Cat In An Alphabet Soup (Catnap)

Temple had not expected to play a part in this drama, if only a walk-on. Even at ten on Monday morning, tourists were trickling out the doors and hoofing up the long expanse of curved front walk, just as Temple was doing behind Eightball O’Rourke.

While Temple watched, Eightball suddenly paused, whipped an automatic—camera, that is—from his coat pocket, planted a booted foot on the raised concrete rim and shot the facade of Caesars. He doffed his hat, swept his sleeve over his brow and bent as if to adjust his boot. Though Temple didn’t see it, this had to be the moment when he placed a plain brown paper parcel (chock-full of some very fancy green paper) at the feet of the proper goddess.

Eightball strolled on. By the time Temple reached Venus, her watch said three minutes to ten, the assigned hour of delivery. She peeked over the whitewashed rim. A brown parcel lay at the goddess’s bare feet, which matched most of the rest of her.

Temple sat on the rim and fiddled with her shoes. She twisted to regard the larger-than-life-size looming goddess, which for some reason reminded her of Lieutenant C. R. Molina, and trailed a hand over the edge until she touched the package. Then she rose, shook her apparently pained foot and gamely limped into Caesars Palace.

Then it was through the crowded lounge area, along the marble-paved Appian Way mall of exclusive shops, out a side door, then around to the back and a rendezvous with Emily at the statued Caesar’s feet.

“Well?” Temple was, justifiably, breathless.

“I don’t know.” Emily said. “I watched, but... Several people came along after you stopped. Couples, a street person in a wheelchair, a really pitiful man—Lord, he can have the money if he found it; um, some kids.”

“Did you see O’Rourke again?”

“No.”

“That’s either very good or very bad.”

“What do you mean?”

“Either he’s an expert tail and even we couldn’t detect him, or he took our fee, made the drop and went home to twiddle his thumbs.”

“I had to try, Temple. Surely if they’ve got the money they’ll release the cats. Maybe Baker and Taylor will suddenly show up at the ABA in time for the last day.”

“Maybe,” Temple said. “Does it really end tomorrow? I can hardly wait.” She bent to fuss with her left shoe. Somewhere on her circuitous route, she’d picked up a genuine grain of sand.

The Pennyroyal Press press kit came in a copper-colored folder with the imprint’s logo embossed dead center, a coin depicting— not the familiar profile of Lincoln—but a crowned king in profile. The word “Pennyroyal” curved above the coin; the word “Press” smiled modestly below it.

Temple sat at her desk skimming the accumulated paper trail on the personalities in the case. Most of the ABA’s hubbub had peaked. In twenty-four hours, the five-day mania would end for another year with a whimper. To every thing there is a season.

This was Monday; already some booksellers were leaving. Tuesday afternoon the exhibitors would decamp. On Wednesday the center setup crew would tear down and put up; by Thursday a new crew of conventioneers would throng the vast complex.

And Lieutenant Molina would have an unsolved murder on her books to make this an ABA to remember.

Temple frowned at the photographs of Pennyroyal’s reigning authors. Mavis Davis made an unlikely candidate for cold-blooded murderer, and neither Lanyard Hunter nor Owen Tharp had a motive, to hear them tell it. At this point Temple wasn’t inclined to credit anyone’s declaration of disinterest.

Look at Lorna Fennick, who’d never mentioned her time as an assistant to Chester Royal. Apparently the experience had been enough to discourage Lorna from becoming an editor and she’d fled to the safer—more ethical?—field of public relations. Then there was the choice of weapon—a knitting needle. The more Temple considered it, the likelier it was a woman’s weapon.

Mavis Davis, Lorna Fennick, Chester’s editor ex-wife Rowena Novak—all made excellent candidates for the author of the ‘stet’ scrawled across the dead man’s chest.

Stet. It meant “let it stand.” In this case, it meant let him end as he began, as nothing. A bitter epitaph even for a murder victim, as if a man’s life were only so much editorial dead matter. Or did Royal’s death restore something in the murderer’s mind? Self-esteem? Justice? Who would be bitter in that way but a wronged wordsmith? Possibly a writer, possibly another editor who’d been overruled. Or a would-be editor who’d been abused.

Almost anyone could have done it. It didn’t require great strength or cunning, just surprise. Anyone could smuggle a knitting needle into the ABA, though a woman would have a better pretext. If Chester Royal had secretly remained behind after the center closed on setup day, someone else could have, claiming an after-hours meeting, say. Getting out later would be much easier than leaving and trying to get in again. Maybe Royal himself had requested the meeting with the killer.