Cat with an Emerald Eye

by Douglas, Carole Nelson

  ********************

  From the sublimely ridiculous to the ridiculously substandard: all in a day's work for the unsanctioned investigator. Temple's next appointment was at the Hi-Lo-Motel.

  "Sorry," she told the Storm, as she wriggled out and left it in its humble parking space. "We sleuth types must go where even Vipers dare not leave tread marks."

  Las Vegas had always offered its visitors a full buffet of entertainment options, from bargain basement to penthouse pizzazz.

  And that was exactly how to tell low-rent district from high-rent district: height. The cheapest motels were one-story high; less cheap ones were two or three stories; moderate places hit ten or twelve stories, and the really, really ritzy outfits lit up the sky as well as their patrons' credit-card balances.

  Temple personally had always resented that low was a sign of lesser luxe in this town.

  D'Arlene Hendrix occupied room 223, which meant a climb with her luggage, but less access from street-level intruders. The place was well lit and clean, but frills had been given the cold shoulder. Temple mounted the concrete exterior stairs to the second floor, then cruised the gallery until she reached the right room.

  A knock brought the TV-buzz within to a sudden halt. D'Arlene Hendrix opened the door on its security chain to check Temple out, then closed the door to release the chain and admit her.

  She wore blue jeans, scuffed tennis shoes and a T-shirt that advertised a Lexington, Kentucky, landscaper. Her bifocal spectacles on their pearl safety chain bounced against a lofty elm tree on the T-shirt.

  "Nice of you to see me," Temple began.

  "I never did understand why you were present at the seance." She gestured to the plainly upholstered desk chair opposite the bed, then sat on the paisley spread.

  "As a sightseer. I'm working for the Crystal Phoenix hotel and casino. We plan a similar attraction, and I was there to see what was what."

  "You certainly didn't do that." D'Arlene shot the silent television screen dead with one punch of a remote-control button.

  Remote control, Temple thought. The Hi-Lo-Motel wasn't totally no-frill.

  "Have you been to Las Vegas before?" she asked,

  D'Arlene's grizzled permanent remained unruffled as her head shook a firm "no."

  "If I'd have realized what a charade this so-called seance was, I'd have never come."

  "What do you mean 'charade'?"

  "I guess I was lured by the promise of Oscar Grant's participation."

  "Really?" Temple didn't peg D'Arlene Hendrix as the kind of woman who would find Oscar Grant promising in any respect.

  D'Arlene laughed ruefully. "I hear you, Miss Barr, even if I haven't the slightest idea who you are. You don't see me as an Oscar Grant groupie. I'm not, but I do recognize the large viewership of his program, and I always hope that something I do will raise the respect level authentic psychics need if we're to help with this horrendous crime problem, especially against children."

  "So you weren't interested in Houdini at all; only in drawing attention to your work?"

  "Houdini, it strikes me, was well able to take care of himself. The cases I'm asked to assist with usually involve the most helpless persons in society: innocent children snatched from the streets or even their very own houses; grieving families who feel that the hunt-and-peck of police work is not enough."

  "So they seek the hunt-and-peck of psychic work."

  "I can't argue with you." D'Arlene Hendrix picked a cellophane bag of dried apricots from the plain-Jane bedside table and offered some to Temple. "My ... intuitions hit like bolt lightning.

  Here. There. Close to the ground. Up in the air." She chewed meditatively on an apricot skin.

  "I've learned to accept the ambiguous nature of my gift. The police want predictability.

  Programming. Some, though, do recognize my flashes of insight, if they don't respect them."

  "You sound like a latter-day Joan of Arc."

  She shook her head and rolled up the apricot bag. "I'm no crusader, but my families are."

  "Your families?"

  "A perquisite of my often unsung work. My clients become foster families. Usually they bring me in at their own expense, much against local law enforcement preferences. I'm always unwanted. And when I do find the missing one's body, my 'success' is proof of everlasting sorrow to those who begged to have me on the case. By then I often feel it as much as they."

  Temple nodded slowly. "How does your ... intuition work?"

  "Like a car that was the biggest lemon you ever owned."

  Temple smiled.

  "It's true. All fits and starts. It's like I eavesdrop on one of those early telephone party lines.

  I'll just get snatches of this and that: a place or person I see; a voice I hear; a gut feeling when I look at a map, or a mother's face."

  "Do you have any children of your own?"

  D'Arlene's face saddened. "No. Couldn't. I sometimes think that's why I get intuitions about missing children."

  "Do you ever find them alive?"

  "Yes. Yes, I do. Twice in almost eighteen years. Then the press ... oh, yeah, everyone's ready to admit the possibility of more than we know out there. After the fanfare fades, the cases come and go, the dead are buried and I'm forgotten. Until the next time."

  "You sound like a burnt-out cop."

  D'Arlene tilted her head toward Temple like a curious squirrel. "You must have a few

  'instincts' of your own. Yes, I'm really kicking myself for coming along for this. First the police decide I'm the one person worth questioning in Gandolph's death--"

  "Why?"

  "Who knows? Maybe someone pointed them in my direction. But you'll notice they threw me back. Then I had booked myself into this modest motel because I'm so used to them. I never could see charging families for fancy accommodations when they're under the kind of stress that brings us together. But the show is paying my way, and I realize now I was dumb not to have taken advantage of an entertainment hotel like the Camelot. At least there I could wander the casino or the shopping arcades or the Strip. But, no, D'Arlene the Tightfisted has to stay on in Las Vegas at police say-so in the equivalent of a Nowhere, Kansas, motel. Want some wine?"

  The final sentence's abrupt change of subject made Temple blink, but she nodded, more curious to see what D'Arlene Hendrix was swigging in her motel room than anything else.

  Out from the bathroom sink came a screw-top brand that must match the room rate of a Hi-Lo-Motel. Certainly Temple had never laid eyes on Olde Grapevine wine before.

  "Plastic glass offend you?" D'Arlene asked.

  "Not at all. I do some of my best work on plastic ... plastic keyboard, plastic credit cards--"

  D'Ariene laughed and propped herself up against the standard-size bed's headboard. "You didn't come here to hear about the frustrations of my job."

  "Actually, I did. The frustrations of every profession or job are pretty much the same: standoffish co-workers, associates who don't recognize your talent and bosses who give you no respect. What's interesting about your gripes is the offbeat job you do. What about that seance?

  I'm green, but I... sensed something going on."

  "Don't get me wrong. I said it was a phony mess, but I never said something wasn't going on.

  There was a lot of pain in that room." She shook her head and sipped some red. "A lot."

  "Psychic pain?"

  "Psychic pain, mental pain, emotional pain; that's the only kind I pick up. At least I'm not tuning in every hammer-hit fingernail."

  "And this was before Gandolph died?"

  "Oh, my, yes." D'Ariene set her plastic glass on the nightstand and gazed up at the opposite wall as if screening a movie there. "Maybe that's why I'm so depressed. Maybe it's not just that poor man's death, and in such a silly getup too. That seance was a Palace of Pain. My skin ...

  ached just from being there."

  "And your feelings were genuine?"

  "You can't fake thin skin, h
oney, even when it's psychic skin."

  Olde Grapevine had really relaxed D'Ariene Hendrix. Even her tight permanent wave seemed to be coming unsprung. Temple felt like an uneasy neighbor at a coffee klatch where the hostess was suddenly spiking the Postum with Kahlua.

  "So where was all the pain coming from?"

  "My 'impressions' don't wear name tags. I sensed a terrific anger. And will, incredible will. All these violent emotions snapped from person to person, like electricity. Didn't you feel it?"

  "I felt more than I expected, that's for sure. And I saw--"

  "The wildman in the chimney?"

  "Sure, I saw that; I guess anyone who's read a book about Hou-dini has probably seen that photograph."

  D'Arlene nodded and retrieved her plastic wine glass in a limp-fingered hand.

  "So you don't believe that was Houdini either?" Temple pressed.

  "Houdini wouldn't come back bare like that. Any spirits I've ever heard of that have a ghost of a chance of being genuine are always quite decently clothed. Unlike my poor victims."

  Temple blanched at the reference, but blundered on.

  "I didn't know about that then, ghosts preferring to appear fully dressed. But I did see another ... person. A little boy and later an old man I thought was the same boy grown up and old."

  A nod. "Terrible pain, terrible rage."

  "You saw those figures too?"

  This time her head shook. "No. The only thing I 'see' are death sites, and nobody had died in that bizarre room ... yet. I felt the emotions, like other people hear music. A whole symphony was playing that night."

  "Who played what instrument?"

  D'Arlene nodded, prodded by Temple's analogy. "Each person had his or her own tone. The bassoon, that was hard to place; I never quite did. But the cello was Gandolph, deeply dark music, quite sad."

  "Who else?"

  "There was a whistle. A melancholy low whistle. The other man, I think, besides Oscar Grant, an obvious, and the professor."

  "William Kohler."

  "The women were a pilgrim's chorus, all wanting something lost quite desperately."

  "Who, though, broadcast the kind of pain you were talking about?"

  D'Arlene's eyes were quite unfocused now. Her whole face had deadened. Temple realized she was watching someone strip-mine her psychic senses, peel back the outer layers one by one until she dug deeper and deeper into her own protective emotional epidermis.

  "You did, for one."

  "Me? I'm not in pain."

  D'Arlene's slack lips tried to smile. Her eyes were slits as she peered through the veil of her lashes.

  "Painful confusion at least. I can still hear that agitated flute trying to calm its pulse."

  "I was working, that's all, and thinking about reality and illusion."

  "Illusion. Much illusion that night. Gandolph's. Yours, I think ... you are working an illusion now, you are no more simply what you say or seem, as Gandolph was not that night. And That Creature. Oh, my God. Born to give the occult a bad name, as if it weren't maligned enough without posing witches on the wing. And around you all, this slipstream of Will. Pure Will. And Anger, white-hot anger. Oscar Grant was the bassoon perhaps, though he sounded more like a tenor sax. Slippery. Tenor sex. She didn't sing, that one."

  "Who?"

  "Your link with the Technicolor aura. Electricity. Strange reverberations. And quite wonderfully serene, like a ... harp."

  "I'm a hysterical flute and Electra's this elegant harp?"

  D'Arlene's lazy eyes flicked slightly open. "It was your analogy to begin with, Miss Barr. And quite productive too. I've never had such clear psychic recall. Your gift is not always to see, but to lead others to see."

  "I see."

  D'Arlene laughed. "You think that is a little gift, and you loathe the little, the little in yourself, the little in other people, which is a much more serious flaw. Little people. But who is the bassoon? Such power, such waste. Such rage, such fear. And the mute rabbit, who only screams in desperation, what instrument does she play? A violin scraping out of tune. And then one last, hysterical high note, quite impressive, quite final."

  The woman shook her head, still not causing a flutter among her greige curls. She sat up, putting her feet on the floor as if restoring herself to solid earth.

  "I feel better. I hadn't wanted to see that seance again, but I could bear to hear it. I think you got what you wanted, Miss Barr. I think you are a satisfied client, even if you won't know it until later."

  "This ... has been fascinating."

  D'Arlene Hendrix didn't look at her. She sat hunched over, regarding the wall-to-wall carpet so unworthy of viewing. "It would have been, if it were faked. But it wasn't. Therefore, it's not fascinating, but sad, and you'll find that out later too."

  Temple stood, set her empty glass atop the TV and went to the door. D'Arlene seemed too leaden to move, perhaps ever again.

  "Oh," she said, like a dreamer remembering one last detail. "I sensed many unseen lives, some not human, but that kind of static is often present in the face of true phenomena. And one thing you must bear in mind, Miss Barr, above all others. I can swear to the veracity of the emotions I channeled, but not to their origin or any action they might have generated. It's the same as on my cases.

  "I never quite know whether I'm picking my impressions up from the victim ... or the killer."

  Chapter 30

  Two, Three . . . Open the Door

  By the next day, Temple was beginning to feel like Miss Scarlet from the game of Clue. With each change of locale, she met another of the suspect characters in the larger game of Murder.

  Maybe.

  She found Professor Mangel under a spreading cottonwood tree on the University of Nevada at Las Vegas campus, where he was addressing two dozen blue-jeaned and jacketed undergraduates Socrates-Style: outdoors.

  Temple turned up the collar on her linen blazer and stuffed her hands into pockets meant to be stitched shut (for a better line) until the day they departed for the Goodwill with the rest of the jacket. Not that the daytime temperatures were that cold yet, but the idea was in the air.

  So were loftier ideas.

  "Psychic, medium, fortune-teller, tea-leaf reader," Mangel was enumerating with dramatic precision. "Actor, arranger, artist.

  None of these names directly figures in the deck." He held up a fanned fistful of oversize cards whose beautifully illustrated backs made Temple edge nearer, all the better to see them.

  "But the one card that covers them all is... can anyone guess?"

  Students buzzed among themselves, but none ventured a suggestion.

  Mangel snapped over one card to reveal its face: not some numerical arrangement of diamonds, clubs, hearts or spades, but another elaborate illustration: a robed man of imposing mien.

  "The Emperor!" a man's voice sang out.

  Mangel smiled and shook his head.

  "The Devil!" a tremulous female voice called.

  Smiling, Professor Mangel shook his shiny bald head. "Seeing visions is not evil, only exceptional, though all too often in this world the exceptional is mistaken for the evil. Any other guesses?"

  His challenge drew a flurry of answers,

  "The High Priest" was first.

  "No," he chided. "I said this figure encompasses that of the priest."

  "Strength," came the next stab in the dark.

  Mangel laughed, enjoying himself, enjoying their attempts at an answer.

  "The Hanged Man," a long-haired biker-dude at the back yelled out.

  "Spoken like a true pessimist," Mangel slung back. "But is the Hanged Man hanging, or are we just looking at him upside down?" Another cryptic smile.

  Temple recognized a rare soul: one who loved to teach. Had she been a class member, she would have contributed. In fact, she couldn't help herself; she knew a few major arcana cards of the tarot. "The Fool!"

  "Not bad." Mangel pointed to her, pale eyes sparkling behind the crude glitter of impo
ssibly thick lenses. "And a more versatile and potent card than it is usually accounted. For what is the Fool but youthful possibility? And that is always both promising ... and dangerous, as you young people know very well. Well--?"

  "Death," suggested a dark male voice that was impossible to trace to its owner.

  Temple shivered as she scanned the group, wondering, but the professor laughed like a college-production Falstaff. "Gloomy youth, who can afford to dwell on decay, since it is so far off. So you think. No. Valiantly suggested, but if I let you continue, you'd name the entire arcana.

  No." He moved his thumb aside, letting them see the name of the card.

  "The Magician," came a thin chorus, with a mutual groan in their voices.

  "The Magician," Mangel repeated, well satisfied. He even beamed at the immobile face of the figure fronting the card. "And what is a magician? Don't worry! I won't tax your ingenuity any longer this morning. I will do my job and tell you what you need to know. In fact, I will be an esteemed educator and let someone else tell you what you need to know. Edmund Wilson. You have heard that name, children?"

  The silence said otherwise.

  Mangel gave one sad "tsk." "An American, after all, ladies and gentlemen. An American pundit, novelist, commentator, only dead a couple of decades ... no bells to be rung, eh? Only sad songs to be sung. Ah, well. Here is what this nobody Wilson said about the function of this very figure, the Magician: 'He has characteristics in common with those of the criminal, of the actor and of the priest' "--Mangel paused, lifting his eyebrows over the thick black line of his glasses frames to ensure that his audience was paying attention--" 'and he enjoys special advantages impossible for these professions. Unlike the criminal, he has nothing to fear from the police; unlike the actor, he can always have the stage to himself; unlike the priest, he need not trouble about questions of faith.

  "Are there," a girl in the front row asked, "no women magicians?"