Cat In An Aqua Storm

“Yeah. It's hard for the girls to use that room now. Dorothy was a sweet girl. But that Savannah Ashleigh bitch wouldn't keep the room after the killing—claimed it upset Yvette, her cat—so the regular working girls got it."

“That’s right." Temple followed Lindy into the relative normalcy of the hall outside the ballroom. “Savannah Ashleigh's cat was in the dressing room during the murder. If only cats could talk." She considered how much Midnight Louie had already witnessed of her life and times. “On the other hand, thank God they can't."

12

WOE vs. WHOOPE

No matterhow ritzy or glitzy the hotel, its understage dressing rooms are as welcoming as a warehouse basement. Temple knew that. What point was there to installing such luxuries as wall-to-wall carpeting, upholstered chairs and decorative countertops in the theatrical equivalents of Grand Central terminal? Too many itinerant bodies come and go, spilling lurid makeup, burning out the bare bulbs that surround the inevitably smeared mirrors and dropping sequins from slowly disintegrating costumes like gaudy tears shed at their passing.

Yet Temple found herself standing hushed in the cavernous dressing room beneath the Goliath's glittering superstructure to which Lindy had led her. She was spellbound as usual by the tawdry glamour of these cold, hard-surfaced places where people transform themselves and emerge to perform wonders in the way of song, dance, and in miming emotion or magic.

One of these human butterflies had not emerged from the cocoon beneath the stage to spread her performer's wings in the spotlights, Temple reminded herself.

“Where—?" she began.

Before she could finish her question, Lindy pointed to a row of gorgeously feathered capes hanging about six feet from the floor. The single crooked finger of one empty wrought-iron hook beckoned, as might the ghost of Dorothy Horvath.

Everything about the room reverberated with absence, rather than presence. The flimsy wooden seating common to dressing rooms—battered, round-seated ice-cream chairs with splayed legs—sat askew to parallel gray Formica countertops. A dressing room, even empty, always held its breath in expectation of a chatty, frantic throng of invaders.

Lindy's lighter scratched in the silence, conjuring flame, then the faint perfumes of fluid and sulfur—presto, a lit cigarette made a dramatic entrance into the dormant setting.

The mundane sound and scent of smoking banished the spell of recent death. Temple stared at the opposite wall and mentally counted cloaks. “What happened to the sixth cape that should have been on the empty hook?”

Lindy’s first drag on the cigarette ended with a smoky “I don't know." Her voice creaked like a scratched LP record. “Don't know what happened to Dorothy's prize G-string, either. The cops probably have ’em both."

Temple approached an abandoned chair, curled her fingers around the curved wooden seat back and gently shook it. Its feet screeched against the floor as it rocked to and fro.

“Tippy," she pronounced. “These chairs always are. Doesn't help the suicide theory, the victim having to balance on a tippy chair to reach that hook."

“Hey, strippers are used to high heels." Lindy leaned against the countertop, inhaling with the true nicotine addict's slowness. “Wouldn't a murderer have to climb a chair to hoist poor Dorothy up, too? A tippy chair would be twice as hard on him.”

“The police say it's a him?”

“Well... a mostly naked woman strangled with a G-string. Who else? Besides, strippers always have man trouble.”

“They're not the only ones,” Temple muttered as she strolled through the space, getting its feel, trying to impress the fact of a murder on her fond memories of a dozen dressing rooms exactly like this one, including Max's upscale private dressing room just down the hall.

A mostly eaten birthday cake frosted with turquoise and pink rosettes sat on a cardboard tray atop the counter. All that remained of the sweet, icing sentiments, also turquoise, were the looped terminal y’s of “Happy,” “Birthday,” and the birthday girl's name. Was it Missy? Cindy? Lindy? Or Dorothy?

The room was filled with discards. Powder dusted the worn countertop, snaring a lone bobby pin in its tinted toils, while an abandoned false eyelash lurked in a corner like a curled spider. The scents of a dozen cheap perfumes melded into olfactory goulash. A two-inch-long pencil with no lead lay on the floor. The same corner that harbored the eyelash also held a bit of paper flotsam.

Temple picked up the crumpled shape: beige and orange, with black printing on flimsy card stock. Some kind of ticket—? A clue?

“Food stamp,” Lindy's down-to-earth voice said flatly.

Temple dropped it as if she had been caught stealing. Or was she just guilty that she hadn't recognized it? No matter how dicey her cash flow got, she could afford food, even Free-to-Be-Feline.