A Cat in the Wings: (InterMix) by Lydia Adamson Read Free Book Online Page A

Ellenville. Louis Beasley. People I pointed out to you at the service.”
    Lucia pulled herself up from her seat on the sofa as if she weighed three hundred pounds.
    The other woman approached quickly and noiselessly, then stopped at a discreet distance to wait for Lucia’s next move. Close enough to assist her if she stumbled, far enough away so as not to hover or give the impression that Lucia was a cripple. I envied her her timing and tact.
    “I’m tired, Alice. So tired,” Lucia said. “Is there anything more now, or can you excuse me? I must sleep.”
    “No, go right ahead,” I said. “I . . . we’ll be in touch.” I nodded good-bye to the other woman.
    Lucia left the room at a snail’s pace, the nurse matching her steps.
    “She’s trancked to the gills, Swede,” Tony observed when they’d gone.
    Of course. I’d been talking to a heavily sedated woman.
    We let ourselves out and waited in the hall for one of the magisterial elevators.
    “Is the game afoot, then, Sherlock?” Tony asked flippantly. “Are we about to roll up our sleeves and get
en pointe
?”
    “What?”
    “The game, Swede. The hunt. You know. Deduct-and-detect. Seek-and-find. Search-and-destroy. You’ve got the old bloodlust, girl. I can see it in your baby blues.”
    “Enough mixed metaphors, Tony. And you know I don’t have baby-blue eyes.”
    Ignoring me, he tried, ridiculously, to execute an ambitious ballet leap right there in the hallway. He announced it as he jumped: “Double
tour en l’air
!”
    He smashed heavily into the wall, then slid down it like some hapless second banana in a Looney Tunes feature.
    “Dear God!” I rushed over to the stunned Basillio and helped him up. Holding on to my arm, he hobbled to the now open elevator and stepped in gingerly.
    Basillio fell into shamed silence. As we rode down, I realized there was probably more than a grain of truth in his comment about my being turned on by the “hunt.” I was serious about helping Lucia out of this mess, of course, but I had to admit the idea of stepping into the
haute
world of the ballet was tantalizing in the extreme.
    Unlike Tony, however, I would never be caught attempting a
tour
of any proportion. First of all—I looked over at the obviously pained and red-faced Basillio—women rarely perform that step. And second—I didn’t dare let him see me struggling not to laugh—my medical insurance is always an inch away from cancellation. As for Tony’s insurance, I was betting the fool had none.

Chapter 9
    One of my regular clients had once told me, as we sat over cups of her home-mixed herbal tea: “Put a whopping spoonful of caviar on a small piece of milk-soaked bread, and place it on the floor twenty feet away from a cat. No matter how much that cat wants that caviar, most likely she will not approach it directly—as would a hungry dog or bird or bee.” Cats do not, she said emphatically, approach food directly.
    “Now, there are those who say the reason for this is that the cat approaches inert food sources the same way she approaches ‘live’ food which she must kill to obtain—that is, circuitously, in a stalking mode.
    “It is my belief that the cat is performing a quasi-mystical geometric ritual known only to felines. Which is why cats often inscribe squares, triangles, and other such configurations before finally coming close to their food dish.”
    At the time I had made no comment, simply taking my paycheck and saying so long to Hilda, an impossibly beautiful white angora, and Waldo, a tiger-stripe half the size of a Doberman. Yet that wild speculation on feline geometrical movements was swirling around in my head as I sat in Louis Beasley’s rather strange home. He had finally allowed me to question him in his combination apartment/place of business, at 2 Fifth Avenue.
    The room in which this porcine, world-famous, ostentatiously dressed impresario met me was curiously devoid of furniture, with the exception of an armchair