Cat In An Alphabet Soup (Catnap)

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 His feline face had that vaguely withdrawn look that some people interpret as superiority to other beings.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.

By six-twelve, she was in the long line of vehicles queuing up the semicircular drive at the convention center’s Rotunda entrance. Lanyard Hunter’s silver hair and patrician height were readily recognizable. So was Lorna Fennick, to whom he was talking as they waited. Temple zoomed the Storm to the curb, waved at Lorna, who waved back as she spotted her own ride, and leaned across the seat to open the door.

Hunter bent down with a charming smile. “Miss Barr, I presume. Lanyard Hunter. I wouldn’t want you accepting a strange man in your car without a formal introduction.”

“How thoughtful. Do come in, Mr. Hunter. I thought we’d dine at Dome of the Sea at The Dunes, unless you hate seafood?”

“Perfect,” Hunter said obliquely enough that the comment could apply to anything, including the driver. “After all the bloody beef dinners it takes to maintain the strength to deal with one’s publishers, I’d prefer something subtler.”

Temple lifted an eyebrow and eased the Storm into the traffic. She’d be willing to bet that she was “something subtler” than Lanyard Hunter expected.

The geodesic Dome of the Sea restaurant offered an aquatic dimness into which it was possible for the neon-weary diner to sink like a peaceful pearl. In tanks surrounding the upholstered banquettes, tropical fish massaged illuminated azure waters to the accompaniment of a harpist plucking liquid melodies.

“Very nice,” Hunter said, the object of his compliment again ambiguous but his eyes resting exclusively on Temple. He had a compelling, platinum-gray stare that sliced past normal social barriers as intimately as a hot scalpel.

Temple took refuge behind a long, glossy menu specifying double-digit prices. A slice of the adjoining casino was visible behind Hunter. One of the many crystal-hung chandeliers haloed his dramatic silver locks like a diamond-toothed circular saw.

He’s no angel, Temple reminded herself, but a skilled and shrewd con man equipped with the smarmy charisma and florid handsomeness of a televangelist. She’d had enough of the type, plus Hunter was a little past her age limit. She was apparently not out of his.

‘‘Charming,” he murmured again.

“Thanks so much for making yourself available, Mr. Hunter,” she said briskly. “I’m sure your insight will be helpful in creating a correct picture of the late Mr. Royal’s achievements. It’s a big responsibility to generate an obituary on a stranger, and an out-of-towner to boot.”

“Lorna said you wanted some information, but could we order drinks and appetizers first?” He regarded her with an understanding tolerance, well aware that his practiced charm made her nervous.

“Certainly. Everything, of course, will be on my PR tab, so order as lavishly as you wish.” That ought to reestablish control, Temple thought. Independent career woman picks up the check.

“I will.” Hunter’s smile broadened into an amused grin. “And the bill is mine; I insist. Experience before beauty.”

She saw little point in playing the liberated career woman in the face of Hunter’s determined role of gracious host. Temple smiled back and proceeded to order a martini, the crab pâté appetizers, scallops, a twice-baked potato with cheese and shrimp sauce, and a Caesar salad.

“That’s a little rich for my blood,” Hunter commented. “High cholesterol.”

“Mine’s one hundred sixty-eight. How’s yours?”

“Well enough. I’m curious; how can I help you with anything involving Chester Royal?”

Temple’s martini had arrived, brimming, a stemmed glass almost wider than it was tall. She managed to lift it without spilling and sipped the level down.

“I’ve heard fascinating things about you, Mr. Hunter, your medical savoir faire included. Surely you, more than anyone, would know how Mr. Royal made such a success of the medical thriller books he packaged.”

“The public fixates on physicians, Miss Barr. May I call you Temple? Doctors are perceived as benign, all-powerful beings who reveal little of themselves while probing into their patients’ most intimate matters.”

Hunter paused, while Temple considered that the foregoing wasn’t a bad description of the Hunter modus operandi either.

“We all fall into their hands sooner or later,” he went on, spreading his. “The medical establishment is a perfect environment for exploring our most irrational fears of death—and sometimes of life.”

“Don’t some people hate their doctors?”

“Only if they’ve been mistreated—misdiagnosed or overmedicated or ignored when a genuine problem was present. Otherwise, they’re ready to canonize them.”

“And you? Do you admire doctors also? Is that why you tried to ally yourself with them?”

“No doubt the ever-efficient Lorna has mentioned my medical ‘record.’ ” He paused again, as if to consider a revelation. He spoke more quickly, without the ever-present smile. “My... mother became seriously ill when I was only in my teens. I matriculated in medicine because of it. I became fascinated by the milieu. My pretending to be a doctor was simply a youthful enthusiasm—and proved to be the perfect education for my current career.”

“Why were you compelled to masquerade as a doctor? Why do others do it?”

“I can’t speak for others, Temple.” Analysis rumpled Hunter’s smooth face. “And I don’t characterize my exploits as ‘compelled.’ It was a... hobby of mine. I functioned quite well as a doctor, as well as my peers did. What tripped me up was the constant record-keeping this society is addicted to, not any mistake on my part.”

“What specialties did you practice? Family physician? Pediatrician?”

“No, no! Nothing so pedestrian. Once I was an oncologist. I was a surgeon another time.”

“But people’s lives were at stake! And you knew you were a fraud.”

“I knew I had no medical degree. And how many real M.D.s are frauds? Medicine wouldn’t be any fun if people’s lives weren’t at stake. We wouldn’t worship Dr. Welby and Dr. Christian and Drs. Kildare and Casey without something vital in the balance—our lives.”

“You wouldn’t have enjoyed the masquerade if that same vital something wasn’t at question?”

Hunter’s dove-gray eyes narrowed. “You make me sound quite bloodthirsty, Temple. I was younger then.” His glance softened as his tone sharpened. “Young men like risk. They race cars, they chase other men’s wives, they practice medicine without a license. It is much the same thing. We all thrive on excitement.”

Temple couldn’t miss the throbbing challenge in his voice. This man intended to devour life. To him, living dangerously included pursuing his spur-of-the-moment attractions. And she could be the current one.

“Do you miss it?” she asked quickly.

“The charade, you mean?”

“Yes. The thrill of the deception, the intricate creation of the believable persona and a paper trail to back it up. The innocent stupidity of everyone around you. The feeling of being so secret and so special.”

Hunter set down his fork, forsaking his fillet of sole. “How well you put it.” His gaze grew even more intense. “I’d almost think you had an appetite for that sort of game. You know the rewards well.”

“PR is a game, too, sometimes,” Temple said, attacking her scallops. “You try to find out what people don’t want to tell you, then turn around and try to keep other people from finding out what they most want to know.”

“Is that why you’re playing gumshoe?”

“I’m not.”

“Nonsense. I must say I much prefer you to that overgrown police detective.”

“Lieutenant Molina seems highly competent.”

“I wonder if that’s what it will take to unravel the murder of a complex man like Chester.”

“You’re a complex man,” Temple objected. He smiled again, as if she had just conceded a point in a chess match. “You must be to have done what you did, then make a writing career of it. Chester Royal, from what I’ve learned, was the antithesis of complexity. He had very simple needs: to feel powerful, to make others, particularly women, feel his power. I don’t think I’d have liked him if I’d known him.”

“A mutual distaste, I’d think.” Hunter laughed. “Yes, Chester had a rabid dislike of women. He always felt they were trying to take things from him—his stature both physical and figurative; his sense of superiority; his money. Must have been embittered by all those wives—and divorces.”

“But I understand that his fear of women goes back to his medical days. And he was a gynecologist!”

“Most male gynecologists then were Roman Catholic, did you know that? It makes sense, a very baby-directed religion by virtue of its proscriptions against both birth control and abortion. Chester was not RC, and I understand he was not averse to performing the clandestine abortion now and again, before it was legal in any sense.”

“Surely only doctors compassionate to women would do abortions in those days.”

Hunter smiled sadly. “Do you know what abortions by medical doctors were like then—often sans anesthetic? No time for recovery rooms and other niceties. I suspect Chester did them for money, period, and to thumb his nose at the system... and to rip fetuses untimely from wombs. He and his many wives never had children, you know.”

“You really think he was that kind of monster?”

“Many of us are that kind of monster, Temple. I never hurt anybody during my bogus medical career. I have an IQ of one hundred seventy-eight, did you know? I can’t say as much for many of the genuine doctors I practiced alongside. I’ve always meant to do a medical exposé, but Chester channeled me into fiction. I think he feared that if I did a controversial book, it would draw attention to his less than glorious past.”

“Or maybe he didn’t want you running down his ex profession.”

“True. Chester was old-fashioned in more than wanting to keep women in their place; he wanted control. He wanted all his authors as off balance as cats on a hot tin roof. Everyone around him was a possible enemy: the woman who would henpeck him, the man who would outperform him in any arena. He loved to put his authors through hell, playing on their insecurities. He wanted me to rewrite Broken Bones five times.”

“Why put up with it?”

Hunter shrugged. “I knew his type from my medical masquerade days. I simply hired a ghost writer to diddle with the ms. over and over until Chester decided he had put me through enough.”

“So you were never taken advantage of editorially, or fiscally?”

“I’m no Mavis Davis, no.” Hunter grinned to observe Temple’s surprise. “I knew Chester’s game; I didn’t let it get to me. And he’d made the mistake of breaking me out early, there was no way he was going to nickel and dime my agent to death at that late date.”

“You seemed to have used him, rather than vice versa.”

“Exactly. I had good training for it in the hospitals. And after.”

“You’re referring to—Joliet, was it?”

“The games played there make those of editorial ego very small potatoes indeed. Speaking of which, are you really going to eat all that? It’s the size of a wooden shoe.’ ” Temple forked into the tuber in question. “You bet. I’ve been on a strange diet lately—tuna fish—and it’s time to make up for it.”

Temple spent the rest of the evening inquiring politely about Hunter’s novels. Most offered unlikely scenarios about heroic physicians foiling near-future plots dealing with corporate clones, sinister truth serums and genetically engineered plagues created by global conspiracies.

Temple could see why spinning such farfetched tales would satisfy Hunter’s con-man instincts. He could play the doctor every day in his novels, and be the hero as well. She could also see why patients trusted him and women would find him attractive, even if they suspected his sincerity. If you’re going to be sold a bill of goods, the salesman had better be smooth.

“What will happen to your books now that Chester Royal’s dead?” Temple polished off the last of her potato just before the waiter cleared the table.

“Nothing. Even if Pennyroyal Press breaks down, any major publisher would be pleased to snap up myself and Mavis Davis. Even Owen Tharp.”

“What about the others on the Pennyroyal Press list? The writers who were just beginning?”

Hunter shook his head as he finished his expensive white wine. “Nothing. They’ll go on clawing in the melee and living on thin air as they always have. But the top authors won’t have to worry. Survival of the fattest.”

“Maybe one of the thin types did it?”

“Kill an editor in chief? Most of them haven’t even figured out the score yet, much less become ready, willing and able to kill the umpire.”

“Then, no matter how horrible Chester was to his writers, none of them had motive to kill him, since it would only hurt themselves?”

“Yes, that is the Gospel according to Lanyard Hunter. Of course you must take into account that I’m a very slippery fellow.” Again the concentrated, intimate stare. Temple fidgeted, then fought off the spell and returned to basics. “Is that your real name, Lanyard Hunter?”

“As a matter of fact it is,” he said complacently. “Though nobody believes it. That’s the best kind of lie: the truth that nobody takes seriously. It will never catch the teller and it will seriously mislead everybody else.”

“I take it these are the con man’s rules to live by?”

“Call it what you will—it works. Doesn’t it?”

She ignored his question, although it had crossed her mind to wonder if his lovers really called him ‘Lanyard’ in bed, one of those uncensored idle thoughts that one disowns faster than a Freudian slip. “Who do you think murdered Mr. Royal?”

“I haven’t the slightest idea, and I don’t care.”

“Then why take the time to spend dinner being questioned by me?” Too late did she recognize that was a provocative question under the circumstances, or considering the company.

Lanyard Hunter bounded into her opening with relish and a seductive smile. “Because, my dear Miss Temple, I happen to enjoy intelligent female company, especially when it’s as attractively wrapped as you. I noticed you at the ABA right away. Besides, there’s only one thing a reformed con man can do, and that is to watch others play the game. I am breathless to discover whether you or Lieutenant Molina will find the culprit first.”

That touched a nerve. “I’m not competing with her; I’m just doing my job. At least it started that way.”

Temple remembered that the onerous duty of ransoming Baker and Taylor would occur first thing on the next day’s agenda. She either had to be up early—or up all night....

The waiter had slipped a salver, bearing the usual coy bill peeking out of a leatherette folder, next to Lanyard Hunter. Hunter’s forearms rested on the table as he leaned closer for the kill. His compelling eyes fixed on Temple with a flattering, unmistakable intent. At the same time, his expansive elbow had unobtrusively nudged the check tray to her side of the table.

Temple blinked, feeling like a robin who had been hypnotized by the world’s largest worm. The rat was going to take her at her word, stick her with the check and seduce her into the bargain, if he could! Lanyard Hunter was the Total Con Man. All of his promise and promises, especially romantic ones, were bogus. He could even be the murderer. No thanks.

“Speaking of my job,” Temple segued as smoothly as a con lady, “I’d better get you back to your hotel. You must be exhausted after two days of the ABA.”

“The night is only postadolescent,” he suggested in a baritone that could have seduced a Barbie doll.

Temple smiled. She was small but not that small. Or desperate. And not born yesterday. “My internal clock is on senescence,” she answered blithely. “I’ve had a long day, and I need my duty sleep.”

On that note the evening ended. Hunter never tried to beat Temple to the check. In no time flat she was pulling the Storm under the Las Vegas Hilton’s scintillating entrance canopy.

“Would you like to come in for a nightcap?” he asked.

“The only nightcap I want is flannel and at my apartment,” she said firmly.

“Are you sure?” Lanyard Hunter’s well-manicured hand had materialized warmly on Temple’s knee.

“Thanks, but I live with someone who might not understand.”

“Oh, who?”

“He’s a... big black dude. Some people think he throws a lot of weight around in this town.”

The hand vanished. Its opposite number was fumbling with the door latch.

“An enjoyable evening,” Hunter said as he hastily left the vehicle. “Thanks, and give my regards to your, er, friend.”

“Oh, I will,” Temple promised with a perky goodbye wave. The Storm took off like a hot aqua bat out of hell.

The moment Temple unlocked her big front door, the apartment felt wrong.

One thing was the heat. It prowled the darkened rooms like an invisible black panther. Its hot breath caressed her face first, then lapped down to her feet.

Even after the tepid air-conditioning of the Circle Ritz’s common areas, the marble-faced lobby and the wood-paneled hallway, this hothouse atmosphere felt unnatural, or rather, as natural as all outdoors. Far too hot for 80; more like a sizzling 90 degrees.

Temple waited while the unfamiliar hulking shapes turned back into her furniture. She slipped out of one high heel, bracing herself on the kitchen divider wall, then another. The shoes toppled onto bare parquet with a soft snick. She’d been meaning to get an entry area rug and now it was too late. Now she’d be murdered in her own apartment!

Maybe not.

She was alarmed, no denying that. The more you took a place for granted, the more you noticed when it altered, even slightly. Why would her air-conditioning have gone off—and hours before, to judge by the temperature now?

The pink neon clock on the black-and-white kitchen wall, so bland by day, broadcast an eerie Miami Vice glow over the counters. It reflected rosily, like a frivolous vigil light, on the living room’s sculpted white ceiling. A vigil light betokened a presence. Temple wondered whose.

She debated retreating. Yet the place was so still. Empty. Utterly empty. The parquet felt warm under her silent stocking feet as she skated across it, afraid of slipping.

The living room opened up before her, a book too dimly lit to read aright. A gap in the French doors was instantly evident, like a dog-eared page. One of the doors was ajar on an acute angle, admitting the heat of the night, and a grinding chorus of distant cicadas that she hadn’t noticed at first.

A heavy scent of jasmine and gardenia also rolled in like fog from the patio. Temple paused at the living room wall, her fingers reading the Braille of the thermostat’s raised plastic letters. The tiny marker was parked in the Off zone—but what burglar would turn air-conditioning off?

She shuffled further into the living room. Then she stopped. Something was missing. The cat should have sensed her presence by now. Louie should be stalking from some favorite retreat, or thumping down from atop the refrigerator, merowing for food. He should be wreathing her ankles, even in the dark, no challenge for his superior night vision. Where was the cat?

Temple back-shuffled as silently as she had entered, and slipped out the front door, never turning her back to the room. Once in the hall with its feeble wall sconces and dull rose carpeting, she raced flat-footed for the elevator and hit the Up button.

It took forever to come. She’d never noticed before how the gears clanked and squealed, how blasted loud the ancient mechanism was! It arrived empty. Temple darted in and pushed the P button. Inside, the car was richly paneled, like the exterior of a coffin. It jerked upward with the unholy racket of an unoiled guillotine being hoisted for the fatal drop.

A clanking stop almost persuaded Temple’s heart to imitate it. She tore for the coffered double doors opposite, pounding them with both fists.

They sprang open. Electra Lark stood there with her hair in stiff peaks resembling properly beaten egg whites. Little papers pressed onto her scalp. One egg-white peak was stained blood-red.

“Temple! What is it? I’m doing my hair.”

“God! I thought you were being scalped.” Temple scampered over the threshold and shut the penthouse doors behind her. “Someone’s in the building—or was. My apartment air- conditioning is off, one French door is wide open and the cat’s gone.”

Electra whipped the hand towel from around her neck, thinking. “The maintenance man is gone for the night. It’s too bad that nice Matt Devine isn’t here.”

“He isn’t?” Temple hadn’t considered that there might be advantages to being a damsel in distress.

“Works nights.” Electra sighed. “We’ll have to be liberated ladies and do it ourselves. I’ll get a flashlight. We don’t want to give the intruder any more to see by than necessary, if he’s still there.”

Temple nodded, and Electra vanished into her kitchen. Temple had never explored the inner depths of Electra’s quarters, but she glimpsed an odd green crystal ball on a huge claw-footed brass tripod in the living room—atop a blond TV cabinet from the fifties. A shadow flitted away as Temple strained to see into the half-glimpsed rooms; probably a phantom of her unsteady nerves.

“This oughta do it.” Electra reappeared, waving an old- fashioned, silver-metal-barreled flashlight that reminded Temple of ancient Eveready battery ads. She just hoped a black cat of her acquaintance, her brief acquaintance, had the same nine lives the Eveready cat always did.

They rode down the three floors in silence; the elevator did not. Temple had left her door unlocked, so they entered immediately on a well-oiled hush of hinges. Electra switched on her beam; the click sounded like a cocking revolver in the silence. A sickly circle of light piddled on the parquet.

Electra and Temple followed the yellow ick road to the French door.

“Oh!” Temple’s gardenia plant lay roots up, its terracotta pot smashed. Otherwise, the patio was untouched and deserted.

“Better check out the other rooms,” Electra ordered. “I hold the flashlight out to the side, see, in case they’re armed. That way, they shoot at the light, but they don’t hit the torso or anything vital.”

“No, just me,” Temple hissed, walking as she did to the right and behind Electra.

Each room proved empty, even when Temple put on the overhead lights and they inspected corners and the shower stall.

“I’ll check these closets,” Temple said quickly as Electra was about to jerk the Mystifying Max poster into the hard glare of her flashlight. Temple poked the light into the interior nooks and crannies.

“Sure a lot of shoes in there,” Electra noted.

“But not much else. No Midnight Louie, either. Electra, he’s gone!”

“Now, now.” Electra Lark left it at that. She was not a believer in false sentiments.

Temple checked her watch. Only 10:27 p.m. She could hardly call the police about a door they would say she’d left unlatched, or an air-conditioner they’d assume she’d left off. Or a missing cat who’d never been domesticated in the first place.

Some of her belongings looked vaguely disarranged, but who was to say that wasn’t the vanished Midnight Louie doing some creative nesting? Who was to say that the wind hadn’t blown the door ajar, and that the vagabond cat had leaped out when opportunity knocked?

“What a shi—shazam of a day.” Temple locked the errant French door.

“Will you be able to sleep, dear? I mean alone.”

“I’ve managed it so far,” Temple said ungraciously, “although I turned down an offer tonight that begins to look better by the millennium.”

“You keep this flashlight tonight. I’ll have Mr. Marino check your thermostat and the door in the morning. We can reach you at the convention center these days, I suppose.”

“Not until almost eleven,” Temple said. “I’ll be running an errand first.”

Compared to this unsettling night, a rendezvous with a catnapper was beginning to sound like the answer to a maiden’s prayers.