Unless, as Miss Temple tells her aunt, the surviving partners can conceal the ancient skullduggery.
"Poor Kendall," Miss Temple sighs.
"Poor Rudy," sighs Miss Kit.
They are a devoted pair of sighers. I wish we sniffers would get more credit.
"How did Louie know that there was a roach ... I mean an unfortunate remnant of an old habit . . . under Brent Colby's desk?"
Miss Kit Carlson asks in all innocence. "I did not think that cats were sensitive to that sort of thing."
"Oh," says Miss Temple in reply. "Cats are sensitive to all sorts of things. I noticed that Louie was well aware of roaches of both the insect and vegetable variety when we visited Rudy's apartment."
"You did not say anything."
"I did not wish to embarrass you about the circumstances of your friend's lifestyle," Miss Temple concedes.
Miss Kit nods with heavy head. "You are right. Especially in regard to Midnight Louie's inestimable nose. Cats are indeed sensitive to all sorts of things."
"Except the human heart." Miss Temple sighs again. "I can solve everyone else's problems, except my own."
Well, I would cry buckets over that, but I do not see how nailing another murderer is going to have a quelling effect on my Miss Temple's love life. Mr. Max Kinsella is still in the same business, so to speak, and Mr. Matt Devine is hardly one to criticize her penchant for crime and punishment, being off on peculiar missions of his own half the time.
"Well," says Miss Kit, with great energy. "We girls will have a fine time on our own celebrating the coming New Year at my party tomorrow night and toasting Louie and your forthcoming media career--"
"You really think we have a chance in hell of snagging the Allpetco assignment after our role in exposing the advertising agency by solving the Santa slaying?"
"Well," Miss Kit begins gamely, "It does establish that you both have exceptional crime-solving tendencies ... oh, Temple!"
"Oh, Kit! What?"
Miss Kit Carlson is laughing so hard she is sliding to the floor. Again. I look around for wine bottles, but none are visible. "I know I should be sober and saddened into the New Year, but. . . what you just said!"
"What did I just say? Tell me!"
"Santa . . . slaying."
"So?"
"Santa sleigh-ing."
"Is nothing sacred?" Miss Temple demands as she comprehends Miss Kit's meaning and begins laughing hysterically and sliding to the floor as well. I sense that I am in for one of those girl-talk evenings again.
Is nothing sacred? Obviously not. How sad to see the state into which two grown single women can descend when the only male influence on the premises is feline. I plan an early retirement to the bedroom and the word processor. Hey! Maybe I can write a happy ending to Miss Temple's love life.
Chapter 37
Merry Maximus Christmas
"A mouse must be stirring," Temple called to Kit as she raced for the apartment door. "No one else would still be out and about this soon after Christmas."
She swung the door open wide, infected by the season and perhaps a bit too won over by the idea that New York City was a village.
What was out and about wasn't a mouse; it was a man. And not just any man, like a milkman or a rent collector or an IRS agent; it was Max Kinsella.
Temple felt her face freeze in astonishment. With a red muffler, a fake -fur-lined brown duster, arms full of packages and melting snowflakes dewing his sleek dark hair, Max looked like a recent escapee from Minnesota--or a Dickens tale--not from Las Vegas.
"Ma-ax--" Before Temple's inflection had committed to ending in cither an exclamation point or a question mark, Max had swept her into the warmth within on an invisible current of icy outdoor air. Temple shivered as she was enveloped in coat, packages and a cold-lipped kiss of greeting that quickly turned subtropical.
She might have stayed in this cozy, tented atmosphere indefinitely, except that a parrot high in a balmy palm tree atop snowcapped Mount Everest was screaming for attention.
"Temple!" Kit's voice was a delighted screech. She loved surprises, and this looked like a good one. "You're being assaulted by outerwear on my very doorstep. Desist, you rogue London Fog!"
Max's encumbered arms (Temple still in one's custody) spread wide in a show of innocence and greeting. "Merry Christmas! You must be the cousin Temple is visiting."
"Flatterer," Temple growled beneath her breath, trying to elbow out from under cover of the voluminous coat.
Max's smile never faltered as Kit closed in to inspect him.
"You must be--" Of course she knew; she had glimpsed him and Matt Devine at the Crystal Phoenix casino, and an ex-actress never forgot an interesting face, let alone two.
"A bottle of Dom Perignon for the charming hostess." From his bottomless folds of coat Max produced the usual oversize bowling-pin shape wrapped in silver foil and tied with scarlet ribbon.
"The Mystifying Max," Kit pronounced after unwrapping the gift and eyeing the bottle's ornate label.
The label must have impressed her, for she found her widest, warmest smile and added her blessing to the obvious.
"Come in, and don't import any more of that icebox air than necessary." She peered at Temple still lurking in custody with intent to dither. "So nice of you to keep my niece warm on the threshold. If you close the door behind you, I believe you will find her nicely thawed."
Temple glared at Kit. "Don't promise anything you can't deliver personally."
But her aunt was already floating down the long gallery, bearing the champagne to the kitchen. "She'll hang up your coat."
Temple had already sprung open the almost-hidden door in the foyer wall.
"White cliffs of Dover, with a secret door. Interesting." Max, eyeing the lofty rooms, shrugged off the heavy coat.
" 'Cousin.' " Temple shook her head.
"Never hurts to ingratiate oneself with the relatives. Especially when one comes bearing immoral propositions."
"They look like ordinary Christmas presents to me."
"Very ordinary. No magic tonight."
"You? Resist the casual sleight of hand? Hah. What are you doing here, anyway?"
"It's Christmas. We're both out of town. I thought a formal call wouldn't be out of order."
"I meant in New York. I know how you found me here. You asked Electra where I was staying."
"My trade secrets--useless." He sobered. "I had business. . ."
Temple, silent, stretched to push the bulky coat onto the lone unoccupied wooden hanger. Max, who was good about helping with small struggles like that, didn't.
He did lean a hand on the closet wall, penning Temple into a tete-a-tete. "Almost New Year's. I think it's time we discussed the future."
She backed into the huddled coats.
"I don't."
"Champagne-cracker needed!" Kit's impressive stage projection called from the living room. "Raffles, are you available?"
Max, unlike himself, snapped to attention to obey the call of masculine social duty, leaving Temple stuffing his coattails into the clustered mass of dangling outerwear.
"I hate winter," she muttered to the abused coats, punching them into place.
By the time she emerged, red-faced but calm, Kit and Max were in the living room holding flutes of champagne in which bubbles twined upward like crystal strands of DNA.
A lone flute sat atop the Lucite coffee table for Temple to claim.
Midnight Louie reclined on the broad windowsill to the left, artistically arranged between two pots of pink poinsettias. On a side table, Kit's small gilded Christmas tree twinkled against the silent night's billions and billions of kilowatts making a private light show of upper Manhattan.
"Killer location." Max turned to lift his untouched glass to Temple's. "To the New Year."
Temple stood numbly by as he and Kit chimed glass rims in turn.
At last she understood what had seemed different about Max, what had made him an almost-stranger
, and had turned her strangely shy--and even abrupt.
He wasn't wearing his evergreen contact lenses. His eves were paler, and their true color, which she had never glimpsed before, blue.
She turned to confirm this astounding fact with another witness to the preblue Max: Midnight Louie, who was tonguing a forefoot while giving Max an evil eye of authentic emerald-green. He looked as dubious as she felt, but then, he always did. That "Oh, yeah? You and what other Doberman?" look was a patented feline expression donned with the first fading of kittenish baby-blue eyes. Cats learned early, it seemed, that the world is mean and man uncouth.
"Temple? How do you like it?"
Her aunt's question reminded Temple to sip the champagne. Her opinion was pointless. She couldn't tell a bottle of Andre's from a Dom Perignon. "Fine."
Max had sat on the low sofa at Kit's invitation, legs akimbo. His usual black had brightened for the holidays: he wore a cable-knit burgundy sweater over a black silk turtleneck and slacks. Temple smiled at this somber concession to the holidays and took the last seat left on the sofa, beside Max.
Kit's white walls, golden floors and black leather sofa felt harsh and coldly modern for the first time. The bare windows seemed as bleak as a factory's, and the light extravaganza beyond them a cheap trick, a chintzy set, a mere advertisement for the real New York-New York: the hotel and casino about to open January 3 in Las Vegas.
Temple had no reason to find Max's natural eye color unsettling, or significant, except that it was the sole thing about himself he had always controlled religiously. The one small secret that had seemed the biggest betrayal of all. The theatrical green eyes were a key part of his philosophy of "loud" being a better disguise than naked. Why had he discarded the contact lenses now? More disguise? Or was he making a statement, and, if so, what and to whom?
Ah, Max.' Thy name is eternal question mark.
"I want to borrow Temple," Max told Kit. He sounded as if he were talking in a rain barrel. He turned and took Temple's hand, still addressing Kit. "Do you have anything planned that I'd interfere with?"
"Only a cocktail party tomorrow night at six. They're in again, even among the younger set. A farewell party for Temple. You must come."
"Of course. But this evening--?"
"Temple is as free as a rolling stone."
"Dinner?" he asked Temple directly at last. "I know a little restaurant.
Max always knew a little restaurant and now Temple knew why. Undiscovered, out-of-the-way places were the natural haunts of secret agents, counterspies and moonlighting magicians.
She nodded. Her right hand was wanning nicely in his, and, in her left hand, the champagne tasted like ginger ale. She set it down on the thick plastic tabletop.
"Come on, I'll get you a good warm coat." Kit rose, took Temple's free hand and led the way to her bedroom, whispering all the way.
"Why on earth are you acting like a zombie? If that had appeared on my doorstep as a post-Christmas surprise, I'd be doing the mazurka on the ice rink at Rockefeller Center. As a matter of fact, he just did. Heck, I'll go out to dinner with him if you won't."
"There are buried issues," Temple said cautiously.
"There are always buried issues. But not between Christmas and New Year's, sweetie pie. Please! Perk up. Smile. It can't hurt that much to look at him. Try not to be crabby to the man, at least. It looks too eager."
"Too eager?"
"Here's my best holiday coat." Kit wrapped a circle of sheared acrylic around Temple like a mother dressing a child for the skating rink.
"Kit! It's red! I never wear red. My hair--"
" 'Tis the season to never say never. And wear these fluffy little earmuffs. Won't hide your hair. Nothing is less romantic than hidden hair. You have gloves, don't you? In that awful quilted down thing in the closet?"
"I didn't have much notice to buy anything warm, and the down thing isn't that bad."
These gloves go with the earmuffs. See. The same white fake fur on the cuffs. Don't you look adorable. Little bunny rabbit! Too bad you have nothing but this monster tote bag to drag around. No matter. Have a great time. Don't worry about keeping me up too late. I'll have Monsieur Louie to keep me warm. Ooh-la-la!"
"Kit! I'll put the damn gloves on myself, thank you."
"Good. Snapping out of your malaise, I see. Be crabby with auntie. See if I care. But be kind to Max."
"I am always kind to animals."
"Grrrr. Off you go."
Kit propelled her back to the main room where Max was waiting at the prow of the view, blending into the night's black velvet backdrop, his back to them.
"Here she is. I'll get your coat."
He turned at Kit's voice, his expression still abstracted from thought. "I left a few things under the tree. House gifts."
"We'll open them tomorrow night." Kit shepherded her charges to the foyer, then whisked Max's heavy coat from the closet as if it were made of thistledown and held it up for him like a very short butler.
He dipped deeply at the knees to accept her unneeded assistance and straightened so quickly the coat whirled around him like a cape. "Shall we go?" he asked Temple, his eyes still blue.
So they went into the cold, snowy night. Temple was glad she was so bundled up that virtually nothing--and no one--could get to her. Not even a magician.
Nobody on wheels in New York City had ever noticed her when she stood six feet out in the slushy winter street and beckoned frantically for a cab. Max hesitated near the curb and lifted one arm like a rather lazy conductor. Six cabs topped by unlit signs sped toward them like a racing field of greyhounds exclusively clad in yellow.
Somehow one always sank down into New York City cabs. Down into a slick worn seating surface polished by rear ends covered in Givenchy fur coats and polyester pants and worn blue jeans and designer leather. Long-gone occupants had left an aura of stale, backstage fumes behind them, along with a melange of Brut and Poison and Opium and the sweetly nauseating hint of the occasional double-malt scotch vomit.
Max didn't bother with gloves, even in winter, yet his hands never cooled. Maybe he didn't want to hamper the tools of his trade, those magically nimble fingers. Now they clasped Temple's icy, gloved hand.
"There's no place like New York," he said. "The energy, the crowds and the rush. It's the toughest audience on the planet."
"I didn't think you were performing anymore."
He leaned back in the lumpy seat. "I'm always performing. You know that."
"Yes, and you were very good tonight with Aunt Kit. She practically pushed me out the door into your clutches."
The mention was mother to the reality. Max's clutches tightened around her.
"Temple, don't pout. It doesn't become you. I've told you more about myself than anyone outside the network knows."
"Max, I'm afraid! Of what happened to you, of what could happen to you. I've never known a professional wire-walker before."
"Yes you have. We all are that at times. Molina, the deceptively ditsy Madame Electra, your friend the good father, even Midnight Louie."
"Deceptively--? The good father--? Max, what have you done now? That was privileged information."
"Nothing's privileged, only private for a time. I had him checked out. Needed to know."
"That's despicable. Unfair. Vile. I mean it!"
"That's my job, Temple, and part of my job is to protect you."
"Not at other people's cost."
"Always at other people's cost. If finding out happens to explain just why you're so protective of his past, why you can swear that 'nothing' happened, so much the better for me."
"Max. I don't know what to say."
"Don't say anything for a while. I came to New York to see some people, find out if there was any realistic possibility of my withdrawing safely."
"From your . . . situation?"
He nodded, glancing at the cab driver beyond the battered grille. "We'll talk about it later. For now, let's just enjoy the ri
de."
A more unenjoyable ride she could not imagine, but Max pulled her against him and she couldn't resist the pull he exercised on her whether it was literal or not.
Temple surrendered to jostling along in the back of the fender-brushing, barreling cab, her head on Max's chest, even through the earmuffs hearing the thrum of his heart. She thought about them, Max in winter, with no hat, no gloves and an open coat. Herself, booted and bundled and gloved and earmuffed, and still cold.
She examined the chasm between them, more than style or temperament, and tried to gauge whether its depth and width had changed now that the burden of Matt Devine's priestly past was not hers alone. Through no fault of her own. Mea culpa. Mea Maxima culpa. Look at how she mixed metaphors now: Max was showing up in the fragments of religious ritual she had learned from Matt. Max the Inevitable. Matt the . . . Unforgettable.
Enjoy, Max had said, and she finally decided, quite deliberately, to do just that.
Temple smiled as her head bounced on the hard-muscled pillow of Max. Now getting overheated by outerwear in inner angst, she was also getting sleepy, very, very sleepy. That old Max magic was at it again.
The cab had stopped and Max had paid before she stirred to her surroundings.
"I said enjoy." Max was teasing her. "I meant relax. I didn't mean go comatose. Some date. Come on, sleepyhead."
She didn't bother telling him that this was the first time she had felt utterly secure in New York, but let him pull her across the cracked leather seat and out onto the sidewalk. There, the night cold revived her like refrigerated smelling salts.
The restaurant was a picture window of plate glass with one word scrawled across it that she couldn't read. Max swept her in a narrow door beside the window into a broom closet of a place crammed with tables and chairs knocking legs. Temple had a sense of being yet lower in Greenwich Village, maybe in some discreetly hidden yuppie soup kitchen.
No reservations; the aproned waiter led them to a tiny table for two slammed against the wall between thronging tables for six, both full of animated, preppie diners.
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