Cat in a White Tie and Tails

by Carole Nelson Douglas

  “Look,” Temple said. “You all thought each other might have done it. You all deny it rather convincingly. That leaves … Cosimo Sparks as the murderer. These dead people were all ‘recruits’ for your secret Synth-esis of magic and mysticism. All except Gandolph. He wouldn’t ‘recruit.’ They all knew too much once they refused to join.”

  “Gloria Fuentes was with us,” Hal said.

  “She was also highly religious and her confessor thought she suffered from too many scruples as well as superstitions,” Temple revealed. “Her scruples may have won out in the end. She might have backed out. Such people tend to have loose lips. And Professor Mangel … his enthusiasm for magic would have stopped at anything dicey. He had credibility. If he became alarmed at your backing a dangerous heist that could hurt people, he’d out you live on Channel Five, believe it.”

  “I wasn’t so obvious about what the Synth actually was with him.” Ramona’s curled lip distorted her beautiful face. “I know how to be subtle. Jeff would not have been a threat, whether he went along with me … us. Or not.”

  “Could Cosimo afford to believe that?” Temple asked.

  Ramona frowned. Her prideful expression crumbled. “I did complain to Cosimo about Jeff being ‘too Goody Two-shoes’ for us. Oh, God. If Cosimo killed him because of what I said—”

  Hal was adamant. “Cosimo died protecting whatever had been stored in that empty safe!”

  “Maybe so,” Temple said, “but he may have done it for his own fanatical purposes.”

  She paused, then quoted an unforgettable line from some Synth-related papers Max had found hidden long ago at Garry’s house and she had reviewed lately. “‘The aberrant brother shall be declared anathema. The price upon his head shall be death.’”

  The three jerked backwards as if snake-bit.

  “How’d you get that?” Hal demanded. “That’s from the sacred illuminated Book of the Synth, from the induction ceremonies. Only sworn members see the liturgy, and only once.”

  “That does read like a license to kill,” she said, “and some sects consider all nonmembers are born to damnation, so offing a few who were a threat wouldn’t be a big leap.”

  “The Synth had its ancient, revered ceremonies,” Czarina said, “but it was a philosophy, not a religion. Nobody took that ‘aberrant brother’ and ‘price upon his head’ seriously.”

  “Maybe Cosimo did,” Temple said, “and then he ran up against some desperadoes who had no compunction against killing to get what they needed for their own ‘sacred’ cause. And if those secret ‘backers’ of the heist-concealing illusion were putting the pincers on you to produce the money they’d stashed in Las Vegas, think what pressure they might have been putting on Cosimo. The coroner found multiple marks from the knife-point before the killing stab was struck. I’m guessing Cosimo, if he’d been willing to kill for his grand plan, would be willing to keep mum and die for it too.”

  “You can’t prove this,” Ramona charged.

  “No. But you’re all in jeopardy if my theory is true, from the law as accessories and from our mutual acquaintances we call the Vaders.”

  “You are just a Restroom Girl.” Ramona advanced on Temple, each step a hammer strike on the hard black Lucite floor. “What makes you think you can stroll into our nightclub, onto our property, and make accusations with what they call impunity?”

  “The killer cats?”

  By then the number of black cats sitting tall on barstools and the bar had tripled.

  The trio turned around to take in that eerie sight. Czarina and Hal froze into position.

  The silence was complete again, and eerie, and sad.

  An interruption in the rhythmic passage of the rotating zodiac made the drinkers look up. Temple and Louie too.

  A tiny flash of white at the interior pyramid’s apex seemed to be growing closer. It grew larger, and then you understood that it was lowering and growing closer. The trio at the bar seemed mesmerized.

  Closer, and closer … a figure in white tie and tails, descending on an invisible black thread like a spider, silent and stealthy but relentless.

  Temple eyed the three at the bar, prey for the descending black widower. They’d already drunk themselves into near-paralysis.

  “Cosimo…” Hal stood, clutching at his bow tie, a melodramatic gesture that would have looked silly had he not been scared stiff. “He’s alive.”

  “No. His ghost.” Czarina was staring upward as if transported. “Speak to us, spirit.”

  “The only spirits here are in your glasses.” Ramona stood and glared into the lights, hands on hips, defying the oncoming figure. “Enter our nemesis. Max Kinsella. He engineered our floating table trick with the street performers and then turned around and engineered the aerial high jinks and off-and-on chest-vanishing illusion with the Cloaked Conjuror and all his high-tech equipment.”

  Something came flying down out of the dark.

  A black top hat.

  An object as white and weightless as dove plummeted down next, and then another just like it.

  A third such fluttering drifted down in the silence as the figure lowered in the same supernaturally smooth fashion. Looking up, into the lights, made him a man of mystery still, even for Temple.

  She could see a silver wand tumbling down end over end, and then … it vanished.

  On the nightclub’s black Plexiglas floor lay a shiny black top hat, two empty white gloves, and a white bow tie.

  Above, was nothing. No motion, no descending body. Nothing.

  Chapter 48

  Bringing Down the House

  As dramatic exits go, that was a pip.

  Especially since there was no entrance to start with.

  I have got to give Mr. Max Kinsella credit for a true magical presence. First you see him; then you do not. Some people could call him irresponsible. Some people could call me just a cat. You can never go by “some people.”

  Meanwhile, I am more than somewhat pleased that I instructed the Cat Pack to assemble here at Neon Nightmare after the Oasis adventure, just in case Synth shepherding was needed. I released the tuxedo unit to go back to the police substation for a well-earned fast-food feast at the hands of Las Vegas’s finest.

  So Mr. Max is the only formally dressed presence here. I hope he spotted my reduced posse and me, and appreciated our letting him hog the stage. Again.

  Meanwhile I set an example for our next moves by sidling over to the almost empty bottle of Blue Curaçao and giving it a gentle swipe.

  It crashes onto its side, leaving a macabre tail of blue blood leaking out of its lip.

  Miss Czarina Catherina screeches and jumps even farther away from the bar, just as Inkadoo and Blacula jump up on each shoulder of Mr. Hal Herald. His Adam’s apple sets his bow tie jiving as he swallows hard and recalls how the Cat Pack shredded the Darth Vaders’ much heavier cloaks during the showdown in the Synth clubrooms.

  With my Miss Temple armed, for the first time in her life, the Pack was there to see to it that no concealed carrying laws were visibly broken. Now we are here to see that certain shady characters scatter posthaste, so Miss Temple can leave safely under our escort.

  Mr. Hal’s shuddering session has encouraged Inkadoo and Blacula to jump to barstools to watch the back of his departing heels. Miss Czarina is wailing and calling on Bast to help her, so I merely escort her out the length of the bar and meow a polite good night.

  Ramona is a hard case. She is eyeing Miss Temple with an aim to exercise a bit of territorial imperative. I well recognize the signs in any species.

  It is then that Miss Midnight Louise chirps from her spot near Miss Ramona’s barstool, stretches with her posterior and big plumy tail up in the air, opens her dainty jaws wide, and extends one elegant black-velvet foreleg to the side of Miss Ramona’s green satin gown and draws one claw down it from shoulder to décolletage.

  Miss Ramona gets the message and scrams with an echo of very fast high heels.

  My Miss
Temple has watched all this with interest but without comment. She looks up into the empty peak of the almost empty nightclub.

  I stalk over and rub around her ankles, in and out like the famous Hollywood hamburger joint handles customers, to say that I will wait outside.

  A couple head-jerks from me, and the Pack leaves various stations on the bar, stepping carefully around the sticky trickle of Blue Curaçao. I must say Miss Midnight Louise sashays out at her own speed and druthers, pausing like a statue of Bast to look up as intently as Miss Temple.

  Chapter 49

  Max’s Last Act

  Just as mysteriously as Louie could suddenly be there in less than the blink of an eye, Temple’s intent stare caught a bit of white still at the peak of the building.

  The zodiac signs still washed over the floor like a ghostly cleaning crew.

  And the dove hovering in the artificial night sky slipped closer and closer until it was a white shirtfront and the face above it.

  Temple bent to pick up the gloves, the wand, and the top hat.

  “How can you do this?” Temple asked Max as he touched ground.

  “Do what?”

  “Risk an aerial stunt in this place, with this equipment?”

  “Magicians have to do the impossible.” He looked up. “The equipment Garry and I installed is sound, and was tampered with only after I’d inspected it and started down.”

  “Then the would-be killer was comfortable with heights and that kind of equipment.”

  Max nodded. “But you can see from the earlier events tonight how many unemployed aerial workers are available around Vegas now. Speaking of risk and the impossible, I knew you could do it.”

  “Do what?” she said in her turn.

  “Get that instinctive yet clockwork mind of yours ticking on the real dynamics of the Synth.”

  “My theories would never get an arrest warrant or play in court.”

  “Maybe not. Maybe not yet.”

  “Is the Synth defanged now?” Temple asked Max.

  “Pretty much. I can always yank out an extra tooth if they get forgetful.”

  She looked up into the vast dark disappearing into a peak, the disco lights now crackling in the night, heat lightning, and bathing their faces and bodies with a dizzying round of zodiac signs. Hers Gemini. His Aries. Theirs … always, Ophiuchus.

  “I will never forget—and coming from a recovering amnesiac like me, that’s something,” Max said. “I will never forget you saying ‘Max, come home.’”

  Temple knew what she had to say then, but she didn’t know what to say now. So she let Max speak.

  “When I did come ‘home,’ and I saw you, your situation, I thought ‘This woman must be crazy.’”

  Temple shrugged. That’s what you do when you can’t quite speak.

  “I call this stranger that my best friend, my mentor, said I loved and I can’t even remember, and she says, ‘Come home.’”

  Still silent, forced to keep silent. He didn’t seem to notice.

  “My biggest regret about still being alive—”

  Temple tried to cut off that horrible way to put it.…

  His hand lifted, the magician hypnotizing an audience into silence.

  “—is that I still don’t remember. And I promise, if I ever do, I will never, ever let you or anyone else know that I do.”

  Max grasped her shoulders and, slowly, kissed her on the forehead. “I’ll wait outside to follow your car home. Just in case.”

  He left.

  Chapter 50

  A Very Vegas Affair

  Temple was having a nice, private nineteenth-century “swoon” on her living room sofa the morning after overseeing the total disintegration of the Synth and proposing a solution to three murders that would likely remain in cold case files for eternity.

  What was frying her brain were the unpleasant facts. For every loose end and murder she might have tied up at Neon Nightmare last night, several messy threads remained. Not the least was the murder of the suspected multiple-killer himself, Cosimo Sparks.

  If world-class architect Santiago had done it, as seemed possible, why would he risk killing such a deluded and low-level crook? And if the three head Synth members had appropriated the Darth Vader look for their panicked heist schemes, who were the real Vaders, the pair that had raided the club headquarters carrying serious weapons?

  And where was the Jersey Joe Jackson loot, which had expanded from rare silver dollars from the Vegas early days to bearer bonds and weapons of mass seriousness?

  Not to mention a series of unsolved “falling” deaths all over town.

  Too much information for even an action heroine to process. She definitely needed downtime.

  In fact, she was lacking only a mint julep and a pool boy (of her acquaintance, of course), when Midnight Louie leaped before looking and made a four-point, twenty-pound landing on her midriff.

  “Oooph, you big oaf! That hurt. Can’t a girl have a time-out to soothe her nerves around this place?”

  Apparently not. Louie added insult to actual injury by using her as a springboard to the newspaper-strewn coffee table. Louie proceeded to dig frantically on the papers he’d been peacefully dozing upon barely a minute before.

  Temple had to feed her leisurely daily print addiction; besides, nothing washed glass to sparkling perfection better than ammonia and ink-stained newsprint. Cats shared Temple’s fancy for outmoded communication forms, and Louie especially.

  Now his big paws were hurtling whole news sections off all four sides of the big low table.

  “Lou-ie. I’ll have to get up, bend over, and pick up your mess. I’m not in the mood for physical exertion. You should understand that better than anybody. Use a litter box!”

  When another Louie swipe revealed her cell phone screen lying one razor-claw away from disfigurement, she leaped upright and grabbed it from harm’s way.

  It purred its thanks in her hand.

  No wonder the cat had disrupted the newspapers. Louie’d been sleeping on her hidden smartphone, and it was set on vibrate, not sound. She bet that had been one big buzz in the behind.

  She put the phone to her ear and heard Matt saying, “Temple. At last I’ve reached you! I’m back in town; something monumental has happened.”

  “Matt? What?”

  “I’m on my way to our place. Your place. At the Circle Ritz. I’ve been running around town at my wits end. I’m almost there.”

  “What’s the emergency?” she asked. “Has something bad happened?”

  “No! Yes. Something beyond inconvenient. They’re arriving this evening on my heels. Where the heck am I going to stow them? What will I do with them? Who can I get on such notice besides an Elvis imitator? Help.”

  “Holy Hysteria! Are aliens landing?’

  “Might as well be. I’m in the parking lot. Unlock your door and pour something ninety proof.” He disconnected without a parting word.

  This was so not like Matt. This sounded like Matt on speed.

  “Thank you, Louie, you faithful alarm-kitty, you!” Temple jumped up, then bent down to grab up scattered newspapers. She also gave Louie a huge wet smooch on the head, which meant he’d be kept busy grooming the assaulted fur until Matt arrived. Poison people lips!

  Temple checked her kitchen cupboards and found the only truly potent liquor: some iffy tequila left over from a margarita-making kick that had lasted about as long as Las Vegas had been marketed as a family-friendly venue … one year. See all the topless pools opened since then in the City That Has No Shame.

  Temple was aghast the Fall of the Synth had temporarily broken her 24/7 connection with Matt and she hadn’t noticed he not only hadn’t called from Chicago but also didn’t check in with her after his show. Apparently something all-involving had kept him too off balance and busy to notice.

  She stirred up some Crystal Light, her all-purpose mixer, and filled two lovely footed crystal glasses. Temple was a great believer that proper presentation c
overed a multitude of flaws, including her cooking. She added a three-count of the Tequila with No Name, making a silent toast to Clint Eastwood, spit-groomed her eyebrows, fluffed her hair, smoothed her mini-muumuu and hovered by the door to await and comfort her uncharacteristically stressed fiancé.

  Matt was dead right. Temple could handle crises in a Chicago minute.

  He burst through the unlocked door seconds later, shut it, sighed, and said, “You won’t believe this.”

  “I believe that you cannot tell a lie. Here.”

  He took the glass she offered, sipped, and then gulped. Sighed again, said, “You rock.”

  “Come into my parlor and tell me what you need.”

  He followed her into the living area, observing Louie sprawling across the couch. “What do I need? Him off the conversation area?”

  Louie leaped up and huffed away, tail at a right angle to his back, the feline middle finger salute.

  “Sorry,” Matt told the departing cat, sitting beside Temple on the empty sofa as they parked their glasses on newsprint “coasters.” “It’s a family matter.”

  “So what’s the matter with your family now?”

  Matt lifted his glass from the coffee table turned cocktail table and toasted her. “Nothing. Now.” He brushed a couple wayward curls off her shoulder and behind her ear and set down the glass again. “I need a wedding consultant.”

  “How soon?”

  “Yesterday.”

  “This is sudden.”

  “Yes, it is. I got the call last night, too late to call you.”

  “‘The call’? That sounds serious.”

  “We are sitting down. Mom and Philip Winslow are flying in this evening to get married in Vegas.”

  “Matt, that’s awesome! They’re thumbing their noses at both families? It’s like Romeo and Juliet.”

  “In midlife. I’m supposed to ‘fix’ it. They cherish some long-gone image of Las Vegas as thronging with cheap drive-up, insty wedding chapels. They don’t have a clue about legal steps and civil ceremonies versus religious ones. Of course, a civil wedding in Las Vegas isn’t recognized in the Catholic Church. They’re acting like a crazy pair of eloping kids.”