Midnight Louie 14 - Cat in a Midnight Choir

by Carole Nelson Douglas

  “Sean will never rest.”

  “He will, but you won’t. Max, being secretive about what you really do, your past, is hurting you with Molina. This could get serious. She could arrest you, or worse, shoot you. If you would only tell her a little —”

  “She wouldn’t believe it. She’s made a hobby out of not believing me, and telling her a little could hurt a lot of people.”

  “She’s in law enforcement, I can’t believe she’d be so blind —”

  “Believe it!”

  Temple stiffened to encounter the stainless steel in Max’s voice, an ungiving intensity she’d never heard before.

  “Do you realize what you’re doing, Temple? You’re taking Molina at face value. Because she’s a woman, a policewoman, because she has a career in law enforcement, you assume she’s straight. You assume she doesn’t have a personal agenda. You assume she’s honest.”

  “Well, she acts annoyingly self-righteous. Are you saying Molina might be crooked?”

  “She might have agendas that have nothing to do with the law or her job. I’m saying she might be human, and if she’s human, she might go very wrong.”

  Temple leaned against the island’s hard granite edge, feeling it dig into her back. It was straighter than a stone ruler, and could not lie.

  People were another matter.

  “You’re right, Max. Ever since Molina came charging at me after you vanished, nagging, worrying, digging, like an annoying dog after a bone — you’re right, I assumed that all she wanted was justice. She might be misinformed, or, in your case, underinformed, but she really just wanted to catch criminals. You’re saying she has a special interest in pinning these vague crimes on you. It isn’t just dogged police work, it’s…obsession? Self-protection?”

  “I’m saying if someone is persistently wearing blinders, maybe he, or she, has something to hide from herself. And people with something to hide from themselves are very dangerous.”

  Temple tried to rearrange the chessboard in her mind. Molina, the Red Queen, say. Not just legal authority but a human being with human failings. Blind to any but one view of Max, because that supported an illusion she needed to maintain, no matter what.

  “I wish I could, Temple,” Max said softly, watching her think, watching her rearrange her assumptions. His voice was sad and tender.

  “Could what?”

  “Could tell you the whole truth. But I love you too much to risk it. I’ll have to risk you finding out half-truths from everybody else and turning against me. It’s just the way it is.

  “I can tell you this. I spent more than ten years of my life worrying about danger that might befall strangers. Now, since I came to Vegas with you, it’s become personal. I don’t worry about strangers anymore. I’m cured of that delusion. Now I’m like everybody else who can’t do anything at all about fate, and life, and death. Now I worry about the people I know.”

  “People?”

  He inclined his head in tribute to her instincts. “People.”

  “Anybody I know?”

  “Everybody you know.”

  Temple considered this unwelcome news. Max would always tell her the truth, as far as he could.

  She nodded, and picked up her folder.

  “Max, what happened to Professor Mangel’s magical poster collection once the room was no longer a crime scene? Did anyone at the university care to keep the exhibition going?”

  “No.”

  “No? What a shame! Even though the posters of you were missing after the murder, the rest of the material must have been invaluable.”

  “I’m glad you thought the collection diminished by my absence, but now it’s enhanced by my presence.”

  “What on earth do you mean?”

  “Come with me.” He beckoned her toward the hallway.

  “I haven’t time for dalliance, Mr. Valentino. Or do we say Pitt nowadays?”

  “I hope not. But dalliance is not on my mind.” Max led her down the dark hallway to the large, unoccupied bedroom where he stored all of his and the late Gandolph’s magical paraphernalia.

  “I’ve seen this act before,” Temple objected.

  “I’ve got a new illusion.” Max opened the door and switched on the light: no magic, just Thomas Edison and Hoover Dam in tandem.

  Temple gasped anyway. Against one wall stood ranks of aluminum poster stands framing the mostly yellow, black, and red vintage placards announcing the great magic acts of the past century and a half.

  “Now this is a magic trick. How, Max?”

  “The magic of money. An anonymous donor offered the university a good price for the entire collection.”

  “How wonderful!” Temple flung her arms around Max’s neck, dangling from his height. “What a wonderful thing to do. I’m so glad.”

  “Well, Mangel really and truly loved my act. He loved the acts of every magician whose posters he collected. Now they’re in a private museum with the leftovers of Gandolph’s magical career. In a way Gandolph and Jeff Mangel, and Gloria Fuentes, Gandolph’s murdered former assistant, are all interred here, locked away from life.”

  Max’s eyes grew distant as he gazed at the collection of magic acts in their most physical form. Temple had the oddest sensation of being in an Egyptian pharaoh’s tomb, of seeing the things the ruler intended to surround himself with in the afterlife, even of witnessing the final enshrinement of the Mystifying Max and his career in magic.

  The notion was so sad she let her arms fall slack and stepped away from him. She could say nothing. It was like being tongue-tied at a funeral because the corpse had sat up politely to listen.

  “Okay,” she said finally, trying to sound businesslike, and succeeding. “I’m here to do some research. I’ve got a murder to solve, or maybe six. Show me the books you took from Professor Mangel’s office just before he was killed.”

  Max rubbed her shoulders, his fingers digging into the tense muscles ridging the nape of her neck. He put a fresh mug of coffee with Bailey’s Irish Cream for flavoring next to her on the desk.

  “Ye gods,” Temple complained. “Haven’t these aspiring Ph.D.s ever heard of a declarative sentence? This last one was two hundred and fifty words, all passive voice.”

  “I’m no writer. Sounds okay to me.”

  “I hope your book on Gandolph isn’t written like this. What’s happening with that anyway?”

  “I’ve, ah, kind of dropped it. Got a little busy.”

  “You can’t stop writing if you want to finish something.”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  Temple frowned at the narrow pages bound in soft rag-paper covers. “What do they use for type size? Agate italic? Never mind what I’m referring to, it’s a print-media phrase for very tiny type.” She sighed and sipped.

  “They’re quoting medieval alchemists and Edgar Cayce and Gypsy tarot readers. Especially something called the Tarot of the Bohemians.”

  “These are probably academic cranks, Temple. Let’s face it, magic is not the usual postgraduate discipline.”

  “No, but poor Jeff Mangel took it seriously as an art form, and apparently got killed for his pains. Listen to this: ‘The key to ancient science of Egypt and India is synthesis, which condenses all acquired knowledge into a few simple laws. To save the laws of synthesis from oblivion, secret societies were established. In the West, they were the Gnostic sects, the Arabs, Alchemists, Templars, Rosicrucians, and lastly the Freemasons.”

  “The Synth. But tarot, alchemy, knights Templar, Freemasons…that’s rank superstition, Temple.”

  “Superstition is one way of fooling yourself, and you just said a couple hours ago that self-deception was a dangerous state.”

  Temple turned a page and blinked.

  “Another blasted star chart. These things make my head hurt. Sidereal time and minutes and planetary positions. I like to read my horoscope in the morning paper, but please!”

  Max read over her shoulder. “This section seems to cover astrology. What
that has to do with magic I shudder to imagine. Skip it.”

  Temple started to turn several pages at once, but two stuck together. She pried them apart. “Yuck, red sauce. Somebody was eating pizza over this tome.”

  “That’s not red sauce, Temple. That’s…blood.”

  “Double yuck!”

  She stared at the pages sealed with a blot of blood as they parted under the pry bar of her fingernail.

  “Max! That’s it! Look. That’s the symbol on the professor’s floor!”

  He leaned close to peer at the small drawing. Dots connected by lines. Stars linked in arbitrary patterns so that humans could put a name and shape to their geometry and call it a…

  “A constellation,” Temple said. “The figure is a constellation. What a weird word they call it: Ophiuchus. You ever heard of that before?”

  “O-fee-yuch-uss? Hmmmm. Have you?”

  “Or O-fie-a-cuss. Never.”

  They exchanged a glance.

  “Web search.” Temple hit the boot-up button on the dead computer sharing the desk with the books from Professor Mangel’s shelf.

  In moments a list of entries with the word Ophiuchus unrolled like a carpet containing a hidden Cleopatra announcing herself to Caesar.

  Max and Temple studied the entries together, heads touching as they stared at on-line “pages” that showed the very drawing that had contained Jeff Mangel’s dead body.

  “Ophiuchus,” Temple repeated almost reverently. “I’ve played around a little with horoscopes…when I was a kid, Max. I used to know the symbols for the planets even. But I never ran into a thirteenth sign of the zodiac. And this is it. Ophiuchus, the Serpent Beaver.”

  “Thirteen is not a lucky number.”

  “Don’t give me the willies! I know that. Black cats and thirteen are unlucky.”

  “So far we’re batting a thousand.”

  “Leave Louie out of this. He’s just an innocent stray.”

  “And so am I?” Max raised a Mr. Spock eyebrow.

  Temple elbowed him in the ribs, not hard enough to notice.

  “Cut it out. Seriously,” Max said, “this constellation has as long a history as any other recognized sign of the zodiac. No wonder some ancient zodiac systems included a thirteenth sign. It’s probably as old as Eden. The serpent. Ophiuchus.”

  “Serpent. Sneaky, convoluted, quiet. Hidden. Poisonous. Enduring since the Fall.”

  “I take it you’re describing the Synth.”

  “I take it that’s how the Synth describes itself.”

  Max nodded. “Members of a secret cabal of magicians might flatter themselves that way. The snake has always been considered a symbol of guile, wisdom, and evil.” He frowned for a moment. “I wonder if it’s a parallel image of the Worm Ouroboros.”

  “The Worm Ouroboros?”

  “You’ve seen the image: a snake devouring its own tail. A symbol of eternity and entropy: the way things fall apart and unite at one and the same time, over and over.”

  “How do you know about this stuff?”

  Max smiled. “While you were dabbling in horoscopes, I was dabbling in mystical mumbo-jumbo. In some forms it’s called philosophy. In others, superstition.”

  “We both must have had a very weird adolescence.”

  “Perfectly and normally abnormal, I’m afraid.” Max touched the crude five-sided “house” that pinpointed the stars of the constellation Ophiuchus. “Like all secret occult societies, the Synth needs to leave a trail. That means it needs someone to follow and find it.”

  “Why?”

  “Why does anything lethal leave a trail? To entrap. To destroy.”

  Temple looked at the book in which she’d found such a perfect clue.

  She didn’t feel like a mouse, but she could smell the strong, lilting odor of sharp cheddar.

  Max saw her to the door, his arm draped over her shoulder like a comforting shawl.

  “Good detective work,” he said. He squinted out the door. “And you did an excellent job of hiding your car.”

  “Ah, thanks…but actually I did a good job of changing my car.”

  He looked again.

  “That ’s yours?”

  “What?” she asked innocently.

  “Not the Odyssey next door. The little red thingamajig.”

  “It’s a Miata.”

  Max’s arm left her shoulders. “A Miata. Is that a good investment?”

  “I don’t know. It’s a fun car.”

  “A convertible? For a redhead? In Las Vegas?”

  “I’ll get a big hat.”

  “Temple.” Max turned her to look at him. “This is the first major purchase you’ve made since we’ve been together without asking me about it.”

  “Well, yeah. I suppose so.”

  “I really can’t fit into a Miata.”

  “You can’t? Oh. I didn’t think of that.”

  “Oh.”

  “But…we always drive places in your car. Or cars. Or whatever They leave for you.”

  “It won’t always be like that. Haven’t you been listening to me?”

  “Yes, but the Storm was worn out and I finally had some real income from my semipermanent floating PR work for the Crystal Phoenix and the Jersey Joe Jackson attraction is done and open and a big success and I thought I deserved something…and this seemed like fun at the moment.”

  “You used to think that what we did was fun at the moment. You used to consult me about big decisions.”

  “It’s a…little car.”

  “It’s a big issue. I don’t fit in it. Are you sending me a message?”

  “Max, no! Don’t be paranoid. I wasn’t even thinking about you.”

  The words hung there, an intended reassurance hoisted on its own petard.

  “I didn’t mean that the way it sounded,” Temple said.

  “No one ever does,” Max said, and shut the door on any further discussion.

  Temple felt awful. She wanted to blame Molina for it, but that was too simple.

  The car looked like a toy as she approached it. Silly. Too small for anyone but a shrunken Alice in Wonderland. Eat me. Humble pie, that’s what she should eat. She felt about two inches tall, and short stature was such an issue with her that feeling small meant she felt really, really guilty. Because she was.

  She’d only been thinking of herself when she’d bought the Miata, and maybe not very maturely at that.

  Despite the sun-warmed sidewalk, her feet in their Mootsie’s Tootsies high-rise slides felt ice cold. This was a lot of money to spend on a whim. An impractical whim. A whim that hurt a significant other’s feelings. Max always acted so strong she sometimes forgot that he had feelings to hurt.

  She got in, arranged herself and her tote bag, glanced at Max’s stoic house facade. Here she sat, in a brand-new car, with a brand-new clue in her tote bag, and she felt horrible.

  The only thing to do when troubled was to get on with the routine of life. She started the car and headed back toward the Circle Ritz. She needed to stop at the Lucky’s store first. Buy groceries. Her least favorite chore. She saw a lot more chocolate in her future than was healthy for her figure.

  Forty-five minutes later Temple stood on a sun-baked asphalt parking lot, her arms cradling brown paper bags, bulging plastic bags dangling from both wrists, wondering where to put her groceries.

  One brown bag could share the passenger seat with her tote bag if she squeezed them together and belted them in. The second brown bag and a couple plastic bags could crowd into the well behind the seats. The other two plastic bags full of bottled water could go in the trunk, such as it was.

  Now. What would hold the groceries down while she whizzed along the street? Time to put up the top, roll up the windows, and turn on the AC. This would be one buttoned-down convertible for the trip home.

  Misgivings nagged her the whole way. How could she have bought a car that Max didn’t fit in, much less a few bags of groceries? She had bought in to a sales pitch without c
onsidering the practicalities. She had been suckered.

  Her back straightened against the seat back as the AC wafted the curls off her face.

  Maybe the car wasn’t the bill of goods she’d been sold.

  Maybe it was Molina who was the slippery saleswoman. Maybe her whole mood had shifted at the woman’s dire predictions about Max, and her cruel revelation of the whereabouts of the ring. Come on, the Storm hadn’t been just Max’s size, either, although she had bought that car before she knew him.

  No, the question was why Molina was bearing down so hard on Max right now. Why was she warning Temple? To get her to do something. What? Question Max. Break up with him. Throw him off balance. Distract him from Molina’s moves against him.

  Max had warned her. Had said Molina could have motives Temple might not even guess at.

  That he wouldn’t say more only meant that Temple had many more puzzles than Ophiuchus to solve.

  Smoke Signals

  Hoping this was the about-to-be-perfect end of a perfectly dreadful day, Temple zoomed into the Circle Ritz lot. She parked the Miata as close to the door as she could while still sheltering it under the big old palm tree’s erratic shade.

  As she stood beside the car extracting her groceries from various nooks and crannies, she heard another engine pull into the lot: Electra’s old pink Probe, now Matt’s, and now painted the color of a white sepulcher.

  Temple brightened as she balanced the two brown bags, her tote bag’s considerable weight swinging from the crook of her right elbow. Her key ring was in her right fist.

  Great. Matt was here just in time to help her with the bags.

  He exited the Probe, locked it, and thrust his keys into the pocket of his khaki pants. Looking neither right nor left, but at the ground, he rapidly crossed the asphalt to the building’s side door.

  Temple opened her mouth to hail him, except that his haste, his almost deliberate avoidance of looking anywhere near her direction made her freeze in chill indecision.

  In those moments of hesitancy, Matt was through the door and gone.

  Talk about being the Invisible Woman! How could he have missed the sight of a strange red Miata in the almost-empty lot?