Cat In A Crimson Haze

Chapter 41

Midnight Special

They met, as hastily planned, in the Ghost Suite of the Crystal Phoenix at midnight on the dot.

Van von Rhine had broken the house rules--her own--to import a Jeroboam of Dom Perignon to the desk. The huge bottle, diapered like a baby in white linen, lay cradled on a crushed-ice bed in a sterling silver bowl. Ranks of crystal champagne flutes surrounded the bowl like a besieging army.

Leaning against the floral wallpaper behind the desk was a framed hand-drawn map of a particularly under populated section of the Mojave desert, whose presence Temple had requested.

The Ghost Suite itself was uncharacteristically overpopulated at this pivotal hour between one day and another. The Gridiron show, ended just two hours before, was becoming history.

Besides Nicky and Van, Temple and Matt were there, along with Johnny and Jill Diamond.

Eightball O'Rourke had missed the Gridiron but not the mopping-up action afterward. Here, he represented the Glory Hole Gang, the only person present who had actually known the late Jersey Joe Jackson in his corporeal form.

Nine Fontana Brothers fiddled with the forties television set against the wall, fascinated by the ceiling-aimed screen reflected in a pop-up mirror in the cabinet lid. The brothers were of a generation used to in-your-face media exposure, not discreetly indirect images.

Midnight Louie reclined in state on the chartreuse satin love seat. Despite adapting a forelegs-forward pose reminiscent of the disdainful miens (if not the manes) of the Luxor Sphinx and the MGM Grand lion, Louie was not too dignified to refrain from eyeing with disfavor another black feline form lying on the aggressively floral carpet.

Unfortunately, nobody much noted his regal displeasure, so it was largely wasted.

"This oversized bottle of bubbly has 'Las Vegas' written all over it," Nicky was saying as he struggled to wrestle a gigantic cork from the gargantuan bottle.

''What's a Jeroboam?" a Fontana brother asked disingenuously.

"Four-fifths of a gallon," Van answered, while her spouse grunted manfully over the cork.

"All right!" came a Fontana, Inc., chorus.

Matt went over to steady the champagne bottle. Conversation, sporadic as it was, stopped, until the show was over. Nicky's forehead sprouted tiny beads of sweat to match the condensation dewing the bottle's green glass sides.

When the cork gave up the ghost, it popped like a Fourth of July firecracker.

Van jumped as if she had seen a ghost, and nervously eyed the room.

"Whooee!" Nicky jumped back to avoid a foamy burp that quickly subsided. "Reminds me of delivering a kid. What shall we christen the bouncing baby bottle now that it's open?"

"How about . . . history?" Temple quipped.

"Exactly." Nicky accepted the first delicate flute from his wife's hands and tipped the massive bottle enough to nurse a pale trickle down its crystal throat.

Soon sixteen flutes filled sixteen hands. Van presented Nicky with the last empty flute for filling.

He frowned as he eyed the assembly. ''Mine's already on the desk, thanks anyway, Van. I guess you ordered an extra glass.''

She shook her champagne blond head without speaking.

''It's for Midnight Louie?" Nicky asked.

She shook her head again, mysteriously. "Maybe it's for our host."

"Oh." Nicky looked embarrassed as he filled the last flute to the brim.

Van carried it carefully to the small, cabriolet-legged end table between a pair of upholstered chairs, and set it down.

Everyone observed this gesture in silence, either touched ... or shocked.

"If anything of Jersey Joe Jackson remains, beyond his actual remains," Eightball said out of the wild blue, "that glass won't stay full for long."

"Amen." Nicky lifted his champagne flute. "And now a toast, to--"

"To the Crystal Phoenix's newest entrepreneurial mastermind," Van broke in. "To Temple for envisioning a future Phoenix that will bring our hotel into the twenty-first century, via the nineteenth and twentieth. Your underground theme park plans are stunning!"

Temple, regarding the uplifted flutes and faces turned her way, smiled her edgy pleasure.

"It's only logical--"

"And," Nicky added, "to Temple for cleverly writing the capture of a gang of crooks into her script so that no breath of scandal will touch the Crystal Phoenix. That could have been our cash collection chamber that got knocked over, with the robbers escaping the underground tunnels via the Goliath, and no one the wiser."

"Even Lieutenant Molina couldn't complain this time," Matt added with a smile at Temple.

"Yes." Van frowned in memory. ''What did the lieutenant say when she visited you backstage?"

''It wasn't her case, you know," Temple said quickly. "She was just an onlooker like everybody else, although she still does suspect that"--she glanced at Matt--"the dead man in the Phoenix ceiling was a scout for the gang. I'm not so sure--" Temple straightened her shoulders and looked around. "Hurry up and drink; I don't get any until the next toast."

Under the cover of their obedient sips and laughter. Matt walked over to touch glass rims with Temple . . . and to ask a discreet question.

"We need to talk about that . . . dead man. Why do you think that Lieutenant Molina's suspicions aren't history, like this champagne?"

"Because," Temple said under her breath, eyeing the crowd to ensure no one was listening,

"Molina came up to congratulate me on the skit . . . and to say that the scheme of setting up the Phoenix as a diversion, the hitting the Goliath smacked of 'stage illusion.' She said that she wouldn't have been surprised to see the Mystifying Max come out of that UFO, and maybe he did, in the guise of Midnight Louie! I was supposed to think she was kidding. Molina kid?"

"What did you say?" Matt asked.

"I said the only person left lurking in the UFO was you, and that I doubted you were Max in disguise."

"And?"

"She said, I quote, that she 'would have to look into that interesting theory' since I was such a canny crime-solver, but that she was 'glad I seemed to know the difference."

"Merow." Matt winced. "She doesn't let a subject go, does she?"

"Not when he's missing in action. Maybe I should let her think that Max is a shapechanger and that Louie is a magician in pussycat's clothing."

They turned to the lounging cat. His eyes had drowsed almost shut, but a faint green glimmer betrayed the fact that his cat nap was a very light sleep.

"Midnight Louie," Van said fondly, "deserves the next toast."

''Hear, hear!" Johnny Diamond's glass was already raised. ''The best surprise entrance I've ever seen. Just when it looked like not even a gnat could exit that clown car of a UFO, Midnight Louie jumps down from the top into the spotlights. An inspired moment."

Eightball added a postscript. "Don't just make a speech, buster. Give the old boy some of that French soda-water. Van, here's an empty ashtray. Jersey Joe wouldn't mind, believe me."

Nicky poured a couple ounces in a big glass ashtray while his brothers watched possessively, then Van bent to place it on the floor near the sofa.

Before Louie could perform the proper preparatory-to-moving ritual: yawning, stretching, examining his nails and rising as slowly as bread dough, Caviar had leaped up to lap the sparkling wine.

Louie pounded to the floor, tail switching. After a feline stare-down. Caviar edged back to let Louie have a sip.

"That cat's been spending a lot of time at the Phoenix," Van said. "Who does it belong to?"

"Me," Matt said, "by default. Caviar's a Humane Society stray Temple brought home from the cat show."

Van regarded Caviar with almost-maternal fondness. "She's like a little, thin, female version of Louie. Seeing her around the hotel has reminded me of Louie, and of my arrival at the Crystal Phoenix,"

"And of meeting me, no doubt," Nicky put in.

"And your whole family," Van added with a sigh. "Caviar is cute, but I think we should take Temple's cue and rename her Midnight Louise."

Everybody who had not yet heard the name laughed at the idea.

Louie looked up from his champagne with a baleful glare, but Caviar only rolled over on the carpet and stretched luxuriously.

A knock at the door was barely heard over the hilarity, so Temple ran to answer it.

The winsome au pair girl stood there holding Cinnamon, who was swathed in a yellow flannel jumpsuit. "Madame said to bring the infant if she was awake."

"Oh, she's adorable!" Jill Diamond crooned, running to take the baby. "I haven't seen her for a month."

Once on the scene. Cinnamon became the star of the party. Even the brothers gathered around, Ralph asking Van when she was going to have Cinnamon's ears pierced.

"Not until she makes me," Van answered sternly, eyeing Ralph's swinging cannon earbob with disbelief. "Perhaps age fifteen or sixteen."

Cinnamon passed from person to person, gurgling until she began fussing.

"Put her down," Van suggested.

Once on the rug, the baby began practicing her crawl to oohs and aahs of praise. She crawled right over to Midnight Louie and grabbed his tail in one chubby hand.

A sudden gasp stirred the crowd.

Louie edged sideways, twitched his tail free and resumed lapping champagne. Cinnamon watched him for a moment, then spotted the newly named Midnight Louise. She crawled the two feet between them at top speed, then reached out for the cat.

Midnight Louise sat up and leaned her face toward the baby.

Van edged nervously nearer, the au pair girl behind her.

Cinnamon fell back on the cushion of her diaper, much to her own surprise, flailing an arm toward the cat. Midnight Louise sniffed the baby's hand, then stepped closer.

Cat and child were nose to nose, silent and curious. Midnight Louise delicately sniffed the baby's face, no doubt detecting milk. Cinnamon turned to gaze up at her mother with an expression of vacant delight.

''She likes her!" Van said, although who was ''she" and who was "her" remained uncertain.

Van turned to Matt, some of that wide-eyed babyish joy still brightening her expression. "I shouldn't ask this, but if you got the cat by default-- ''

"You're welcome to her," Matt said quickly, "If she wants to stay. I work nights, and I haven't been home much days lately," He glanced nervously at Temple, as if he had revealed a clue she might pursue. ''It's not fair to the cat."

Van watched cat and baby absorbed in each other, while Midnight Louie finished the last of the champagne. She picked up Cinnamon and handed her to the nanny. ''Enough excitement for now. It appears that the Crystal Phoenix has a new house kitty, if Midnight Louise deigns to stay."

"I hope Midnight Louie deigns to come home now that he's the one and only cat at the Circle Ritz," Temple put in.

Louie, busy cleaning his whiskers, stopped to give her a piercing look, as if he thought she meant more than she said.

Temple was getting unsettled. Everybody was looking at her like she was Lieutenant Molina or something, always on the job. Was she missing something here? Probably a lot, she concluded.

"When will you have a draft of the master plan for the hotel?" Nicky asked Temple during the conversational lull.

"As soon as I can get all my scattered ideas on paper. It seems idiotic not to use the tunnels now that we know they're there. And I have--I hope--a small surprise already."

"The Goliath link will be sealed as soon as possible, of course," he said. "Why do you suppose the tunnels' only exit led there?"

"No mystery." Eightball came over to Nicky for a refill of champagne. "You young folks forget that only a few decades ago this was all desert. Ole Jersey Joe probably put the tunnel exit at the edge of his property. When he hit hard times, he began selling off land on the fringes of the Joshua Tree Hotel until all he had left was the hotel grounds. Then he sold that. It just happened that the Goliath was built atop the tunnels' end."

"By the way." Temple lifted her glass. "When we talk about the heroes of the tunnels, I'd like to toast my personal rescue team. Matt Devine and the Fontana brothers, every one."

"Amen," said Eightball, gulping down the exquisite champagne as if it were beer.

The brothers smiled with modest restraint, and Ralph fidgeted with his earring.

''All I did was find a flashlight and follow Midnight Louise" Matt objected.

"Trust a cat to find a new place to hide" Van said.

"Why was that entrance to the tunnel left open anyway?" Matt asked.

Everybody paused to consider. Except Nicky.

"I examined the scene with our security supervisor after the show. The door itself has a heavy metal frame to support the weight of the concrete block facade. When it swings shut, the fit is perfecto; a government inspector couldn't see it."

"It must have been shut all these years," Van added. "What opened it, and who discovered it?"

"All I know is-the how," Nicky said. "We found this phony electrical outlet nearby. If you pry off the cover, you reveal a button that operates a motor inside the tunnel. My security gal says that the costume rack was bolted to the floor recently, so nobody checked it. The robbers must have planned to leave their loot in the tunnel, seal up the entrance from the Goliath as fast as they could, then carry the cash out through the Phoenix in small amounts over time. Those guys were coming and going around here for quite a while setting this scheme up."

"And setting up the disruptions," Van put in, "to focus attention on the Gridiron and the Phoenix so all the suspicion and the police personnel forces would concentrate on us."

"Then they'd slink up from the basement in their own sweet time," Eightball said, "laughing up their sleeves at us the whole while. That's the kind of scheme Jersey Joe would have dreamed up. Almost makes you think the dirty double-crosser is still kicking."

"I hope not!" Van clasped her champagne flute to her chest as if it were fire and she was cold.

Nicky put an arm around her. "No more superstitious hokum. This hotel--and this suite--

harbor nothing intangible but history and memories. Hey, Van, I thought the whole idea of holding this party up here was to banish ghosts."

His wife's smile was tremulous. "I know. I want to be big and brave, but when I look at those two black cats and this suite--''

A knocking resonated in the room, startling everyone.

"Just the door,'' Temple said calmly, going to it. ''Who else are you expecting--?"

She opened it in mid-sentence, instantly getting her question answered in 3-D and Technicolor. ''Lieutenant Molina. What a surprise. Do come in."

"Miss Barr. Don't mind if I do."

Van von Rhine stepped away from her husband, the picture of a collected hostess. "I'm so glad you had time to drop by. Lieutenant. I didn't know how long that . . . business downstairs would take." She went to the table to collect the untouched glass of champagne.

That's Jersey Joe's Temple wanted to shout, but didn't. Instead she glanced at Matt, who was watching Molina with the same guarded suspicion that Temple usually had.

"This isn't my case." Molina's smile was purely social as she accepted the champagne and looked around. "What an . . . amazing room. What's the story?"

Awkwardness had settled on the party despite Molina's formal gown and informal question.

The brothers Fontana particularly looked like mongeese into whose midst a cobra has suddenly slithered. They began adjusting their tuxedos as if instantly infected with a plague of fleas and ticks.

Temple supposed that there were enough concealed weapons in the room to arm the LVMPD's tactical squad.

Molina, however, did not seem in the mood for police matters. She strolled the room's perimeter like a visitor to an art museum, studying each piece of furniture, the carpet, the blinds, the draperies, with quiet reverence.

"Jersey Joe Jackson's suite," Van explained, pride of possession overcoming fear of another kind of possession. "He was--"

"I know who he was,'' Molina interrupted in that official way of hers.

"This was his last residence before his death," Van continued without a hitch. "When the hotel was redone, nothing here was touched."

Molina turned with a radiant expression. "Brava! It's wonderful . . . and look at that--" she swept toward the television set, Fontana brothers scattering like ultra-formal bowling pins at her approach "--it's a television set, isn't it? Very early." Molina caressed the lid rim as she stared down into the oval screen. "Fabulous."

Temple was torn between wondering why on earth Van von Rhine had invited a police lieutenant to this informal gathering and pouting because the setting so appealed to Molina.

Worse, it enhanced her. Her size and height, her floor-length, crimson vintage gown, the simplicity of her hair and makeup fit the Ghost Suite like an old elbow-length kid glove.

Something touched her arm. She glanced up to find Matt smiling down at her. "The Blue Dahlia looks right at home, doesn't she?"

His reference made her smile too, but Temple couldn't help feeling that this was her night, her skit, her discovery in the tunnels, her friends and her cat to the rescue, her hotel. Molina was stealing some of Temple's stage-thunder, just by being here.

"Frank couldn't come?" Matt asked suddenly.

Molina turned with another one of those disconcertingly serene smiles. ''Unlike myself, he was on duty. He had cleanup work to do." She turned to Nicky and Van. *'Frank is an FBI man.

You'll be happy to know that he thinks the thieves were not local talent. With other states now allowing legal gambling, criminal elements driven out of Las Vegas years ago are making inroads elsewhere. Some not-too-bright factions decided to bring their ambitions here." Molina paused, as if undecided about continuing. "That's one theory. Then again, foreign elements might be backing native hoods; either gangsters or terrorists who need money and Las Vegas has a lot of that."

"Foreign gangsters? Terrorists?" Van grew stern. "What kind?"

Nicky answered. ''I think the lieutenant is referring to the Russian mob that has sprung up since the Soviet Union collapsed. Am I right?"

''You're right about the Russian mob, but they were not what I had in mind."

"The Yakuza?" Nicky asked, doubtful.

Van was not reassured by this dialogue. "Russian mobs, terrorists, the, the . . . Jacuzzis. At our little Las Vegas hotel?"

"Don't worry, Mrs. Fontana." Molina was still smiling at Van's original nickname for the Japanese mob. "My own theory involves a much more reassuringly familiar portion of the globe."

"The Middle East?" Van asked tensely.

"More like the North Atlantic," Molina answered cryptically.

Everyone kept blank silence at this perplexing notion, but Temple felt a sudden chill.

"If the masterminds of this scheme are foreigners, how did they know about our tunnels?"

Van asked. "Even we had no idea."

"Ah." Molina placed her champagne glass on the linen tablecloth that temporarily covered the desk. She lifted the big, bold, brassy envelope purse she carried and withdrew a large plastic baggie filled with something white.

"They had local assistance. And I do have a teensy bit of relevant evidence with me, in hopes you could help identify it. This was found in the tunnel. It appears to be an architectural plan. I know it's folded, but--"

"The basement floor plans!" Temple came over in high indignation. "This must show the tunnel system. It was missing from the set of plans Van gave me, and I had my own suspicions about where it was. Where did you get it?"

"In the tunnels. We'll have it examined, of course," Molina said, "but it appears to be a copy."

"Can I see it?" Temple asked.

Molina's hesitation was just long enough to be mildly insulting before she handed Temple the plastic bag.

Temple leaned over the desk and held it up to the wall behind it. Despite her high heels, she had to stretch to touch the folded plan to the wallpaper.

'There! Can you see the darker oblong on the wallpaper? That's where Van said a photograph of the desert hung for a long time. This folded section covers about a fourth of it. I think this plan was in the frame. Somehow someone saw it when the frame was disassembled to retrieve Jackson's map to the cache of silver dollars.'*

"Come to think, of it--"Van looked at Nicky with dawning surprise. "There was something on the back of Solitaire's treasure map, but we didn't pay any attention to it."

"Just as I thought. That's why I asked you to bring this." She touched the framed sketch. "Is that the map you had framed?" Temple asked.

Nicky and Van nodded as one, seeing the light.

"Can you take off the paper later and see if it's drawn on the basement plans?" she requested. "I believe that the original plan is still there, but maybe someone else got a copy long ago.

With a shrug, Nicky turned the frame and ripped the brown paper backing off. Inside was a piece of mat board he managed to pull away from one corner with the tip of his car key.

Faint blue lines made patterns like the furrow-scribed Peruvian plains that were supposedly an alien airport. Voila!

Everyone crowded around to see, but Molina was unimpressed. "I said that this was a copy.

That's what matters."

"Did Jersey Joe have out-of-state friends or relatives?" Temple asked Eightball.

. "Who knows? Jersey Joe was a human fox. He didn't like folks to know who he knew or where he lived, and he liked to have a lot of emergency exits out of everything. I'd guess his relationships were as extensive and hidden as those tunnels. He sure took us Glory Hole Guys for a ride. If we're around, some of his other associates from the old days could be too. Maybe we weren't the only ones looking for his loot."

"Hmm," was Temple's only comment. She was dreaming up twists in the Jersey Joe Jackson theme park again. Everything she learned about the man lent itself to commercialization. And with Jersey Joe dead, it was public domain. What a find!

"Hmmm," Lieutenant Molina echoed in a far more dubious tone.

She collected the evidence from Temple and returned it to her purse, then picked up her champagne glass and toured the room again, savoring its ambiance.

Molina paused before Matt.

"Was the man who fell from the ceiling an associate from Jersey Joe Jackson's past?" she asked rhetorically, facing only him. ''I doubt that, but it's possible. Will we ever know who he was, or why he was killed?" Her head twisted over her shoulder to regard Temple. "Or about the dead man at the Goliath? I can only promise that I will never stop trying to answer those questions."

She moved a step or two to replace the champagne glass on the table where Van had set it.

It was still half full.

"Thank you for the inviting me up here," Molina told Van and Nicky. She glanced at Temple, then the others. "A most interesting . . . show."

She glided to the door.

Temple reflected that this was one of probably only two rooms in the whole world in which clunky old Lieutenant Molina would glide like the spider woman.

''You will tell us," Matt said abruptly, stepping forward, "if you find out anything about the dead man. Men."

"When I find something out," Molina corrected, "I may have another question or two to ask some of those here. Good night."

In the silence that prevailed like a dropped curtain after she had left, Nicky Fontana shrugged. "I feel like I've just survived the Last Roundup scene in a Charlie Chan movie."

"That is one spooky dame," a Fontana brother suggested. "I mean, police officer."

"Don't mention spooks in this room, please!" Van said with a shudder.

"I suppose the lieutenant has to be cryptic," Matt said, but he didn't look happy about it.

Temple didn't know what to say, except that it was time to return to the Circle Ritz.

She looked at Caviar--Midnight Louise, rather--and found her peeking out from under the chartreuse love seat. Louie still occupied the cushion. Temple sighed. She could hardly force the hero of the hour from his satin-pillowed lap of vintage luxury. Maybe he wanted to be the Phoenix watch-cat again, along with his new namesake. Midnight Louise.

Louie himself wasn't talking, but he was watching. Intently. Temple realized that his hair had stiffened into an ebony aura. He was staring askance, as if to inquire "Who goes there?"

Temple followed his absinthe-green stare to Molina's abandoned glass, then looked again, committing a classic double take.

The champagne flute, half full only seconds before, was now utterly empty.