Cat In An Aqua Storm

26

. . . All Must Come to Dust

The aqua Storm sprinted through the colossus’s braced legs like a cartoon car—bright and fast. As it pulled under the hotel’s metallic entrance canopy, a parking valet came scampering in his Ramses kilt to open the driver’s door. Temple was happy to exchange a dollar bill for the precaution of avoiding the parking ramp.

She faced her reflection in the Goliath’s mirrored revolving doors. She felt less stiff and sore today, and even looked a little more... perky. Too perky. Her impromptu outfit made her resemble a patriotic tap dancer, she thought, whisking into the midst of her reflected spinning selves, then around and out into the Goliath lobby.

Today she was going to take this town by the tail and whip the convention PR into apple-pie order. The ballroom would be open again, the troops gathered, and she had lots of juicy new information to confirm and expand upon. Best of all, Electra would still be undercover.

The landlady had told Temple she had resolved to continue her charade “as long as it takes” to clear the competition of the pall of bad press. Temple was relieved to have a reliable inside source, but had wondered aloud just how far Electra was prepared to take her stripper persona.

“To the limit the law allows,” Electra had declared doughtily. She even refused Temple’s offer of a ride to the Goliath.

“I’ve got to take the Vampire in for a tech rehearsal. We got the music keyed in yesterday.”

“What music?”

“The music for my routine,” Electra said indignantly. “ ‘Born To Be Wild.’ You don’t think you can just show up and claim to be a stripper without an act?”

“I didn’t think about it at all.”

“Hmph. Good thing I’m the undercover operator.”

“I think the word is ‘operative.’ ”

“Whatever. Don’t worry about me. I’ll be in later. Strippers sleep late. You don’t want me to blow my cover, do you? You’ll hear me coming.”

What have I wrought? Temple asked herself, pausing before the ballroom doors as she remembered Electra’s parting words.

Today no security men were plastered against the doors, legs braced and faces sterna, like miniature colossi. Better. Normalcy was returning. Temple sailed inside unchallenged, full of the spirit of Scarlett O’Hara. Today was not only another day, it was an unfolding origami paper sculpture, rife with surprise and elegance.

“Hi there, T.B. Coming in a little late, aren’t we?” Temple hit the breaks on her Jourdans at the sound of that ever-so-deep baritone, and turned in its direction.

Yes, Crawford Buchanan occupied a ballroom chair against the wall. He was riffling through some papers as pale as his silk-blend oyster trousers and yuck-yellow shirt. A straw fedora hid most of his silver hair and a brass-headed cane leaned against the wall beside him. He looked like a decadent English invalid.

“What are you doing out of the hospital?” she demanded, not meaning to sound as annoyed as she did.

He tremulously patted the left side of his chest. “The boy is better. They released me, with odious instructions on diet and exercise. I decided to begin my new physical-fitness regimen by ambling over here and seeing how you were doing.”

“Just dandy until now.”

Buchanan fished a folded newspaper tear sheet from among his papers. “Actually, ‘dandy’ doesn’t appear to do justice to such happenings as a double murder.” He flashed the Las Vegas Scoop’s front page with ten double-column bylined inches on “Jack the Stripper-ripper Strikes Again at Goliath.”

“I’m doing this PR job because you keeled over, and you’re knifing me in the back with sleazy stories on the tragedies?”

“Now that I’m no longer handing PR, the stress is gone,” Buchanan said. “No conflict of interest, I think you’d say. I did the first story from the hospital,” he added modestly. “You mind checking it to see if all the facts are right?”

She snatched it from his hand and read the first lurid subhead. “ ‘A Comely Come-on from an Ecdysiast’! Crawford, even you admitted that the poor Horvath woman wouldn’t have given you the time of day in a Swatch factory.”

“I wanted to convey a feeling for the victim when she was alive and beautiful. Haven’t you heard of the New Journalism?”

“ ‘She eeled past me in a scent of roses and regret’—oh, God! You don’t even get to the first murder until the fourth paragraph. And the last subhead, ‘Catwoman Caught by Batman’? Crawford, this is salacious, self-aggrandizing and totally fictional.”

“Thank you,” he said complacently, reaching to take his treasure back. “Don’t wrinkle it.”

Temple refolded the tear sheet and slapped it atop the papers piled on his lap. “Stay home. Stay out of print. Stay out of my way, or I’ll see that WHOOPE sues you and your fish wrappings to kingdom come.”

“I got you a job,” came the injured whine. “Most people would be grateful.”

“Want to do something to make me really grateful? Retire.”

Temple stomped away over the black spaghetti of cables still strewing the carpeting. Electra’s pancakes were beginning to back up in her stomach, and she really didn’t want to taste them again. It would be a perverted kind of poetic justice if she ended up with a heart attack and Crawford Buchanan replaced her.

“Whoa—! You’re a real fireball today.”

Temple stopped by the smoke signal hovering above one of the scattered ballroom chairs—Lindy’s. Ike Wetzel sat in the chair next to her, puffing on a cigar.

“I’ve just had a chat with my predecessor,” Temple said. “He’s written a smarmy story about the murders for his scandal sheet.”

“I know.” Lindy waved some of her own smoke away and patted a vacant chair seat. “Sit down. We’re not worried about that. No one takes ‘Buchanan’s Broadside’ seriously.”

Wetzel brooded for a moment, then broke into the conversation. “Frankly, much as I hate to say it, the murders are getting us some big-league press coverage.”

“I was going to write a blanket press release,” Temple said, “then set up a system to funnel interviews and make sure that marauding press people don’t disturb the contestants.”

Wetzel laughed. “Forget it. Listen, strippers get so much bad press that all this attention for some plain old murders is gravy. These girls love to stop whatever they’re doing for an interview. Pictures are even better. Don’t sweat it.”

He rose, his cigar ash perilously close to falling off, and headed for the stage.

Temple watched him, an overbuilt short-legged man, a walking inverted pyramid of touchy pride and prejudice. His every word and mannerism made plain that he didn’t expect to have his will crossed. He could hit a woman he considered lippy.

“How long were Kitty and Ike married?” she asked Lindy, looking down quickly to judge the woman’s reaction.

Lindy drew on her cigarette until she frowned from the effort. “You’ve been busy. Maybe seven, eight years. They broke up about three years ago.”

“They couldn’t still have been seeing each other?”

“Never say never.”

“Did he... hit her?”

Lindy shrugged and screwed her cigarette butt into a slick of watered-down scotch at the bottom of a hotel glass. “Who knows? Could have. Ike’s a funny guy. Changes. Like he was always against his girls competing in the contest. Fired them if they took the weekend off to do it—that’s not unusual, a lot of clubs don’t want us to waste time on things like dreams. Just fling that ass and sling that booze at the customers. So Ike was real hard-nosed about WHOOPE, the whole deal. Then, this year, he lightened up. Got himself put on the board. Said we were gonna do it right. Strange guy.”

“Strange business,” Temple added. “Don’t any women own clubs?”

Lindy’s dark eyes widened. “Say, you read my mind. I’d like to get something like that going. But clubs cost money. A night’s lights can run twenty-five hundred dollars. Rent, three grand a week and up. Then there’s liquor trouble, fight trouble. Clubs need bouncers. It’s a man’s game.”

“Do you know who Kitty was seeing recently?”

“Some guy.”

Lindy’s disinterested tone promised no new revelations. Temple had heard the dancers confiding every fact of their private lives:

“I’m in love with this neat guy.”

“My kid got ninety-three on his math test yesterday.”

“Hey, hon, I’m so worn out from last night I don’t even want to wiggle my butt.”

“I’d like to beat the shit out of my old man.”

Dressing-room girl talk revolved around guys and kids and bum pasts, all generic, like the customers. Facing such a transient, casual milieu, even Molina would have a hard time solving a murder times two.

Temple had watched the action near the stage while brooding on the frustrations of getting juicy gossip from a rolling stone.

“At least you all have access to the stage setup again,” she said. “The prelims are tomorrow, and showtime is only fifty-some hours away.”

“Yeah. Except now that we have the ballroom back, the cops have banned us from the dressing rooms.”

“What?”

“Just this morning. We got here around ten to find yellow tape stretched across the hall. Everybody’s been changing in the wings.”

“Crime scene tape? But why now—?”

“Yeah. Took ’em awhile to get around to putting it up. Cops must be like the lazy stripper—a little behind in their work.”

Temple glanced quickly to the ballroom wall. Buchanan’s chair was empty, the cane gone. She scanned the room, trying to see past all sorts of arresting getups. There—the would-be Mark Twain garb. Luckily, pale colors stood out in a crowd, especially one where the dominant color was black.

Buchanan was wandering around the floor ogling the female strippers. No doubt his press credentials aided and abetted. She assessed the acts available, and hoped they would suffice to keep the miserable weasel occupied while she headed downstairs to find out why the police would waste their time putting up crime tape two days too late.

Lindy was right. The back stairs were no longer the discreet, deserted route they had been. A yellow tape blocked the bottom, and beyond it stood a uniformed officer.

Temple descended anyway, wishing that her high heels were not so percussive.

“You can’t enter, ma’am,” the officer told her when she paused on the bottom step.

She liked the additional elevation. “Can I at least ask what’s going on?”

“You can ask,” he said.

“Isn’t it odd to cordon off a crime scene after the lab people have been and gone?”

“They haven’t,” he answered.

Temple opened her mouth to ask another unwelcome question when the rising wail of a distraught woman interrupted her. Obviously the woman was deeply anguished.

Temple stared at the officer, puzzled. “Is Lieutenant Molina—?”

Molina herself suddenly stepped into the picture, like a magician, all at once. Temple jumped, even though she knew Molina had merely been out of sight down the hall, and had stepped forward when she heard Temple’s voice.

“You know a Savannah Ashleigh?” Molina asked.

Temple nodded, recognizing the exasperated note in her voice despite the official monotone.

“She’s hysterical. Do you think you could get a sensible word out of her?”

Temple shrugged slowly.

“Let her through,” Molina told the officer.

He pulled the tape free of one wall.

“Well, come on,” Molina said.

Temple hesitated a moment longer. With her high heels and six inches of riser, she was exactly Lieutenant C. R. Molina’s height. She hated to abandon such a rare advantage. Muffled wails were too great a temptation to resist, however, especially when they were movie-star muffled wails.

“What happened?” she asked Molina as she stepped down.

“Your theory got blown to Vancouver.”

“By another murder?”

“Two,” Molina said succinctly, starting down the hall.

Two, Temple thought. How did a killer mimic a one-a-day nursery rhyme with a double murder? He didn’t.

Temple hated the fact that she always had to trot to keep up with Molina. Down here on the concrete floor, her two little tootsies sounded like a convention of high-stepping hackney horses.

Molina led Temple to a dressing room across the hall from the ones she had visited. Temple noticed that the door to the big one was open, but the private one was shut.

This door was ajar. In the mirror Temple glimpsed something old—the Ashleigh mane of platinum blond hair... something new—the glitter of an evening gown draping the actress... something borrowed—a white square of handkerchief linen that could only belong to someone sensible. And something pink.

The woman was not so much sobbing as gasping for breath “Gone,” she wailed. “Just gone.” And then she gave a long, whining moan.

“Did she know the victims?” Temple asked in surprise.

“You tell me. They were found in her dressing room.”

“Who were they?”

“We’re still checking. Sister act.”

“Not... twins?”

Molina nodded. “Know them?”

“Met them. June and Gypsy... gone? How?”

“We don’t know yet.”

Temple was going to ask another question, but Molina forestalled her. “Look, they were found dead, naked except for a thin coat of gold paint. Identification’s been a little slow. Tracing the path of that gold paint down here has been a lot slower.”

“That’s why the area’s barred.”

“Right.”

“And Savannah Ashleigh found the body? Bodies.”

“Dialed nine-one-one. A perfect witness. Too shaken to leave the area. The first squad on the scene found her in the dressing room, like this.”

“Gone,” Savannah wailed again, in utter bereavement.

“I had no idea that they were that close,” Temple whispered.

“Whatever. See if you can settle her down. We can’t interrogate a siren.”

Temple edged into the room, seeing her cheerful outfit in the mirror. She felt like a clown, but there was no way to approach Savannah gently, not with these heels on this floor.

She slipped the shoes off and left them by the door. She could see in the mirror that, behind her, Molina lifted one eyebrow in mute surprise, like Mr. Spock. Come to think of it, they had a lot in common.

Temple approached Savannah. “Miss Ashleigh? Miss Ashleigh?”

At the sound of her own name, the panting picked up tempo. Savannah’s eyes were wide open and dazed, as was her mouth. Her long-nailed hands clutched the pink purse on her lap, twisting its straps, tightening on its sides as if it were dough she was kneading.

“Gone,” she repeated.

If Savannah Ashleigh had been able to put the variety of tone and inflection into her film lines that she put into that one word here, she would have had a remarkable career.

“Yes,” Temple said, “sometimes people are gone. But we are here.”

Savannah Ashleigh stared at her blankly.

“I’m Temple Barr, the new PR person. We talked Tuesday, remember? A lot of the national media is coming in for the show, did I tell you?”

Savannah’s head began shaking in petulant denial. “Media? What do I care? Gone! Gone, gone, gone!”

“I know it’s upsetting. I found someone dead once myself.”

“Dead? Dead... dead?” Her wide eyes went wild as her voice hit the high notes of hysteria. “She’s dead?”

“Both are dead.”

“Both. Both?”

Temple could see why Molina had let her talk to Savannah. She tried to picture the lieutenant subjected to one-word answers, repeated noisily and ad nauseam.

“That’s what the police say,” Temple said.

Savannah’s head bowed over her lap, over the pink bag in her lap. Her glamorous bleached platinum hair looked like an old woman’s disordered mop. And then Temple understood. She reached for the bag, but Savannah wailed and clutched it closer.

“Dead. And gone.”

Temple was at least able to pull off the woman’s hands and brush away enough hair to glimpse the “Yvette” sewn atop the bag—not a purse, but a cat carrier. From the crushing way the actress clutched it, the contents were obviously absent.

“What happened?” Temple asked. “You came in, went down to the dressing room, left Yvette and went upstairs again. When?”

The word “Yvette” worked wonders. Savannah looked up, her face as radiant with shared knowledge as young Helen Keller’s at the breakthrough moment in The Miracle Worker. No one had been speaking Savannah’s language before. She had been shocked to discover the bodies, but what had devastated her was simultaneously discovering the absence of her cat.

“Yvette,” she repeated in heartbreaking tones. “Who? Why?”

“Am I right? The dressing room was fine when you came in, changed and left Yvette?”

Savannah nodded through tears that would not fall, her face twisted into a mask of tragedy.

“What time was that?”

“Nine,” she wailed.”

“And when you came back?”

Savannah shook her head. Time was not a priority with her. “Later.”

“And the bodies were there, dead.”

Savannah nodded ponderously.

“You called nine-one-one?”

Another lethargic nod.

“And then you remembered Yvette and went back? That was very brave. But Yvette was gone.”

“Ye-es. Gone. You say dead—”

“Not Yvette. Not... yet. How could she have gotten away?”

Savannah’s Hollywood-white teeth bit her bottom lip until it matched their pallor. “I left her in her carrier and shut the door. I thought she was safe.” The sentence ended on another long wail. “Safe... safe,” Savannah repeated like a mantra, rocking. “What will... the killer do with Yvette? Do to Yvette? A killer’s got her!”

“Maybe Yvette ran out when the women or their murderer entered. Yes! She could be hiding among all the costumes down here. You know how cats are: won’t come out even though you beg and plead. Give it time. I’m sure she’s all right. Who would hurt a cat?”

“Think so?” Savannah was sniffling slightly now, a good sign that the hysterics were ebbing. She pressed the police-issue handkerchief to her delicate nose, then recoiled at the stiff linen and tossed it onto the dressing table.

“It’s the likeliest scenario,” Temple said. “Cats are too clever to get caught by anybody, even a murderer.”

“Yvette was so sweet, so trusting—”

“She’s still a cat, and you don’t often catch a cat napping when it comes to crime.”

Savannah nodded with childlike trust. Temple peeled her rigid hands away from the crumpled carrier.

“Yvette will need this when she comes home. Why don’t you leave it open down here? Give her a chance to come back and curl up when it’s quiet again. It’s only a matter of time.”

“Promise?” Savannah beseeched, her big hazel eyes floating in a pond of tears. “Promise she’ll come back?”

Oh, great, Temple thought even as she nodded reassuringly. Now she had to produce another missing cat at an event she was running, as well as face up to the fact that the puzzling and terrible death of two more women had proved her fiendishly clever murder theory was nothing more than child’s play.