Cat on a Hyacinth Hunt

by Carole Nelson Douglas

  Matt had insisted she wait for him to bring the car around. His grim fury may have been on her behalf, but it sheathed her in icy isolation. Around her, people came and went, deliriously tipsy or well en route.

  Even the hotel's cheery stretch limousines rebuked her. She watched anxiously for the Storm's impudent aqua silhouette among the upscale flock of precious-metal-colored Infinitis and Lexi.

  At last the Storm swooped to the curb, the passenger door popping open simultaneously.

  Temple got in, grateful for the privacy if not the continuing conversation. Matt's last, ironic comment still echoed inside the Black Hole: "Maybe you'll finally figure out that he isn't worth protecting."

  Neither spoke until the entrance glare of New York-New York was a comet trail behind them, quickly shrinking against the vast inkiness of nighttime Las Vegas.

  "I wish you'd told me," Matt said.

  "So do I, but, then again, maybe not."

  "I don't get it. Why you keep shielding that guy? He's brought thugs down on you for the second time."

  "How could I have stopped what happened to me?"

  "You couldn't. It's not your fault. But I'm with Molina. Why do you keep denying that Max Kinsella is nothing but trouble? You're just like my mother."

  "That's it, isn't it? I'm your mother and Max is another face of Cliff Effinger. Having enemies may not be Max's fault."

  "Letting you play sitting duck for them is."

  "What can he do? Kill them?"

  "Maybe he did. Lieutenant Molina tells me the first two goons haven't been seen since the parking garage incident."

  Temple was silent in the face of that fact, wondering why Matt didn't see the obvious, other than the fact that the obvious is always as mysterious as the hand in front of your face, a magnified surface of such familiarity that it becomes foreign when confronted too closely.

  Matt sighed, automatically navigating the traffic stream of the Strip.

  "I guess all the martial arts exercise was useless."

  "Not useless. But I was trapped between a van and my car with an armload of groceries. All he got in was one good wallop, really, but it knocked my glasses off and I hit my head on the van. Then it was messy while I tried to scramble over the Storm's hood to get away. Electra came to my rescue with a brass knuckle of keys. End of story."

  "One guy, huh? And it wasn't either of the missing thugs?"

  Temple shook her head. He still wasn't seeing that this attack was nothing like the first.

  "They're getting bolder, though," Matt went on, "actually coming to the Circle Ritz. Why?

  What did the man want? Did he say anything? Any clue why the great Kinsella's ex-girlfriend is being singled out for assault?"

  "Could you pull over for a minute?"

  "Here? Off the Strip?"

  "Yeah. Anywhere."

  "There's hardly anywhere convenient to stop. Why? What do you need?"

  "Absence of motion, for one thing."

  "You're getting carsick? Temple, have you seen a doctor? Don't tell me you pulled the same routine as last time, refusing to go to an emergency room? I can't believe Electra would let you be so foolish."

  Temple gritted her teeth. "There's the Hacienda. Just pull into the parking lot."

  As the car left the Strip, everything around them dimmed and quieted. Temple exhaled in relief.

  "I don't mean to carp," Matt was saying, "but nausea could be a sign of concussion. I'm worried about you, Temple, and I'm worried that you'd still choose to lie to me rather than betray Max Kinsella. Isn't our relationship better than that?"

  Temple sighed again. It was as if an internal gag order was in place. She could hardly bring herself to say the truth he was asking for, that his every assumption was goading her into revealing.

  "I'm okay," she said. "The attack was two days ago; I'd hardly develop symptoms of a concussion now. I'm sorry. I tried not to ruin your celebration. I know what you've accomplished in the last few days is really important. But I can't have you blaming what happened to me on Max. It had nothing to do with him. Zero. Zilch."

  "It was a garden variety mugging? Then why the big act? Were you afraid I'd feel my self-defense tutoring was inadequate? I think my ego can handle that."

  "Oh, your ego can handle the truth. I'm just not sure your id can."

  "Temple! Just tell me the truth. I don't know why women do this. Suppress and excuse in the name of other people's feelings. You've got to face reality."

  "We're trained not to. Okay. My attacker wasn't a common garden variety mugger. He wasn't a mugger at all. And you're right, I do seem to be paying for my associations. It was Effinger. That reality enough for you?"

  "Effinger? Cliff Effinger?"

  Matt sounded stupefied. Temple had expected a major implosion.

  "I ought to know," she added, "I saw the full-size portrait of him before he was memorialized in wallet-size."

  "Effinger. Why? Why bother you?"

  "Not because he was looking for Max, or you, that's for sure. He was angry because you'd forced him to see the police. He wanted you to know that if you could find him, he could find someone close to you."

  "How on earth would he know--? We're not exactly a front page couple. I can't believe it."

  "Maybe he had help. He seems afraid of someone or something. More afraid of whatever that is than he is of you, or the police. His message was, leave him alone."

  "That creep! True to form; go for anybody weaker, a woman."

  "It worked before. Threatening your mother."

  "He's cunning enough to push all the old buttons."

  "And desperate enough. You and Molina can do your worst to harass him; you'll never scare him more than who he's been working for."

  Matt hardly heard her. He was back exploring some interior maze of memory and emotion.

  "You see why I was a teeny bit reluctant to tell you," she said.

  "No. I'm not a child to be kept in the dark. My mother thought she was doing that, protecting me, but kids need the truth even more than adults."

  Temple debated jumping to the second level of Truth or Consequences. So far, Matt had not greeted her news with the storm she had expected. Still, his abstraction and withdrawal were a tad eerie. He had almost forgotten her.

  "I wonder if that woman ..." he murmured.

  "What woman?"

  "Huh? Oh, somebody I ran into when I was hunting Effinger. I suppose he's moved by now."

  "And he sure doesn't want to be found again, that I know."

  "Why?" The question was not posed because he expected an answer.

  Matt put the idling car into gear again. "I don't suppose you'd let me tell Molina about this."

  "Molina? Why not? Better for her to meddle with Effinger, if he's going to take being tracked down so personally. But I'd appreciate a day or two more of recovery before I have to face her."

  "She doesn't need to see the damage, just needs to know how he reacted. God, I never dreamed he'd hurt you."

  "At least we know he's afraid of you."

  "And what good is that if he lashes out at people I know? All I've done is make him more dangerous."

  "Maybe you've made him expendable to his overlords. Maybe he's fighting for his life."

  "You mean, my finding him could get him killed?"

  Temple nodded.

  Matt considered that. "So I might have accidentally played Judas. There's some justice in that."

  The Circle Ritz parking lot looked deserted when the car turned into it, headlights flashing the darkness.

  They exited the car warily, stopping, looking, listening for lurkers.

  But it was fifty-some hours and a New Year later. Effinger was a ghost visible only in the hollows of Temple's face.

  Matt herded her inside like a guard dog.

  Waiting for the lobby elevator, Temple said suddenly, "I'm tired."

  "Seeing the sofa can wait," he agreed, still abstracted, still fit-ting together the puzzle of Effinger
and his shadowy associates.

  He saw her to her door and insisted on searching the rooms before he left her.

  "Take care of yourself," he said at the door before leaving, putting a palm to her face so lightly she barely felt the touch. He kissed the top of her head and was gone.

  Temple locked the door, deflated.

  Where were the funny hats and the streamers? Where had Matt's good mood gone? Why did she have a sense of having faced only half the music?

  She moved slowly into the bedroom, taking the shoes off as she went.

  And where was Midnight Louie? So far she hadn't seen him.

  A shadow moved in the bathroom. He'd probably been sleeping in the tub again.

  She went to greet him, but Max stepped out of the room on quiet cat feet instead.

  Chapter 8

  Mr. Mystery

  "You look like hell," he said.

  "Happy New Year to you too."

  "Come on. Let's wash off that unhappy face."

  Max boosted her onto the pedestal sink's generous edge, then opened the medicine cabinet, pulling out the cotton pads and makeup remover.

  When she'd patted on the concealing makeup, Temple had thought of how uncomfortable it would be to rub off, but Max, veteran of greasy stage pancake that he was, whisked it off with featherweight strokes.

  "So." He ran warm water over a washcloth in the sink. "How did he take it?"

  "I can't believe you were sitting here waiting up for me like an overprotective parent. What if he had come in for more than a quick look around? And where were you then anyway?"

  "Outside. Prepared to make like a human fly if he checked out the patio. You're avoiding the question. Why would he come in if you told him that you're ..." Max swathed her face in the warm washcloth.

  "That I'm what?" she asked through the muffling terry cloth.

  "How can I put it so you won't take offense?"

  Temple pushed the washcloth away. "You can't."

  Max grinned. "Never could. How did you put it?"

  "I didn't, exactly."

  Max backed away from her and leaned against the opposite wall, a study in black-clad disappointment on washroom-white tile. Temple used to take his all-black attire for Magician Chic; she suddenly realized it was Sable Second-story Man.

  "My masquerade didn't work, Max. So we got into the Effinger incident instead. Telling Matt that finally finding his stepfather had made me into a target was bad enough; I didn't see any way to add on, 'Oh, by the way, Max and I did the wild thing in New York and I can't talk to you any more.' "

  "You're just avoiding the inevitable, and insulting us both."

  "I know. But it feels like I'm sparing somebody's feelings, like mine."

  Max pushed off the wall, relaxed again. He dabbed at her cheek with the lukewarm washcloth.

  "I think you'll like the contact lenses, but why did you chicken out on getting a wild and crazy color?"

  "Don't be so sure I did. These are temporaries while I'm waiting for the prescription."

  Max looked intently into her eyes; she wasn't getting sleepy. He took her hands, held them up like Exhibit A on the strong tented surface of his fingertips. The ring he had given her was missing.

  "Temple. I know you wouldn't be waffling on telling Devine the truth if you didn't have deep feelings for him. I'm not putting a name on them, but they're there, and they won't get out of our way until you tell him that we're together again."

  "But are we? One night doth not a relationship make. Or mend."

  Max reached behind her neck to undo the tiny black hook at the neckline, then ran the back zipper open to her tailbone, his fingers tracing the route with the same featherweight touch.

  "Why don't you slip into something comfortable and sleep on it? Tomorrow evening, when you've had a chance to rest up and concoct a new set of waffles, I'll pick you up so you can come on over to my place," he whispered into her ear in a bedroom voice. "I could use an amateur sleuth and an editor in the worst way."

  Then he grinned and left her sitting on the sink to jump down on her own.

  She followed him as far as the bedroom door, shouting after him as he vanished onto his favorite exit, the patio.

  "Max, you want to lure me over to your place for editorial services?"

  He didn't bother answering, so she shut the door, pointedly, and did as he suggested.

  Amateur sleuthing at the former Orson Welles house? Editing? Curiosity killed the cat, and apparently it had driven Louie out for the night as well.

  Temple felt relieved to drop her glittering carapace of a dress and peel off the concealing pantyhose. She actually felt relieved to be alone at last, bereft of all masculine company, human or feline, passionate or purely platonic.

  Sometimes you, yourself and I were all the company one could stand.

  Chapter 9

  Flamingo Memories

  Temple only needed a liquid powder foundation by the next day to disguise what the old-time gumshoes called a "mouse."

  As black eyes go, it was a fading charcoal gray; her mouth only felt like it had been to the dentist, and she was beginning to simmer in anticipation of Max's forthcoming mystery night out ... in.

  And entering the Crystal Phoenix's understated entrance drive was like returning to Manderley again, sans Max de Winter.

  Van von Rhine had insisted that a New Year's Day appointment would not intrude on family or business plans. In fact, she had added over the phone yesterday, the holiday was especially appropriate to the renovation project and the wonderful . . . donation that it had received.

  Donation in Las Vegas? Temple wondered. Money was wagered and lost and--

  occasionally--won here, but rarely was it simply given away. And never to commercial projects.

  So Temple crossed the Phoenix's navy-and-camel casino carpeting Tuesday morning and barely heard the frequent chimes of slot machines as she headed to the executive offices behind the reception area.

  Lines of registering guests snaked obediently through the roped-off maze in front of the long front desk. Apparently the Phoenix wasn't suffering despite lacking some of the latest gimmicks on the Strip, such as a Jurassic Park theme park or a roller coaster shaped like the Loch Ness monster. They could have a baby Nessie for the kids. Hey, not bad ideas, either of them, although a bit pricey for the Phoenix.

  She kept an eye out for lurking Fontana brothers, Nicky's nine darkly handsome littermates.

  They were touchingly protective of her but rather overwhelming en masse, both sartorially and for an undeniable air of Gangster cologne. Fontana Inc. was always impeccably tailored and accoutered by Cerutti and Beretta, though somewhat rough around the behavioral edges.

  She spotted neither the Fontana brothers' Armani-suited silhouettes nor their less conventional post-romance-convention attire, Elvis jumpsuits. No doubt they had rung in the New Year until their fine Italian heads had also rung.

  Nicky Fontana, though, sleek as a black Maserati with camel-colored leather interior, was waiting in his wife's outer office to usher Temple into the inner sanctum.

  "Sorry to have played hooky over the holidays," Temple told Van, who rose from behind her glass-topped desk to join her husband in front of it.

  They were living proof that opposites attract and make an attractive couple: Nicky with his sienna skin and vibrant dark eyes and hair; Van a Nordic blond with a demeanor as cool as her husband's was heated.

  Nicky leaned against the thick glass and crossed his arms. "So how was New York? Did the cat take it by storm?"

  "He took the advertising agency by storm, though that was all of Manhattan he saw, except for my aunt's glamorous condominium in a miniature flatiron building. Oh, and a railroad flat in a part of the Village where only the lonely live."

  "Uptown, downtown," Nicky said. "That's what makes New York exciting. Sophistication and sleaze side by side."

  "Thank God our hotel isn't going for the New York-New York look, then," Van put in, shudde
ring genteelly.

  Nicky liked to scratch his discreetly manicured nails across the blackboard of her fine sensibilities. Van had been reared in the hushed, hothouse atmosphere of the European luxury hotel industry and found Las Vegas trying at times.

  "So what is this surprise?" Temple asked, not feeling up to spending too much time at the Phoenix today, despite her fondness for Nicky and Van.

  Van, wearing one of the exquisite Escada suits that were her trademark, stepped dramatically away from a long side table.

  That's when Temple spied the cityscape -in-miniature of an architect's model.

  She edged toward it, taking in a jumble of shapes and color. The thing looked like a Miro or Matisse painting in 3-D. And it was fully accoutered with . .. flamingos. Lots and lots of flamingos.

  "But. . . this is Crystal Phoenix Hotel and Casino. Shouldn't they be phoenixes?"

  "Not when Domingo himself has designed the new children's petting zoo. It will be partly a permanent installation of his recent headline-grabbing conceptual art hit with the plastic flamingos, and partly a zoo."

  "I think they're both the same," Nicky muttered in Temple's ear, donning an angelic expression as Van shot him a suspicious glance.

  "And Domingo is giving us the free use of his design, 'if his friend Miss Temple Barr approves.' Isn't that wonderful? You must have made quite an impression on him."

  Temple shrugged modestly.

  "And all he wants," Van went on, "is that we dedicate it to 'Brother John.'"

  Temple let her jaw drop. And instantly regretted it.

  "What's the matter?" Van looked concerned.

  "Saw the dentist yesterday. She was open half the day and I'd booked the appointment before I knew Louie and I would be the toast of New York during the holidays."