Cat in a White Tie and Tails

by Carole Nelson Douglas

  Chapter 47

  After-Hours Nightmare

  “I could use a good PR woman,” the voice on Temple’s phone said.

  “For what assignment?”

  “Closure.”

  “Not in my job description.”

  “You’ll like it. Trust me.”

  “I always did. But Max, it’s almost one o’clock in the morning and we’re supposed to be recovering from a … strenuous public appearance. We might still be a little shaky, your legs and mind, my sanity and cat.”

  “The closure is for the Synth.”

  “Oh. That does sound tempting. Now?”

  “Yes. At the Neon Nightmare.”

  “Aren’t they still open now?”

  “They’d shut down to the public a couple days ago for ‘reconstruction.’ After the debacle at the Oasis, who knows when they’ll reopen. I do think a small closing ceremony is required.”

  “Closed down? So what do you need me there for?”

  “Personal satisfaction.”

  “Mine, or yours?”

  “Both, hopefully.”

  “I’m not supposed to be getting that out and about.”

  “It’s metaphorical, of course.”

  “Of course. Okay. I’ll bring Midnight Louie as a chaperone.”

  “Fine by me. Maybe not by the Synth.”

  “Even better.”

  “You’ll be home again before Mr. Midnight signs off the air.”

  Max himself had signed off on that note.

  Temple looked down at Midnight Louie, who’d come to sit by her feet and, she swore, eavesdrop by some mysterious placement of his ears as antennas.

  “Mysteriouser and mysteriouser,” she muttered. “Dare we trust a man who’d let us ride an elephant as mere distractions? What does he want us to distract from now?”

  Louie yawned. It was late.

  “Also, what does one wear to a closuring?” she asked rhetorically.

  Then she padded barefoot to her bedroom closet to come up with something quick and clean and nautical, navy wide-leg capris and a red-striped knit top and rope-decorated wedgies. This certainly wasn’t club wear, but Neon Nightmare didn’t sound like it was doing too much rocking right now.

  Louie was definitely in one of his climbing moods.

  She locked her door and took the elevator down, but he met her by the Miata in the parking lot, having used the lone palm tree trunk as an exit. A suspicious number of light-reflecting iridescent green eyes lurked among the oleanders.

  Temple took the Miata’s top down for the short drive to Neon Nightmare, and Louie lofted over the low car’s side into the passenger seat.

  She checked her watch. Matt’s return flight time forced him to go straight to his midnight-to-2:00 A.M. show, and he’d be home a half hour later. Temple wanted to be there to explain her Circus Circus moments at the Oasis. He’d been distracted by his mother’s sticky romantic problems, poor guy. In fact, the whirlwind Chicago trip must have been pretty stressful. It would be great to get back to easy-as-pie normal, especially after a wearing heist-busting.

  Speaking of which, what was Max up to? She wouldn’t be meeting him like this if she wasn’t sure it was old business, including circumstances she’d been deeply involved in. Max without a memory displayed no sexual interest in her at all.

  That was a bit insulting, but mostly a huge relief. She looked over at Louie, who sat up in the seat like a person and looked around with great interest, like a dog. If you wanted to see “insulted,” it would be Louie if he knew her thoughts at the moment. He regarded people, and certainly dogs, as inferior species. Sometimes she thought he had a point.

  “Now,” she told him later when she put the Miata into Park in the almost deserted Neon Nightmare parking lot, “this is another weird place full of weird lights and people.” As far as she knew, the Neon Nightmare was new to Louie. Midnight Louise had led the Cat Pack raid on the Synth the first time she saw them in action, right here. And they’d taken down only two Vaders that time.

  Temple eyed the black glass pyramid’s exterior. The neon rearing horse still reigned atop the peak. She guessed the interior was the same overlit, sound-system-drenched bar and dance club as ever.

  It pleased Temple as she approached the neon-arched entry that she and black cats had been the recurring bane of the Synth magicians who’d owned and run this building, and whose plans to plunder Las Vegas had been foiled so spectacularly at the Oasis, thanks to Max and the Cloaked Conjuror.

  Temple yanked on one of the front door’s huge handles. She’d recently brought a firearm into this place, it had seemed so dangerous. Could she really walk into this possible trap? Could she still trust Max, maimed as he had been?

  As she hesitated, Midnight Louie stretched his yard-long frame up the massive door. He wanted in. She leaned all her weight on the bronze door to crack it, then did it again. As it opened with no protesting noises, they left the warm Las Vegas night to slip into the cool, stale silence of the dark interior.

  Temple’s shoes had ridged rubber soles. Louie’s feet had soft pads. They made no noise as they moved into the massive central dance and drinking area.

  Neon still silhouetted the bar area, the spinning disco lights still cast the thirteen signs of the Synth zodiac on the floor and … people still sat at the bar, drinking.

  Temple edged nearer, unnoticed. Two women, one fat, one lean. One man, medium. No, the chubby woman was the medium, as Temple recalled. These were the three people Temple had seen threatened by the two Darth Vader invaders in the rooms concealed behind the nightclub’s mirrored black walls.

  They’d spotted her for only one lightning-flash moment, but they’d sure seen the Las Vegas Cat Pack take down their enemies, the Vaders. They’d resurrected those sinister figures for the Oasis caper, but Temple was sure the earlier Vaders didn’t participate. They had carried serious weapons.

  Right now, what was left of the Synth wasn’t expecting to see anyone or anything. All hunched morosely over the cocktail of choice, the liquor bottles sitting on the glossy black bartop ready for several refills.

  “The street troops did a fine job,” the solo man said mournfully. “Their timing was perfect.”

  “So was the ‘timing’ of our enemies,” the slender woman in a green satin gown answered, pointed elbows on the bar, a wide-mouthed martini glass cradled in her hands.

  “Two sets of them,” the heavyset woman said in a ponderous voice. Temple couldn’t see past her voluminous caftan to what witches’ brew she drank. “Who invited the tap-dancing fools to our sidewalk snatch party?”

  “The Darth Vaders came here uninvited,” the man reminded her. “We were helpless then too.”

  Temple was back-stepping on tiptoe. Max wouldn’t have wanted her to be here alone with these Synth members. Why the heck had he called her here? At least Louie …

  She looked down. Louie was gone. He’d probably ambled somewhere else in the empty nightclub, soundless and stealthy.

  Well, darn.

  Rethink that.

  Well, damn.

  Here she was alone with a trio of depressed magical mobsters who’d tried to heist a Strip casino only hours ago. She made out the shape of an upholstered banquette behind her and sank down on it, trying to become invisible.

  “This place is kaput,” the man said. “We can’t pay the mortgage, just like Mr. and Mrs. America.”

  The plump woman spoke next. “Going for that prize money was a long shot, Hal, but Cosimo’s death is what really did us in. He knew where all the money we’d been promised was hidden. Do you think he gave it up to whoever killed him?”

  “It was never our money,” the man told her. “We were in it for the glory of doing a mass illusion like tonight. Face it. We knew we were being set up as a distraction for another major heist by whatever crime elements amassed the supposed hidden fortune we were guarding, but look at the razzle-dazzle we stage-managed with the crowd tonight. Our street performers’ tra
nsformation, the distraction, the scale, we almost waltzed that transparent treasure chest right out of there until that mob of tap-dancers co-opted our action.”

  “‘Close’ is worthless,” the Thin Woman said. “We were outmaneuvered by the Cloaked Conjuror and his freaking Fred Astaire accomplice. How did they know to do the white tie and tails bit? That was our gimmick!”

  Hal was still mourning. “I don’t know. It’s just lucky we set up a flash mob of civilians to wear the same Vader heads and cloaks as the two thugs who accosted us in our own clubrooms only nights ago, or we’d never have been able to escape. How could CC know about our plans? We just put them together on the fly with…”

  “Guess who’s missing right now? Max Kinsella,” the Thin Woman pointed out. “We stole the formal-wear heisters idea from his act, but he conjured a whole new illusion for us.”

  “So we were betrayed. What’s new,” Hal asked. “We should slit our wrists? You’re a medium, Czarina Catharina,” he added bitterly. “What do you see in our future?”

  The woman spun around on her barstool. The lighting from above made her face into a cratered dark side of the moon, excessive weight, age, and defeat evident in every highlight and shadow.

  Temple glimpsed a giant bubble glass behind her, almost empty, with booze the color of C. R. Molina’s electric blue eyes at the bottom. Had Czarina been drinking that much Blue Curaçao straight? Temple checked the bottle on the bar. Yes. Oh, the calories!

  “I see dead people, Hal,” Czarina intoned.

  “Oh, shut up.” The Thin Woman straightened her sharp shoulders and half spun to address Czarina. “Nobody died today. Just dreams died today. The Cloaked Conjuror is a bigger sensation than ever, the big, fat, rich, anonymous bully. He’s okay, but we shed our Vader skins to escape and are okay too.”

  “Maybe not, Ramona.” Hal spun to face into the deserted room, elbows pushed back to lean on the bar.

  Oh, great. Temple was once again an unseen eavesdropper on the Synth at work and play, or, actually, idle and in despair. She was a witness. They’d recognize her from the last time she’d shown up at their headquarters, would know she wasn’t just a “lost customer.” She wished she’d been foolish enough to carry a gun here again.

  Would Max really invite her to this Synth pity party and not show up? Just how muddled was his memory?

  She considered bending out of sight below the table, planning to crawl out in the darkness, a tactic both humiliating and scary.

  A clinking sound stirred the banks of shelved liquor bottles behind the bar. The trio snapped their heads to the rear, spinning back around to face the mirror behind the wall of booze that reflected shards of their unhappy faces.

  Temple froze in place. Any motion now would attract them.

  “Poltergeists,” Czarina intoned.

  “The building settling,” Hal said. “Why shouldn’t it fall apart too? You just said ‘nobody died’ today, Ramona. What about yesterday? Just few days ago.”

  “Cosimo, sure,” she answered. “Maybe one of the Vaders did it.”

  “Or one of us,” Hal said.

  “What? Are you crazy?” Czarina jerked half around to look him in the eye past the intervening presence of Ramona.

  Hal shrugged and turned away. “A couple of our would-be recruits didn’t make it either.”

  “Who?” Czarina demanded.

  Temple noticed Ramona’s long nails caressing the sides of her martini glass.

  “Gandolph,” Hal said.

  The word almost made Temple’s heart stop. She had to hear this.

  Then she thought, Which death is he talking about? Gandolph’s fake death or the recent real one? Max. You wouldn’t take this almost-confession lying down. Where are you?

  “Gandolph? He’s been out of the picture for … months and months.” Czarina stretched for the tall blue bottle and poured more liquid sapphire into her glass.

  Ramona smiled as she turned around to hold her martini glass at her breastbone. “He died at that Halloween séance to channel Harry Houdini. He died disguised as a fat old female medium, the rumor went,” she said maliciously. “Was he gay, or just crazy?”

  “He was a longtime friend of Cosimo’s.” Hal lifted his highball glass in a solo unspoken toast. “Old-school magicians like those two will never come again. I thought at the time maybe you had killed him, Czarina.”

  “Me?”

  “He’d outed you as a fake medium only months before. He may have lifted your likeness for the Houdini gig. That’s a lot of hurt for your professional reputation, not to mention personal ridicule, Czarina. And now someone’s killed Cosimo too.”

  “Hmm.” Ramona lifted her glass like a chalice and sipped before speaking. “I’d always wondered if it was you, Hal.”

  “That séance death? Surely not Cosimo’s.”

  Ramona shrugged, which did great things for her décolletage, especially in the dramatic overhead lights. “Both, maybe.”

  “So.” Czarina was starting to sound soused. “Hal thought I killed Gandolph and you thought he killed Gandolph and Cosimo. Who do you think I thought you killed?”

  “Are there any more deaths to go around, Czarina?”

  “You bet, Ramona. You almost won the Cloaked Conjuror’s assistant to our cause. What a coup that would have been. Then Barry tragically ‘fell’ from the stage catwalk during that TitaniCon science fiction convention.”

  “I don’t do straight-up ladders for three stories with these shoes, Czarina.” Ramona kicked up her slinky hem to showcase a high-arched foot wearing a killer spike heel. “Now, if he’d been stabbed to death … It was an accident. No police were on it.”

  “Then what about those would-be recruits Hal was mentioning, Czarina?”

  “I happen to know, Ramona,” Hal put in, “from Cosimo’s own lips, that you tried to seduce that university professor to our side and he wouldn’t seduce. How much about us did you tell him? Because he ended up dead in his classroom.”

  “That was an exhibition area,” Ramona said, her face and body stiff with control. “Jeff was an … engaging man, more interested in my mind than my body, true, but I seldom encounter men like that.”

  “You don’t give them a chance to skip over the obvious, rather,” Hal said.

  “I … was sorry he died.” Ramona took another oh-so-controlled sip of her straight-up martini. “He had a genuine love for magic and those who made it their lives. He studied the mystification, the surprise, the delight of the audience. He had theories from old, old books. I’d never realized the history … He made me feel like a kid again, wanting to believe, to be believed.”

  Temple, the lone unacknowledged audience member in the dark, believed her.

  “Someone jealous of your intellectual infatuation with your professor killed him,” Czarina decided. “Hal? Did you contribute to Professor Mangel’s ‘study’?”

  He nodded. “You too, I imagine. We’re all suspects.” He frowned. “I suppose you thought I killed Gandolph’s female assistant as well. That I was attempting to seduce her to our cause and failed.”

  “Gloria?” Ramona was surprised. “She was a done deal. She was eager to join us. She disapproved of Gandolph’s retirement quest of exposing mediums as fakes. She nattered on about people needing faith, needing spiritual guidance from the spirit world. I might have killed her myself to shut her up.”

  “But people do need that!” Czarina turned passionate. “It’s not just a scam. We mediums are … deep-sea divers. We’re trying to take our clients to a deeper level of their memories and emotions so they can see those they love are always with them in some way. Everybody mocks now. Everyone’s a cynic. Everyone gets to see the man behind the curtain. That’s why I hate the Cloaked Conjuror. He’s wrenched the magic out of our lives.”

  “But you wouldn’t kill him?” Hal asked.

  “Knowing what I do of the spirit world? Creating such a black hole of injustice in the universe as murder? I want my powers to hea
l, not destroy. I want recognition, yes, but not revenge. That’s so poisoning.”

  “Hmm,” Hal said. “So our heartless seductress became an acolyte of a mild-mannered professor and our ridiculed medium would never besmirch her afterlife with a destructive act and, frankly, ladies, I’m too old and honest with myself to care to kill anyone. So who did the crimes?”

  Temple recognized her inevitable cue. A dramatic pause she had to fill. Now she really knew more than they did.

  “Have you all ever considered … Cosimo Sparks?” she asked.

  “Who’s out there? Who is it?”

  Three hands saluted the owners’ eyebrows as they glared past the moving lights into the darkness to find her. Ramona let the hand shading her eyes tilt down to cover them. Hal and put his hands at the sides of his face. Czarina gasped and clapped a hand to her mouth to stifle a cry. They resembled the See No Evil, Hear No Evil, Speak No Evil monkeys gone catatonic.

  Temple stood.

  As everyone stared speechlessly during a long, flabbergasted pause, something thumped onto the bar top. One Midnight Louie, taking a stroll through the Stoli and Beefeater and Blue Curaçao bottles.

  A second unmistakable thump. Another black cat landed atop the barstool next to Czarina.

  Thump. A black cat beside Hal bracketed the trio.

  “Don’t freak,” Ramona told her confreres. “It’s just those rabid cats that invaded our clubrooms when the two clowns in Darth Vader masks threatened us. These kitties clawed those invaders to shreds. And the woman lurking in the dark over there is Restroom Girl.”

  Czarina lifted glasses on a beaded chain invisible against her patterned caftan to her shocked face. “Yes, it is. She claimed she’d gotten lost on the way to the restrooms.”

  Hal pushed off the barstool and limped forward two steps. “What do you mean have we ever considered Cosimo Sparks? He was our natural leader, totally committed to making a statement. He knew we were … caretakers of those mysterious parties’ hidden loot. He wouldn’t have betrayed them, because when they got ready to do their biggest Vegas heist in history, we’d bring off the biggest magical illusion in Vegas history too. In person. Not like David Copperfield making the Statue of Liberty vanish on TV, but right in front of people. That’s magic the old-fashioned way.”