Cat in a Quicksilver Caper

by Carole Nelson Douglas

  She wasn’t sure she needed to feel taller anymore. Just grounded.

  A Bottle of Red, a Bottle

  of White Russian

  He scared her.

  She’d asked for this interview, but it scared her.

  She wasn’t the police. She was a PR person with a license to snoop. She was messing in what could turn out to be an international incident, but she had a pressing need to know. For her job. For her peace of mind about what had happened on her watch.

  So she was scared, not because he was a scary guy, he was just so totally different. He was a living legend. A Russian aristocrat who’d become a French citizen. The aristocrat and French parts were paramount.

  Temple recognized that Ivan Volpe was a rare breed, someone a midwestern mutt like herself would ordinarily never have crossed paths with. Except in Las Vegas. She also recognized that he traded on his unique, blue-blood-drenched background to make himself into a high-flying standard of the Jet Set.

  Madame Olga was an aristocrat of the stage. Temple could recognize that honor and deal with it. Danny Dove was a commercial version of Madame Olga. Their common tongue was “theater, dance, art,” and Temple spoke that, albeit humbly.

  But “Count” Volpe. He flummoxed her.

  She had been an essay contest finalist once, back in college, for one of those “one-year editorships” at a women’s fashion magazine. Several months of demanding editorial entries had culminated in a group of twelve finalists spending five days inside a Manhattan whirlwind learning experience. The two midwestern finalists were like token blacks: in for the appearance of equity, out for the reality.

  She had met him before. The Ivan Volpe, a Russian émigré with an Italian last name. Her, a tiny girl in a little black cocktail dress (the magazine had corrected her self-description to “after-five” dress) introduced in a Manhattan penthouse to a tall, aristocratic Russian émigré, a consulting director, impoverished but possessed of major snob appeal, at a cocktail (Temple hoped that designation was chichi still) party catered totally by blacks in black tail serving platters featuring gross and relatively raw truncated parts of animal life.

  “Do you speak Russian?” the anorexic magazine editor who’d introduced her to this blanc eminence had asked Temple over the beef tartare.

  Heck, no! Why should she?

  Probably because it was the current trendy major at the Eastern women’s colleges. Minnesotans like Temple majored in English. Duh.

  “No!” Temple had dead panned in a Russian accent right out of Ninochtka (the thirties movie with Garbo; if you’re gonna steal, steal from the best). “I do not speak Rrrrussian.”

  A dead pause.

  When Volpe had laughed, long and hearty, the snooty editor had been required to produce an anemic snark.

  Temple hadn’t won the competition, although she’d seen signs that her entries had been winners. A deadly dull girl from an Eastern “Sacred Seven” college and an über-wealthy and aristocratic family had won. And to think all this American aristocracy had started with that dinky scruffy ship called the Mayflower. Temple had never heard of any of her group of twelve again.

  But here was Count Volpe, twelve years later: tall, straight, white-polled, intimidating.

  “I do not speak Rrrrussian,” Temple declaimed in her best Garbo voice.

  His white lashes blinked. He visibly scanned for the first recording of their meeting, and found it, though he was past ninety now. Then he laughed again.

  “Ninochtka! Hah! Your hair used to be Communist red. I remember. Now you are White Russian blonde, but you are still spirited. They were all such bloody bores, weren’t they?”

  Temple grinned.

  “And look at you! A player on the Las Vegas scene. How can I help you? Dinner, of course. Later. I must discover how you have got here, along with that most . . . interesting hair. I, alas, must take whatever ‘gig’ my advanced age permits. Like reality TV. I have always been a showpiece. Blue blood is very rare in the modern world. I hope not to shed any more than I can spare. But this exhibition seems to require human sacrifice. I remember the last czar, can you believe it? I was an observant and prescient infant. And my memory has always been my meal ticket. Dinner. Will your hotel pay?”

  Imagine!

  She, Temple Barr, taking a Russian count out to dinner. On her expense account. An account for a count. For which she expected a full account of what was going on at the White Russian exhibition.

  “I have become a professional consultant,” he explained as they awaited their cocktails in the Pluto Pavilion restaurant. Pluto was the farthest out planet in the solar system, and this restaurant was the New Millennium’s farthest out in menu and prices.

  “Why not?” he asked rhetorically. “I am quotable, suitably distinguished, old but still mobile. I am camera ready. I have nothing to lose.”

  “I guess your family lost it all in the revolution.”

  “Yes. You Americans are just now getting a glimpse of how much can be lost so quickly. But I do not talk about the bad old days. I radiate their lost glamour. I bow and kiss hands. I assiduously ensure that I have not lost my heavy Russian accent and overlay it with a fine soupçon of French. In the old days, in Russia, my very, very young days, I had been born a prince of privilege. Here, at the beginning of another century, I have become a prince of media. The celebrity photographers rejoice to ‘shoot’ me arm in arm with Paris Hilton and her puppy dog. I would say ‘just shoot me,’ but I am too old to object to being still valuable in any arena, even that of mockery.”

  Temple frowned as much as she was capable of, which wasn’t a lot. She was still too much of an optimist.

  “When we met,” she pointed out, “you were playing that same role for the fashion magazine.”

  “Of course. Trot out the old dog to do new tricks. I was being used as much as you were, my dear.”

  “I really, really wanted to win and live in New York on their pittance of a salary and shock them all and become a famous writer or fashionista, but an original.”

  “And so, what have you become?”

  “You’ve seen it. A freelance public relations person. At least I work for myself.”

  “Ummm” he said in a dubious British way. He had an international air, man without a country. “Then why are you probing the whyfores and whereabouts of our entire cast of culture vultures, as I believe we are called by the hoi polloi, during the time in which that rather vulgar fellow fell to his rather careless death?”

  “It’s not enough to wait for the coroner and police to come to a conclusion. I need to know what might be behind the death so I can deal with the press. The opening is only days away. If the Czar Alexander scepter is stolen, it will ruin the exhibition and the hotel’s new museum. They won’t be able to book an exhibition of sweat socks after that.”

  Volpe lifted one expressive eyebrow. “No? Sweat socks sound like the essence of Modern Art to me.”

  By then their White Russian drinks had arrived and Temple was taking some solace in sipping a cocktail that tasted more like dessert than some Nouveau Cuisine blueberry aspic flan with seaweed garni.

  “The key to a robbery,” she said, “is who would want the scepter.”

  “It’s a priceless artifact and quite beautiful. Who would not?”

  “But what would anyone do with it?”

  “There are always the rogue collectors, my dear. I find them fascinating, and am sure that I’ve met a few. They are fabulously rich, their walls are papered with Old Master paintings, and yet you suspect that somewhere in some bank vault of a room they harbor some of the century’s missing masterpieces for their own private delectation, almost like an upscale pornography collection.”

  Temple made a face. People like that were true culture vultures, accent on the word “vultures.”

  “It is pornography or greed that inspires your obvious distaste?” he asked.

  “That kind of greed is pornographic.”

  “Nothing I can
exercise, in case you’re wondering.” Volpe shook out his French cuffs, displaying his gold-and-malachite cufflinks. “I earn a decent, vulgar salary with consulting positions like this, but I earn my living as a professional guest and ‘interesting person’ on three continents. I could never afford to underwrite a major art theft, much less sit on the monetary results of it. And, as you say, the scepter is too rare and valuable to merely sell.”

  By then the salads had come, frills of greens obviously hydroponically grown on Mars. Temple had seen curled dandelion stems (as a child, when that had been a game) that looked more edible. A bowl of dressing with little black specks that looked like nits floating in it sat alongside her plate.

  Volpe noticed her dubious summation and called the waiter over. “Russian dressing, if you please.”

  “This is the house recipe—”

  “And most tasty upon a house, no doubt. But we celebrate all things Russian here.” As the waiter whisked away the offending bowls, Volpe leaned over the table, and said sotto voce, “A bottled mayonnaise–heavy abomination, I foresee, but better than that green mess with the measles.”

  Temple laughed. “So. If a spoiled billionaire didn’t order the scepter stolen, who else would want to take it?”

  Volpe folded his arthritic yet graceful hands under his chin, resting it on one pointed forefinger. “You think too reverentially, in terms of Great Art, or Great Decoration, in this instance. Have you considered Eastern European politics, my dear? Such a ripe field for treachery. All those barbarous Asian states nestled up against Mother Russia’s far eastern flanks. Terrorists of the Muslim persuasion? Oh, the global ramifications, plus the jewels wrested out of their frame, worth enough to fund any amount of lethal mischief anywhere. Osama bin Laden isn’t made of all the money in the world. An influx of imperial Western wealth would be welcome to aid in its downfall.”

  “That would make more sense of Art Deckle’s involvement. Terrorists might recruit someone dubious like him. And terrorists of all stripes now attack Russia, including Muslim Chechen rebels.”

  “How history turns. So amusing. I remember when our Russians were rebels against their countrymen. Now, they are besieged from without. ‘Art Deckle,’ by the way! The man had gone utterly show biz. A sad fate for Olga’s brother, once a promising ballet dancer.”

  “That would make him adept at upper-air acrobatics, though, the kind necessary to attack the scepter from above.”

  “True. But his injury had been devastating: the leg shattered from ankle to thigh. He would have been mad to attempt such a feat.”

  Temple nodded. Max could do it. Maybe had done it, who knows? He didn’t seem to be confiding in her anymore. She swallowed a lump of regret, remembered her own torn emotions, tried to think more generously. And who was to say this recent death hadn’t been a tragic accident? Maybe Art-Andrei had been trying to prove to his sister that he still had the chops to perform, if not in this show, in another?

  Their entrees arrived while she mused, and she shook off her speculations to find Count Volpe’s dark eyes focused solely on her face.

  “You pity that dead man,” he said.

  Yes, and all the performers who meant to fly and who are then deprived of that freedom, the Mystifying Max included.

  “It must have been a diminished life.”

  “And a diminished death. Trapped like a fly in amber in that net of elastic cord. Olga would never admit it, having long ago become the Iron Woman the ballet demands, but she felt the shattering of her brother’s leg long ago in her own imperious limbs. She cannot be as indifferent to his final death here, and now, as she pretends.”

  “She pretends?”

  “Don’t we all, Miss Ninotchka? We White Russians who . . . decorate . . . this mummer’s show pretend we are content in our remade Western lives, but we ache for the old days we barely remember. We weep to see our people consuming two quarts each of vodka a day, and being known for a gray, laboring life in the shadow of a Kremlin that is scattered and attacked and, sadly, second rate now in world affairs.”

  Temple felt for the old woman and her cataclysmic times.

  She ached for her own old days that she could so readily remember and wept inside to think of Max trapped and reduced, and herself safe elsewhere. Happy.

  The Wrath of Carmen

  The house was empty.

  Molina slapped her car keys onto the high counter that divided kitchen from living room.

  When had Mariah’s schedule gotten tighter, busier, more demanding than hers?

  Band practice. Soccer practice. Cheerleader practice. (Boys still dominated basketball, but there was a fledgling girls’ team. Not for Mariah. Too short. Hence, a cheerleader.)

  The striped cats, Tabitha and Catarina, came twining around her ankles, mewing, plaintive. They were suffering from Home Alone syndrome too.

  Carmen unloaded a couple of cans of cat shish kebob or whatever onto some saucers and put them on the floor. The cats settled down to eat, feet neatly tucked.

  That reminded Carmen to kick off her leather loafers, murder in this hot weather, and lift her legs one by one to peel off the knee-highs she wore with them. Sure, Temple Barr could clatter around bare legged on her perky mules or whimsical high-heeled sandals. She was a PR woman in the entertainment industry. Dignity was not a job requirement. Carmen padded barefoot on the cool laminate floor to the fridge to extract a Dos Equis. Kid not home; mom could chill out. As much as mom could ever chill out.

  Female homicide lieutenants did not ever want to look bright and breezy. Carmen shook her head. This was a tourist town where the street cops wore summer uniforms of beige Bermuda shorts, but casual was not an option for her.

  And that was okay. She wasn’t a casual kind of person. Casual doesn’t cut it working your way up on the force, being a single mother. Aaaiiy!

  She sat heavily on the off-beige sofa covered in a wide-woven jute fabric. Fairly cool. The shoes and socks had left welts on her arches and ankles. So had the ankle holster she’d taken off first.

  She’d left her guns on top of the eating bar. Mariah wasn’t here. Cats don’t have opposable thumbs to handle firearms. She’d stow them in the bedroom gun safe after she’d cooled off with half a beer.

  Condensation dimpled the brown bottle. Dew for the drinking woman. The beer tasted effervescent and stinging.

  So. Mariah was off social butterflying. Maybe Larry was off. Carmen felt like some adult company. Tabitha ratcheted up the side of the couch to one arm, then blinked solemn yellow eyes at her. Me? Snag upholstery?

  Cats were born hostile witnesses. Mum to the max.

  Max.

  Carmen made a face. Her deal with Temple Barr was going south before the ink was barely dry. That swing-style death at the New Millennium had Max Kinsella’s imprint all over it. The only oddity was that it wasn’t Kinsella himself throttled and hung out to dry.

  Maybe someone else felt the same way as she did, and had missed his or her mark. Carmen stretched her bare toes into the only sand available to her . . . the sandy beige nubbles of cheap wall-to-wall carpeting.

  Maybe the place could use some updating, but with Mariah’s college tuition looming . . .

  Carmen sipped beer, then stowed the bottle on a terra cotta coaster on her coffee table. Now that she’d wound down a little, she was aware of a tiny distant sound.

  Outside? Some neighborhood low-rider twenty blocks over?

  And there was a smell.

  She eyed the cats, the usual source of unlikely smells. They had moved away from their half-demolished dishes to tongue-scrape their whiskers, faces, and feet clean.

  Good children with bright shining faces.

  The distant insectlike buzz of semi-music was putting her to sleep. Like she didn’t lose a lot of it in the night. And the scent. Heavy, come to think of it. Sweet. The way death was sometimes, in the earliest stages, before the sour . . .

  Molina shot to her feet, bare toes digging in so she could charge i
n any direction. She eyed the black, dead bug–like silhouettes of her guns on the pale kitchen countertop.

  She ran to grab them, secured one in each pocket of the hot polyester-blend blazer she’d still kept on. In this climate, linen and cotton wrinkled like your grandfather’s forehead from sitting at desks and in cars.

  The cats leaped onto the abandoned sofa, claiming her vacant spot. They always wanted to be where you were, where you had been.

  Maybe somebody else did too.

  Her cell phone was on the coffee table. It wasn’t like her to strew her belongings around, but the day had been hot and Mariah was gone again, and maybe she’d felt a false sense of solitude and security in her own home.

  A homicide lieutenant should know better.

  She snatched up the phone, pressed it on, hit . . . Larry’s number. Didn’t hit TALK.

  She was carrying a 9-millimeter Glock and the Colt Pocket Lite. If she couldn’t handle vague buzz and sniff without backup, she might as well use her shield for a beer coaster.

  The house was older than she was. Laid out like a thick-waisted hourglass. Kitchen, dining, and living areas off the attached garage; long narrow hall with bedrooms and bath leading off that.

  Modest house. Modest neighborhood. Fairly safe unless the Hispanic gangs were at it on your front doorstep, which they usually knew better to avoid in her case.

  And so she walked into her own hall with the 9 millimeter cupped in a two-handed grip, elbows braced, body sideways.

  Mariah could have left her bedroom stereo on. The sound was still soft, but louder here. A Latino station celebrating la vida loca in ways Ricky Martin had never thought of.

  The odor hit her as sharply as vomit the minute she crossed into the hall’s eternal shadow. Houses in Las Vegas demanded interior darkness. Cool. Shelter from the sun.

  She looked down, took a moment to focus.

  She stepped in the smell, and made it sharper. Sweet.

  Carmen bent to touch the dark red ovals that dotted the bland hall carpet.

  Velvety. Thick. Saturated with scent.