"For your sterling performance among the mediums the other night," Max said.
" Magnifique. "
"You ... you were there?"
"Who do you think stage-managed the entire thing?"
"Max, you couldn't have."
"Of course I could have. It's what I do."
"But you were home, asleep."
"I should have been," he agreed as the cocktail waitress sashayed into place, flouncing her abbreviated ruffles into his shoulder.
"Temple?" he asked.
She waved her hand. "Surprise me."
Max took the waitress's order pad and wrote something on it. She dipped with a wink and vanished.
"How did you even know about the second seance?"
"I didn't, until I called Electra that morning to see if you'd gotten home safely."
"Max, you didn't!"-
"She told me you were resting for the seance that night. She seemed particularly pleased to hear from me."
"I bet she did."
"Asked if I'd been spending a lot of time at the library lately, and what I'd been looking up."
"Grrrr."
"Do you have any idea what that was about?"
"Electra's unquenchable curiosity. Okay, so you then hie over to the haunted house and set up. Didn't the Glory Hole boys get in your way?"
"So you're responsible for that added complication! We were working at cross-purposes, apparently, but it came out all right in the end. The old guys didn't come along until after ten o'clock, so I was mostly set. I just had to make sure they didn't see my illusions in motion and blow the whistle."
"What did you hope to accomplish?"
"I don't know. I only know that magic has always worked for me when I most desperately need it. I hoped, I guess, to flush out the conscience of a killer."
"And succeeded beyond your wildest dreams, as always."
"Not always. I still have some wild dreams left."
Temple toyed with the cut rose at her place. "What effects exactly did you produce?"
He looked as if he didn't know where to start. "The panther."
"Where did you get a panther? You're not working with one now."
"No, but a lot of magicians do. Nice size cat, very dramatic, easier to handle than a lion or tiger.
Kahlua was on loan for the night."
"Then ... the fireplace was lined with mirror ... or you had installed a false back."
Max shrugged modestly.
"But, Max, you were the walking dead when I left you at Gandolph's house."
"And after I talked to Electra I'd had, oh, four hours sleep, so I walked right over to the haunted house and started setting up. You know how much intense effort is involved installing a magic show; same thing. I'm used to working under pressure."
"But how could you know that the psychics would react to the phenomena?"
"Modesty is not one of my weaknesses, of which there are many."
Temple rolled her eyes.
"I guess you know that from experience," Max added modestly. "I happen to believe that any competent magician--and I am far, far more than competent--can outdo any fraudulent medium. I figured if I put their tawdry tricks to shame, they'd be so unnerved they'd begin to believe they had conjured something real. Even fake mediums hope for genuine success. They wouldn't be in the spook business if they didn't half believe."
"Well, it worked like a charm, Kinsella. I'd have you take a bow, but you're a wanted man."
"Wanted here right now, I hope."
Temple glanced toward the stage. "I hope not."
"She's not coming."
"What?"
"I love it when you're surprised silly and trying not to show it. You do such a good job, but not quite good enough. Molina isn't singing tonight."
"You know about her performing here?"
Max nodded. "She's on a case; not a chance in homicide that she'll turn up."
"And you brought me here, with me thinking you were walking into the lion's mouth? Why?"
"It's a fun place. It's where I wanted to be with you, sans the songstress, of course. Why should I let a detail like Molina stop me? All I had to do was check the duty roster--"
"In the police computer!"
"Right. It's never magic, Temple. It's just damn good planning."
Like magic, a drink in a footed glass appeared in front of Temple. Foamy, pink. A Pink Lady.
The waitress dipped to position a matching green drink in front of Max. A Grasshopper.
Together, the two drinks looked a lot like Electra's Probe and Temple's Storm: Miami Vice colors.
"I think you got it wrong this time, Kinsella." Temple sipped her drink through the straw.
"Dessert first, substance later."
"The mediums and son of medium nicely confessed, didn't they?"
"To harassing Gandolph to death. None of them necessarily killed him, or even meant to. No arrests, no trial, no case closed. No vengeance either."
"The book will be vengeance. I'm hoping you can help me with it."
"With the writing?"
"Nope. Oh, maybe some light editing. No, I need a front woman."
"A flack to hype it?"
Max shook his head. "A ghostwriter to take credit. I don't care to be in the limelight. You'll do nicely. Of course it will be a coauthor credit with Gandolph the Great."
"Max, it's a pity you can't do it; you'd be much more promotable as co-author."
"Can't. Anyway, I won't be able to finish it for a year or so. Gary had lots of research and notes to cull through. At least the project will keep me off the public streets."
Temple picked up the rose she'd laid by her water glass to inhale the indescribably wonderful scent again.
"Aha! What about the bats, the hundreds and hundreds of bats?"
"They did scare the goblins right off the rafters and tangled my many lines of illusion. I assume they were imported to have at the happy haunted-house patrons. Or has Houdini adopted a familiar?"
"Not a genuine bat in sight when I did my tour of duty at the Hell-o-ween Haunted Homestead, and nothing to do with Houdini, or Welles. Some protesters were picketing the Halloween attraction for vilifying spiders and snakes and rats and bats. I bet the zealots salted the empty premises with a brood of bats once the attraction had closed to make a point how peaceful the critters are."
"As you have made a point." Max bowed his head in her direction. "I'm delighted that I didn't suffer the slings of bat guano for some more sinister reason."
"So you created everything: the panther, Houdini's second appearance, the flying martial arts weapons, the fog, the figure in space."
"Or amplified what was already there. What figure in space?"
"The Gandolph-like figure in the Edwina hat and cloak that everybody saw floating in the darkness and the distance."
"Mass hysterical delusion." Max dismissed the phenomenon. "Didn't hurt the impact of my effects, though."
"I think there was something there."
"Of course. There's always something there when people see things. Reflections, or just an expectant state of mind."
"No. That figure was real. I saw it at the previous seance, in three stages: boy, man and elder prophet. So did Agatha Welk. The others saw something then too, but they took it for a hologram programmed by the haunted-house operators. They never saw it with the detail I did, especially when it appeared last behind Gandolph, before he was dead, the mouth saying something--"
"Temple, you've had a trying time. Sit back, relax, drink your drink."
"You're sounding complacent, Max, and I find that annoying."
"I know better than to annoy a redhead, unless she wants me to."
"Well, you're rubbing me the wrong way now. I know what I saw. I mean it! I finally know what I saw, and it wasn't Houdini and it certainly wasn't phantoms from the ingenious mind of Max Kinsella."
He was silent.
Temple picked up the rose. "This is lovely. Thanks. But..
.you gave it to me for the wrong reason."
"How so?"
"You remember when I was trying to come up with the word?"
"Wonderfully ingenious. I had no idea you had researched Houdini enough to know the whole Rosabelle routine. Worked perfectly with my illusions to unhinge the mediums. That's what finally did the trick and loosened their tongues. When you came up with 'Rosabelle.'"
"That's just it, Max. I didn't come up with 'Rosabelle.' "
"But... you said it."
"No, I started to say something like it, and the mediums jumped on it. We've all been looking for the wrong ghost. It's like you always say. People see what they expect to see. People hear what they expect to hear. Even Max Kinsella. Sometimes."
He was listening now, his face serious, sober.
"I was trying desperately to remember the one true thing I saw at the other seance: the figure through the window. And the last time I saw him, the last thing I saw was his lips forming a word over and over. A last voiceless word. He stood right behind Gandolph, and I think he was trying to warn him of danger."
"Why would any ghost want to warn Gandolph.. . unless it was his dead mother--?"
Temple shook her head. "This ghost has a lot in common with Houdini and Gandolph. And you. 'Ghost' isn't an adequate word. 'Spirit' is better. This was a spirit that would not be quenched in life, despite many reasons. A man who was born in Wisconsin on a date very near Houdini's amended birth date. A man who was deeply attached to his mother, though she died when he was still a child. A magician with an intimate connection to Gandolph, and even to you.
"And I didn't realize that until I searched for the word. I work with words. I write them. I used to say them in front of a camera. I can't lip-read, but I have a certain instinct. So I was trying to sound out that unspoken two-syllable word."
"Not 'Rosabelle'?" Max looked bewildered, but like a believer.
Temple shook her head.
"I was just getting it when they interrupted me and declared it to be 'Rosabelle.' But it wasn't."
"What was it, then?"
"One word, a last word, from long ago."
"Temple, don't tease me."
She took a deep breath and inhaled the rose's scent first. And last.
"Rosebud."
Max and Temple were back on the dance floor, stunned in the spotlight.
After a long time, Max spoke.
"The arguing voices the neighbors heard Halloween night."
"Yes?"
"I have an idea, but we'll have to go back to the house."
"Fine."
"Can you wait until after dinner?"
"No."
"Too bad we're not talking about something else."
"First things first."
"I still can't believe it."
"I don't expect you to."
"It changes everything."
"Not everything, but a lot. We'd better go."
Max pulled her closer and rested his chin on the top of her head. "One more number; it helps me think."
"That's a new one."
"The music. Cryptographers use music to get themselves in a decoding mood. Very mathematical and inspiring, music."
Temple smiled. After what she'd told Max, she felt like being held, because the implications were very scary. Being held on a dance floor was both stimulating and safe. Max seemed to think so, too, as they swayed together.
"Oooh! What was that?" Temple asked after a dramatic move.
"A dip. I understand that they're all the rage."
"Where'd you learn to do a dip?"
"Danny Dove isn't a bad example."
"You were all over the romance convention too?"
"Maybe I needed to learn a thing or two."
"I don't think so."
They spun in a tight circle as the music shifted into the intro for another instrumental.
Words were running through Temple's mind. Rosebud. Halloween. Ghosts. Midnight Louie.
Black magic. Spells. That old black magic . ..
Those last words weren't thought, or merely mouthed without sound, or even spoken. They were sung! Temple looked up, appalled, at Max.
He was staring over her head, appalled. "Damn! She's supposed to be investigating a transient murder on the north side."
Instead, Molina's contralto was crooning softly over the micro-phone.
Max backed them out of the light and off the dance floor. They slunk along the sidelines to the door, where Max thrust some bills at the headwaiter.
"Emergency. Got to leave. For that table over there. Waitress in the ruffly thing."
"Max, they're all in ruffly things," Temple whispered as they tiptoed out, much good as discretion did now. "Did she see us? I couldn't bear to look."
"She's onstage. The lights are in her eyes. She wasn't expecting us."
"And vice versa. So she couldn't see us."
"Probably did." Max sounded resigned.
"My purse!" Temple stopped dead in the parking lot.
Max reached into his jacket and produced it.
"Oh, thank God."
She stopped again. "My rose!"
He reached into his pocket, came up with a ten-dollar bill folded into a rose. "I'll have to make you another one."
Temple shook her head. "If she's seen you?"
"What can she do?"
"Arrest you."
"Find me first." He let her in the car and went around. "Sorry about dinner."
"At least we hadn't ordered yet."
"I've still got the linguini Alfredo."
"Done."
The drive back to the house wasn't as self-conscious as the earlier drive.
"I'm almost afraid to go in," Temple commented when they stood in the garage before the connecting door to the house.
"It's not haunted."
The kitchen was so big and impressive it was impossible to be scared once Max had turned on all the under- and over-counter lights.
He rummaged in the cabinets, then turned to consult her. "Do you want to eat here or on the opium bed?"
"You don't eat on that priceless bed?" Temple envisioned cracker crumbs in the fretwork.
"Ah, no," Max admitted. "I thought we could eat... after."
"I think we better talk ... first."
"First wine, then." He ducked through the glass door to emerge with another rare bottle of something. "At least we can drink on the opium bed."
"You seem a little fixated."
"It's comfortable. Besides, all Gary's furniture is huge and clubby. It's my turn to confide a few home truths; let me choose the confessional, at least."
Glasses and wine bottle accompanied them to the bedroom where the opium bed provided the exotic centerpiece.
Temple had to step out of the Midnight Louie shoes like a good little geisha girl before climbing onto the embroidered satin coverlet. The bed was built like a latticed house, even a sort of gazebo, with open roof and sides. It was as cozy as a children's playhouse on a rainy day, despite the inlaid cinnabar and mother-of-pearl Temple could see why Max liked lounging there; it was vast enough to accommodate his length both ways. He installed the wine bottle on a table behind the bed's low back, then settled into a pillow-piled corner.
Temple sat cross-legged beside him, sipping her wine.
"What's your theory?" he asked.
"I think that Orson Welles's ... spirit felt protective toward Gandolph. It also was drawn to Houdini."
"Welles called himself 'The Great Orson' when he performed magic. And he was born, forty-one years after Houdini, a month later, to the day: May sixth, nineteen-fifteen."
"And of course Halloween is a key date for him, too."
"The Martian-landing radio broadcast on Halloween in nineteen thirty-nine that half the country took for real. It was the first time he shocked the world, but not the last."
"The 'noises' heard here on Halloween night, that could have been a spectral radio replay!
And Welles, like Houdini
and Gandolph, was devoted to his mother. Didn't he live mostly with her as a child?"
"Yes. She was a superb singer, a very cultured woman."
"So, given these similarities and Houdini's death on Halloween and his tremendous will, I think Orson Welles's spirit drew somehow on this conjunction offerees and learned that Gandolph could be in danger."
"Then he appeared to warn him. But he didn't save him."
"How do we know he didn't? The battle-ax might have killed him otherwise. What no one--
and maybe not even a spirit---could know was Gandolph's cardiac vulnerability. He had no history of heart disease, but I think the stress of the seance killed him."
"Hmm." Max nodded and poured more wine in his glass.
"There's something you're not telling me."
"For one thing, I've had the advantage of poking through Gary's files on mediums. He had all your seance partners on disk."
"And--?"
"They all did have motives for killing him. Obviously, Wayne Tracey might have had much more lethal feelings than he confessed to, but Oscar Grant was not simply the respected host of a rather unrespected television show, he--"
"Had a gang history in LA. Maybe drugs. Maybe still drugs today."
Max let his eyebrows lift in tribute. "Very good. Very true. And of course the treacherous bitch--"
Temple interrupted him again. "How did you know about that?"
"You think I would rig the room and neglect a microphone and tape recorder? Anyway, the lovely Mynah's extramarital affairs were legion, including a revived encounter with her own ex-husband, Oscar. I wouldn't be surprised if she was getting it on with the spirits in between more fleshly engagements. Exposure would not have helped her, and besides it could hav endangered her marriage."
"Why would she care?"
"Because William Kohler made all the money. He financed her New Age retreat."
"No! That... slouch potato? Where'd he get the money?"
"He's a stockbroker, and not a very ethical one, according to Gary's investigation. He also operates a lucrative financial newsletter. A scandal about Mynah and her New Age psychic and physical escapades would undercut his creditability."
"And the others?"
"Well, D'Arlene Hendrix seems to have done some good on the psychic front, but the reason the police took her in for questioning is that they discovered that Gandolph had been questioning police departments she worked with about her methods. That sort of thing makes the police suspicious, and his inquiries certainly weren't helping her reputation with law enforcement. Her work is her life, so..."
Cat with an Emerald Eye Page 35
