"Temple Barr!"
" Oh, no!" She stopped and turned, stricken.
Oh. Only Crawford Buchanan, the slime reporter. To think that she would ever be relieved to see him. His brown distressed-leather jacket had to have escaped a J. Peterman catalog, along with an ivory silk aviator scarf that dangled almost to his knees and would look infinitely better on either gentleman of her acquaintance that she was so intent on avoiding at the moment.
"Well. If it isn't the Munchkin Hunchfront of Notre Dame," Crawford went on, as he was always going on, his conceited drawl emphasizing his one good attribute, a deep, thrilling, radio-mike voice. "Does that cat ring bells in his spare time? He certainly does nothing for your figure."
"Louie and I are both too travel-worn for chitchat. What are you doing here? You don't look like you're heading in or out. No baggage."
"Elementary deduction, my dear Watsonette. I'm here to pick up my squeeze. Her and her kid visited family for the holidays."
"I loathe the expression 'squeeze.' "
"Too bad. It's here to stay, T.B. Just like me." He leered.
Crawford Buchanan was the only man outside of a silent movie melodrama who still knew how to leer.
Temple turned and resumed her race for the airport exit. "Tell it to the marines. I have a feeling they could fix that."
A Whittlesea Blue cab was waiting. Several were. Temple took the first one and collapsed into the backseat. The ride from McCarran airport was almost laughable. Seen from the runways, Las Vegas Strip landmark hotel-casinos made a crazy-quilt skyline: the Luxor's pointed pyramid jousted with the fools-cap Disney-blue towers of the Camelot, which tilted at the new New York-New York's boxy art deco skyscrapers, which contrasted with the Mirage's tidal-wave wall of gilded glass.
Entering Las Vegas was like driving into a town of half-scale architects' models, a Twilight Zone set that even Rod Serling could never have imagined in quite this unlikely juxtaposition.
Temple and Louie were deposited before the Circle Ritz's round fifties silhouette in no time flat, for an absurdly low fare.
She had asked the cab driver to drop them at the wedding chapel in front. Not that she was expecting imminent nuptials, but this way she could sneak in the attached apartment building's side entrance, avoiding the back entry via the parking lot and the pool, where she was likely to confront the Ritz's usual suspects.
In the deserted marble-lined lobby she pushed the elevator button, glad to have only one elevator to deal with and only four floors of building ahead of her, after her sojourn in high-rise New York-New York, the Original.
The elevator doors opened, revealing . . . nobody. Temple darted in like a daylight robber, cussing when her wheeled baggage rollers caught in the brass-edged gap between lobby and car. She wrestled her key out from her tote bag during the one-floor journey and clenched it between her teeth for safekeeping while both hands were busy dragging baggage.
The thick hall carpeting nearly derailed her bags, but she finally turned down the cul-de-sac leading to her front door.
There she leaned the bags against the wall, reclaimed the moist key and unlocked her door.
Solid mahogany heft drew it open of its own accord. Sighing at this small boon, she stepped over the threshold.
She broke through an invisible skin of her own absence, en-countering the undisturbed peace of rooms abandoned for a while. Everything in its place, including silence, and a blessed familiarity. The effacing hum of the refrigerator. The place even looked neater than she had remembered leaving it, but that was just the Alzheimer's effect of being away kicking in.
She unhooked Louie's CatAboard Seat, letting him and it ease to the floor.
He was out and sniffing around like a bloodhound, then edging out of sight. She heard a muted thump atop the kitchen counter as she wrestled the luggage inside.
A sense of deja vu subdued her like an opiate as she warily moved through each room, hunting nameless snares and traps. She entered her own bedroom like a thief, expecting another's spoor. Nothing but her own imagination and some hallucinogenic fragrance. Being away always brought her back a temporary foreigner attuned to smells and sights residence had made undetectable.
Too weary to unpack, she tilted her luggage against a bedroom wall before returning to the main room to lock the front door. Then she rooted through the cupboards for something succulent to spoon over the eternal mound of dry Free-to-be-Feline pellets occupying Louie's dish like one of those lifelike ceramic desserts restaurants parade before jaded diners' palates nowadays.
The cat thumped down from somewhere in the living room and came running for smoked oysters in shrimp sauce. Temple collected and folded his-- her --carry-pouch and tucked it away in the tiny guest closet. She returned to the kitchen, wondering what she should do. Eat.
Rest. Or sit down and stare at the walls.
Someone knocked at her door.
Temple's jump made Louie look up resentfully from his eating.
The knock had not only startled Temple but it had interrupted the total concentration Midnight Louie required for dining.
Heart pounding for no good reason, Temple went to open her door without peeking through the tiny peephole. She had to face the music some time, no matter who was playing what instrument.
"Electra!"
"I heard your cab arrive and thought you might want your mail." Her landlady hefted a cardboard box overflowing with rolled-up newspapers, mail-order catalogs, bills, solicitations and Christmas cards.
"Thanks. I think. Did you have a nice holiday?"
"Great. A couple of the kids got to town, only one with grandchildren. And you?"
"Interesting."
"Oh?" Electra, clad in a seasonal muumuu whose pattern somehow blended orchids and evergreens, paused after depositing the box of mail on Temple's coffee table, awaiting a report.
"Sit down," Temple said, capitulating. Of all the people she might have encountered immediately on returning home, Electra was the least harrowing. "Want something to drink?"
"Nope. Egg-nogged, wined and Mimosa-ed my way through too many meals out while the kids were in town. I'll just get a load off my feet--and it's more load than before you left--then settle next to my pal Louie. Oof! He's got oyster breath."
Electra's weight not only dimpled the love-seat cushion, but caused Louie to roll right into her evergreen orchid patch. Too rotund himself to fight gravity, they stayed hip to hip and floral print to fur. Louie even began to purr.
"Aw, he missed me. My little big boy. Well? Did you two win the commercial contract?"
"Don't know. We didn't exactly endear ourselves to the advertising agency. I managed to implicate a murderer among them."
Electra clapped her hands until the copper, silver and brass bangles on each wrist jangled.
"Some people would be so greedy for their own advancement that they'd rather conceal than reveal such a thing. I'm sure your integrity made a big impression on them."
"Integrity is not the desirable commodity it used to be. And concealing things isn't as easy as it sounds," Temple answered grimly.
"Is there something I should know?"
Temple paused, rubbing her ... temple. "No, but there's something I should know. Is Matt back yet?"
"Last evening, just in time to rush to his job at ConTact. But he seemed in a peach of a mood. Must have had a good Christmas visit home in Chicago. Poor guy. He was moping around after you left for New York."
"Not merely over my departure!"
"Well--," Electra, a card-carrying justice of the peace, seemed to toy with a temptation to fan the flames of like into the ashes of true romance. "No. He seemed to have a lot on his mind.