Carole Douglas - Cat in a Midnight Choir

“The Worm Ouroboros?”

“You’ve seen the image: a snake devouring its own tail. A symbol of eternity and entropy: the way things fall apart and unite at one and the same time, over and over.”

“How do you know about this stuff?”

Max smiled. “While you were dabbling in horoscopes, I was dabbling in mystical mumbo-jumbo. In some forms it’s called philosophy. In others, superstition.”

“We both must have had a very weird adolescence.”

“Perfectly and normally abnormal, I’m afraid.” Max touched the crude five-sided “house” that pinpointed the stars of the constellation Ophiuchus. “Like all secret occult societies, the Synth needs to leave a trail. That means it needs someone to follow and find it.”

“Why?”

“Why does anything lethal leave a trail? To entrap. To destroy.”

Temple looked at the book in which she’d found such a perfect clue.

She didn’t feel like a mouse, but she could smell the strong, lilting odor of sharp cheddar.

Max saw her to the door, his arm draped over her shoulder like a comforting shawl.

“Good detective work,” he said. He squinted out the door. “And you did an excellent job of hiding your car.”

“Ah, thanks…but actually I did a good job of changing my car.”

He looked again.

“ That ’s yours?”

“What?” she asked innocently.

“Not the Odyssey next door. The little red thingamajig.”

“It’s a Miata.”

Max’s arm left her shoulders. “A Miata. Is that a good investment?”

“I don’t know. It’s a fun car.”

“A convertible? For a redhead? In Las Vegas?”

“I’ll get a big hat.”

“Temple.” Max turned her to look at him. “This is the first major purchase you’ve made since we’ve been together without asking me about it.”

“Well, yeah. I suppose so.”

“I really can’t fit into a Miata.”

“You can’t? Oh. I didn’t think of that.”

“Oh.”

“But…we always drive places in your car. Or cars. Or whatever They leave for you.”

“It won’t always be like that. Haven’t you been listening to me?”

“Yes, but the Storm was worn out and I finally had some real income from my semipermanent floating PR work for the Crystal Phoenix and the Jersey Joe Jackson attraction is done and open and a big success and I thought I deserved something…and this seemed like fun at the moment.”

“You used to think that what we did was fun at the moment. You used to consult me about big decisions.”

“It’s a…little car.”

“It’s a big issue. I don’t fit in it. Are you sending me a message?”

“Max, no! Don’t be paranoid. I wasn’t even thinking about you.”

The words hung there, an intended reassurance hoisted on its own petard.

“I didn’t mean that the way it sounded,” Temple said.

“No one ever does,” Max said, and shut the door on any further discussion.

Temple felt awful. She wanted to blame Molina for it, but that was too simple.

The car looked like a toy as she approached it. Silly. Too small for anyone but a shrunken Alice in Wonderland. Eat me . Humble pie, that’s what she should eat. She felt about two inches tall, and short stature was such an issue with her that feeling small meant she felt really, really guilty. Because she was.

She’d only been thinking of herself when she’d bought the Miata, and maybe not very maturely at that.

Despite the sun-warmed sidewalk, her feet in their Mootsie’s Tootsies high-rise slides felt ice cold. This was a lot of money to spend on a whim. An impractical whim. A whim that hurt a significant other’s feelings. Max always acted so strong she sometimes forgot that he had feelings to hurt.

She got in, arranged herself and her tote bag, glanced at Max’s stoic house facade. Here she sat, in a brand-new car, with a brand-new clue in her tote bag, and she felt horrible.

The only thing to do when troubled was to get on with the routine of life. She started the car and headed back toward the Circle Ritz. She needed to stop at the Lucky’s store first. Buy groceries. Her least favorite chore. She saw a lot more chocolate in her future than was healthy for her figure.

Forty-five minutes later Temple stood on a sun-baked asphalt parking lot, her arms cradling brown paper bags, bulging plastic bags dangling from both wrists, wondering where to put her groceries.

One brown bag could share the passenger seat with her tote bag if she squeezed them together and belted them in. The second brown bag and a couple plastic bags could crowd into the well behind the seats. The other two plastic bags full of bottled water could go in the trunk, such as it was.

Now. What would hold the groceries down while she whizzed along the street? Time to put up the top, roll up the windows, and turn on the AC. This would be one buttoned-down convertible for the trip home.

Misgivings nagged her the whole way. How could she have bought a car that Max didn’t fit in, much less a few bags of groceries? She had bought in to a sales pitch without considering the practicalities. She had been suckered.

Her back straightened against the seat back as the AC wafted the curls off her face.

Maybe the car wasn’t the bill of goods she’d been sold.

Maybe it was Molina who was the slippery saleswoman. Maybe her whole mood had shifted at the woman’s dire predictions about Max, and her cruel revelation of the whereabouts of the ring. Come on, the Storm hadn’t been just Max’s size, either, although she had bought that car before she knew him.

No, the question was why Molina was bearing down so hard on Max right now. Why was she warning Temple? To get her to do something. What? Question Max. Break up with him. Throw him off balance. Distract him from Molina’s moves against him.

Max had warned her. Had said Molina could have motives Temple might not even guess at.

That he wouldn’t say more only meant that Temple had many more puzzles than Ophiuchus to solve.

Smoke Signals

Hoping this was the about-to-be-perfect end of a perfectly dreadful day, Temple zoomed into the Circle Ritz lot. She parked the Miata as close to the door as she could while still sheltering it under the big old palm tree’s erratic shade.

As she stood beside the car extracting her groceries from various nooks and crannies, she heard another engine pull into the lot: Electra’s old pink Probe, now Matt’s, and now painted the color of a white sepulcher.

Temple brightened as she balanced the two brown bags, her tote bag’s considerable weight swinging from the crook of her right elbow. Her key ring was in her right fist.

Great. Matt was here just in time to help her with the bags.

He exited the Probe, locked it, and thrust his keys into the pocket of his khaki pants. Looking neither right nor left, but at the ground, he rapidly crossed the asphalt to the building’s side door.

Temple opened her mouth to hail him, except that his haste, his almost deliberate avoidance of looking anywhere near her direction made her freeze in chill indecision.

In those moments of hesitancy, Matt was through the door and gone.

Talk about being the Invisible Woman! How could he have missed the sight of a strange red Miata in the almost-empty lot?

Fact was, he couldn’t have. He must have spotted it as he turned in, and he could hardly miss her.

But he had.

Temple trudged toward the building’s glass door, the darkness inside allowing the glass to reflect her overburdened figure.