Cat In A Quicksilver Caper

It was Max’s turn to be silent. “Maybe that’s true,” he said. “Maybe I found her weakness and it was me. Hate is fear, and sexual fear hides unadmitted desire. If that’s what it would have taken. As it happened, I preferred to let her grind my face into the ground and feel she’d beaten me physically. Pride isn’t worth a penny if someone you love is at risk.”

“Nope,” Matt agreed. That’s why he was here, warning Temple’s lover, instead of letting Max go down so he could have Temple all to himself.

“So,” Max said. “Now your face is asphalt dust. Maybe you’ll have to screw Molina to get her off Temple’s case. No sacrifice too harsh.”

“You can laugh. I guess it’s a kind of defiance. But if Temple thinks you’d ever thought of betraying her with Molina—”

“Oh, shit,” Max said. “Oh shit oh shit oh shit.”

“Did you?” Matt asked, because he had to and because he actually enjoyed asking it way too much.

Matt couldn’t believe how much he relished the idea of Max being unfaithful, how down and dirty he could get, for the right wrong reason.

But he had to know.

“Because, if so, I’m going to have to warn Temple, to tell her something. I’d like to include your self-defense.”

“Sanity? Look. Why would I? I don’t need this right now. I have no idea where this nonsense came from. And I don’t need some do-gooder John Alden playing go-between for me and Temple. Even you should know by now you want her.”

Matt felt a flush. Why? It was the truth.

Max threw up his long, bony hands, always clever, always strong. “That was a low blow. Sorry. I suppose you are a professional mediator of sorts. Mediate this.”

“I won’t use this against you with Temple. Or for me.”

“Use it. I won’t surrender Temple to anyone without the balls to take her.”

Matt felt the old blinding rage he thought he’d buried with his stepfather surging into all his muscles. He stepped forward, balanced for martial arts moves. Max was more expert, he knew, but Matt had the fire in the belly in this case. It would be a long, bloody draw probably.

Max stepped back. “Pax, priest. Us tearing at each other will only hurt Temple more. That’s one thing we’re agreed on; the less damage to Temple the better.”

“Is there anything you can say to defend yourself, to counter Molina’s charges?”

Max had nothing printable to answer.

Free to Good Home

I have pretty much figured out this whole murder-theft ring and given my Miss Temple the credit, or the main ideas, at least.

Now would be a good time for resting on my laurels, and this is exactly what I am doing in my crib at the Circle Ritz when I hear the scrabble of pointed nails, i.e., claws, on the French door–opening mechanism.

I am too worn out from my recent intense cerebral labors, not to mention the late hours I have been keeping, to do more than cock one peeper open. Sure enough, a furry snake slides under the crack in the frame. In a moment, the door pops open as sweetly as if my own supple touch had cracked it.

Much to my surprise . . . not! . . . Miss Midnight Louise ankles in.

“Sawing timbers in the Pacific Northwest, I see,” she says.

“Who, me? Not on your life. I am for saving the forests. What I am doing is resting up my muscles after serving as a counterweight to three females of my acquaintance the other night.”

“Big deal, Daddy-o. All you had to do was throw your weight around, which should come naturally. But that is why I am here.”

“Oh, really. It is not because you wish to check up on the health of the senior member of the team?”

“Oh. We are a ‘team’ now?”

“Well, I mean that we are Midnight Inc. Investigations, which is a firm, and since there are only two members of said firm, I suppose in a loose sense we are a . . . team. But nothing personal.”

She sits and tucks her long, luxuriant black train around her dainty forelegs. Show-off!

“Whatever,” she says in the irritating manner of the younger set. “We still have a problem in the flies at the New Millennium.”

I frown. “The show has been closed down for now, and even the police are through dusting the area with a mouse-hair brush and going over it with a flea comb.”

“That is part of the problem.”

“Tell me.”

“I think you should see for yourself”

“Jeez, Louise! That is a long pad across some pretty hot turf, not to mention the climb at the end. I need to preserve my strength.”

“On Miss Temple Barr’s cushy sofa, of course.”

“So. You want one, find your own sugar daddy.”

“I do not need a keeper, but I admit I am an exception.”

“You admit something. Hmmph. All right. I guess I can go and survey the scene of my latest exercise in crime deduction. Miss Temple has seen that the authorities know all about who was in on what and why and how.”

“Exercise is the key word in all that hot air. You need some. Up and at ‘em, Pop, before I sic Ma Barker’s gang on you.”

This opens my other eye and gets me up on my feet and humming “The Star-Spangled Banner.”

“The gang is here?”