Cat In A Crimson Haze

Chapter 29

A Ghost of a Chance

Temple surveyed her new home away from home. The first pair of high heels she had been able to wear in days sank past their plastic heel caps into plush carpeting the color of cafe au lait.

Beige grasscloth wallpaper was interwoven with silver strands. A computer screen cursor winked encouragingly from a neatly petite laptop floating on an otherwise empty sheet of inch-thick glass. A laser printer in the same ivory-color casing rested atop a nearby cart.

Against the wall, a row of walnut-veneer two-drawer file cabinets awaited the opportunity to conceal any clutter that Temple could generate.

Atop one file cabinet, steaming discreetly, sat a black coffee mug emblazoned with the gilded, feathered form of a rising phoenix.

Temple peeked into the cup. She had asked Van's secretary (male, but not a Fontana brother) to bring her coffee with milk.

Yup, the mixture within perfectly matched the color of the carpeting.

Temple sighed wistfully at her magnificent blank slate of an office. She would make it the clutter capital of America in a just day or two, she thought, unloading the essential contents of her tote bag onto the glass desktop.

She owed her elegant roost at the Crystal Phoenix to two people. Danny Dove had insisted that Temple rewrite the absent Crawford Buchanan's "abysmal scripts,'' his phrase, not hers, in front of Van von Rhine. And Van von Rhine, in turn, had insisted that Temple needed an office in which to master mind the Crystal Phoenix resurgence, as well as any little promotional project she might dream up for "dear Spuds"-- Van's phrase, not Temple's-- "and his offbeat lakefront fast-food emporium."

Temple suspected that the office served another, "unspoken purpose. It would help everyone at the Phoenix keep an eye on her, since she was the suspected target of the mischief now abroad. She frowned, remembering how Matt, hot, bothered and indignant, had denied any intention to protect her, other than by teaching her martial arts. He had not denied hiring Eightball O'Rourke. Interesting.

''All right," Temple told her gorgeous but empty office. "As long as I'm being kept after class for my own good, I might as well do a little homework."

She hit the intercom button on the desk, jumping when a disembodied masculine voice answered. For all she knew, a Fontana brother could now be manning the outer office. Or Crawford Buchanan.

''Could you find out if Van has the Crystal Phoenix renovation blueprints? I want to see a set."

"Yes, Ma'am," the young man, who answered to Yancy, replied. "Be right back."

Temple's coffee had barely cooled to drinking temperature when a light knock resonated on her door.

At her invitation, Yancy entered, bearing armfuls of rolled architectural drawings. They tumbled to the desk, like blue-blooded bones. Temple uncurled one, anchoring one corner with her coffee cup, another with a china dish of paperclips. They were the only possible paperweights in the sleek office.

Sighing, she took off one red leather Margaret Jerrold pump, then another, and laid them across the remaining two corners.

She had seen architects renderings before, but she had never tried to interpret them. She broke a nail while excavating her tote bag for her glasses case.

"Will that be all, Ma'am?" Yancy wanted to know.

He was a slight young man with a well-scrubbed face and dark, collar-dusting brown hair moussed into an oddly antique-looking pompadour.

"For now," Temple said grimly.

She sat on the desk chair and rolled it across the plastic carpet-protector until she could rest her elbows atop the slick glass surface and absently sip coffee.

Zillions of fine blue lines zigged and zagged across the plans expansive surface. She had enough sheets here to paper her condominium, if living inside the veins of someone else's walls appealed to her.

Hearing the door shut, she glanced up. Yancy was gone. She was alone with her secret treasure maps at last. Yo, ho, ho and a bottle of rum-flavored continental coffee.

**************

"Here they are, dearest dumpling."

Danny Dove had knocked before entering. Temple wasn't sure exactly what with. Both arms were loaded with sheaves of coffee-stained papers. But, after all, he was a toe- and tap-dancer, so he must be digitally dexterous with all limbs.

"An office to die for," he said with a melting look around.

"Not in, I hope."

"Of course not. You're far too important to knock off now."

"How can we--I--rewrite these skits at such a late date? Won't the performers go crazy if they have to relearn changes?"

"They would go crazier delivering Mr. Buchanan's garbage to an audience. Most of this mess"--Danny dumped the lot atop the desk as if unburdening himself of rubbish--"is salvageable with some editing and a modicum of real wit."

"I happen to have my modicum right here with me." Smiling, Temple reached into the ever-ready tote bag sitting at her feet.

Danny watched het extract a blue fine-line ballpoint pen, then eyed the tablecloth of architectural plans beneath the precious but putrid scripts.

''Riveting," he said. ''Architects and editors always use blue pencils, or pens. It must mean something."

"They are probably just depressed. Looking over these skits, I can see why. Crawford's only funny bone is in his left elbow."

"Too bad he didn't dive down those steps and break it."

"There haven't been any more rehearsal accidents?" Temple asked anxiously.

"Not since you've taken all the sunshine and yourself away."

"Hmm."

Danny braced his hands on the curling edges of the architectural plans and leaned forward for emphasis, reminding Temple of Michael Caine in one of his spy films. "Listen, ducks. I don't know what's going on around this hotel, but it's not normal. Watch yourself, love."

"Oh, I will," Temple promised. "I will."

Danny nodded and bounded, Gene Kelly style, to the door and out it.

By mid-afternoon Yancy had run the edited skits through the handy-dandy full-page scanner in the corner--nothing but class for the Crystal Phoenix, even in the office furnishings department.

Her blue pencil busily checked off skits that were already read into the computer memory.

Now she could correct the blue screen of the color monitor, sharpening Crawford's dull wit and lopping off leaden lines, adding her own impromptu spin. He would be furious, but she was having fun. Such nice, messy raw material he provided! Temple loved operating on club-footed prose.

She was so busy she hadn't even noticed when the office door opened.

But it must have opened, because Midnight Louie was now serving as the fourth corner paperweight on the plans, his black muzzle nestled deeply into the toe of her red shoe.

She noticed him with a start, then saw that the door had been nosed ajar. Apparently the secretary was off secretaring.

''Glad to know you're alive," she told him. ''I guess you're sorry you ever moved to the Circle Ritz. If you miss my shoes so much, I can leave a pair with Van von Rhine for your future delectation."

But the cat was not about to go quietly on a guilt trip of Temple's making. He yawned and rolled over to display his impressive underbelly. Temple gave the black fur a good scratch and also tickled his chin for good measure.

''We both have been spending a lot of time at the Crystal Phoenix," she admitted aloud. "I hope your sojourn has been less traumatic than mine."

At that Louie blinked solemnly, as if to sympathize.

He stretched out a fat paw and patted the curled corners of the hotel plans.

"No messing with the floor plans, fellah. I haven't even had time to look at them yet."

Temple turned back to her computer. She was in the process of integrating Crawford's tasteless "June Is Bustin' Out All Over" number into her grand finale. Her remodeling would require a new wardrobe of complicated costumes, but the effect would be socko. Shocko!

Boffo! Psycho! Danny Dove wouldn't mind. After all, she wasn't kicking the Lace 'n' Lust ladies out of the show, she was simply giving them a whole new platform, a fresh facade, a free facelift, so to speak.

She snickered wickedly, Crawford would be finger-flaunting furious.

Her office door cracked open, hitting the wall. The sudden inrush of air sucked the papers on her desk into rustling rearrangement.

Temple spun to face the door and found a brace of Fontana brothers frozen in an action pose worthy of a movie poster, guns in hand.

She decided not to hit the floor. People with glass-topped desks have nowhere to hide.

"We saw your door was ajar and suspected an invader." the nearest brother explained, eyeing the empty office with displeasure.

"Just something the cat let in . . . the cat.''

She pointed to Midnight Louie, still hunkered atop the crinkled pile of hotel plans, his significant overweight the only thing that had kept the whole shebang from scattering. Her shoes lay at opposite corners of the desk. Paperclips glinted everywhere like solid silver rain.

''Sorry, Miss Barr," Ralph offered lamely, ''We thought that crack in the door was suspicious." He bolstered his semiautomatic and bent to join his brother in picking up the pieces.

"Kinda wrinkled," said the other brother, probably Julio, as he plopped the disheveled pile of Crawford's scripts back on the desk.

"Hey, our suits will be fine with a fresh pressing," Ralph said. "That's nothing compared to making a mess for Miss Barr. You don't have to mention this to anybody, do you? We'd look a little . . . trigger-happy."

"I appreciate the protection, but right now I could really use some peace and quiet while I work."

They left, drawing the door shut so slowly and quietly that it took twenty seconds to close it.

Temple counted.

She sighed and regarded Midnight Louie, who was stretching luxuriously on his favorite snoozing surface--papers. Architectural plans were almost roomy enough to accommodate his full length.

He began pulling up the corners to construct a nest.

"Enough. You're as awkward as a Fontana brother doing flying tackles. You're as clumsy as a kitten up a tree, and it isn't even spring. Oops. I've been writing too many song satires lately. Get off the papers; they're bent out of shape enough already!"

Temple shoved Louie's lolling weight aside and tried to stack the plans like a giant deck of cards, but the sheets were too battered to push meekly into one pat pile.

Then she saw the problem: they weren't single sheets, but pairs, stapled together at the upper left corner. No wonder they were so cumbersome.

She stripped off the first pair and held them up in her arms, which barely stretched from edge to edge.

The top sheet showed the remodeled Crystal Phoenix entrance and lobby, complete to a small square indicated dead-center. That must represent the Plexiglas plinth that upheld the gorgeous Lalique glass sculpture of a phoenix.

She struggled to flip over the huge page so she could see the next drawing.

Not much to see. More marshaled lines going every which way in rectilinear precision, like Mondrian in a blue period. Except that ...

Temple frowned and set down the plan, reaching for her shoes to act as corner anchors again. The paper underneath had an ocher cast, and the drawing style was different.

She studied the plan. It was like trying to create a jigsaw puzzle, breaking the design into pieces that would tell her more than the whole.

For one thing, this layout was the same general shape and size of the top sheet, only there was no square placed dead center for a mythical bird.

She flipped back the top sheet, and then flipped it away again to study the bottom sheet.

They were the same, but different. Then she saw it: the bottom drawing must be the plans for the original hotel that Jersey Joe Jackson had built in the early fifties, the Joshua Tree.

Temple sat down, studying blue lines until an orange grid remained before her vision when she glanced up at the pale grass cloth walls.

She grabbed a second set. Midnight Louie yowled his displeasure as another layer of paper was whisked from under his sprawling limbs, torso and tail.

Examination revealed the same system. The remodeling plans overlay the original construction plans.

''Kind of neat, huh, Louie? Past and present in one tidy package. The basement-level plans should be the most revealing. You can bet Jersey Joe Jackson never built in the elevator stage and all the neat technical stuff."

But when she got to the bottom set of plans--by then Louie was lying on cold, unforgiving glass, his ears back and white whiskers twitching--there was only the top sheet.

Temple riffled through all the other sets, accompanied by enough crackles of stiff paper to simulate a fire on a radio show, but found no original of the hotel's lowest level.

So she picked up the phone receiver and punched in Van von Rhine's extension.

''Temple here. Yes, I adore the office and Midnight Louie looks very dashing against the pale motif. Yup, he showed up. Apparently it's not me he's avoiding, but the' Circle Ritz, I can't imagine why. Anyway, I've got the remodeling plans and each page is stapled to the original plan for that area, except the basement. Why is that missing?"

Temple turned her blue pen upside down and rapped gently on the glass desktop as she digested Van's explanation.

"You never found a set of plans for the basement? Then how did your architect . . . ?

Remeasured every inch, huh? Ouch. That must have played havoc with the budget. No, no real reason, just curious. You know me. You're sure? ... I see. Thanks anyway."

Temple replaced the phone on the console and continued tapping her pen, until a big black paw swiped it sideways.

"I'm not playing, Louie. I'm thinking. Why is the plan for that one floor missing? That would have all the important mechanical areas and everything. Granted that Nicky and Van's architect worked around it, why did he have to? The plans for everything else were intact, and in order."

She leaned back in the ivory leather chair, which leaned back with her.

"Oh! It even tilts and swivels. How nimble of it."

Temple's comment was not to inform the cat of the attributes of her chair, but to calm her nerves. At the sudden motion, her stomach had wrenched with a sudden fear of falling, probably a flashback to her bad tumble down the stairs. To the basement. To which there was no extant set of original architect's drawings.

Jersey Joe Jackson's basement.

All that was left of Jersey Joe's hotel now was his former rooms during the days of his decline and death, the Ghost Suite. Room 713. Where Jill and Johnny had discovered a hoard of stolen silver dollars in a mattress just a couple of years ago. What else was stuffing the mattresses in Jersey Joe's former suite?

Temple smartly tapped the intercom button.

"Yes, Ma'am?"

Good, Yancy was back.

''Can you get me some room keys?"

"All the rooms are entered with cards nowadays. Ma'am."

"Not 713, I believe."

"I'll have to check with Miss von Rhine."

"Fine."

Oops, she had made a Nostradamus style rhyme. About time.

Temple had a feeling. Temple had an itch in her instep. She grabbed her pumps off the table and donned them. While she waited to hear from Yancy, she tapped her toe instead of her pen, impatient to be off. Temple had an idea running around the back of her mind like a gerbil hunting for an exercise wheel.

Soon there came a tapping, as of someone gently rapping, "rapping on her chamber door.

"Yes?"

Yancy appeared, in his hand a genuine brass hotel key attached by a chrome beaded chain to a wooden oval with the number 713 carved into it.

"Great!" Temple stood to take custody of the key.

"The boss was out of the office, so one of the Fontana brothers dug it up for me."

As Yancy passed it over the desk, Louie bestirred himself to leap up between them and bat at the dangling wooden plaque.

"Always so playful," Temple said jovially as she jerked the key well beyond his reach.

Yancy did not leave the room.

''Is there something else?" she inquired.

"I've heard of that suite," he said darkly. ''It's haunted. Miss von Rhine won't rent it; she won't even have it mentioned. It's like the place is not supposed to exist."

"Then we'll pretend that this key doesn't exist, and I'll return it directly to the appropriate Fontana. Which one gave it to you?"

"I don't know!"

"And you work here full time? Tsk-tsk."

Temple sallied past the young man before his misgivings could get the better of his inertia.

"Don't worry. It's my job to come up with marketable angles on this hotel. Ghosts are very popular right now. Maybe I can cut a deal with this one."

She exited, twirling the key around her little finger.

Yancy, she hoped, would put his scruples on hold until she had some time to do a bit of serious snooping into the deep, dark past of the Crystal Phoenix.