Unknown - 16_Cat_In_An_Orange_Twist

“I don’t carry firearms. Well, almost never. And the groceries are delivered.”

“Of course. Since you’re so zoned out on writing fever, and I do understand, let me whip something up for you.”

She headed for the huge Zero King refrigerator-freezer that the house’s previous owner before the late Gandolph-Orson Welles, no less-had installed.

“I can’t speak for the supplies,” Max said hastily.

But the huge refrigerator was more fully packed than she’d ever seen it. Fresh berries, including expensive raspberries and blackberries. A whole shelf of exotic mustards. French bread. Lots of greens with unpronounceable names. She’d never seen such a well-stocked larder.

“Hey, even I can cook up something from all this,” Temple announced. “Something deli-licious. Just sit down on the stool

and I’ll cut and paste for once.”

He obeyed her, which was a first.

Temple pulled out rye bread so dark and meaty it was almost black, cheese, lettuce, an onion, olives, and a package of shaved roast beef lean enough to be anorexic.

“You look like you haven’t eaten in three days,” she said. “I’ve been eating and drinking the book project night and day for I don’t know how long.”

“Then it must be going well.”

“Progress is being made,” he said guardedly. “You look pretty deli-licious yourself.”

Now, that was the Max she knew and loved.

“If you’ve been cave-manned away, you probably don’t know that I’m up to my old tricks.” “Counseling Matt Devine?”

“No!” Temple almost sliced off part of her thumb with a wedge of cheese. “Haven’t you seen the papers? About Amelia Wong, the feng shui maven, hitting town for the Maylords furniture opening? I’m handling all that. Well, the Las Vegas end, anyway. Wong has a whole platoon of personal assistants and PR people and bodyguards.”

“The only papers I’ve seen are Garry’s rough draft. Bodyguards? Feng shui is dangerous? I thought it was some gentle domestic art, not a martial one.”

“It is. Speaking of gentle domestic arts, I not only can slice a mean sandwich, but I’ve been reading up on feng shui, and your entryway could use a whole lot better chi.”

“I could use a whole lot better chi.” Max began sampling from the bowl of washed berries she had plunked down on the black granite countertop in front of him, on which he had once plunked her down. Yum. “But you’ll do for now.”

She glanced up and found the heat back in his blue eyes. He had looked so uncharacteristically stressed when she’d arrived. Max had always led a superstrenuous life, but he had always managed to conceal the cost. Maybe he was opening up to her on a whole new level now, letting her see him sweat. Temple frowned. Max never sweated.

What was going on?

“So tell me the news I missed,” he said, visibly relaxing.

“Let’s see. I was in a group shooting spree, as shootee, not shooter. I found two dead bodies and have managed not to be bothered by Molina on a single one.”

“Shooting spree? You found? Two dead bodies?”

She basked in the comforting aura of Max’s astonishment and concern, not sure which was the more comforting. Max’s readiness to ride to her rescue or a certain pride that she hadn’t needed him on this one? Yet.

“Well, the first time I was part of a crowd that didn’t exactly find the body. We had it personally unveiled to us by Amelia

Wong during her orange-blessing ceremony.”

Now that she had engaged Max’s interest and brought him out of the strange, distant mood she’d found him in, quirky explanations of tragedy suddenly couldn’t cut it.

“Oh, Max. It wasn’t just a dead body. It was … Simon. Simon Foster. Dead. In the Murano. At Maylords.”

None of those cold, hard facts meant anything other than Martian to him, but her emotional undertone did.

He was beside her, wrapping her in the damp velour of his workout sweats, to which she added her own long-delayed dampness.

He didn’t say or ask any more, just held her.

“And I’m not even cutting any onions yet,” she finally said. Thickly. Much later.

“I don’t like onions anyway. Skip them. And maybe you better put the knife down. It’s sticking into my ribs.” “Oh!”

Max removed the long sharp knife from her fingers and took over slicing the bread.

“There’s an open bottle of wine in the chill compartment,” he said. “Very red, very dry, and very expensive. French, of course. You pour the wine, and I’ll cut the cheese.”

She laughed, shakily, at the allusion to her reckless knife wielding, and did as he suggested.

French wine always made her lips pucker, but sipping it felt virtuous. Maybe it was like communion wine. Too austere to

be a sin, not at all silky and sensual, like a white zinfandel or a merlot.

Max lifted her up onto the kitchen stool, reminding her of another man and another lift. Not good.

Then he smiled and linked arms and glasses with her and they drank that hokey old-movie way, together. Good. “Tell me

about it,” he said.

“Simon Foster is Danny Dove’s significant other. Was.” She sipped again, on her own. “I’d just met him at the Maylords opening.”

“Maylords is your account?”

“Right. Amelia Wong et al. is their guest guru for the opening week’s events.”

“And the Murano?”

“A door prize for the opening. It was orange.”

Max winced. Like Louie, he personified the sophistication of black, pure black.

Temple felt obliged to defend her client’s color scheme. “The whole week’s theme was … is orange. It’s the hot new merchandising color this year.”

“Louie must love that.”

“Huh? Why?”

“Black cat. Orange. Halloween.”

“I guess.” Temple felt misery descend on her like parachute silk, soft but engulfing and blinding, doing nothing to cushion the impact of landing on her own inadequate feet.

“So whose was the second body?”

Max knew how to pull her out of an emotional tailspin. Engage her puzzle-solving mind.

“I found her. Personally. Alone. Swinging from picture-hanging wire in Simon’s brilliant Art Deco interior vignette, with a

letter opener stuck in her chest.”

“Temple! That’s ghastly.”

“Not as bad as finding Simon. He had been stabbed too, and then put in the Murano. But he was just plain nice. Beth Blanchard was a witch. Bitch. There. I said it, even if it speaks badly of the dead. I saw her in action and she was incredible.

Every clich� you ever heard about a bitch on wheels. Still, it was awful to see her dead.”

Max nodded. “I know what you mean. Much as Kathleen O’Connor wronged me and mine for twenty years, and as much as I would have cheerfully and personally have wrung her neck, I’m glad Devine had to ID the body, not me.”

“You mean that?”

“Which? The neck wringing or ID-ing the body?”

“Both, I guess.”

“Yes.”

“So you don’t hate Matt.”

Max pushed her always unruly hair behind one ear. “Wish I could.”

“But you don’t.”

“Don’t tell anyone.”

“Only you.”

He caught her in a bone-crushing embrace then, and she watered his velour again, not sure if it was for Simon or Danny,

or Matt, or Max, or herself.

“I’m sorry,” he said. Not once, but twice or more.

He never did say why, and she didn’t think to wonder about that until much later.

They pulled apart and ate the sandwiches, not with relish but with a mutual pretense of appetite.

They drank the wine.

Max asked her all the right questions, and soon he was painlessly caught up on all the painful things that had happened to her. She didn’t mention collaborating with Rafi Nadir. That was even worse than mentioning Matt.