Cat In A Leopard Spot

Chapter 10

Animal Instincts

“What was that masked thing?” Temple asked as the Maxima jolted over the dusty road taking her and Max away from the Animal Oasis.

“This?”

Max pulled a small object from his pocket that looked like a tiny camera, but wasn’t.

“It scans lines of type. Here. It’s on. Scroll down with the arrow until you come to an address on Redrock Mountain Road.”

“Wow. I’d never need a pen and notebook again. What’s at this address?”

“Someplace you’d never want Midnight Louie to go.”

“Really! What is it? The animal pound?”

“Worse. It’s Rancho Exotica, owned by one of the area’s biggest big game hunters. He’s rumored to run an ‘animal ranch’ for breeding and sale. I’ve heard of his operation. Very hush-hush.”

“What’s so hush-hush about another Animal Oasis?”

“Word is he provides canned hunts and trophy heads for high rollers.”

“Max! This is where you’re going to send me? I like being independent, but that doesn’t include suicide.”

“Last time I looked, you were still two-legged. Relax. Cyrus Van Burkleo is untouchable in this town. He bankrolls all the right fundraisers. Very smooth operator. Rumors can’t hurt him. If I went in there, he’d smell investigation. You…you’re just an eager-beaver PR gal doing some background research. I took the liberty of setting up an appointment for you.”

“Now, while I was wobbling around Animal Oasis with the gallant Mr. Granger? How?”

“I phoned.” Max produced his cell phone from his other jacket pocket.

“But how did you get an appointment on such short notice?”

“I said I was Van von Rhine’s personal assistant calling from the Crystal Phoenix. We were running up against deadline on opening our animal attraction and could Mr. Van Burkleo spare a few minutes with their ace project coordinator, who could use some expert tips for the Phoenix exotic petting zoo? Van Burkleo doesn’t turn major hotel-casinos down, especially one with a manager whose name so neatly mirrors his own.”

“The Phoenix isn’t so major compared to some of the T rexes in this town now that MGM Grand has bought out Steve Wynn.”

Max smiled tightly, never taking his eyes from the rutted road. “But Macho Mario Fontana is major muscle; this guy’d never irritate a Fontana operation.”

“The Phoenix has nothing to do with Nicky’s uncle Mario. I know that for a fact.”

Max’s terse smile widened into a grin. “But Cyrus Van Burkleo doesn’t know that. And don’t you tell him.”

“So what is my mission at Rancho Van Burkleo?”

“Be on your toes”—Max glanced to the floorboard and at her platform wedge sandals—“which I don’t have to tell you to do. Ask anything, see everything, and make mental notes on it all. If you happen to notice a leopard that isn’t as happy a camper as the big cats you just saw at Animal Oasis…don’t let on. Naive, nubile, and perky should do it.”

“Max, that’s sexist.”

“So is Van Burkleo. I wouldn’t send you in there if I didn’t know he had a blind spot that’s just your size. Think you can handle it?”

If Molina had asked her that question, she would have snarled “Sure” on a knee-jerk impulse. With Max, she was tempted to hedge. And that told her she was getting all too dependent on him.

Time to go face King Kong on her own, hopefully without her hands tied behind her back.

Rancho Van Burkleo was tucked even farther back from the highway than Animal Oasis.

It sported no workshop-lettered sign. Only a desert track that suddenly turned into asphalt running toward the end of the world.

“There’s nothing out here, Max.”

“That’s the idea you’re supposed to have. Slow down and drop me off here. I want to scout the perimeter.”

“Dressed in black?”

“Left my camouflage clothes at home. It’ll be all right. At this point, the security should be mostly to keep the animals in, rather than humans out.

“You seem to have scouted this place before,” Temple observed as she slowed the car to a jolting stop on the rough road.

“No, but the data in Kirby’s files was fairly specific, at least about the perimeter of this place. Van Burkleo is one of those quasi-legal operators every law enforcement unit—state police, DEA, INS, Initials R Us, ad nauseam—would love to catch with his fingers in some illegal cookie jar.”

Temple said nothing more. Max was sending her into a serious danger zone. Either he honestly trusted her instincts or the umbrella of the Crystal Phoenix and the Fontana family was a larger, stronger defense than she realized. She was a little slow on the uptake, but half a lifetime of surviving on animal instincts had made Max a master at weighing danger.

Animal instincts. Number one was self-preservation. Temple had better dial hers up to maximum.

Max had told her to drive until she couldn’t, so she continued along the road more cautiously than usual, in other words, slowly.

Thickets of scrub clustered on the flat land, obscuring what lay beyond. What lay beyond was rougher terrain, crisscrossed by dry washes that could fill up with water breathtakingly fast in a hard Nevada rain, which came seldom but devastatingly.

A lot of washes were damp in their rocky bottoms, despite a long lack of rain. She began to suspect that these washes could be filled mechanically to put off trespassers. Some moat!

Finally, a gate set into piled rocks loomed ahead like a minimountain. An iron fence extended in either direction as far as the eye could see. Must have cost as much as a Strip hotel-casino wet area, and almost nobody would see this. Except for Max’s assumed high rollers. A modest sign read Rancho Exotica. She did a double-take when she read it, because the first time through she’d seen: Rancho Erotica. Las Vegas conditioning at work.

When she stopped at the gate, she noticed a speaker and camera set into the raw, red stone.

It squawked at her, so she squawked back after getting out of the car to get her mouth close enough to the speaker. The high-mounted camera recorded her most unflattering angle: from above she looked like a red-headed mop with no body.

“Temple Barr from the Crystal Phoenix Hotel and Casino. Mr. Van Burkleo’s office is expecting me.”

A voice so distorted it was genderless instructed her to proceed when the gates opened.

She tramped back into the car, irritated at being too short to lean out its open window and submit to this inspection with dignity.

The high, barred gates retracted into their red stone mountains with the slick mechanical ease of ancient tomb booby-traps springing on the wary hero of an Indiana Jones movie.

Another long drive—what was out on the perimeter all those miles back for Max to scout?—finally rewarded her with the sight of a low stone compound built along the base of the mountain.

The road took her to the center of a sprawling construction stabbed with walls of glass and redwood. A wooden door wide and high enough to befit a cathedral provided a focal point.

There the asphalt ended like a thermometer in a fat pool of parking lot-cum-turnaround.

Temple parked and got out of the car, wondering if she looked as dusty as its once-mirror-black surface.

She took off her sunglasses. The surrounding scene lost the vivid color the tinted lenses intensified. To the naked eye, the building seemed like a Bauhaus version of a ’50s ranch-style motel: self-consciously low, long, and modern, a rugged man-made slash underlining the majesty of the mountain behind it.

The big doors entered the cathedral-ceiling main structure at the building’s center. Call it Chapel Central. Temple headed for them.

By the time she got there, a normal-size door at the side of the impressive entrance had opened. A tall, slim woman stood waiting in it.

Tall, slim women always made Temple feel like a truant reporting to a principal, but definitely not p-r-i-n-c-i-p-a-l as in “pal.”

Feeling as fraudulent as a delinquent seventh grader, Temple stomped to the low-profile door on her high-profile wedgies and gave her name and rank again.

In like a safe-cracker’s lock pick.

In and face-to-face with a tiger.

Foot-to-paw, rather.

The quarry-tile floor before her was covered with the splayed hide of a magnificent Indian tiger, only its glassy-eyed head rising in repellant 3-D from the flatness of its glorious skin.

Max had mentioned moneyed scofflaws who would break the rules of God and man, but he hadn’t warned her she was about to deal with people who needed to walk on wild animals to feel tall.

She shot a searing glance at Miss Tall and Slim, who was pausing casually on one flattened foreleg of the tiger.

After having so recently seen the magnificent live beasts prowling and lounging at the Animal Oasis, this scene was like going from a kindergarten slide show to a porno flick.

Luckily, the contrast rendered Temple speechless, or she would have blown her cover.

“I’ll take you to Mr. Van Burkleo’s den,” the supermodel said. “If you’ll follow me—” She moved on without looking back, expecting compliance.

Temple followed, but she walked around the animal skin.

It was a long walk. Like all rich men’s residences, this one required a floor plan to get around in.

It was nice to walk this far indoors in Las Vegas without passing slot machines for once, though.

To take her mind off the tiger rug, she studied Miss T & S’s tasteful sand-colored linen suit, which she accessorized with brown alligator pumps made from a hide so real that Temple expected the heels to start snapping at her if she got too close. Temple thought items like that were banned in Boston, and Austin, and all parts of the U.S.

But she wasn’t current on what wildlife products were banned as imports. Maybe even the poor tiger rug was permitted.

But not permissible in her world. Imagine poor Louie hunted down for his hide and then slapped down on a cold terra-cotta tiled floor for eternity! Well, for a long time, anyway.

Temple’s thoughts churned as she huffed and she puffed her way after Ms. T & S in her alligator shoes. Of course, Temple wore leather shoes, but that was a byproduct of cows that would have been killed anyway and she supposed she would have to reevaluate her whole footwear code shortly. Also fast food.

At least the Midnight Louie Austrian crystal shoes exploited no living thing. Except who had glued the crystals on? Oh, dear. Even Dorothy could hardly click her ruby slipper heels in good conscience nowadays if she really thought where everything came from. Temple supposed even Wicked Witches of the West had some rights….

Speaking of which…

“Wait in here,” the tall sylph announced in a tone so flat she sounded put upon by being forced to speak again. “Mr. Van Burkleo will be with you shortly.”

“Thank you,” Temple said, not mentioning that everyone was with her “shortly.” She marched into the “den” and stopped abruptly just past the threshold.

The place was a jungle of stuffed animal life.

It was as if every animal she had seen live and glorious just an hour ago was now represented in its dead and stuffed state on every wall and floor of the massive room.

Amidst such a profusion of glassy-eyed accusation high and low any humans in the scene seemed pathetically lost, dwarfed by the dead beasts that surrounded them.

“Is there anything that you’d like?” her attenuated guide asked in a tone that devoutly hoped not.

Temple was a born redhead, and born to be contrary.

“Why, yes. I could use a little information.”

“Information?” Repeated with distaste, like a dirty word.

“Yes.” Wasn’t that what the nameless secret agent had wanted in The Prisoner, the cult ’60s television show? She felt a bit like his renegade spy character, suddenly inserted into a strange environment, not knowing what was what, who was who.

“Information,” Temple repeated, with gusto. “I usually deal with much more mundane events than big game hunting.”

“You must be new with the Crystal Phoenix,” the woman suggested, not cordially.

“New at this position. Temple Barr.” She extended her hand. Forcing people to shake hands was one way to break down even an icy reserve.

“Courtney Fisher.” The woman surrendered a long, thin, pale hand.

Temple pumped away like young Helen Keller at the family watering trough learning the word “wat-er.” “So nice to meet you, Courtney. How long have you worked for Mr. Van Burkleo?”

Temple made no move to sit down, no move indeed, to release the limp mackerel (white and cold) in her custody.

“Two years. If you’d care to take a seat—”

Temple was not about to be unloaded that easily. “Gee, thanks, but I sit all day at my job. And this room is so fascinating. Look at all those animal eyes…it’s almost like they’re watching us. Of course, they can’t. They’re only glass, aren’t they? Not real.”

Courtney glanced around with an expression of new distaste.

While the woman looked at the surrounding gazes with new eyes, Temple studied her more carefully. Older than she first appeared. Perhaps thirty-eight. Skin wrinkling and tightening at the edges of her eyes and jaw like a pantyhose mask. A lion’s-head ring. A gold charm bracelet full of lions and tigers and bears and giraffes and kangaroos and cheetahs, worth a lot more than a secretary earned if it was eighteen-karat gold, as Temple suspected. Another gold animal charm at her neck. A snake and something else, thin and geometric unlike the sculptural animals, a shape that looked vaguely mystical and somehow familiar.

Everything about her smelled of money. Did even secretaries here bring down the big bucks? Temple remembered that this place was probably a killing ground, and winced at the aptness of her metaphor.

She glanced at the lofty deer and antelope and mountain goat heads bearing trees of antlers. They brought down the big bucks here, all right.

“It must be fascinating to work for Mr. Van Burkleo. Do you shoot yourself?” Oops. She meant, do you shoot, yourself? In person.

Somehow it came out sounding as if Ms. Fisher should shoot herself, preferably in the foot.

The woman captured her lean wrist bone in the loose circle of the fingers of her other hand. “Shoot? No. Dusty, hot work. I prefer to stay under air-conditioning.”

“I can’t disagree,” Temple said. “It really can get like darkest Africa out there. In the spring, summer, and fall, anyway. I guess Las Vegas has two climates: burning zone and some bad weather now and again, which is when it rains or gets below eighty degrees.”

Courtney showed impeccable teeth. “Is there any refreshment you’d like? Soft or hard?”

“Dr Pepper,” Temple suggested, assuming that would be a pain to get. She intended to study the room by herself.

Courtney did looked pained. “I’ll see what I can do. Mr. Van Burkleo will be in as soon as he’s finished with some international calls.”

“Of course. We contacted him on very short notice. It’s so kind of him to see me.”

Courtney’s composure cracked for an instant. Apparently “kind” was not an adjective that suited Mr. Van Burkleo.

She stalked out of the room like a gangly giraffe. For the first time Temple thought there might be some superiority in lack of height.

Once alone, Temple considered snooping, but it was hard to think about doing it under so many observing eyes. Talk about the “Eye in the Sky!” Las Vegas casino spy cameras had nothing on this phalanx of overhead animal heads. Temple was beginning to feel guilty just for being alive and able to move in their frozen presence.

I didn’t do it! she wanted to shout, like some guy on his way to the death chamber in a ’30s gangster movie. I’m not the one who killed you all. But she had a feeling that protest would ring as true in this room as Jimmy Cagney’s had on celluloid.

Social attitudes had killed these magnificent beasts, not need.

And everyone in a society was guilty of those attitudes, one way or another, even if it was just taking them for granted.

Then a corner vignette caught her eye. A wall-mounted giraffe neck and head maybe, gosh, twelve feet long tilted down toward the floor. Giraffes really had such sweet faces…. Temple froze to realize that a baby giraffe stood on the floor and was stretching its slim, long neck up toward the “mother’s” face.

They hadn’t shot and stuffed a baby giraffe, had they?

It must be a fake baby giraffe, which was tasteless enough. Temple tiptoed over to check out the faux fur. It looked like authentic hide to her.

The baby stood taller than she and its big shiny glass eyes seemed almost to move as she stared at it in horror. Shooting a baby anything, and then setting up this Disneyesque mother-and-child vignette…

Dazed by disbelief, Temple tiptoed around a few other animal skin rugs, trying not to notice species. Zebra, she thought. Lovely, lithe zebra. Well, the hunters would say there were too many of them, or once had been, or would be if they weren’t “harvested,” as if living things could be harvested like onions or tomatoes. Which could be considered living things too, by some. What a slippery slope ethical consumption was!

She started at the sight of a huge gray elephant’s foot…just a wastebasket by the massive wooden desk.

She tried to imagine someone cutting off her foot, hollowing it out, and keeping it to hold crumpled papers and broken rubber bands.

And where were the other three feet? At whose desk sides? In what attics and storerooms, antique shops? Imagine the places they’d been, far from the dusty and lush ground trod by the huge creatures when living.

There had been 100 million wild elephants in Africa once, she’d read recently. And now there were twenty.

Temple turned, looking for somewhere to sit before she got dizzy.

Well.

Not the velvet-upholstered horn chair…or the zebra-hide director’s chair. Maybe that ordinary black armchair…eek! Leather. How would she like to see her parents used as upholstery?

No wonder animal rightists got a tad agitated. Once you started thinking about how people used and abused animals, and animal “products,” once you realized the human race was now launched into cloning and genetically designing animals to serve its every need or whimsy…

Temple turned as she heard the double doors into this chamber of horrors open.

A man stood framed by them, wearing a khaki jacket and pants bristling with pockets.

He was stockier than a stuffed laundry bag, his head sun-reddened between the spiderweb of thin gray hair strands still left to him. Huge freckles spread over his face and tops of his hands like fat rings in soup. Three large warts only emphasized his blunt, wind-burned features.

Beauty and the Beast had been given a cruel new twist, for the beauty was in the taxidermist’s remnants of the animal kingdom, and the beast was the one puny man in their midst.

Oh, he wasn’t so puny physically. In fact, Temple might ordinarily be intimidated, ever so slightly, by such a huge, hearty, and callous specimen of Homo sapiens.

But, buttressed by the wise artificial eyes of noble creatures from water buffalo to lion and tiger and bear to deer and the elephant foot standing at truncated attention as a wastebasket beside his massive mahogany desk…

Well, Temple had never been in the presence of a serial killer before.

Get the goods on this guy, she heard herself thinking, and let Max take him down.

She felt like just another bit of insignificant prey…and then like a tiger-in-disguise herself. Hidden by the jungle, moving silent and swift. Ready to pounce…

“Miss Barr, is it?”

He came forward, held out a callused hand (from holding an elephant rifle, no doubt), and shook hers in a relatively relaxed manner. “And how can I help the Crystal Phoenix today?”

All right, PR Woman, do your Clark Kent imitation. Or maybe Lois Lane.

“It’s so kind of you to see me on such short notice, Mr. Van Burkleo. We’re in a bit of a pickle at the Phoenix with our animal exhibit.”

“I thought you were doing a petting zoo.”

“We are, and we have a consultant handling that. But…at the last minute the owners—”

“The Fontanas.”

Temple didn’t correct him. The owner of the Crystal Phoenix was Nicky Fontana, singular. And Nicky had nothing to do with his family’s mob background. But mentioning such a shocking desertion of his roots wouldn’t serve Temple here.

“Yes,” she said, smiling. “Such a nice family to work for.”

Van Burkleo’s sandy, hairy eyebrows raised. She didn’t look like a mob soldier.

“We are not unaware,” she went on, “that our best clients would very much like access to the services you provide. And we thought you might be willing to advise in our acquisition of one or two more…thrilling exhibits for our renovated areas.”

“Have a seat.”

She nearly threw up. The “seat” he indicated was that literal monstrosity, a Victorian chair constructed solely of deer horns upholstered in crimson velvet.

Temple arranged herself on it like Queen Victoria greeting a foreign dignitary (though her feet, even in three-inch-high wedge heels, didn’t quite touch the floor).

“What an interesting…zoo you have here,” she observed.

“A few of my personal trophies.”

“Then you are a big-game hunter yourself.”

He bowed.

“You have been to Africa many times?”

“Yes.” He smiled. “But the best specimens were not bagged there.”

Temple managed to look genuinely mystified.

“This,” said Van Burkleo, “is what your Crystal Phoenix clients will be able to track, shoot, and bring home from here.”

She nodded, slowly, absorbing the enormity.

In the desert outside of Las Vegas, if you paid enough, you could slaughter an endangered species and have it shipped home on ice for the taxidermist. But how?

“Surely there are laws—?”

’We fly meat all over the country. This is a working ranch. Cattle.”

“Cattle.” That made as much sense as raising llamas. The only head that did not gaze back at her from the crowded walls was that of the humble steer or cow. Too common. Too domesticated. Too doe-eyed. Too easy.

“Cattle,” he repeated, pleased that she had so quickly learned their code. Their hypocrisies. “And what kind of ‘stock’ can I interest you in?”

“Nothing too exotic,” she said apologetically. “A big cat or two.

I suppose white tigers are—”

“Very difficult. Not impossible, but very difficult. Luckily, we have some excellent breeders locally.”

Temple sat still, shocked to her core. Was he implying that he could raid the breeding stock of the most public and protected big-cat programs in the country?

Such power—or nerve—was truly chilling.

“We really don’t care to compete on that level,” Temple said. “Something smaller would be fine. A panther. Or a leopard. Maybe both.”

He nodded. “Excellent choice. You do understand that obtaining a prime specimen may be expensive?”

“What attraction in Las Vegas is not?”

At that moment the broad coffered door leading into this den of iniquity opened again.

“A guest, Cyrus?” asked the woman framed by the doorway.

Temple had expected the aloof Courtney. Instead, she found herself riveted by the most exotic-looking woman she had ever seen. In fact, she blinked hard a couple of times to make sure she hadn’t been transported to the Island of Dr. Moreau.

The woman seemed to expect the unabashed wonderment of strangers. She slunk into the room, one leg crossing so markedly in front of the other that the gait underlined her resemblance to a jungle cat.

A tawny mane of painstakingly streaked hair haloed her face…or what was left of it.

Temple had seen TV reports on extreme plastic surgery: young adults having themselves tattooed, pierced, and cut-and-pasted into hybrid human/animals. The extremest example she recalled was a guy who was morphing into a lizard-man, surgically split tongue and all.

This woman’s case wasn’t as obvious, but it came close. Eyebrows plucked to a thin blond line were barely there. Her supplemented cheekbones jutted out so far they made her eyes look smaller and forced them into an unnatural tilt. Collagen-thickened lips went beyond starlet-swollen to misshapen, blending with her snubbed nose until together they made a…muzzle.

Worst of all, when she reached the desk, Temple saw she was wearing those patterned contact lenses. This amber-colored pair gave her pupils vertical slits, like a cat’s eyes.

Add all that to the fact that everything she wore was bronze or hide patterned, and that costly gold charms shaped into the heads and bodies of big cats dangled from her neck, ears, and wrists, all winking with tasteless constellations of diamonds…Temple was speechless.

“Leonora,” the woman said in a husky purr, extending a hand with nails so long they curved into claws. They were enameled a pale ocher color, which made them even creepier than if they’d been lacquered an obvious Carnivore Red. It was as if they were lying in wait for the real thing, like blood.

Temple had stood without thinking why. Maybe to be polite and shake hands. Maybe to be readier to run.

Leonora kept coming closer. She was wearing chamois suede capri pants, a tiger-striped silk-and-spandex top, cork-soled espadrilles.

One clawed hand, tanned pale mocha, reached for Temple.

Temple wasn’t sure if her hand lifted to meet it, or to paw it aside.

Smooth, cool flesh grasped hers. The curved nails brushed the thin skin on the top of Temple’s hand.

“Leonora Van Burkleo,” the woman emphasized.

Temple glanced at Cyrus in dazed comprehension. This was his wife. From the marked age difference, his trophy wife. From Leonora’s bizarre and deliberate resemblance to a beast, his literal trophy wife.

Leonora’s smile revealed Hollywood-white teeth, quite emphatically pointed. Temple had met people with markedly pointed teeth before. But these were unnatural. They had been filed, just as Leonora’s face had been reshaped.

Temple realized then that she had quite literally walked into the lion’s den.

Max wasn’t aware of being stalked until he was almost back to the drop-off point where he was to meet Temple.

He had sighted some of the ranch’s security forces early during his ramble. These were camouflage-attired men with rifles, the kind of professionals that turned his blood cold: hirelings, not true believers. Hard men who were used to doing unspeakable things. It was kill or be killed with their sort, and Max had always tried to stay well away from either role.

He flattened himself among some scattered rocks, a shadow among shadows, and waited until they were utterly gone before moving on.

And then he came on the trail.

He was an urban animal. Wilderness tracking wasn’t his particular skill, but even a city slicker could see the random impress of a sneaker tread on the softer areas of sand.

Several sneaker treads.

The security forces wore desert boots. His own shoes always had smooth-soled leather. He had never left easily traceable tracks, like a tire, on carpeting or anywhere else.

Sagebrush was the only cover out here, but the three-foot-high growths pockmarked the flat desert floor as regularly as dotted Swiss. Max moved from bush to bush like a cartoon character, trying to figure out whether the sneaker set had been coming or going.

He had gotten close enough to the compound to not like what he’d found. Close enough to worry about Temple still inside. Now other trespassers were adding to the likelihood that either Temple or he might get into trouble.

Max checked his watch. Only an hour and forty minutes since he’d left Temple. Knowing her fondness for thorough jobs and her gift for talking her way into, and often out of, anything, she was probably still happily poking her nose into her host’s business.

He glimpsed movement to his right, sensed a buzz on the air, possibly a distant Jeep.

He dove for the best cover, a small outcropping of rock thirty feet away, hitting the sand and rolling the last few feet. Before he could roll upright, a heavy weight jumped him from above.

Lord, one of the lions is loose, was his first thought. The weight squeezed the wind out of him, flailing buff-colored limbs blurred his vision.

A blow to the head reassured him. It was hard, but not clawed. A human pride had him in their grip.

Max promptly feigned unconsciousness to avoid any more cracks in the skull. No one could go as convincingly limp as a magician.

“Not a guard,” someone whispered harshly.

“Then what?” demanded another whisperer.

“Shhh! The Jeep’s coming this way.”

The grips on Max tightened as the vehicle’s motor and wheels ground, coughed, and spit sand through the sere desert air. It sounded like an eggbeater on the run.

The noise grew, hovered like a swarm of huge bees, then faded into a distant drone.

“Thank God.” This whisper was raspy, but it was a woman’s voice. “I hope we didn’t kill him.”

Max found that hope encouraging. Ranch security would have had no such scruples.

He played possum while they turned him over and poked at him like curious chimps.

“Black?”

Max, sweating, agreed. It was crazy to have gone a-hunting in city black out here, but he hadn’t become really suspicious until he and Temple had arrived, and by then it was too late to send out for a safari suit.

Hands pawed at him. “He’s not armed.”

Not with obvious weapons anyway.

“What’s a Joe Blow doing out here?”

Max stirred slightly, not wanting to start a ruckus. There were at least three of them, and while the odds didn’t concern him, keeping the peace did. Guards with powerful binoculars would catch any dust-up in this terrain.

“What—?” he groaned, trying to sound like an innocent, head-whacked schmuck.

He blinked the sand out of his eyes, finally focusing on tanned, seamed faces. Two men and a woman. She was the party’s senior member, a lean sixty-something with wiry strands of silver hair escaping a beige bandanna.

“What are you doing here?” she asked.

The men, a twenty-something and a forty-something with outdoor faces, kept what they thought was a good grip on him.

“Exploring,” he answered.

“Alone? On foot? Dressed like that?”

“A friend dropped me off by car. I’d heard about this place. Wanted to look it over.”

“Didn’t you see the guards?” one of the guys asked.

“Yes. But they didn’t see me.” Max risked a grin. You don’t want to be seen by guards, he implied. I don’t either. Maybe we’re allies.

The woman snorted contemptuously. “In that outfit, and they missed you?”

“I headed for shadow when I saw or heard them. Unfortunately, you were part of the shadow I was heading for here.”

The woman’s burnt sienna fingers curled into the fabric of Max’s black turtleneck sweater. “Silk blend.” Her eyes, so light a gray they seemed as silver as her hair, hardened. “What the hell is someone like you doing out here on foot?”

“I’m looking for a big cat.”

“Going to take it down with your teeth, right?” asked one of the youngsters.

“Not going to take it down at all. Going to get it out of here.”

That made them sit up and take notice. Literally. The hands loosened on his limbs.

“What is your scam?” asked a thin-faced man with a sand-grayed ponytail down his back.

“No scam. What I said. I’m looking for a stolen leopard.”

The woman was unimpressed. “Alone. On foot. Out here. Unarmed. Dressed like that.”

“My partner is inside, and I’d really appreciate it if you’d quit playing twenty questions and let me start worrying about when she’s coming out, or if she’s coming out.”

Their custody eased even more. Max went on. “And you might mention who you are, and why you’re out here. Together. On foot. On feet that leave quite visible tracks, by the way.”

He looked around. Except for the walking stick that had beaned him, they carried nothing more obviously dangerous than water canteens and backpacks.

“She?” the woman asked.

Max nodded. “It was an impromptu mission, I admit. Not advisable in light of what I’ve found out here, including you.”

“Mission?” The thin-faced guy still looked suspicious. “You some kind of…cop? Paramilitary?”

Max smiled. “No. Just trying to help out a friend.”

“A friend who keeps leopards?” The man who asked this had freckles, a snub nose, earnest blue eyes. Must have been a cute kid, but his face and tone now were harder than the red rock in the Valley of Fire.

“A friend who works with a leopard. A magician.”

“They’d steal a performing leopard?” Ponytail’s voice shook with rage and surprise.

“Hard to come by unmarked heads.” Blue Eyes flashed a meaningful look at the others.

“You don’t know what you’re getting into,” the woman said to Max, having made up her mind about him. “We’ll get you back to where you need to meet your partner, if we can, but we won’t get caught to do it.”

Max allowed himself to move into a crouching position that was still nonthreatening. “I know what I’m doing out here, and now I know what’s going on out here, but why are you here?”

“What’s going on out here?” Blue Eyes taunted him.

“Canned hunts. Trophies for rich men, culled from zoos, stocks of abandoned exotic felines, the old, the weak, and the domesticated, available to dress your mantel for the sum of several thousand dollars. Pretty ugly racket.”

The woman let out an explosive breath, part relief, part unspoken expletive. “You got it. And that’s why the security. They don’t want anyone to know what’s going on, and I’m not so sure they wouldn’t shoot anyone who found out about it, especially someone out here on their own without witnesses.”

“So. You’re not government investigators?” Max eyed them all again. “You look like a college archeological expedition—sorry, no offense meant. And you don’t have a handgun between you, much less a rifle…. So what are you?”

“Hunt breakers.”

“And you think I’m a fool. You’ve seen the patrols, the weapons. Those men will kill you, whether you’re alone or in a pack, if you interfere with their operation. That’s what they’re paid to do.”

“But not in front of the hunters.” The woman smiled grimly. “That’s why we won’t show ourselves until they’ve got a customer with a gun in his hand and some poor declawed retired circus lion cornered against an outbuilding so the coward can be a big-game hunter when he goes home with a dead head for the wall.”

Max shook his own head, thankfully not yet dead, just aching. “You won’t believe me, because I look like an amateur, but I’m not. If they’ll steal a performing leopard from a Strip show just to get stock, they’ll kill to protect their setup….”

He let the sentence trail off because it didn’t make sense, even as he said it, not even to him. He believed that these hunt breakers were in mortal danger, all right, but why would this illegal canned hunt operation risk drawing attention to itself by abducting a prized animal from a man as powerful as a multimillion-dollar-salaried magician?

Not just for kicks, but he couldn’t see any other reason for the leopard’s abduction. Maybe that walking stick had shaken up his brains more than he liked to think.

“Would you like to the see the operation up close and personal?” Van Burkleo asked, smiling genially at Temple.

“Of course,” she said. “I’m already impressed. I had no idea such a sumptuous accommodation was out here.”

“We like it that way,” Leonora said. “But don’t drag our guest—Cyrus, you haven’t introduced her to me—”

“Temple Barr of the Crystal Phoenix.”

“The Phoenix!” Leonora’s virtually invisible brows rose with surprise. “We haven’t had any clients from there yet. Of course we are pleased to accommodate a Fontana family enterprise. What is your position at the Phoenix?”

“Informal,” Temple said, watching both Van Burkleos’s eyes narrow suspiciously. She was by no means in like Flynn, which meant getting out might be dicey. Very dicey.

“I’m a humble publicist, but Nicky and Van have entrusted me with the concept and execution of their new virtual-reality Action Jackson ride and holographic experience, and also for a small animal area, with all the close-up and personal effect of a Vegas show, but strictly appropriate protection for the animals on display, of course.”

“Of course.” Leonora’s frighteningly inhuman eyes regarded Temple with the same expressionless intensity she sometimes encountered in Midnight Louie’s gaze. “We will have a drink while I explain our setup and rules. I’m sure Cyrus neglected the details. Would you like a golden lion?”

“Actually, I’m interested in something smaller. A panther or a leopard, possibly both.”

Leonora’s laugh was half a growl. “Silly. I meant a drink. A golden lion is my own invention. Lochan Ora with rum and Kahlúa.”

“Sounds…delish,” said Temple, who couldn’t imagine combining coffee and scotch liqueurs with rum, but sensed that you didn’t argue with a lioness.

Leonora opened a tall cabinet lined with mirrors and cut glass, quickly mixing the contents of two Waterford decanters in a pitcher. The amber-black concoction was poured into delicate liqueur glasses. Temple sipped at hers after Leonora brought it over. Maybe lion fangs weren’t venom bearing, but Leonora’s filed teeth looked fairly aspish.

During the social lull, Temple asked innocuous questions, which got innocuous answers.

“How long have you been here?” she tried.

“Long enough to develop the property, and our very quiet but solid reputation, as we wanted to,” said Leonora.

“It’s wonderful to have a nearby resource for the occasional animal,” Temple soldiered on. “I don’t know what I would have done if I hadn’t heard of you.”

“And how did you hear of us?” Van Burkleo asked, his voice as smooth as a rum sundae.

“Oh. A friend of Macho Mario’s, of course. I mean, Mr. Fontana.”

Leonora’s eyes glittered as she looked significantly at her spouse.

Temple realized that her clumsy attempt to name-drop had gotten her pegged as the old man’s girl Friday, Saturday, and Sunday night.

These people thought like National Enquirer reporters!

But the instant that false impression had been made, it was as if Temple had joined some secret sorority. Leonora came to take away the triple-power liqueur, favoring Temple with what passed for a wink from one of her beastly eyes.

“We better not keep you away from the Phoenix too long. Come along. I’ll show you what we have available. Something, I’m sure, will suit.”

Temple thanked Mr. Van Burkleo profusely, more from relief at leaving his presence and that of the surrounding animal heads than from gratitude, and trotted out after Leonora.

As she recalled, lionesses were the huntresses of the pride while the extravagantly maned males lay and sunned themselves like romance-novel cover models. So she had been handed over to the more dangerous of her hosts.

They left the house by the rear, after passing palatial rooms filled with animal memorabilia, that is to say, taxidermied body parts.

Temple began to imagine a wonderland filled with Van Burkleo parts to infinity….

Behind the living quarters was a pathway and a deep moat, beyond which unnatural natural habitats for big cats and other exotic animals were established at the base of the mountain.

Temple was sure it was all impressive, but she was taken only to the big-cat area. She couldn’t help thinking that the animals were on display like department store mannequins, only these were living. A lion roared from behind the scenes, causing her to jump and then come to a dead halt.

“Just old Leo,” Leonora reassured her.

“Definitely not what we want at the Phoenix. The leopard and panther are…quieter, aren’t they?”

“Of course.”

“And, as I told your husband, we do have a wildlife consultant who will be in charge of the animals and exhibit. This is just a preliminary scouting expedition on my part, to decide whether we want to include a big cat or two. Or not.”

“I understand. There we have two snow leopards. Very nice. Very expensive. Forty thousand apiece? Does that suit your budget.”

“This is Las Vegas, Mrs. Van Burkleo. That is not exorbitant.”

“A black leopard.”

“Oh.” Temple stopped. The panther was sunning himself on some rocks beside a narrow waterfall that trickled into the moat far below. His muscled black coat shone like fresh tar in the light, and his big blunt head was far more massive than Midnight Louie’s. “He’s gorgeous. Is he like a leopard?”

“The same thing, really, except for the coloration. Like golden retrievers and black Labrador retrievers. Black big cats used to be called pards, and the spotted big cat was named after the more golden lion—”

“Leo-pards!”

“Exactly. Yours for thirty, shall we say?”

“Oh!” Temple tried to sound pleased. “And a plain—that is, regular—spotted leopard? Van von Rhine is a blond, and more partial to spotted leopards than the black ones.”

“I quite understand. People identify with beasts, don’t they? I know I do. I am a lion person from start to finish. Besides the snow leopards, and it would be a shame to break up the pair, the only spotted leopard I have is still too new to be kept in an environment. You’d like to see it?”

“Of course.”

Leonora headed for a low set of doors built into the mountain that Temple had overlooked while gawking at the animal habitats, which were as impressive as any modern zoo’s.

They left the heat and sunlight behind them as they entered a metal door after Leonora clacked a code into a keypad with her overgrown fingernails.

Instantly, the air felt dank. Water pooled on the concrete floor.

Temple inhaled the stench of animal hair and waste and raw meat.

“The holding cages aren’t as aesthetic as the environments. You will need similar facilities behind the scenes for your animals at the Phoenix.”

“Luckily, we have plenty of room for that.”

Temple followed her guide past empty cages. She saw huge water bowls, and pieces of half-devoured meat of some kind she chose not to speculate about.

Finally, she came to an occupied cage. A lithe leopard paced back and forth, its golden eyes burning in the eternal twilight of the cage area.

“This one is…fresh,” Leonora said. “It’s a bit nervous. Cats like stable environments and he was just brought in.”

“How long ago?”

“I don’t know. A few days?”

“Where is he from?”

Leonora turned to stare at Temple. “I don’t keep the records. Cyrus’s secretary does. I see he has plenty of water. He should be calming down.”

She moved toward the bars. The leopard suddenly brushed against that side, then turned and screamed at her.

Temple jumped back three feet. The cry had been wild, furious, pained.

Even Leonora retreated. “I don’t know what’s got into him. Perhaps homesickness for his former environment. If he doesn’t settle down, no one will want him and then what will we do with him, hmmm? Don’t be a bad boy!” She shook a predatory claw at the animal.

It apparently read the same unspoken threat in her tone that Temple heard in her words, slinking to the opposite side of the cage, where it paced, back and forth, back and forth.

“It looks kind of skinny,” Temple said.

Leonora whirled on her. “The big cats are in superb condition. Not an ounce of fat, all muscle. Lean, as nature meant them to be. We do not keep them to grow fat and lazy, like house cats.”

“Of course not,” Temple said hastily, wondering if she was overfeeding Louie on Free-to-Be-Feline. “He looks in peak condition. I’m sure we’d be interested in him. And the black one. But of course it is up to…Horst.”

“Horst?”

“Our animal guy. Consultant. I’m the scout, as I said. Horst will want to make the final decision.”

Leonora nodded.

Temple was already wondering if Max could do a believable Horst. Why had that name popped into her head? Van Burkleo would no doubt see right through a phony Horst. Who did they know who was German that they could trust? Maybe Max knew someone.

She looked at her watch. Galloping Guccis, she had been here for two and half hours. Max must be fricasseed by now.

“Oh, I must get back. Things to do. Thank you so much for such an informative meeting.”

Leonora’s face had become the lordly mask of a dozing lion. She turned without comment to lead Temple into the sunlight and the fresh air.

Behind them, the leopard screamed protest again.

This time Temple didn’t jump. She just gritted her teeth and wished she had been a lion tamer in a previous life.