Cat in a Quicksilver Caper

by Carole Nelson Douglas

  I move on.

  I return to the Circle Ritz (because it is en route to the last way station) and I am loath to confront the most iffy female on my list.

  Karma crowns the Circle Ritz like an invisible diadem of New Age mumbo jumbo. The penthouse is her territory, and the ambiguously phrased declaration is her bread and butter. But she is female and deserves consultation.

  I claw my way up the old palm tree onto the high patio, and then through the French doors into the shrouded environment.

  Miss Electra Lark is away, so I have full interrogation rights here.

  First, I have to find Karma, who usually hides.

  She is not under the couch. Or the chairs. Or the bed.

  She is under the sink, in an area reeking of wet wood and lemon wax.

  Her blue Birman eyes shine red in the dark. She was made for color-correcting cameras.

  “Pssst!” her voice warns me.

  “Chill,” I tell her. “I am conducting a survey.”

  “You? A census taker?” The shock draws her out onto the kitchen parquet.

  “A personal survey,” I say.

  “And?”

  “If you had your druthers, would you rather live with a human with a devoted roomie of the opposite sex, or a come-and-go boyfriend with interests abroad?”

  “Are you working for Cosmo now, Louie?”

  “Naw. This is a private poll.”

  Karma slinks all the way out from under the pipes.

  “An interesting question. Does it behoove us felines to have domestic stability or romantic uncertainty in our own love lives?”

  “Uh, I am not talking about my love life. I am talking about my domestic situation, which is another kettle of fish entirely.”

  “Your roomie is a mermaid?”

  “No. She has two legs and no scales, except in her bathroom. I am just wondering which dude to encourage her to glom on to. In a way that would benefit her. And me.”

  “Are you sure that your interests are matching?”

  “No. That is why I am conducting this poll. Look. I know that a girl has gotta do what a girl has gotta do. I just wonder how I come out in all this. I have certain needs.”

  “Like what?”

  “Um, to come and go as I please.”

  “Check.”

  “To have a litter box on the premises, even if I do not deign to use it.”

  “Check.”

  “To be consulted as to my position on the bed.”

  “Aha! That is where your territory overlaps with the men in question.”

  “Right.”

  “And you have been her main squeeze of late?”

  “Pretty much.”

  “Then you are obligated to claim lounging rights no matter who has been or is sleeping in her bed. Assert yourself!”

  “I can handle keeping my claim in the current digs. But what if she moves in with the guy upstairs? Or they buy a house? Then it will be a free-for-all in claiming territory. And I may not want to move and leave the Circle Ritz. It is an ideal location and I am just now engineering moving my aged mother into an adjacent situation.”

  “Louie! No wonder you are troubled. I was not aware that you actually knew your mother, and I am most impressed by your loyalty to her.”

  Karma, being full of slightly schizty psychic cheer, cannot yet grasp what kind of cat dear old Ma Barker is.

  “Do you see any glimmers of who my Miss Temple would be best off with?”

  “And she is—?”

  “Cute little redhead, now temporarily blond. Feisty. Her main job is public relations but she is a darn good gumshoe too.”

  “Ah, she has visited my retreat on occasion. My companion person, Electra Lark, tries to keep intruders out so that my delicate sensory apparati are not clouded, but she is not always successful. I do pick up vibes from humans who haunt the Circle Ritz. But they seem vague, like spirits to me.”

  Karma seems vague to me!

  “Tell me of the rivals for her love.”

  “One is long, dark, and sleek like me.”

  “Him! I have sensed him before. He is a creature of air and high places, an overseer, a guardian, like myself. He is wise but troubled by a past he cannot elude. Your redheaded miss is a fire spirit, a spark of energy and ability. The air spirit will fan her flames, but will also exhaust her emotions.”

  Okay. This does not sound too far out. For once, something Karma says makes sense.

  “And the other man?”

  “He lives here too. He’s got looks to rent out and still win a pageant. He has been stuck on meaning well for so long he can hardly move sometimes, but he is getting over it.”

  “Ah, yellow haired?

  “Right. Blond, the humans call it.”

  Karma nods her head, which is also masked in darker fur like the Siamese sisters, only her dark hose end in white satin gloves and spats.

  “I have seen him.”

  “How?”

  “Sometimes my mystical communion with the stars and moon require me to emerge onto the balcony. He is a water spirit, that one. I have seen him drawing himself powerfully through the deep blue pool below. His life has been struggle, but he has become good at it. I sense a new lightness in his dogged laps to and fro, as if he has sprouted wings that lift him above what that weighs him down in the water.”

  “Water and fire, not a good match, right?”

  “To the contrary, Louie. They balance each other’s destructiveness. Water needs fire to produce steam heat, you know.”

  I gulp. I think I do know. And, worse, I think that Miss Temple and Mr. Matt know now too.

  A lot of help Karma has been.

  But I cannot help asking, “Which element am I?”

  Her Lieutenant Molina blue eyes, which is to say a body-armorpiercing shade of electric blue, nail me to the wooden floor.

  “Earth,” she says. “You are a creature of the streets who trusts your pad leather and your eyes and ears only. A born loner, you are, plodding and practical, and you always get your man. Or woman. You are not airy, or fiery, or even misty, but you are not one to leave any job undone. As for your own love life, I see many options, none of them very immediately rewarding. For now, you are better off meddling in human matters. You seem to have some minor gift for it.”

  On that unhappy prediction, Karma makes the royal circling wave of dismissal with her foreleg.

  I back out, careful not to salaam, and run my rear into the side of a mohair sofa in the main room. Dude, but those buzz-cut bristles sting like a radiator brush!

  I cannot wait to escape onto the balcony and then piton my way down the rough trunk of my faithful palm-tree bridge to the Circle Ritz’s various floors.

  My pads touch hot asphalt at last, and I reflect that solid ground is indeed my medium.

  Unfortunately, my current case is an air-bred one, and I am off to the New Millennium to reconsider the sisters Siamese and just who and what is going on there to put my Miss Temple’s stilettos in a sling.

  As for whom I wish to back in the Circle Ritz bedroom sweepstakes, my mind is torn between the elements of water and air. One a fellow can drown in, and the other can break a dude’s neck.

  Looks to me like my little doll had better watch her backside.

  Old Acquaintances

  Not Forgot

  Back at the scene of the tragedy, an airport metal detector now provided a nice paranoid touch at the entrance to the museum area. A young uniformed guard was manning it.

  Sure enough, Temple “tinged” when she walked through. She had to remove her emerald ring from Max and the small studs in her ears and go through again. Ting.

  “Sorry, ma’am,” the guard said. “I’ll have to wand you. Maybe it’s something metal in your clothing.” His eyes skimmed and nervously deserted her bust area.

  An underwire? He’d thought Temple was wearing an underwire bra? And her a measly 32B since high school? Bless him! The notion was flattering, but Temple couldn’t
bask in it for long and still get on with her sad business.

  “Are you kidding? You have no future in lingerie sales. Look. It’s probably a steel arch in my shoe.”

  Temple went back though, stripped off her Beverly Feldman spikes, and this time waltzed through without producing any rude noises. By then the barely twenty-one-year-old screener was redder than cranberry sauce on Thanksgiving.

  “They should have an ID badge ready for you,” he muttered.

  But when Temple pawed through the plastic-laminated cards, hers bore the image of her old curly redheaded self, not the straight and sleek-locked blond temptress with the Little Orphan Annie chest measurement the Teen Queen show had recently made of her.

  “Old photo.” She sighed, then proved it by flashing her driver’s license. “New look.”

  “No problem, ma’am, just step up to that tape mark and I’ll have this new photo ready by the time you leave.”

  A computer captured her digitally and the guard nodded to indicate that the shot was taken. “Nice change,” he added, auditioning a shy smile.

  Maybe blond hair magically inflated the viewer’s perception of bust measurement. Temple sighed again as she walked into the museum proper and turned about six male heads.

  She had to dump this bleach job if she wanted to get any work done! Maybe a temporary rinse close to her natural color; anything that would cover platinum blond.

  Crews were still finishing work on the display structures and connecting electrical gizmos for light and security when they weren’t ogling her. Temple eyed them back, which she’d normally never do. Any one of them could be a shill checking out the art installation for future tampering.

  Uniformed guards stationed around the perimeter added an air of seriousness to the central chaos. Scaffolds ringed the area too. Temple’s eye was drawn up to the dark dangling V of line still pointing like an arrow to the top of the scepter’s translucent housing.

  He’d been turned to show a clown-white-faced man wearing a greasepaint mask, black spandex tights and leotard like an acrobat, apparently strangled by the hammock of bungee cord that spanned one side of the museum ceiling to the other.

  “Awful to think about, isn’t it?” an unearthly voice said behind her. Think James Earl Jones as Darth Vader.

  Temple spun around, gawked, looked up. And up. And then decided that the men had not been ogling her and her electric blond hair, but the awesome oncoming form that had just now caught up with her.

  He was well over Max’s six foot four and robed like a Klingon crossed with an Egyptian lion-faced god.

  Towering over her five foot zero in his built-up boots, he was clad in superhero spandex all in black, the better to emphasize healthclub muscles. His head was a mask of two-tone black tiger stripes and a mane of dreadlocks. Add the funereal basso and you had that always anonymous but never shy performer known as the Cloaked Conjuror.

  “I almost didn’t recognize you with the hair redo,” he said. “You were the little gal involved in getting that bad guy at TitaniCon a few months back.”

  When Temple gaped at him for even remembering her after the chaos of that night, he added, “I never forget a face.”

  “Yes, well, your own current face is pretty unforgettable too.”

  He didn’t comment but joined her in gazing up at the place where the dead man still hung.

  “One of my stunt doubles died high up in the stage flies at TitaniCon,” the Cloak Conjuror’s disguised voice rumbled. “Good man. They never determined if it was an accident. Or murder.”

  “This one also iffy?”

  “I suppose. Could have been some nutcase working up a publicity stunt. Could have slipped and died with no one around to help. Could have been murdered.”

  “Las Vegas leans to aerial murders,” Temple mused, remembering the dead bodies in the ceiling at the Goliath and Crystal Phoenix hotels, both of them connected, perhaps circumstantially, to men she knew and loved.

  There! Her subconscious had tricked and kicked her into a reality check. She was a total romantic schizo! Her outer blonde and her inner redhead were of two minds and hearts as well as two Lady Clairol shades.

  Temple didn’t think she should be having an emotional epiphany right here amid the rubble of museum construction, but there it was.

  “ ‘Aerial murders’?” The Cloaked Conjuror was struck by the phrase. “My guy was killed up on the catwalk up top.” The ponderous head tilted to view the black-painted upper third of the space.

  “Is there a catwalk up there too?” Temple asked.

  “Of course. To service the lights and the magic act rigging.”

  “Which is pretty Cirque du Soleil.”

  If a mask could grin, the voice behind this one did.

  “Imitation is sincere. No one in this town can put together a new act without taking Cirque into account nowadays.”

  That made Temple wonder again what Max was dreaming up in that direction now that he had recommitted to a performing career. She knew the discipline was fierce and all engulfing. Something else occurred to her.

  “Are your big cats involved in this museum act too?”

  “Of course they make an appearance. I need to limit their time up there. Too risky. Even for magicians.” He chuckled. “But I’ve a got a new catwoman in my act, so that provides the feline presence so effective in magic shows.”

  “A catwoman?” Temple feigned ignorance all the better to pump CC on his fishy new partner. “To your Batman/Catman? Interesting. I’m supposed to be skewing publicity toward the high-end art audience, but I could probably get some pop culture media interested in your new partner. Where’d you find her? In one of the Cirque shows?”

  “Nope, though she was right here in Vegas. Did a little act at a place called the Opium Den. Shangri-La’s the name, so I guess she’s a Siamese kind of cat herself.”

  A thieving kind of she-cat! While Temple was struggling mightily not to go Scarlett enough to outright swoon with fury, he added, “Even has a Siamese cat she used in her old act. Damn agile and clever little thing. Hyacinth. Those two communicate like a witch and familiar. Ought to be a few publicity angles in that.”

  Temple could just see the headlines: EXTRA! READ ALL ABOUT IT! LAS VEGAS PR WOMAN GOES CODE RED IN CZAR EXHIBIT.

  The Cloaked Conjuror was walking away to chat up Randy. Temple guessed that she had held up, as any delicate blossom must when she hears her most fatal female bête noir is on the scene of a very ugly possible crime. She already knew Shangri-La was a thief. She’d taken the diamond and opal ring Max had bought Temple at Tiffany’s.

  Temple at Tiffany’s. Hey, that sounded even better than Breakfast at Tiffany’s.

  The Opium Den was a third-tier theater off the Strip. She and Max, and Matt and Lieutenant Molina had all gone there for different purposes a few months back. Temple had been asked up on stage; somehow stripped of her ring and lured into a cabinet that deposited her in the building’s basement, from whence she was whisked as a prisoner. Along with Midnight Louie, a cat who had a habit of trailing her like a dog at the most perilous moments. She and Louie had been bound, boxed, and rushed out of town in a semi full of magician’s boxes and designer drugs.

  Max had taken the whole cargo apart to find them in the trick cabinets, not too much the worse for wear, except Louie was literally spitting mad. Sometimes having a magician boyfriend was a boon. Sometimes not; say, when he vanishes for a year without a word.

  Temple didn’t want to dwell on her worst moments, or months. Max was back and he’d had a damn good reason for ducking out: contract killers on his tail. They still were. And Max was still ducking out, for days rather than months at least. Although Temple was finding that harder and harder to take.

  But it was disturbing to think that Shangri-La had shown up again. At best she’d been an accessory to a drug deal. True, no one at the police department had ever been able to connect her to anything. And, believe it, Molina would have tried. Hard. Molina view
ed anyone who had anything to do with Temple with suspicion because of Max. Except maybe Matt Devine, who was hard to view with anything but admiration, or . . . lust? Gorgeous ex-priests with an ethically sincere approach to romance were not a dime a dozen even these days, God bless him and his Catholic conscience!

  Back to Shangri-La. At worst, she’d wanted to hurt Temple for some reason. Or maybe just use her as a distraction, but how did Shangri-La know who Temple was, or, rather, with whom she associated?

  Temple cricked her neck at the pendant dead man, a macabre human chandelier in this vast, airy space.

  People wearing latex gloves were laying a plastic drop sheet beneath him. The inevitably paint-spattered step ladders were being brought in, their aluminum feet shod in plastic baggies so as not to contaminate the drop cloth.

  Temple couldn’t help shivering in the 72-degree air-conditioning that chills every Las Vegas venue.

  “He’s the only one in this room who can’t hurt you. He’s thoroughly dead,” observed a dry, slightly accented voice behind her.

  Temple turned, glancing up, as she usually had to. Surprise! The woman was her size, maybe only two or three inches taller. Temple was wearing her three-inch corporate pumps and this woman wore—Temple always checked shoes after faces—snub-toed Mary Jane ultra flats. With a strap across the instep. Not evoking all-American Mary Jane but . . . Detective Merry Su. Yet this wasn’t the same woman.

  The face was way more interesting than the footwear.

  Pale but unfreckled; unlike Temple’s, the eyes boysenberry dark in a pasty oval cameo of a face—rice powder, maybe? Eyelids and eyebrows tilted up at a sharp angle, with the epicanthic single eyelid of Asian physiognomy. Oh. Temple’s earlier shiver hardened into an overall alert; she froze against allowing all motion. She could guess who this was.

  The woman wore a fluttery off-white chiffon top and handkerchief-hemmed skirt, her white tights stark against the black satin Minnie Mouse flats, a disingenuous Alice in Wonderland look. Dull black hair was pulled back hard from her face into a ponytail as coarse and lavish as a show horse’s.