Cat In An Aqua Storm

“Excited by it? Simple. You see, I could have had that strippers’ convention PR job, only I turned it down. Not Crawford Buchanan. He’s too greedy to reject any sure thing. So it could have been me and not Crawford Buchanan who’s up to his neck in a murderous mess. If I’d stumbled onto a body a second time, you can bet that Lieutenant Molina would have put me in thumbscrews.”

“That homicide detective! He sounds like a terror, or a throwback to the days of brass knuckles.”

Temple chewed crab salad and her impulses, then forbore telling Matt that her bête noir of the law was female. It made her look less in need of sympathy.

“Why did you turn the convention down?” he asked.

“This is one of the few times when I can grandly say, ‘principle.’ All that flesh on parade makes me uneasy, the notion of teasing a bunch of paying customers. Even regular working women are sometimes tempted into acting or looking like bimbos to get male attention.”

“Aren’t there men strippers now, too?”

“Oh, sure, but it’s the same thing. Besides, they’re all overblown plastic musclemen, about as attractive as steroid robots.”

“Then you don’t like them because you don’t find their type attractive?”

“And stripping seems demeaning. On the other hand, I guess they make a lot of money doing it, so who can blame them?”

“You can. You blame Crawford Buchanan for being greedy.”

“Don’t make me sound like a prude or a pauper. What upsets me is that I came closer than I want to think about to getting tangled in another murder. Which explains my unholy glee.”

“You had a hand in solving the last one. What’s wrong with that?”

“That’s not my job. My job is getting good publicity for my clients. I hate messes, and murder makes a mess you wouldn’t believe. But this time it’s in Crawford’s lap, not mine.”

“I’ll drink to that.” Matt lifted his glass. “What’s the story on this Crawford guy?”

“The bane of my life since I got to Vegas. Goes everywhere. Writes a sleazy woman-chasing column about the nightlife for the Las Vegas Scoop. Has no sense of shame or ethics. Would steal a client from the Pope.”

Matt choked on his wine at her heated description.

“Really, Matt! He’s the most slimy, sexist, smug, smarmy... PR person to pollute a press club.” Temple settled back for a sip of her own wine. “I shouldn’t let him get to me.”

“Is he getting to you, or the murder?”

“You keep asking these pointed questions.”

Matt smiled. “That’s my job.”

“You’re good at it. I always seem to need to explain my motives to you.”

“That’s not the idea. My questions are supposed to help you explain your motives to yourself.”

“You’re a model counselor,” she admitted more seriously before rising to dash into the kitchen for the crème de menthe chocolate mousse that would crown their plain supper. Temple was adept with desserts if nothing else edible.  “A lot of people wouldn’t understand why Buchanan infuriates me,” she said when she came back and sat down after placing the dessert dishes.

Matt nodded. “It’s the injustice of it all, of Buchanan’s golden survival while he breaks every rule. In a way, you envy him.”

“I do not!” Temple meditated over her parti-colored mousse, dipping tiny spoonfuls from the deep narrow dessert glass and then letting them melt on her tongue. “Maybe I do envy his chutzpah.”

“We all envy the insensitive people of the world. They suffer less.”

“True.” Temple had noticed Matt’s wry tone on the last comment. “You must talk to a lot of suffering people.”

“You mean in my job?”

“You’re saying the sufferers are all around us. They are us.” He ate his mousse as methodically as she, in silence. “The ones who call you, though,” she said finally, “must be doubly desperate.”

“They don’t call me. They call the hot line. They call a distant, nonjudgmental voice. Someone who can’t see them, find them, accuse them. A disembodied conscience or savior.”

“Doesn’t it ever get to you? Dealing with all that misery?”

He shrugged almost imperceptibly. “Sometimes you help.”

“You can never know how much, though. Some callers you’ve given up on may have saved themselves. Some you’re sure will make it, won’t.”

The wine bottle tilted in Matt’s hand as it bowed deeply to Temple’s glass. That’s when she realized that they had drunk a lot, that her cheeks were flushed even as she felt suddenly sober, unbuoyed by bubbles, thinking about life and death. He was slow to answer.

“No, you can never really know what happens to the voices on the line when they hang up. Some you hear from again after a long silence. Some just vanish.”

Temple swallowed hard. “Not knowing must be the worst thing on earth,” she said fiercely.

Matt’s warm brown eyes met hers, broke the polite barrier they always erected, penetrated hers like burning swords. “No. The worst thing is knowing.”

5

Sick to Death