Cat in an Alien X-Ray: A Midnight Louie Mystery (Midnight Louie Mysteries Book 25)

by Carole Nelson Douglas

  We immediately eel around the round trash can into a room of tables surrounded by four lightweight chairs. Hmm. Is this place a morgue or a bridge club?

  In fact, I become almost hypnotized by the blaring fluorescent lights and the stainless steel cabinet fronts that stand in a U-shaped row like robotic servers on parade. Snack dispensers. Louise has made a tour from the other side and we meet in the middle.

  “Awesome,” she says. “I must admire these people for sustaining such a prodigious appetite in the face of daily death. Although it is all junk calories.”

  “Cheetos? That is dairy protein. You know how we like our milk. Pepperoni ’n’ cheddar. That is dairy and protein.”

  “Pretzels?” Louise’s tone is withering.

  “Ah, salt is the saline solution that is the staff of life, along with, uh, wheat.”

  “Gluten.” She glowers. “High-fructose corn syrup.”

  “Fiber. Low, er, sodium.”

  We have faced off over this bounty we do not have time to break into.

  Louise nods as sagaciously as a babe of her type can. “If we can contemplate breaking into the fast-food automat, we can crack any autopsy cabinet in the place. Do you think they will make it easy for us and have drawers?”

  “One can only hope, Louise.”

  * * *

  Of course, identifying one dead dude among so many is a challenge. I somehow think our ancient alien will not be in any old drawer, so we tour the rooms off the main autopsy area.

  “Where would Grizzly Bear stash a prime candidate for illegal paparazzi snapshots?” I ask.

  Midnight Louise sits down, curls her flurry tail around her neat forefeet and pretends to meditate like Bast. “I would mislabel the most desirable exhibit.”

  So. Looking for “ancient alien” on stainless steel drawers as if they were file cabinets is not likely to be successful.

  Suddenly, Louise lifts her head. “Idiots!”

  People certainly are.

  “We have overlooked the obvious,” Louise announces without giving me a hint of what she is referring to.

  “Obviously. And that is—?”

  “Where do you hide a leaf?” she asks.

  “In a forest. Father Brown, the priest-detective I have cited before, figured that out before your one-thousandth great-grandmama was born.”

  “Where do you hide an alien being fallen to earth?”

  “Under … oddities?” I hazard.

  “Under … suspected suicides?”

  “It is true that there was not a mark on him, except ours, and no Cat Pack attacks are fatal. Is there a suicides room?”

  “There should be, in Las Vegas,” she says.

  “Yes, people win, and most people lose, and lose and lose. I believe,” I decree, “I would file him under ‘Anonymous.’”

  That is how we locate the one unlabeled room. We sit upon an empty autopsy table—excellent construction, sturdy stainless steel with the look of those modern recto-linear sinks all the best home redos feature these days, almost an old Roman grandeur to them. I feel quite importantly supported by a pedestal, always a flattering position for my breed, from Bast on down.

  Together, we leap, and push open a door that takes the force of a human palm in ordinary circumstances.

  We are in! And, more important, the door has sprung wide and is not creeping closed again, as in all the best summer slasher movies.

  We loft up in tandem to view the sole corpse occupying this unlabeled room. Talk about anonymous.

  “He looks perfectly human, almost alive,” Louise comments reverently.

  “They did a good job. The broken limbs are straightened to fit the table, the Y-incision in the torso is neatly sewed up, and the cranial sawing looks almost like a hippie headband.”

  “A sign of respect and excellent workmanship.”

  “He might become a museum exhibit ultimately.”

  “Not so good,” Louise says, wrinkling her nose.

  “They can freeze-dry him. No odor.”

  “It is not that. Observe the faint white lines to the sides of his bronzed torso and legs.”

  “Almost like the scars of a wire whip.”

  “Or … these.” Louise lifts the spread four shivs of her right mitt.

  “Our slashes tend to be a bit ragged.”

  “These wounds are healed,” she points out (quite literally, running her fanned ninja knives through the air just above the rib scars). “I would like to see the back.”

  “Not possible without human cooperation. This dude must weigh one-eighty. Could this man have contracted the Cat Pack slashes here in Las Vegas and still be from outer space?”

  “Possibly. What do you think of him?” she asks.

  “He does have an exotic look.”

  “More of a human model, say a romance novel cover hero.”

  “His hair is oddly slicked down close to his skull for that,” I say. “I have heard my Miss Temple quote Mr. Grizzly Bahr, our esteemed coroner, that faces relax in death so that the features may seem entirely alien.”

  Louise pats his cold dead face with one velvet-soft mitt. “Poor mystery man. I have the oddest feeling that I have seen him somewhere, but that is not likely.”

  In Las Vegas, the unlikely is always possible.

  Chapter 36

  Stunt Double

  Temple sat in her condo in a funk as she grazed through the morning paper, viewing what Silas T. Farnum hath wrought.

  She was probably the last person at the Circle Ritz who subscribed to the local paper. Staring at that day’s “second front” with its slightly out-of-register color photos of the parking lot crowd wasn’t the kind of promotion she’d want to get even a not-quite client. It was a sea of Spock ears and tinfoil hats.

  She was even in one pic, caught in the act of turning Rens over to his happy owner. Temple wondered if Penny could recognize photos of herself. Or see herself in the mirror even. Just then, Louie skittered through the living area from the second bathroom litter box, his tail fluffed to radiator-brush size. He dashed across the glass cocktail table, claws razoring right through the opinion pages and classifieds section, a bizarre marriage in modern journalism, and raced on into the bedroom.

  “Louie! Slow down, Mr. Black the Ripper.” Cats did that, suddenly tore through the house as if they’d gotten a moth in their ears or laid a major stinky in the litter box.

  Temple bent to retrieve the scattered papers, thinking she should save the savaged second section, half-client or no half-client, and then stared at the paper’s yet-unread front page.

  DEAD “ALIEN ASTRONAUT” HAS CLASSIC JUNGLE TEMPLE FEATURES, read the headline on the story below the fold. A sketch purported to be “obtained” by a freelancer was obviously based on smartphone shots caught on the run when the body first fell. Next to it was a photo of a purported “alien astronaut” from a Mayan temple. Temple squinted at the image—it did look like “air hoses” were coming from his head, and the figure was tilted at the angle of astronauts leaving Earth’s gravity.

  This whole mess made “good print” and YouTube these days. She turned to the story’s “jump” to make sure no one had mentioned her name, and there was Farnum in a photo, beaming like he’d just ballooned into Oz.

  Temple’s mind was on a mad, mad, mad merry-go-round.

  She had no idea how she’d answered one phone call and was now involved with a notorious site of double murder, or at least of double body-dumping.

  Not to mention a “ghost” hotel-casino building that was expected to attract hordes of customers by being invisible.

  Or how Las Vegas’s mythical “mob” and “Area 51 alien” presence had met on one scruffy lot owned by one dapper oddball.

  She ran the last few days past her mental movie screen. Standing on that hard-packed sand and watching Silas T.’s revolving spaceship restaurant appear and disappear ten stories up.

  Standing on that same spot with the sand now burning in broad daylight and
trying to explain herself and Farnum and his high-tech magic act to Molina.

  The awful moment when the actual plastic and canvas that hid the real construction came billowing down in slow-motion, carrying one bronzed, naked male human body and a black feline figure that was twisting down like a furry screwdriver to disappear near a ground-level swell and strut out like a stunt cat when next seen again.

  Cats could walk away from falls from extraordinary heights.

  Dead men couldn’t.

  Temple pictured the corpse on Molina’s cell phone. One hesitated to stare at naked dead men, or women. Well, one would if one was not a person professionally charged with dealing with such bare facts of life and death.

  But those faint pale lines, the so-called alien scars could have been made by wire. She was sure Grizzly Bahr, no relation, had considered that possibility. Bundled in a sheet and wire for transport and then left naked at the top of the building. Why not? Great place to stash a body, in a hidden edifice.

  Yet, had it been so precariously placed that a misstep by a house cat had given the game away, not any nearby perpetrator?

  Somebody had “dropped” bodies there for some reason, which would mean somebody wanted Farnum’s project to be the hot public potato it now was.

  So was Farnum the instigator or the victim, the perp or the target, of the dead men?

  Temple turned to the sensational front page. You’d think the Review-Journal had morphed into the Crackpot Gazette.

  She studied the stone figure. Then looked at the sketch. She attired Las Vegas Man in Maya Man’s headdress and gear. A definite resemblance, but in the features and the profile, not the context.

  Omigod! Penny and Rens. Facial features not registering, blurring out, needing … context. Clues. She sent newspaper sections flying as she frantically patted down her cocktail table top for the slim outline of a smartphone.

  Search and … seized!

  She ignored contact groups labeled “Friends” and “Family” and went to one named “Iffy.” She checked her faithful wristwatch with the second hand. Please, please, please be in.

  “Molina,” came the familiar bark.

  Yes! Good doggie, reliable doggie.

  “I need to see the body.”

  “Which body of the two in question are you hankering to view?”

  “The ancient alien.”

  “Of course. He’s off-limits to the public, the press, even the President of the United States.”

  “They wouldn’t be able to help ID him.”

  “And you are?”

  “I think I know him from somewhere.”

  “Won’t happen, even if you met him on Mars during your lunch break.”

  “I’m dead serious. I need to look at him out of context, not in it. I have temporary prosopagnosia.”

  “I don’t care if you have terminal halitosis. That body is on lockdown.”

  “Grizzly Bahr would let me in. I know he would.”

  “Am I to infer that he has performed some highly unprofessional courtesies for you before?”

  “Uh … no. I just suspect he would, like I suspect I know the body. I mean the dead man. I wouldn’t know his body, since I hardly looked at it on your cell phone, and of course I haven’t seen any naked strange men. Or strange naked men. Recently. Ever. But I didn’t really see his face. That’s what I think I subconsciously recognized. The face. But the context temporarily blinded me.”

  Molina suddenly snapped at someone nearby. “Just leave the reports.

  “I’ll call the coroner,” she told Temple. “If Bahr okays it, you’re in. I’ll let you know later. Much later. Some of us work on actual cases as a career, not a hobby.”

  Temple hung up with a smile.

  Molina was going to find out that Temple and crusty ole Grizzly Bahr had an affinity that went a lot farther than a last name that sounded the same.

  Chapter 37

  Bad News Bearer

  “Van von Rhine.”

  The voice on the phone was as smooth and controlled as its owner’s platinum-blond French twist. Temple knew she was also going to have to get Van von Rhine’s fancy French panties into a double-pretzel twist pretty soon.

  “Hi, Van. It’s your PR consultant en route to the Phoenix. I’ve got to talk to you immediately about a nasty public relations turn of events that so far is known only to me, the Metro Police, and the coroner.”

  “It involves our hotel-casino?”

  “Peripherally.”

  “What on earth—?”

  “It’s not on Earth anymore. It’s very alien territory.”

  “Tell me this has nothing to do with that UFO fiasco on Paradise. Talk about bad publicity for the entire Strip.”

  “I’ll tell you that I’m not willing to commit any more info to the cell phone towers. Don’t talk to strangers with media credentials until I get there.”

  “Now I’m really alarmed. I’ll call Nicky.”

  “No.”

  “No?”

  “No. We need to be forewarned and forearmed before anybody else hears this, and everybody else will, all too soon.”

  “Drive fast,” Van said before signing off, sounding terse.

  Temple buzzed the Miata around any lagging traffic, although the Strip was typically a slow-flowing river of hot metal. Temple always felt like Nancy Drew in her roadster in the small convertible. Now she raced like Nancy on a hot crime trail.

  “Where’s the fire?” the Phoenix’s parking valet asked as her little red car sped up to the dazzling glass-and-mirror entry canopy.

  “Hi, Wayne. Emergency meet inside. Put her someplace in the shade to cool down.”

  “Sure thing, Miss Barr.”

  Crystal Phoenix parking valets were attired like bellboys from a Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers ’30s movie and had the same pep.

  Temple dashed inside.

  “Whoa!” She ran into—literally—one of the Fontana brothers.

  “You’re breaking the sound barrier,” he commented.

  “No time to say hello-goodbye, I’m late,” she threw behind her, White Rabbit–style. She didn’t even have time to ascertain whether she’d nearly slammed into Eduardo, Giuseppe, Rico, Ernesto, Julio, Armando, or Emilio. She knew it wasn’t Nicky, Aldo, or Ralph.

  Her toe on its one-inch platform sole (she would go no higher, not even for precious stature) tapped the marble floor in front of the elevators until a set of doors opened.

  Temple eeled past the departing passengers and punched the button to the top floor before the elevator had time to change gears and rise instead of sink. And she punched the CLOSE DOORS button on six falling faces of tourists left behind this trip.

  Inside, Temple took floor orders from the handful of people who’d slipped in with her and punched them in, toes tapping in rebuke. The other riders got the message. They stayed clear and haunted the elevator doors so they could squeeze out as soon as the car arrived at their floor.

  There were times when being petite concentrated a surge of pure energy.

  Van’s male assistant was standing by the inner office door to whisk it open while handing her a glass of Crystal Light—her favorite beverage, but one not served at the Crystal Phoenix.

  Temple came to a stop at Van’s glass-and-chrome desk and slung her tote bag to the floor. “I’m going to be going to the morgue to identify a body.”

  Van, already as pale as the vanilla she was named after, stood behind her desk, caught up in the drama. “Oh, no. Not anybody we know?”

  Temple nodded.

  “Not anybody we love?”

  Temple shook her head, still trying to catch her breath. “Somebody we know and don’t love, which is worse.”

  Van was perplexed. “How can that be worse?”

  “It’s a murder victim, and I, for one, found him a murder-deserving individual. We could be suspects.”

  Van sat in her channeled white leather executive chair. “Us? All? Suspects?”

  “Especiall
y the family Fontana.”

  Van shook her head and exhaled a hushed “Nooo.” She looked up. “All right, what can we do about it?”

  “You don’t want to know who the victim is?”

  “I’m sure you’ll tell me when you sit down and catch your breath.”

  “Santiago,” Temple said as she did so, “the Phoenix’s Chunnel of Crime designer, personally hired by your husband, Nicky, and suspect for the Cosimo Sparks murder in that very locale.”

  “Santiago? Was he still hanging around town?”

  “Evidently. That international architectural superstar seemed phony from the get-go. He and Sparks may have planned some shady scheme that kept Santiago here, even under suspicion.”

  “The police didn’t have enough evidence to hold him. Oh, if only he’d skedaddled out of the country as fast as he could, Temple! We didn’t have to murder him, we fired him. Given his larger-than-life personality, I’m sure his murder would be spec-tac-u-lar.”

  “It was. He’s tabloid news now.”

  Van looked puzzled. “Nothing in town has been tabloid headlines lately except that loony UFO dustup on Paradise.… Oh, no!” Van thumped a fist on her glass desktop. “You’re telling me the purported ancient astronaut deposited on ground zero at that loopy UFO project on Paradise was our Santiago? How can you ID him? Wasn’t that man nude?”

  “I assume Santiago was capable of that state.”

  “And why was he there?”

  “He was consulting on the UFO project.”

  “Of course. His kind of scam.” Van rested her paler face on her pale hand. “We’ve taken his name off all the publicity for the Phoenix–Gangsters Chunnel of Crime once he was suspected of murder. Isn’t that enough?”

  “I’m afraid people—and especially media people—will remember what, and who, brought him to Las Vegas. We need to create a short but sufficiently vague press release saying Santiago had consulted on remodeling projects at the Crystal Phoenix but that position is over and so was all contact with him.”

  Van nodded through Temple’s presentation, still stunned.

  “And, Van, luckily I’m in place to control the Phoenix link from the other end too.”