Cat In A Topaz Tango

“I panicked. Yes, I did. You were indeed my keeper. I needed you. And, I knew you wouldn’t have vanished like that of your own will, unless you had an underlying motive. I needed to know why you had disappeared.”

“You still don’t trust me, Mr. Randolph.”

“No, Dr. Schneider, I don’t. Until I have my memory back, I won’t trust anyone. And even then it’ll be dicey. Difficult.”

“And if you never do recover your memory?”

“In time, I might find people to trust. But I have to make sure I live that long.”

“I don’t envy your future.”

“I don’t envy your past.” He refilled their glasses. The wine glowed.

“What of our present?” she asked.

“That’s ours to determine.”

“If someone doesn’t kill you first.”

“Apparently I’m harder to kill than someone counted on.”

“I knew you were an extraordinary man five minutes after I entered your room for an interview.”

“I look good in a hospital gown?”

She smiled. “You looked like hell, but you still were—let me find the exact English words. You were wary. Proud.” She made a fist, searching for the right idiom. “You were prickled, like a land mine of the mind.”

“Prickly, I think you mean.”

“Hard to get close to, to see into. Mental spikes all around you. Lightning snapping.”

He laughed. “This from a head case with no memory and bum legs?”

“Yes.”

“Am I still so prickly?”

“Yes . . . and no. So—”

She leaned forward to push him into the chair back so quickly the cane fell to the floor. His muscles automatically tensed for an attack and it was one.

She knelt before him. Looking down, he saw the gaping camisole barely supporting her rounded breasts under taupe aureoles and rose tips. Just.

She looked up, easing off his Bally slip-on ankle boots. “This is my restaurant. No shoes—”

She rose, her breasts pressed against his thighs (oh, God) . . .

“No belts, unless you have any kinky after-dinner notions—”

. . . to loosen and pull away the narrow Bally snake of smooth leather.

“No tie—”

Her torso pressed his as she arched upward to undo the tack and the silken Ermenegildo Zegna knot and draw them away.

“. . . allowed.”

He caught her hands in one of his, put his other at her nape and pressed her face to his for a long, luxurious, five-star kiss. Or several. He liked the appetizers at her restaurant already.

His free hand slipped the camisole straps off her lovely, strong shoulders, one by one. She shrugged them farther away. Seducing and being seduced felt like the most civilized parlor game in Europe.

He felt the physical and mental pain of the past six weeks melting like marzipan after-dinner sweets into the sour landscape of his soul. It wasn’t just the sex, it was breaking the touching barrier. He’d needed comfort more concrete than words. This had been coming for some time, and would be worth it no matter the cost.

Mostly.

Maybe.

Oh, baby . . .

On the Topaz Trail

Since it is Miss Topaz’s hotel, as she puts it so firmly, I am forced to let her lead.

Ordinarily I resist a subservient position on principle, but I am not a fool.

Ordinarily an extraordinarily svelte and attractive lady of my species is not walking, tail high and swaying, directly ahead of me.

I am already checking out the surroundings for romantic rendezvous spots, but Topaz’s lively mind is on other matters.

“The moment I noticed the hotel security forces converging on the theater, I knew something fishy was up.”

“‘Converging’? ‘Something fishy was up’?” That is usually my line. Why has the lithe Miss Topaz started talking like an ungodly combo of Miss Lieutenant Molina and Sam Spade?

“The perp was gone,” she goes on, “and your mistress’s significant other required lifesaving treatment. However, I concluded his attacker must have been somewhat attacked in turn, or he would not have ceased to harass Mr. Matt, as you call him.”

“What do you call him?”

“Hot. Did you see that pasodoble he did? I trust we will still see his tango tonight.”

Oh, no. Females are so shallow. “The show must go on,” I say sourly.

She stops and turns. I find I have trailed her to the theater area, where yellow crime-scene tape warns off all comers.

Topaz walks under the streamers, tail high. I follow.

“No, Louie. ‘The Shoe Must Go On.’”

Yikes! Has she been talking to my Miss Temple lately? What is it with these females and fancy footwear?

I soon discover what. The area is deserted while the forensics people are back at the lab doing CSI: Las Vegas film montage tests and things to music. Who would ever imagine major network viewers would be seduced into watching science how-to films in the name of crime drama? Mr. Wizard would have been proud. Bill Nye, the PBS “science guy” would have been begging for cameo roles.

Miss Topaz trots through the empty audience seating and onto the wooden set floor, bold as old gold. She stops by the velvet curtains backing the stage above the set of four risers.

I can see where the curtain has been torn and dusted for prints. Blood runs down the velvet in an ugly dark snake of color to the floor, where it has dried to a carmine color.