Cat on a Hyacinth Hunt

by Carole Nelson Douglas

  Temple realized that she had never needed Max's love more than now, when her own feelings were subdivided into searing confusion.

  "I know it's hard for you to betray confidences." Max wrapped his endless arms around her.

  "But this is for Devine's own good. I'd be willing to bet that the woman who turned over Effinger and accosted Matt later for not killing him is the very same woman who sent the hyacinths and paid for the funeral. I just wish I knew her game. Or her identity." Max tilted up Temple's chin, regarded her with a smile that softened his sharp features. "I give your neighbor credit for his Devine forbearance with Effinger. It's obvious that Effinger was a family abuser who deserved a lot worse than he got from Devine, if not the killer. It takes a lot of moral courage to outgrow the past, even if you were trained as a priest. He's all right. And he'll be all right, Temple. You'd don't have to mother him."

  Wonderful. Max the magnanimous. Max the consoler. Max the idiot! Defending the competition because he couldn't imagine any competition worth worrying about. Poor Max!

  Max shook her lightly, as if rousing her from a trance. "So let's forget the personal issues and look at the facts, ma'am. Just the facts. Want to hit the computer room? I can show you a graph on the hyacinth orders."

  Temple nodded. She could use graphs and cold, hard facts right now. She could use Max's bracing form of self-confidence. She could use distraction.

  But the computer revelations were far more interesting than she had thought. She squinted toward the glowing screen.

  "The flower orders are amazing. So many little florists, all over the country. One even from Canada. All on telephone credit-card numbers and all shipping every winter-blooming hyacinth they had. It's like a battle plan. Hyacinths in formation. And it must have cost a mint."

  "Seventy-six hundred and eighty-nine dollars. And the credit card numbers are all from stolen cards. From all over the country, by the way."

  "What? How do you know?"

  "I've access to the latest lists of reported lost or stolen cards."

  Temple leaned back in the secretarial chair, her accessory to the more substantial throne that Max occupied in front of the computer.

  "Sometimes I don't know whether you're Us or Them."

  Max grinned again, fondly. "And who are Us or Them?"

  "I don't know. Government or insurrectionist. Police or crook. Spy or seditionist. Human or alien."

  "You allow for an incredible range of deviation. I admire a lively imagination. But let's stick to the problem at hand. Does this mystery woman have a name?"

  "Kitty, according to Matt."

  " 'Kitty the cutter,' you called her."

  Temple nodded. "If it was the same woman at the funeral home, she called herself Trudy Zelle then."

  Max just grinned.

  "Why are you laughing at me?"

  "Not at you. At her audacity. I just remembered who Gertrud Zelle was."

  Temple shook her head. "Yeah, the name does sound vaguely familiar, like I heard it on a PBS station. An opera singer?"

  "Only tragic opera, if so. But dance was her ticket to notoriety. Gertrud Zelle was the birth name of the woman who performed as Mata Hari."

  "Then this woman is a spy too!"

  "Or wants us to think she is. How badly did she slice Devine? I mean, he's still walking among us. Apparently he can still function."

  Oh, yes. "A three-inch wound, to the side."

  "Interesting. How did she get that close?"

  "She intercepted him after work in the parking lot. Obviously, he never expected an assault."

  "Why would she do it? Out of pique? This woman is attracting attention to herself. That makes me suspicious. Who or what is she concealing behind the obvious?"

  "Efnnger is the key. He's the bridge. Not only to Matt's personal life but to your disappearance and now this whole 'hyacinth' puzzle. The word was on a paper in his pocket, along with some sort of reference to me. Molina won't get any more specific than that." "Not at you. At her audacity. I just remembered who Gertrud Zelle was."

  Temple shook her head. "Yeah, the name does sound vaguely familiar, like I heard it on a PBS station. An opera singer?"

  "Only tragic opera, if so. But dance was her ticket to notoriety. Gertrud Zelle was the birth name of the woman who performed as Mata Hari."

  "Then this woman is a spy too!"

  "Or wants us to think she is. How badly did she slice Devine? I mean, he's still walking among us. Apparently he can still function."

  Oh, yes. "A three-inch wound, to the side."

  "Interesting. How did she get that close?"

  "She intercepted him after work in the parking lot. Obviously, he never expected an assault."

  "Why would she do it? Out of pique? This woman is attracting attention to herself. That makes me suspicious. Who or what is she concealing behind the obvious?"

  "Effinger is the key. He's the bridge. Not only to Matt's personal life but to your disappearance and now this whole 'hyacinth' puzzle. The word was on a paper in his pocket, along with some sort of reference to me. Molina won't get any more specific than that."

  Max nodded, absently pulling the discreet ponytail at his nape.

  He had never made love to her with his long hair loose.

  Temple realized that she wanted him to. That she needed time to fully experience the change in his appearance, to see him as the

  CAT ON A HYACINTH HUNT * 271

  lover in an erotic Japanese woodcut, flying hair and robes and elegant masculinity that didn't need Western overstatement, suspended in time.

  He had changed. So had she. They needed to settle down and explore those differences.

  Since their reunion only a week ago they had behaved like all forcibly separated lovers: coming together again at every opportunity to prove that nothing had changed when everything had. Their sexual chemistry had always been satisfying, but it had been tempered by the small realities of daily life that gave its fiery heights a more static, solid base.

  Now they seemed characters in a spy-thriller, meeting clandestinely, conspiring, conjoining and slipping away into shadows again. These stolen moments had an exciting, frenetic sensation, but also felt fevered, desperate, disjointed. They needed timeout, leisure, a time to make love and a time not to make love. They needed everything the current situation was least likely to give them.

  "Let's adjourn to someplace more comfortable," Max suggested. "You don't like the opium bed, and I doubt the futon is your cat's pajamas ..."

  "Is there a living room in this place?"

  Max smiled, and pinched her cheek. So they went there, to sit in matching Chinese black-lacquered chairs and talk.

  "I like to think these date back to Orson Welles's day here." Max ran his hands over the ebony-smooth armrests. "A man his size would have welcomed the width as well as the elegant understatement. A misunderstood man. Not the overweening genius they made him be, but a titanic talent who spent himself too soon. He fell in love with fame at an early age, and never escaped it. Not even in death."

  "What did you fall in love with at an early age, Max?"

  "A woman named Kathleen. A land. A heritage. Danger and death. Caring so much that nothing mattered, which is the greatest self-deception of all."

  Max looked at her across the formal room's gulf.

  "So now you're a counterterrorist," she said. "Who are the head counterterrorists?"

  "Shadows, even to me."

  "Who do you 'counter?' "

  He sipped the wine he had brought with him. Temple had abandoned wine. In vino Veritas.

  And she had imbibed too much Veritas for the time being.

  "At first I was anti-IRA," he said. "An odd position for an Irish-American. But they had killed Sean. I was off courting a Green colleen when they did it; they weren't Orangemen, but Greens-men, or else there, but for the grace--the gratuitous cruelty--of God, went I."

  Guilt, Temple thought. The glue of the human jigsaw puzzle. Guilt made p
eople more than angels, and far less. It made them human. Confession was not always good for the soul.

  Concealment was sometimes a mercy, even from oneself.

  "Tell me about the dead men in the casino ceilings."

  "The Goliath management was worried about their security being breeched. Nothing they could put their finger on, just unease among the staff, as if they glimpsed something wrong out of the corner of their eyes but never could focus on it. I was asked to penetrate their system, if I could.

  "I found the secret watching/listening post in the ceiling, cleverly placed just back and below one of their eye-in-the-sky camera installations. Empty, of course.

  "It was cramped even for a midget, but it gave an overview of one of the blackjack tables. I reported it and volunteered to inhabit it one night to see what I could see. My profession involves getting myself into spots that are physically impossible for one of my size ... or length, at least. I had to belly-crawl down an air-conditioning vent to get there and when I did, the hidey-hole was occupied. Just my opening the panel to it dislodged what turned out to be the body that fell to the blackjack table. Of course there was no way to turn around without entering the now-exposed hidey-hole. I had to belly-crawl backwards to get out, and when I reached the mechanical annex, three armed men were waiting for me. Not hotel security forces."

  "Max!"

  "I fought, I hid, I ran. I knew that I was iced either way. Exposed as a spy if I admitted my hotel assignment, and liable to be in the sights of the setup crew for as long as it took to get rid of me. So I ran as far as I could go."

  "Where did you go?"

  "What's the place so obvious and predictable and taken for granted that no one ever thinks about it?"

  When Temple shook her head, Max opened his empty hand as if presenting something magical. "Canada, haven for draft protestors and rogue magicians."

  "What did you do there for so long? How did you survive?"

  "I became a corporate magician."

  "You? A house . . . wand-waver?"

  "I kind of liked it actually. My job was to build morale and encourage creative solutions to problems. Production problems, personnel problems. I was a human resources wizard. I was expected to be the odd man out, and was paid for it."

  "I bet you were good at it."

  "I was. Surprised me. That there was something legitimate I could do in this world. Could bring home a salary like all the other wage slaves. People told me I helped them."

  "An entertainer helps people too. Probably more than a publicist."

  "What about an amateur sleuth?"

  Temple gave one of those sighs that sounded too large for a person of her small size. Sighs, and size. Homonyms. A crucial clue in her first "case."

  "It's just congenital meddling."

  "Or congenital caring," Max suggested gently.

  "Either way it's a female failing, isn't it? It's not macho like going out every day in a uniform with a gun and a billy club, or in civvies with a gun. It's listening to people. It's 'arranging' things.

  It's putting the little details together. I let a killer go."

  "Whoa!" Max sat up in his handsome chair. "You and Sherlock Holmes. Talk about an

  'amateur.' How? And why?"

  "The situation was so muddy. The misunderstandings so tragic. The ultimate victims were so very young. I played God. I decided not to judge. But the killer knows I know. I wonder if paranoia will set in, and I'll pay someday."

  Max balanced his forearms on the Chinese chair's alien curves.

  Not Chippendale, not Duncan Phyfe, not Queen Anne, quite. He seemed like a mystic aiming at elevation, as if he could float off the physical plane. He was just thinking.

  She was struck by his grace, which was mental as well as physical. She awaited his verdict.

  "Everything is a choice. Good or ill. A choice. Every day brings events, people, that narrow choice. Sends us down a chute like an animal to the slaughter. We twist and we turn. We buck like hell. And we always wonder if we should have broken for freedom sooner, or appeared tamer and less threatening, or been born an amoeba. My choices separated me from you when it was the last thing I wanted to do. I don't know if I'll ever overcome that.

  "You let a murderer go. Your choice will make you look over your shoulder for the rest of your life. Not only for the one you think might mull it over and come after you, but for the one you don't realize you let go, and who will never let you go. I know."

  Chapter 39

  Opium Den Dreams

  You know me: I will take the scent of a female over the scent of a flower every time.

  Miss Temple Barr and her cohorts are clearly on the trail of the lonesome flora called hyacinth. It is obviously my job to make sure that the lady of the same name is not lonesome, especially if she is in the mood for making any startling revelations.

  Some would say that my habitual interest in the female of my species is blinding me to the true clue in this conundrum. Be that as it may, I know where my particular talents are best applied, so I hie back to the Opium Den as soon as I deliver my missive to Miss Temple Barr's coffee table.

  By then the late show is underway, and Miss Shangri-La is joined on stage by an array of petite Asian ladies all draped in exotic robes missing their tops. Miss Shangri-La, being the star of the occasion, does not need to go topless, but her black-clad ninja-boys have peeled down to a streamlined version of a sumo wrestler's diaper, only theirs are stretch black satin that leaves nothing to the imagination but X-rated speculations.

  I do not understand the difference between family and "adult" entertainment in Las Vegas.

  Come the late show, skin breaks out like a raging ebola epidemic.

  Perhaps if humans were fully furred, they would avoid this obsession to shed their clumsy clothes in increments. The fair Hyacinth is on stage with her mistress, lithely leaping into and out of various boxes. Except for a ruby and sapphire dog collar, she is dressed only in the hide and hair nature gave her. I am beginning to think that it is this bizarre custom of wearing clothes that has made humans so strange about the rules of taking them off.

  I know that I most dislike the discomfort of having hats and collars affixed to my body parts for commercial filming sessions. But now I am utterly unfettered, so before settling down in Miss Shangri-La's dressing room to wait for Hyacinth, I decide to explore the area beneath and behind the stage.

  At times like these, I regret that I was not on the Circle Ritz scene when Mr. Max Kinsella was plying his profession and living there with Miss Temple. Perhaps I could have visited him backstage and learned the secrets of the magic trade. All these painted boxes that are wheeled on stage lie around like mummy cases behind the scenes.

  I nearly jump out of my hide when I spot a pair of fire-breathing dragons glaring down at me in the backstage dimness ... but these are merely painted on the doors of a wheeled cabinet.

  I am so incensed at being taken in by a pair of painted mythical monsters, that I fiddle with one door until it pops open. I leap inside. The interior is plain black, an excellent camouflage color for me. I sniff around, detecting no more than a phantom odor of sulphur. No doubt this is a trace element from the dragons on the door, who probably blow their stacks on cue when some shill vanishes and then appears again inside said cabinet.

  From what I can see, everything here is from the same old bag of magician's tricks. Nothing new, nothing truly magical rather than merely mechanical, nothing to write home about or call the police for. I am very disappointed, but do not have long to languish in this state.

  Suddenly my painted shelter rolls into rapid motion. We are wafted up together, the dragons and I, on a stage elevator and then rolled swiftly across the hollow-sounding wooden floor of the stage itself. The wheels clatter like a Brobdingnagian baby rattle, but I doubt that they can be heard over the swell of Oriental music, as crisp as water chestnuts and as atonally high-pitched as a tortured water buffalo.

  I flatten my ears
to my head, then squint my eyes shut as the dragon doors burst open and the spotlights and the whole world glare in at me.

  "As you can see," Shangri-La's lilting voice is announcing, "the cabinet is as empty as a gambler's pocket."

  Well, I am cowering in one corner of it, but with my eyes and mouth shut, I hope I am taken for the black background. It is all I can do. I never intended to crash a magic act in mid-performance. I keep still as paint and hear the show go on.

  "Hyacinth and I will step into this box, and only one of us will emerge."

  I hope that three of us will emerge. Also I hope that I am not stepped on, being so at one with my background. Perhaps there is something to this zen stuff after all.

  A swirl of flower-imprint chiffon fills the black box. The door shuts, assisted by the ring of an offstage gong that makes my ears sit up and take notice, but by then their red interiors do not show against the black box, because the doors are shut and it is so dark in here even I cannot see my nose before my face.

  Therefore, when a spidery drift drags across my whiskers, I get my back hair up. I am not sure if my vibrissae have been impinged upon by an errant fold of chiffon, or by something more chilling.

  I do not have long to contemplate the Stirrer of My Whiskers.

  The whole bottom of my world drops out so fast that I am plopped with my keister cold-concrete down. Phantom touches web me like spider weavings.

  I avoid a shudder, and then one last, airy stroke across my nose pauses to tickle my chin.

  "Louie?" a silken voice inquires. "Are you trespassing on my territory? Naughty boy!"

  Four at full extension swipe through the blackness, but my trusty vibrissae sense the blow and I rear back.

  A hiss tells me the striker knows she has missed.

  "I am not angry, Louie. Just reminding you that I am queen of this stage. No unauthorized walk-ons allowed. Follow me."