Unknown - 16_Cat_In_An_Orange_Twist

“I left it in the Maylords lot, remember? You can drop me off there tomorrow. Well, later today. Much later today.”

“Oh.” Temple put both feet on the asphalt, observing the glitter of the Midnight Louie shoes with an odd third-party sort of detachment.

Matt took her hand and pulled her upright, shut the car door, hit the lock button on the key chain.

“What’s the matter with me?” she wondered with small interest.

“Shock and exhaustion. Come on, I’ll walk you in.”

“It feels like I’m really drunk without the buzz.”

His arm around her shoulder steered for the building’s side door.

When they got there she shook herself alert. “I’ll take the keys. I’m awake and singing now.”

But the key tip stuttered in the lock before she finally found the right touch. And when they took the elevator up a floor and got to her front door, she fumbled the keys again.

“You’re still cold.” He took the keys from her fingers to unlock the door.

“How come you’re Mr. Steady as She Goes?”

“I had to go on the air live to do my show tonight. Sobers the emotions right up.”

“The show must go on. I used to know what that meant.”

She flicked the light switch by the door, then gazed into her living room, dead ahead. It looked so normal, especially the newspaper sections tossed all over.

In a couple hours the Las Vegas Review-Journal would be in the same place, full of front-page news and photos of the shooting spree at Maylords. Oh, her aching PR-person head!

“I’ve got to get on this first thing tomorrow,’ she said, mostly to herself. “Today.”

Matt steered her into the kitchen. “Where’s that Kinsella firewater stored?”

“Cabinet under the coffeemaker. Maybe I should have caffeine.”

“No. One nightcap and you’ll sleep like a baby. Caffeine first thing in the morning, which will be about noon for you.”

Temple nodded, almost nodding off. Matt lifted her onto a kitchen stool to get her out of the way. That brought her head on a level with his and their glances crossed for the first time since leaving Maylords.

She swayed toward him. He hesitated, then brushed his lips across hers, more hit-and-run than kiss, but they didn’t … hadn’t … kissed casually before. Temple was feeling anything but casual, yet this moment seemed too natural to comment on.

Now Matt was squatting in front of the cupboard, shoving aside the Old Crow bottle for the tall, dark, and expensive model beside it. Kinda looked like Max himself.

Matt rose, poured it neat into two glasses from the cupboard, Irish cut crystal, and handed her one, curling her fingers securely around the wide, low glass.

“To the end of all bad things.” He raised his glass.

Temple couldn’t help feeling it was a toast to all the undear departed who’d made all their lives so miserable, from Matt’s evil stepfather to Max and his stalker. But not even they couldhave been behind the terrifying attack on Maylords. They were so very dead. And Temple was dead tired.

She sipped the fiery gold liquid. It cleared her sinuses like Chinese mustard.

“Kickapoo Joy Juice.” She blinked tears out of her eyes. “What an irreverent name to call one of the world’s choicest

whiskies. I really don’t like hard liquors straight. You don’t have to drink all of it. You look a lot better already.”

“How?”

“It’s true you don’t need much help in looking better usually, but you were pretty pasty-faced.”

“I think that was a compliment. The first part. Not the pasty-faced part. Unless you like pasty-faced.”

“I like someone who looks like the blood is running through her veins again. You and Danny were right on the lights thing, but I bet the long wait for the police interviews was more wearing than anything else. Did, ah, Molina make it out there while I was off being Mr. Midnight for WCOO?”

“No. Not a rhinoceros-thick hide in sight. You were lucky they questioned and let you go early. Not only because you made your showtime but you avoided the stultifying tedium of that many people being interviewed, very sympathetically, by the police. I can’t believe the police actually can have a heart. Maybe it was because Molina wasn’t on the case. It’s hardly homicide.”

“But it could have been. Still, it was obviously a random attack.”

“Was it? I mean, how do we know someone special wasn’t the target? Like Amelia Wong.”

“Because nobody was hit, which is downright miraculous in a mob like that. The police seem to think it’s malicious

mischief, attacking the building, not the people in it. They said the land the store is built on was a vacant lot for a long time.”

“I didn’t know.”

Matt nodded and sipped his drink, leaning against the kitchen counter. “That’s what they told me. A lot of the local hoodlums liked doing target practice on the site. Probably resented that Maylords took their fun away.”

“I’m relieved to know that, and glad that you could see me home, but I feel kind of rotten about abducting Janice’s escort

for the evening.”

“The evening is over, or hadn’t you noticed?”

She checked her watch. “Five A.M., good grief! It’s hardly worth going to bed.”

“This is when I usually do.”

“This late? I mean, early?”

“I get home from the radio station about three, unwind a bit and presto! Five o’clock in the morning.”

“At least you’re in no danger of waking up with the three A.M. blues.”

“No. Are you? I can stay.” He nodded to the living room sofa. “Matt, what about Janice?

“Shouldn’t you be asking what about Max first?”

“Is this like a game Concentration? Which cards are two of a kind? Max. Janice. They’re … both not here.”

“But I am, and I don’t want you waking up scared and alone.”

She almost pushed it by answering, “You don’t want me?” But then they’d both be stuck with whatever he answered. “I don’t need baby-sitting.” She pushed herself off the support of the kitchen countertop. Surviving a mass attack was like getting very drunk very fast. “I’ll have you know I’ve been called a ballsy little broad by a professional bodyguard.” “My phrase for it would be stubborn and proud.”

“I don’t believe that stubbornness is one of the Seven Deadly Sins.”

“It could be.” Matt shook his head. “Just call if you can’t sleep.”

He went to her door before she could summon an answer. “I’ll sleep,” she called after him down the short entry hall. It sounded like an afterthought. Like bravado.

I just hope to Hannah I don’t dream, she told herself as she turned the key to lock Matt out and herself in. Locked in.

She had hoped Midnight Louie would have been home togreet her, but when she reached her bedroom there was no sign of the big black cat … except for several black hairs on her comforter. Were any of them Max’s? she wondered.

Here yesterday, hair today. The story of her singular single life.

Chapter 13

Mad Max

Gandolph the Great stood by the kitchen island literally whipping up a magical postmidnight snack of crepes a la Orson.

Max Kinsella watched his mentor’s sleight of hand with the wire whisk. Gandolph still had the dexterity for cooking gourmet dishes, but his age-thickened knuckles were past their prime for magical illusions one couldn’t eat. “Temple,” Max observed, “can’t cook.”

“Won’t cook. Everyone can.”

“But not exquisitely. She has always appreciated the few simple kitchen tricks I learned from you.”

“I wish I could meet her.” Garry Randolph, the man behind the stage name, looked up from under bearish eyebrows. “Being presumed dead can be damned inconvenient. I never thought you’d settle into any kind of domestic arrangement, not with the tigers you had on your tail.”