Cat in an Ultramarine Scheme

by Carole Nelson Douglas

  “You believe you can see Elvis and yet you think a seasoned performer like Mr. Max would use equipment he had not checked for flaws?”

  “Perhaps someone compromised the cord after he had launched. That Neon Nightmare club is a maze of secret passages and rooms. The cord required an anchor at the top. I recall shenanigans of a similar sort at the New Millennium Hotel and Casino, which shortly after put an end to that treacherous lady magician Shangri-La.”

  “Does that not make your nether appendage twitch just the slightest bit? These two acrobatic acts afflicted with lethal malfunctions?”

  “Which ‘nether appendage’ do you refer to?” I ask, deadpan.

  “The one that is long and useful for balance,” she snaps.

  Yup. Literally snaps. I avoid her daughterly snit and let her fangs close on a whisper of my retracting whiskers.

  I am still quick on the draw both fore and aft.

  We hunker down to resume civil discourse.

  “You have made a decent point, Louise. There has been a lot of lethal aerobatic hanky-panky at major hotels lately. Reminds me of the dead dudes found in the spy spaces above the Goliath and New Millennium gaming tables a year or two ago.”

  “Phhhtttt!” she says. “Those were not spectacular deaths of professional performers. The victims there were small-time lawbreakers.”

  “Does that not sniff more of ‘mob’ activity than the Cases of the Plunging Performers?

  “Please, Perry Mason,” she says, “let us not get illiterate about it.”

  “Perry Mason novels are very literate,” I protest.

  “I was referring to the Case of the Repeating Initial Title Consonants. I believe you are guilty of that very thing sometimes. Now I know where you get it. Perry Mason, indeed. I am no Della Street.”

  “No, you are not. You are more what they call ‘proactive.’ ”

  “Thanks, Pop. It makes me sound like a variety of yogurt, but I realize that you meant to be complimentary.”

  Guess Who’s Come to Dinner?

  Temple was surprised to have been invited to Van von Rhine’s office for a one-on-one.

  Van without Nicky was like latte without coffee. Puzzled, Temple hoped the couple’s differences in enthusiasm for the Gangsters redo hadn’t gotten serious.

  She settled into a chair facing the desk. Van didn’t look ruffled.

  “How is everything going?” the boss lady inquired, sticking a Montblanc pen into her blonde French twist.

  The effect reminded Temple of a geisha girl, although Van was anything but.

  “Frankly,” she answered, “we’ve got a bit of a mess. The police are pretty annoyed by the drama of a mysterious, anonymous man in formal dress dying in a hidden vault in an uncharted tunnel beneath major Vegas Strip attractions. The civic mob-museum committee has been threatening to ‘commandeer’ the entire vault for the city’s ‘vintage law-enforcement’ exhibition.”

  “Amusing,” Van said, sounding anything but amused. “Obviously, that death scene is the last thing the police want. They’re clearly out of their depth, excuse the expression. Everything the Phoenix had planned has ground to a costly halt. We need that murder solved.”

  “Yes, ma’am,” Temple said.

  Van sighed and retrieved the pen from her coiffure.

  At that geisha moment, her Asian personal assistant knocked on the door, then entered.

  Tommy Foy had seen Temple in. He knew the women were simply noodling around on Crystal Phoenix matters and therefore interruptible.

  “Miss von Rhine,” he said, “you wanted to know the moment your foreign visitor checked in. Her luggage has been taken to the Crystal Cascade Suite, and she is here.”

  “Wonderful,” Van said, standing. “Show her in.” She smiled at Temple. “This is a friend from my European upbringing, visiting Vegas out of the blue. I’d love you to meet her.”

  Van was literally bubbling over. It reminded Temple that career women like them didn’t have much time to nourish female friendships. Associations, yes. Temple, the only girl in a family of boys, felt a pang that she had no best gal friend in Vegas. Van was an employer, after all, and Electra Lark, a landlady. And, gosh, who next came to mind? Her nemesis, homicide lieutenant C. R., aka Carmen, Molina. Was that pathetic!

  Temple turned to greet the newcomer with a warm smile.

  Oh, wow. Supermodel tall, slim and sleek. Blonde like Van, only not like Van. Zorchy, used to be the word. Cool, blonde, and hot, the type that always made Temple feel like she was on loan from the Girl Scouts to the local high school. Or college. Or TV station job.

  “Revi!” Van exclaimed, coming around her desk to grasp expensively suited arms and to brush cheeks. “So amazing to see you again.”

  “And I, you. I see so few from Saint Moritz these days.”

  “A girls academy in Switzerland we both attended,” Van, always the perfect hostess, explained to Temple. “And, Revi, this is the hotel’s ace public-relations expert, Temple Barr. My school friend, Revienne . . . Schneider, is it still?”

  “Yes, of course,” the blonde said, with the faintest of accents. “You also work under your maiden name?”

  “Of course,” Van said.

  Well, Temple thought, ‘Revi’ had neatly dodged the issue of her marital status. Bet she knows Van’s married surname to an F, as in “Fontana family.”

  “Revienne is such a lovely name,” Temple noted. “I’ve never heard it before.”

  “Yes,” Van agreed. “It’s French, but totally unique. It comes from the word return, and here she’s returned to my life. I wish I had such an evocative name.”

  “Now, Van,” Revienne said, “I’ve always found your full name enchanting. I do understand why you dislike it, though.” The woman sat in the chair next to Temple and arranged her long legs into a paired, high-fashion-model side slant. “I use mine in full form now.”

  No more girlish “Revi,” she was saying.

  In fact, Temple had a rough time envisioning the newcomer as ever having been an awkward adolescent. Revienne wore a mossy green silk suit that had to have been purchased in a major Europe an capital and which fell into expensive, unwrinkled folds fresh from the transatlantic flight.

  “No time to psychoanalyze me at the office, Revienne,” Van said, donning her impassive executive mask for a moment, in fun. “We’ll dine after you’ve rested. What brought you to Las Vegas so suddenly?”

  “I’d been promising to do some lectures for a friend from Lyon. He’s had a visiting professorship at your branch of the University of Nevada here. Hugo Gruetzmeyer. He thought a local case might intrigue me. But, Van, I caught some disturbing buzz on the Internet after the flight.”

  “You’re talking about the Crystal Phoenix,” Van said, her blue eyes sharpening. “So, this is a business, not a pleasure trip. What is your business then?”

  Temple would not have wanted to be under Van’s suddenly suspicious gaze. Her hotel and her husband’s family were the center of a sensational murder case. Even old school friends needed to prove themselves for suddenly showing up.

  Revienne shrugged her wide, expensively clad shoulders. Her quick gray-eyed glance summed up Temple’s position and temperament as if taking a psychic temperature.

  Temple felt as cautious as Van did. This woman was as quick and subtle as she was smart, in both meanings of the word.

  Revienne spread her long, graceful fingers palms up, in a gesture of charming surrender. Temple noticed she wore no rings, not from a man and not from Revienne to Revienne. Temple instantly remembered Matt’s glamorous engagement ring on her third finger. She’d certainly come to take it for granted and sometimes wondered if it was too much bling for a petite woman. Now it felt like a glitzy weapon blinking out a Morse-code message: Don’t tread on me. I have backup, lady.

  It was weird this woman got her and Van’s hackles up so fast. They were equally protective of the Crystal Phoenix, perhaps, and even more protective of the Fontana family males, as
well. Temple did have some best pals in Vegas, she realized. They just weren’t girls, but an updated rat pack of cool guys and one big beautiful black cat named Midnight Louie.

  Revienne gave a single breathy laugh, part apology, part peace gesture. “I realize, Van, and Miss Barr, you need to be sensitive about negative publicity right now. That’s why I’m here. To help. Professor Gruetzmeyer called on me because certain aspects of the tunnel vault death might relate to my experience. I know you have the legendary CSI filmed here in Las Vegas, but that is television-show razzle-dazzle, as you say in this country. I am a respected psychologist on the Continent, and beyond—England, the Mideast . . .”

  “Not in the U.S.?” Temple asked.

  “Not . . . yet. Though I very recently worked with a most challenging and unforthcoming American. You are a wary people, I must say.”

  “These are wary times,” Van said.

  “Exactly. I do have experience in cases involving terrorism.”

  “Perpetrators or victims?” Temple asked.

  “Both,” Revienne said.

  “This has nothing to do with terrorism,” Van said. “We have one unidentified man, in formal costume yet, dead and likely murdered in an abandoned part of the hotel property. If we hadn’t been, er, excavating for a new attraction, no one would have known.”

  Revienne gave Temple an amused (possibly condescending) glance. “I take it your publicity efforts devised the live taping of the old vault being opened. I never heard on any news source that anything besides the dead man was found inside.”

  Temple tapped the sole of her high-heeled Nina sandal on Van’s cushy carpeting. “No news is bad news when it comes to publicity. The Crystal Phoenix is getting as much buzz as the Wynn or the Venetian now. If you manage to solve the death, it’ll make a super exhibit in the new Mob Museum at our affiliated facility, Gangsters.”

  “Spin,” Revienne mocked. “You Americans are experts at it until you become entangled in unexpected outcomes.”

  “You French, on the other hand, are experts at food, wine, and tomfoolery.”

  “Tom whom?”

  Van laughed. “L’amour, illicit love affairs, Temple means.”

  “Ah,” Revienne said, nodding her perfectly windblown, shoulder-length Bed Head. “Is love ever truly illicit?” She nodded at Temple’s ring finger. “You are tying yourself to one man—always risky. An impossible dream, perhaps?”

  “Not really,” Van said briskly. “You’ll meet my husband at dinner, if you can rest sufficiently to be up and about then.”

  “Oh, I slept on the plane. Like a baby.” She stood, all five-nine of her on four inches of Christian Louboutin spike-heeled leather.

  “Barbie goes supermodel,” Temple muttered under her breath, as Van ushered her friend to the office door.

  “What was that, Temple?” Van asked, coming back.

  “Your friend could be a supermodel.”

  “Not really. They’re even taller and thinner.” She sat in her chair and swayed it from side to side. “I suppose we could use the help of an internationally known psychologist, but Revienne has become rather tiresomely perfect.”

  “She wasn’t always like this?”

  Van shook her head in its polished blonde-satin helmet of elegant hairdo.

  “Those exclusive girls schools in Switzerland? We were all offspring in the way of our wealthy parents, parked there to learn how to look and act healthy, wealthy, and wise. We were mental messes, Temple, and Revi—Revienne—was just as fragile and confused as the worst-off of us. My father was a widowed hotel executive who changed temporary residences and lovers almost as frequently as the maids changed sheets. He had a semilegitimate reason for dumping me. Revi’s parents had a stable luxury flat in Paris. They dumped her because she witnessed her younger sister’s suicide.”

  “Oh, my gosh. That slick woman?”

  “That woman.” Van nodded grimly. “We were all isolated, ignored, and mad as hell. Revienne may look smooth and successful, but that’s what we were trained to do. A renowned psychologist? Yes. But we all learned to put on a good front at school, and unless something dramatic happened to shatter that psychological shellac, which we all hid behind, she’s not the paragon she seems.”

  “What ‘shattered’ your ‘shellac’?”

  Van looked startled. “You think mine did?”

  Temple nodded. “You kept the hairdo and the manner, but you snagged the first Fontana brother to break the family front and marry. I’m happy to say my aunt was the second. How’d that happen?”

  Van smiled and spun her fancy executive chair all the way around, like a kid on a ride. “Nicky. He broke through. Never underestimate the persuasive power of a Fontana.”

  “I wouldn’t,” Temple swore, standing. “If your old school friend and her professor friend want to investigate the death, we can’t stop them. I have some suspicions of my own and will follow them, solo, if you don’t mind.”

  “Not at all.”

  Temple opened the door to leave.

  “But,” said Van, “don’t hesitate to call on all the resources of the Crystal Phoenix, which are mostly Fontana brothers.”

  “Aye, aye, ma’am.” Temple grinned as she shut the door on Van.

  She’d like to see Revienne up against a Fontana brother.

  Not literally, however.

  Bahr Bones

  Temple wasn’t a habitué of the local morgue, but her size-fives had visited the low-profile building a time or two.

  “Dr. Bahr is expecting you, Miss Barr,” the receptionist reported in a happy chirp.

  Temple knew she was a nice break in routine, being alive and not being a grieving relative or in a helping profession.

  “Thank you, Yolanda,” she said. A savvy PR person always reads name tags and uses first names to establish rapport.

  The door to the morgue’s inner sanctum—and here that cliché phrase really resonated—opened, crammed full with burly Dr. Bahr in his white lab coat.

  His surname, tall bulk, and untamed, curly, reddish gray hair had earned him the “Grizzly” nickname. Also, like most medical examiners, he dealt with death and the dead in a matter-of-fact, sometimes wickedly humorous way.

  “Come in, come in,” he greeted her, the soul of professional conviviality. “You are looking very lively,” he confided as he showed her into an empty conference room.

  The vanilla-bland Formica tabletop and surrounding black chairs could have been in any business office.

  “Let’s see today’s shoes,” he suggested before they sat at a pair of meeting corner seats. “Oh, the dead will like that open-toed look, especially the bloodred toenail polish. Tagless toes are a big turn-on here.”

  “High praise,” Temple said, putting her perpetual tote bag, this one red patent leather, on the empty chair seat next to her.

  “You could almost smuggle out a body in that giant bag, Miss Temple.”

  “I’m here on behalf of Gangsters renovated mob museum, but I am not their ‘bag’ lady.”

  “You are nobody’s bag lady,” he said gallantly. “What exactly can I do for you?”

  “Did you ID the vault victim?”

  “Ex–Vegas magician named Cosimo Sparks. Bizarre death.”

  “How did he die? I found the body. He was in formal dress, and I didn’t see a mark on him but the studs on his shirt front.”

  “Sure one of them wasn’t a stab wound?”

  “That would take a pretty ‘anorexic’ weapon.”

  Bahr nodded. “Like a supermodel in spikes. I can’t leak any more confidential info, except to say there were odd hesitation marks. Usually stabbers overdo it, over and over again. Sparks’ wounds were an odd combo: A half dozen trial cuts—hesitations—then a bold killing stroke, one clean, deep drive to the heart. An angry, powerful, but initially timid murderer.”

  “Glad he or she was long gone before I got there,” Temple said, with a mock shiver. “Okay, I could also use any details on the La
ke Mead . . . find. That would be super helpful.”

  “Ah, yes, a cold case. I can spill my guts on that one. Just a figure of speech. So you are intrigued by our old pal ‘Boots.’ Too bad he’s too dead to enjoy having a lovely young lady like you on his case.”

  “You have a name for him already?”

  “We always nickname our corpses for in-house reference. Numbers are so impersonal.”

  “ ‘Old pal’ is not a total figure of speech?”

  Grizzly pouted his lips and shook his head. “Those leg bones are eligible for AARP, at least.”

  It took thirtyish Temple longer than usual to get his meaning. “Oh, fifty years old or more.”

  “That’s going by what’s left of the leg bones. The only parts of the feet and boots that didn’t decay, dissolve, or were eaten are some scraps of the soles. Cowboy boots.”

  “I suppose many men wore cowboy boots out here in the forties and fifties.”

  For answer, Grizzly shifted in his chair and stuck out a foot.

  Temple glimpsed a stitched, pointed black toe.

  “Not necessarily just them,” Grizzly said, stating the obvious.

  How could she have omitted checking out footwear just because it was on a man, and a respected professional man, an older man!

  “My bad,” Temple admitted. “Those are mighty good-looking boots.”

  Grizzly shrugged. “The higher heels and steel arches support your feet when you’re standing over a cold body all day. You gals aren’t the only fashion victims. Besides, height is a psychological advantage.”

  “Don’t I know it,” Temple said glumly, thinking of the perfect Revienne Schneider.

  On the other hand, Kitty the Cutter wasn’t more than five-three, to hear Matt tell it. He was the only man to have seen her alive and in person, and then again, among the naked and the dead, here, where she had finally been both.

  Wow, Temple realized, Max and Matt are the only men who’ve seen both Kathleen O’Connor and me naked. Not a happy thought! Thank goodness women today didn’t have to marry any man who’d seen them naked.