Unknown: 16_Cat_In_An_Orange_Twist

“Electra, I really can’t discuss why Max moved out, or why he didn’t move back in, actually, when he … turned up again. I keep up the mortgage payments, don’t I?”

“I don’t care about the mortgage. I care about you. Here I have this attractive young career-gal tenant who has associated with two of the-well, in my age group, the word was ‘eligible,’ but I’m sure you young things have a much raunchier way of putting it nowadays … hot hunks?-guys to hang out at the Circle Ritz, and she seems to have lost both of them sometime, somewhere, somehow.”

Temple tried to answer but the “hot hunks” phrase had temporarily muted her.

“Oh,” Electra went on, gesturing widely enough to make Louie jump up as if she held a hidden treat in one of her hands, “I knew Max was still my Invisible Tenant. What a second-story man! As good as Louie at discreetly eeling in and out the place, which one would expect of a professional magician. They never can do it the easy way.”

Electra peered owlishly over the titanium rims of her often present reading glasses. “I don’t know if that applies to everything about them, but we’ll let that go. Anyway, Max’s hide-and-seek act added some Cary Grant caper charm to the place. So romantic. But he hasn’t been eeling in and out, or out and in, like he used to. Matt’s been vague and distant. And you’ve been looking way too worried for a natural redhead for far too long.”

Temple heard her out, turning the cold crystal glass in her palm. Electra had put her flower-appliqu�d fingernail on the unflowery bottom line: Temple and the two men might have faced extraordinary dangers in the past few months, more might still be facing them, but the upshot was that Temple’s personal life wasn’t very personal at all anymore. With anyone.

“I don’t mean to depress you, dear, but I’m worried. Max I enjoy worrying about. I know if he gets himself into a tight corner, he’ll get himself out of it, and you along with him. But you and I know that Matt’s background doesn’t exactly equip him for living in city full of sex, drugs, and rock ‘n’ roll. I would hate to see that sweet boy get into something he’s not ready to handle.”

“Ex-priests are more resilient than you think:‘“You think so, dear?”

“I hope so. Listen, Electra. I can’t say much about it, but you’re right. We’ve all three been under tremendous pressure. I don’t want to scare you, but it could have touched the Circle Ritz. Even you. Now I think, and hope, it’s over. Or the worst of it, anyway.”

Electra sat forward.

“I really can’t say more.”

“A tiny hint of what kind of danger you’re talking about might help my insomnia. You know, up in the penthouse I can see a lot of comings and goings. Not that I snoop on my tenants, of course. You’re saying you’ve kept me in the dark because it’s ‘good’ for me? Honey, ignorance is never bliss.”

Temple bit her lip. She recognized the truth of Electra’s reverse aphorism. She owed her an explanation. So she spilled the bizarre beans everybody had been keeping secret from each other for too long.

“Matt had a stalker. But it’s over now. Definitely over.”

“A stalker? From his radio job? Media personalities attract nuts sometimes.”

Temple shook her head. “That’s what’s been so … awkward. The stalker was someone who wanted to harass Max but

couldn’t find him.”

“How would he find Matt, then? They have nothing in common but you. Oh.”

“That’s why they’ve both stayed as far away from me as they could. They didn’t want the stalker finding me. And the Circle

Ritz.”

“Nothing in common but you and the Circle Ritz?” Electra looked down at Louie, who rewarded her attention by performing an impossibly long stretch that torqued his body in two opposite directions and showed off all of his, er, undercarriage.

“Amazing,” Electra mused as Louie’s yawn showcased sharp white teeth and crimson tongue. “Was this stalker a woman, by chance?”

“Yes. What an amazing deduction, Electra. The vast majority of stalkers are male.”

“Deduction, phooey! I just remembered seeing Matt down by the pool months ago talking to some strange woman. I don’t

often see strangers in the rear pool area.”

“How strange was she?”

“Not strange weird, just strange as in ‘unknown.’ She was a knockout, actually. Wore a jade green pantsuit, more formal than you usually see in Vegas, especially poolside. I couldn’t see her features very well, but she had Louie coloring.”

“Louie coloring?”

“Naturally black hair and lots of it. Red lips, not natural in her case; white teeth, maybe helped along by bleach. I’m guessing she had green eyes like Louie too. The two of them made a striking picture near that oblong of blue water, that’s why I stopped to study it. Matt so blond and lightly tanned and so very unclothed, she so white skinned, yet boldly colored and overdressed. That’s what struck me, how pale she was, as if she never went out in the sun. Not a native, that’s for sure.”

Temple, mesmerized, contemplated the vivid picture Electra had painted. She’d never seen the woman in the flesh tones, in Technicolor, but that’s how the lively Electra always thought. Even Janice Flanders’s “police” portrait had been executed in charcoal gray. Executed. Strange word for the act of making art, but apropos in this case.

“Kitty the Cutter.” Temple murmured the sobriquet she had given the woman months before.

Electra hissed out a breath and sat back. “That bad, huh?”

“Her first attack was her worst.”

Temple supposed that Matt’s lightly tanned body still carried the scar. Not that she was into dwelling on Matt’s lightly

tanned body. Kitty, though, had been into ruination, all right. She felt a surprising surge of anger.

“You say it’s over.” Electra was prodding.

“It’s over. She left. She’s gone.”

“Hmmm.” Electra sounded properly skeptical. “She must have left a lot of damage in her wake. So both men had to stay away from you for your own protection.”

“Kitty was a jealous god. If she was after a guy, nobody female close to him was safe, not even Molina’s daughter-” “Lieutenant Molina?” Temple nodded.

“I thought you two haven’t gotten along ever since Max disappeared and the lieutenant was questioning us all. She seemed sure he’d been involved in a murder at the Goliath Hotel the night he vanished.”

“We don’t,” Temple said. “Get along. Then, when she was persecuting Max, and now.”

“You poor thing! Trying to hold the fort with all this going on. No wonder you’re so confused about your love life.”

“I’m not confused about my love life, I just haven’t had much of one lately.” Temple clapped a hand over her mouth.

“Oho! Now it comes out. I wasn’t born in those exciting days of yesteryear for nothing, dear. You are blowing opportunities

left and right, girl.”

“I’m not blowing them, circumstances are. Max can’t get married-”

“Why not?”

“For reasons I find reasonable.”

“And Matt can’t do anything but get married, I imagine, given his Church’s strict position on everything carnal. No wonder everyone has been so cranky lately.”

“We have not! Been cranky. Just stressed.”

Electra chugalugged the last of her Dr Pepper and stood.

“Disgraceful. All this sex on TV, sex on the Strip, sex on the billboards, and here we have three healthy young people who

can’t seem to get around to it.”

“This is all so none of your business, Electra. You don’t know the whole story.”

“Whoever does? When you figure it out, tell me. I’d like to see two people in this unit again.”