“That’s really a nice favor,” Temple began. “Aha!”
She pulled the cell phone from her bag, where she had been rummaging all during their conversation. She flipped it open while Max eyed her askance. “Oooh, Battery’s dead. Guess I forgot to recharge it.”
“Maybe you’re best off without armaments,” he said, watching her drop the phone back into the bottomless maw of her tote bag.
“What time is this hunt supposed to happen?”
“Five P.M.”
“I suppose that’s so all concerned can have a civilized dinner at eight. Except the prey.” She checked her watch—1:00 P.M.—and looked around. The bustling lobby thronged with people who showed no interest in them whatsoever. “Can I take you on a quick tour of the innovations? I’m sure we can get to anywhere we’re not expected in time.”
Max looked around rather more thoroughly than she had. When his glance came back to her—the natural, blue-eyed one she had gotten so used to that she’d forgotten he’d ever hidden behind green contact lenses—his Irish eyes were smiling.
“Why not?”
“You seem a bit more chipper than you were a few days ago.”
“Maybe I’ve decided that I’m no more bad for you than the next guy.”
Temple decided not to ask if he had any particular “next guy” in mind.
Max offered her his arm and the tour began.
Chapter 42
Secret Witness, Silent Witness
“Hey, kit,” I whisper from the large-leaved shade of a towering canna lily.
I feel something like a dirty old man, to tell the truth.
But the kit in question has made claims to being mine—though I deny it up one side of my whiskers and down the other—so I am not about to get arrested on lurking charges.
Midnight Louise elaborately sniffs the air just to let me know she has other places to go and people to see. Then she sashays over to my canna lily plant and rubs against the lower leaves as if pausing for a moment’s rest on her rounds.
I must admit that I am still shaken from just seeing my Miss Temple consorting—cavorting?—in public with Mr. Max Kinsella inside the Crystal Phoenix Hotel. One of the big advantages to Mr. Max Kinsella, in fact the only advantage that I can see to the man, is that his duck-and-cover past has kept him more low-profile than a straightedge razor. At least when it comes to intruding into my and my Miss Temple’s lifestyle.
So it is disturbing to see this undercover pair conspiring in the shade of a wall of parlor palms. It is almost as disturbing as if I were to be seen associating with Miss Midnight Louise in broad daylight.
Which I will not be doing if I can get her to join me in the canna-lily shade.
She hisses a greeting and informs me that I had better not have any designs on Chef Song’s koi, as they are her special wards now. It would go against her grain were anything to happen to any of them. She would then be forced to go against my grain, which she assures me I will not like.
“I am not here on any trifling errand,” I say loftily. “I was merely doing you the courtesy of checking in before I head out to Rancho Exotica again. I would not wish to be accused of denying you the opportunity for a long ride in a Mob meatwagon. I know how you yearn to associate with the more upscale elements in town.”
“Can the sarcasm,” she advises me. “You still have those two nose jobs with you?”
“Alas, no. Their assignment is over. I now have a witness to the crime and it is merely a matter of returning to the ranch to take a deposition. Dull work, really. I could not blame you for staying someplace safe and luxe like the Phoenix and letting your elders do the dirty work.”
“There is more than one of you? Say it is not so!”
“I was using ‘elders’ in the general sense.”
“You are being very good-natured about leaving me out of this,” she says suspiciously.
By now she is more leery of my wishing her to stay home than my possibly wanting her to come along.
I play her like a two-pound carp. “It is only that I know how unhappy you were last time to miss the bus, so to speak. I wish to give you every opportunity to learn from your elders.”
“Ha! You probably are not sure you can cop a ride on the meatwagon without me to distract the muscle at the wheel. No go, Pops. This time you will have to play decoy. I will try not to let those heavy doors slam shut on anything of yours that you might miss.”
She strikes a tough deal, but getting into the meat wagon solo is a delicate operation.
“So who is this witness?” she prods. (I mean she literally prods…her claw into my paw. Ouch!)
“A secret witness is not a secret witness anymore if I tell anyone who asks.” I also do not tell her that she may be of assistance in wringing the story out of said witness. No sense letting the kit think she is more important than she already thinks she is.
Not half an hour later we are in line behind a Dumpster ready to take the afternoon stage to Rancho Exotica.
“Shhhh!” my darling not-daughter admonishes me.
“That is not me growling. That is my stomach. I neglected to have lunch.”
“You can gnaw on a horse hock once we are aboard.” She casts a baleful yellow glance my way. (A pity she did not inherit my soulful, lettuce-green eyes, not that we are related, of course.)
“Horse! I have interrogated horses. I would never eat them. Is that what they feed the Big Cats?”
“Among other things.” Midnight Louise is squinting at the sides of beef milling around the van…not the frozen meat hunks, the hunks on legs, i.e., the ham-handed human dudes who are manhandling the meat into the rear compartment.
“Those are exceptionally beefy individuals,” I mention.
“Minions of the Mob usually are.”
“Strange that the experts say that there is no more Mob in Las Vegas.”
“Please. You have been out of the hotel business too long, Pops. They still have a good grasp on the wholesale meat business, that is for sure. Were you a drinking dude and prone to hanging out in bars, you would be having guys offering you steaks by the slab at a very good price. The hotels lose their weight in purloined meat every year.”
“Indeed. So these dudes mean business.”
“I would not want to let one of them catch me by the hairs of my chinny chin-chin.” She eyes me. “So you think you can distract them while I slip into the van?”
“Uh. Sure.” I am not as nimble—or do I mean nubile? I suspect both words are somewhat the same—as Miss Midnight Louise, but I certainly know my way around the criminal elements, even when they are packing lamb chops instead of revolvers.
Not that they might not be packing revolvers too.
While the dudes return to the warehouse to load up another cart of cartilage, I dash from the Dumpster to the front of the vehicle. I figure Miss Louise’s trick of yowling has gotten old by now, so I bound up on some piled boxes to the van’s roof and bide my time.
Ooooh. That refrigeration unit is blowing hot air onto the hot metal roof, making it into a steel stovetop. If I do not watch it, my toes will sear and I will be worthless in a five-yard dash.
In fact, my best move would be to jump down the back right into the van, but first I must distract the boys from Syracuse so that Louise can sneak into the meat locker.
I give a low moan.
“Yo, Vinnie,” one guy says. “You getting frostbite? Do not leave any fingerprints on the merchandise.”
“Hey, Manny. You got indigestion or something? Must have sampled the goods.”
I moan again. You would be surprised what eerie vocalizations we furred dudes can produce…unless you had been at one of our community sings or love-ins, and then you would not be surprised at all.
I hear Vinnie clomp around to Manny on the side of the van. “You do not think that some of this meat is still alive?”
“It is fresh,” Manny says, “but I am sure it is also fresh dead. You do not think some of this mea
t is haunted?”
“Haunted? You mean tainted. Naw, it is all primo stuff.”
I lean over the back roof of the van just in time to see a pennant of black fur whisk out of sight into the cool dark below.
I leap down to the metal floor—an iron iceberg—and nip behind a few haunches of what I hope is beef. It is odd how we become accustomed to certain incivilities of life. Or death. I would never be hungry enough to eat a horse, despite the saying, but I would have a cow.
I almost have a cow right there when a sharp-featured appendage curls into my shoulder.
“Get behind the prime rib, Daddio. The meatheads are coming to see if the standing rack of lamb has the heebie-jeebies.”
I hunker down, toes curled against the cold, biting down hard to keep my fangs from chattering. If I had to claw my way out of here for some reason, my shivs would probably snap off like icicles.
We arrive at our desert destination during the apex of the day’s heat, but must wait many icy minutes while our chauffeurs wrestle frozen meat onto carts and out of our way.
Finally, sensing a lull in the action, I stumble to the open van door and drop down to blessed, and solar-heated, terra firma.
A moment later Louise lands beside me. We cold-foot it farther under the vehicle, obnoxious as the shade is to our chilled bodies.
“It was warmer when I was with the Yorkies,” I mention.
“Overheated, hyperactive canines.”
I roll…er, swagger to the raw edge where shadow and sunlight meet. As soon as my toes defrost, we can make a run for the big cat compound.
Meanwhile, Manny and Vinnie tramp back and forth, slinging hash, so to speak.
My stomach unfortunately objects audibly to the downloaded edibles disappearing from sight.
Manny’s engineer boots pause but a foot from my nose. “Vinnie, you will have to have that looked into.”
“Maybe one of the tires is losing air,” Vinnie says.
I hear knees creaking and scramble to hide behind an opposite wheel.
“Nope,” says Vinnie. “Tires are all pumped up.”
Midnight Louise lets out a hiss of exasperation as the boots thump away. “You and your Ghost of indigestion act. A plain old yowl would have been less intriguing to these mutton-heads. Okay. Tootsies toasty? Let us head for some cover that matches the air temperature.”
She is gone like an eightball caroming across a sand beige pool table. I streak after her, expecting toes to snap off, and am pleasantly surprised when they do not.
By an ever-handy Dumpster we catch our breaths.
“So where is this secret witness of yours?” Louise asks. “Are we heading for the house or the hills?”
It is so tempting to mislead the little snip, but my toes, frankly, are not up to laying false trails.
“The compound.”
Stalking like shadows on ice, we pad over the hot sandy dirt toward the now-familiar row of cages in the outbuilding.
“Looks like you have been busy,” Louise concedes. “You seem to know your way around this place.”
“I have hoofed this terrain from here to the Animal Oasis.”
“Animal Oasis. What is that?”
Before I can answer her, I stop to stare in shock.
It is the same old, same old, all right. Lions and tigers and…and bare cages.
Two of them.
Not just Osiris’s but the one that contained my secret witness.
Even Midnight Louise is frowning at the lineup, counting noses and coming up one too few.
“Looks like another Big Boy is AWOL,” she notes. Then she looks over and sees my expression. “Oh, no, Daddio Darnedest! Is the missing person your secret witness?”
I nod glumly.
The witness is definitely not here to see us.
I can only hope that is not a permanent condition.
Chapter 43
The Black and Blue Max
Four-thirty.
Max had been watching the world through the view screen of a video camera for so long that he felt like he was looking through the Cloaked Conjuror’s mask.
At the moment he was basking snakelike atop the artificial rocks forming the skeleton for a simulated waterfall, his black clothing so dust covered it had gone gray.
He had managed to procure a Jeep Laredo the color of mud. Driving a security-force vehicle look-alike got him fairly close to the compound. The Laredo was parked in a thicket of paloverde trees. His circuitous way to the ranch house area had been booby-trapped by so many fellow prowlers that it was almost laughable, like a scene in a Pink Panther film farce.
The three earnest hunt breakers were out there, armed with binoculars and flare guns. They too had managed to come very close, despite the patrolling security guards. That made Max more nervous than the pairs of guards that rode or walked both near and far from the ranch house. The protesters were as unpredictable as lizards, and in their safari khakis, as easy to overlook.
Once ensconced where he was least likely to be expected, on a perch well greased with bird droppings, he had recorded various wheeled arrivals. A white van proved to be a meat delivery truck and left after unloading. A bronze Ford Expedition, that held the title for biggest dinosaur in the outsize SUV world, was the second arrival. It had disgorged a man in an Aussie-style hat, not pinned up on one side, so that Max couldn’t see his face. Obviously the hunter. Shortly after that had come Temple’s aqua Storm, now parked by the house’s soaring entry door in front of the bulbous behemoth that was the Expedition, looking like a mislaid turquoise chip in this dun-colored setting.
Meanwhile…Max switched the camera for a pair of binoculars that were both surprisingly powerful and incredibly petite. Kind of like Temple.
His vulture’s-eye view of the scene showed the trio of hunt protesters hunkered down sixty yards away in the desert and creeping ever closer.
Not thirty yards away one of the rifle-bearing security guards scanned the terrain like a point man.
Max raked the magnifying lenses over the compound and spotted a cluster of feminine hair colors by the ranch’s soaring entrance doors: Temple’s cocklike comb of red, the tawny mane of the widow Van Burkleo, the assistant Courtney’s slick yellow poll.
He lowered the binocs, disturbed to see the guards stationed all around the area, like beaters. Now that he had inventoried the forces assembling, he was sorry he had asked Temple to be on hand. He was even sorrier that she didn’t have the Colt pocketlite he had offered her. Although in a crisis she was more likely to draw her cell phone than a gun.
He swooped the binocs back to the hunt breakers: more unarmed innocents in a nest of vipers.
A movement in the desert between the compound and the nothingness that stretched to the horizon caught his eye. Something black like him, but smaller.
Wait a minute. He swept the binocs over the empty horizon again. Not quite empty. Max saw something else he didn’t like. Something he never would have noticed had he not taken the high ground to look around. Odd how earthbound people thought, in terms of miles and roads and fences. Not as the crow flies, though…or the vulture. The vulture was a far more appropriate image for this situation, with so many human vultures gathering around for what human vultures crave…not dead flesh, but the material remains of the dead flesh.
His heartbeat accelerated. In disbelief? Or disappointment? Or did he just not want to tangle with this particular opponent? Damn! He was less interested in finding a murderer than a missing leopard, but now he’d managed to do both. Just this minute, just when he was trapped in this perch, watching and recording.
But was there any new danger? The worst was over, wasn’t it? Van Burkleo was dead. That’s what everyone had wanted, each in his own way. Van Burkleo dead. The hunts were over. The beatings ended. The ranch was about to be sold. The money made and taken away. The animals dead or dispersed…
Then why one last hunt?
Was there one last victim?
Chapter 44
Pretty Please Don’t!
“I can’t have the panther?”
Temple managed to sound both astounded and indignant. Your typical disgruntled customer.
She had been pretty pleased with herself for using the panther as an excuse for her latest visit to Rancho Exotica. She didn’t have another pretext to hand or in brain. She would have to ride that panther until it dropped.
And it was warm out here. Temple blew upward to lift her curls from her damp forehead. She hated being the only curly-haired woman in the girl group.
Leonora and Courtney exchanged pointed looks.
“My heart was set on the panther,” Temple said.
“I thought your heart was set on Mr. Maximilian.” Leonora glanced pointedly at Temple’s ring finger.
Oh-oh. She had been much too rash in throwing the trinket back.
“Sapphires,” Temple said.
“I beg your pardon?”
“We decided I looked better in sapphires. A new ring is on order. Now. About that panther—”
“I’m sorry, but we had scheduled one final hunter and he chose the panther.”
“You’re shooting it?”
Leonora stiffened. “Not personally.”
“When? Where?”
The two women turned to look at the Expedition parked behind Temple’s Storm in the driveway like Godzilla poised over Mighty Mouse.
“Now?”
Temple had never pictured her panther, her Midnight Louie in an extra-large cat suit, as the object of the hunt Max wanted to stop. Where was that nasty little gun when she needed it?
“What is the swine who’s doing the shooting paying for the privilege?” she asked.
“Really, Miss Barr, this is our business and your friend was willing and eager to buy it—”
“I’ll double the fee.”
“I don’t see how—”
“Is it easier to let them take potshots at poor dumb animals, instead of you?” Temple asked, goaded beyond empathy. “Is that why you don’t care about these helpless animals being gunned down without even a fighting chance? Your husband is dead. You don’t have to live like you did. You’re not just another hunted-down trophy. You can stop it now.”
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