What we have here is a failure to communicate.
24
The Name of the Game Is Murder
The pink neon clock in Temple’s kitchen announced an incredible hour—ten p.m. Only. Temple’s mind and body floated somewhere on the dark side of midnight about sixteen light-years from reality.
She dropped the bulky manila envelopes on her kitchen counter, unmindful when her belongings spewed out like vomit. She’d already picked up her kitchen receiver to dial the penthouse.
“Yeah, home. Just questioning. A long story. Oh, Electra, I’m afraid Louie’s gone for good! Sure. I’d love company.”
Temple had changed into her favorite leopard-print sleep shirt before her doorbell rang—she loved having an apartment with a real doorbell, a melodic caroling that issued from a rank of long bronze pipes. Now it sounded like a dirge.
The lush tropical pattern of Electra’s most Hawaiian muumuu vibrated outside her door, but the landlady’s chameleon hair was sprayed jet-black, as if she’d known mourning was in order.
When Temple stared, Electra was quick to reassure her. “The hair’s for Lorna Fennick’s memorial service tomorrow—or rather Chester Royal’s. Don’t worry; just temporary.”
“I’d forgotten about that.”
“For you.” Electra offered the glass of scotch she clutched.
“Thanks, but I’m not up to it, even after an interrogation at Headquarters. Great hot-shot detective I make, retreating to a tumbler of Crystal Light when the chips are down.”
“How down are they, honey?”
“Low-down. I’ve been stalked through the convention center and grilled by Lieutenant Molina and it looks like Midnight Louie has been—Put Away.”
“How horrible!”
“For a while tonight, I never thought I’d see this place again. Poor Louie must have felt the same before they—”
Electra was looking at Temple strangely. In fact, Electra wasn’t looking at her at all, which was odd given the emotional fireworks that Temple was providing.
“Dear, what’s that on your coffee table?”
Temple glanced over her shoulder into the dimly lit room. Reflected street light shafts slid eerily across the rippled ceiling in shades of aqua and Mercurochrome. The furniture sat hunch-shouldered, downcast somehow. A foothill of silhouettes tumbled across the coffee table’s usually sleek glass surface.
“Some novels a woman at the ABA gave me,” Temple answered. “Want any free books? I’m not in the mood to read medical thrillers.”
“Not the books. That thing beside the books.”
Temple looked again. “I must have thrown a purse down. I don’t remember. I’ve had an awful day—”
Electra was brushing by, not a hard thing for Electra to do—her capacious muumuus always impinged in passing.
She hit the living room light switch, making everybody blink, including the black cat that reclined Sphinx-like on the coffee table in the sudden spotlight of the ceiling fixture, its hindquarters sheltered by a Time-Life bag and its forepaws splayed upon a tumbled tower of books.
“Louie!” Temple squealed.
He yawned and licked a forepaw.
“Louie!” Temple hurled herself between the coffee table and the love seat, reminded of a similar earlier moment in pursuit of this particular cat.
Midnight Louie was more amenable to supposed capture now; at least he allowed Temple to stroke his head and regard him with the unqualified wonder generally reserved for newborn infants.
“How did you get in?” Temple cooed. “How did you get out? If you ever were in the pound—”
Louie had mastered the art of looking wise and keeping mum.
“I wonder how long he’s been lounging here while I’ve been worried sick about him?” Temple mused.
“Long enough to sink a few fangs into those books.” Electra deposited the scotch on the coffee table and shuddered for effect. “A creepy bunch of covers. I hate medical trappings like scalpels and surgeon’s masks.”
“They sell books; some people eat this stuff up. Look, this was written by a nurse.” Temple handed over a Mavis Davis tome; Electra examined it dubiously.
“Where? In Transylvania? Now that you’ve got your kitty cat back, I’ll toddle along. You should be safe here. Matt fixed your French door lock. M.L. won’t get out of it again, and I doubt anybody will get in.”
“Where is Matt?” Temple glanced up from admiring Midnight Louie. The hour was late and she looked a mess, but it wouldn’t hurt to thank a good neighbor.
“Working.” Louie stretched and ambled along the tabletop over the piled paperbacks. “Watch out!” Electra yelled. “He’s trying to drink my scotch.”
Louie’s muzzle was indeed immersed to the whiskers in the low-ball glass.
“Doesn’t the ice bother him?” Electra wondered.
“It is hot.” Temple absently excused Louie’s depravity, even as he lifted his damp jowls from the glass. “And he did have a harrowing experience. I think.”
Louie deserted the coffee table for the kitchen, where he lofted himself atop the counter to nose among the manila envelopes and their erstwhile contents.
“Watch out, he’s in the garbage,” Electra warned genially. Obviously her contact lenses were out for the night. “You’d better rest now. The service tomorrow is at ten sharp. Should I give you a wake-up call?”
Temple nodded as she showed Electra out, then returned to the coffee table to survey the damage. Louie had really been taking a bite out of the books, she thought, studying the perforated glossy covers. Apparently people were not the only ones to eat these thrillers up. The major victim had been an Owen Tharp title, The Origin, which featured a striking-snake-coiled stethoscope. Perhaps glimpsing this image earlier had subconsciously led Temple to the STEThoscope connection she’d proposed to Molina.
The Origin’s subject matter certainly wasn’t appetizing... a fiendish physician cloning an army of body-part donors from his unknowing patients. Louie had taken critical exception to it, no doubt, for he had gnawed the all-caps title until it resembled a theatrical marquee spotlight sign that was missing several bulbs; only the --E O---IN in THE ORIGIN were still legible.
The cat thumped down from the countertop.
“You’re trouble,” she told him in mock disgust. “Not only are your whereabouts usually unknown, when you are visible, you muck up everything in sight. Think you can manage to spend a quiet night at home for a change?”
Louie accompanied Temple to the front door, where she noticed a brassy new chain lock and spent two minutes trying to make the end piece slide into the groove. Then she gave up and stumbled to the bedroom.
She slept like a kitten, waking briefly now and then to make sure she was warm and limp and somewhere safe. She sensed Midnight Louie as a lump at her feet, then at her side, then gone, then back again.
She started up once—thought she saw a man standing in the filtered night light of her bedroom. Her heart pounded as her mind juxtaposed two unrelated but wrenching events. He might be a still-stalking murderer... or the ghost of Max Kinsella. The lighter blurs that were her windows absorbed the illusion. She slept even harder after that.
She awoke again, unsure whether it was late or early. Notions and images floated in her mind, multicolored motes in a golden eye, darting away just as they became detectable. An alphabet soup of words, type, letters, and even sounds, images made a revolving ABA exhibition in her head; through it all threaded a stethoscope and a knitting needle. Butterflies of the brain. And ladybugs. Ladybug, Ladybug. The lady is bugged and Pennyroyal presses grapes... bee’s knees and Kankakee and number five knitting needles and Tweedledee and Tweedledum, two of a kind and who’s behind?—Temple netted a few, then a few more butterflies from the brainstorm swirling around her, then some more... and then she knew.