Cat with an Emerald Eye

by Douglas, Carole Nelson

  When the light snapped off, everyone breathed a sigh of mutual relief. Slowly, they resumed their seats around the table, waiting.

  "This young man," D'Arlene said, "has had a terrible burden of vengeance."

  "He knew about Gandolph's disguise?" Temple asked.

  "Apparendy, from what we just heard. Apparently Gandolph had debunked his mother. Was she a medium, Wayne?"

  Wayne nodded, staring at the battle-ax embedded in the table.

  "I didn't mean to kill him. I wanted to expose him, scare him. I didn't want him to escape into the Afterlife. I wanted him to face consequences, like my mother did! The articles, the TV

  shows, the digs, the laughter. He went on television with hidden videotapes of her seances. He made the circuit... The Tonight Show when Johnny Carson was still doing it. Tom Snyder, on his first TV show. And after she'd been humiliated half to death, he and they went on to other victims. When she died last year, I knew I had to take action. I wanted you all to know what he was!" He looked around the table. "You can't blame me."

  "I can," Crawford Buchanan put in. "You'll never work again in this town."

  That seemed to stir some life in Wayne Tracey. He looked up and grinned. "Thanks. I needed that."

  "What exactly did you do?" Temple asked carefully.

  Wayne looked at her, but he didn't seem to recognize her. He was still walking through past emotions and present guilt. "I came in early to 'check lighting.' Nobody notices a cameraman, especially Crawford Buchanan's cameraman. The blades were already rigged to zip around on their almost-invisible lines, and I was supposed to stand on the sidelines. Once everyone was seated, I lengthened the line on the battle-ax, thinking it ought to come close enough to scare Gandolph. I didn't think it would cut him."

  "It did, but it didn't kill him."

  "Were you responsible for the fog?" Jeff Mangel asked. "That confused us."

  Wayne shook his head.

  "I--" Oscar Grant cleared his throat. "I came in hours early and rigged that. I needed effective footage for my show. I figured the murkier the better. I mean, the effects were here, why not use them?"

  "And the chlorine?" Jeff Mangel sounded angry. "That made us all teary-eyed and confused."

  "It was a screen." William Kohler's weak voice hit everyone like a clap of thunder, for he'd never spoken before in this room. "Mynah had me set up the projection of Houdini, and she didn't want anyone to see it too well."

  "Shut up, you goddamn lump!" Mynah was not in the mood for confidences. Her face was the mask of a peeved Medusa and her silver hair fanned around that ugly expression as if it had been struck by heat lightning. "Can't you do anything right? Keep your mouth shut at least!"

  "What about this latest Houdini tonight?" Temple asked William.

  He suddenly grinned, his heavy face lightening. "Same photo, much better effects. I had nothing to do with it, and Mynah couldn't even thread a sewing machine to save her soul. I designed her whole setup at the house and made it work. Maybe poor old Gan-dolph had a hand in it. He was right; mediums are a bunch of lying fakes."

  "Not all of them," D'Arlene Hendrix said from across the table where she held Agatha's hand on one side and kept her other hand on Wayne's forearm.

  The gesture reminded Temple of something. "What about the handcuffs: Someone, or something, had to put Gandolph in irons and it had to be when he was already unconscious."

  "A brilliant touch," Oscar conceded, "but not mine, alas. You were holding hands with the guy. Gal."

  "True, and the cutlery flying around was distracting enough that I didn't notice Gandolph's hand slip from mine." She sighed.

  Another silence.

  "I thought she had just fainted," came a low, confessing voice.

  "I should have known!" Temple turned on Crawford Buchanan like a watchdog. "Why did you even have the handcuffs with you? Planning a little S & M expedition after the seance, C.B.?"

  "Don't excite yourself; we might have another untimely death to explain. No, they were a good prop. Television shows need visuals. I'd planned to throw 'em out on the table, so to speak, but when the old dame next to me keeled over I got the idea of cuffing her so it would look like Houdini had issued a challenge. Unfortunately she--he--was dead and it ruined the effect."

  "Did you throw out the bullet Louie found too?"

  Crawford shook his gel-slick black-haired head as soberly as the chief mourner at a mob funeral. " No, never thought of that. A bullet isn't big enough to show up well on camera."

  "Then who contributed the bullet to the show-and-tell?" Temple asked the table at large.

  No one 'fessed up to that particular red herring, and Midnight Louie certainly wasn't going to say where he found it.

  Electra looked around like a lively white-haired robin. "Maybe the real Houdini was trying to take a shot at a lousy medium, and missed. So as far as phenomenon go, that only leaves the strange man we saw outside the windows unexplained."

  "And the other smells," Jeff Mangel added. "The food, the wine--"

  "The roses," Temple finished.

  "Were you in on this?" Mynah suddenly demanded. "I always thought you were a treacherous bitch."

  "No." D'Arlene answered for Temple with something very like righteous anger. "She honestly understood something the rest of us couldn't see, which makes her the only honorable medium in the room besides Agatha. You're projecting again, Mynah; you're trying to pass off your own dishonesty on someone else. It won't work anymore. Not after tonight. Word will get out. Here and Beyond. They don't call you the White Witch for nothing."

  "I was going to say," Temple added, "that I've been called worse, but I don't think I have been. And it's true, I did think I saw someone outside the windows. I didn't get that word you all recognized from the likeness of Houdini, but from him, a tired old man, a kind of King Lear in a hat and cape."

  "Maybe it was a prescient vision of Gandolph's spirit," Agatha said timidly. "I saw him too, and he looked much more like Gandolph than Houdini."

  "So we've failed." Oscar Grant's voice was heavy. "I suppose tonight's footage was useless."

  I'll take custody of that." Crawford stood and picked up Wayne's camera.

  He almost dropped it again, being unaccustomed to the weight.

  "What are you going to say about us, show about us on TV?" Mynah asked hysterically. "You can't believe a thing this so-called husband of mine says. Oscar is an utter fraud and Mangel's an academic fool and Agatha a neurotic and D'Arlene has pretensions of being some sort of head dorm-mother for helpless humanity--"

  "You'll see. I may have something to sell to America's Most Wanted."

  Crawford headed for the door, camcorder clutched like a babe to his chest.

  Oscar stood up to shout at his departing back. "But nobody killed Gandolph, can't you see?

  He just died. Maybe his heart was bad; maybe he was allergic to chlorine, maybe he got blood poisoning from the ax? There's no crime here."

  Crawford was gone, only the pounding of his footsteps down the stairs echoing up. Temple listened hard, hoping maybe she'd hear a crash.

  "Well," Electra said. "Oscar is right. I don't see what we could report to the police ... if any of us felt we ought to report to the police. But I must say that I am disappointed in many of you.

  I can't help thinking that the spirit world is too, and showed its disappointment in what we saw tonight. Temple, I think we should leave. It's been a very trying seance."

  Temple stood, glad that her knees still supported her. Clearly, although Gandolph had died, no one had directly killed him, or had really meant to. She had arrived at the same conclusion as the police, much later, and after much more personal turmoil.

  With all she had heard, there was something she couldn't get out of her mind. She had a confession to make too, about her part in the evening's events, but this was not the audience for it. Maybe the only audience for it was, as she had said before, not truly meaning it, "out there."

 
She meant that now.

  Chapter 39

  Ghostwriter in the Sky

  Max's voice on the phone reverberates as from an echo chamber; it sounds like a communication from a ghost. Temple hasn't heard him on the phone for months. He sounds like a stranger again.

  "You never did get to wear your prize shoes at the Crystal Ball at the Phoenix after the Halloween seance," he begins.

  "No," she agrees. "But who told--?"

  Max is a man less worried by who than by what. "Why don't you dig them out"--[he knows her closet]--"and well go out for dinner tonight?"

  "But--"

  "I can make out-of-the-way personal appearances, and I assume you're not a wanted woman . . . yet."

  "Where can I wear such elaborate shoes?"

  "Wherever you want to. You didn't worry about that before."

  "I didn't have these shoes before. Max, I need to know where we're going so I know what else to wear."

  "A classy little out-of-the-way place. Wear whatever goes with the shoes. I'll come by at seven."

  Temple listens to the lull of the dial tone until the telephone wrangles at her to hang up.

  Max is even more mysterious than before. She used to love his spur-of-the-moment social style.

  It seemed spontaneous, fun. Now she understands that his sudden whimsical turns were dictated by grave considerations she never saw. Still, Max found the shoes; he deserves to celebrate his feat. Her feet. The Midnight Louie shoes.

  *****************

  Temple is ready by six-thirty and discovers that she can't sit down because Midnight Louie has left fine black hairs on every horizontal surface. She's wearing the ankle-length, stretch-velvet dress that never saw the lights of the Crystal Ball, and it's black anyway, but she doesn't want it to be furry too. Max isn't used to cat hair.

  Tonight she's pinned a black enamel panther-head pin with emerald-green eyes a couple inches below the dress's soft turtleneck. Except for the Shoes, that's her only jewelry. She should be appropriately dressed for anything from Caesars Palace Court Continental restaurant to Three O'Clock Louie's at Temple Bar. She used to get so excited wondering where mysterious Max Kinsella would take her; now she's just worried. Should he be doing this? Is it safe? For him? For her?

  He rings the doorbell, like a good lad.

  She realizes she's never opened the door for him in this place. It does feel a little like prom night, only any flowers she'd get from Max would be paper.

  He's wearing a matching black turtleneck, not velvet, and black blazer, slacks, shoes.

  She can't help smiling. "We look like we're going to a mime's funeral."

  "Except for your shoes." He looks down and she turns, the flared skirt swinging out.

  "Spectacular, but I hope you don't think the real Midnight Louie should have a night out too."

  "No. He's resting comfortably in the bedroom."

  Max wanders in, looks toward the room under discussion. "I suppose he regards it as his territory now."

  Temple thinks, and decides to leave that unanswered.

  Max turns. "Ready?"

  For what? "Sure."

  She picks up her only evening bag, a silver minaudiere on a black satin string.

  "Coat?"

  "How cold can it get?" She holds out her arms in their wrist-length sleeves.

  "You'll be all right."

  She hopes so.

  Locking the door behind her seems ostentatious, especially when she drops her key-heavy chain into the shallow black mouth of the tiny purse.

  On the way down in the elevator Max leans against the polished wood. Temple wonders what kind of wheels he uses now.

  It's cooler and darker outside than she had expected. In the parking lot, her aqua Storm is parked next to Electra's pink Probe; together they look like an ad for a Miami Vice rerun. Next to them sits a new Taurus that looks ... black.

  Max opens the passenger door. "Gandolph's."

  "Can you just use it?"

  "I'm his heir," Max mentions after he gets in and pulls on the seat belt.

  "Won't that be awkward? Won't you have to show up in court eventually?"

  "No." Max doesn't explain further, and his voice, his profile don't encourage Temple to probe.

  She stares ahead, thinking that the evening feels all wrong, that the Taurus isn't Max and it isn't her, it's a dead man's hearse. It's a dead relationship's hearse. The little purse sits on her lap like a dead thing, heavy and still. She curls her hands around it, not being used to carrying small purses, or sitting in a well-upholstered sedan with velour upholstery, or feeling like she's in a magazine ad for something.

  Only when the car makes several turns does she look at Max.

  "Ah, is this place we're going to on the west side?"

  He nods. She'll have to get used to that ponytail in profile. It doesn't look bad, just different.

  Like the car. Temple is terribly afraid that they are heading in the wrong direction, but doesn't know how to say so, so she says nothing, not even when the Taurus turns into the parking lot of the Blue Dahlia.

  Disastrous! Temple is speechless. Sick. Shocked. Does not dare say anything. Then she glances cautiously at Max, and suddenly suspects that he knows exactly-- exactly --what he is doing. He grins at her like Sean Connery as James Bond, insouciantly pleased with himself, with her.

  "I just discovered this place. Quite unusual."

  Temple nods in a daze, trying not to notice the place in the lot where she and Matt collapsed with laughter at the idea of Molina the singing policewoman.

  This is getting interesting. Just how much does Max know about the Blue Dahlia, and who sings there sometimes, and when Temple might have been there and with who? Whom?

  Whoever.

  She is demure as he lets her out like a large little gentleman.

  They are like two coiled springs trying to guess when the other will make like a Slinky and flip ... right for the stairs and a hasty exit.

  They enter the restaurant, are shown to a table for two lit by the small coral-shaded lamp she remembers from last time.

  "This is darling," she remarks, as she probably did last time.

  "It's fairly new. Since my ... sabbatical."

  "Is that what you're calling it?"

  He settles into the chair, which he has to push back from the table to accommodate his legs, as usual. "It's as good a term as any. Do you like it?"

  He means the restaurant, of course. Temple looks around. The small dance floor is empty, but a few musicians are shaking out their arms and their instruments under the spot lit stage area. A lone stool sits at the side, unoccupied.

  Temple strokes the cold metal purse on the white tablecloth. She should probably tell Max they have to leave now, that Molina could come in at any moment, but when she looks at him he seems so at ease, so in control, so sure of himself that she can't quite warn him.

  Besides, then he'd ask her how she knew Molina sang here and she'd have to explain she'd been here before, which would ruin the "surprise" aspect of the evening, always a big thing with Max. And then he'd ask with who--whom?--not out of jealousy but because he always wants to know everything about everything; that's what makes him a master magician, always knowing every situation inside out.

  And she'd have to say it was just a dinner out with Matt, hating that "just," because that seemed to put Matt down and he didn't deserve it.

  Better to let Molina nab Max and let him break himself out of jail afterward, Temple decides morosely, than to ruin the present with an autopsy of the recent past.

  "You seem more serious than usual," Max says.

  "Just worried."

  "About what?"

  "Our being out in public like this. Your being out like this."

  "Let me worry about me; I've been doing it for a while." Max's smile could cut through fog.

  "Come on, you want to show off those shoes, don't you?"

  He takes her hand to draw her up and onto the tiny parquet dance
floor.

  No one else is there, but Max is used to solo numbers in the spotlights. The musicians have indeed got it together by now and are playing something familiar and forties and vaguely Brazilian (fascinatin'rhythm).

  Max can dance and, as he's proving tonight, has even mastered some ballroom moves.

  Temple thinks that she is doing the samba or something similar, but it doesn't matter what she thinks she's doing, because Max's lead is so smooth and so strong that she is doing just the right thing no matter what. She had forgotten how easy it was to dance with Max, because she is so small and he isn't. He's right; they'd be great on stage together if she could stand to be locked in cramped cabinets and wear fishnet hose. Well, maybe she wouldn't have to wear fishnet hose...

  Max can slow-dance too, and Temple is swung out and drawn in, whatever the music and moment dictates, until she stops worrying and looking out of the corner of her eye to see if the stool is occupied yet or if any yellow-haired ghosts are watching from the sidelines.

  They are of course making a spectacle of themselves, exactly what Max shouldn't be doing for his own good, but then her shoes might be drawing a tad of attention away from him.

  Midnight Louie would like that.

  "You're finally smiling," Max says when the music has them swaying together cheek to shoulder again.

  "I haven't danced like this in a while."

  "Me neither."

  When the fourth number starts and they leave the floor, a smattering of applause accompanies them.

  "Honestly." Temple unfolds her napkin with one mighty wrist shake and arranges it carefully on her delicate velvet lap. "What an exhibitionist. You couldn't remain undercover in a dust storm."

  While Temple is taking her worry out on the table linen, Max has folded his napkin into an intricate star-shape, which he presents to her like a bouquet. In the center is one breathlessly perfect, perfectly pink fresh rosebud.

  She stares at him with the proper amazement, not so much for the trick and the posy, but for the underlying meaning. And suddenly the night is not a dream, but the opening act for just what she needed, distance and a sudden snap back to reality, time for a discussion: