Cat in an Orange Twist

by Carole Nelson Douglas

  “It’s my job.”

  “No, it isn’t.”

  “Are you saying I’m in the wrong career?”

  “I’m saying you have the wrong attitude. It’s not your job to micro-manage murder investigations.”

  “You sound like Molina.”

  “Maybe Molina’s not always wrong. Is that faintly possible?”

  “I suppose.” Temple put her hands to her temples, which were ringing with tiny bubbles hitting high notes on crystal.

  “Look at you,” Matt was saying. “You may laugh it off, but you’re unnerved by that motorcycle attack. And you should be. You can’t look after everybody, Temple.”

  “Who should I look after, then?”

  “Yourself first.”

  “And how do I do that??

  “I don’t know. Find out what makes you happy and follow your bliss, like Joseph Campbell says.”

  “What if I don’t know what my bliss is anymore?”

  Matt smiled. “Hang on, like the rest of us, until you figure it out. Trying not to get killed is a good start.”

  “What did you mean downstairs, telling the Fontana brothers that you took care of me daytimes? That was pretty possessive.”

  He was silent for several seconds. “That’s the only time I have off.” He shrugged slightly. “Did it bother you?”

  “Not at all, oddly enough.”

  The silence was mutual.

  Temple regretted that she’d gotten too tiddly to do anything but gape as he turned and left.

  Minimum Maxposure

  Monday, Monday, and the Orson Welles house was still his to occupy, but even Max was uneasy not knowing where Gandolph’s latest bolt-hole was, though he shouldn’t have been.

  After all, his mentor had been playing the role of Invisible Man since before Max had been born.

  Max was getting pretty good at the part himself, he reflected, brooding about how Gandolph’s sudden reappearance had interfered with Max’s time with Temple. Max’s personal life was suddenly on the back burner again. It was his fault for daring to have a personal life.

  So Gandolph might just turn up on the doorstep of his former house when the mood took him, or when he felt it was safe. Max had let Garry in that first night they had connected in the labyrinth of the Neon Nightmare club with mixed feelings: excitement to be working with an old partner again, and with the nagging certainty that Temple was instantly cast as second fiddle for the immediate future.

  Now the man who had been Gandolph, Garry Randolph, was on Max’s—his own—threshold again, and Max felt like it was a home invasion.

  “You look distracted.” Gandolph shrugged out of the paint-spattered workman’s jumpsuit he wore over his usual slacks and sweater as a disguise for getting in where he wasn’t expected, or wanted. Dead, or alive.

  “I’ve been printing out our ‘book’ so you can read it. I’m also working out seriously again, as you recall, for my new act.”

  “My return has inspired a fresh yen for the stage? Wonderful news, my boy! I never approved of your ‘retirement.’ ”

  “Not a career renaissance, I’m afraid. If the Synth is potent to any degree, we need to infiltrate it. I’ve got a gig, all right. The Phantom Mage is turning tricks nightly at Neon Nightmare.”

  “Turning tricks?” Gandolph looked truly distressed.

  “Cirque du ‘Inferno,’ dear master. I’ll be pushing these retired joints through acrobatic legerdemain high over the mosh pit at the NN.” Max sighed, then smiled. “I’m actually looking forward to inventing the magic act from hell. I confess: I’m a sucker for High Concept. Literally.”

  “First things first,” said Gandolph.

  “The kitchen?”

  “Don’t I wish! This house has the finest kitchen I used to own. I suppose you only manage to boil water in it now that you have no sweet young thing to impress . . . never mind. What’s on my mind is the book, first, and your new act, second. You’ll have to be very, very good, and very, very different, to fool the Synth into thinking the Phantom Mage is someone totally new.”

  “ ‘Someone totally new.’ That’s what I’ll have to become, isn’t it, if I’m going to infiltrate the heart of darkness? Not much room in there for someone totally old.”

  “Nonsense, my boy! You’re not old at all at . . . what? Thirty-four now?”

  But Max hadn’t been thinking of himself. He’d been thinking of Temple, who was good at coming here discreetly, with proper precautions, for improper purposes, and who hadn’t lately. At all. He needed to find out what was going on with her. Instead of the magician sawing the lady in half, Max had split his magical identities in order to masquerade at Neon Nightmare in hopes of finding out . . . what? Anything that was worth keeping Temple in the dark when he had promised . . .

  “Listen,” Garry said. His rotund form rolled ahead of Max into the kitchen like the bouncing ball you’re supposed to follow when you almost know the words of the next song.

  “Listen, Max. Separately, you and I have happened on the same trail.”

  “The Synth. They are something sinister, then.”

  “Oh, yes. Unless they simply like to think they are. They could be a senior version of this Goth kick the youngsters are on. Bizarre dress, arcane symbols, evil attitudes and all so much drama.”

  “Then why am I risking breaking my neck to infiltrate them?” And risking breaking up with Temple, he added mentally. Where was she? She must be involved in something consuming to stay away so long. Or maybe she was involved with someone consuming, and he knew where to look for that usual suspect. Sure, she’d been calling him, but he hadn’t been able to answer. Yet. Damn and double damn!

  “Are you listening, Max?”

  “What? Yes. Of course. You’re saying the Synth is a paper tiger. A cheesecloth coalition. Smoke and mirrors, the smoke stale and the mirrors cracked.”

  “How you put things! I can’t wait to read your additions to my book. I’m saying quite the opposite. I think the Synth is key to a number of things that have happened in Las Vegas since you followed me here, and they are definitely what has been up our alley all those years on the Continent.”

  Max frowned. He’d been a green, angry boy when an IRA bomb had leveled a pub and his post-high school traveling partner, his cousin Sean, with it.

  Max could have been there, johnny on the spot to save Sean or go down with him. But he’d won their stupid adolescent competition for a comely Irish lass named Kathleen O’Connor and he’d been off losing his so-called innocence while Sean broke apart and burned.

  So he’d done what he could. He tracked the bombers and turned them over to the British. Unholy treason for an Irish-American boy, but also an impressive achievement.

  He’d been recruited and whisked out of harm’s way by Gandolph and his associates in international counterterrorism. They worked to stop the bloodshed, not avenge it, and magic had been both man and boy’s cover. Gandolph explained how ideal that occupation was: one traveled, one moved mysteriously, one mastered the arts of subterfuge, even apparent invisibility. That appealed to Max, who had been an amateur magician since grade school.

  “So we’ve ended up in the same fix again,” Max said finally. “On the run, occasionally presumed dead, and trying to save the world from itself. When do we get to save ourselves and our little worlds?”

  “Now.” Garry’s dark eyes were gleaming in his plump Santa Claus face. “The Synth isn’t just disgruntled magicians uniting to fight the trend to expose the secrets of our ancient illusions, to bring down the Cloaked Conjurors among us. I believe that someone is using it for geopolitical purposes, and has been for some time. I think that if we find out who, and why, we will solve a lot of worrisome matters both here and abroad.”

  Max groaned. “Good Lord, Garry. You’re saying I can save the world by swinging on a star at the Neon Nightmare every night?”

  “Well, you’ll have to do more than swing, my boy. You’ll have to investigate. I’ll be ther
e when I can, as backup. And I don’t say this assignment will be fast, or easy. But it could be more important than either of us guesses.”

  “I bloody well know how important this assignment is.” Max had almost gritted his teeth.

  Garry nodded, impressed by Max’s renewed vow of passion for the cause.

  But Max the good agent wasn’t considering the global picture. He was thinking about the confined orbit of his own little life, a domestic life that he’d managed to build with Temple between the bullets and the subterfuge.

  She wouldn’t wait forever for the normalcy he kept promising and failing to deliver.

  Neither would anybody else, whether it was Lieutenant Molina, or Matt Devine.

  Lying Down on the Job

  What did I overhear my Miss Temple and Mr. Matt discussing? Biker gangs? Gay biker gangs?

  This is not a milieu in which I see my loving roommate making much headway.

  Much as I admire her quick thinking and fast trigger finger on a can of cooking oil, I decide it is time for Midnight Louie to investigate Maylords, pronto and solo.

  Louise and I have not taken vows never to part, thank Bastet. So Tuesday morning as soon as the big hand nears the twelve and the little hand is past the nine I ankle and hitch my way over to the furniture store.

  Getting in is a problem. Even a dude who prefers a cat condo to a Barcelona chair knows that such stores are Snoozer City until the working folk come in to browse on the nights and weekends.

  So how am I going to crack the case if I cannot crack the doors into Maylords without being painfully obvious as out of place? It is not as if I can carry a credit card concealed on my person.

  As usual, the out-of-sight service areas are my best shot.

  I linger behind the always-welcome Dumpster, waiting for the store to open so they can rev up the delivery trucks. There is not much action and I almost snooze off myself, until I hear a suspicious scraping sound.

  I open one weary eye. I am staring at a rat-sized furball with a comma for a tail and cubby cheeks. Not a rat. Not a squirrel. Hmmm. Perhaps an escaped exotic pet, like a gerbil or a hamster.

  “Eek!” The creature scoots under the Dumpster.

  Great. I will have to conduct my interrogation cheek-to-asphalt.

  “Whoa, there, son,” I say. It never hurts to establish a relationship with a source, no matter how tenuous. “I mean you no harm. I have breakfasted on Fancy Feast and Free-to-Be-Feline and am full up in the prey department. I just want to know if you live around here.”

  A series of cheeps comes from under the battered brown metal. Ah, this is a chicken of sorts: the humble prairie dog. I feel pity for any creature unjustly tagged with a canine appellation, so tsk sympathetically at the little fellow.

  “I will not bite,” I promise.

  Apparently it has heard this line before, because it clucks and cheeps and skitters farther under its metal sanctuary.

  “Honest,” I say, which does not calm the creature. “You happen to visit the vacant lot across the street?”

  Well, imagine trying to interpret Peter Lorre on speed. Sam Spade never had to put up with this. I get a lot of nervous chatter and finally a stuttered “Ya-ya-ya-yes.”

  “Okay. I want to know about some bad actors. Big. Human. On nasty, noisy wheels.”

  I glimpse something gleaming: beady eyes. “Huh-huh-huh-huge. Human.”

  “Depends on your point of view. They are just big to me. So they have been hanging out there?”

  “Only re-re-recently.”

  “Since this big furniture store opened, right?”

  “Fah-fah-fah-furniture store? What is that?”

  “The building they just put up here, that made your Dumpster lunch line possible.”

  “Oh. The Gi-gi-gi-gantic man-mountain.”

  “Right.” If that is what this little guy wants to call a prime retail location, fine.

  “Ya-ya-ya-yes. But as soon as the man-mountain came, the snorting, howling beasts came and then the Big Boom and I had to move.”

  I guess that the Big Boom was shooting gallery night at Maylords Friday last. But I am fully satisfied with the interrogation, if not with the condition of my stomach, which is, in fact, growling.

  This tidbit in motion must be getting my old hunting instincts in gear.

  At least I know now that the bikers who hassled my Miss Temple are not fast-food-emporium parking-lot muggers, but are, as I suspected, connected to Maylords. They may even have been the shooters on Maylord’s opening night.

  Hmm.

  “What was that you said, sir?” the quavering voice inquires from under the Dumpster.

  “I said, ‘Beat it, before I make a prairie omelette of you. And stay away from that vacant lot. I am redeveloping it as a high-dollar gated community for some low-riders from North Las Vegas.”

  I hear only a frantic scrabbling for an answer. This prairie dog was chicken.

  It only takes a couple of hours and fending off an invasion of fire ants with hopes of using my person for an ant-hill, but at last I hear the shifting gears of a monster truck.

  Before you can say “Lift that bale,” I am out of jail and waiting patiently behind a parked tire for human feet to enter Maylords. Work boots soon do just that and I bide my time.

  I want to enter as they exit, for then they will be toting some big piece of furniture I can use as an awning when I sneak in. There is nothing like toting three times their own body weight to distract people from looking too hard at what is underfoot.

  So I have flattened myself against the wall near the door when it whooshes open, letting out a frosty breath of air-conditioning and two grunting, cursing men in support belts.

  They should take a lesson from the humble ant, I muse as I observe a conga line of said critters, who can move many times own weight over long distances . . . ooops! On the other hand, the humble ant is humble precisely because it is so easily stomped on by a size twelve work boot. So much for trying to use Midnight Louie’s nose as a sun shade!

  I whisk around the size twelves in question and into the cool environs of Maylord’s shipping and receiving area. The floor is unembellished concrete, but these pads have trod Las Vegas’s meanest streets and are as silent as melting snow as I waltz in and around and under shrouded pieces of furniture and into a hall that leads to a repair shop that connects to the showrooms.

  Voilà

  I stand in a hall of mirrors. And ottomans. And breakfronts. And credenzas and étagéres and everything elegant that my ladylove, the Divine Yvette, would adore.

  I have entered an upholstered and carpeted world, salted with the tangy scent of leather, every surface a potential scratching post or snoozing spot. Every potential scratching post or snoozing spot is costly and oh-so-accessible. I am, in fact, in Cat Heaven.

  Before I go ape without the aid and abetting of catnip, I resolve on a course of action. I must be invisible. I must be all ears. I must absorb the sights, sounds, personalities and underlying criminalities that swirl into an unsavory stew in this place.

  Hmm. Savory. Stew. Is that a lambskin ottoman I see before my very nose?

  No. I must leave no trace, not even a genteel marking ceremony to memorialize my presence.

  I soon pad along the cool tiles until a sight strikes a blow of familiarity to my eyes. It is simply two framed prints, but I have heard my Miss Temple swooning over them. They feature long, narrow ladies in elegant dress and were perpetrated by an artist known as Er . . . Tay. Rather sounds as if the chap was burping. Ur-tay.

  I loft atop a lovely lavender leather sofa in a neighboring room setting and proceed to curl up on it until I resemble a pillow. An extraordinarily large, furred pillow, but one as motionless as stone.

  Like the bearskin-hatted guards at Buckingham Palace, I am impervious to distraction. Nothing will disturb my concentration or Sphinxlike immobility. I am on duty, as statuesque and still as Bast herself. Any slim glimmer of watching green a passing observer mi
ght notice is like the Egyptian glyph of a human eye. It knows all, sees all, but is as motionless as the dead.

  Actually, this whole place is as dead as a tomb. It is hard to keep from drowsing off. In the rooms a few people come and go, but seldom, and they are amblers shuffling along from vignette to vignette.

  I do hear the authoritative click of high heels in the distance. The sound is sharp and brisk enough to be my Miss Temple. I freeze even more than motionless as I hear those emphatic footsteps heading my way.

  My Miss Temple has observed me at my leisure on a sofa too often to be taken in by my act when it is on the road. My cover is as transparent as a G-string at the Saran Wrap strip joint. So I squeeze my peepers totally shut. It is primitive instinct to hope that if you cannot see, you cannot be seen. I know better, but I will try anything.

  My ears reverberate. Stilettos have not pounded ground so hard since the railroaders nailed down the Golden Spike at Promontory, Utah, and that was two centuries back, give or take a few decades. Speaking of which, that is what every second feels like to me now. I do not want Miss Temple to think that I am spying on her.

  The footsteps come within a couple feet of me and stop cold.

  I continue playing dead and wait for the whistle to blow. Only my Miss Temple will not whistle. She will whisper, and demand what I am doing here, even though I cannot answer, for more reasons than one.

  I hear the sound of one toe tapping. Ooh. She is really mad.

  I crack one eyelid the teensiest bit.

  Well, that is a high heel and the toe is tapping, but it is way too big to belong to my charming roommate. It must be big enough to cradle a kitten, a size eight, say, or even a nine. Ugh. We are getting into Molina territory with that shoe size, and what my Miss Temple decries, I despise as well.

  But this is not Molina, not with that much leg showing, although it is as spindly as that of a giraffe. I follow the figure upwards and see its back is toward me.