Cat In An Aqua Storm

Molina’s world-class blue eyes—Temple could give credit where credit was due—lay stranded in maroon circles. Her hair was more lusterless than usual, and she was unconsciously twisting the loose class ring on her right hand. At eleven o’clock, both women were already frazzled.

“1 don’t know,” Temple answered, aware of a mirroring bitterness in her own voice. “WHOOPE apparently doesn’t need PR advice since the murders have made it world-famous. I guess I’m about as effective as you are, Lieutenant.”

“PR is window dressing. Murder is people’s lives.”

“I know. And I still think—”

“I don’t care what you think.”

“I know. But you do care what I know.”

“What do you know?”

The ballroom was bustling in preparation for afternoon and evening preliminaries. Seminaked men and women fussed with costumes, props, lights, music. Technicians lent state-of-the-art finesse to the process. Media people buzzed around, thrilled by the crude energy, the obvious glitz, the titillating lure of sex and death.

No one police lieutenant, no one PR woman could do a damn thing to stop it.

“I knew,” said Temple, “that Kitty Cardozo was abused, and was fighting it. I suspect that she was calling a local hot line with the same message she gave me: she was breaking free, she was going to live her own life.”

“Matt Devine?” Molina asked tersely. “She was calling him?

“Like clockwork. Until Tuesday night.”

“What happened Tuesday night?”

“I was attacked. Matt skipped work to stay at the Circle Ritz with me. Kitty was killed.”

“Devine stayed with you?”

“Yes. Strictly defensive, Lieutenant.”

Molina moved her nervous hand from her ring to her forehead, where she brushed back her thick hair. “I checked him out.”

“Matt?”

“No college record, no degrees. No driver’s license in this state. The hot line director stonewalls on his background. You seem to have found another mystery man.”

“With all this going on, you had time to play peek-a-boo in Matt’s life? My life? Again?”

“Maybe you have a pattern: mysterious men and murder. By the way, we haven’t found anything out on your attackers.”

“ Attackers-schmackers, so what! You probably think I hallucinated that, too. Listen. You didn’t like my nursery-rhyme pattern. Well, it works! I did my own checking out, with the public library. Both of the first victims were born on the right days.”

“And murdered on the wrong ones? Is there a right day for it, Barr?”

“How about today?”

Molina visibly stiffened. Temple was impressed with herself. Height didn’t matter here, or position. Only results. She had a feeling she was beginning to think like a hard-nosed homicide lieutenant.

“So.” Molina deliberately modulated her voice to noncommittal silk. “Tell me what the library said.”

Temple did.

Molina nodded. “It does fit. Perfectly. Do you realize what a... twisted mind it would take to follow your plan?”

“No more twisted than a random stalker.”

“It doesn’t figure. Whoever’s killing them is taking a tremendous risk. Some of these killers have massive egos. They enjoy the game of taunting the police. The murderer has got to be someone close to the competition. Now you say it’s someone who had access to their birth dates.”

Temple shrugged. “Look at a driver’s license in an unguarded purse. Call the library and find the right date.”

“And bypass victim B, C and D because they were born on the wrong day of the year?”

“Why not, if you’ve got a cornucopia of victims?” Molina was silent again, thinking. “There must be... three hundred entrants in this competition.”

“Three hundred and four,” Temple said with PR person precision.

“Almost as many as days in the year.”

Temple nodded.

“Your whole approach is crazy,” Molina said.

“Maybe we’ve got a crazy killer.”

“Hmm. What do you want?”

“The birth date of the latest victims. I don’t even know their last name.”

“Standish.”

“As in 'Miles’?”

“So the records say.”

“And the date?”

“June first, nineteen sixty-seven.”

“That young?” Temple was surprised.

“That young. You’re pretty young yourself.”

“Sixty-five. Hey! I guess I am.”

“Where are you off to? What are you going to do?”

“Call the library again,” Temple answered, sprinting away. The phone that Temple had requested the day before still sat on a chair by the wall. She had to call information to get the Clark County Library number. The librarian consulted a perpetual calendar and was quite certain. June 1, 1967, had been a Thursday.

“Thursday’s child has far to go,” Temple repeated speculatively. But what about Wednesday’s? Why had Wednesday’s child (“is full of woe”) been left out?

While she was sitting there puzzling it out, the corner of her eye caught a flurry of black leather coming in at seven o’clock low. Temple braced herself for Switch Bitch, but when the figure arrived, she got Motorcycle Moll. “Electra! You haven’t been home.”

‘‘Tell me about it. Listen, did you know that Glinda North—Dorothy Horvath—was lesbian?”

“No. Um, what has this to do with anything?”

“Well, she wasn’t great bait for a sex-crazed heterosexual serial killer.”