Cat in an Alphabet Soup Read online

  “Oh, no.” Rowena smiled. “No. You will find few villainous doctors in Pennyroyal Press books. Only Owen Tharp could get away with doing that occasionally, for some reason. What you will find in a Pee-R Press book are whining, incompetent, crazy, homicidal nurses. You will find demanding patients and pompous, worthless hospital administrators, especially if they’re women. But you will rarely find ignoble doctors.”

  “Remind me to skip reading a few. Claudia said Chester called Lorna Fennick a ‘press-release-pushing ball-busting broad.’ He hated women?”

  Rowena nodded. “So deeply that he didn’t consciously admit it.”

  “Why?”

  “Only Chester really knew. He seldom spoke about his family, but I gather that he felt humiliated in grade school by the women teachers.”

  “That warped him on women for life?”

  “Maybe.” Rowena smiled. “I remember him grumbling more than once that a man used to be able to get away from women in medical school....” She sighed. “He never had been a prepossessing man; dates couldn’t have come easily when he was young. Maybe that’s why he went through five wives later: to prove he could do it. After our marriage, I realized that he feared losing part of himself in the face of women’s competence. That’s why Lorna couldn’t work for him for long.”

  “Lorna Fennick worked for Chester Royal?”

  “She was his editorial assistant when he first began packaging for Reynolds-Chapter-Deuce. She never married him, but she’s another victim of the Chester Royal School for Women, as is Mavis Davis.”

  “What about his male authors—did he abuse them, too?”

  “A raging thirst for power will consume any kind of fuel, but, no, it never bothered him to see another man get ahead as much as it did a woman.”

  “Not much question why he was murdered.”

  “No. Somebody’d had enough.”

  “Not you.”

  “I’m glad you didn’t make that a question. Not me. I studied the situation the way I would the structure of a novel. I understood why he became skewed, how my own flaws had made me so useful, so usable. That common book of ours is long out of print. It’s old, cold type; the acid in its pages has already consumed it. And now Chester himself is dead matter.”

  “What does that mean, exactly?”

  “A manuscript that’s been turned into type. It’s redundant.”

  Temple grimaced at the aptness of the phrase in the current case. “Why didn’t you come forward when he was killed?”

  “Why should I? I’m two wives back. I don’t care, and neither did he.”

  “Your detachment is admirable,” Temple said, wondering if Max would ever fade as docilely into her past. “From what I’ve grown to know of Chester, he’d be a horrible doctor. It’s lucky that he was forced out young. What was the malpractice suit about?”

  “A woman died—in childbirth, I understand.”

  “Childbirth, but—he was an ob/gyn?”

  Rowena nodded sadly.

  “That doesn’t make sense, not with his fear and hatred of women! I mean, babies and the wonder of birth and all that.”

  “I can see you’ve never had a baby.”

  “No. Have you?”

  “Yes. Very young. I gave it up. That’s past history. It had nothing to do with Chester. Nothing to do with this.”

  “I’m sorry. And you’ve never looked back—?”

  “Never.” Rowena’s face tightened. “Having babies isn’t all pink and powder; it’s also pain and helplessness. A woman is absolutely dependent on her doctor. He sees her at her worst, bloated, swelled-of-belly, fearful; he examines her in what could be called the most passive position imaginable.

  “You’re too young to have heard the horror stories. Often ob/gyns dictated when and how many children their patients had, even after the birth-control pill came along; you still can’t get it without a prescription. Your doctor determined when you had your baby; if it was inconvenient for him, as it was for the charity doctor who delivered me, he had his nurses pin a woman’s legs together, maybe so he can drink two more martinis at his dinner party before going to the hospital. A doctor can make a woman patient feel weak, and stupid and worthless. And such doctors often did. Ask any woman over the age of thirty-five.”

  “It really was the bad old days, wasn’t it?”

  Rowena Novak nodded, her face wry. Temple couldn’t tell if it had been soured by memories of that long-ago, ignorant pregnancy and the shameful way it had been treated—or recollections of the late Chester Royal.

  “When I finally found out,” Rowena said, her voice slow and firm, “about his malpractice problem, that’s when I left him.”

  Temple sat in her idling Storm, the ventilation fans on high and the flimsy Yellow Page trembling in her hand.

  It was four o’clock. She had already visited neighborhoods of Las Vegas she had never known existed. And she still didn’t have the private detective she’d so blithely suggested to Emily Adcock.

  What she had was a problem.

  Private investigators either came in the form of firms, in which case they would hardly countenance dropping off money to catnappers without police knowledge, or they were the lone wolves of legend whose shingles hung on disreputable buildings in decrepit areas. Temple wouldn’t trust $5,000 cash to any one of these sleaze-os.

  She began to see why so many private-eye novels opened with a woman in trouble (in this case, unfortunately, her) consulting one of these lone strangers in some down-at-the-windowsills office.

  This one—her last chance—worked out of his home in a neighborhood where cars rusted like modern sculptures in sandy driveways and the rocks on the roofs were matched only by the gravel in the front yards. Joshua trees and cactus crowded around the low-roofed, one-story crackerboxes provided a sort of prickly shade.

  Temple got out and locked the car, then approached the house. If she were lucky, E. P. O’Rourke would not be in. Sunning lizards scattered at her approach, pausing only to rear tyrannosaurus-like on their leathery hind legs and watch her with bright black eyes.

  The ground felt like the bottom shelf of a red-hot oven as the heat rose to meet the blazing overhead sun halfway. Temple felt sweat blossom on her face and limbs and as swiftly evaporate. It was not an unpleasant sensation, rather like being steam-ironed, she imagined.

  Several nearby houses looked deserted, except for one four doors down, from which the drumming bass of a rock station drifted. Spanking new Harleys tilted at rest near its weathered side doors. In the distance a dirt bike droned soft and then loud like a circling hornet.

  Temple knocked on O’Rourke’s screen door, which was wearing so little forest-green paint she expected it to flake loose at her blows. The door beyond it was solid wood except for a small black diamond of glass high above the knob.

  It jerked partway open.

  A man stood against the deep shadow within, a slight, wiry fellow with eyes squinting against the daylight. “Yeah?”

  “Mr. E. P. O’Rourke?”

  “Yeah?”

  “I’m interested in discussing an investigative job.”

  The eyes looked her up, then down. The door swung open, baring more interior darkness.

  Temple swallowed, then opened the rickety screen door. Entering houses in torrid climates was like plumbing the dark secrets of some ancient tomb. Windows were few and kept shaded. The visitor always blinked blindly on the threshold until the eyes adjusted to the abrupt dimness. In the meantime, E. P. O’Rourke could conk her on the head, rummage her tote bag and ravish her body.

  Temple discounted her last foolish fear as her vision adjusted. E. P. O’Rourke was as stringy and desert-baked as beef jerky, with a shock of white hair and eyebrows in odd contrast to his seamed bronze skin.

  “Come on in,” he said, turning.

  Temple followed. Like most desert houses, this one offered a right-angle corkscrew of turning halls and boxy dim little rooms. In five steps she had lost the dir
ection of the front door, which O’Rourke had shoved shut before preceding her into the house.

  The air inside was hot and damp. She heard the drone of an old-fashioned water-cooling air-conditioning system—surprisingly efficient but invariably dank.

  O’Rourke stopped in a room almost completely occupied by a huge slab of desktop. The surface was bare except for a black billiard ball that had been drilled into a pen rest and a free-form olive-green ashtray dusted with ash residue. No butts. He slipped into a battered leather office chair behind the desk and indicated a seat.

  “What brung you here?”

  “I read your entry in the phone book.”

  “I mean, what problem?”

  “First I should ask you your qualifications.”

  O’Rourke shrugged. He was wearing a short-sleeved peach polyester shirt and, she thought, jeans and tennis shoes. At least no one would hear him coming, if his joints didn’t crack. Light filtered through the dusty blinds along one high, long window. O’Rourke’s hair was ethereally white in the hazy illumination, and his eyes gleamed baby-blue.

  “I been in the merchant marines, but that was before you was born. I knocked around a bit. Been in business in Vegas for a few years. Been around, that’s about it. Now, what can I do for you, girlie?”

  “You’re no relation to Chester Royal, I hope?”

  “That dead ’un at the convention center? What’s this got to do with that? I don’t mess with homicide cases.”

  “Nothing. This is cats.”

  “Cats?” He spoke as if she’d named an alien being.

  “Pet cats. Two are missing. What is your fee per hour?”

  “Pet cats are missing all over the world. Nobody seeks professional help for it. Fifty dollars, plus expenses.”

  “There wouldn’t be expenses. It’s a simple... drop.”

  “Drop, missy? Where’d you get that lingo?”

  “TV.”

  “Don’t have one. Hasn’t been anything good on since Sid Caesar.”

  “Before my time,” she shot back. “Are you bonded?”

  “Are you kidding?” He paused to groom an unruly eyebrow with a forefinger, the way another man might stroke a mustache. She would have sworn he looked mischievous. “My word is my bond.”

  “Are you kidding?” She shifted to rise and leave.

  “Look. You don’t get a license unless the police say so.”

  “You got a license?”

  He pointed to the wall beside her, where a cheap black frame defined a document. Temple rose, got out her glasses and took her time deciphering the cursive script in the dim light.

  “I don’t know, Mr. O’Rourke,” she said, resuming her seat, “there’s money involved.”

  “Eightball,” he said.

  “Huh?”

  He gestured to the shiny black ball on his desk. “Eightball. It’s what everybody calls me.”

  “Isn’t an eight ball supposed to be unlucky?”

  “Only if you mess with it too early in the action. If it’s last on the table, the way it’s supposed to be, it’s lucky for the winner. I usually last to the end at whatever I do,” he said, with an emphasis both crisp and salacious.

  Temple, surprised, laughed. She would bet that Eightball O’Rourke would be no one to tangle with in a barroom brawl if he had a broken bottle in hand, and as for his endurance in other pursuits, she wasn’t about to challenge it.

  “How much money,” he asked genially, “and what’s involved?”

  “It’s ransom money.”

  “A kidnapping?” He whistled through teeth so white and even that they had to be false. “I don’t usually send folks to the cops, but even if it is only cats—”

  “The ransom is five thousand dollars. That may not seem like much for a kidnapping.”

  “That’s considerable for cats,” he admitted. “You want I should tail the napper when he picks up the cash?”

  “I want you to drop off the cash so that I can tail the catnapper.”

  “You got this backward, miss. Tailing’s the hard part. You could drop the cash and know it’s done and let me do the walking. That’s what you use the Yellow Pages for, isn’t it? ‘Let your fingers do the walking’?”

  “If you think that’s best. We could meet before the... drop and I’d give you the ransom money then.”

  “And give me my money, too. Then. Heck,” he said when she hesitated, “if you aren’t sharp enough to make sure I drop the dough, how were you gonna tail a kidnapper?”

  “I was hoping it would be somebody I’d recognize.”

  “Don’t they all.”

  “How much is this going to cost?”

  Eightball O’Rourke eyed the big round schoolhouse clock on the wall. “We talked a half hour here, say another couple hours before and after the drop. Hundred fifty dollars flat unless your napper takes off for the Spectre Mountains and I gotta trail him.”

  “It could be a her,” she said.

  “Don’t matter. Either sex trails the same.”

  “One thing. Is there anything you can do to ensure the safety—and safe return—of the cats?”

  “Nope.” Eightball O’Rourke rose and extended a hard, dry palm for a farewell shake. “Not a damn thing.”

  15

  Hunter on the Prowl

  Temple returned to the convention center after five p.m. for the second night in a row. This time she found the office empty and Midnight Louie lounging on her desktop grooming his expansive, jet-black belly.

  “Hey, guy. Where you been all day? Enjoying the convention center?”

  The cat looked up, impassive, and began taking long licks at his copious chest hair. His feline face had that vaguely withdrawn look that some people interpret as superiority to other beings.

  Temple shrugged. Louie had already demonstrated that he had his ways in and out of the mammoth convention center, as well as around it. She wouldn’t even be surprised to find that he had beaten her back to her apartment one evening, and was waiting on the patio outside the French doors, bored as you please.

  Louie was abstracted at the moment. He accepted her strokes of greeting with a short “merow” and a narrowed glance. Perhaps he was just tired, as Temple was.

  She sat at her desk without bothering to drop the tote bag. A minute to compose herself and then she had to hustle Louie down to the car, red-hot by now after roasting in the peak afternoon sun. Then they’d go home to a chill, refreshing tuna dinner: raw from the can for him, salad for her. Cats left a lot of half-full cans of tuna sitting around going stale. Better that she eat it than that Louie should suffer from refrigerator-mouth tuna, at which he always turned up his jet-black nose.

  “I’ll eat the lettuce,” she told Louie. “I’ve got to watch my figure even if you don’t.”

  Approaching feet echoed down the hall. They stuttered to a pause, then rounded the corner into the office.

  “Temple! Thank God you’re still here!” Lorna Fennick cried rapturously.

  “What now?”

  “Lanyard Hunter wants to talk to you.”

  “Haven’t you got that backward?”

  “No. After his media interview this afternoon I mentioned that you wanted to speak with him. He immediately asked if you were ‘the cute redhead’ he kept seeing with me. Naturally, I said yes. He said dinner tonight would be fine. I think he likes you.”

  “Oh, Lord. That’s all I need. A mashing murderer.”

  “Temple, you don’t think—?”

  “No, I’m just tired and irritable and surprised. Why’d a famous author want to waste time on me when he could be wined and dined by his publishers and assorted hangers- on?”

  “Look, this is Sunday evening. After tomorrow, it’s virtually over. Maybe he’s just attracted to you.”

  “Why? I’m not a hospital.”

  “That’s below the stethoscope, Temple. Aren’t you PR woman enough to take advantage of an interview you wanted when it drops into your hand like a plum?”


  “More like a plumb bob,” she complained. “That’s what I don’t like. Hunter is playing too easy to get.”

  “Well, you don’t have to.”

  “Okay, what’s the deal?”

  “You pick him up here at six-fifteen. Take him wherever you figure is the best setting for prying information out of him.”

  “Are you suggesting I use my feminine wiles?”

  “I’m suggesting you use your public relations savvy.”

  “Okay. I gotta scram this place, then get Louie home and ... sob, freshen up ... to get back here in”—Temple consulted her watch, whose minute and hour hands seemed to have shrunk or stretched to a matching length—“fifty- five minutes.”

  At that she fished her car keys from her tote bag, drew the handles over her shoulder and swooped up the lounging Midnight Louie in one uninterrupted motion.

  “ ’Bye,” Temple called to Lorna through the key ring between her teeth on the way out. “And thanks. I think.”

  Not even Wile E. Coyote can move faster than a PR woman on the run. Crisis is the profession’s middle name. Temple’s aqua Storm darted like a dragonfly through the five p.m. traffic, its glittering sides snaring reflections of a searing red sun melting like strawberry syrup over the chocolate ice-cream peaks of the western mountains.

  At the Circle Ritz, Temple sprinted for her apartment, Louie’s legs dangling like furred pendulums from under her arm. The cat was plopped onto the parquet and presented with a fresh mound of tuna before he got his sea legs.

  Temple showered before he finished it. She was redressed, remade-up and ready to rush into the torpid evening by the time he’d finished his postprandial ablutions and had settled by the French doors, keeping one sleepy eye cocked on the patio.

  Temple sped from the bedroom, cramming necessities from her tote bag into a small, dressy purse. Her flame- colored floaty dress was a tribute to the heat, the sunset and Lanyard Hunter’s apparent weakness for the color crimson.

  After waving goodbye to the cat and turning her air conditioner up to 80 for the evening, Temple slammed her mahogany front door locked. She was back in the car, the air-conditioning on Max as in maximum, or Max the bum, her shoulder-length red earrings swinging maniacally, at one minute to 6 p.m.