Cat on a Hyacinth Hunt Read online

  "Such a rapscallion." Electra tickled Louie's considerable tummy while he rolled under the attention. "Call me a hopeless romantic, but I can't resist these devil-may-care boys in black."

  Temple refrained from adding, "Me too."

  ********************

  After Electra had left, Temple sat on the couch idly sorting her mail into intimidating stacks without reading it. Usually she loved diving into a motherlode of hoarded vacation mail, especially when it included notes from distant friends.

  "I must be tired," she told Louie, who certainly had the part down pat himself.

  The big tomcat sprawled upon his back as languid as Adam on the Sistine Chapel ceiling.

  Temple doubted that even God's lightning bolt could move him. His lazily curled limbs pointed to Temple's intriguingly vaulted white ceiling on which the Las Vegas sunlight played chiaroscuro peekaboo with indoor shadows. One of his back feet was particularly elevated; when he assumed this lounging lion position, Temple always felt she should extend immediate permission for him to leave the classroom to go to the little boys room.

  Louie yawned, a major production that revealed a pallid rose blooming on his otherwise black palate.

  "It's called a 'letdown,' " Temple told him, dramatically driving her Mexican onyx dagger through another envelope and creating a jagged edge. "Like when actors finish the run of a play, or a PR woman is done with a big publicity campaign or a cat no longer is the toast of Madison Avenue."

  Louie blinked. Feline body language always struck Temple as inherently foreign, like a Parisian shrug or an eloquently obscene Italian hand gesture. When a cat blinks, one senses one is being paid a profoundly flattering attention as has not been offered the human kind since Eden. Like Italian sign language, the feline dialect had its ruder side as well, but today Louie was luxuriating. Temple flattered herself further that he not only was attentive to her every thought and mood, but that he was glad to be home.

  She sat back and closed her eyes, like Louie.

  Letdown. Like when a woman has resumed a romantic liaison without knowing why, or when again or where again or wherefore art thou, Romeo? Max had called her three times at Kit's after leaving New York so suddenly, so literally anticlimactically. So Maximumly.

  As usual, he couldn't discuss over the telephone any particulars for his midnight call back to Las Vegas, and in Kit's airy but intimate rooms, Temple couldn't murmur anything but inanities against the background noise of her aunt's pointed attempts to pretend she was too busy elsewhere in the apartment to hear Temple's half of the conversation.

  Temple couldn't forget waking up in the hotel whose name she hadn't bothered to remember that post-Christmas morning, its barely glimpsed geometry assembling around her like a dream-scape in reverse, with nothing left of Max but a note and a rapidly dissipating afterglow.

  The magician exits, stage left, leaving the audience begging for more, with the lady sawed in half and hanging by a hair.

  Wasn't that just the way he had exited eight months before, without explanation, leaving her stranded to defend him? Leaving her to fend off thugs who came looking for him and left her bruised and battered? Leaving her to steadfastly stonewall a Las Vegas homicide cop about any facts relating to the Mystifying Max and all his works?

  Temple smiled to recall C. R. Molina's frustration; a petite, feminine woman often dismissed as "cute," Temple had proven a hard case to crack, even for a nearly six-foot-tall lieutenant who was something of a power-suited amazon herself.

  Temple's smile faded. Max's abrupt departure hadn't left her simply facing the legal music. It had also left her unsure and lonely, free to meet Matt Devine, new neighbor, new personal project. Temple always wondered what had attracted her to Matt while she was still freshly smarting from Max's defection. Sure, Matt was the handsomest man she'd ever known. And, more rarely, the nicest. Too bad he was also an ex-Roman Catholic priest whose sexual experience came from the confessional. Or was that fact "too good"? Had she been so quickly attracted precisely because Matt was a freshman at the usual single, thirty-something sexual gavotte? Had he merely been a convenient safety zone to idle in while she waited for her true love to ride back for her?

  Because she'd always known Max would return. A powerful instant rapport had knocked them both off their feet, professionally and personally: she the repertory theater publicist, he the touring magician. She had deserted Minneapolis stability for the sands of Las Vegas and a freelance career without a qualm, although her family had plenty and let her hear every one.

  Now she should be ecstatic. Max was back and better than ever, though the explanation for his absence involved murky international politics a law-abiding publicist couldn't know too much about. And Matt? She had helped him track down personal demons from his Chicago childhood, playing pal, big sister and the sort of sweet-sixteen girlfriend who would coax him a few baby-steps over the sexual threshold and no further until he was ready. Which he might never be.

  So here she sat, lost in her own love story, worried because Max's mysterious past made him a more dangerous partner than she could have imagined, and because Matt's present progress had come perilously close to depending solely on her.

  She loved Max, but feared that she might not be able to live with what he really was. She cared for Matt, but she worried that he had come close to loving her, and her heart had chosen sides long before she had met him.

  Temple muttered an Anglo-Saxon epithet she rarely used on grounds that it lacked finesse and tossed the letter opener atop a leaning tower of Christmas catalogs. And then the phone rang, startling her as if she had been shot.

  Letdown. The morning after. Sometimes it made one a trifle edgy. Not Midnight Louie. He yawned again.

  She didn't have the energy to stand at the kitchen wall phone, so she went to bedroom-office for the portable. Public relations people lived and died by the phone; they were multipurpose tools: personal accessories and lifelines and the puppetmaster's strings, the pianist's hidden harp that could play soft and persuasive or stormy and driving.

  A phone was your best friend.

  But she hesitated before answering this call. She wasn't ready to reenter reality. Especially the reality of an impulsively resumed love affair.

  It wasn't Max, as she had half-hoped and half-feared. It was Matt, as she had half-feared and half-hoped.

  "Welcome back," he said, sounding too close for comfort.

  "Thanks. I'm still on jet lag."

  "I know, though Chicago is only two hours off-time compared to New York's three. Listen, Temple, I've got to work the next few nights straight to make up for my time off. Can we make a date for New Year's Eve? I've got it off."

  Temple blinked; only she knew her gesture was devoid of feline profundity.

  "There's so much to tell you," he went on. "You wouldn't believe what happened."

  "What about Effinger?"

  "Oh, Molina had to let him go, but that isn't important."

  Effinger wasn't important? Had Temple's plane landed in the true Twilight Zone? Effinger wasn't important, and Matt wanted-- nay, expected--a "date." This was more than she could take standing up. She sat down at her desk.

  "You sound exhausted," Matt said.

  "I haven't said enough for you to tell how I sound."

  "That's what I mean. Usually you're bubbling over with info-bits on this and that, and you must have a lot to tell me too. I'll let you go. But, what? Nine Monday night? I thought we'd try to see the New Year in, if you can stay awake that late, so crack out your Louie shoes and something jazzy. We'll have to take your car, of course."

  "Of course." Matt taking her car for granted? Taking her for granted? "You don't really have to take me out someplace ritzy--"

  "Celebrations don't need justifications, like red sofas don't, right?"

  He couldn't see her wan smile, but he must have sensed it.

  "Temple." When she couldn't muster more than an inarticulate hmmm in a questioning up glide, he p
lunged on. "I really can't wait to see you. I hope you had the Merry Christmas you deserve. 'Bye."

  Temple cradled the droning phone on her shoulder long enough for the operator's tart, schoolmarmish voice to come on and shrill that her call was disconnected.

  Temple punched the unit off, then on again and pounded in a flurry of eleven numbers.

  Three rings later, she was back in New York City, in a manner of speaking.

  "Kit, Matt just called."

  "Did you say Matt or Max?

  "And you think you're confused."

  "Just tell me, blond or black?"

  "Blond. I don't know what I'm going to do."

  "What did you do?"

  "He wants to take me out for New Year's Eve. For a celebration. An upscale celebration, apparently. And I said yes."

  "Modest Matt is taking you out on the town? Wow. I'd say send him here, but I don't believe in Santa Claus anymore. So you said yes. What a wimp."

  "I owe him an explanation."

  "But not a romantic rendezvous."

  "This isn't necessarily a romantic evening. But he did call it a 'date.' He's never used that word before."

  "Right. You're wondering what Max will say about this."

  "I'm not wondering what he'll say at all. I know. What I'm wondering is how I'm gonna keep them in separate corners. There hasn't been a word from Max since I got back."

  "For what... three hours? Temple, give me a break. Maybe he left a message on your answering machine. Did you check it?"

  "No. That's a good idea. He probably invited me out for New Year's Eve," she added dourly.

  "Kit, what am I going to do?"

  "What you always do: the best you can. Max has to understand that his eight-month absence didn't mean your life was in deep freeze, even if your relationship was. He has to respect your other obligations."

  " 'Obligation' doesn't quite describe Matt Devine."

  "Relax, honey. Emotional involvements aren't like European principalities; they don't occupy neat borders within your heart. Life is messy. There's nothing to do but wade in and clean it up the best you can."

  "Right. I'll check my messages."

  "Was your flight okay?"

  "Fine. Louie didn't even yowl. I think he's as worn out as In am.

  "From what you told me of the auditions, Louie has his own romantic dilemmas to exhaust him."

  "What do you mean?"

  "Gold and silver, the lovely leading ladies, Solange and Yvette. Jeez, what names! I sound like I'm discussing a Franchise Sagan novel."

  " 'Bonjour, Tristesse,' " Temple quoted an appropriate title. Hello, sadness.

  "I didn't know your generation knew Sagan. Espresso and angst, youth and despair. Check your messages, hon. I'm sure Max has left one, and it'll be good for him to face some competition for a change. Builds character."

  Temple thanked her aunt and disconnected, switching on the answering machine, whose small red flashing light had been blinking on the edge of her consciousness since she entered the office.

  She pulled over a minisized legal notepad and dug out a pen from beneath her stratified papers while the tape rewound. And rewound and rewound. On her left hand, the glorious, still-alien ring Max had given her flashed its ambiguous message of fourteen-carat gold and fire opal.

  It didn't look like an engagement ring; it didn't feel like a bribe or a sop, but it did weigh as heavy as a commitment.

  Finally, the voices began parading as Temple scribbled phone numbers and notes.

  The first message was a computer-generated solicitation. Nothing from her family, but Temple and Kit had called her mother's house from New York and had found the clan gathered the day after Christmas. Funny how your parents' house was always your mother's house after you left.

  "It's Van von Rhine at the Phoenix. Happy Christmas, Temple," the machine replayed. "I'm so sorry to call you during the holidays, but we've--you've--received the most wonderful surprise Christmas present for the renovation project! You must come over to see after Christmas. Call me as soon as you can."

  Temple felt a restorative prick of curiosity. Van von Rhine was the most tactful, if businesslike, of hoteliers. She rarely spoke in such imperatives or with such enthusiasm.

  There was a reminder from her dentist's office. Why had she scheduled an appointment right after Christmas? Hadn't she known she would be too emotionally challenged to dive into mundane matters like flossing, plaque and mouthwashes?

  She jotted down other numbers, other messages of routine importance. Not a word from Max.

  Boy, the big rush in the Big City and the big silence on home turf. Guess she'd been smart to book something else for New Year's, right, Louie?

  By now Temple was passing the cat still airing his undercoat on the loveseat, and heading for the bedroom. When in doubt, take a clue from a southern belle and take a nap. The necessary grocery store trip could wait until, if not tomorrow, late this afternoon.

  Like all temporarily abandoned places, the bedroom was waiting with bated breath for Temple to reclaim it with the unmistakable clutter of her presence.

  Temple hated bending over to unlace her homely travel ten-nies, but she finally struggled out of these engulfing marshmallows of the footwear world. Her black plane getup didn't show Louie's cat hairs, but had attracted more than its share of itinerant white lint, so she peeled off the top and leggings as she hopped and stripped on the way to the bathroom.

  She let the black knit clothes puddle on the white-tiled floor, inhaling a scent of soap she'd been too familiar with to notice before. Nice.

  Temple only wore perfume for dressy occasions; strong scents turned elevators into torture chambers, and in her profession it was bad business to risk alienating people who might be allergic to Emeraude or Poison.

  But she relished the subtler scents of soap and shampoo, and had forgotten that until she had left her bathroom long enough to sense it with refreshed eyes and nose.

  She loved its wall-to-wall shiny fifties tiles, its small but elegant quality, the deep, deep porcelain tub. But she was too tired--suffered too much ennui, the heck with sadness, Franchise!--to brood in the bathtub. A fast, hot shower, and then to bed.

  She opened the frosted glass door, with its silver stripes at top and bottom that were so very fifties ... and gasped as a wall of silk flowers drenched her bare body like a melting rainbow. The faint, pleasant scent enveloped her, and the jump-start shock it had given her heart soon softened into an edgy, expectant throb.

  She wouldn't have been surprised to find the magician himself standing behind the cascade of his upscale paper flowers, but Max was never predictable.

  Temple sighed, inhaling more of the fugitive scent, wondering what would contain so extravagant a shower of flowers.

  One thing was decided. She took a bath after all.

  Chapter 2

  Bagged

  Only one bag of groceries.

  It sat sedately in the Storm's passenger seat, all but buckled in. Usually Temple loaded the trunk with enough bags to hold each other upright, so she could take corners at a slightly racy speed and not worry about making tossed salad.

  But an only grocery bag demanded babying: a front-row seat and kinder, gentler right and left turns.

  This had been a quick restocking trip, easy enough to accomplish her first afternoon back in town. Temple loved buying groceries, but she hated lugging them out of the car and into the apartment. She always enjoyed the end product of the food-getting process, but loathed the steps in between, including cooking. On the other hand, she loved the artful presentation of food. Tell Temple Barr that her culinary efforts looked much better than they tasted, and she would not be insulted.

  This was one area where context pleased her more than content. Of course, she avoided cooking as much as possible, usually "concocting" instead. Whatever she prepared would be nicely arranged, attractive in color, decently calorie- and fat-conscious, and come in a can or a box or a plastic baggie from th
e fresh produce section.

  At least at the butt-end of December she didn't have to worry about the low-fat yogurt melting.

  She parked the Storm between an older custom van and Electra Lark's pink Probe. The van was one of those beige behemoths that are so impossible to see around--or through--on the road. And Temple firmly believed in driving while looking through other people's windshields.

  She liked knowing what was coming up ahead.

  So she was wondering which tenant the annoying van belonged to, and fretting about opening her passenger door wide enough to extract her fat grocery bag from the car without denting the neighboring van or smashing the French bread she had treated herself to. And, of course, she didn't want to scuff her Via Spiga heels on one of the van's nasty big wheels while she was wrestling with the grocery bag and her tote bag, key ring jangling from one hand.

  Life was full of small struggles for a small woman.

  She set the passenger door to lock and kneed it shut. Not quite hard enough. It had locked, all right, but in an ajar position. She would have to put everything down, unlock the jammed door and re-slam it, once more with more feeling.

  Temple uttered one of her rare, unembroidered curses. No "Holy Shish kebob" this time, just the "shish." Besides, no witnesses.

  "Can I help you out, little lady?"

  Shish! No doubt this was the owner of the van that had hogged the parking spot. .. that had given her no room to maneuver .. . that had made her mis-slam the car door . . . that had forced her to stand here in the parking lot of the house that Electra had built, clutching a bag of groceries to her chest like Louie in his CatAboard Seat.

  She turned as much as the space and her burdens permitted, tempted to answer, "Help?