Cat In An Alien X-Ray

Chapter 4

Home Alone

“I thought he’d never leave.”

Matt shut the door on Max and turned to Temple.

“Me too,” she said, moving into his arms. “Ever since we came back from Chicago, which was an all-business and too-much-funny-business trip, we’ve been caught up in your mom’s wonderful-but-quickie wedding. You and I haven’t had any real time together, night or day.”

“I know.” He pulled her into one of those first-time love-declaring, almost desperate embraces with a long kiss that migrated into a breathless series.

The new-old intensity of it made her knees and pulses quiver like a teenager’s. “What was that for?”

“For us putting away all the old family business that’s kept us worried and shot down our privacy, including who murdered whom on your darn Table of Crime Elements.”

“I guess we’d better take a break.”

His agreement was swift and no less intense, but he broke their kiss with a frown. “The cat’s moved out to the balcony. He just pushed the French door open.”

“Louie hates human ‘mushy moments.’ Forget him. Now we have the bed all to ourselves.”

But Matt pulled out of their embrace to inspect the ajar French door and the balcony.

Temple sighed for full dramatic effect. “Matt. Louie is the original cat burglar. He always uses the French doors.”

By now Matt was examining the levers and the latches as if they were a more fascinating erotic zone than hers truly’s. Guys! They always had to examine anything mechanical. She wouldn’t be surprised to learn there was a robotic blowup doll.

She couldn’t help complaining about the French doors getting more attention than her. “You sound just like—” Max.

He whirled to face her.

Temple switched grips on the conversational footballs. “—like Lieutenant Molina making a house safety check. We can discuss changing the latches later. Meanwhile, ‘I’m melting, I’m melting,’” she quoted the Wicked Witch of the West, as she had turned into another kind of puddle indeed.

He looked into her eyes, and seconds later she got a very satisfying bum’s rush into the bedroom, although he shut the door behind them for the first time, as if intent on keeping Louie, or the whole world, out.

Temple had no complaints about that, or anything.

* * *

“You don’t really hate my Table of Crime Elements,” she said later, when they were entwined side by side on the living room sofa, bare feet propped on the newspaper-laden coffee table.

“It’s brilliant, Temple, like you.” He kissed her … temple, where her hairdo had devolved into damp tendrils. His sigh was deep enough to worry her. “I’m just more aware now of how dangerous this world is, and how much we’re in danger every day.”

“You mean, because of runaway buses or comets or recession? Or because of whatever your stepfather was mixed up in or—?”

“Because of all that, up to and including your tendency to solve everyone’s problems, including the police’s. It’s dangerous. This last trip to Chicago, it was almost fatal to Louie.”

“We can’t sit still and wait for the bad guys and gals to find us.”

“No,” he agreed, his tight-lipped mouth a grim underline to that reality. “But you can be watchful.” Matt shifted into a less cuddly position. “I’m going to have to be working late for a while.”

She took that news, turned it over in her mind, and laughed. “You work late already.”

“Later. A couple of hours later. I won’t be able to see you after the show.”

“Not until four thirty A.M.? I loved all our wee-hour rendezvous, the off-Strip world so deliciously dark. Why?”

“Ambrosia and I are running experimental tapes on a new concept. When your boss is the broadcaster ahead of you, that’s the only time available for … experiments. I’m not giving up the earlier evening hours, because that’s the time we can share going out and about like normal people.”

Temple mock-pouted, though she was curious about the “experimental tapes.”

“At least that means you’ll be available for the post-honeymoon bash Nicky Fontana and Van are throwing at the Crystal Phoenix Tuesday night for my aunt Kit and his oldest brother Aldo.”

“Really? There are post-honeymoon bashes? I’d love to have that for us.”

Temple played coy. “I’m sure if I hint nicely to Van and Nicky. I do handle their PR. But why are you looking into new formats at WCOO? Oh. Does Ambrosia know about your network daytime TV talk show offer?”

“That’s an exploration, Temple, not an offer yet.”

“An ‘exploration’ that put a little deal tempter like a Jaguar in your driveway.”

“In the Circle Ritz parking lot. And that’s a problem because a car like that should be garaged. In fact, fancy cars are more trouble than the head-turning factor is worth. The only head I want to turn is yours.”

“I’ll never make you into a conspicuous consumer,” Temple said, not complaining.

“Says the retro fashion recycler.”

She smiled at his point, but frowned right after. “So did you tell Ambrosia about your career-change possibility?”

“On the air, ‘Ambrosia’ is all breathy empathy as she plays songs to comfort the troubled. As a businesswoman, Letitia Brown is sharper than a shark’s tooth.”

“So she knows you’re in danger of leaving? You’ve caved and are trying out something the two of you can do beyond your Midnight Hour advice show, separately, following her sob story hour?”

Matt shrugged, looking unhappy. Poor guy, he had way too many scruples for the business world, Temple thought. She didn’t want to add to his pressures.

“Okay. I’ll give you up for those precious post–Midnight Hour rendezvous, but you’re all mine from noon to eleven P.M.”

“I’m all yours around the clock, only I’ll have to be absent for my work hours.”

* * *

Finally. The men had left. Temple didn’t believe she’d ever feel that way about either one of them. Still fretting over Matt’s strange new indifference to his exciting job opportunities, she unleashed her own anxieties. She hied back to the bedroom and the small chest that housed accessories. The notorious scarf drawer was so full of its airy contents that it jammed a bit on opening.

She pawed through the contents for the few ring boxes and rings. Not a good hiding place, but she’d felt so safe at the Circle Ritz, when Max lived here with her, with Matt just a floor above.

Her fingers found the heavy gold of a man’s ring; the worm Ouroboros symbol of eternity, swallowing its own tail; and the box with the cheap cocktail ring she’d wasted her money on at the women’s exhibition, something sparkly and girly that had fit her mood then. She didn’t find the opal and diamond ring in its plastic evidence Baggie from Lieutenant Molina.

She sat on the bed, her heart pounding, the two rings in her lap. She shut her eyes, remembering the saleswoman behind the ring counter she barely looked at over the array of glittering stones.

That’s when Matt’s “returned” Ouroboros ring must have been slipped into Temple’s bag and had emigrated with the boxed ring into her drawer unnoticed. When had Max’s ring vanished—again—then? Much more recently.

Temple looked up, to the rooms beyond the bedroom. Midnight Louie jumped up beside her, nosing the two rings.

“Oh, Louie,” she said. “Has Kitty the Cutter been breaking in here all along? Collecting ‘trophies?’ And what am I asking you for?”

His sturdy merow clearly meant he was just the one to confide in.

And then her phone rang.