Cat In An Aqua Storm

Temple refolded the tear sheet and slapped it atop the papers piled on his lap. “Stay home. Stay out of print. Stay out of my way, or I’ll see that WHOOPE sues you and your fish wrappings to kingdom come.”

“I got you a job,” came the injured whine. “Most people would be grateful.”

“Want to do something to make me really grateful? Retire.”

Temple stomped away over the black spaghetti of cables still strewing the carpeting. Electra’s pancakes were beginning to back up in her stomach, and she really didn’t want to taste them again. It would be a perverted kind of poetic justice if she ended up with a heart attack and Crawford Buchanan replaced her.

“Whoa—! You’re a real fireball today.”

Temple stopped by the smoke signal hovering above one of the scattered ballroom chairs—Lindy’s. Ike Wetzel sat in the chair next to her, puffing on a cigar.

“I’ve just had a chat with my predecessor,” Temple said. “He’s written a smarmy story about the murders for his scandal sheet.”

“I know.” Lindy waved some of her own smoke away and patted a vacant chair seat. “Sit down. We’re not worried about that. No one takes ‘Buchanan’s Broadside’ seriously.”

Wetzel brooded for a moment, then broke into the conversation. “Frankly, much as I hate to say it, the murders are getting us some big-league press coverage.”

“I was going to write a blanket press release,” Temple said, “then set up a system to funnel interviews and make sure that marauding press people don’t disturb the contestants.”

Wetzel laughed. “Forget it. Listen, strippers get so much bad press that all this attention for some plain old murders is gravy. These girls love to stop whatever they’re doing for an interview. Pictures are even better. Don’t sweat it.”

He rose, his cigar ash perilously close to falling off, and headed for the stage.

Temple watched him, an overbuilt short-legged man, a walking inverted pyramid of touchy pride and prejudice. His every word and mannerism made plain that he didn’t expect to have his will crossed. He could hit a woman he considered lippy.

“How long were Kitty and Ike married?” she asked Lindy, looking down quickly to judge the woman’s reaction.

Lindy drew on her cigarette until she frowned from the effort. “You’ve been busy. Maybe seven, eight years. They broke up about three years ago.”

“They couldn’t still have been seeing each other?”

“Never say never.”

“Did he... hit her?”

Lindy shrugged and screwed her cigarette butt into a slick of watered-down scotch at the bottom of a hotel glass. “Who knows? Could have. Ike’s a funny guy. Changes. Like he was always against his girls competing in the contest. Fired them if they took the weekend off to do it—that’s not unusual, a lot of clubs don’t want us to waste time on things like dreams. Just fling that ass and sling that booze at the customers. So Ike was real hard-nosed about WHOOPE, the whole deal. Then, this year, he lightened up. Got himself put on the board. Said we were gonna do it right. Strange guy.”

“Strange business,” Temple added. “Don’t any women own clubs?”

Lindy’s dark eyes widened. “Say, you read my mind. I’d like to get something like that going. But clubs cost money. A night’s lights can run twenty-five hundred dollars. Rent, three grand a week and up. Then there’s liquor trouble, fight trouble. Clubs need bouncers. It’s a man’s game.”

“Do you know who Kitty was seeing recently?”

“Some guy.”

Lindy’s disinterested tone promised no new revelations. Temple had heard the dancers confiding every fact of their private lives:

“I’m in love with this neat guy.”

“My kid got ninety-three on his math test yesterday.”

“Hey, hon, I’m so worn out from last night I don’t even want to wiggle my butt.”

“I’d like to beat the shit out of my old man.”

Dressing-room girl talk revolved around guys and kids and bum pasts, all generic, like the customers. Facing such a transient, casual milieu, even Molina would have a hard time solving a murder times two.

Temple had watched the action near the stage while brooding on the frustrations of getting juicy gossip from a rolling stone.

“At least you all have access to the stage setup again,” she said. “The prelims are tomorrow, and showtime is only fifty-some hours away.”

“Yeah. Except now that we have the ballroom back, the cops have banned us from the dressing rooms.”

“What?”

“Just this morning. We got here around ten to find yellow tape stretched across the hall. Everybody’s been changing in the wings.”

“Crime scene tape? But why now—?”

“Yeah. Took ’em awhile to get around to putting it up. Cops must be like the lazy stripper—a little behind in their work.”

Temple glanced quickly to the ballroom wall. Buchanan’s chair was empty, the cane gone. She scanned the room, trying to see past all sorts of arresting getups. There—the would-be Mark Twain garb. Luckily, pale colors stood out in a crowd, especially one where the dominant color was black.