All of our ears flatten in joint pain and consternation. A lion’s roar in the wilderness is a primal thing. It sounds fiercer than the volcano in front of the Mirage at eruption time. Worse than a jetliner taking off from McCarran. Probably worse than a tornado coming to take you away to Oz.
While we all wince in common pain, my two henchthings whimper.
Sounds of an ominous nature occur behind our backs: the scrape of claw on concrete, a soft growl that never ends, heavy breathing. I feel hot breath on my spine.
I turn, resigned to laying down my life in defense of the wimpy.
Although I have also been resigned to the fact that the canine species, no matter how ridiculous, is gifted with superior sniffing power, I discover that my prime sense is the most useful now. By the all-seeing eyes of Bastet I observe that the impenetrable darkness is not quite impenetrable.
As my legendary night vision adapts to the situation, I discern a life-saving fact: bars.
Then I discern the nature of the awesome feline muscle behind those sweet bars: a Big Cat whose silhouette is a negative of the night. A mirror image of myself magnified about twenty times.
Finally the gent gives up the growling and shows his teeth. I survey the Rocky Mountains of feline dentures and cannot help noticing that both Midnight Louise and I would fit fine in there, along with the Yorkshire constabulary.
A paw the size of a dinner plate thrusts through the bars.
I am afraid the dinner plate is out here, and we are sitting on it.
“Back! Back!” comes a falsetto cry.
Golda has leaped to my side and our defense with an ear-splitting yap.
“Back, back!” seconds Groucho, now pressing against my other side.
Half-pint courage is all well and good, but not when you are facing about forty quarts of snarling predator power.
Our opponent’s jaws spread wider.
I expect to hear a Fee, fie, foe, fum any second now, as this giant gets ready to grind the bones of whoever is dumb enough to stand up to it.
Then I hear something crack, and close my eyes. Bye-bye, bitty dog!
But the fluffballs bracketing me have not been snagged by the exploring mitt, and my eyes widen as I see the grin of death before me turn into a…yawn.
Another impressive jawbone crack, and superfeline smacks his fangs. “You. The runt cub in the middle. I saw you in my cage the other day, making off with part of my lunch.”
“Me? No, sire. I mean, sir. I was in Las Vegas doing my nails at the time. This is my first visit to Rancho Exotica. I swear it on my mother’s vibrissae.”
A growl again, but it sounds like a chuckle. “You do not look big enough to have whiskers, Cub, but maybe your mother might.” The huge eyes blink at my bodyguard. “Usually visitors bring rodents along only if a snake is in residence, and there is none on the premises now.”
“Snake.” I have visions of a boa constrictor big enough to swallow the Ritz Hotel. “Rodents. Oh, you mean my, uh, muscle. These are not rodents; they are miniature dogs.”
“Dogs.” The big dude yawns again. “They are lucky they feed us well here.” The broad brow furrows. “All except the theatrical guy from the New Millennium Hotel. Him they did not feed well. But he did not stay very long. Our population keeps coming and going, I am not sure why.”
I am not about to tell this dude the facts of life at Rancho Exotica. No use upsetting the natives when they might develop a nervous appetite in response.
“Yeah, well, I am a private investigator operating out of Vegas, and I am here to find out why some of our best cats are disappearing.”
“Vegas?” The big guy almost grins. “I hear that town is filled with disappearing cats. I am from Provo myself. I was a roadside attraction at a reptile ranch until the authorities confiscated me. Then I did time at an animal rehabilitation ranch until the management had a big spat over the donation money. We ended up being shipped hither and yon. And this is my hither.” He yawns again. “It is not a bad life, no worse than any other place I remember, but somewhat boring.”
I hate to tell him it will go from boring to fatal in short order.
“They call me Midnight Louie,” I introduce myself. “I would appreciate your not eating my bodyguards in a reflex motion. They are small but occasionally useful.”
“What a coincidence,” the big guy answers. “They call me Midnight. And Ebony. And Inkspot. It depends on where I land and how much imagination the two-legs have. But you can call me Butch.”
“So how long have you been doing time here, Butch?”
“I am a senior resident. About as long as it takes a fat moon to get skinny and back again.”
“And Osiris, how long was he here?”
“You know the theatrical dude! Why did you not say so at first? He was a little peeved and a lot panicked when he was here, but I cannot say that I blame him. They had him on rations so short they were invisible.”
“So you said. For how long?”
“Several suns. Then they took him away one dark time, and he never came back. That happens, though, like the waning of the moon and the swelling of the sun each day. We are always being brought and taken away.”
There is something so sad about such a big bruiser being caged and subjected to the whims of an inferior and weaker species that for a moment I am lost for words. These big guys in the Big House have not got the free will of the smallest alley cat.
In the silence, Groucho yaps out, “Sounds like the panther could use a good lawyer.”
Amen.
“Come to think of it,” Butch goes on, “I remember you trespassing on my territory twice. You brought back the picked-clean bone. What weird behavior. Must come of living and working in Las Vegas. Say, I get it! Were you bringing your compadre Osiris a secret snack?”
I wish I could say that I keep silent from modesty, or unwillingness to credit Midnight Louise with the life-saving operation, but I am mostly loath to let the big guy think that I stole his lunch for any reason whatsoever, in case he expects me to make it up to him personally.
“That was a good deed, little fellah,” he rumbles on.
I blink. He likes me. He actually likes me. “It was nothing that I would not not-do again.”
While he is trying to decipher that phrase, I press on. “In fact, we are here to find out where Osiris has gone. These here are my personal noses, which is why I would be grateful if you big dudes can refrain from munching them while we conduct our investigation.”
“Investigate away. We have always been curious about where our compatriots go.”
I hear a couple of short growls of agreement from near and far, and realize that we have been eavesdropped on by some mighty big ears.
“No one ever bothers to tell us,” Butch rumbles on. “It is like they think we are deaf and dumb.”
“Can I take it that the entire compound will give us carte blanche?”
“We do not have any carte blanche that I know of, but we will answer your questions if we can. We are more than a little bored anyway.”
So I make the rounds, in the course of my investigations meeting one toothless lion, two ocelots, and a puma in a dead tree.
They all confirm the panther’s story. Osiris was not fed while here and was taken away, never to be seen again.
We end up at the empty cage that housed the kidnapped leopard.
“Any scents worth trailing?” I ask the Yorkies.
They zip through the bars like floor mops, not even ruffling their trailing coats. I see their shadowy little forms, nose to concrete, vacuuming up the residue on the cage floor. At times like these I am glad that dogs, like the French, are more renowned for their “nose” than my breed.
“Ooh,” says Golda. “More Big Cat.” She sneezes so hard her ears lift horizontal to the ground. “Why do I not smell any dog out here?”
“They do not hunt dog for trophy heads,” I point out. “No value in it.”
Groucho growls at me, all
four tiny feet braced. “We are more valuable as hunting partners than prey. What has your kind ever done to make itself useful to mankind?”
“We have inspired innumerable art objects, from the Sphinx to the MGM Grand lion.”
“Exactly nothing, then.” Groucho wheezes with laughter while Golda sneezes again.
I feel like the Cowardly Lion being berated by Munchkins, or toy windup Totos. If I did not need these noses at the moment, I would hand these two over to Butch and his ilk for between-meal palette cleansers. All that hair would make pretty good dental floss for those saber-tooth-size fangs, I bet.
But I control my savage side and play the urbane drawing-room detective.
“I hope, my little furry friends, that ‘exactly nothing,’ is not what your noses have come up with.”
While Groucho and I have been debating, Golda has been running around the cage floor in imitation of the Energizer battery ad bunny.
“Water, water everywhere,” she complains, taking another swab around the floor like an industrious mophead.
“Then all traces of who has come and gone here have been washed away,” I say.
Golda sniffs indignantly. “Not all. Not to the connoisseur.” I notice that Groucho is sitting back and letting her do all the down and dirty nose work.
She finally comes over to us and sticks her hairy little head through the bars.
“I smell the track of the cat, of course. He is much too big and earthy to miss. His trail goes that way.” She jerks her bow to the left. “I smell many, many man feet. They have walked in enough excrement of all kinds to make the cage floor into a litter box of sorts.”
“Then it is hopeless,” I cannot resist predicting. I have never been one to put all my faith in dog noses anyway.
Golda sits on what would be her tail, were one discernible under that fountain of hair. “Perhaps not. I detect a random pattern to all the manfeet scents but two,”
Groucho leans forward, interested. “And how do these trails differ?”
“They go in opposite directions,” she says promptly, “the only two trails that do but one thing: enter the cage area, and leave.”
“Which directions?” I ask.
She jerks her bow left again.
“Ah, with Osiris. This must be the person that removed him from his cage to the scene of the crime. And the other direction?”
She jerks her head in the opposite direction.
Groucho stares into the darkness, sniffing. “But there is nothing that way but empty desert for miles and miles.”
You can guess which trail we end up following.
Chapter 34
Calling on Agatha
“What we need,” Temple said, “is an Agatha Christie moment.”
“You mean,” Max said, “an Agatha Christie climax.”
“Really, Max! Agatha Christie didn’t put those sorts of things in her books. Although…”
“What?”
“Her husband’s first name was Max. One of them, anyway.”
“How did you learn so much about Agatha Christie?”
“Read a few of her books, ages ago.” Temple eyed him seriously. “Do you know what I mean by an Agatha Christie moment?”
“You want to call all the suspects together.”
“I dream big.”
“And then finger a murderer.”
“No, I’d be happy with just a little more insight.”
“That’s dreaming big?”
“A little insight that would point toward a murderer.”
“Let me think.” Max thought, rather as theatrically as Hamlet did.
He finally glanced at Temple with an expression both amused and promising a dramatic solution. “Do I look like someone who needs to shoot animals to you? A weekend game hunter?” Max’s expression grew craven. “Moneyed, maybe.”
“‘Moneyed’ may be all we need to ‘open sesame’ at the Rancho Exotica,” Temple agreed. “Okay. Here’s the setup. You’re a client. A Phoenix high roller. I want to impress you with the very special services the Phoenix has to offer.” Temple made a face at the iffy ethics of her own scenario, nothing she’d do in a million years for real. “But why would I be there with Mr. High Roller?”
“Maybe you put a lot of yourself into your job.”
“Hey! I’m no floozie. I’m a PR professional.”
“You haven’t had me for a client yet.”
“Well, I guess if I can covet chain-mail bikinis from Macedonia Jones, I could pretend to be impressed with a client’s special customer.”
“Especially if he bought you a bauble from Fred Leighton’s at the Bellagio.”
She made another face, this one stronger. “I’ve heard PR people called corporate prostitutes before. I just never thought I’d be living up to the lowest level of the profession so soon. I don’t think I need a bauble as a cover.”
“No, but you’re missing a ring.” Max’s expression was even more masked than usual. Temple couldn’t tell if the emotion behind the mask was anger or sorrow, but it was something much darker than his deliberately whimsical tone. She wished he and Louie didn’t share a certain catlike inscrutability. “I can provide another,” Max said a trifle wistfully.
“You’ve given up on getting the other one back?” She found herself talking around a sudden lump in her throat, as if they were discussing replacing a dead pet.
“I never give up on getting anything back.”
“Are you just talking about the opal ring? Or about me, or even your preundercover, fancy-free lifestyle?”
“How about all of the above?”
“You dream big.”
He took her hand, her bare left hand. “I know nothing will replace the ring Shangri-La stole onstage at the Opium Den in front of God, Lieutenant Molina, and everybody. I promise you, I’ll find her and I’ll get it back.”
“It’s all right, Max. Really. Rings like that are only worth what they mean. You’ve got more important things to worry about.”
His grip tightened. If she’d been wearing a ring, it would have pinched her finger. “No. I don’t.”
Who could look away from the Mystifying Max when he was being this intense, and this truthful? Not Temple.
She smiled around the lump that still hadn’t gone away. “I know you don’t, and I know you will. Get it all back.” His grip eased as he smiled and gave her hand a small shake. “So, about the stage prop. From Fred Leighton’s? Really?”
“Just as a cover, of course,” Max amended, careful not to crowd her. But was it a cover for something more than the current charade? Was Max still insecure about her?
“I’d need a pretty convincing cover,” Temple said airily, moving onto less serious ground. “And you’d have to look like a pretty convincing high roller.”
“Absolutely.”
“It’s returnable, of course.”
“Absolutely.”
That was how Temple reentered the Van Burkleo household wearing a ten-carat vintage emerald ring surrounded by diamond baguettes. Temple always found it intriguing that bread—a slang term for money, like dough—also came in baguettes. French bread, of course. From Paris.
Even Leonora Van Burkleo’s mascara-smudged, mourning eyes widened to do a quick mental computation.
“I’m so terribly sorry,” Temple began.
It wasn’t clear if she was apologizing for the ostentation of her ring or for an intrusion on a house of mourning.
Leonora Van Burkleo spread beringed, inarticulate hands.
It wasn’t clear if she was acceding to or expressing the callous fact that the universe must go on. As the heart must go on. Après le Titanic, le déluge, c’est commerce.
“Mr. Maximilian”—Temple gazed moistly at her escort—“has most-favored-nation status at the Crystal Phoenix. Perhaps you can guess why.”
“I can indeed.” Leonora prowled within scratching distance of Max, who was dressed more expensively, and thus more quietly, than ever. “I am sure
we can offer him something worth…bagging.”
“Actually,” Max said, taking a hasty spin around the two-story hall with the long-horned antelope heads mounted high like once-living chandeliers, resembling a man casket hunting at a cut-rate funeral parlor, “I’m interested in buying the total operation.”
“Really?” Leonora’s lean, mean eyes paid tribute in exact turn to the Patek Philippe watch (no mere Rolex for Daddy Maxbucks), the Roman ring, the Zegna suit worn with…gasp!…a Gap turtleneck.
Where did he dig up these things? Temple wondered. Was there a Wardrobe Anonymous Warehouse somewhere for undercover operatives? The same place where rotating cars were stored? Someplace where it can be easily done. Perhaps out on Highway 375 near Area 51.
“My condolences,” Max said with scintillating sincerity, taking Leonora’s paw. Hand. The golden menagerie of charms on her wrist jingled like spurs. “Perhaps it’s too soon to discuss business.”
Leonora’s long, lacquered nails curved possessively around his fingers. “Business?” she purred. And she did purr. Temple wondered if all her plastic surgeries had damaged her vocal cords somehow, had given her that contralto rumble. Or was it another affectation, like her new face?
Temple restrained a warning growl.
“I’m sorry, madame,” Max continued, not sounding it at all, “to intrude at such a time, but an enterprise like this needs a guiding hand”—her lethal nails curled harder into his fingers—“or at least a front man with international connections.” Max was suddenly all brisk business. “I’m in this country only a short while. I was interested in seeing the facilities, if you don’t object.”
“Not at all. But I’m afraid that the assets will be tied up for some time. Cyrus was not one to share his financial dealings.”
Max reclaimed his hand and stuck them both in his blazer pockets as he strolled around the vast, southwestern-style entry area.
“Quite an impressive layout. I understand from…Miss Barr that you have an equally impressive, ah, head shop, so to speak, here also?”
“How quaintly you put it.”
At that moment another woman entered the huge hall, moving more like its mistress than an employee.
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