Cat In An Aqua Storm

“I’m Temple Barr, the new PR person. We talked Tuesday, remember? A lot of the national media is coming in for the show, did I tell you?”

Savannah’s head began shaking in petulant denial. “Media? What do I care? Gone! Gone, gone, gone!”

“I know it’s upsetting. I found someone dead once myself.”

“Dead? Dead... dead?” Her wide eyes went wild as her voice hit the high notes of hysteria. “She’s dead?”

“Both are dead.”

“Both. Both?”

Temple could see why Molina had let her talk to Savannah. She tried to picture the lieutenant subjected to one-word answers, repeated noisily and ad nauseam.

“That’s what the police say,” Temple said.

Savannah’s head bowed over her lap, over the pink bag in her lap. Her glamorous bleached platinum hair looked like an old woman’s disordered mop. And then Temple understood. She reached for the bag, but Savannah wailed and clutched it closer.

“Dead. And gone.”

Temple was at least able to pull off the woman’s hands and brush away enough hair to glimpse the “Yvette” sewn atop the bag—not a purse, but a cat carrier. From the crushing way the actress clutched it, the contents were obviously absent.

“What happened?” Temple asked. “You came in, went down to the dressing room, left Yvette and went upstairs again. When?”

The word “Yvette” worked wonders. Savannah looked up, her face as radiant with shared knowledge as young Helen Keller’s at the breakthrough moment in The Miracle Worker. No one had been speaking Savannah’s language before. She had been shocked to discover the bodies, but what had devastated her was simultaneously discovering the absence of her cat.

“Yvette,” she repeated in heartbreaking tones. “Who? Why?”

“Am I right? The dressing room was fine when you came in, changed and left Yvette?”

Savannah nodded through tears that would not fall, her face twisted into a mask of tragedy.

“What time was that?”

“Nine,” she wailed.”

“And when you came back?”

Savannah shook her head. Time was not a priority with her. “Later.”

“And the bodies were there, dead.”

Savannah nodded ponderously.

“You called nine-one-one?”

Another lethargic nod.

“And then you remembered Yvette and went back? That was very brave. But Yvette was gone.”

“Ye-es. Gone. You say dead—”

“Not Yvette. Not... yet. How could she have gotten away?”

Savannah’s Hollywood-white teeth bit her bottom lip until it matched their pallor. “I left her in her carrier and shut the door. I thought she was safe.” The sentence ended on another long wail. “Safe... safe,” Savannah repeated like a mantra, rocking. “What will... the killer do with Yvette? Do to Yvette? A killer’s got her!”

“Maybe Yvette ran out when the women or their murderer entered. Yes! She could be hiding among all the costumes down here. You know how cats are: won’t come out even though you beg and plead. Give it time. I’m sure she’s all right. Who would hurt a cat?”

“Think so?” Savannah was sniffling slightly now, a good sign that the hysterics were ebbing. She pressed the police-issue handkerchief to her delicate nose, then recoiled at the stiff linen and tossed it onto the dressing table.

“It’s the likeliest scenario,” Temple said. “Cats are too clever to get caught by anybody, even a murderer.”

“Yvette was so sweet, so trusting—”

“She’s still a cat, and you don’t often catch a cat napping when it comes to crime.”

Savannah nodded with childlike trust. Temple peeled her rigid hands away from the crumpled carrier.

“Yvette will need this when she comes home. Why don’t you leave it open down here? Give her a chance to come back and curl up when it’s quiet again. It’s only a matter of time.”

“Promise?” Savannah beseeched, her big hazel eyes floating in a pond of tears. “Promise she’ll come back?”

Oh, great, Temple thought even as she nodded reassuringly. Now she had to produce another missing cat at an event she was running, as well as face up to the fact that the puzzling and terrible death of two more women had proved her fiendishly clever murder theory was nothing more than child’s play.

27

Louie in a Jam

I am no Einstein (and would never allow my hair to go so obviously untended) but even a Roads Scholar of the self-made variety can see that the dressing rooms and ballroom of the Goliath Hotel are no fit environment for the likes of the Divine Yvette.