Unknown - 16_Cat_In_An_Orange_Twist

Temple had wanted to check in the store before it closed at 7:00 P.M. She prowled Maylords’ concentric aisles, visiting the landmarks of the grand opening without the distraction of a mob.

She had glimpsed a suited man loitering in the big boxy area, around the corner from the entrance, reserved for unglamourous goods like mattresses and carpet samples.

The harried shirtsleeved man she saw pushing a huge dolly bearing a credenza was Matt’s friend from seminary, whom he’d pointed out at the opening.

Temple cruised past vignettes she was beginning to recognize, regarding them as side “chapels” to round out her church analogy.

At one she stopped, almost ready to light a votive candle, had there been any.

This was Simon’s design, a temple to Art Deco revival. He had been so talented. Her eye moved from one piece to another, torn between pure aesthetic pleasure, a lust to own everything she saw, and an impulse to weep.

Her gaze flipped back the way she might return to an earlier-read page. Something was … wrong.

In her memory, Simon again stepped up to the lacquered gray wall and exchanged one Ert� print’s position with another. The improvement was instantaneous.

Now it was back the old way, and all wrong. Temple stepped up to the wall, and stretched to lift one framed print off its hook. She leaned it against a leopard-print sofa cushion, then strained to remove the other.

She was too short for this job, but Simon deserved to have his vignette the way he had wanted it.

“What are you doing there?” The question was sharp and commanding.

Temple didn’t stop what she was doing. Neither did her inquisitor.

“Lady, I’m talking to you. Customers can’t just walk in this store and start rearranging furniture.”

“Why not? You do it.” Temple turned, facing the tall woman standing in the aisle like an affronted statue come to life. “The last thing I saw Simon Foster do when he was alive”-Temple lifted the Ert� print of a woman in a gauzy black and orange chiffon gown, to the hook on the left-“was to restore the placement of these two pieces. Like this. Some yahoo had come through and moved them back again.”

“There’s no computer connection to Yahoo here,” the woman said scathingly.

“Yahoo,” Temple explained, “is an ignorant being, not an Internet service. See Jonathan Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels.” When the woman looked blank, she added, “Ted Danson played the title role in a TV miniseries. He ran into a lot of yahoos. A yahoo is a member of a race of ignoramuses.”

Beth Blanchard blinked. Slowly. “Ted Danson. Cheers. Right. We have nobody named ‘Gulliver’ here.”

She was tall and thin with a hyperthyroid look: bulging blue eyes. She was also incredibly unlearned.

“And,” Blanchard added, “you’re the … ignoramus if you think you can walk into Maylords and rearrange the room

settings. I’m going to call security.”

“Get Raf Nadir while you’re at it,” Temple said. “And Kenny Maylord. He’s the one who hired me.” “If you were hired you can get fired.”

“Apparently that’s the rule around here. Unfortunately for you, I have a contract with the corporation.”

While Beth blinked in confusion, Temple stepped back into the aisle to eyeball her quick-change act.

“Much better. Simon had an impeccable eye. See how the spiral right-facing movement of the orange piece complements the scroll on the bedposts?”

“You’re nuts, lady. I don’t see anything.”

“My point exactly. You should let people who can see things do their jobs unmolested.”

The woman blinked again. Temple concluded that she was not only ignorant but a tad stupid. They didn’t always go together, but when they did you got a dangerous person. Nothing would stop her from running roughshod over people much sharper, and more sensitive, than she. Even when they were dead.

Temple hated bullies, especially when they were standing right beside her and had nine inches on her.

Another voice joined the discussion. “You mentioned my name?”

Rafi Nadir was standing there in all his brute glory; navy mobster suit and five o’clock shadow.

Beth tensed beside Temple. “This woman is vandalizing the vignette. Escort her out of the store.”

Nadir turned to Temple. He looked stern. “Anything I can help you with, Miss Barr?”

“This woman is undermining the work of her fellow Maylords employees. Get her off my back.”

“Well!” Beth started to say more, but Rafi turned and gave her a look Temple recognized as cop-not-to-fool-with.

“Your days are numbered, though you don’t know it,” Beth told Rafi.

Temple sucked in a breath. That sounded like a death threat. Maybe Simon had received the same warning.

Beth hoarded one final salvo in her mediocre mind, a shot at dishonoring the dead. She stared toward Simon’s vignette, then said, “I guess he won’t be collecting any commissions on that stuff, no matter how it’s arranged.”

The sound of her furious retreating heels echoed for a long time.

Nadir stared after her. “Castrating bitch,” he noted without rancor, then turned for an expected chastisement from Temple.

“I couldn’t have put it better myself,” she said.

“You are full of surprises.”

“So, sometimes, are you.”

“She’s right. The extra security guys like me are only contracted until the Wong woman leaves. Then it’s down to the skeleton crew of regular security … a bunch of Marx Brothers who think like police reserve wannabes. Amateurs.”

“Maybe she meant ‘your days are numbered’ literally. And I hear the entire sales force has been put on notice.”

“Is that right? Everybody’s expendable? After the dough Maylord spread around getting ready for this opening? Doesn’t

figure.”

“No, it doesn’t. But how does Simon’s murder figure into it?”

“He was queer.”

“That’s no reason to kill someone.”

“In some circles it is.”

“Not in upscale home furnishing stores.”

Nadir shrugged, declining to argue, but not changing his mind, or his prejudices.

“Listen,” she said, “all I know is that people are leaving the staff already, one way or the other. I need a list of how many have quit so far. If, as the charming Ms. Blanchard says, your days here are numbered, could you get that for me?”

“You want me to pass privileged information on to you? You want me to play snitch?” “Ah . yeah, that’s about it.”

He shook his head and laughed. “You know how low snitches rank in the game of cops and robbers?”

“Lower than a snake belly?”

“Even lower.”

“I don’t suppose you know how to run the kind of computers they probably use around here anyway. Maybe you could get me into the administrative offices after-hours-?”

“Worse plan. And I am computer literate. But you don’t need to do technoespionage, kid. You just want to interview the employees who were dumped, or ran, right?”

“Right. Just talk to them.”

“Okay. I’ll get you a list.”

“How?”

He waited a beat. “I should impress the hell out of you and not tell you how.”

“If you can get me that list, I’m already impressed. It’s a good idea, isn’t it? Interview the malcontents?”

“Don’t ask me. I’m no detective, not even a private one.”

“So how are you going to get that list?”

He shrugged. “No magic. They keep a list of authorized employees in the security office. They’ve checked off the exec, including the Foster guy. They’re real nervous about the disgruntled ones doing them dirt. Heard, or overheard, that they had an incident recently in Palm Beach when an angry ex-employee shot out their illuminated display windows at night.”