Unknown - 19_Cat_In_A_Red_Hot_Rage

“You already know Elmore was number three,” Electra was saying in a monotone, subdued voice. “You put that in your notebook. I never bothered to write any of this down—unlike dear, dead Oleta!”

“Whenever you talk to the police again, none of these theatrics. Pretend you’re a Stepford wife. Only say what you have to and without any emotion whatsoever.”

“When, not if?”

“When, not if, Electra. You were too darn convenient to the body. Somebody else probably figured that out too. But don’t worry, the Red-Hatted League is on it.”

“I want to be there with them!”

“We’ll see.” Temple found the pen slipping between her fingers and rolling under the sofa fringe. “Electra, what is that under your couch?”

Electra looked down. “Ali, besides dust bunnies? Maybe my cat, Karma.”

“Is she declawed?”

“Never!”

“Thanks, I guess I won’t risk patting around down there in the dark. I’ll try to remember what you say and write this down later.”

“Try to re-mem-ber,” Electra quavered in a thready soprano. “Husband number one,” Temple demanded.

“I’ve never really counted him.”

“Electra!”

“That’s what we girls did in my day, my dear. We either married any man who ever kissed us, or we never married at all and got known as hippies. Darren and I eloped in senior year of high school, and he then further eloped with a bottle of rye a few weeks later. I’ve never seen or heard from him again, and am the better for it. I don’t think that minister was real, anyway, and I never thought to ask to see the license. Boys would do anything to get into your girdle in those days.”

“Girdle?”

“Tubes or panties with industrial-strength elastic you had to spend ten minutes getting on. They were tight enough to bite like a snapping turtle, believe me, if any roaming fingertips roamed too far. I didn’t lose my virginity until my second husband.”

Temple cleared her throat. “Darren must have really liked that bottle. It’s awfully dark and hot in here. I may swoon.”

“That’s all right. All the floors are covered in Persian carpets; lots of nap.”

“So who was number two?”

“Another elopement. Billy was a filling station attendant with an urge to—”

“Don’t say it!”

—go to refrigeration school. Between his double shifts, I somehow got left out. I divorced him and I moved yet again to forget.”

“And then came Elmore.”

“Not a moment too soon. I actually had delusions about him.”

“You mean ‘illusions.’ “

“No, just delusions. I had so many delusions that Curtiss actually came along a full nine months after them. I really enjoyed being a housewife and mother. Elmore was always on the road, selling insurance policies. Curtiss and I had six happy years together before Elmore came home one day and said he’d found another woman. What he’d meant was that a conniving cheerleader had found him and his house payment and steady job and little family to fling out on the stoop.”

“That was Oleta.”

“Yup. She always was a little—”

“I get the picture,” Temple said quickly, trying to evade hearing another rough word from her landlady’s mouth: slut.

“—snip. That’s why I kept the last name ‘Lark.’ Just to annoy her. And it did.”

“Why? You had moved on to Vegas and the Elmore Larks were in Florida.”

“By then, I was old enough to start getting mad about being betrayed.”

Temple bit her lip and thought about feeling like a betrayer, which she did now. She’d always taken Electra at face value as a free spirit. She’d never guessed how many decades it had taken her to get that way.

“Men and women,” Temple said, “seem to have a hard time getting in sync with each other in any era.”

Electra’s face lost its pained, in-the-past expression and resumed the sweetly sharp look Temple knew so well. And relied upon. She was two thousand miles away from her mother, but they’d never quite evolved into girl talk, anyway. Kit and Electra made excellent standins.

Electra pursed her lips, as if to say: Enough about my little murder rap and me. “You care to discuss what’s happening on the Max-Matt front? I’ve been dying to know. Really. Dying.”

Temple didn’t care to, but she could feel herself blushing, which was a dead giveaway in a modern girl that something was happening.

“How much do you know?”

“I’m a landlady. I always know more than I’m supposed to.” Temple nodded and wished she’d been an old-fashioned girl with a handkerchief to knot.

“I know,” Electra said, “that our darling boy Matt Devine has made major updates to his bedroom decor. About time! And that you’ve been up there admiring the changes.”

“Electra!”

She shrugged. “You’ve always had an interest in interior design. And I know Max hasn’t been around lately. Except for the time he called and you weren’t in, so he took me for a ride on the Vampire.”

Temple was stunned silent. Max had been here, at the Circle Ritz? Recently? When she hadn’t been? And he’d taken Electra for a ride on the vintage motorcycle he had traded to Electra for a down payment on the Circle Ritz unit back when he and Temple had been almost-marrieds?

“The Vampire,” Temple repeated. “Max took you out on the Vampire?”

“You weren’t here at the time, dear,” Electra said gently. “I think … I think it was a farewell spin; that I do. He’s a knight, Max, in shining midnight-black. Can give an old lady a thrill ride as well as a young one. And, I admit, I was thrilled.”

“When? What day?”

“Why, I don’t quite remember. Maybe four or five days ago. It felt like a sentimental journey, and I’m sure he’d have much rather had you riding pillion. But you weren’t here.”

And now Max was not “here” at all.

Temple tried to make sense of the timeline. Did Max have time to squire Electra around on the Vampire and still shut down his house, sell it? Or had all that happened before he came back to the Circle Ritz for one last dashing surprise visit?

Only … Temple hadn’t been there to be surprised, or kissed good-bye, or driven around the block. So Electra got it in her place: the cryptic, fond farewell. All Max, only Max, all the time.

“Temple. Dear. It’s not all tragedy. Haven’t you and Matt been—?”

“Yes. But it’s tragedy if I never see Max again.”

“I’ve never seen most of my husbands again.” Electra leaned back into the sofa. “And you and Matt?”

Temple gave a deep sigh. “We may want a Lovers’ Knot ceremony sometime soon.”

“No! Really? I’m honored.”

“Electra, Max is missing.”

“Wasn’t he always?”

“Not like this. For real! As far as I know, you’re the last person to see him.”

She got it immediately. “Me, not you.”

Temple nodded.

“Then he doesn’t know about you and Matt?”

“He’s Max. He knew about me and Matt before me and Matt knew about us.”

“That makes it worse.”

“Right.” Temple leaned forward and knotted her hands together. “I don’t feel right about this. This is not the way Max would have bowed out, and I think he was probably ready to bow out.”

“He was a little … the last time I saw him,” Electra admitted. “A little what?”

“A little … nostalgic.” Electra leaned forward to take Temple’s hands in hers. “Listen, hon. If Max is as omniscient as you think he is, there’s nothing you could do that surprises him. Maybe this was his graceful exit, like Sherlock Holmes falling into ReichenbachFalls. Maybe he thought people would want to forget about him.”

“Like we could?”