“I’m not a jockette. The only muscles I’ve built up are in my feet.”
“That’s why it’s ideal for you. It doesn’t depend on brute strength. There’s a studio only blocks from here. Jack Ree’s a great teacher.”
“Well, the gear is kind of cute”—she tugged on his full-cut sleeve—“but I’d get lost in it. And I bet I couldn’t wear my high heels, right?”
“Not if you want to kick the menace out of anybody. We work barefoot.”
“Never! Not in public.”
“You really have a thing about it, don’t you?”
“Appearing without high heels for me is like appearing nude would be for somebody else,” she said firmly.
Matt leaned over to inspect her feet. “You’re barefoot now.”
“Except at home,” she added with great dignity.
He pondered for a moment. “I can’t stay here every night.”
“Who says?” she couldn’t resist saying. “Oops. Must be the Tylenol talking.”
He was thinking hard and hadn’t heard her, or had and wasn’t going to comment. “I could teach you,” he said. “Here. At home. Then you wouldn’t have an excuse.”
“Here?”
He looked around the room. “Not here. Down by the pool. I could borrow a couple mats from Jack. You don’t
work nine-to-five every day, and I’ve got afternoons off.”
“Would I have to wear the cutesy pajamas?”
“I thought you liked mine.”
“On you. And not even Cuban heels?”
“The only thing you’re going have on your heels will be calluses.”
“Sounds unappetizing.”
“I’m serious, Temple. You might find out you’re not as little as you think you are.”
She shrugged. “You and Molina,” she conceded sourly. “A couple of authoritarian do-gooders. Just for all your meddling, I’m going to find the G-string murderer, and tie him—or her—in knots with my new tai kwan chi.”
“Tai chi or tae kwon do,” Matt said, laughing. “Why should your finding another murderer get my goat?”
“It won’t, but I hope it’ll fry Lieutenant Molina down to her hard-boiled clodhopper sole.”
Talking to someone in the middle of the night was always therapeutic. When Temple returned to her bedroom—unaccompanied, darn!—visions of herself playing Karate Kid danced in her head until the fantasy became a dream and dream, morning.
She slipped into low-heeled slides and a wraparound sundress she didn’t have to dislocate her arms to get into, and entered the sunny front room. Not to worry. No Matt. The sofa was a sofa again, with the bedding folded neatly on one arm. Matt must have learned such disciplined bed-making at boot camp or something.
She shuffled into the kitchen for something hot and bracing. With Matt gone, Temple enjoyed a certain, guilty relief. She could limp around the apartment without putting a brave face on her injuries, and without worrying about what her actual makeup-bare face looked like. She could even cuss under her breath.
And she did. It hurt to open the cupboard door and reach up for the mug, to turn on the faucet and twist open the instant-coffee jar. Running the microwave didn’t hurt, thank goodness.
She turned from the cupboards, looking for some Equal to sweeten the straight black bitterness of coffee, and saw a foreign object poised on the opposite counter. Her shoe. Whole again. Heeled, so to speak. Heel and sole.
Temple smiled as she hobbled over to pick it up. Matt must have gotten up extra early and Super Glued the heel back on. She was standing there with a cup of coffee in one hand and mooning over a shoe in the other when her doorbell rang.
She glanced at the black-cat and pink-neon wall clock. Eight o’clock. Who’d call that early? Unless Lieutenant Molina couldn’t wait until nine for Temple to start her mug-shot search.
She reluctantly set down the shoe and wobbled for the door. She opened it on Electra’s worried face.
“Did you have a good night, dear? I mean, did you sleep well?”
“Mostly,” Temple answered vaguely. “Want some too-black coffee?”
“Never touch the stuff. Here, let me pour a little out, add a bit of water and... voila!”
“Thanks,” Temple said, accepting the diluted, drinkable coffee. “I’m not together yet, and I have to be at police headquarters downtown by nine.”
“That’s what I’m here for. Breakfast while you wait. Assistant dresser, whatever. Do you want me to give you a ride there? The Vampire awaiteth.”
“No, thanks. A bit too much agitation for me. I can get myself around once I get myself going. I wish—”
“Yes, dear—?”
“I wish I had another pair of ears and eyes at the Goliath for the strippers’ competition. I won’t be able to get in until ten or so, and I’ve got a feeling that the show has just begun to get on the road.”
“Can you still do that job under the circumstances?”
“If they lost two PR people in a row, they’d really freak. Besides, it’s too late for anyone else to come in cold.”
“Maybe Mr. Buchanan is feeling better and can spell you.”
“Electra, I’m going to be fine. I’ll be better off with work to take my mind off things. And I wouldn’t wish Crawford Buchanan on anybody.”
Electra was banging through the cupboards in an effort to be helpful. She clattered the dishes, then handed Temple a cereal bowl. “Here’s some milk.”
“Thanks.” Temple set down the coffee mug and took the tablespoon that Electra gave her, and crunched away at a generous spoonful. “Arghgk!” She ran to the sink and spat out her mouthful.
“What is it, dear? Is your stomach too delicate from the attack to—”
“Stomach nothing. It’s my taste buds.” Temple returned to the counter, picked up the so-called cereal container and squinted closely at the fine print. Since she had expected Matt, she had left her glasses on the bedside table.
“Electra, this is Louie’s Free-to-Be-Feline, not cereal! Aiyuch! No wonder he won’t eat it.”
“Oh, sorry! It looked like some trendy new cereal. Something certifiably healthy.”
“It’s supposed to look like that,” Temple commented sourly. “That’s how they sell it to gullible humans. Cats are apparently harder to fool. Would you mind looking in the lower cupboard? I need some protein. I’m sure Louie wouldn’t object to sharing some of the water-packed, dolphin-sparing fancy albacore people-tuna that’s so bad for him with me.”
19
A Kinky Cat-tail
Paging through mug shots was like perusing a yearbook of the terminally tough.
Temple flipped past enough slightly skewed faces, tattoos, scraggly beards, sideburns and mustaches, scars and criminally close eyes to cast the gang members in several road-show companies of West Side Story.
“It’s hard,” she told the uniformed female officer who came back to check on her progress. “They were on me so fast, and they didn’t look that unusual.”
Officer Ontiveros, a woman of impressive muscularity, nodded, and offered a slim smile of encouragement. “The subconscious works all the time. Give yours a chance to testify.”
So Temple turned page after page, wondering what Molina expected her to find: petty muggers or big-time muscle? Were her attackers even in this massive book?
At last she indicated three men who might have attacked her. “Obviously, I’m wrong about at least one,” she said.
“That’s okay, miss. It’s a lead. The hard part will come if we dredge up any of these guys and have to go to lineup.”
Molina must have been nearby watching, though that seemed unlikely. She strolled up just as Temple was about to be released from her civic duty, sat on the desk edge—no mercy the morning after—and looked down at Temple thoughtfully.