Mynah presided over this Winter Wonderland like the Snow Queen from Hans Christian Andersen's most savagely cynical fairy tale.
"The moonstones!" was all Electra could say.
Fanned, Mynah's long fingers and nails passed over the array as if hesitating above the keys of a musical instrument. Temple could almost see the drops of lucent moonstone tremble to her not-quite-touch.
"My miniature scrying mirrors," Mynah commented. "I sell them, and you buy them to find out what can be seen in mirrors, if anything."
"There are no price tags," Temple noted.
Mynah was unperturbed. "No, I establish prices on the spot, depending on how I like the purchaser." She tilted her head. Her eye-brows were dark but unpenciled, her eyes ice-crystal blue, her makeup as subtle as snow, if she even wore any. "You like something? Want me to price it for you?"
She had the air of a lazing Big Cat, a white tiger napping before deciding to pounce. Temple didn't want to give the woman the edge of instantly evaluating her by setting a price too low, or too high, to be real.
"There's too much to see," Temple said. I'd need time to pick one. They're all so exquisite.
Do you make them yourself?"
"No. I only ... touch them to activate their hidden properties, rather the way I conduct stances. The one last night was not a seance, but a show," she added with quick disdain.
"A bad show," Electra put in over Temple's shoulder. "I'd really love these earrings, how much?"
"For you?" A smile, wider than it was warm. "Forty-seven dollars."
Electra didn't wince as she pulled out her checkbook.
Mynah reminded her to present her driver's license, then wrote down the number on the check. "Remember, once I touch them, these mini-mirrors of mineral might show you anything."
"Just so it isn't my crow's-feet." Electra laughed earthily.
Crow's-feet, apparently, did not intrude into Mynah Sigmund's world. She answered with utter seriousness. "The moonstones do not show the present, or the superficial. They reflect deep, and delve both past and future."
Oh, goody galoshes, Temple thought, were back in seance mode: no contractions and portentous predictions.
Electra pocketed her package and ebbed behind Temple, leaving her to begin a disingenuous interrogation of someone who had probably been born calculating odds and memorizing state income tax tables.
"Mynah, babe!" The man's voice came from behind Temple and Electra.
"Why, Big Mike." Mynah's face tilted so she could eye him from-under her black lashes. Her pale lips produced a Mona Lisa slice of sickle moon. "There's room just for you. Go around the side curtain and come into my parlor. You can sit a spell."
From her lips, the word "spell" sounded like a sinister enchantment rather than a colloquial expression for "a while."
Temple glanced significantly at Electra. She had not seen such a blatant case of Phony Female since junior high school.
The man seemed oblivious to the invitation's artificiality. He stomped around the booth's side, bulled through the delicate fabric and plopped down on a gray folding chair next to Mynah.
"Where you been so long?" the White Witch asked in tones syrupy enough to drown pancakes.
Her eyes were only for the new arrival. Temple and Electra could have been wooden Indians, for all she cared.
Temple wasn't used to being erased from any woman's consciousness merely upon the Arrival of a Man. She checked Electra, who was also suffering a sudden case of invisibility.
The Man in Question was a big beefy guy in his forties, genus rancher. He stuck cowboy-booted feet out from the chair and hitched his thumbs in his Levi's pockets. A bolo tie with an art gallery Native American slide added a regional touch of formality to his Western-cut shirt. He returned the same knowing look-for-two that Mynah gave him.
"How's the fair doing?" His brusque manner indicated that he didn't care much one way or the other.
"Fine, now that the inane semipublic seance is done. We had ourselves a double apparition, one of them in triplicate, did you hear? And a small death."
He was nodding and smirking. Words were unimportant. What mattered was the music playing under them, the separate and se-cret language of expressions that made this conversation a duel of innuendo and taunt.
"Mynah!" The next man who arrived behind Temple and Elec-tra was tall, but as well stuffed as a teddy bear sagging at the mid' die. "Do you need me to cart away the empty boxes now?"
Mynah's husband, what's-his-name, was as indifferent to Tern* pie's and Electra's presence as the other man, but behind his mock tortoiseshell eyeglass frames, Temple spied a dull resentment, a cowed fury. Ah, yes, this was the Nowhere Man pointed out last night as the Snow Queen's heavyweight husband. Then who was yon frowsy middleweight parked in the folding chair?
William Kohler, that was his name! The husband's, not the rancher's.
"I just shoved them all under the tablecloths myself." Mynah's careless wave of one white hand implied William had been derelict in his duty, so the brave little woman had done it all alone.
Sour William still needed something to fuss about. "They can't all fit under there."
"They did." Her lake-blue gaze had iced over.
Mr. Mynah was not wanted here, nor was Temple, who had not bought, nor Electra, who had.
The New Man watched with smug contempt as William tightened his lips. "All right," he muttered. "I'll check again later."
It sounded like a threat rather than a promise, but not much of either. He lumbered off, still muttering.
Mynah sighed, shifted, let herself remain the focus of all eyes. "He really is a dear."
She might just as well have said, "He really is a bear," for the emotion in her tone.
"So who have you knocked dead with your smile now?" the oaf in the chair asked.
She shrugged. "A hermaphrodite, apparently." A practiced trill masqueraded as a laugh. "A man dressed as a woman, can you believe it? Came to expose us fraudulent mediums."
"Seems like he ended up well done." The guy pulled out a Navajo pocketknife to jab at the grime beneath his nails.
Temple was repulsed beyond staying to do her duty as an inquiring mind. She turned to Electra and lifted both eyebrows.
Electra nodded.
"Well come back after we check out the other booths," Temple announced pointedly.
Mynah's demi-smile widened, but she didn't look at them; her gaze was only for the guy on the chair. "Take your time, ladies," she mocked, making "ladies" sound like Victorian biddies on an expedition to buy bell jars.
By the time the two were beyond hearing distance, both were too miffed to speak.
"What a... phony broad," Temple finally managed to spit out. "I thought that kind of billboard-obvious man-hunting went out with Scarlett O'Hara."
"Scarlett was never that obvious. I'd forgotten about that," Electra reminisced fondly.
"About what?"
"What it felt like to become instantly invisible when a woman you were with wanted to concentrate on a man."
"You were used to that?"
Electra widened her eyes. "We all did it then. It seemed logical."
"To the men too, I bet."
"I don't know. Those were the days when they used to have to jump up like jackrabbits every few minutes to light a woman's cigarette." Electra nodded dazedly. "I guess those were the days when there were a lot more smokers."
"It all sounds like people lived as if they were in an old movie."
"We were, hon! It's called your own past. And it was a time, frankly, when a woman knew her place in a situation like that: quietly ebbing away to give the other woman a clear field."
Temple shook her head. "I don't see why that Sigmund woman is such a vamp. Like I say, it's so obviously phony."
"Men don't get much of that these days," Electra said. "Maybe they miss it. It may be phony, but it's all for their benefit, which must be rewarding."
"Well, I'll just visit the oth
er booths, then, and get the scoop on Mynah."
"Very wise. Now you have something to ask them about."
"What?"
"Edwina Mayfair was really a man, wasn't he?"
Temple nodded.
"Maybe he was in disguise because he and Mynah were in cahoots."
"You're kidding! Why would she bother with an elderly skeptic like him when she already had a husband in tow and Pa Cartright on the side?"
"As you said, she's a phony broad. They never stop handing that stuff out, because they never have enough."
"Seems to me that the motive for killing the old guy had to have been because he planned to expose someone's trickery."
"Sure. But it doesn't have to be paranormal trickery, Temple. It could simply be old-fashioned hanky-panky."
While Temple paused in mid-aisle to weigh that idea, Electra grabbed her arm with alarming pressure. "Oh, look! Crystals to die for. Come on!"
Electra dove for a booth across a stream of people. Temple tagged along, thinking.
A feeding frenzy of excitement broke out in the aisle ahead of them. Over it all beamed a bright white camcorder light.
"Crawford!" Temple felt like she had sighted Moby Dick.
"Something's up!" Electra hallooed back. "Let's go."
They weren't the first on the scene, which was now watched by an audience of fifteen fascinated fair-goers.
Stage center were Crawford and the cameraman, Watts and Sacker and ... D'Arlene Hendrix.
"This could have been discreet," Sacker was saying, glancing around to find the reporter that accompanied the glaring camcorder.
"But I... I'm innocent!" D'Arlene protested. "I didn't do anything."
"Come along," Watts urged. "This is just for questioning. We are not about to cuff you for the TV cameras or anything."
"You!" Sacker barked. "Shut that off."
The two detectives turned and pushed through the crowd, D'Ar-lene between them and casting anguished glances backward.
"D'Arlene Hendrix?" Temple said. "Talk about an unlikely suspect. I wouldn't have thought the Martha Stewart of the paranormal set would have the nerve to skewer an olive."
"She wouldn't." Electra tried to work her way out of the crowd to follow, but was stymied.
"Oh, this is nuts. She'd never kill anyone. Temple, you have got to do something about this."
A breathless, low voice spoke at Temple's rear.
"A distraught New Age onlooker has just asked Temple Barr, crack Las Vegas lady sleuth, to prove the Halloween ghost-killing suspect innocent. Will she do it?"
A mesh fist of microphone zoomed toward Temple's mouth like a mobile metal ice-cream cone, tempting her to bite, hard. The television light engorged into nova-brightness.
"Will you?" Crawford Buchanan demanded dramatically for the camera.
"I'll... No comment." Temple turned her back on the camera, grabbing Electra's arm and diving into the crowd. She felt the heat of the light follow them until it veered to pursue the detectives hustling D'Arlene away.
"That was thrilling," Electra said in shaky tones. "I feel like a district attorney or something."
"How about like a victim? Crawford is the consummate grandstanded You'd think he was working for Court TV."
"I can't get over D'Arlene Hendrix being arrested. Her work with families of lost children is outstanding, and has even been praised by some police detectives. They have the wrong person."
"Electra, the police are just taking her downtown for questioning; that's hardly arrest, as you know from my experience."
"But it's a scandal now that your Crawford friend has latched onto it for TV." Electra's jaw set, a new expression for her. "I don't care how corny you feel about being named a sleuth, D'Arlene's quality of life and career are at stake. You've got to do something."
Temple shook her head, a mistake, because it felt loose enough on her neck to fall off.
"What I've got to do is go home and get some sleep. And so do you. Don't say another word.
Not until later when we can read about it in the morning paper."
Electra frowned. "Sherlock Holmes would never wait until he could read about it in the morning paper."
"Maybe he had ESP," Temple growled, turning on her heel to leave Crawford Buchanan, the psychic fair and her New Age Watson behind her.
Chapter 18
Maxnapping
A Friday-afternoon nap.
What a luxury.
Temple stretched as she awoke, ghosts and panthers circling in her subconscious.
Louie was an out-of-focus lump curled up on the end of her bed.
At least he was safe at home. Again. How she would love to interrogate him!
She stretched again, blinking at the black haze on her bed.
Louie was putting on a lot of weight.
She patted the bedside table for her glasses, unfolded the earpieces and pushed them on.
Oh.
Midnight Louie had morphed into Max Kinsella, who did not have to lose weight, and who--
while sitting on the end of her bed--could by no means be described as "curled up." Unless it was as in: "curled up like a steel spring" and ready to pounce.
Temple wished that she was really awake. She wished she had not put her glasses on. She wished she was wearing Chanel No. 5 and a Victoria's Secret chemise, say in teal silk satin. She wished she was wearing a potato sack. She wished she was not here. She wished he was not here.
She smiled.
"Max! What on earth brought you back?"
He just shook his head. "Tell me about the murder."
" We don't know it was a murder."
"Too bad 'we' don't. I do." - "You do? How? Did I miss the news?"
He found the television remote control she was patting the covers to corral, then clicked on a station. A group of hundred-year-old teenagers, pierced on every visible inch of skin, except on their ears, seemed to be speaking out passionately on the benefits of purple hair.
"No news on yet this afternoon but bad news." Max clicked the talk show off. "Tell me what happened. You were holding hands with Gandolph, after all."
"I was not! I did not know the woman was Gandolph. I was happy to be not holding hands with Crawford Buchanan, unaware that I had been cruelly deceived and was actually pressing palms with an elderly, cross-dressing male magician nobody had heard of in a cat's nine lives."
"Lots of people had heard of Gandolph the Great. He was retired, true."
"Retired to transvestism."
"He was a showman," Max said. "He was ... a Don Quixote. He was there because he had something to prove, not because he wanted to pass as female."
"How do you know?"
"Because it's an honored tradition in the seance-exposing game. Even Houdini wore wigs in disguise when he was investigating mediums. Possibly women's clothes as well. And, besides, I know Gandolph. He was ... my friend."
"Max--" Temple was shocked. Max had never mentioned having a friend before, come to think of it. "He must have lived in Las Vegas when we moved here, but you never mentioned him."
"Yes, I did, but not often."
"Right! That's where I heard the name before ... maybe once! If you two were such buddies, why were he and I never introduced?"
"You were last night," Max said grimly.
"Max, I'm worrying about gnats in the face of tarantulas. I'm sorry."
He didn't quite look at her. "Don't worry. I don't want to hear about Gandolph's last moments. I do need to know what happened."
"So much did, Max! I still can't sort it out. I think we all saw a ghost, only I doubt it was the ghost we were supposed to see. Louie dropped in, yes, quite literally. Down the chimney, like a sooty feline Santa. Maybe you'd like to question him?"
Max smiled, dropped the remote control on the zebra-patterned coverlet, and stood.
"I'll brew some instant espresso in the kitchen. It's almost five P.M. Why don't you slip into something ... less comfortable."
Temple eyed her purple fuzzie jogging suit while he was gone. "Something less comfortable," really. Where was her chicest potato sack when she needed it, anyway?
She found a sort of caftan she'd forgotten about, emerald-green gauze with gilt lettuce-leaf edges, and managed to be wide awake and changed before he returned with two mugs of murky Instant Sludge.
"You mean it?" she asked after her first heady sip. "Gandolph was a friend of yours?"
Max prowled to the French doors overlooking the acute end of the triangular patio. He'd talked about putting a spa out there, but they'd never gotten around to it. It would have been nice, a mini-version of Van and Nicky's penthouse Jacuzzi.
Max's mind had been somewhere else Temple had never seen. "Maybe 'mentor' is a better word for Gandolph," he said. "I had the most contact with him at the beginning, and the end, of my career."
"Max, don't say that. Your career isn't over."
"Isn't it? I walked out on a half-dozen engagements, two for charity, without a word. I knew what I was doing. I didn't want to do it, but I had to. I'm a poor man now, Temple."
"What about all the dough you raked in when you were the toast of the Continent?"
He turned, grinning. "We're not counting the Swiss bank accounts and Cayman condominiums, are we?" She couldn't tell if he was kidding, or not. "So, you sat next to him. Tell me what happened."
Ordinarily, that wouldn't have been a big order. It was now, given the confusions of that midnight seance on the crux of Halloween and All Saints' Day, suspended between two worlds, the real and the really weird.
"I don't know, Max." Temple was glad she had ditched the glasses. This coffee was hot enough to steam up retinas. "I bought his act: this ditsy old gal in a funny hat. He must have been good at it. Only one thing struck me as unusual: 'she' kept warning me not to take anything that happened seriously. I thought that was odd behavior for a psychic at a seance."
Max was chuckling. "I'm sure he didn't know who you were, but, believe me, if Gandolph were taking advantage of you in any way, it would definitely be heterosexual."
"That old goat in granny clothing! And here I was all hot and bothered about Awful Crawford, meanwhile holding hands with the worst dirty old man in the bunch!"
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