Cat In A Leopard Spot

Chapter 34

Calling on Agatha

“What we need,” Temple said, “is an Agatha Christie moment.”

“You mean,” Max said, “an Agatha Christie climax.”

“Really, Max! Agatha Christie didn’t put those sorts of things in her books. Although…”

“What?”

“Her husband’s first name was Max. One of them, anyway.”

“How did you learn so much about Agatha Christie?”

“Read a few of her books, ages ago.” Temple eyed him seriously. “Do you know what I mean by an Agatha Christie moment?”

“You want to call all the suspects together.”

“I dream big.”

“And then finger a murderer.”

“No, I’d be happy with just a little more insight.”

“That’s dreaming big?”

“A little insight that would point toward a murderer.”

“Let me think.” Max thought, rather as theatrically as Hamlet did.

He finally glanced at Temple with an expression both amused and promising a dramatic solution. “Do I look like someone who needs to shoot animals to you? A weekend game hunter?” Max’s expression grew craven. “Moneyed, maybe.”

“‘Moneyed’ may be all we need to ‘open sesame’ at the Rancho Exotica,” Temple agreed. “Okay. Here’s the setup. You’re a client. A Phoenix high roller. I want to impress you with the very special services the Phoenix has to offer.” Temple made a face at the iffy ethics of her own scenario, nothing she’d do in a million years for real. “But why would I be there with Mr. High Roller?”

“Maybe you put a lot of yourself into your job.”

“Hey! I’m no floozie. I’m a PR professional.”

“You haven’t had me for a client yet.”

“Well, I guess if I can covet chain-mail bikinis from Macedonia Jones, I could pretend to be impressed with a client’s special customer.”

“Especially if he bought you a bauble from Fred Leighton’s at the Bellagio.”

She made another face, this one stronger. “I’ve heard PR people called corporate prostitutes before. I just never thought I’d be living up to the lowest level of the profession so soon. I don’t think I need a bauble as a cover.”

“No, but you’re missing a ring.” Max’s expression was even more masked than usual. Temple couldn’t tell if the emotion behind the mask was anger or sorrow, but it was something much darker than his deliberately whimsical tone. She wished he and Louie didn’t share a certain catlike inscrutability. “I can provide another,” Max said a trifle wistfully.

“You’ve given up on getting the other one back?” She found herself talking around a sudden lump in her throat, as if they were discussing replacing a dead pet.

“I never give up on getting anything back.”

“Are you just talking about the opal ring? Or about me, or even your preundercover, fancy-free lifestyle?”

“How about all of the above?”

“You dream big.”

He took her hand, her bare left hand. “I know nothing will replace the ring Shangri-La stole onstage at the Opium Den in front of God, Lieutenant Molina, and everybody. I promise you, I’ll find her and I’ll get it back.”

“It’s all right, Max. Really. Rings like that are only worth what they mean. You’ve got more important things to worry about.”

His grip tightened. If she’d been wearing a ring, it would have pinched her finger. “No. I don’t.”

Who could look away from the Mystifying Max when he was being this intense, and this truthful? Not Temple.

She smiled around the lump that still hadn’t gone away. “I know you don’t, and I know you will. Get it all back.” His grip eased as he smiled and gave her hand a small shake. “So, about the stage prop. From Fred Leighton’s? Really?”

“Just as a cover, of course,” Max amended, careful not to crowd her. But was it a cover for something more than the current charade? Was Max still insecure about her?

“I’d need a pretty convincing cover,” Temple said airily, moving onto less serious ground. “And you’d have to look like a pretty convincing high roller.”

“Absolutely.”

“It’s returnable, of course.”

“Absolutely.”

That was how Temple reentered the Van Burkleo household wearing a ten-carat vintage emerald ring surrounded by diamond baguettes. Temple always found it intriguing that bread—a slang term for money, like dough—also came in baguettes. French bread, of course. From Paris.

Even Leonora Van Burkleo’s mascara-smudged, mourning eyes widened to do a quick mental computation.

“I’m so terribly sorry,” Temple began.

It wasn’t clear if she was apologizing for the ostentation of her ring or for an intrusion on a house of mourning.

Leonora Van Burkleo spread beringed, inarticulate hands.

It wasn’t clear if she was acceding to or expressing the callous fact that the universe must go on. As the heart must go on. Après le Titanic, le déluge, c’est commerce.

“Mr. Maximilian”—Temple gazed moistly at her escort—“has most-favored-nation status at the Crystal Phoenix. Perhaps you can guess why.”

“I can indeed.” Leonora prowled within scratching distance of Max, who was dressed more expensively, and thus more quietly, than ever. “I am sure we can offer him something worth…bagging.”

“Actually,” Max said, taking a hasty spin around the two-story hall with the long-horned antelope heads mounted high like once-living chandeliers, resembling a man casket hunting at a cut-rate funeral parlor, “I’m interested in buying the total operation.”

“Really?” Leonora’s lean, mean eyes paid tribute in exact turn to the Patek Philippe watch (no mere Rolex for Daddy Maxbucks), the Roman ring, the Zegna suit worn with…gasp!…a Gap turtleneck.

Where did he dig up these things? Temple wondered. Was there a Wardrobe Anonymous Warehouse somewhere for undercover operatives? The same place where rotating cars were stored? Someplace where it can be easily done. Perhaps out on Highway 375 near Area 51.

“My condolences,” Max said with scintillating sincerity, taking Leonora’s paw. Hand. The golden menagerie of charms on her wrist jingled like spurs. “Perhaps it’s too soon to discuss business.”

Leonora’s long, lacquered nails curved possessively around his fingers. “Business?” she purred. And she did purr. Temple wondered if all her plastic surgeries had damaged her vocal cords somehow, had given her that contralto rumble. Or was it another affectation, like her new face?

Temple restrained a warning growl.

“I’m sorry, madame,” Max continued, not sounding it at all, “to intrude at such a time, but an enterprise like this needs a guiding hand”—her lethal nails curled harder into his fingers—“or at least a front man with international connections.” Max was suddenly all brisk business. “I’m in this country only a short while. I was interested in seeing the facilities, if you don’t object.”

“Not at all. But I’m afraid that the assets will be tied up for some time. Cyrus was not one to share his financial dealings.”

Max reclaimed his hand and stuck them both in his blazer pockets as he strolled around the vast, southwestern-style entry area.

“Quite an impressive layout. I understand from…Miss Barr that you have an equally impressive, ah, head shop, so to speak, here also?”

“How quaintly you put it.”

At that moment another woman entered the huge hall, moving more like its mistress than an employee.

Temple sensed Max’s immediate interest as Courtney Fisher, as tall and tan as the girl from Ipanema, came swaying into their charmed circle.

“Is there anything your guests need, Leonora?” Courtney asked. “Refreshments? I’ve finished copying all the computer files.”

Leonora lifted a languid wrist and opened her mouth to perform hostess duties, striking Temple as a trained animal warming up for a familiar act. She spared her the effort.

“I met Mr. Van Berkleo’s assistant on my earlier visit. Maxi, this is Courtney Fisher.”

“Charmed.” Max took her hand, bowing so low over it in a European fashion that his face gazed at the vee of her maize linen suit and any presumable décolletage anyone so slender might be expected to have.

That’s when Temple tumbled to the fact that Courtney probably had been a mistress here: Van Burkleo’s.

Max had sensed it instantly, in the way the two women prowled at just too much social distance around each other, like nervous tigers in a too-small-for-territoriality cage.

“I don’t care for anything, do you, darling?” Temple responded to the recent beverage offer.

Max hesitated just long enough to flatter both women. “No. We are here to see the animals.”

“Then you must start here, which is, oddly enough, the ending point.” Leonora’s strangely immobile face managed the tiniest moue. “For the animals as well as poor Cyrus.”

“You needn’t show us.” Max sounded amazingly sincere for someone who meant the opposite.

“It is nothing.” Leonora’s face grew smug. “Cyrus died among his beloved beasts. If he could still be here with them, I’m sure he would be. In fact, I’m having him cremated so he can remain with them. You would have no objection to agreeing to his eternal residence, Mr. Maximilian, if you purchase the ranch?”

“Ah…no. Of course not. Highly fitting.”

Highly freaky, Temple thought.

She heard Courtney Fisher jingle away behind them as they moved toward the den, aka the scene of the crime.

Leonora also jangled and glided away, but toward the lair in which Temple had met Cyrus Van Burkleo. She still wore the colors of the Serengeti Plain. Her widow’s sackcloth and ashes were spots and stripes. She resembled some Bob Mackie edition of a Camouflage Barbie doll, small golden trophies of animal likenesses surrounding her person like clanging temple bells.

Temple glanced at her new ring as she followed Max and Leonora into Van Burkleo’s office. It had the opal ring from New York beat by about fifty thou, but she wished she had that one back.

She remembered how the friendly clerk at the estate jewelry shop had blinked not an eyelash when Max had whipped out cash to pay for the ring. “This is the fastest and flashiest way to establish credibility,” he had whispered to Temple as they left with the ring on her finger. “Like it, darling?” he asked loudly on the threshold.

“Love it,” Temple confessed, just as loudly, with smarm, as they swept into the concourse crowded with people.

And she did. Not the ring so much as feeling like she was starring in a Noël Coward play. She was much too short to star in a Noël Coward play.

But that was then. This was now. Now she was reduced to a supporting role in an Agatha Christie play, as the pampered wife took command of the handsome stranger, leaving the feisty ingenue in the wings with one hell of a winking emerald ring. Temple was beginning to feel like a traffic semaphore, giving the green light to other people’s comings and goings.

She trailed the pair into the loathsome office, amusing herself by picturing Leonora’s clumsy face and feral eyes in the place of the noble visages that actually occupied the walls.

Not one, she noticed, was a leopard. Was that why the leopard in question had been brought into the house? To be stalked on its owner’s own home ground? She wouldn’t put anything past people who made a living from dead animals.

Anyone that could tolerate old, confused and semidomesticated animals to be gunned down from a few feet away by men who had paid ten or twenty thousand dollars a head for the privilege…well, such a person deserved to be represented for eternity by a headstone.

She had not seen the animal-rights protesters, so she couldn’t gauge their ability to kill in defense of taking life. She’d think not, but on the other hand, nothing enraged her as much as the deliberate death of the helpless: a child, a prisoner, an animal.

If someone threatened Midnight Louie in her sight…although it was usually the other way around: someone threatened her in Midnight Louie’s sight, and on a couple of occasions he had taken most effective action for a house cat.

Her imagination had sometimes magnified Midnight Louie to big-cat size and pictured him patrolling her fifteen-hundred-square-foot domain at the Circle Ritz, trolling for prey.

Eight hundred pounds of snarling feline fury.

Somehow she never imagined him snoozing on his back with all four paws splayed to the four corners of the room like the king of the beasts on his African savanna. Well, to the four corners of the earth. Actually, given the round shape of the Circle Ritz and the globe, none of that four corners stuff made sense. Who came up with those figures of speech? Mapmakers? A pope before Galileo, or long after him?

Galileo. Leo. How the English pronounced the name Leo in a Noël Coward play. Lay-oh. As in Lay-oh-nar-do Dee-Creep-io. Odd how many “leos” there were in this case. The leopard itself. Leonora. Leo the lion on Van Burkleo’s wall. Next thing she knew Leontyne Price would show up as a suspect. Or Noël (Leon backward!) Coward himself. No, he was dead.

All they needed now was a suspect named Ole, but that was a name you only ran into in Minnesota….

“Temple,” Max said for what sounded like the third time from the emphasis he put on it.

“Yes?” She had been mentally leo-gathering, she admitted to herself. Maybe because a female was always superfluous around Leonora, the prototypical predatory woman.

“Would you like to see the outdoor facilities? Leonora has kindly offered to guide us. And your emerald could use some fresh air.”

Any daydream to avoid facing the nightmare of dead animal heads on walls.

“Of course,” she said, waving her ring-bearing hand in a very Noël Coward leading-actress way.

Max came to take proprietary possession of the ring. Of her hand, that is, and they both beamed with nauseating expectancy at Leonora.

“I really don’t know why you’d care to take on a game operation in Las Vegas, Mr. Maximilian. It’s a low-profile enterprise, best suited to those with a passion for wildlife.”

“Oh, Maxi has a passion for wildlife,” Temple said, linking her arm possessively through his, “although he has a quite subtle dislike of the obvious.”

The woman’s leonine face lifted at the muzzle—upper lip to those used to human anatomy—at Temple’s implication. Temple thought she spied a sprinkling of hairs on that strangely elongated upper lip. At the least Leonora needed a good waxer, if not a wax museum.

“The grounds,” Leonora added, eyeing Temple’s strappy high-heeled sandals, “might be hard on those shoes.”

She herself wore sporty, cork-soled wedgies with enough rope ties to form a slingshot.

“These shoes,” Temple said stoutly, “are usually harder on the ground than vice versa.” She turned an ankle to display a claw-sharp spike.

“Ladies,” Max intervened. “I doubt that the animals will care much about footwear.”

“Unless they’re in need of something old and smelly to chew on,” Leonora added with a pointed look at Temple’s feet.

She clattered out of the room ahead of them and led them via a long, circuitous route to the house’s huge institutional kitchen and finally out to the yard that faced into the foothills.

At first one saw only the pool and waterfall, the plantings and rock gardens.

As they walked farther, the desert reasserted itself, and the vast acres of land alongside the house grew apparent.

Although it was still spring in Las Vegas, there was no shade on the desert, only a sense of the sun warming every stone and grain of sand, creating a tanning-booth intensity of light.

Despite her redhead’s pale, freckle-prone skin, Temple could understand why cats basked.

No cats lounged amid the sand and scrub, though.

A long, low structure proved to be a suite of barred cages, like those you see in a circus, under a common roof, accessed by a security-number pad that opened a sliding metal gate. Behind the cage bars within lay, sat, slept, and paced an assortment of big cats.

A smell of sun-warmed fur, dung, and raw meat radiated from the area. The concrete surrounding the cages was streaked with rivulets of water that trickled into the ground-level cages themselves.

Temple was offended by these mean, utilitarian living conditions for the huge creatures, especially after passing through the luxurious house. No wonder Letty the Leopard had wanted in. Or Lennie.

“It’s not a zoo,” Leonora said as if reading Temple’s mind. Or face. “It’s an animal compound. None of them stay here that long. We have quite a demand.”

“All hunters?” Max asked.

She turned quickly, as if liking the question.

“Many. But we resell a few to those requiring exotic animals for business, or pleasure.”

“They don’t look old.” Max had wandered up to a cage holding a black leopard, better known as a panther.

“Some are mere zoo excess,” Leonora said, watching him like a cat.

The panther came to rub against the bars, stopping to sniff Max’s hand.

He uncurled the fingers slowly, like a petal opening. The huge cat pushed its blunt face forward as if to brush against the palm.

“Be careful!” Leonora spoke sharply, her voice a rasp of caution and shock.

Max was concentrating on the cat, not moving.

The two stood there for a few moments, as if communicating in a silent language.

Then the big cat moved on, began pacing against the opposite set of bars.

“Do you know where all your animals come from?” Max asked.

“No. Don’t looked surprised. We have suppliers. Sometimes it’s best not to know too much.”

Max moved on to an empty cage. “It’s always best not to know too much. Is this the cage that the…rogue leopard occupied?”

She came to stand beside Max. From the rear her artfully teased and streaked long hair looked amazingly like a mane.

Her voice was gruff. “Yes.”

“Any idea how the leopard got out, got into the house? Someone had to know the keypad number sequence.”

A silence.

Temple, ignored (and glad that Max and not she was the focus of this strange woman) studied Leonora’s body language as she answered.

Her posture shifted from the weight on one leg and hip, like a model, to an equal-weight stance, like a pugilist. Her shoulders lowered and squared. The mane brushing the tiger-print silk blouse twitched, ever so slightly, like a tail.

Leonora Van Burkleo was not pleased with questions about the how-tos of her husband’s death.

“How did the leopard get out?” she answered the query with another question. “It did not let itself out. Someone had to have released it, admitted it into the house.”

“How is that possible?” Max continued, ignoring her mad-cat signals. He was the same way with Louie. “Even if you knew the code, how would you handle the loose leopard? Granted, you get semidomesticated animals here, but they don’t just trot after people like a dog, into houses. Was it confined and then released inside, do you think? Was it led along, on a leash? Was it a particularly domesticated cat?”

“I don’t know! We never ask these things. They’re not here that long anyway, and if the exotic-pet fanciers don’t select them quickly, we pass them along to the hunt staff.” She paused, shifted her weight back to one leg, leaned inward to Max.

“A leopard is not a particularly large big cat. The hunters prefer lions and tigers.”

Max lifted his hands, framed the pacing panther in them like a film director planning a shot. He nodded. “Big is everything these days. Could your husband have let the animal into the house?”

Leonora’s weight dropped back to both feet, her knees sagging.

“Cyrus? But why? He’d never done such a thing before. These animals are…doomed, most of them. Cyrus was not a sentimental man, but he knew better than to personalize any of the creatures. And you’re suggesting he would ‘let’ one in, like a dog? Why?”

“I merely offer suppositions,” Max said. “The vague circumstance of his death might leave a taint about the place. You know, the ranch where the hunters become the hunted. Not too popular a concept with flabby weekend warriors looking for wall candy. But I agree. I see no reason that your husband would let a big cat into the house like a dog. Unless, of course, it behaved like a dog.”

At that she laughed, and took his arm.

“Believe me, Mr. Maximilian. Nothing behaves less like a dog than a big cat, no matter how many zoo habitats it has lounged in, or how many backyard cages it has languished in. A cat is wild, through and through. No one owns one. No one tells it where to go or what to do.”

“You’re right,” Max agreed, turning to Temple at last. “Want to see the hunting grounds next, darling?”

“Dying to,” Temple responded with feeling.

And she knew just what kind of mythical beast she’d like to hunt there. Catwoman.

The Jeep jolted back to the cage area. Temple supposed that was part of the Rancho Exotica “experience.” A sense of “roughing it” in everything—desert landscape, rugged ride over rough terrain, emptiness, and then sniping at some confused, fenced-in animal until it was cornered and could be killed by a blind man.

Temple, who sat up front with the taciturn driver, tried to relax her jaws but they remain clenched.

It didn’t help that she was covered in dust from eyelash to ankle, and that some muscular guy in safari-suit khaki was advancing to help her out of the high-seated Jeep Laredo like a great white hunter dealing with the client’s spoiled daughter. Even her emerald-and-diamond ring was clouded.

It also didn’t help that she sensed a cloud of cold fury enveloping Max behind her as the GWH took hold of her waist and lifted her down to the ground.

“Thank you,” Temple muttered into her assistant’s dark and brooding face.

This was beginning to feel like Mogambo. From Noël Coward to Clark Cable and Ava Gardner. That’s what you got from watching too many old movies.

She turned quickly to reassure Max with a look and discovered that it wasn’t fury he was radiating but fear. It was a fleeting expression, but Temple was stunned to find Max visibly anxious.

She turned to study her unasked-for escort.

“One of our security guards,” Leonora said. “His name is Rafi.”

Temple nodded at Rafi—odd name—and was about to introduce herself when Max interjected himself into the scenario like a leading man treading on the lines of an extra who had stepped out of place.

“Call me Maximilian.” He stepped in front of Temple. “Terrific layout. I’d really like to discuss it with you from a security viewpoint.”

“Rafi is a new hire,” Leonora began.

“Excellent. A fresh point of view is what I want. Care to stroll around the grounds for a moment, if you can spare one?”

Rafi, a sullen type who was immediately suspicious of Max’s enthusiasm, glanced carefully at Leonora.

She shrugged. “Mr. Maximilian is interested in buying the property.”

“You’d sell?” the security man asked incredulously.

Rafi seemed a bit belligerent for a hired gun, Temple thought. And Leonora’s feline face took on an edgy, guilty look that surprised her.

“Don’t worry, my man,” Max said quickly. “I’d keep on the staff. That’s all right, isn’t it, Mrs. Van Berkleo?”

“Of course. If they want to stay. You may want to hire Miss Barr away from the Crystal Phoenix, if you require an assistant,” she added cattily.

“What about—?” Temple began.

“Courtney has decided to leave for greener pastures,” Leonora said demurely. That blunt face did not do demure well.

Max’s attention had wandered, as if bored by discussion of people when a miniempire was before him. He gave the man called Rafi a man-to-man grin.

“Now, about those peripheral fences. Barbed wire? Do you really think they’d keep out interlopers?”

“What kind of interlopers?” Leonora demanded, overriding Rafi’s answer.

Max looked startled. “Every enterprise has its enemies. What about…say, those ethical-treatment-of-animals people. Vegetarians. You know what I mean,” he directed toward the security man.

He was walking Rafi away from the two women, off into the bush, so to speak.

“Quite…commanding,” Leonora commented.

Temple wasn’t sure which man she was referring to: Rafi, who had hauled Temple out of the Jeep like a delinquent twelve-year-old, or Max who had commandeered the security man like he was recruiting for the IRA.

“Yes.” Temple joined her hostess in looking after them. “Do you have enemies? It might explain your husband’s death.”

“You mean—?” Leonora examined Temple carefully, as if seeing her for the first time. Perhaps she was. This was the sole occasion that the distraction of men wasn’t around, and Leonora seemed to concentrate solely on men. Temple wasn’t sure if it was because she was one of those dependent yet manipulative women who loved to coax things out of men (she was still covertly eyeing Temple’s ring every ninety seconds or so), or because she watched them in a purely predatory sense.

One interpretation made her a greedy widow. The other made her a greedy murderess.

Murderess, the old-fashioned form, seemed to fit her to a T-shirt. Animal patterned, of course.

“What did you think of this Rafi character?” Max asked as they drove away.

“Calling him a ‘Rafi character’ predisposes me to not think much of him. Also your hauling him away like he had the plague.”

Max had recovered his equanimity and grinned at her as the car bucked over the rutted desert road. “I’ll rephrase that. What did you think of that guy?”

“I thought of him as the great white hunter from a forties movie.”

“Central Casting is you. So what does that mean?”

Temple had to interpret her own reaction. “He’s one of those apparently smug men in what should be the prime of his life who’s seen it all go sour and is living out on the fringes, recapturing his virility by controlling the uncontrollable. How’s that?”

“Awesome.” Max spoke seriously. “Villain or victim?”

“How about a little bit of both?”

“Dangerous or posing at it?”

“Potential or pose, they’re both dangerous, aren’t they? I didn’t need as much help dismounting the Jeep as I got. There’s a kind of contempt for women that poses as gallantry.”

Max nodded. The dusty drive in the open car had ground sand into the fine lines radiating from his eyes, giving him a steely, early-Clint look Temple hadn’t seen before. But then she hadn’t seen Max in any but an urban environment.

He seemed to get grittier in the desert: more suspicious, like someone out of his element. Temple had never seen Max out of his element before.

“Why are you so interested in the Rafi character?” she asked. “Leonora said he’s a new hire. I doubt he could be involved in the death.”

Max’s hands tightened on the steering wheel, for no particular reason.

“That’s what we came out here for, to study the scene for suspects. Maybe he was hired to move a leopard indoors. Did you notice something odd about the empty leopard cage?”

“It had been washed down today.”

“Right. The leopard’s been gone for three days. Looks like somebody wants to make doubly sure there’s no trace evidence.”

“Of what?”

“Of whatever happened that moved a leopard from a cage outside into a living room.”

As the car jolted off the private road onto the highway, Temple immediately noticed that Max turned north, not south.

“Where are we going now?”

“To visit the only Ranch Exotica suspect we haven’t interviewed.”

“Suspect, singular? Aren’t you forgetting the animal-rights activists? I haven’t seen hide nor hair of them, excuse the expression, under the circumstances.”

“No need. I’ve kept pretty good tabs on them.”

“Oh. So I get to see the indoor suspects and you get an exclusive on the outdoor suspects. Smacks of great white hunter, if you ask me.”

“I can’t think of a good excuse to introduce you to the activists, who are a paranoid lot at best. But this last suspect is an outdoor/indoor variety, and there’s already a precedent for you paying a visit there.”

“So who is it?”

“The leopard, of course.”