“They blame that on rearranging the furniture?”
“Feng shui is much more than that. And furniture is an important part of the domestic landscape, which, after all, so
intimately reflects the inhabitants’ interior landscape. Think about it.”
Temple did, sipping delicately at the sweetly tart green liquid in her martini glass. But the first significant piece of furniture
she fixated on wasn’t anything in her rooms-except maybe Louie, who followed his own feng shui in choosing where to artistically display his bonelessly sleeping form-the first furniture that came to mind was Matt’s red suede ’50s couch.
In his sparsely furnished rooms it screamed “major Hollywood motion picture” among a bland array of small, doomed independent productions.
Of course the Vladimir Kagan designer relic was a coproduction: Temple had found it at Goodwill and forced Matt to buy it because … because it was cool and actually valuable, it turned out. And it wouldn’t fit in her rooms, with all her accumulated stuff that was so much less interesting.
“You’re thinking of something both pleasurable and troubling,” Amelia said. “I’m almost afraid to ask what, and I’m never
afraid to ask anything.”
“What? Oh, I was wondering if two people can share custody of a single couch.” “They can with children.”
“But children are so much easier to move.”
Amelia laughed. “You obviously don’t have any. Nor stubborn dogs.”
“Only a stubborn cat.”
“Cats are too clever to be stubborn. They appear to go along with what you want, then turn it into what they want. I prefer
the childlike directness of dogs.” “Do you have children?” -
“Grown.” She smiled.
“And their father-?”
“Outgrown.” Her smile stayed the same, slight but pleased.
Aha! Temple wondered how Mr. Wong liked being cut out of the picture now that Amelia was Ms. Media Millionaire Sweetheart.
“Perhaps your … ex is unhappy about missing out on an empire.”
“It was his own idea to leave.”
“That makes it even worse.”
” No,” she answered with a smile that was both sympathetic and oddly impersonal. “The settlement was far more than generous. From me to him, of course. Now you tell me this.”
Amelia Wong set down her martini on the gold-leafed coffee table. She clapped her hands. The dogs jumped off the sofa in a golden wave and undulated back into the room from which they’d been called.
She eyed Temple with laser-ray intensity. “Why is a temporary public relations representative so interested in me? Or in the bizarre attack on Maylords, for that matter?”
“Public relations people are only supposed to care about the glitz and the glory, not the problems behind the scenes?”
Amelia made an impatient clicking noise, like an aggravated beetle. Her irises seemed as dark and shiny, and impervious,
as a beetle shell.
“This is a matter for the police. It is not your business. It is not my business. We are businesswomen, not policewomen. It is not our duty to tidy up every untoward happening that we witness.”
Temple could have given her reasons. She could have quoted John Donne that “no man is an island.” She could have mentioned her knack for unraveling crimes.
Temple put down her empty martini glass too. The truce in Amelia Wong’s frenetic, singled-minded work style was over.
Wong had bodyguards enough to survive a shooting spree without quivering. But Temple had been among the innocent extras who could have been caught, fatally, in the crossfire. Pampered Amelia Wong wouldn’t understand that if fear didn’t kill you, it made you angry.
Temple decided in ending the interview to go for inscrutable and just smile.
Too bad her next social appointment-cum-interrogation was going to give her zilch to smile about. And then some.
Chapter 17
Hot Water
A cafeteria was an unlikely place to rendezvous with a big bad bogeyman from a homicide lieutenant’s past, Temple
thought, eyeing the joint.
But maybe the apple-pie ambiance was just the right unlikely setting for a “date” with Rafi Nadir. Temple spotted him already seated by a window, a brown tray serving as a portable place mat before his folded arms.
His swarthy looks and solo state made him look out of place among Wonder-bread families chowing down at all the surrounding tables.
She shuffled through the line in her turn, trying to quiet the butterflies in her stomach. Rafi Nadir was one bad dude. Everybody said so. He was a rogue ex-cop turned hired muscle for shady operators. He liked to hang out at strip clubs. His former significant other regarded him as the Great Satan even after thirteen years apart.
Temple was nuts to meet him alone like this, but he seemed to like her for some unfathomable reason. Temple, and the ex-reporter in her, could never resist an easy source, no matter how dangerous.
So she shuffled through the line in her summer espadrilles, too nervous to eat much, nailing the last lime Jell-O dish to accompany her red dye
3 barbecue-sauced pile of beef brisket. Her tray had an unseasonably Christmassy air, but it couldn’t be helped. Cafeteria food was not her favorite.
She filled a huge paper cup with a cataract of tiny ice cubes and watered them well before she joined Nadir.
Nobody she knew would approve of her coming within six tables of separation from him. But Temple suffered from congenital curiosity, a feline predisposition that sometimes manifested itself in other species.
Nadir looked up from an uninspired mound of ketchup-frosted meatloaf and nodded. She sat to deploy her dishes on the plastic veneer tabletop. If he got too frisky she could heave the plate of brisket at him … or season the encounter by drawing the pepper spray from her straw tote bag.
“Now I see why you’re so little,” he said.
Temple eyed her meat-and-Jell-O meal. “I’m on the go a lot. I got used to odd foods.”
“Why didn’t you want to meet on the Strip?”
“It’s so noisy and crowded.” And there’s too much chance of my being recognized there.
Nadir sipped his black coffee. “I’da figured you to want as many people around as possible. Why are you afraid of me?”
“Well … I don’t know any guys who hang around strip clubs.”
“You think you don’t know any guys like that.”
She didn’t argue. It would be too hard to explain that the guys she knew best included an ex-priest.
Temple shrugged and pushed the beef away after nibbling two slices. The Jell-O was more fun, and challenging, to eat.
Nadir shook his head. “I met you at a strip club, remember?”
“Yeah, but I was there on a mission of mercy. So to speak.”
“Maybe I was too.”
“You? I mean, you did help me out by decking the Stripper Killer, but that was just because you happened along.““Maybe
not.”
“You were following me-?”
“Not that way. Don’t get your Jell-O in a puddle. I’m an ex-cop. I’ve got a suspicious mind.” “So do I.”
“That’s good. Little girls who stick their noses in big messes should have suspicious minds.”
“Big guys who put down little girls who carry pepper spray should wear big goggles.”
“Jeez, women today have more chips on their shoulders than the Jacksonville Jags have shoulder pads.” He tore open a blue packet of Equal and poured the powder into his coffee, as if sweetening it would sweeten up Temple. “You weren’t making a name for yourself as Tess the Thong Girl in that club because your sister sells spandex by the Strip side. No way. And you’re not a cop, city payroll or private. And secretaries don’t rate the attention you get. So what the hell are you?”
“You heard last night at Maylords: a public relations consultant.”
“Now, that’s a job title that’s subject to interpretation,” he said with a semi-official smirk. “But that I believe. So why were you pretending to be someone else at the strip club? Don’t tell me that’s how you snag new clients.”