Cat with an Emerald Eye

by Douglas, Carole Nelson

  "She's not on this case."

  There was a silence. She glanced suddenly at Max. He was looking at her, and it was no glance.

  "You didn't tell me Molina was a woman," he said.

  "I guess it didn't seem important."

  "Perhaps it wasn't." He rapped the printouts on the desktop with one sharp blow so that they were neat-edged as a fresh ream, and cleared his throat. He wasn't looking at her anymore but his voice was as smooth as when he was introducing his next illusion. "Well, I know now, so I can desist in my fantasies of punching out the flatfoot's lights for doubting you."

  "Did you harbor such violent fantasies?"

  "It's a bit late for discussing fantasies of any nature." Max checked his watch, grinned at her, then sat back on the floor. "God, I've got to get some sleep."

  "I've got to get home and feed Louie breakfast."

  "And here I said you couldn't cook."

  They staggered upright much too soon, then shuffled through the silent house.

  "What will the neighbors think?" Temple wondered when the broad front door cracked open to admit a thin trickle of dawn light.

  "That the real estate lady is a bit weird for sleeping over in empty houses. Thanks for supper," Max added, catching her and kissing her good-bye like a drunken man, which he was by now.

  Temple lurched out into the cool daylight, her tote bag packed with papers, her eyes blinking.

  She turned back to the door, still open a crack.

  "When you wake up again, Max, don't forget to shave. You could give a cactus razor burn."

  She tottered off to the car, managing to start it and zoom away before any neighbor poked nose out of house to get the morning newspaper.

  Someday soon, one of those newspapers would read: MAGICIAN'S MURDER CAUGHT.

  Chapter 36

  Reincarnation

  "So where have you been?'"

  Electra Lark, pink plastic rollers in her silver hair looking as natural as tofu, asked that question in the lobby of the Circle Ritz like a dorm mother forbidding access to the elevators until the answer was given.

  "Don't get overwrought," Temple said. "You're not my den mother."

  "It's almost seven o'clock in the morning and you're just getting home, wearing the same clothes you left in last night."

  "At least I'm wearing them. Fret not, I was busy researching the seance murder."

  "And I know how too. After you left last evening, Agatha Welk called me up to warn me about your alarming tea-leaf reading and mentioned that you were on your way to a drink with the Count Dracula of the seance set: that smarmy Oscar Grant."

  "All true, but contrary to Agatha's tea leaves, I was just fine."

  "Oscar was a gentleman?"

  "No, but the Fontana brothers rescued me."

  "How many Fontana brothers?"

  "Only three."

  "Dear, I consider myself broad-minded, and Lord knows I have a few ex-husbands, and the Fontana brothers are rather adorable, but drowning your current frustrations in late nights and wild sex is no answer."

  "Electra, my personal life is not a proper subject for your speculation, especially when your speculation veers in such improper directions. I assure you I was not with any number of Fontana brothers all this time. Now will you step aside and let me get an elevator so I can get to my condo in time for brunch, if not breakfast?"

  Electra folded her arms, crushing the printed parrots on her muumuu. She did not budge from the elevator doors.

  "You were somewhere all this time, and there has to be a man in it somewhere."

  "How about a dead man? I was doing some heavy reading-up on Gandolph the Great."

  "The library was open all night?"

  "This is Las Vegas, Electra. Everything's open all night. Get with it"

  Temple brushed past her, amazed that Electra had been stopped cold in questioning her whereabouts. Maybe the libraries really were open all night. She'd have to check that out when she had time, for future reference.

  "I'm sorry, dear." Electra followed her into the elevator compartment. I've been frantic since Agatha called. She's known for accuracy, and this 'dark, dangerous man' prediction is disturbing."

  "Electra, all predictions are disturbing, or else why bother predicting anything?"

  "Maybe." Electra watched the brass hand above the door jerk toward the number 2.

  "Perhaps I'm skittish because of the new seance tonight."

  "What new seance?"

  "It's Professor Mangel's idea. All the mediums are meeting again in the haunted house. This time they're going to concentrate on raising the ghost of Gandolph the Great."

  "Great." Temple leaned against the elevator's varnished mahogany walls.

  "Can you come? Professor Mangel says everything must be as it was before."

  "Oh, I can come, if I get my beauty sleep between now and then. Otherwise I'd be mistaken for a ravaged revenant. Note that I said 'ravaged' not 'ravished' Electra. But has Professor Mangel considered that re-creating the circumstances of the first seance could set the scene for another death?"

  "Another death? Why?"

  The elevator door slid open. Temple managed to pause dramatically on the threshold before anything snapped shut on her.

  "Because no one knows the reason for the first one yet."

  Electra disappeared as the elevator door closed, her face slack with shocked contemplation.

  Temple trudged down the hall, feeling the effects of a night lost in computer contemplation.

  Or maybe just the effects of a night lost. She yawned as she headed down her entry cul-de-sac, which was dusk-dim in the wan light from the door side sconce.

  Matt Devine looked pretty wan too, sitting in the corner under that tepid night-light, his legs folded like a yogi's.

  Temple almost dropped her forty-pound tote bag when she saw him. Darn, if she would have thought of it, she could have waved her sixteen tons of printout at Electra to prove her night out had been spent in virtuous academic toil.

  "Matt--?"

  His limbs unfolded as he jumped up at her approach.

  "Matt, what are you doing here?"

  "Waiting, obviously. Electra called me at four this morning."

  "Why?"

  He hesitated. "She wondered if you were at my place."

  "Electra--!"

  "Don't get mad at her. By the time she called me she was frantic." Matt rubbed the back of his neck. "Apparently our dear landlady takes this fortune-telling stuff seriously. She was sure you had fallen into the hands of this dark, dangerous man."

  "Dark, dangerous short man," Temple corrected, more for Matt's sake than Electra's. "It's a good thing she overlooked that last adjective, or the police would have been rousting Crawford Buchanan out of bed, instead of her bothering you. Have you been waiting here since four?"

  "Once we discovered that you were still out, she was in an even bigger tizzy, so I promised to wait here and let her know as soon as you showed up." He checked his wristwatch. "Seven-forty. I'd better tell her."

  Temple put a hand up to stop him. "Don't bother. She descended on me in the lobby. She must have been watching from her balcony for my car to arrive, so a lot of good you did playing night watch-man on my doorstep. You better come in for some decaffeinated coffee. I know I need some."

  He reached to take her tote bag.

  "Thanks, but watch out," she warned.

  "What have you got in here, a dead body?"

  "Just Louie. And just kidding. Research. I found a source with access to all the computer files on Gandolph the Great's unpublished book."

  "That's the guy who died, right?"

  "Right." Temple threatened the aging tumbler with her key until it rolled over and played open. "Now my own lock doesn't recognize my facile touch. I guess I've been up a while too long. Just set the tote on the kitchen floor by the wall, will you, please? I've skimmed the stuff and don't want to see it again until I've had a nap and can focus."

 
; Matt followed instructions while Temple tottered into the kitchen and dragged a couple mugs down from a cupboard. The decaffeinated coffee was in retreat in a lower cupboard, pushed way to the back behind every instant product her shelves possessed. While she was digging her way back, hoping to encounter no survivors from her insect version of the Bates Motel, something fell from an upper cupboard. An ungodly loud thump on the counter-top was followed by something big flashing past her to land on the floor like a sack of solid-lead potatoes.

  Temple shrieked a little, her nerves being somewhat ragged from lack of sleep and for other reasons also often related to lack of sleep but far more interesting.

  Matt was right there like a lifeguard, but not fast enough for Midnight Louie, who stretched his forelegs up the open cupboard door, his weight shutting it on Temple barely before she could whisk her fingers out of the way.

  "Merooowwwl." Louie gave the demanding plaint she knew well.

  "He must want to know where you've been all night too," Matt commented, not entirely in jest.

  Temple sighed. Vary from routine one teeny, tiny bit and everyone you knew was an interrogator.

  "You obviously don't know cats," she answered Matt. "He wants to know where I've been, all right, but only because he didn't get his dinner."

  "There's plenty of green pellets in this bowl here."

  "That's not dinner, that's... bowl-dressing. Do you mind?" Her last comment was addressed to Midnight Louie as she opened the cupboard again to pull out a couple of small, low cans.

  She glanced up at Matt, hoping she looked appealing at this hour of the morning, begging on jackknifed knees that were about to simply snap from this permanent squat position.

  "Do you mind," she asked a lot more nicely, "opening these cans and smearing the contents over all those green pellets for Louie?"

  "Nope." He vanished, Louie on his heels like a bloodhound. "Pretty pungent stuff," Matt noted shortly after the "pop" of lids. "And he gets both cans? Okay, Louie, get ready to chow down."

  Temple got what felt like the right jar by the throat and pulled it into the light of day.

  Creaking in the knees, she dragged herself up in time to watch Louie make his morning obeisance to his bowl of Free-to-be-Feline. Usually the level of F-t-b-F didn't Recline much, but the gravy atop it did.

  "Smoked oysters? Baby shrimp in clam sauce?" Matt sounded unsure. "Isn't that a bit rich for him?"

  "Oh, probably. But I can't get him to eat anything else. I've tried everything."

  "Let him wait until he's hungry enough."

  "If he's hungry enough, he just won't come home, but he will move on down the line to the nearest Dumpster, and the menu in there will be even worse for him."

  "Maybe he shouldn't be out on the streets."

  "No, none of us should, but Louie's a street cat, and if I pen him up hell go nuts. Freedom is vital to some of us."

  Matt shook his head but didn't comment; freedom had never been much of a factor in his life.

  Temple had finally wrenched open the Postum jar (purchased a year ago when she had prematurely decided to quit drinking coffee for a day) and now had rooted a table knife from a drawer to repeatedly stab the rock-hard, granular mess the contents had become.

  "Let me," Matt suggested, taking the jar, closing it and shaking loose the dried powder by rapping the bottom hard on the countertop.

  Temple nearly jumped out of her skin.

  He eyed her curiously. "Go sit down. I'll fix this."

  "But you've been sitting up all night. I'm so sorry, Matt; Electra shouldn't have involved you."

  "I actually got some sleep. I'm used to crises. I haven't been sleeping that well the last couple nights anyway."

  Temple was afraid to inquire into the cause, so wordlessly foot-dragged her way past the oyster-gobbling Louie into the living room. There she fell onto the sofa, kicked off her high heels and tucked her feet under her rear.

  Seance tonight. That meant she had to arrange going to the site with Electra before she squeezed in some sleep and read through the Gandolph material.

  Matt brought the steaming mugs to the coffee table and stood there waiting.

  "What?"

  "Coasters."

  "Are you domesticated; definite headwaiter material! There are some water-absorbing stone ones decorated in Native American motifs, but I'm too tired to remember where they are.

  If the mugs steam up the glass table top, so be it. Steam evaporates."

  On the other hand, maybe it doesn't always, Temple thought, recalling certain moments from last night's research.

  "Domesticated? Trained by parish housekeepers, anyway." Matt sat, almost as heavily as she had, and sipped the brew. "Pretty bad. I don't know the proportions."

  "If it's hot, passes for coffee but won't keep me awake, I'll love it." She leaned forward for the mug and brought it to her lips. Just the steam curling up into her nose acted like an inhalation room, both energizing and relaxing her. "Ummmm."

  "So. Did you learn who might have killed the magician?"

  "Not yet. Or even if he was killed by somebody. Somebody living, anyway. He was writing a hell of a book, though. Documented expose on mediums who cheat confused people of their money and dignity. Guess it was a crusade for him; his mother was bilked like that."

  Matt nodded. "You don't like to see your mother taken for a ride."

  "Mine wouldn't go. She's much too cautious. She wouldn't let me cross a street alone until I was almost eight or something."

  Her comment made some troubling emotion flicker in Matt's eyes. He was so dangerously readable unless he was playing counselor. He'd never learned to hide his reactions except for somebody else's sake.

  Temple felt an internal conflict simmering. Max was like a volcano, unpredictable and exciting, but Matt made her feel so utterly secure it was... divine. Max was caffeine, Matt was...

  chamomile tea. Max was edgy nerves, Matt was nirvana. She could have gone on for hours in this vein, she was that punchy, but stone-cold predictable Matt was showing signs of an imminent trembler.

  "Temple, I shouldn't bother you with this at a time like now--"

  "Bother," she ordered, being in the happy position of someone with her feet up, finally, and her hair down.

  He hunkered over his steaming mug as if it were a wall he wanted to hide behind, or a fire he needed to warm himself at. His honey-brown eyes darkened with question. "I... think I saw Cliff Effinger this weekend."

  "Your stepfather? Are you sure?"

  "Absolutely not sure. The guy didn't look anything like Effinger, didn't dress anything like Effinger. He was crossing the Strip, though, and he walked like Effinger. Funny, I never noticed Effinger's walk when I knew him, but I saw it then."

  "What did you do?"

  "Tried to follow him, but I was on that damn motorcycle, and in the wrong lane to boot."

  "Oooh, and on the Strip too. Not easy to move over and turn around."

  "Easier with a motorcycle than a car. I doubled back but he was gone. If it was him, he sure had changed. Cowboy hat. Jeans and boots. Denim vest. All Western-duded up. Pretty ludicrous.

  Like a late-life makeover."

  "Or he was in disguise."

  "Disguise?"

  "Naked isn't the best disguise in Las Vegas, loud is. Seems to me this Novo-West guy who walked like Effinger is such a hundred' and-eighty-degree turn on the sleazily suited Midwestern man you used to know that the difference might be deliberate."

  "But, then ... Effinger would know he was wanted for questioning. He'd be dodging the police, pretending to be dead."

  Temple nodded, almost nodding off into her cup as well. "My point exactly, Dr. Watson."

  "I have been stupid about this! Maybe the dead man at the Crystal Phoenix was supposed to make people think Effinger was dead. That means Effinger himself didn't want to leave Las Vegas, but couldn't stay here without seeming to have gone, one way or another. Why?"

  "I don't know, but I'm sur
e you'll think of something. Lots of somethings." Temple yawned.

  "I'm sorry. You need to sleep."

  She nodded. Her eyes had closed and she didn't want to open them ever again. Thank goodness she had never been able to wear contact lenses.

  Someone leaned near and took the cup from her fingers. "You want me to show you the way to San Jose?" a nicely deep, masculine voice asked.

  Umhmmm.

  She was pulled up, pointed and guided in some direction.

  The best part was arriving where she could sit down on something soft and certifiably comfortable, her very own bed.

  "You need anything?"

  Just ten thousand years of deep, dreamless sleep. Oh, no ... can't. "Set the alarm," she mumbled.

  "What time?"

  "Three." Sounded good.

  "I'll let Electra know she can call you after three."

  Umhmmm.

  "Here's the morning paper, in case you wake up later and want to escape to the real world."

  "Thanks."

  "Anything else?"

  Just go 'way. But first...

  She reached out into the gray nothing, found his arms, pulled, found his face, kissed him. "Thanks."

  Then she slipped back, down, out cold, feeling warm anyway.

  Something floated down over her like a cloud, like a spirit. She heard faint sounds that faded. Later, she felt another heavy plop beside her. Plop, plop, fizz, fizz, oh, what a relief it is...

  Temple awoke in that drowsy, daytime-nap state of utter but strangely serene disorientation. She was wonderfully warm, thanks to the comforter from the other side being pulled over her and thanks to Midnight Louie warming one hip like a hirsute heating pad.

  The drawn mini-blinds let in tiny split-seams of daylight, striping the room's dim atmosphere. Sleep never felt so good as after being awake too long. Waking up never felt so luxurious as in mid-afternoon. Temple squinted the clock's red-hot letters into temporary focus.

  Two thirty-five. Three o'clock alarm, right, but she didn't have to worry about disarming it for a while yet.

  Temple stretched and yawned. Midnight Louie protested the stretch and added his own yawn. Three O'Clock Louie. Another seance. Was she ready for this? Knew a lot more now; knew the mediums a lot better. Maybe Houdini would surprise them and slip into town a few days later. Maybe a murderer would surprise them and try again. But she could handle it. She plucked her glasses off the bedside table, turned her head Midnight Louie's way and wrinkled her nose at the solemn cat face so close and so closemouthed ... now.