Douglas, Nelson - Midnight Louie 05-Cat in a Diamond Dazzle

"Nothing, but it shouldn't be packaged so embarrassingly like sausage, and that's what those muscle-bound, semi-nude, male cover models look like."

"Aha! So you've looked."

"Who could miss them?"

"But you've never read a romance novel?"

"Not since ... oh, Wuthering Heights ."

"I can't believe that." Electra glared at her over the concentrated gleam of the music lamp until Temple felt like she was being grilled by a cop. Romance patrol on your tail "Okay," Temple said, thinking hard and trying to be honest. "I read some Georgette Heyer Regency romances in high school.

You know, romantic farce among the upper classes, skirting the indiscreet but very proper after all, as discreet as Jane Austen. Those male cover models all looked like Bob Cratchet in Beau Brummell clothes."

"Heyer is a classic author," Electra said reverently, "but a bit prim by today's standards. Even the Regency romance has caught up with the times. Face it, the period is historically more correct with a peek behind the bedcurtains. The Regency rake had a high old time."

"I don't know why I'm standing here debating books I haven't read with you when my life is last week's powdered milk without water at the moment."

"You see! You haven't kept up with the romance field. You need to get acquainted with modern times between the covers. You might learn something that would help your current situation." Electra finished with a significant waggle of her silvery eyebrows that made her resemble a demonic fairy godmother beckoning an innocent to a night at the erotomaniac's ball.

Temple laughed, which was an improvement on her previous mood. "Honestly. You think I could learn something from a paperback romance novel? Please. Life is earnest, life is real. Life is nothing like a date with Fabio on a really good hair day--his, not yours. That kind of self-deceptive escapism has zilch to do with my . . . domestic dilemma."

"A Domestic Dilemma ," Electra parroted, assuming a strange, simpering demeanor Temple had never seen before. "A Regency romance by Henrietta Hayfield under the, ah, old Garnet imprint." She bit a lip.

"Published in the late seventies, I think. The heroine is a runaway heiress who disguises herself as a chimney sweep and marries an earl with an allergy to soot. Stunning romantic tension, but no sensual fireworks in either the hearth or the bedroom. Did I mention that the conference is going to have a trivia contest, too?" she finished modestly.

"How appropriate!" Temple said, steaming. "I know you mean well, Electra, but the last thing I need now is visions of Scarlet Pimpernels or scarlet women dancing in my girlish imagination. I need my feet on the ground, not my head in the clouds. I'm going to my . . . rooms."

Electra thrust the bundle of papers at Temple. "At least look over the conference materials, dear. I've never known you to have a closed mind. It might be fun."

"Fun is not in my game plan at the moment."

Temple stomped out of the wedding chapel on her noisome sandals, enjoying shattering the silence that she had sought, and so soon lost.

Still, the encounter with Electra had eased her emotional shell shock. A lethargy of despair lifted with her as she jolted upward in the creaking elevator.

She pulled the door key from her jumpsuit pocket and entered the condominium, flipping on the kitchen switch. Fluorescent light burned the black-and-white decor kitchen into etched sharpness. It oozed just far enough into the living room beyond to reveal the sofa and its two occupants.

One end was again in the possession of Midnight Louie, his eyes glowing green in the semi-dark; at the other end sat Max Kinsella. His eyes did not glow green.

Temple wasn't surprised to find him there this time, but she did feel the lover's knot in her gut kink again. Max, seeing her, reached up a long arm to turn on the reading lamp over the sofa, bathing himself and his Hawaiian shirt in an incandescent spill of buttery light.

Temple set the materials Electra had given her on the edge of the kitchen counter and went to face the music.

"This time," Max said, "I was perfectly house-trained. I used my key." He leaned forward, the object in hand. When Temple didn't take the key, he set it down on the coffee table.

With both ends of the sofa occupied, Temple didn't relish putting herself in the middle. So she sat on the coffee table facing the sofa, something only a lightweight like herself could do without tipping it over.

Maybe it was the downpour of light from above, but Max looked worried, or, rather, he looked like he was trying not to look worried.

"I don't understand," she said for openers.

He shrugged. "My breaking and entering via the balcony seemed to upset you. I can be civil and use a door like anyone else. You can keep that." He nodded at the key on the glass-topped table.

Temple felt like another fictional little-girl-lost, only this time it was Alice confronting tables bearing alien objects that could abruptly change her perceptions of herself and the world around her. Did her reaction to current events make her a mature Big Girl, or an emotionally shrunken Little Girl? Go ask Alice.

"It's your key," she finally said.

"You can give it back when you really believe that."

"Electra said you won't stay at the Circle Ritz."

"Can't," Max corrected. "This was meant to be a flying visit to let you know I was alive."

"Thanks, I guess."

He was silent. At the sofa's other end, Louie maintained his noncommittal stare. Then he suddenly hiked a hind leg over one shoulder and began grooming his business end, all the while keeping a glaring eye on Max.

Temple had never before seen a cat give anyone the finger, and laughed. Max deserved a feline finger, at least.

"He doesn't like me," Max noted.

"Oh, I doubt Louie is reacting in terms of like or dislike. He's just not sure you won't commit an indiscretion on his sofa.

"He must know my history." Max directed a significant, and searing, look at Temple.

That look could have made a nun blush, but Temple was drained of frivolous blood. She looked at the floor.

"Temple, what's happened with us?" he wanted to know.

"Max! What usl You were gone, without word or warning, for over five months. Lieutenant Molina even implied that you might be dead, although Lieutenant Molina mostly implied that you were an escaped murderer whose whereabouts she wanted to know."

"Electra clued me in on your recent crime-solving exploits, but she didn't mention this Molina bozo.

He had no right planting nonsense in your mind--"

"Is your Interpol record nonsense?"

"My Interpol record--?"

"Play innocent, but your hidden baby blues won't fool me, and they are baby blues. I saw it right there on the Interpol card in black and white: six-foot-two, eyes of blue. Sure, you could grow an extra inch or two, but your eyes wouldn't change color. Would you trust somebody who even lied about their eye color?"

Max's frown was still worrying at the Interpol news. "What the devil could that damned interfering lieutenant have dug up?

"How about IRA involvement? That bring back any forgotten chapters and verses? You know, following the black velvet band for the good of dear auld Ireland and all that. I didn't even know that you were Irish-born."

"I wasn't."

"Then what were you doing in Ireland at the tender age of seventeen, being suspected of IRA activities?"

"I was a tourist! That whole business was a mix-up. This Molina didn't have anything more recent than that old Interpol bulletin, did he?"

"No ..." Temple found Max's assumption that Molina was male as irritating as a hovering gnat, yet it was not worth swatting down when much bigger issues were swarming en masse. "That still doesn't explain why your local disappearing act became semi-permanent. Or why you never said good-bye. Or called. Nor does it explain away the body in the ceiling of the Goliath casino. Or the other body in the ceiling of the Crystal Phoenix casino just a couple of days ago ... or why you wear those damn green contact lenses that I've never seen you putting in or taking out. That took premeditation, Max, and plenty of it! What did you take me for, a loyal and gullible audience of one?"