Unknown - 16_Cat_In_An_Orange_Twist

Talk about obsessive-compulsive! She reminds me of a rat on a wheel running first one way, then the other. As if it much makes a difference in the daily rat race that is Maylords. I know one thing: here the rats are winning.

Chapter 39

Hunting Grounds

for Murder

Temple found herself feeling the opposite of what she had expected after Simon’s wake: eager to race back to Maylords and the arts council reception … and Beth Blanchard.

A knife in the back.

Other than the fact that this seemed general operating procedure at Maylords-oh, let her count the ways-she was thinking that this was a maddened woman’s method. This was up close and personal.

And Beth Blanchard was another one of those towering examples of womanhood nowadays, like Lieutenant Molina. She’d have the height, and the strength, to strike down hard at a man’s back.

Even to manhandle his dead body into a vehicle. Or … maybe she had help. Jerome Johnson had been suspiciously servile when taking her orders around the showroom. Maybe he had to be. Or maybe Jerome had done it. Why? Well, he certainly was oversensitive about Temple’s nonrelationship with Matt Devine. And Matt had indicated Jerome had uncomfortable ideas (from Matt’s literally straitlaced view) about himself.

Maybe Jerome had mistaken Simon for Matt from the back and … whammo.

Because there was Matt, associated not with one but two of the few women who worked for Maylords: Janice and Temple

herself.

Hadn’t they all had terrifying recent evidence of how lethal a crush gone wrong could be?

But mostly Temple liked Beth Blanchard for Simon’s murder. She was a Bad Attitude walking. Temple could easily see

that temper getting the better of her.

Still, that didn’t explain the frightening shooting attack the night of the opening. Was it coincidence? A Wong-motivated international terrorist attack on the one hand, maybe involving hmmm, foreign trade, the Chinese tongs. If so, where did the overthe-top bikers harassing her come from? A local revue? The Good Ship Lollipop? Everything was so disparate. Guns and gays, media icons like Amelia and Danny, feuding low-level employees like Jerome and Beth. And in-house sexual harassment by both genders, for Beth had been after Simon.

But if Beth was the murderer what did she use? What weapon-? Most people don’t tote long sharp knives around with them. Temple’s theory made the stabbing a crime of balked passion. Why else would the murderer have had to resort to hiding the body in a motor vehicle that was the center of attention? Did the killer want the body to be discovered with a flash of media fire? Or just hidden long enough to arrange an alibi? And could Beth have dragged Simon there? Yes, if it hadn’t been too far. And she would have been frantic to hide the evidence of her act.

If obscuring the time or place of the murder was a goal, the Murano’s heavy window tint made it a pretty clever and safe

bet.

Temple hated the almost opaque black window tints people used now. I n a desert climate like Las Vegas’s it was supposed to block out heat. But Temple always liked to check out who was poking along at minus-zero miles per hour, or zigzagging in and out of traffic like a berserk attachment on an Italiansewing machine. Not that she had ever done anything more with sewing than hand stitch pants legs hems up. That was why she preferred skirts that she could always roll up at the waist.

Temple was in the Maylords parking lot before she knew it, habit allowing her to drive the familiar route without impeding

her theorizing.

She checked her watch before she grabbed her tote bag. Less than two hours before the reception. Amelia Wong was coming from Simon’s viewing too, and had still been there with her whole entourage before Temple left.

That meant Temple had time to look up Beth and Jerome to ask some subtle leading questions she hadn’t quite thought of yet… . She did not relish approaching either one now. BB had been born hostile and certainly showed that side of herself to Temple. And Jerome didn’t seem to like her. Or like the fact that Matt did.

The store was oddly deserted, a testimony to the recently turgid economy even for a hot new ticket in town like Maylords.

The only way to find her usual suspects was to cruise the aisles. Beth Blanchard would come running at any sign or sound of a customer to hijack, Temple knew, not disturbed that her steel-heeled Weitzmans were clicking away like an old-fashioned telegraph key on the polished stone.

She really didn’t see how Simon’s death could have had anything to do with the Amelia Wong hullabaloo. It must have been a coincidence. As for the window-blasting spree, mischievous malice was nothing new for Maylords, which apparently axed employees as early and often as the French Revolution guillotined aristocrats.

Temple was lost.

The store was laid out like a maze, meant to surprise and astound, not to be predictable.

Her heels echoed like bullets hitting glass. She usually liked the sound of her own progress, the sense that she was moving forward briskly.

Now she began to wonder if “briskly” was such a good idea. One man had already died in this upscale Wonderland. She

had raced in here expecting to nail a killer.

Maybe a killer would nail her.

Where were the Fontana brothers when you needed them?

At Layaway Land, or wherever, watching over Amelia Wong and Company, i.e., her Flying Monkey minions.

So Danny wasn’t here. Max sure wasn’t here. Matt was not here. And the Wonderful Wizard of Ahs was out to lunch.

Temple tried to distract herself from her nerves by casting a musical “yellow brick” road show of her own.

She was Dorothy. Danny was … the scarecrow. Max was … the Wizard himself. Matt was … hmmm, the Tin Woodman, who was looking for a heart or maybe just a libido. The Wicked Witch was Beth Blanchard and the Flying Monkeys were the Maylords security forces.

And Toto was …

Holy not-cow! Louie!

What was Midnight Louie doing here, right in front of her just when she was feeling most abandoned, swaggering his tail

left to right like a metronome, leading her? …

Leading her through the maze that was Maylords, a physical and a psychological maze.

Was it really him?

He stopped, growled, and regarded her with the expression a cat would reserve for a termite.

Yup. It was Louie his own self.

Hey! Sometimes a faithful cat is the best a girl can do. Temple moved forward, cheered by the company. They rounded a corner and she stopped.

Creepy, where they’d ended up. Right at Simon’s wonderful Art Deco room vignette.

Temple could have bawled, except she saw an all-too- familiar form standing in front of the paired Erte prints.

That witch couldn’t let a dead man rest in peace for even three days. She was fooling with Simon’s design yet again! Well, who’s afraid of the big, bad witch?

Not Temple when in full defense-of-friend Mode.

“Can’t even wait for the internment to ruin his room setting, can you?” she challenged.

At her ankles, Midnight Louie rubbed back and forth, back and forth, as if intent on impressing his presence on her.

Beth Blanchard turned stiffly, like Freddy on Elm Street or Jason on Halloween.

Omigosh. The woman was demented. She hardly seemed human the slow, deliberate way she turned to face Temple.

Major creepy. Over the edge. Temple had been all too right.

She glanced down at Midnight Louie. He didn’t look like a SWAT team, which is what Temple figured she would need when the chair swung around to reveal the desiccated, dead face of Mrs. Bates Motel… .

Beth Blanchard swung around. Her frozen expression sneered at Temple. The knife … the dagger glinted in the overhead