Unknown - 16_Cat_In_An_Orange_Twist

She frowned at the cryptic words after each name. Avatar. Genji. Mongrel. Bebe. Whipped Cream.

Some names had been crossed out, with dates penciled next to the Xes.

Okay, she’d just have to ask … “Caesar,”

“Grandview,” and “Saltlick,” three of the former employees, what the nicknames meant.

Let’s see. Who was closest?

Temple pulled out her map of greater Las Vegas, and triangulated on the first target.

” ‘Grandview’ it is.”

There had been an Art Deco-vintage movie theater in St. Paul by that name. Temple chose to regard this fairly remote coincidence as a good sign.

She put the Miata in gear and shot off to the Granada Apartments. Surely a recently unemployed person would be at home, sending r�sum�s via the Internet.

The Granada Apartments were thirty years old, not quite antique enough to be chic. Lord, Temple hoped that description did not describe her! Then she felt an instant pang as she recalled Danny Dove’s enthusiasm for moving into the Circle Ritz with Simon.

One moment, a stable happy life. The next, history. She tried to imagine how she’d have felt if Matt had fallen victim to his stalker. Do not go there. Or if Max had lost to Molina, and was facing decades in prison on some trumped-up charge. Do not go

there.

It did occur to her to wonder why all the men in her life … well, both … well, the one man in her life and the runner-up. .

faced mortal danger so often. Was she possibly an unlucky omen?

Do not go there.

Temple pulled onto the cracked concrete parking lot of the Granada Apartments. Three stories. Beige stucco. Ticky-tacky tiny balconies just big enough for a discount-store fold-up chair and a geranium planter. Genteel getting by.

Temple checked her list. “Grandview”-Glory Diaz was the name-had been fantasizing if she’d come up with that word while looking out from her balcony here. Who could blame her for dreaming, though?

Temple hustled out of the Miata (newest car on the lot) and hurried to the second-floor unit.

The unit’s doorbell didn’t give when pushed, so Temple knocked. And knocked. Until her knuckles stung. From inside came the strains of ’40s swing music, which Temple normally liked, when it wasn’t interfering with her pursuit of a victim, witness, or suspect. Listen to her: Nancy Drew on Xenadrine.

Finally, she heard the chain lock scraping open. The doorknob turned.

There stood Glory Diaz, a bottle blonde wearing dead-hooker black Maybelline eyeliner. Makeup caked in the furrows of her face despite the glamour look: her chorus-girl height was enhanced by strappy high heels from Wild Woman cheapo shoe store in the mall. Platinum hair and leopardskinprint spandex skimpy in all the wrong places finished the look, and how!

Temple felt “Grandview” didn’t have much of a future vista. In fact, she couldn’t imagine Maylords hiring this hard-edged dame in the first place, despite her very passing resemblance to a worn-out chorine. Still, one had to make the best of a bad deal.

“Hi! I’m Temple Barr. I’m doing publicity for Maylords. Some bizarre things have been going on there. I thought that you, as a former employee, could clue me in on a thing or two.”

“Honey, have I got news for you! Come on in. Would you like some Pernod?”

“Uh, no.” Temple had never figured out what exactly Pernod was, so she decided she was best off avoiding it at all costs. When in doubt, don’t fake it.

Glory Diaz, who must be brunette under that Marilyn Monroe coif-was it a wig?-tsked like a grandmother, then licked her exaggerated lips. “Lime Kool-Aid, then?”

“Cool.” Temple stepped onto the orange shag carpet. Ick. Whatever marketing guru had decreed orange temporarily chic again had been temporarily insane.

Temple took the offered seat on a long, terminally floral sofa. It made Electra Lark’s Hawaiian muumuus look restrained.

Glory sat, her own floral sheath shifting well above her bare, Mystic Tan-tawny, albeit knobby, knees.

Her shoes were Plexiglas spike platforms that Temple had never seen outside of a Frederick’s of Hollywood catalogue. Hey, everyone has a secret vice or two. Hers were catalogues and fairly adventuresome shoes, so she couldn’t be too hard on Glory’s fashion sense.

Glory was busy pouring limeaid from a plastic pitcher on the coffee table into clear plastic glasses with paper cutouts of butterflies embedded between two clear layers. She either kept it ready for company or had been drowning her unemployment sorrows in a poison-green sugar OD.

“So you’re the PR gal. Aren’t you the cutest thing?”

No, Temple thought. I’m not. Not a “gal,” or a “thing” and not cute! But these darn butterfly glasses.sure are!

Glory Diaz was one of those sad women with absolutely no feminine physical graces who dressed like a Barbie doll.

Temple had often cursed the inescapable femininity of a short, small woman bequeathed to her by some Billie Burke, Good-Witch-Glynda-style godmother, but she’d never felt like a caricature of it, the way Glory looked.

This woman had been way too obvious for the Maylords corporate culture. Maylords hired few women: Janice, several understated female interior designers uniformed in smooth bobs and low-heeled pumps, and of course that witchy woman Beth Blanchard, another Human Resources Department mistake.

And then there was the exhibitionism rumor. No wonder Glory had been fired while her orientation seminar seat was still warm. Apparently very warm.

“So,” Temple said, never one to beat around the er, bush, “who hired you and who fired you?” “I wasn’t fired. I left.”

Temple nodded, then sipped mouth-curdlingly tart-sweet limeade. “So who hired you?”

“Mark Ainsworth, that rascal.” Glory had simpered on the word “rascal.”

The only “rascal” Temple could picture the anxious, snobby manager playing was the role of weasel.

“And why did you decide to part ways?”

Glory, coy, leaned back into the couch corner. “Darling? Can’t you guess?” “No—”

“Maybe you don’t know Maylords’s nickname among the initiated.”

“Maybe I don’t.”

Glory simpered again. “Gaylords, darlin’.”

Temple nodded. Slowly. Trying to decide if this was rampant homophobia or … a clue.

“I should tell you I’m a friend of Danny Dove’s,” she said. “Oh, what a sweetie! Always so respectful, but very hip, if you know what I mean.”

“Oddly enough, I do. How did you meet him?”

“He came around a lot during orientation to visit Simon. It’s hard to miss star power on that level! DD was so charmingly proud of Simon. Poor boy. Never had a chance. I read in the paper what happened to Simon, though I’m not surprised.”

“Not surprised that Simon was killed?”

“That somebody was killed. The way that place is run is murder. Dear Simon. Such a doll. And Danny was so nice to me when he came in. A class act. More than I can say for Mark Ainsworth. Probably because I wouldn’t give out. I have my standards.”

“Wait a minute. You wouldn’t ‘give out.’ But … you just said, `Gaylords.’ “

And now that Glory Diaz had mentioned it, Temple had to agree that a lot of the store’s staff was gay. It had never occurred to her, maybe because she’d always worked in the arts. So … Gaylords. More gay men on staff than in any artistic endeavor? Maybe. Funny. Kenny Maylord didn’t look or act like Mr. Liberal. Temple would bet he was straight, although having a wife and kids didn’t always prove it.

A pattern was trying to form in her mind, but something in her fought it. Something was keeping her from getting it… .

She glanced at Glory, whose long-nailed fingers were fanned on her knee, ruffling the hem of her skirt, which was retreating upward.