Cat In An Aqua Storm

She almost expected to glance down and find Max looking back at her in the mirror. Funny how you conversed with a person’s image when he was using a mirror, as if he really were on the other side of it... already. Was that where Max had gone? Behind the illusion of his own image?

Temple eyed the distinctly female cosmetics, an odd combination of expensive Borghese eyeshadows and inexpensive Maybelline products. Although the room’s fixtures and furniture remained the same, it had been essentially transformed somehow. The magician had changed it into something else by making himself disappear. It held memories that smelled faintly stale.

Temple shook her head, at the room and at herself. She was about to back out, feeling like an intruder who had stumbled onto a stage set for a play she wasn’t in.

Then her mirror’s-eye view spotted something odd atop the wicker sofa on the opposite wall. How often had she perched on its chintz upholstered arm after a show, waiting for Max’s makeup to come off, ready to keep him company until he came down from the exuberant high of performing? Stop it! she ordered herself, and walked over to the sofa to inspect the anomaly.

A pink gym bag. That fit the overfeminine, slightly junky touches in the room. The mesh side insets, Temple thought, must help air out soggy exercise wear.

Something moved behind that pastel barrier.

She jumped back, her heart beating, the heavy tote bag swinging hard into her hip, once, twice.

“Ow.”

The contents of the bag echoed her complaint. Only its cry of protest sounded more like “Wow.”

How had she forgotten the unforgettably feminine feline darling? Certainly she hadn’t paid much attention to the cat carrier at the time. Temple crouched down until the mesh was on eye level and peered inward. Two gleaming round eyes gazed back. Long spidery silver hairs brushed the mesh.

“Aren’t you the natural beauty! Of course. Yvette. Savannah Ashleigh’s pampered baby cat.” She could see the same unreadable silvery script embroidered across the bag’s top. As Temple’s forefinger scratched the mesh, Yvette’s delicate pink nose outlined in flattering black tilted to sniff it.

“Well. I hope your mistress comes back soon. We don’t want you all alone down here witnessing any more murders—like mine!”

Temple stood, aware of the deserted dressing rooms surrounding her, of the recent, nearby violent death lingering with a kind of half-life. Even if Max’s strong personality had left no aura in this room, perhaps the dead dancer’s brutal passing had managed to haunt the entire area.

Temple hurried out of the dressing room, embarrassed by the thought of explaining her presence to a suddenly returned Savannah Ashleigh. She wouldn’t even want to explain it to herself.

Down the hall, the door to the murder scene stood ajar. Temple halted, even though she knew that doors are always ajar in deserted dressing rooms. The last thing weary, absconding performers want to deal with is closing doors behind them.

Still, she tiptoed closer, managing to keep her reverberating heels just off the floor. She eased inside without having to push the door further open. The cloak-shrouded end wall caught her eye instantly. Had the victim been posed there deliberately, she wondered, like dead meat on a hook? Cruel and crude, but then so was using the woman’s own prize G-string for a hangman’s noose.

Was there a message in the manner of death, the place of death? Temple thought so. Maybe if she stood very still and emptied her mind, an intuition would creep in.

A strangled whimper ruined her concentration.

Temple’s eyes jerked from the wall of gaudy cloaks to the opposing rows of mirrors and chairs that lined the dressing room. Empty. She turned. Only lockers stood behind her, pushed up against the wall with some of the doors sprung, the shiny gray enamel paint chipped off like cheap fingernail polish.

No one could hide in a locker. Not a murderer then. Not even a figment of her imagination now.

Yet, she had heard a noise, very near. She wasn’t hallucinating. Temple looked around again, methodically: along the ceiling line, down the row of chairs. Last, she examined the hanging costumes—from the fuchsia turkey-feather numbers jammed together at the far end to the equally imaginative exotica imported by the visiting strippers, and the truly tasteless high heels and boots lined up under them.

A muffled hiccough. The last gown on the left, a scarlet-sequined bodice with a ruffled Flamenco skirt, trembled.

Temple looked down again, below the froth of glamorous hems. This time she spied a jazzy satin pair of spike heels with a rhinestone-framed cat face on the toe. They were inhabited by real feet and legs.

She strode over and pushed back the scarlet costume. The hanger screeched against the rod like a scalded cat, making Temple jump along with her discovery.