“It seems this old place is haunted.”
“Haunted? Oh, I don’t think so, Electra.”
“Don’t believe in ghosts?” “Not here.”
By now Electra had tugged-and Temple had elbowed-the door open and they squeezed through together.
Inside, the hall was cooler, but not much. Summer had not yet turned Las Vegas streets into one big sizzling Oriental wok.
“Why should the Circle Ritz be immune from ghosts?” Electra asked.
“Because I live here and I really don’t need another complication in my life right now.”
“You live here. Isn’t that amazing?’ They had reached the small but handsome lobby. Electra pressed the up button for the sole elevator with one elbow and the expertise of a longtime resident.
“I don’t live here?” Temple was getting alarmed.
Electra’s usual mode was unconventional rather than cryptic. She’d always used her snow white hair as a palette for a rainbow of temporary colors to match the vivid tones in her everpresent muumuus.
Brown was alarmingly ordinary for one of Electra’s expressive bent.
“Is this your subtle way,” Temple asked, “of trying to kick me out? You can’t. I own my place. On the other hand, you could kick out Matt Devine. He only rents.” As if anyone would ever want to kick out Matt Devine.
“Matt who?”
“Electra! You’re acting ultraweird. Maybe Miss Clairol has gone to more than your head. The moment I dig my key out
ofmy tote bag and let us in, I’m going to fix a cup of tea or a snifter of brandy and find out what’s going on with you.”
“Funny, I was planning to ply you with brandy, if you have any.”
Temple temporarily transferred some grocery bags to Electra’s arms while she plumbed the jumbled depths of her everpresent tote bag. The keys surfaced tangled around a giant can of paprika. Some of her purchases hadn’t fit into the six bags she could conceivably carry.
She dropped the paprika into a bag in Electra’s custody, then unlocked the door.
She never glimpsed her own place without an internal sigh of satisfaction. No “unit” in the Circle Ritz was the same, another aspect of the vintage building’s charm. Temple’s place was Mama Bear size: medium, partly because it had been bought for two.
The Baby Bear-size entry hall showed views of a blackand-white kitchen just the right size for Goldilocks and, farther in, the pie-slice-shaped living room. Its handsome rank of French doors led to a small triangular patio. Off each side of the main room were two bedroom suites with tiled baths. One of them served as Temple’s home office, because for the year that Max had lived here openly, no way did they need separate bedrooms.
Temple’s current live-in roommate sprawled on the off-white sofa dead ahead. Okay, he was often lazy, but he always looked good, which was more than some of her women friends could say about their slacker layabouts.
“That’s no ghost,” Temple said, admiring the black hairy body lounging so fluidly on her furniture.
Electra snorted. “I’ve seen more of Midnight Louie lately than I have of you. And he’s a real Houdini when it comes to
slipping in and out of this place.”
“I’ve been busy.” Temple proved it by heading for the kitchen to unload her week’s worth of the Craven Cook’s convenience foods, frozen stuff first. “And why do you need to ply me with anything alcoholic?”
Electra unloaded canned and dry goods onto the tiled countertops in silence. Nothing in the Circle Ritz had ever been updated except the owner’s hair color.
The rhinestone-festooned Felix the Cat clock on the wall swung its molded black plastic tail back and forth, telling time as
quietly as a cat.
Temple finished stowing the refrigerated foods, then turned to the still-startling brownette beside her. “Weird how radical
`ordinary’ looks on you. Would Dr Pepper on ice in my best Baccarat glasses stand in for the brandy I don’t have?”
“Absolutely. I’ve squeezed out some the world’s deepest, darkest secrets over Dr Pepper. So misunderstood.”
By the time they’d iced their soft drinks and headed for the living room sofa, Midnight Louie had obligingly moved to the white faux goathair rug under the coffee table. There he lounged like a Playgirl centerfold in desperate need of a full body waxing.
“This is nice.” Electra leaned back into the neutral-colored sofa cushions.
Inspired by her recent research into decor, Temple decided she really needed a fashion-forward seating piece with as much 000mph as the red suede ’50s couch she had found at the Goodwill for Matt, a floor up.
Electra wiggled into the cushions. “I do like sitting down with a resident in one of my units. Unwinding. Not worrying about ghosts.”
“First, explain the hair. I’ve gotten used to the Color, or Multicolor, of the Week, but … brown. Who wants to be brown?”
“Brown is back, big-time.” Electra hefted the mahogany-shaded soft drink in her glass. “And sometimes you’ve been fashion-forward for long enough that you yearn for some stability. Like residents you know and occasionally actually see.”
“I’m getting the idea that you think I’ve been running around town too much. You are not my mother, Electra.”
“Heaven forbid! My own kids were enough to get educated and out on their own. It isn’t just you, Temple, dear. That darling boy Matt Devine has been even more of a ghost around here than you lately. And when I have run into him in the parking lot, ‘run’ is the word for it, as in ‘hit and.’ He doesn’t stopand chat like he used to, or offer to help me with something. He just skedaddles like I was Typhoid Mary in a toxic muumuu.”
“Don’t take that personally,” Temple advised, although she certainly had when it first started happening to her. “After all, he’s got that nightshift radio counseling job. Doesn’t exactly get him out and about early in the day. And now there are out-oftown speaking engagements. So he’s been a bit distracted lately. The price of being a semicelebrity.”
“Distracted, hell. He’s been avoiding me. And now you are too. Plus, you’re making lame excuses for him. Why?”
“I felt the same way, Electra, until I realized all that Matt had going.”
“He’s always been busy, but never … aloof. I’m worried about him. Something is wrong.”
Electra’s frown accentuated two of the amazingly few lines on her face. Even the darker hair color didn’t age the plump contentment of her features. Temple guessed Electra had never been a pretty girl, but she was heading toward being a gorgeous old lady.
She almost leaned over to pat Electra’s hand … and tell all. Only there was so much to tell and it really wasn’t her story
to spill.
“Matt’s all right,” Temple said firmly. She wished she really believed that.
“And then there’s my favorite phantom,” Electra said ominously. “He’s running on a short leash.”
Temple glanced to the cat-shaped rug that was rubbing its permanent five-o’clock-shadowed jaw on the toe of her Via Spiga pump.
“Louie has always been a night person. He’s proven he can take care of himself, and then some, and he’s not reproducible.”
“Not that phantom. I mean Max.”
“Oh.”
“Oh. Hello? Pardon my slang, but you and he did buy this place together. As far as I’m concerned, he’s been AWOL since he vanished a year and a half ago. ‘Absent without Leave.’ Without my leave, if not yours.”
“Electra, I really can’t discuss why Max moved out, or why he didn’t move back in, actually, when he … turned up again. I keep up the mortgage payments, don’t I?”
“I don’t care about the mortgage. I care about you. Here I have this attractive young career-gal tenant who has associated with two of the-well, in my age group, the word was ‘eligible,’ but I’m sure you young things have a much raunchier way of putting it nowadays … hot hunks?-guys to hang out at the Circle Ritz, and she seems to have lost both of them sometime, somewhere, somehow.”