Cat In An Ultramarine Scheme

When Temple returned to her Circle Ritz condo, it was quiet and empty, and she realized that would drive her nuts. She went to the spare bedroom to use the desktop computer and did a search on Revienne Schneider and Professor Hugo Gruetzmeyer. She no longer Googled. She used Bing.com because that encouraged her to shout aloud, “Bingo!” when she hit pay dirt and found something.

Pay dirt, she mused. That was a gold miners’ expression, and if anyone should take it seriously, it was the old guys who made up the Glory Hole Gang.

Hmph. Maybe she wasn’t solo on this investigation. They had a lot at stake in settling matters and getting their restaurant underway at Gangsters. Their brainstorming session today had put a new light on some very dark issues in their lives and given her a lot more to think about regarding current deaths and disappointments.

Why hadn’t she thought of them sooner, instead of moping around feeling that forties song staple, lonely and blue?

Cheered, Temple dove into the many sites mentioning Revienne Schneider. She found nothing about her family, but plenty on that Swiss private school. Then the Sorbonne in Paris, then a gap, then graduation from Sigmund Freud University of Vienna and Paris, and an impressive portfolio building to a crescendo of 165,000 Web mentions.

Apparently, Revienne Schneider had been a girl wonder right out of PhD school, working with damaged young women all over the Continent and Ireland.

Mention of that island nation always chilled Temple’s blood. It had spawned Kathleen O’Connor, she who’d ruined the lives of Max and his terrorism-slain cousin, Sean, and who’d seduced Max into a future of regret and undercover counterterrorism.

Now Temple was chilled to the bone to read of the awful Magdalen institutions, where young women were given a life sentence of drudgery and incarceration. Verbal, physical, and sexual abuse thrived among such an isolated and helpless population, as it can in private families as well. In comparison, having four slightly bullying, obnoxiously superior older brothers didn’t seem like much of a problem at all.

The former reporter in Temple was working up a righteous rage, but the Magdalen atrocities had long been revealed, though the hidden sins of the Roman Catholic Church in that regard persisted the way Wall Street CEOs’ unbelievable millions in “bonuses” persisted after the entire country’s economy crashed in 2008.

You had to admire Revienne for wading into that cesspool of damage with her fresh shrink credentials and, well, media-ready personal attributes. This woman definitely looked “Illegally Blonde.”

Jeesh, thought Temple, staring at another image of Revienne, designer-suited up and sleek, what is it with these European femme fatales? Thirty-seven, single, dedicated to her work. It didn’t seem … natural for a woman this attractive to have no marriage history or romantic links, but she was a Frenchwoman. She’d have no trouble connecting with men wherever she went.

Temple wondered why this perfect, and even selfless, career woman gave her the creeps. A big black bar flashed across the screen and slapped Revienne Schneider right in the elegantly aloof blonde kisser. It was a furry tail.

“Louie! You scared me. When’d you get home? And from where? And why are you playing computer-screen smackdown with the beautiful blonde stranger in town?”

He hunkered low on the desktop, covering Temple’s notepapers and pen and a quarter of the computer keyboard. He began grooming his slap-happy paw and purring loud enough to imitate a queen bee hive.

“Apparently,” Temple said, “you don’t like gorgeous blonde interlopers on our crime scene, either.”

Louie just yawned to show his carnivore-red mouth and flash his white baby-shark’s teeth.

Temple was still mooning at this image of tall blonde perfection when her old-fashioned doorbell rang. Avon calling? Maybe.

Right now she was about convinced that finding the right facial foundation might make her look taller. She padded barefoot to the entry hall, and voilà …

“You!” Temple was sorry she’d answered her doorbell, though it was too nice of a one to ignore. Now she wished she’d just stood behind the closed door, enjoying a long, sonorous melody of bells until her visitor had given up and gone away.

Unfortunately, her visitor was not the type to give up and go away. Ever.

“I thought my life had been too blessed to be true lately,” Temple grumbled as she stepped aside for Amazonian homicide officer C. R. Molina, in the extenuated flesh. And wearing flats! “And here I thought we were drinking buddies,” Lieutenant C. R. Molina said, crossing onto Temple’s black-and-white-tiled entry-hall floor with her giant Big and Tall Women low-heeled loafers.

Flatfoot was right!

Even without high heels, the homicide officer still towered over her. Well, why not? Temple not only went mostly barefoot at home, she knew she looked particularly shrimpy at the moment, wearing her longest T-shirt belted as a short knit dress.