Cat In An Aqua Storm

When Temple caught up with her outside, Electra was by the retaining wall smacking her lips and enjoying the scenery. “I forgot your unit had a pool view. Matt has added a lot to the Circle Ritz’s ambience since he came.”

“Really?” Temple sat on the cushioned lounge chair.

Electra plunked down on the matching ottoman. “Really. How are things going between you two?”

“What things? You make us sound like an item.”

“Well, you did go out with him a time or two after the ABA hullabaloo.”

“He was just being nice.”

“Hmm. He’s good at that.”

“He is. He’s the most genuinely nice man I’ve ever met.”

“Why do you sound so disappointed then?”

“I don’t know.” Temple sipped her poisonously sweet low-calorie drink. “Nice is great if it’s an opening curtain. If it’s the whole show—”

“No spice.” Electra nodded sagely. “Like my second husband. Perfectly nice, kind to widows and wackos. Boring.

“Matt’s not boring, just reserved.”

“You’re just spoiled by the ex-Max.”

“What’s spoiling about someone who can walk out on you without a word?”

“It’s not boring.”

Temple sat back, remembered Max. “No.”

Electra leaned forward to pat her knee, her armful of silver bracelets jingling like the spurs of song and story. “Don’t fret, dear. Men are always more interesting at a distance, or when they’ve just come or just gone. It’s a trait of the breed. Take my ex-husbands, but then I really couldn’t wish them on anyone.”

Temple laughed. “Thanks for the paper, Electra. And the pep talk. I think.”

The landlady winked, rose with her beer and let herself out.

Temple remained in the lounge chair, listening to the faint, rhythmic plash of water as Matt swam laps below. She sighed and unfolded the newspaper.

“No kidding!” She seldom spoke to herself, but had been doing it more since Louie’s arrival disguised it as pet talk.

Her eyes whipped back and forth along the short lines of front-page type like a Singer sewing machine set on zigzag. Words leaped out: fraud... dead... Goliath... stripper... suspected murder.

Temple leaped up in unholy shock. “Good grief, a thief! Murder at the strippers’ convention. And it’s in Awful Crawford’s own damn lap! I can’t believe it.” Below her, the water stilled. Matt was standing in the shallow end, a shading hand to his eyes, looking up at her balcony.

“I’m okay,” she shouted down. “I just learned that my worst enemy, who was boasting about snagging the strippers’ convention away from me, has landed in the middle of a juicy murder. Not me this time, him!”

“Are you jubilant,” Matt shouted back, glistening golden in the sun, “or jealous?”

Temple sobered. A woman was dead and Crawford Buchanan wasn’t equipped to do anything about it but wring his pale white hands. She sat down and considered Matt’s question again, seriously. Then she rose, leaned over the patio wall and invited him over for supper.

“Supper,” she repeated when she opened the door to Matt’s prompt ring at five o’clock. “Not dinner. I don’t do dinner.”

“What’s the difference?” He presented her with a chilled matte black bottle of Freixenet. He was wearing a champagne linen short-sleeved shirt that made his tan and his brown eyes sing like the Song of Solomon.

“This says dinner.” Temple hefted the wine bottle before depositing it on the table. “But it can stay for supper anyway. Supper is a little deli this, a little leftover that. For supper you can over-garlic the bread and bum the beans. For dinner you have to be perfect. For supper you can have your wine in a supermarket glass. For dinner”—she went up on tiptoe in her high-heeled Anne Klein emerald leather sandals, opened the shallow cabinet high over the stove hood and batted at the long-stemmed glasses just out of reach.

Matt came over and took down two of the hand-blown cobalt goblets.

Temple settled back to earth with a relieved sigh. “For dinner you drink out of craftware.”

“Very nice.” Matt set the princely glasses at the colorful Fiesta ware places already set in the dining room corner. “I’m glad I brought dinner.”

“And heeeere’s supper.” Temple swooped the plates of deli breads, homemade crab salad, cold baked beans and artistically arranged fresh veggies from the refrigerator.

They settled down to the food without a lot of small talk or fanfare, which she liked, although she belatedly realized that the large, handmade wineglasses would hold a lot of sparkling bubbles.

“I hope you don’t think I’m too much of a ghoul after my outburst this morning,” she said as soon as the main dishes had made the rounds.

“You do seem to have a certain detachment about murder.”

“Well, the first time, it created a crisis on my job. It’s hard to empathize with a fly in the ointment, especially when he’s as widely loathed as the late Chester Royal turned out to be.”

“What’s the story on this murder at the Goliath? Why are you so...”