“Nadir had nothing to with this.”
“No,” Temple admitted, “but if I could make Molina think he did, she might blink and you’d be able to eel out of her sights.”
Max drew her close to him at the door and kissed the top of her head. Her artificially blond head.
“Always a superb strategician.” He pulled her closer, hugged her almost to death. “I’m sorry, Temple. More sorry than I can ever say and you can ever know. There are some things I only realize now that I just can’t control.”
Temple couldn’t decide whether to take that as a confession, a farewell, or a prediction.
Triple Threat
Nobody much notices what us cats get up to.
That is why we make such good detectives and sneak thieves. There is not that much difference between either role.
Anyway, there is nothing I can do for Mr. Max eeling away like the snake that dropped the apple at Eve’s tootsie tips and then remembered a pressing appointment elsewhere. Nor can I help my Miss Temple in performing whatever acts of Public Relations legerdemain that she finds necessary with the press and the forthcoming police.
Nor can I do much with the Big Cats, who have been sealed up in their portable tin cans and carted away. So much for brawn when the chips are down.
So.
There is only Squeaker and me gazing down on the aftermath of one nasty bit of carnage. And contemplating the ignored but wriggling form of Hyacinth clinging to the unseen back of a dangling platform twenty feet below.
“They assumed she fell,” I note.
“Erroneously,” Squeaker notes in turn.
“She was a witch bat out of hell.”
“Is,” Squeaker says, quite accurately, “and I do not like her either. She could be very sharp with me.”
I examine the tiny blood-red scabs visible around her throat and neck. “She no doubt did not like competition.”
“I was just an anonymous body double. I offered her no challenge.”
“That is challenge enough for one like Hyacinth. Oh, well. Hide-ho. I suppose we might as well consider how to rescue her.”
“You are a noble breed, Louie.”
“Naw. I just do not like to leave one of my own kind on the ropes. I do not know how we will manage it, though.”
This last statement wins the applause of a feline hiss. I gaze at the empty carrel of the two black leopards and find a pair of old gold eyes with green backlights gazing back.
“Louise!”
“Moonlighting again,” she says, “without a net. When will you wake up to reality, Pops? Who is the caramel-cream popcorn?”
“Ah, Squeaker, this is my partner in crime solving, Miss Midnight Louise.”
“Oh, I see the family resemblance. You must be Mr. Midnight’s sister.”
What a ditz! I hear Miss Louise purring while I smother a growl of protest.
“I had heard,” Louise goes on, “that my pals Lucky and Kahlúa were performing marvels of levitation at the New Millennium, so I decided to drop in on the proceedings. Little did I know that others of my acquaintance would have the same idea.”
Miss Midnight Louise, of course, is quite familiar with the onstage shenanigans of Mr. Max Kinsella. At all costs, she must not mention this to Squeaker because the fewer beings, four- or two-footed, who know about his brief but spectacular presence here, the better.
“We have a more immediate problem, Louise,” I say.
“Yes, I see my former sparring partner is hanging by a hair, what little of it she has.”
The antipathy between the longhairs and the shorthairs of the cat kingdom rivals that between the Gelphs and Merovingians. I do not quite know who these funny-named dudes were, but I have heard their names mentioned on PBS, along with other individuals of supposedly liberal biases, so maybe they are libertarians or librarians or something.
“We cannot leave one of our kind just hanging,” I venture.
“Speak for yourself, Johnny Snappleseed,” Louise retorts. “I cannot wait to watch the scrawny little witch drop. Considering her attempts to end your life, liberty, and pursuit of haplessness, I would think you would be counting down the seconds too.”
“Oooh!” Squeaker’s eyes could not be rounder. “Your sister is most outspoken.”
“She is not my sister, and she is right in that Hyacinth has been a bad girl.”
I look down at the cat in question’s long dangling gams in their plush gray stockings. Bad girls are minor failings of mine. Those long, painted showgirl nails won’t stick to hardwood for long.
“So,” says Louise from her higher perch, “it is decided. We all have suffered at the claws of Hyacinth and hate her arrogant, destructive guts. Who wants to go down and peel her treacherous claws off the board, and who wants to stay up here and make sure we all get back up safely?”
“I will go down,” Squeaker says promptly. “I am her body double and have been rehearsing acrobatics on these fallen pedestals.”
“And we are the lightest,” Louise concurs, joining the rescue party.
“What is left for me to do?” I ask.
“We need a reliable counterweight, Daddy-o, to pull us all up. Now, I will hop onto this snarl of cable that the Mysti . . . that the mysterious stranger in black used to disable and save the Cloaked Conjuror earlier. We should go down like an elevator. You hop on as I pass your perch, Miss Caramel Cream. And you, Big Boy, grab on to the trailing rope as we swing low enough to reach that piece of traitorous feline fur.”
“I can slow and stop you two girls,” I protest, “but once you have Hyacinth on that cable netting, you three will outweigh me.”
Louise is now head rescuer and not to be gainsaid. “Hopefully, we can all scrabble back up the rope while you hold everything steady. You do know how to hold the rope steady? You just clamp your two paws together on it and pray.”
Before I can get out a quick ejaculation to my favorite Egyptian goddess, Bast, the impetuous Louise has extended shivs on every limb and leaped onto the pile of limp cable, pushing it and herself out over the looming gulf that is now dark and empty, although cordoned off with crime scene tape.
If this does not work, there will be much speculation in the Las Vegas papers tomorrow about how and why four formerly cool cats should choose to leap to their deaths like lemmings, a vastly inferior species.
Before I can blink or get a go-ahead from Bast, the disabled snarl of rope and Miss Midnight Louise flash past my puss. Squeaker leaps aboard, grappling hook shivs sinking into the cable.
So far, so good. We now have three ladies in dire peril.
I throw a full body slam at the long rope rising up as they sink down and pin it to the mat . . . or to the platform that supports me. If this thing goes, we are all pancakes.
My move was made just in time. The falling cage of cable jerks to a halt opposite Hyacinth’s clinging spot.
I feel the rope fibers fighting to slip through my shivs but tighten everything I have, and it holds.
I watch while Squeaker leans out and prods Hyacinth with a delicate shiv. Shangri-La’s partner seems dazed and lethargic. I guess seeing your main human go smash on a marble floor is not a life-instilling experience, even if Shangri-La was bad to the bone from the word “Shazam.”
Maybe this rescue attempt is misguided.
Squeaker has overcome her timidity to reach out even farther and sting Hyacinth’s long, lean dangling form with a spurful of shivs. Getting her own back, in a way, prodding the other cat to a life-affirming leap onto the already hefty mass of rope I am anchoring.
Louise and Squeaker have started clambering up, making the whole rope quiver like a bowlful of Santa Claus belly. This is not helping me maintain my grasp. And Hyacinth is still playing the swooning southern belle. In moments, the whole kit and caboodle will plummet down, unstoppable, and I will be the sole survivor. Or the counterweight.
It is not in my code to let the women and children sink with the ship.
Be
lle. Hmmm. Bell!
I embrace my rope and swing out over the abyss.
Whomp!
I descend like a dude who has been presented with custom-fit concrete booties.
My move works like a charm. The Medusa-mass of entwined rope and feline hitchhikers snaps right up to the ceiling pulley, allowing Louise and Squeaker and Hyacinth to drop off on a secure platform and lay there preening their nails.
It does, however, also leave me swinging out over the abyss like that ugly bell-ringer guy from France. Not my favorite position in front of the ladies.
“Louie!” Miss Squeaker cries in heart-rending fashion.
Miss Midnight Louise is mum, and I can see that Miss Hyacinth is still comatose and that she is the only one not licking her ravaged nails, which might give some credence to that curare-nail-polish boast, which means my Miss Temple’s Mr. Max is in dire danger of blood poisoning.
But it does not behoove me to reflect on the imminent danger other dudes may be facing. I have done my survival of the species thing and saved the ladies.
Who will save Midnight Louie?
You can bet it is not going to be the ASPCA.
I take a deep breath and suck in my gut.
Someone has to reach for the falling star; I guess it is up to me.
First I go limp. Second, I let go.
A chorus of wailing disbelief from above cannot stop me.
I swing down onto the platform that Hyacinth claimed and snap my shivs out so I slide down it. It gives under my flailing weight and sinks like an elevator. As the momentum gets suicidal, I release every shiv, and catch hold of the thin bungee cord that Shangri-La fell from before Mr. Max made a superhuman effort and caught her by one wrist.
I am hanging by two nail sheaths, but the bungee cord has enough elastic left to stretch gently under my slighter feline weight. I am still downward bound and can see only the furtive glimmer of security lamps on the geography below.
The bungee cord is getting tired of the down escalator and is tensing its fibers to rebound up again.
I let go and close my eyes, calling on Bast.
I see a transparent pyramid coming up at me fast, planning to transfix a very tender part of my anatomy on its sharp, onion-dome tip. I execute a Greg Louganis triple-twist-and-turn dive to make a one-point landing—stomach down—oooof! There goes my Salmon Supreme with Smoked Oyster Sauce—and I am sliding down the steep smooth invisible roof, searching in vain for the 365-carat diamond on the Czar Alexander scepter to wink at me. It is gone for good and I may be a goner for good too.
I have engraved four lines into the pyramid side before I slide off onto the viewing platform surrounding the scepter area. I land on all four feet—whew, that stings!—my head unbloody and unbowed, but my pads burning like Hades and my head aching like Zeus’s before that upstart Athena burst out from his brain.
“Way to go, Daddy-o,” a voice calls from high, high above. Midnight Louise, of course. “I never knew that you had won a Purple Heart in Olympic air skiing.”
My heart is not all that is gonna be purple from this little stunt.
Deadhead Curtain
Raiser
“Sorry,” Detective Alch told Temple way too bright and early the next morning, “but I’ve asked around this entire end of the hotel, and you’re the only one who’d seen Shangri-La without makeup. And that includes her performing partner, the Cloaked Conjuror. So, you’ll have to do ID duty.”
“She was right down here with me the other day, on the main exhibition floor. Dozens of people could have seen her.”
“But they didn’t. You say you did.”
“I thought I did.”
Alch scratched his thatch of salt-and-pepper hair, more from habit than necessity. “At least we’ll know if the Asian woman you talked with was the dead woman, or not.”
Temple sighed. Deeply. “You mean I have to go the coroner’s facility.”
“Not a formal autopsy. They have a viewing chamber.”
“I’ve heard of it,” Temple said quickly, recalling Matt’s description of IDing his dead stepfather.
“Ordinarily we could use a photo,” Alch said, “but this is a pretty critical ID since the victim was anonymous, in a way. Can’t take any chances. Sorry.”
Everyone was telling her he was sorry these days. Except Matt, for a change. A big change. But now she was sorry. She hadn’t told him about Max’s latest gig as Suspect of the Week.
“You’ve got a lot of catch-up work here at the New Millennium, I know, Miss Barr,” Detective Alch said. “I’ll drive you over personally and have you back ASAP.”
“Where’s your partner, the petite fleur of the Crimes Against Persons unit?”
Alch guffawed at that description. “ ‘Petite fleur’ with dragonclaw thorns. Sorry, no Su on board. Naw, they always send me on these unpleasant runs. Figure I’ll ease along the poor civilian who has to gawk at dead bodies.”
“Quite a compliment,” Temple allowed. “Molina knows I wouldn’t do it if she asked.”
“Now of course you would. You’re a good citizen. Clear up this thing with a solid ID, and who knows what suspects we could find other than your boyfriend.”
“You know?”
“It’s my job to put two and two together, and you two have been a duo for a long time.”
“A long time,” Temple repeated.
By then Morrie Alch had her out the door and was ushering her into the front seat of an unmarked police car. It was a nondescript vehicle except for the flat computer screen and keyboard and two-way radio enthroned on the console.
“This Shangri-La,” Alch mused as he spiraled the car out of the shadowy hotel parking ramp into the sunlight glare of jammed near-Strip traffic. “I hear she snookered you once.”
“We talking pool?”
“I’m talking sweet-talking you out of the audience and onto the stage, where she relieved you of a valuable ring. Some magic trick. The lieutenant happened to be there.”
“I remember. But the police couldn’t find any way to charge Shangri-La with anything, ring snatching or drug smuggling. So, now that she’s dead months later, I’m a suspect?”
Alch chuckled like a befuddled uncle. “Maybe. If you really liked that ring, and what’s not to like about a Tiffany ring from your best beau?”
Temple could see why Alch pulled escort duty to the presumed bereaved so often. She appreciated the quaint old-fashioned way he phrased her romantic situation while pointing out her potential for revenge for her traumatic past encounter with Shangri-La.
“No, you’re not a suspect,” he reassured her. “Not to me.” And panicked her. “I’m just saying you had opportunity to study her close-up in her stage costume. And if you saw her bare faced—”
“I did. I was shocked. I’d assumed, as you had, that she showed her face to no one.”
“Musta caught her off guard. You think that ring thing had any hidden personal meaning?”
“No. She just wanted a distraction for her stage trick.”
Alch made a face that was half frown and half pout. On him, it looked good. “We found no evidence at all that she was involved in the kidnapping that followed. So. Innocent bystander, huh? Not so lucky last night.”
“None of us was lucky last night, Detective.”
“ ‘CC’ was. Cute how they abbreviate ‘Cloaked Conjuror.’ Guess it must be a pain to refer to him daily by such a klutzy pseudonym. I can’t get over all these anonymous magicians around town now. Like that new guy at Neon Nightmare, the Phantom Mage. Does all that new-fangled bungee work too. Used to be that breed kept their feet on the ground and lived for the limelight. Like Siegfried and Roy, bless their hearts, or this Mystifying Max my boss has on her hit list.”
Temple didn’t know how to reply to this comment, so she didn’t say anything. Avuncular Morrie Alch might seem as comfy as chocolate chip cookies with milk, but he was a detective with a disarming Columbo-like way of seriously nosing around.
Temple yawned. “I’m sorry.”
“Must have been up pacing all night,” Alch said with a quick glance. “Trying to figure out how to get this hot tamale out of the fire. I notice the hotel press release refers to an ‘accident.’ ”
“I didn’t write it. Randy Wordsworth did. But isn’t that the best public conclusion for now? The stage machinery was defective but nobody fell without a mighty effort to prevent it.”
“Then you’re of the school that the guy in black was trying to save Shangri-La, not torpedo her.”
“Is there any other school among the witnesses?”
Alch concentrated on easing them into a parking spot outside the coroner’s low-profile facility on Pinto Lane. “Not among the witnesses, no.”
Temple knew that he was referring to Molina and her grudge match with Max.
Pinto Lane was a two-block street north of busy Charleston Boulevard and south of Alta Drive, where Our Lady of Las Vegas Church Convent School could keep an eye on the quick and the dead at the Clark County Coroner’s office. Like most public buildings in Las Vegas, this one was pale, bland, and entirely overlookable, if that was a word.
The lobby resembled the waiting room for a dentist’s office.
Alch ambled up to the reception window, flashed his shield, murmured a little, then beckoned Temple to a plain wood door.
A buzzer belched it open. They passed into a nondescript hall. A nose-tickling odor of oranges grew stronger but vanished as Temple was led through another door into a cubicle. The process reminded her of nothing so much as getting a mammogram, except for the male escort. And in fact she’d had her first one recently at the University Medical Center just two blocks away. Turn thirty and all sorts of strange and serious things come at you face first.
There had been a full-length curtain on that cubicle door. Here, they faced a shorter curtain on the opposite wall. Temple was reminded of a motel window with the drapes drawn.
“You know what to expect?” Alch asked, a hand on the drapery pulls.
“She’ll look like she’s ‘sleeping.’ ”
“No, young lady. I well know the temptation to get smart in the face of something unpleasant. She will look like she’s dead. You need to compare the pallor and stillness you see here with the healthy and mobile face you saw a few days ago. There will be changes but not significant ones.”
Cat in a Quicksilver Caper Page 23