He laughed. “You earned an advanced degree. You get paid plenty for your expertise and time. You know your way around the male ego, and inside a subconscious, not to mention a conscience. You don’t need anyone, least of all me, ogling your knees. You like being an attractive woman, period. The reasons for that would be something I might like to explore, had I the time. Perhaps it was the low expectations of those civil servant parents.”
“And your parents?”
“The American equivalent of civil servants.”
He knew that was true, but not why it came out and sounded so right. And why he felt a sharp pang of failure and shame at mentioning his parents. And how he could have disguised that emotional weakness fast enough for her, which he hadn’t.
“You are, you know,” she said softly.
“Are what?” His pulse was pounding. What was he? What had he done to feel this wave of self-disgust and guilt? He was glad his face was scabbed, it might hide the inner turmoil better.
“Charismatic,” she said. “Perhaps I should excuse myself from your . . . service,” she added, avoiding the word case. “I am here to help, not irritate. Not to tease, and I have been, a little.”
“What would be ‘a lot’ for you?”
Her laughter was free, loose, and apparently genuine. “I can only think of teasing answers to that.” He found her knowing hazel eyes irresistible, and scary.
“How about,” she went on, “I ask you these long-established psychologically analytical questions, and you can have some fun at my expense? You will enjoy exercising your brain and your suspicions.”
“What is this?”
“Free association.”
“No associations are free,” he said, dead serious.
“Ah. I agree. The purpose of this exercise is to startle your mind into remembering. Perhaps you don’t wish that process to be shared. I could leave you the list, and you could . . . play with it mentally.”
And take those lovely legs away? Not to mention the lovely acrobatics she was putting his mind through?
“I’m cool with it.”
“ ‘Cool.’ Americans are always ‘cool’ with everything. All right. I start now. Freedom.”
“No such thing. A common illusion.”
“Responsibility.”
“A snare and a delusion, and a major necessity for a human conscience.”
“Everest.”
“High and mighty.”
“Women.”
“Warm.”
“Horses.”
“Big, beautiful, and stupid.”
“Money.”
“Useful.”
“Father.”
“Priest.”
Her eyebrows raised. So did his. “Where did that come from?”
“Mountains.”
“Molehills.”
“Love.”
“Loss.” Another telling answer. He saw her tuck that away.
“Trust.”
“Virtue.”
“Mirror.”
“Deception.”
“Woman.”
“Dangerous.” Her eyes were gleaming with psychiatrist’s fool’s gold: glints of supposed insight.
“Man.”
“Original sin.”
She looked up. “Not woman? It was Eve who ate the apple.”
“A secure man isn’t led into anything against his conscience by anyone. Adam was the weaker one.”
“War.”
“Senseless. But we all know that. Which makes it even more senseless.”
“Champagne.”
“Could use some about now.”
She laughed and uncrossed her knees, putting her clipboard on the foot of the bed.
“So could I, Mr. Randolph. You have given me some very contradictory answers.”
“You can’t smuggle any champagne in wearing that skirt.”
“I will come next time in an inexpensive peasant dirndl skirt to my ankles, with champagne. Would that do?”
He shook his head. “One would ruin the other.”
“You don’t compromise well.”
“Do you?”
She eyed him hard. “No.”
Then she stood. “I’ll leave to contemplate your answers. I think you should do so as well. They are most interesting. But, then, I expected no less, and I know you wish to anticipate and meet my expectations in every way.”
She was saying she knew he wouldn’t tell her anything substantive? That he suspected her validity?
Or was she just flirting again? Damn, that was fun. He must have been celibate for a while before his accident. A flash of guilt again. Yes, he had been. And the guilt? That hadn’t been fair to someone. A woman. Woman. Warm. Was that the woman who evoked that word?
Woman. Dangerous. He’d been thinking of Revienne, flirting back a bit, but he felt another twinge of warning. He’d known a very dangerous woman. Maybe more than one, if he was the undercover agent Garry Randolph hinted he’d been. Garry Randolph!
That name was so familiar and yet not quite right. Grand was the missing word, maybe. A pseudonym? Garry Grand? Gandy. Gandhi?
Answers were dancing like a cloud of annoying gnats flitting in front of his eyes.
Almost he could name them, each and every one of those trembling motes.
But he couldn’t catch and trap and fix a word on a single gnat.
Crime Scene
Miss Kitty, the madam, introduced the place’s cook-bartender-piano player, Phylliss Shoofly.
Temple winced to recognize a play on the name of that right-wing Madonna of rectitude, Phyllis Schlafly. The pun was similar to porn performers’ names Temple had run across. Velva Dixon, for instance. Or H. V. Load.
Phylliss looked like lesbian muscle. Every brothel needed one.
Temple rolled her eyes to think of Matt wandering around in this palace of subculture and the sex trade. Way more than he’d bargained for on a simple jaunt to a bachelor party.
First, to put this cast of dozens in their proper holding tanks.
“Let’s be sexist about assigning rooms to our suspects,” Temple said. “Van, you round up everything with the last name of Fontana in the bar area. Electra, you herd the bridesmaids into the kitchen. Kit, you and Miss Kitty and Miss Shoofly can stay here in the parlor with the resident ladies.”
“Where will you be?” Kit asked.
“Upstairs, in my ladies’ chambers.”
As Temple turned, she jerked to glimpse Midnight Louie sitting in the archway. No . . . this was a fluffier, smaller black cat with halo of turquoise marabou for a ruff. What was the lurking Louie up to? Not like him to avoid the spotlight. Had he seen this hotsy-totsy house cat named Baby Blue? Probably. Maybe he was like any human male in a bordello distracted from business by the scenery. Heck, that was why the men went there!
Temple moved into the foyer to take the front stairs and spotted the two missing men sitting together on the top step, neither looking distracted by courtesans. In fact, both looked equally grim and chagrined.
Matt took Temple’s hand to steady her as she sat on the steps below them. All this excitement on top of a few glasses of champagne was wearing.
“Nicky Fontana,” she said, “what makes you think I can find a murderer in this mess?”
“I need you to?” When Temple was silent, he added, “Matt needs you to?”
Temple glowered. “What’s all this about Matt being in danger of imminent arrest? Are you trying to panic me?”
“It’s true,” Matt put in. “I ended up hiding from the armed and dangerous bridesmaids in the one room that produced a dead body.”
“So you witnessed the murder?”
“No.”
“So you heard the murder?”
“No.”
“Yet you were there?”
He nodded miserably.
“What is this: see no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil? You admit you were in the room.”
“Not quite, Temple. I was in an adjacent . . . chamber.”