cat in a crimson haze

by Carole Nelson Douglas

  Temple supposed that there were enough concealed weapons in the room to arm the LVMPD's tactical squad.

  Molina, however, did not seem in the mood for police matters. She strolled the room's perimeter like a visitor to an art museum, studying each piece of furniture, the carpet, the blinds, the draperies, with quiet reverence.

  "Jersey Joe Jackson's suite," Van explained, pride of possession overcoming fear of another kind of possession. "He was--"

  "I know who he was,'' Molina interrupted in that official way of hers.

  "This was his last residence before his death," Van continued without a hitch. "When the hotel was redone, nothing here was touched."

  Molina turned with a radiant expression. "Brava! It's wonderful . . . and look at that--" she swept toward the television set, Fontana brothers scattering like ultra-formal bowling pins at her approach "--it's a television set, isn't it? Very early." Molina caressed the lid rim as she stared down into the oval screen. "Fabulous."

  Temple was torn between wondering why on earth Van von Rhine had invited a police lieutenant to this informal gathering and pouting because the setting so appealed to Molina.

  Worse, it enhanced her. Her size and height, her floor-length, crimson vintage gown, the simplicity of her hair and makeup fit the Ghost Suite like an old elbow-length kid glove.

  Something touched her arm. She glanced up to find Matt smiling down at her. "The Blue Dahlia looks right at home, doesn't she?"

  His reference made her smile too, but Temple couldn't help feeling that this was her night, her skit, her discovery in the tunnels, her friends and her cat to the rescue, her hotel. Molina was stealing some of Temple's stage-thunder, just by being here.

  "Frank couldn't come?" Matt asked suddenly.

  Molina turned with another one of those disconcertingly serene smiles. ''Unlike myself, he was on duty. He had cleanup work to do." She turned to Nicky and Van. *'Frank is an FBI man.

  You'll be happy to know that he thinks the thieves were not local talent. With other states now allowing legal gambling, criminal elements driven out of Las Vegas years ago are making inroads elsewhere. Some not-too-bright factions decided to bring their ambitions here." Molina paused, as if undecided about continuing. "That's one theory. Then again, foreign elements might be backing native hoods; either gangsters or terrorists who need money and Las Vegas has a lot of that."

  "Foreign gangsters? Terrorists?" Van grew stern. "What kind?"

  Nicky answered. ''I think the lieutenant is referring to the Russian mob that has sprung up since the Soviet Union collapsed. Am I right?"

  ''You're right about the Russian mob, but they were not what I had in mind."

  "The Yakuza?" Nicky asked, doubtful.

  Van was not reassured by this dialogue. "Russian mobs, terrorists, the, the . . . Jacuzzis. At our little Las Vegas hotel?"

  "Don't worry, Mrs. Fontana." Molina was still smiling at Van's original nickname for the Japanese mob. "My own theory involves a much more reassuringly familiar portion of the globe."

  "The Middle East?" Van asked tensely.

  "More like the North Atlantic," Molina answered cryptically.

  Everyone kept blank silence at this perplexing notion, but Temple felt a sudden chill.

  "If the masterminds of this scheme are foreigners, how did they know about our tunnels?"

  Van asked. "Even we had no idea."

  "Ah." Molina placed her champagne glass on the linen tablecloth that temporarily covered the desk. She lifted the big, bold, brassy envelope purse she carried and withdrew a large plastic baggie filled with something white.

  "They had local assistance. And I do have a teensy bit of relevant evidence with me, in hopes you could help identify it. This was found in the tunnel. It appears to be an architectural plan. I know it's folded, but--"

  "The basement floor plans!" Temple came over in high indignation. "This must show the tunnel system. It was missing from the set of plans Van gave me, and I had my own suspicions about where it was. Where did you get it?"

  "In the tunnels. We'll have it examined, of course," Molina said, "but it appears to be a copy."

  "Can I see it?" Temple asked.

  Molina's hesitation was just long enough to be mildly insulting before she handed Temple the plastic bag.

  Temple leaned over the desk and held it up to the wall behind it. Despite her high heels, she had to stretch to touch the folded plan to the wallpaper.

  'There! Can you see the darker oblong on the wallpaper? That's where Van said a photograph of the desert hung for a long time. This folded section covers about a fourth of it. I think this plan was in the frame. Somehow someone saw it when the frame was disassembled to retrieve Jackson's map to the cache of silver dollars.'*

  "Come to think, of it--"Van looked at Nicky with dawning surprise. "There was something on the back of Solitaire's treasure map, but we didn't pay any attention to it."

  "Just as I thought. That's why I asked you to bring this." She touched the framed sketch. "Is that the map you had framed?" Temple asked.

  Nicky and Van nodded as one, seeing the light.

  "Can you take off the paper later and see if it's drawn on the basement plans?" she requested. "I believe that the original plan is still there, but maybe someone else got a copy long ago.

  With a shrug, Nicky turned the frame and ripped the brown paper backing off. Inside was a piece of mat board he managed to pull away from one corner with the tip of his car key.

  Faint blue lines made patterns like the furrow-scribed Peruvian plains that were supposedly an alien airport. Voila!

  Everyone crowded around to see, but Molina was unimpressed. "I said that this was a copy.

  That's what matters."

  "Did Jersey Joe have out-of-state friends or relatives?" Temple asked Eightball.

  . "Who knows? Jersey Joe was a human fox. He didn't like folks to know who he knew or where he lived, and he liked to have a lot of emergency exits out of everything. I'd guess his relationships were as extensive and hidden as those tunnels. He sure took us Glory Hole Guys for a ride. If we're around, some of his other associates from the old days could be too. Maybe we weren't the only ones looking for his loot."

  "Hmm," was Temple's only comment. She was dreaming up twists in the Jersey Joe Jackson theme park again. Everything she learned about the man lent itself to commercialization. And with Jersey Joe dead, it was public domain. What a find!

  "Hmmm," Lieutenant Molina echoed in a far more dubious tone.

  She collected the evidence from Temple and returned it to her purse, then picked up her champagne glass and toured the room again, savoring its ambiance.

  Molina paused before Matt.

  "Was the man who fell from the ceiling an associate from Jersey Joe Jackson's past?" she asked rhetorically, facing only him. ''I doubt that, but it's possible. Will we ever know who he was, or why he was killed?" Her head twisted over her shoulder to regard Temple. "Or about the dead man at the Goliath? I can only promise that I will never stop trying to answer those questions."

  She moved a step or two to replace the champagne glass on the table where Van had set it.

  It was still half full.

  "Thank you for the inviting me up here," Molina told Van and Nicky. She glanced at Temple, then the others. "A most interesting . . . show."

  She glided to the door.

  Temple reflected that this was one of probably only two rooms in the whole world in which clunky old Lieutenant Molina would glide like the spider woman.

  ''You will tell us," Matt said abruptly, stepping forward, "if you find out anything about the dead man. Men."

  "When I find something out," Molina corrected, "I may have another question or two to ask some of those here. Good night."

  In the silence that prevailed like a dropped curtain after she had left, Nicky Fontana shrugged. "I feel like I've just survived the Last Roundup scene in a Charlie Chan movie."

  "That is one spooky dame," a Fontana
brother suggested. "I mean, police officer."

  "Don't mention spooks in this room, please!" Van said with a shudder.

  "I suppose the lieutenant has to be cryptic," Matt said, but he didn't look happy about it.

  Temple didn't know what to say, except that it was time to return to the Circle Ritz.

  She looked at Caviar--Midnight Louise, rather--and found her peeking out from under the chartreuse love seat. Louie still occupied the cushion. Temple sighed. She could hardly force the hero of the hour from his satin-pillowed lap of vintage luxury. Maybe he wanted to be the Phoenix watch-cat again, along with his new namesake. Midnight Louise.

  Louie himself wasn't talking, but he was watching. Intently. Temple realized that his hair had stiffened into an ebony aura. He was staring askance, as if to inquire "Who goes there?"

  Temple followed his absinthe-green stare to Molina's abandoned glass, then looked again, committing a classic double take.

  The champagne flute, half full only seconds before, was now utterly empty.

  Chapter 42

  Templetation

  Temple wasn't sure which part of the sight that greeted her when Matt opened his door was more startling: the vision of a docile Midnight Louie in Matt's arms, or Matt's intriguingly bare upper torso that Louie was obscuring all too effectively.

  "I called because, after moaning all the way home about Midnight Louie's apparent defection, I figured you would be relieved to know," Matt said. ''Not to worry. Apparently, he's come home."

  ''Why to your place, and not mine?"

  Matt scratched Louie under the chin while Temple practically purred. Ah, the advantages of being a cuddly kitty cat.

  "Maybe," Matt said, "it was there, and maybe he forgot which floor you were on after his prolonged absence. The bathroom window's still open for Caviar."

  "Midnight Louise," Temple corrected him. "I think it's kinda cute."

  "I wonder if Louie does." Matt regarded the cat, who blinked solemnly at his scrutiny. ''He's one Zen dude; we'll never know what he's thinking. Maybe he's here reclaiming territory a foreign cat had tainted, or maybe he just knew I had a particularly rough day."

  Matt bent to put Louie on his own four feet again.

  ''Cats can be comforting, when they want to be," Temple agreed. "You want me to take him back to my place?"

  "No." Matt had straightened again and so had his expression.

  Temple watched Louie stalk around the sparsely furnished living room, sniffing this and that.

  She was trying not to feel flustered and failing miserably.

  For one thing, she and Matt were both so undressed, and not ready for it. She had rushed up to see Louie barefoot, wearing a terrycloth romper. Matt had obviously been in bed when Louie arrived, and had time to pull on only trousers in honor of her imminent arrival.

  Why hadn't he pulled on a t-shirt while he was at it?

  Sure, she had seen him in swim trunks by the pool, but that was outdoors and public. This was indoors and . . . intimate.

  It didn't help that Matt looked so good without clothes.

  Louie jumped on the sofa and began sniffing all the corners, no doubt discerning the traces of his new namesake. Temple wished she could smell motivations as easily.

  Matt went over to evict him then turned back to Temple. "I know it's late, but I thought we needed to talk."

  "Sure." Talk was cheap, if nothing else in human relationships was.

  Temple edged over to the couch. They both stood awkwardly before it. At night, with the room so bare and the overhead light so bald, Matt's living room felt like an empty bus station, impersonal and chilly.

  "Sit down." Matt followed his own advice and sat first.

  Temple perched on the adjacent cushion. Lord, she was acting like an idiot!

  "I went to the morgue today," Matt began. He laughed at his own opening line. "You're a bad influence. I never used to get involved in such macabre matters. Anyway, I wanted to make sure that the dead man they found at the Phoenix was my stepfather."

  ''And?" Temple was relieved that things were back to normal and they were discussing less stressful things like bodies and murder, even if the body in question was related to Matt.

  He shook his head. ''I expected sheet-covered gurneys or stainless steel drawers, like in a horror movie. Instead, they have this Viewing room,' a cubicle actually. It's about as homey as the visitors' room at the jail. Beige walls and a picture window with a short drape over it. They pull the curtain and the star of the matinee is lying before you, actually several feet below, on a gurney, covered by a sheet to the neck, like he was sleeping. It's the oddest feeling in the world to look down on the dead."

  ''Especially on someone you knew."

  Matt eyed her intently. "That's just it. I don't know if I knew him."

  "What do you mean? Wasn't that why you went to the: morgue, to settle this once and for all?"

  "Yes. But I should have known better. He's escaped me again."

  "You mean the corpse isn't Cliff Effinger's? Molina will have a cow."

  "Hold on, Molina already knows about this."

  "She does? This changes the whole complexion of the Goliath heist."

  "No, it doesn't. I said I don't know if it's Effinger. . .That means I can't tell. I can't identify him."

  "Of course you can. This is the man who made you and your mother's life hell for years. How can you forget a face like that?"

  "Temple, you don't realize how death changes people, especially their faces. I should have known better. I've anointed the sick at the instant of death, after all. Our faces, our features, they're merely muscular . . . masks. When the attitudes and tensions that form them leave the body, so does the familiarity. In death, the face elongates, and gravity pulls the skin, even the eyes, to the side. It's instant and impressive. Life is gone, as if the Master Puppeteer had loosened all the strings at once. The more the strains of life have distorted the face, the greater the change."

  "Gruesome! Most of the dead people I've seen, except for funeral home visitations, have been people I didn't know when they were alive. And all those people on television shows waltz in and identify the body just like that."

  "You see my problem? I was so focused on finding Effinger I forgot about morbid transformation. And I haven't seen him for seventeen years. I didn't have a prayer of making a credible identification. Close the curtain and call it quits."

  ''It's like with Max," Temple said slowly. ''You'll never know." Only Matt was facing lost hate, not love.

  Matt shrugged. "Maybe that's better. Maybe that's God's punishment for my unforgiving need for vengeance."

  " Max's disappearance isn't punishment for anything. Maybe God isn't that interested in you.

  Sorry, is that blasphemy?"

  Matt's laugh carried only a touch of rue. "No, that's good old secular reality, and I deserved it. This theological angst of mine must be wearing. I can't stop looking for my stepfather, and if I have to start with a stranger's body, I mean to find out who he-was and why he carried Effinger's I.D. I've discovered you can't drop unfinished business. That's why I wanted to talk to you tonight."

  Temple waited, still nervous, while Louie prowled the perimeter.

  Matt angled himself to face her more directly, so their knees--hers bare, his not--almost touched. His arm lay behind her along the top of the sofa's back cushions. She felt a little surrounded, by his seriousness as much as his position. Now she understood the lack of a shirt.

  Baring his body was an unconscious metaphor for baring his soul. She wished she had a seatbelt; she had a feeling this was going to be a Bette-Davis-style bumpy ride.

  "A lot has happened in the past twenty-four hours, but I realized something," he said, "when I was standing there in that bizarre cubicle yesterday afternoon looking down on that , dead body."

  ''About yourself?"

  ''That, and about you."

  "Oh, great. I better get a different perfume. That's not the sort of ambia
nce it's supposed to evoke." Temple's fingernail was nervously tapping her teeth before she realized it.

  "I know it's macabre, but you're not exactly unconnected with that scene." Matt's smile was self-mocking again. "What I realized is that I've been using my personal crises to avoid you, just the opposite of what I told you, and told myself."

  "Yup. That 'Poison' has got to go. And I love the bottle, too."

  "You're hiding behind humor again," he accused mildly, ' "but that's one of your most charming habits."

  "Really? You think I'm charming?" Temple was pleased, even if she didn't think she was charming.

  "I think more than that. I've been thinking a lot about that night on the desert, a lot about you, about . . . touching you again."

  Here it is. Temple thought with despair, her nails picking at the lettuce-edged hem of her shorts, the moment I've been hoping for, and I'm going to sit here paralyzed with pleasure and fear, then say something dumb, or semi-funny, or say nothing at all, which will be the worst thing of all to do. Charming old me.

  But this wasn't her scene; Matt was directing this one. She realized suddenly that playing stage manager gave her a sense-of control she needed to function. Here, she couldn't be sure where Matt was heading--he wanted her madly; he was giving her up for Lent. This was her big opening night, the possible beginning of a real relationship with Matt, and she had a bad case of stage fright.

  "Am I scaring you?" he asked.

  Temple shook her head forced herself to speak. "No. Never. I'm scaring me. I do it all the time."

  "Funny. I never noticed. Too busy being me. Temple, I know you've gotten a few clues, but I'm kind of a mess. You're the bravest woman I know, but are you sure you want rush in where even archangels fear to tread?"

  ''Brave? Me?"

  He nodded. ''In every way it counts. Mentally, emotionally, spiritually."

  "I'm not . . . spiritual."