"Thin air," Temple repeated. "Was that why he ate so much, all his dreams were immaterial, so he became totally material?"
"I doubt it," Max said, sitting opposite her at the breakfast table. "I think he ate because he truly enjoyed it. He probably inherited his tendency to overweight, and age simply ensured that heredity took over. The camera is as cruel to heavy men as it is to women."
"Yes, the camera is an equal-opportunity offender, but people aren't. Overweight women are more despised than overweight men."
"And overweight Beautiful People are despised more than anybody. Media idols aren't supposed to have our same feet of clay."
Temple gazed down at her mound of pasta tubes and bright yellow cheese sauce, steam rising from its surface like mountain mist.
"Now I feel guilty about eating this. Think of all the starving Beautiful People in the world who would give anything to exchange their diet of Kitty Litter and purified water for this!"
"Eat, drink and be merry while you may," Max suggested, lifting his glass.
"Good advice, but since I'm the leg-woman of this outfit, I'm planning to do some extensive running around tomorrow ... and tomorrow. Not much time to eat."
"What's going to keep you in constant transit?"
"My ... unconventional personal life. I'm afraid things have come to such a pass that I'm going to have to consult some psychics."
Temple couldn't tell whether Max took her statement as a promise or a threat.
Chapter 29
Behind Door Number One
Mynah Sigmund, wouldn't you know (Temple told herself), was a native talent and a local act.
She lived in an older area of residential homes, not nearly as nice as the one Max owned (Temple also told herself) . During the psychic fair, she was available at home for one precious hour a day, and Temple had brazenly booked it. For some people, five of an afternoon was the cocktail hour. For Mynah (rhymes with Car-o-lin-a), it was the withdrawing hour.
"Be there at five," she had instructed Temple. Her eyes--blue, clear and cold--had wordlessly emphasized the importance of obeying directions to the letter. "I always meditate at three P.M. for an hour, then . . . collect myself. You may let yourself in."
"I'm not to knock?"
"Knock? No. Rapping is a phenomenon I neither stimulate, nor tolerate, in my vicinity. You'll see."
Mynah smiled then, a Mona Lisa pristine-madonna smile probably intended to drive men mad. Most women would describe it as supercilious big-sister smug. But Temple had noticed that men usually fell for what most women disdained, and vice versa. It was too bad that the sexes didn't develop an anonymous cross-gender warning service.
Now Temple parked her' Storm in the semicircular driveway that aped the semicircular poured-concrete fence comprising the front of Mynah's address. Other neighborhood houses lay exposed, crowded by Joshua trees and various tall, spiky and pale desert growths. Mynah's establishment was ringed by this contradictory and virginal wall, both fluid and rounded in form, like a wave of supernaturally white sand, yet discouragingly solid and opaque. It was a wall that begged for breaking.
Against this soft/hard cold/hot white wall, and the bleached stones that covered the ground, and the uncompromisingly spotless cocaine-bright concrete that formed the driveway, the Storm's soft aqua silhouette looked strangely apropos. A blob of Southwest paint, perhaps, torn from the sky, dropped on a blank canvas and about to be smeared into an approximation of the native precious stone, turquoise.
That was the trouble with the whiteness of Mynah. Like the whiteness of the whale Moby Dick, it was unnatural, despite the naturalness of its environment. It existed to set off the color of everything else, and everything else usually suffered by comparison. Oh, the Storm looked its ordinary spirited self: blue and white are the eternal partners of peace. But Temple's red hair; now that would be an intrusion here.
Also her color-blocked linen pants suit, chosen perhaps unconsciously as a gauntlet to throw down before the anemic Mynah. And her purple, orange and Kelly-green high-heeled J. Renee pumps.
On the other hand, five was also the Sunset Hour in some parts of the country, worldand time zone. Temple straightened her gaudy padded shoulders and prepared to ring the bell, since knocking was prohibited.
But the gateway (a double-doored expanse of milk-stained mesquite) was merely arched doors split by the obvious line of separation. No knocker to drop. No practical, round period of a built-in bell to ring.
Beyond the wall and the gate, water fell in a talkative turquoise lament upon pale stones.
Village women weeping and washing in this vale of tears.
What women? What village? This was a one-time tract house, for God's sake, Temple reminded herself. She hated spells of any kind, unless they were uttered by grandmotherly women with wands, who could bring forth dazzlingly different shoes with every wave.
Glass would not be welcome in this place of stones, which were the raw material of unfired glass. Here was cool earthen removal. Withdrawal. Here was Western asceticism. Here was high-toned hokum incarnate.
While Temple searched for some implement with which to announce her arrival--a car horn, perhaps, rudely tapping out "Happy Days Are Here Again"? A single stick, scratching on the untouched-by-human-hands-except-to-buff-it wood? The sound of one foot kicking ... ?--the gate split into two sections and silently swung inward.
Temple searched for the Cyclopean eye of a security camera, but found none.
A bell rang. A single bell. One of those tony Sonoran desert bells designed by a monkish architect building a modem City of Cibola in the Land of the Peyote Sun, Temple just knew.
One of those bells that just one of cost a fortune through the very best (the most quiet, discreet, verbose) catalogs: Found at a Spanish Mission forgotten since Frey Junipero Serra first boogied down the Baja . ..
Temple's travel-brochure meanderings never grew so thick as when she was feeling on foreign ground, so she cut the mental chatter and stepped onto the (get this!) clear glass paving stones set into pure-white cement.
The fountain she had heard suffered postnasal drip in a corner of the courtyard. One lugubrious drop of water after another fell from endless levels of copper-leaf ladders to vanish among the wan blades of bloodless plants massed at the fountain's bottom.
The single ponderous bell, now curiously mute, still trembled from its recent attempt at sound.
Beyond the fountain and the white stone garden and the copper-and-verdigris-colored leaves hung a curtain of glass beads, winking back the white, with no visible split in its surface.
Temple waited, knowing by now that some effect was forthcoming, that petal by bloodless petal the portal would part, and Mynah would choose to show herself lurking at its pale heart.
But the wall did not part, because it was not glass. It was running water. The waterfall sheet broke into individual drops as fat as glass beads, then thinned to harpstrings and finally dispersed to a mist that vanished except for an occasional drip in counterpoint to the fountain's steady tympanum beat.
Mynah stood beyond the absent barrier, dressed in a white gi. Her belt was black, and its dramatic charcoal slash matched her aggressive eyebrows.
"Come through," she suggested, "unless an occasional drop of rain frightens you."
Water, Temple recalled, could make vivid colors run. She clicked like a beetle over the glass flagstones dewed with moisture.
Once inside the room sound fell in tinkling sheets of digitally recorded New Age music, as random as rain and not nearly as refreshing. Mynah had not moved, but the window of water was in smooth place again, falling so perfectly it seemed plate glass, albeit a little wavy.
"Reminds me of the seance room," Temple commented.
"Seance room? In that ... joke of a haunted house? Please, you're talking about a cartoon."
"A cartoon didn't kill Edwina Mayfair."
"Edwina Mayfair. Such an obvious pseudonym."
"Obvious?"
&nb
sp; Mynah cocked her wiry eyebrows and sank onto an arrangement of cotton-covered pillows.
" 'Edwina.' A feminized version of a man's name. Check the man's birth certificate and you'll probably find 'Edwin' is his middle name, or his father's name. And 'May-fair.' A pun on 'Playfair,'
do you think? No doubt he felt that true psychics didn't 'play fair' because they achieved their successes by intangible means. A master of the Tangible, our Gandolph the Great."
"Our?"
"I speak of the situation. He perished at our seance, cheesy and insincere as it was; therefore his death is 'ours.' "
"You take credit?"
"Credit... no! My dear Miss Barr, you have been severely affected by this ... melodrama, haven't you?" Blue eyes piercing through the rain of everyday appearances. "Don't! It was foreordained. Who was there, when or where it was held, is immaterial. He was doomed to die.
Somewhere. With somebody."
"By murderous means?"
"Murderous means? Well, we don't know that, do we? I think ... heart trouble is a suitably sentimental diagnosis for such occasions, don't you? Poor Edwina. Poor Gareth, the kitchen boy.
Such Arthurian names, so Pre-Raphaelite! So Victorian! We are modern, to our cores!" She pounded her fists, knuckles white as baroque pearls, upon the harp-bones of her chest. A gi can gap open or shut, depending on its wearer's bent. Again Mynah eyed Temple as if her vision were a threat, or an instrument. "Is that why you are troubled, why you seek psychic healing?
You obsess about death?"
It was as good an excuse as any. Temple looked down, trying to get up the nerve to feign nerves. Her very indecision did the trick.
"You poor girl!" Mynah's clasped fist uncurled, stretched out to Temple. "I read your confusion. You are torn between two--convictions."
"Yes!" Temple said, relief at Mynah's benign conclusion sounding overemphatic.
"What are they? You must tell me."
When Temple hesitated, Mynah pulled a small unbleached-muslin bag from one turned-back cuff. Six or seven tiny colored stones poured into her palm.
"Pick one. Only one. Quick! You must choose with your reflexes, like a master of martial arts, not with your head."
Temple never chose unthinkingly; that was all the fun. Not amethyst or garnet or pearl, they meant something common, she remembered. Something uncommon, to confuse the seeress in her lair. Temple snatched at a facet of light bright as a lizard's eye.
"Peridot," Mynah pronounced. "How unusual." The cold blue eyes flicked to Temple's hair.
"Perhaps not for one of your coloring and temperament.
"You are... impulsive." Ridiculous, Temple answered internally. "High-tempered." Stable.
"With buried psychic talents." Rubbish. Mynah leaned nearer, across the gulf of white marble floor tiles. "Passionate." Weeeeell, about the truth. "Imaginative, to a fault." Tell that to the nightly news. "You worry too much," she added soothingly. Bingo! Like, what am I doing visiting a manipulative, lying snake like this? "Nothing is wrong, my poor, impulsive, imaginative, frightened girl!"
She took Temple's hand and began to uncurl her fingers from around the semiprecious peridot. Temple considered resisting, but didn't want to blow her worried-girl cover.
"See how you secretly desire to reveal all the secrets at your core. ..."
Temple gazed into her bared palm, seeing only the peridot--a truly insignificant chip of peridot, really, hardly big enough for one tiny ear stud. Ralph Fontana would spit upon this piece of measly peridot! It wasn't big enough to reveal the hidden heart of a Thumbellina! Hardly worthwhile for an ant to tote it back to the anthill
"You are making mountains out of anthills," Mynah went on, "murder out of mere natural causes. Trust me. I read more than crystals and sand paintings, you know."
Temple didn't even know about the crystals and sand paintings; why didn't she get to see the main event? What did she have to do, cross Mynah's palms with peridot? She did so, turning her hand edgeways to let the nile-green chip drop into her hostess's hand.
"Generous." Mynah's smile indicated that she was back to enumerating a litany of Temple's virtues and vices.
"Does your husband practice any psychic powers?" Temple asked.
"My husband?" Mynah's big blue eyes blinked vacantly. It was as if her attention had been rudely shifted to the inhabitant of another planet. "Why would you even mention him, when you are seeing me?"
"Well, you are married--"
"And how does that concern you?"
"Not at all. I just thought he might be ... around." Temple glanced nervously toward the hovering plant forms.
"William is a dabbler," Mynah said shortly. "He is quite separate from my work."
"Where might I find him?" Temple persisted.
"At his day job." Mynah's white-frosted lip curled.
"At--?"
She tossed her head as if being forced to reveal the mundane facts were physically restraining. "An ... office building. I don't keep track of such places, such pursuits. You'll have to ask someone else who does."
Temple nodded, slowly. A wife who couldn't be bothered to re-member where her husband works? Granted, modern married cou-pies often went their own ways, but they usually at least knew the path to their spouse's workplace. Yet Temple sensed that Mynah wasn't keeping something from her; she simply hadn't bothered to know these things.
"Why do you want to see William?" the woman in white demanded, a tiny pout puckering the lipstick rime at the corners of her mouth.
"I'm new to all this. I'm trying to get a rounded viewpoint."
"No!"
Temple politely raised her eyebrows. Mynah's dark brows were drawing together as if a stitch had been taken between them.
"You are... generous, as the peridot says, but also have another side of the peridot in your character, a flawed side."
Temple waited. A recitation of her supposed virtues had gotten boring; perhaps the flaws would be more insightful.
"You are envious. Unmarried, you seek after my husband." Temple would have protested this extreme conclusion, but Mynah was in full pronouncement. "But you are also envious of the powers of others, such as myself. Oh, you pretend to be seeking enlightenment, but your purpose is very different. Keep the small cyst of green poison--" She dropped the grain back into Temple's palm before she could draw back, and rolled her fingers shut on the sharp stone.
"I see everything, you know. You came here hoping to learn my powers, to find powers of your own, and you have learned only of your own limitations."
"What do you mean?" Temple felt honestly indignant. Information, yes; but a "powers" thief she was not.
Mynah stood. "Don't you know I can read every ignoble thought? You seek my secret."
"Secret? I haven't even asked to see the sand paintings."
Mynah tossed her Loving Care #88 sterling silver mane over her shoulders. "You envy my power over men. You, who are ignored by men. Who live alone, like an old maid with her cat--"
"What about my cat?" Had Midnight Louie been in the neighborhood? What had he done now?
"See how defensive, how pathetic you are? And you admit you have a cat. This meeting, an excuse! Deny it if you can."
Temple couldn't.
"You care for nothing but the adoration you see me turning away. You are consumed by the flames of jealousy. You covet paranormal powers only for base and futile reasons. Go, college girl! Dream your feeble dreams. Show your true colors. The simple purity of true ability will never be yours."
That "college girl" did it! Did this dame think she was dealing with some raw amateur?
Temple (impulsively) considered unleashing (with high temper) a few apt observations of her own, which were far more on target than this mumbo-jumbo attack.
But that would be blowing her cover, wouldn't it? Temple reflected (generously). Her buried psychic powers revealed that it was better to let a suspect stew in misconceptions than to set her straight (passionately) and ruin the inter
view.
No, she was better off continuing with her psychic interrogations, then reporting the results to Max, or Matt, whichever one of her psychological or magical experts was better suited to restore her battered self-esteem, especially when she repeated the charge about having nothing better to share her life with than Midnight Louie! Come to think of it, Louie would be most solicitous himself at news of this rank slander.
Envious, hah!
Temple left without waiting for the water-curtain to be drawn.
She emerged, somewhat wet, into the tranquil courtyard and a dusky, cool evening not suited to running through walls of water. Walking on water, maybe, with her hidden powers, but not running through...
Shivering, Temple scooted into the Storm, pushing the heat level to the max. Onward, she told the car as the engine stuttered in sym-pathetic cold. She dropped the peridot into her glove compartment.
But before she showed the house of Mynah Sigmund the smoke from her tailpipe, she drove around it once more for good measure. That was when she spotted the glossy black rear fender of a Viper protruding from a plumy stand of pampas grass.
Either a Fontana brother was calling on Mynah while her husband was off working who-knows-where, or somebody else who drove a flashy car was. Darn, too bad Temple was such a wimp of a vamp; otherwise she could sweet-talk Watts and Sacker into running a license check for her.
Temple sat up in her seat. She didn't want to drip on the vinyl. Maybe the detectives wouldn't check on a dog license for her, but what had Max been doing all day? Sitting safe at home, cracking into computers. He was a quick learner; maybe he could track down the right Viper, in a manner of speaking.
Temple kicked her feet out of soggy (sigh) shoes (cursed be Mynah and all her waterworks!), then gunned it hose-footed to her next appointment. Maybe Mynah had murdered Gandolph the Great for providing too much competition with the hat. A long black veil will outdraw bridal illusion every time.
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