Carole Douglas - Cat in an Alphabet Soup

That touched a nerve. “I’m not competing with her; I’m just doing my job. At least it started that way.”

Temple remembered that the onerous duty of ransoming Baker and Taylor would occur first thing on the next day’s agenda. She either had to be up early—or up all night....

The waiter had slipped a salver, bearing the usual coy bill peeking out of a leatherette folder, next to Lanyard Hunter. Hunter’s forearms rested on the table as he leaned closer for the kill. His compelling eyes fixed on Temple with a flattering, unmistakable intent. At the same time, his expansive elbow had unobtrusively nudged the check tray to her side of the table.

Temple blinked, feeling like a robin who had been hypnotized by the world’s largest worm. The rat was going to take her at her word, stick her with the check and seduce her into the bargain, if he could! Lanyard Hunter was the Total Con Man. All of his promise and promises, especially romantic ones, were bogus. He could even be the murderer. No thanks.

“Speaking of my job,” Temple segued as smoothly as a con lady, “I’d better get you back to your hotel. You must be exhausted after two days of the ABA.”

“The night is only postadolescent,” he suggested in a baritone that could have seduced a Barbie doll.

Temple smiled. She was small but not that small. Or desperate. And not born yesterday. “My internal clock is on senescence,” she answered blithely. “I’ve had a long day, and I need my duty sleep.”

On that note the evening ended. Hunter never tried to beat Temple to the check. In no time flat she was pulling the Storm under the Las Vegas Hilton’s scintillating entrance canopy.

“Would you like to come in for a nightcap?” he asked.

“The only nightcap I want is flannel and at my apartment,” she said firmly.

“Are you sure?” Lanyard Hunter’s well-manicured hand had materialized warmly on Temple’s knee.

“Thanks, but I live with someone who might not understand.”

“Oh, who?”

“He’s a... big black dude. Some people think he throws a lot of weight around in this town.”

The hand vanished. Its opposite number was fumbling with the door latch.

“An enjoyable evening,” Hunter said as he hastily left the vehicle. “Thanks, and give my regards to your, er, friend.”

“Oh, I will,” Temple promised with a perky goodbye wave. The Storm took off like a hot aqua bat out of hell.

T he moment Templeunlocked her big front door, the apartment felt wrong.

One thing was the heat. It prowled the darkened rooms like an invisible black panther. Its hot breath caressed her face first, then lapped down to her feet.

Even after the tepid air-conditioning of the Circle Ritz’s common areas, the marble-faced lobby and the wood-paneled hallway, this hothouse atmosphere felt unnatural, or rather, as natural as all outdoors. Far too hot for 80; more like a sizzling 90 degrees.

Temple waited while the unfamiliar hulking shapes turned back into her furniture. She slipped out of one high heel, bracing herself on the kitchen divider wall, then another. The shoes toppled onto bare parquet with a soft snick. She’d been meaning to get an entry area rug and now it was too late. Now she’d be murdered in her own apartment!

Maybe not.

She was alarmed, no denying that. The more you took a place for granted, the more you noticed when it altered, even slightly. Why would her air-conditioning have gone off—and hours before, to judge by the temperature now?

The pink neon clock on the black-and-white kitchen wall, so bland by day, broadcast an eerie Miami Vice glow over the counters. It reflected rosily, like a frivolous vigil light, on the living room’s sculpted white ceiling. A vigil light betokened a presence. Temple wondered whose.

She debated retreating. Yet the place was so still. Empty. Utterly empty. The parquet felt warm under her silent stocking feet as she skated across it, afraid of slipping.

The living room opened up before her, a book too dimly lit to read aright. A gap in the French doors was instantly evident, like a dog-eared page. One of the doors was ajar on an acute angle, admitting the heat of the night, and a grinding chorus of distant cicadas that she hadn’t noticed at first.

A heavy scent of jasmine and gardenia also rolled in like fog from the patio. Temple paused at the living room wall, her fingers reading the Braille of the thermostat’s raised plastic letters. The tiny marker was parked in the Off zone—but what burglar would turn air-conditioning off?

She shuffled further into the living room. Then she stopped. Something was missing. The cat should have sensed her presence by now. Louie should be stalking from some favorite retreat, or thumping down from atop the refrigerator, merow ing for food. He should be wreathing her ankles, even in the dark, no challenge for his superior night vision. Where was the cat?

Temple back-shuffled as silently as she had entered, and slipped out the front door, never turning her back to the room. Once in the hall with its feeble wall sconces and dull rose carpeting, she raced flat-footed for the elevator and hit the Up button.

It took forever to come. She’d never noticed before how the gears clanked and squealed, how blasted loud the ancient mechanism was! It arrived empty. Temple darted in and pushed the P button. Inside, the car was richly paneled, like the exterior of a coffin. It jerked upward with the unholy racket of an unoiled guillotine being hoisted for the fatal drop.

A clanking stop almost persuaded Temple’s heart to imitate it. She tore for the coffered double doors opposite, pounding them with both fists.

They sprang open. Electra Lark stood there with her hair in stiff peaks resembling properly beaten egg whites. Little papers pressed onto her scalp. One egg-white peak was stained blood-red.

“Temple! What is it? I’m doing my hair.”

“God! I thought you were being scalped.” Temple scampered over the threshold and shut the penthouse doors behind her. “Someone’s in the building—or was. My apartment air- conditioning is off, one French door is wide open and the cat’s gone.”

Electra whipped the hand towel from around her neck, thinking. “The maintenance man is gone for the night. It’s too bad that nice Matt Devine isn’t here.”

“He isn’t?” Temple hadn’t considered that there might be advantages to being a damsel in distress.

“Works nights.” Electra sighed. “We’ll have to be liberated ladies and do it ourselves. I’ll get a flashlight. We don’t want to give the intruder any more to see by than necessary, if he’s still there.”

Temple nodded, and Electra vanished into her kitchen. Temple had never explored the inner depths of Electra’s quarters, but she glimpsed an odd green crystal ball on a huge claw-footed brass tripod in the living room—atop a blond TV cabinet from the fifties. A shadow flitted away as Temple strained to see into the half-glimpsed rooms; probably a phantom of her unsteady nerves.

“This oughta do it.” Electra reappeared, waving an old- fashioned, silver-metal-barreled flashlight that reminded Temple of ancient Eveready battery ads. She just hoped a black cat of her acquaintance, her brief acquaintance, had the same nine lives the Eveready cat always did.

They rode down the three floors in silence; the elevator did not. Temple had left her door unlocked, so they entered immediately on a well-oiled hush of hinges. Electra switched on her beam; the click sounded like a cocking revolver in the silence. A sickly circle of light piddled on the parquet.