Cat in an Alphabet Soup Read online

  “We couldn’t have bought better coverage,” Dubbs agreed, “for an unfortunate, er, accident. Any way you could use this big guy to put out an all-points on the missing Scotties? You know, without letting on that they’re actually gone?”

  “I’m a publicist, Bud, not a miracle worker. Baker and Taylor may not be eager to announce the disappearance; might cause more problems than solve them. And the missing felines are not ‘Scotties,’ they’re Scottish fold cats. That means their ears come pretucked.”

  “Whatever.” Dubbs broadcast his usual air of vague demand. “Round up those cats and I’ll forget about you dredging up dead bodies just before the ABA’s opening day.”

  “Body. Singular.”

  “Keep it that way,” Dubbs said gruffly.

  The staff had melted away during the discussion, leaving Temple and the cat to absorb Dubbs’s directions. The man turned away, then paused. “Better stash that cat somewhere,” he said. “Lieutenant Molina is picking you up in a few minutes.”

  “Picking me up? It sounds like an arrest—or a date. Why?”

  Dubbs shook his head, one of his more commanding gestures. “She asked for you. Wants a guide to who’s who on the convention floor.”

  “Rats! Even I don’t know that yet.”

  “Just help her out. And try to keep it discreet.”

  Temple sat at her desk to stare soulfully into the baby greens regarding her through the carrier portcullis. “The lieutenant is coming to take me away,” she intoned. “Sorry, pal; I’ll have to put you in the storeroom again; it’s the only place big enough for a roaster pan. Salmon tonight, I promise.”

  Temple was shoving Louie into the storeroom when she heard the heavy footfalls of the law. She rushed back to find the police lieutenant looming over her desk.

  “Cute.” Molina’s deliberate deadpan tone held no complimentary grace notes. She was staring at the second front feature. “Makes it sound like the force needs a feline division to find its own left foot, much less a dead body. Your creative PR, I assume.”

  “It beats ‘Dead Editor at Convention Center.’ ”

  “Fiction always looks better than truth. That’s why so many people turn to crime.”

  “Hey, don’t look at me, Lieutenant. I thought you wanted a guide to the ABA, not a suspect.”

  “I understand you had a run-in with the victim.”

  “You must have consulted Claudia Esterbrook. She reminded me of that, too. Except it’s kind of silly to kill someone you never met before and whose name you don’t even know.”

  Lieutenant Molina’s eyes—an unearthly aquamarine color capable of fascinating if they hadn’t been kept expressionless—flicked Temple up and down. Her mouth quirked. “Relax. It’s hard to picture you puncturing a man’s stomach and ripping up into the heart with a number five steel knitting needle.”

  “So that’s the murder weapon! And, listen. I bet I can do anything you can do.”

  Lieutenant Molina allowed a tight smile to thaw her professional façade. “Don’t get competitive, Miss Barr; this is a murder rap we’re discussing. I want you to show me the ropes of this free-for-all.”

  “It’s just a normal convention.”

  Molina’s eyes rolled like wayward blue marbles. “Twenty-four thousand people! You ringmaster this sort of circus all the time?”

  “It’s my job,” Temple said a bit stiffly.

  Molina raised a raven eyebrow that needed some judicious plucking in Temple’s opinion. “Don’t tell me: somebody’s got to do it.”

  “Right. What do you want to know?”

  “How this thing is scheduled. What the daily events are. Who here is connected to the deceased.”

  “Let’s hit the floor. First, you’ll need a badge.” She couldn’t help smirking at that, but Molina offered no comment.

  Hearing the lieutenant’s low-heeled shoes thudding behind her own crisp high-heel taps on the long way to the registration rotunda, Temple mentally toyed with unkind variations on “flatfoot,” but kept them safely to herself.

  People three deep, many of them women burdened with purses, empty canvas bags and a visible film of genteel perspiration, milled in the lobby.

  “Is it always such a madhouse?” Molina wondered.

  “Always, but the ABA is one of our behemoth conventions—twenty-four thousand book-loving and -selling souls. We can crash the line for your badge. In-house privilege. Thanks, Carrie. There. Before we face the floor, we better face the press room.”

  Molina gestured Temple to proceed her.

  Their first stop was a quiet room where folding chairs in churchlike order sat slightly askew, as if the congregation had just risen for a mass exit. Temple cruised a long line of tables awash in printed matter along the walls. She paused here and there to snatch up a pair of glossy folders and thrust one of each set at the police lieutenant, keeping the other.

  “I don’t need all this paperwork,” Molina protested. “I’ve got plenty of my own.”

  “No?” Temple eyed Molina over her electric-magenta eyeglass frames. “Funny, they’re bios on Pennyroyal Press’s top three money-making authors.”

  Molina cracked a folder to study a glossy eight-by-ten photo of Mavis Davis and the accompanying press release. “Any of this information actually true?”

  “Enough to fill you in, and I can do more of that, if you’ll answer one question.”

  “Yes?”

  “Why me?”

  “Why you—why?”

  “Why’d you ask for me to lead this little tour of wonderland under glass?”

  Molina grinned. “It was either you—or Crawford Buchanan.”

  “What about Bud Dubbs?”

  “He has too much at stake. You are a free-lance flack, aren’t you? You don’t owe your rent to the company store for more than a few weeks at a time.”

  In answer Temple flipped out her business card, which bore the sketch of a smoking felt-tip pen and the words “Temple Barr, PR.”

  “Cute,” said Molina.

  “You don’t like me,” Temple said. That was a serious offense; most people did. Charm was part of her professional armament.

  “Maybe I don’t like your boyfriend.”

  “Ex-boyfriend. And you never even met him. Did you?”

  “I’ll do the interrogation here, thank you. I find his behavior suspicious.”

  “I find it actionable,” Temple retorted, “but there’s no law against a guy skipping town. It’s been three whole months. I got over it; maybe you should.”

  Something flashed in Molina’s icy blue eyes, and vanished. “Maybe you should ask yourself why he skipped. Unless you were part of the reason.”

  Temple grimaced. “I ate too many anchovy pizzas, all right? Look, Lieutenant. He just left. Guys do that. It wasn’t because of me, everything was—”

  “Was what?”

  “Peachy keen,” Temple said through her teeth. “No, he didn’t dig the Vegas scene or the way the Nevada heat curled his hair or—something. Besides, I don’t see why a Sex and Homicide detective is so interested in a magician who took a powder and vanished. Unless you think my sex life is a lot more interesting than yours.”

  No flash of distant blue this time. “Depends upon the kind of powder he took. And did you ever consider it might be the Homicide part that involves me?”

  “Max? Kill someone? A man who pulls baby bunnies and cockatoos from his coat sleeves for a living? Give me a break.”

  “It might be the other way around.”

  Temple frowned. She hadn’t expected another grilling on the semi-unlamented Max Kinsella. What was the Iron Maiden of the LVMPD getting at now? The answer hit Temple like a block of ice in the guts. She’d never considered that, not even for a minute in the darkest 3 a.m. brooding session.

  “Max? Dead? No! You don’t know how strong and physically fit magicians have to be, how fast, how smart. They are not easy candidates for murder, believe me. You really think that’s why Max hasn’t
shown up?”

  “Cheer up, Miss Barr. It’s a much more personally flattering reason than the one you’ve been cherishing for three months.”

  “What do you know about what I might cherish?” Temple flared, instantly regretting the outburst.

  “That’s the problem. Nothing. When I questioned you after Kinsella’s disappearance months ago, you were about as forthcoming as a mob hit man. Now you’re stonewalling again on this ABA murder. I am the police, you know. I’ve got a right to ask questions.”

  “Not such personal ones. Not in a simple man-missing case.” Molina kept silent. “What didn’t I tell you that you needed to know?”

  “Everything. You claimed to know nothing about Kinsella’s background, his family, friends—”

  “I didn’t. Look, Max and I had been together for only a few months. He was a traveling magician, and I don’t have much contact with my family, either. I just didn’t—don’t— know those things.”

  “And you didn’t see what they had to do with his disappearance?”

  “I didn’t see that our relationship was police business. Max was—is—a free spirit. I knew that; it’s one reason I—anyway, he didn’t take all of his things, but he never traveled with much. His engagement at the Goliath Hotel had ended that night. Isn’t it obvious that he just wanted to move on without me and didn’t have the nerve to say so?”

  “A free spirit. And an emotional coward. And you the soul of stability. Why’d a smart woman like you fall for him?”

  “I don’t like that question now any better than I did then.”

  “It wasn’t quite as obvious then that Kinsella was playing with fire.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I’m not at liberty to say.”

  “But I should spill my guts, sure!” Temple took a deep breath. “I’ll say this. Max never did the expected. He liked to surprise people. It genuinely delighted him. That’s why he became a magician. He never lost that sense of child’s play. Maybe it didn’t make him the most predictable of partners, but it sure as hell made life interesting. He came into mine like a white-magic tornado, and I can’t say I was surprised when he left in a puff of smoke.”

  “You forgive him?”

  “No... but his disappearance wasn’t out of character, and it’s not as simple as cowardice. Stage magicians take risks; that’s part of the performance.”

  “Sleight of hand and mind.” Molina snorted. “Tricks.”

  “But it takes an athlete to perform them.” Temple shook her head. “You’ll never understand a man like Max. He doesn’t play by the fine print in the book of rules. He laughs at rule books, and steady-job-holding people like us. So he’s not dead, if you want my honest opinion, Lieutenant. Death hasn’t gotten fast enough for Max Kinsella yet.”

  “I still think you’re covering up something; maybe just the fact that you miss him.”

  “Think what you like.” The policewoman’s air of faint amusement cooled Temple’s anger—and anxiety—better than a pitcher of ice water. “Listen, Mavis Davis will be meeting the media in about five minutes. Want to get a look at her?”

  “Apparently you do.”

  Temple led them to a pair of seats front row, dead center. “She writes best-sellers about murderous nurses. If you’re looking for perpetrators, Lieutenant—and not chasing ghosts—Chester Royal’s nearest and clearest experts on murder were his authors.”

  The press room lunch break ended abruptly. First Claudia Esterbrook charged in, eyeing the disheveled press handouts with distaste and siccing an underling on the mess.

  She greeted Temple and the lieutenant with a curt nod... and open disfavor. They would file no stories. Her face screwed into its customary expression of impatience when the next persons in the room were Lorna Fennick and the first entrée of the afternoon’s media feast, Mavis Davis.

  Claudia bustled back out to the hall. In moments she could be heard rounding up reluctant reporters. “Larry, you swore you wouldn’t miss the first interview of the afternoon! I’m counting on you; just go right in. Elise—Graffiti magazine, isn’t it? You don’t want to miss Miss Davis. Come on, now, all of you, and we can get started.”

  They straggled in, the bleary members of the press, the dapper but bored TV reporters. Their rears had polished the paint thin on the folding chairs so thoughtfully molded to cradle sagging bottoms, and their attentive ears had overdosed on the same questions from their colleagues, the same answers from authors trotted out like trick ponies at twenty-minute intervals.

  The morning’s sole interesting moments had been Erica Jong’s cleavage—and that for only half the press corps—and Walter Cronkite’s quips on still-unstable world politics as he plugged his latest tome on sailing ships and squint-eyed old salts.

  The media people focused on Mavis Davis with a universally jaundiced eye: a youngish Julia Child without even a chicken wing as a prop to offer the media. Half of them were dreaming over their own book proposals and the encouraging editor, or sales rep, or friend of an editor or sales rep, that they had buttonholed earlier on the convention floor, anyway. Claudia kept her whip out—her strident, almost viciously cheerful voice. She rounded ’em up, headed ’em in, plunked ’em down and... another four hours of raw hide.

  Mavis Davis had been deposited facing them on a tastefully upholstered tweed chair, with a freestanding tweed room divider behind her to which Lorna Fennick was hastily tacking posters of the latest Davis title, Ladybug, Ladybug. According to the press release, it followed the medical and off-hours career of an arsonist pediatric nurse. The ladybug pictured on the cover, fully embossed to sensual depth, had a blood-bright shell with tiny black skull markings and wings of red-foil fire.

  “People read this stuff?” Lieutenant Molina hissed this in Temple’s ear loudly enough to be heard at twenty feet. “It’s sick! Gives the wacko element ideas.”

  Heads whipped around. Claudia Esterbrook glared as her talons scored a glossy folder until the cover stock split.

  “You obviously haven’t been keeping up with the bestseller list, Lieutenant,” Temple noted. “Your profession is quite well represented,”

  “Libeled, you mean,” Molina said.

  Claudia started the show with a clarion throat-clearing that silenced the well-trained media people. Most were ABA veterans, being book page editors, and knew that Claudia demanded a meek flock in her field. If she found them derelict in their devotion to duty—attending the endless round of programs, interviews, author breakfasts, etc.—she could jerk their press credentials, or at least tarnish them a bit. They settled down, pencils poised and cameras, whether hand-held photographic models or shoulder-high videotape machines, cocked.

  Everyone was ready but Mavis Davis, who sat fidgeting with a copy of her novel until the dust jacket crinkled.

  “How did you happen upon the idea of writing about lethal nurses, Miss Davis?” came the first, hardly original question.

  “Ah—” Mavis Davis was a raw-boned woman whose hair had been crimped into an unflattering greige Brillo pad by the Las Vegas oven. Her figured polyester dress must have acted like a nylon tent, sealing in the heat. Her cheeks were hot spots of ruby-red blusher on a pallor of genuine stage fright. Temple had never seen a person less suited to a public interview. She felt sorry for her.

  “Ah,” Mavis Davis repeated. Even her voice was unfortunate, an attenuated quiver that couldn’t make up its mind whether to sing alto or soprano. “It’s the contrast, you see. Behind a calling of mercy, of care and the, the... well, you don’t expect a nurse to do anything drastic, do you? On purpose, that is. That’s the fascination.”

  “Are you implying, Miss Davis, that there’s a feminist undertone to your subject matter; that men are usually assumed to be capable of violence and mayhem, but not women? There’ve been plenty of villainous doctors in fiction and true-crime nonfiction.”

  “Exactly,” Mavis Davis said eagerly. “Nurses are so innocent, you see; all in white, like brides. And t
hen, their victims, my victims—in my books, that is—are innocent, too. Helpless children. Well, I can’t really say why my books are so popular, except that it’s a contrast between innocence and evil. And readers always like that.”

  “But your nurse antagonists aren’t innocent caregivers; they’re more of the Nurse Ratched school.”

  “Nurse Ratchet School? I’ve never heard of—”

  “Like the villainous head nurse that persecuted Jack Nicholson in One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest.”

  Mavis Davis blinked. “What an odd title. It’s much too long for a book.”

  “It was a film. And a book before that.”

  “Oh. Well, I don’t know it, young man. Perhaps you could ask me something about one of the characters in my books.”

  Silence prevailed.

  Then a woman’s voice lilted from the rear. “What about reality, Miss Davis? Has the death of your editor, the chief of your publishing imprint, Chester Royal, given you second thoughts about the fictional deaths your novels portray?”

  “Of course, I’m devas-devastated. I’ve worked with Mr. Royal from the beginning of my career. Only Mr. Royal has edited my books. I, I don’t know what I’ll do without him—”

  Lorna Fennick spoke up with smooth efficiency. “We will find you another editor as congenial as Mr. Royal, Miss Davis. You are a revered author with Reynolds-Chapter-Deuce. We’ll hardly abandon you, no matter the circumstance.”

  “Still...” Mavis Davis smiled weakly. “I’m not a writer by first career, you know. I was a nurse—quite a different nurse from those I write about, I might add. It’s hard to—to change horses in midstream—”

  Lorna’s hands sympathetically clamped the woman’s shoulders. “Leave all that to us; we only ask that you continue to create the wonderful stories that you have such a gift for writing. Thank you, ladies and gentlemen; we’ll cut this off early. Miss Davis, as you can see, has been deeply affected by Mr. Royal’s sudden death. Oh, yes, a few last photos, I'll step back for a moment.... There. Thank you all.”

  “You know who I’d like to see in the hot seat?” came a low male voice from behind them. “The hotsy-totsy homicide lieutenant who’s been hanging around this convention. What’s the verdict, Molina? Murder?”