“The Vampire,” Temple repeated. “Max took you out on the Vampire?”
“You weren’t here at the time, dear,” Electra said gently. “I think . . . I think it was a farewell spin; that I do. He’s a knight, Max, in shining midnight-black. Can give an old lady a thrill ride as well as a young one. And, I admit, I was thrilled.”
“When? What day?”
“Why, I don’t quite remember. Maybe four or five days ago. It felt like a sentimental journey, and I’m sure he’d have much rather had you riding pillion. But you weren’t here.”
And now Max was not “here” at all.
Temple tried to make sense of the timeline. Did Max have time to squire Electra around on the Vampire and still shut down his house, sell it? Or had all that happened before he came back to the Circle Ritz for one last dashing surprise visit?
Only . . . Temple hadn’t been there to be surprised, or kissed good-bye, or driven around the block. So Electra got it in her place: the cryptic, fond farewell. All Max, only Max, all the time.
“Temple. Dear. It’s not all tragedy. Haven’t you and Matt been—?”
“Yes. But it’s tragedy if I never see Max again.”
“I’ve never seen most of my husbands again.” Electra leaned back into the sofa. “And you and Matt?”
Temple gave a deep sigh. “We may want a Lovers’ Knot ceremony sometime soon.”
“No! Really? I’m honored.”
“Electra, Max is missing.”
“Wasn’t he always?”
“Not like this. For real! As far as I know, you’re the last person to see him.”
She got it immediately. “Me, not you.”
Temple nodded.
“Then he doesn’t know about you and Matt?”
“He’s Max. He knew about me and Matt before me and Matt knew about us.”
“That makes it worse.”
“Right.” Temple leaned forward and knotted her hands together. “I don’t feel right about this. This is not the way Max would have bowed out, and I think he was probably ready to bow out.”
“He was a little . . . the last time I saw him,” Electra admitted.
“A little what?”
“A little . . . nostalgic.” Electra leaned forward to take Temple’s hands in hers. “Listen, hon. If Max is as omniscient as you think he is, there’s nothing you could do that surprises him. Maybe this was his graceful exit, like Sherlock Holmes falling into Reichenbach Falls. Maybe he thought people would want to forget about him.”
“Like we could?”
Electra shook Temple’s intertwined fingers. “He knows that. He knows that he’ll be resurrected, that we won’t stand for him being gone. Not even you and Matt. He’ll come to your wedding. Trust me. He could never resist a surprise appearance.”
Temple sighed, shakily. Electra was right. You had to have faith in Max. That was what made him such a peerless magician. Now you see him, now you don’t. But you will.
“Meanwhile,” Temple said, “we’ve got to deal with your crisis.”
“Right. So how is he?”
“Who? Max? I told you, I don’t know and it’s driving me crazy.”
“No. Matt! I don’t know and it’s driving me crazy.”
“He’s fine. He’s still here.”
“No, I meant, how’s he in bed?”
“Electra!”
She shrugged. “It was a natural question, given his priestly history.”
“I’m not asking you how Elmore Lark was in bed. Not that I’d ever want to know.”
“It’s no secret. He wasn’t, so there’s nothing to tell.”
“You must have slept with him to have a son from the marriage.”
Electra pulled a face. “No, I was not a virgin bride in that instance. Curtiss was the only good thing that came out of that marriage. With the next husband, Gerry, I got a herpetologist.”
“As in helping people with herpes?”
“No. As in snakes. I have a daughter with a fascination for reptiles. Now it’s her career. Maybe she was trying to tell me something about my choice of husbands.”
“So there was Darren, Billy, Elmore, Gerry . . . who else, and any more kids?”
“Weldon the Winn-Dixie manager and Tom, who couldn’t even manage to hold a job. Terra in Indianapolis is a teacher and Rob in St. Louis is a car mechanic. Curtiss sells insurance in Tucson, which is lucrative. Sandy’s the herpetologist in Texas. All grown and good kids and nicely on their own. They can’t believe I married such a string of losers, though.”
“In which case, you could be a suspect in a lot of deaths.”
“No. The only one of my exes I might wish dead is that jerk Elmore. But I suppose I should wish him far away so I’m not tempted to confront the bum.” Temple decided against telling Electra that her supposed almost not ex was here in town. She also was glad too that she managed to get Electra’s always-busy mind off of her and Matt’s nocturnal adventures.
Better that she dwell on dead people.
“Can I go back to the convention now, Temple?” Electra inquired in a small wee voice. “I was supposed to be helping with registration.”
“I don’t see why not. Oleta’s dead. How much more trouble could you get into?”
Chapter 17
Sob Sister, Soul Brother
Matt was finishing his afternoon laps in the Circle Ritz pool.
One thing he loved about working nights—and there were a lot of things he didn’t—was having uncrowded daytime access to things that normally would be unpleasantly crowded. There were usually seven or eight after-work visitors to the pool. Now he had it all to himself.
He’d come here late at night too, before or after his “Midnight Hour” stint, which was now two hours and no longer accurately titled. Temple had recently confessed to watching him then, sometimes. That innocent little voyeuristic admission had been wildly . . . stimulating. But so was everything she said and did these giddy, sexy engagement days and nights.
He was smiling as he swam to the side to pull himself up on the pool’s tile edge when he heard the cell phone “ring.” Temple had helped him program the call signal, a paid-for download of Bob Dylan’s “Forever Young.” He liked the way the song echoed the New Testament Beatitudes. Once a priest, always a sucker for biblical phrasing.
Not a lot of people called him. His agent. His immediate boss at WCOO radio. Temple.
So he raced for the cell phone, dripping on the hot concrete, snatching it up from the towel, and sitting on the lounge chair.
“Yes?”
“Matt! I’m so glad I reached you.”
He lay back in the soothing sunlight, letting his skin and the sunscreen protecting it soak up rays. “Me too.”
“I mean now.”
There was more than banter under her words. Matt sat up again. “What’s happened?”
“Everything! I’m at the Crystal Phoenix. They’re holding a huge convention here, and they almost were holding Electra for murder. I just got back from the Circle Ritz talking to her around two. You weren’t there.”
“Just got back now myself, in time to slip in some laps before the five o’clock crowd hits the pool.”
“Oooh, what are you wearing besides a light tan?”
“Light tan swim trunks.”
“Are you alone?”
“Yeah, apparently.”
“Could I get you to take them off?”
“Hardly!”
“Phone sex is something we haven’t tried yet.”
“I can wait.”
“Oh, don’t mind lascivious me. I’m just trying to take my mind off all the really terrible things that have happened already today.”
“Electra, under suspicion of murder? What on earth is that about?”
“It’s too hard to explain over the phone: hundreds of women in red hats, some of them in pink hats. One strangled with a Red Hat lady scarf. Electra found her dead, and the victim happens to be the vixen who stole her th
ird husband thirty years ago.”
“I am not following this.”
“You don’t have to. I’m on it. The Fontana brothers are on it. Our old friends Alch and Su are on it. What’s really wigging me out right now, selfish as it is, isn’t Electra’s and the Crystal Phoenix’s PR troubles. It’s . . . oh, dammit, Matt. It’s Max.”
He’d really, really hoped to hear as little of that name as possible.
“I needed to talk to somebody about it, and I know you’re the last person I should, but Electra’s in no state to deal with my petty problems—”
“I’m the first person you should come to. Always. About anything.”
“I know. And I love you for it. Here’s the thing. Aldo Fontana, who’s dating my aunt Kit, believe it or not, drove me out to Max’s top-secret house location this morning.”
“I could have done that.”
“It just came up. I haven’t been able to reach Max by phone for three days. I just wanted to say . . . you know, about us. Sorry, good-bye, and good luck. It seemed the decent thing to do.”
“I agree.” Of course he’d hoped she’d never see Max Kinsella again, that she’d never want to, but that was totally unrealistic.
“Matt, the house was gone!”
“Gone?”
“Not physically, just all the furniture, everything that was so ‘Max’ about it. This floozy named French opened the door. She’d bought it at a terrific price a few days ago, she said; moved right in. All her ugly condo unit stuff was everywhere.”
“You said he’d been acting . . . distant lately.”
“And now Electra just told me that he’d visited the Circle Ritz four or five days ago, but I wasn’t here. And then he, he—”
Matt waited for her to battle back tears. His heart was sinking like the Titanic. Damn Max Kinsella! He always managed to draw the spotlight, create a scene, make Temple’s tender heart ache.
“He . . . took Electra.”
Matt waited.
“For a ride.”
He waited, not guessing the next line.
“On the Vampire. Way out on the highway, really fast. That was supposed to be me, Matt. But Electra got that last ride. It’s as if he was saying good-bye to the Circle Ritz, to the Vampire, to me. And now he’s really, really, missing. Not like before, just for a while. And I missed saying good-bye.”
Matt waited, but Temple didn’t say anything else. Probably couldn’t. Okay, Counselor Guy, what do you say to the woman you love and adore when she’s cracking up over your rival?
You say to yourself: she came to you with this. And that’s a very important thing.
“I’m sorry, Temple. Everything’s crashing down all at once for you. But I’m not. I’m here. I’ll help you. I’ll do whatever it takes to find out what happened to him, if you can’t.”
“I’m sorry for laying this on you. I’ve got to go back out here and play perky PR woman with everything in hand, and get Electra off the hot plate on the side. What do you think, though, Matt? Why is Max doing this to me?”
“I think Max is doing what he has to, for those undercover reasons nobody has a need-to-know about. I do think he’d given up on being able to offer you the open commitment you needed. I picked that up from him, lately, you know, an ebbing away. I think he foresaw that we would happen if he stepped out of the picture. I think he let that happen.
“Temple, if you don’t mind having Max Kinsella for a matchmaker, I sure don’t. Trust the man. You always have.”
She laughed, shakily. “Thanks. I told you breaking up was hard to do, I just wish I could do it. Formally. I’ll see you, later?”
“Later.”
“Sorry to be such a weak sister. I’m lucky I didn’t short-circuit this stupid cell phone.”
“You can come home and short-circuit me anytime.”
She laughed. “Thanks for the motivation. Back to the hubbub and the funny, tragic, lethal human circus.”
“Love you.”
“Love you too, Matt,” she whispered back.
It was some comfort that she’d used his name.
Chapter 18
Vanishing Powder
“It was bad,” Miss Midnight Louise says, “very bad.”
Well, these girls. Always exaggerating. I cannot believe that Miss Midnight Louise, usually as hard as nails, is even a tad breathless as she reports back to me.
Then again, she has hightailed it from Mr. Max’s home on the city fringes back to the Circle Ritz by means of sneaking into the six inches of space behind the passenger seat in Aldo Fontana’s Viper.
I am not sure whether it was the squeeze or the speed that put a kink in Miss Midnight Louise’s tail. I do know that I am not going to yank her chain farther by asking which.
Either way, she has returned to the Crystal Phoenix agitated and expecting me to do something about it. She does not even care that I have been nosing around her turf in a criminal matter.
We have rendezvoused under the tropical greenery edging the lobby bar.
“Listen,” I tell Louise. “The scene of the crime as far as we’re concerned is now here at Crystal Phoenix Central. Midnight Inc. Investigations can no longer afford to have you gallivanting from the Neon Nightmare club to former residences of former Miss Temple squeezes when our beloved landlady’s reputation and freedom are at stake.”
“You mean your Miss Temple’s and your landlady. I live here at the Phoenix, thank you. So you are willing to give up on investigating Mr. Max’s whereabouts and condition—or lack of living condition—after the terrible impact he made on the Neon Nightmare side wall?”
I am indeed disturbed about that, but I am more concerned right now with restoring the Circle Ritz’s landlady’s reputation. I have just moved Ma Barker and her gang of feral felines to the Circle Ritz. There is not much sustenance around there unless the place’s residents get on with the program. Miss Electra Lark is the best general for the job. Ergo, my task is to get her off the homicide hook.
So I answer Louise in a way to take her mind off the current obsession.
First, I reassure. “Mr. Max knows how to take care of himself and about six others at once, and always has,” I say. “And he is forever doing things that are not what they seem. That is the magician’s credo.” Then I tempt her weakest spot, her curiosity. “Anyway, it does not look like his long frame will be jousting me for comforter space in the future. Miss Temple has embraced the light.”
“No! You mean Mr. Matt? He is the best-looking shaded golden human I have ever met, but I think you would dislike seeing a black alpha male unseated from the communal bed, even if you did knock toes and claws sometimes. When did this new set of sleeping arrangements happen?”
“Recently. They conducted their courtship off the premises, but there is a ring with enough carats to keep Bugs Bunny for life and they almost forgot themselves on the zebra-striped comforter in Miss Temple’s boudoir the other day. With me in the next room, mind you.”
“In the daytime! With you present! That is indeed serious,” she agrees. “Mr. Matt is the most diligently serious human being I have ever seen. Does he not require papers and witnesses to take a mate?”
“Oh, they want ‘papers’ for everything these days, including us. Big Brother is watching even the cockroaches now. But I know how romance can turn a dude’s head. And my Miss Temple’s head is pretty turned too. Frankly, Mr. Max was not making the scene often enough lately to preserve his territory.”
“I am thankful I have been fixed to prevent such unpredictable periods of insanity,” Louise sniffs.
Although I always aim to use the utmost courtesy with the females of any species, the chit does claim to be a descendant and has recently forced me into making our purely professional association formal. Midnight Inc. Investigations, of course, is mainly me.
I return to our most satisfying bone of contention.
“So you say that my Miss Temple and Mr. Aldo Fontana paid a visit to the house formerly known a
s Mr. Max’s. And so you saw that it was occupied by some foreign dame with a great figure. So what is new in Las Vegas? The city is all about great figures, on the stage and on the list of house gambling rules.”
“That must have been a terrible shock for your roommate. It would be like your returning to the Circle Ritz and finding that no one you knew was there.”
“With Miss Electra Lark suspected of murder, that could happen.”
“Your Miss Temple would be missing, her furniture gone.”
“My living room sofa? The zebra-patterned comforter on the bed? My litter box under the sink in the second bathroom? No!”
“You are certainly the self-sacrificing sort, Pops. And you do not even deign to use the litter box in Miss Temple’s digs, which is a mighty inaccurate name for her unit, given your habits.”
“Where I go is my business, and my business only.”
“Thank goodness,” she says, swiping a dainty claw over her eyebrow hairs. “Anyway, Mr. Footloose and Fancy Free, I am sure you have seen some pretty swift set changes on a Las Vegas hotel stage.”
“For sure. And the ones at Mr. Max’s magic shows, when he used to perform at the Goliath, were faster than a cardsharp’s deal.”
“Well, that is the way it was at that house of his. After I checked out the Neon Nightmare from top to bottom and learned some very interesting and alarming things, I nipped over to the house you had told me about.”
“Only Miss Temple is supposed to know that address.”
“And you? How did you manage that, then?”
“I make it my private business to know where my Miss Temple goes.”
“And you dropped mention of it to me.”
“When?”
“Long ago, when you were thinking I was a stupid unrelated female and not listening.”
“I did not do that!”
“What? Think I was a stupid, unrelated female?”
“No. That ‘thinking you were not listening’ part.”
“Trust me, Daddio. If it were not for you dominant males forgetting to remember that we listen, half the stuff in the world would not happen, except thanks to us stupid unrelated females.”
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