Cat in an Ultramarine Scheme

by Carole Nelson Douglas

  Temple opened the accessory chest’s top drawer. This was for jewelry and bigger accessories, unlike the smaller chest in her bedroom that contained the notorious scarf drawer, where she’d finally stashed Max’s ring. She plucked a pair of mirrored sunglasses from the collection stored in shoe-box tops. She snagged a rhinestoned raspberry beret to obscure her strawberry-blonde hair, just in case someone knew her.

  In the mirror, the effect wasn’t at all Zoe Chloe Ozone, amazingly.

  “Okay, Retro-Disco Babe,” she told herself in the mirror. “We are gonna take the Neon Nightmare by its flaming electric-rainbow mane and shake it until the Synth and what happened to Max Kinsella, if he was there, come falling out into the light of day.”

  Temple grabbed the Miata keys from the kitchen counter near the tiny entry hall, locked her condo, and headed to where a rearing neon mare surmounted a pyramid crammed with music, mania, and maybe magic and murder.

  Sitting in the Miata in the fresh darkness with the top up a block from the Neon Nightmare, Temple finally allowed herself to check the temperature of her sandal-strapped toes, instep, and ankles. Yup, cold feet.

  She shut her eyes. The longer she thought about it, the less she liked it.

  Her cell phone felt like a magic egg in the palm of her still-warm hand. This was spring in Las Vegas. The desert air was hot and heavy from the hangover of sun-drenched daylight bouncing off all the concrete, glass, and asphalt.

  She was bathed in the literal nightmare sign of many neon colors, flowing over her little car like a giant mane. She could leave a message for . . . not Matt in Chicago. Her landlady? No . . . Molina? God forbid. Rafi? No, he knew this place. He could rod right over and stop her. She wanted someone who’d miss her if she didn’t turn up, but distant enough to not think much of where she was and what that meant.

  Whose number was on her cell phone that she could text?

  She settled on Nicky Fontana. “Chkg out Neon Ntmr 4 G’s ideas. Disco TB. News at 11.”

  His phone would record when she left the message—8:00 P.M.—and he wouldn’t bother calling her back or become concerned until after 11:00. Nicky was a casino watchdog. He stayed up at least until midnight every night.

  Now. She had been as sensible as a one-woman fury could be. She was going inside that gaudy pyramid, and she wasn’t leaving until she had solved the puzzle of the Synth or died trying. Or, better, shot someone in self-defense trying. Hopefully not in her own foot in its flashy leopard-print suede wedge heels. Hey, maybe Bob Dylan of “Leopard-Skin Pill-Box Hat” fame would write a song about them in her memory.

  Dalai Lama Eyes

  While my Miss Temple, looking like a floozy, is heading out the front door, I am out my special bathroom exit window, ratcheting up ye olde leaning palm-tree ladder to the Circle Ritz penthouse.

  The sinking sun is haloing the distant mountains with a faded neon-rainbow glow, but scenery is not on my mind.

  Once I have dropped down onto Miss Electra Lark’s penthouse balcony like a ninja, unseen and stealth footed, I pounce down the line of French doors, seeking the loosest hinges. There is always one weak link to everything and everyone, and Midnight Louie is a past master at sniffing them out.

  Aha! I pause at an end door. Methinks I smell the blood of a purebred Birman female. Or at least I spot a long, white, airy whisker protruding under the door. It is locked, of course, but this is the same flimsy hardware as on Miss Temple’s balcony doors. Back in the nineteen fifties, when this joint was built, the crime rate was as low as the interest rate is now.

  I do my patented leaps and twists, and am pleasantly rewarded much sooner than usual, when the locking mechanism bows to my superior strength. Unfortunately, I am at the apex of my leap and enter twisting my torso to land on my feet.

  I make an awkward five-point landing—I also take it on the chin when I fall to the carpet—and look up to see a pair of red taser lights gleaming not six inches from my temporarily immobile eyes.

  My shivs dig into the carpet as I rapidly scramble up to assume the “Halloween” martial-arts pose, feet clenched and back arched, rear member slashing.

  “At ease,” drawls an unimpressed female voice. “Where is the fire?”

  “What are you doing out in the open?” I wonder.

  “Opening the door, dodo,” is the tart reply from the agoraphobic Karma, who is usually to be found lurking under large upholstered furniture.

  “Uh, I did that,” I tell her, forgetting you can tell the telepathic or psychopathic . . . or whatever “ick” you want to call her . . . nothing. She knows all, sees all, says all.

  “Uh,” she mocks, “I let you do that. I could sense your neurotic panic all the way from the second floor. It has quite curled my whiskers.”

  The illumination in here is eternally night-light to accommodate Karma’s oversensitive nature, so I have to squint to see that her vibrissae have indeed curled inward at the ends as if under the influence of a permanent wave.

  “I did that?” I cannot help sounding a bit pleased.

  She sighs, heavily. “I cannot help you, Louie.”

  This is bad news.

  I do not normally buy this psychic hokum anymore than I regularly eat Free-to-Be Feline, but it is true that Karma’s breed is descended from the cats that defended the Dalai Lamas in Tibet, back when it was a sovereign and mystical place that harbored legends like the earthly paradise of Shangri-La (from which a naughty lady magician of Miss Temple’s and my acquaintance took her performing moniker).

  The legends say that the souls of departed Tibetan priests inhabited the beige-colored temple cats. Frankly, they share much in common with the late Shangri-La’s performing Siamese, the evil Hyacinth: cream beige body with brown-masked face, brown legs, and tail, and stunning blue eyes, except they are long-haired (and have that uppity longhair air, as if they listen to harpsichord concertos all day on velvet pillows). The legend is that their coloring, especially the four white mitts, were awarded by a god when they tried to save a long-ago Dalai Lama from being killed by mountain marauders.

  So I have to keep all this stuff in mind when dealing with Karma, as she is supernaturally sensitive.

  “You do not know what I want,” I argue.

  “Of course I do, Louie. I know what you want before you know it. And I am telling you that had you contacted me first, when you sent the clowder to their various far-flung posts, given the fact that you are related by blood to three of them, I could indeed have invoked Bast to lend you the mystical and ancient power called Oneness of Overmind so you could communicate long-distance.”

  “I am related to three of them?”

  “I can count.”

  “Then Midnight Louise is indeed my—?”

  “The product of your littering, yes. And now you are right to fear for her well-being.”

  “How would we, uh, three, do this Oneness of Overmind thing?”

  “I would perform the ceremony, but the effect is only temporary. It would require burning a whisker each and a few drops of communal blood, not to mention the sacrifice of one life apiece.”

  “Cell phones are much more humane,” I say, shocked.

  “Had our kind pockets . . . I sympathize with your concerns, Louie. Part of the permanent wave in my whiskers is from absorbing the danger haloing your recently departing human like the scent of death. I hope her recent departure does not become permanent.”

  “But she has already left, and it will take time to summon the Cat Pack. I need paranormal help.”

  “And I am giving it to you. I have consulted the stars, particularly the sinister sign known as Ophiuchus, and looked into the future, and I have this urgent advice for you.”

  “Yes?”

  “Run like hell.”

  Room Disservice

  “Somehow,” Gandolph chuckled as he hung up the room phone, “I doubt a room-service dinner with me will be as enthralling as with your friend Revienne.”

  “I never said she was a fri
end,” Max objected, using his hands to lift each leg onto an ottoman and stretch out more than three feet of chronic ache.

  “The over-the-counter pills help at all?” Gandolph asked, sitting in the upholstered chair.

  Max shrugged. “I’m used to the discomfort, but those dank Old World buildings must have been built to make people uncomfortable, like that bloody convent.”

  “The church probably inherited the manor house a couple centuries ago, and the Magdalen operation was a leftover from the age of Dickens, Max. The Old World was always harsh compared with the New. You’ve forgotten our small travails when we lived abroad. Daily comfort is an American concept. Think of all the toilet paper American tourists trekked on European tours for decades.”

  “I spent enough time this unscheduled trip ‘roughing it’ in the Alps.”

  “With a hot blonde waiting on you foot and foot.”

  Max shrugged in surrender. “I’m spoiled. I know it. Speaking of which, I can’t believe these ‘recovering’ IRAers haven’t tumbled to the fact that ‘Michael’ Kinsella is the ‘Mystifying Max.’ ”

  “My European counterterrorism associates and I kept your original identity up-to-date all these years. Comfort may not be their game, but subterfuge is. They’re way older at it than we are, living right next door to ancient enemies without any massive moats of ocean.”

  “How the hell—?”

  “According to the record, Michael Kinsella returned to the U.S., graduated from a state university with a . . . biology degree, and got a high-school teaching job.”

  “I’m amazed. Maybe I should drop back into that phony life. Start over. I do seem to have a gift for biology,” Max added with a wicked glint.

  Gandolph was perusing a folder. “What do you want to start with, duck soup or cream of potato?”

  “Are you talking about my fake life, biology, or the room-service menu?”

  “The menu. It’s quite decent.”

  “High praise from a gourmand like you.”

  “How did you like the kitchen in my former Vegas house?”

  “Good grief. A memory of that room just flashed through my mind.”

  “Excellent, Max! Good progress.”

  “Your online redhead was in it, sitting on your granite-topped central island sipping a bubble glass of . . . probably merlot wine. Not a bad picture. Interesting composition of reds.”

  “The bubble glass is all wrong! Someone must have added it to the household after I left.”

  “Could have been me. Bubble glasses are fun magic props to have around the house.”

  “I’m not catering to your indecisive mood. We’re having rainbow trout and stuffed rack of lamb, vegetable mélange, with brandied bread pudding for dessert. I’ll order the wines.”

  “And a Celebrex chaser for my seventy-year-old legs.” Max remained silent for a moment. “You know what I’d really love for dinner?”

  “What?”

  “A Big Mac.” Max expected his companion to have a foodie fit over his low-end, high-fat craving.

  “McDonald’s is everywhere,” Gandolph said briskly. “I’ll order you one up as an appetizer. You need to get some pounds back on somehow. A man bedridden for more than a month can really lose weight. Perhaps beer will help. We’re meeting our next sources in a pub.”

  “You spoil me,” Max said. “I’ve been an ungrateful boy.”

  “You’ve been through as much as you faced seventeen years ago in this very place.” Gandolph’s smile turned into a thoughtful purse of his lips. “It’s good you recalled ‘our’ kitchen in Las Vegas.”

  “We’re here in Belfast so I can recall my teenage rebel past. Why are Vegas memories intruding in the Irish mist?”

  “Because they are all linked, my lad. More than either of us might realize, or like, I fear.”

  Ladies’ Neon Night Out

  A doorman in a muscle T and dated gangster bling bowed her into the club.

  “No cover charge, cutie,” he said. “Every night is ladies’ night at the Neon Nightmare.”

  Temple sashayed in, having forgotten she would be welcomed as cash on the hoof by a nightclub’s management. She usually looked younger than her thirty years. All dolled up she probably looked just barely legal.

  Men bought drinks for silly young women who dressed like they thought they were hot. Lots of drinks. Good. Temple was here to pick brains . . . and maybe locks.

  Temple had never done the Las Vegas singles scene, although every bar in town was a singles scene. She’d moved here with Max, madly in love. His magic-show extravaganza at the Goliath ran twice nightly, so they’d played out all their love scenes at their Circle Ritz condo. It had been a very “married” existence, come to think of it.

  Temple apparently didn’t look “married.” She fended off a couple of middle-aged salesmen-in-suits types who were obviously tourists, and the sale-eager bartenders, because no way was she opening her pistol-packing purse to pay for a drink at this elbow-squashing, people-packed bar.

  That would be dangerous, even though she had the safety on. She was beginning to think she had overreacted to the idea that Max hadn’t just “gone missing again” but had been here and then never seen again . . . and was possibly really dead and she didn’t know it. The thought was intolerable.

  “Let me guess,” a man’s voice said on her right. “Whatever you drink comes in a footed glass.”

  Temple eyed the night’s first catch. Around thirty-five, with a face more pleasantly quirky than handsome. She rejoiced to see brown hair gelled into that central pompadour demanded of guys who would be Hollywood hip these days. Even Matt was being threatened with an “extreme make over” by a radio management going ever more online.

  Temple glanced over the guy’s shoulder to the gyrating mobs on the dance floor and up into the pyramid’s distant dark peak, where stabbing light sabers of neon dueled with electric color.

  “You’ve never been here before,” her bar partner guessed. “New in town?”

  “Pretty much,” she lied. “You too?”

  “No. I’m assigned here.”

  Even better! “Are you a Neon Nightmare habitué?”

  “I was right. Footed drinks and fancy French. What can I get you?”

  “A wine spritzer?”

  “That’s for lunch.”

  “You’re right. A Spanish coffee.”

  His peaked eyebrows became even more pronounced. “You don’t do the bar scene much.”

  “Nope.”

  “What’s in a Spanish coffee, besides the coffee?”

  “Rum, Kahlúa, triple sec, cream, and sugar.”

  “I admire a woman who can hold her calories.”

  He ordered a beer for himself, surprising Temple. Had she actually drawn a moderate drinker she could pump for half an hour without him making a pass or sliding slowly to the mirror-black floor?

  Her Spanish coffee arrived in a footed glass mug, looking like dark Irish Guinness stout with a head on it. Max-mission appropriate.

  “Footed,” he pointed out. “Thanks for not proving me a liar. I’m Steve Fox, by the way, boy-wonder programmer. My company sent me out here for three months of skill upgrading.”

  Temple had left all rings at home. Clutching her lethal purse in her lap with her left hand, she produced her right for a shake. “Temple Barrett. I do PR around town.” Okay, she would pull out the cliché: “You come here often?”

  “Yeah, as a matter of fact. The company suite-hotel makes one hope for bedbugs for entertainment. This place changes the neon show nightly. They used to have this wildman masked magician on a bungee cord who could do amazing illusions bounding all over the interior. Best free show in town.”

  Temple sipped the warm, comfortingly sweet foam atop her dark, bitter, strong drink. Her heart was soaring and sinking at the same time. That magic man had to be Max.

  “Why aren’t they advertising a primo attraction like that?” she wondered aloud.

  “Maybe becaus
e I haven’t seen him in almost two months. Unsung when he performed, forgotten when he left.” He eyed her again. “What made you put on the Ritz and come sit at the bar here when you don’t want to be picked up? Don’t claim you’re a habitué. I’d know better.”

  “Got me!” Temple laughed unsteadily. “I have an assignment, too, writing up trendy bars. I’d heard about your magician, but not that he wasn’t performing.”

  “The Phantom Mage,” Steve recalled, sipping his brew. “Kinda hokey name. Smart psychology, though. You didn’t expect much and then, wham!”

  “What was he doing here?” Temple mused, almost under her breath.

  Steve had a fox’s sharp ears. “Making a buck. You’re not going to write about a dead act, are you?”

  “I might.” Temple bit her lip at the double meaning she heard in Steve’s question.

  “Drink too hot or too strong? Coffee will keep you awake and rum will keep you happy.”

  “Exactly right. I better get down to business. Those neon fireworks up top are spectacular. Is that where the Phantom Mage made his entrance?”

  “Right. And exit. Now that you say his name again, I guess it suited his act.” Steve squinted up into the light show. “I think there are invisible balconies up there.”

  “Balconies?” That fit with Rafi’s seeing people “vanish” into the walls at all levels.

  “You know, perches. He seemed to be walking on air at times.”

  Temple’s heart clutched as her left hand fisted on her lap purse. That illusion was right from the Mystifying Max’s Goliath act, where he used strobe lights, like some of those that flashed over the dance floor here, to seem to fly.

  “These strobe lights are so disco sixties,” Steve commented.

  “Yeah. They pulse on and off, so people’s motions seem jerky.”