Cat In A Leopard Spot

Chapter 50

Action Traction

Temple came running into the clearing, using her high heels like the pitons she had claimed they were, driving her forward faster than even she believed possible, the security man and his ponderous boots tamping sand behind her.

Leonora had stayed behind in the front seat of the Storm, the door open, her delicate shoes planted on the desert sand, quivering.

But she had ordered—ordered—the man to go with Temple and do what she said.

The scene in front of them wasn’t chaotic, but it was like a stage with three spotlit acts, a three-ring circus: you didn’t know where to look first.

The three dusty wayfaring strangers trilling like a Salvation Army chorus in front of a loose panther was the most riveting vignette.

They were singing, she thought, the song about the lion sleeps tonight. The panther had obviously not been sleeping today.

The lone man on the right, on his knees holding a bleeding face in two blood-gloved hands, caught her attention next, and held it.

Behind her, Rafi’s footsteps veered away and toward his fallen fellow guard.

And then there was the third scene stage right: Max coated in sand dust, beside another fallen man.

Temple couldn’t tell whether he was helping the man, or holding him in custody, or both.

Max’s eyes flicked across Temple, their expression changing from something dark and unreadable to relief, then to wariness as they moved on to Rafi, helping up the stricken guard across the clearing.

Max looked around farther, then focused back on her.

Her eyes questioned him, so he nodded toward the guard’s bleeding face. “Louie’s work.”

“My Louie?”

“You know another?”

She stared at the man in Max’s grasp. He was bleeding from the mouth and his head was turned away. “Your work?”

“His own.” Max kicked the rifle toward Temple, then unlatched his belt and pulled it through its loops like a whip.

Temple thought for a moment he was going to take it to the man, but instead he crouched and bound the guy’s wrists behind his back.

“This might hold him, it might not. So if I were you I’d pick up the rifle and make like a guard.”

A rifle? It was to laugh. But Temple squatted beside it, picked up the stock, being careful not to get near the trigger, and stood, pointing the lethal barrel at the ground. That was where she intended to leave it.

“I take it,” Max said, “that you’ve called for reinforcements.”

“I left my cell phone with Leonora. Don’t worry, I used a spare battery for it, and gave her Molina’s personal number. Several times.”

Max, oddly indifferent to his prisoner, instead watched Rafi.

Temple could see calculations moving across his mobile face. Not all of them were pretty. Were anyone else other than she watching, he wouldn’t let even that much show.

“It’s up to you,” Max said abruptly. “You need to get that Rafi guy the hell out of here. Tell him…the cops are coming and this is a mess and he’s best out of it.”

Max turned to go.

“And this is—?” Temple gestured gingerly with the rifle.

Max nodded. “The killer. In more ways than one.” His voice was drenched in disgust. “God have mercy on his soul. I certainly wouldn’t.”

He turned and scaled the rocks, disappearing into their dun-colored contours and then over their crest like a lizard.

Temple looked from vignette to vignette. The panther, burnished red-black by the westering sun, had settled on its belly, licking a paw. Apparently the singing had quieted it.

Raf had ripped a sleeve off his shirt and dabbed at the other man’s face until the scratches beneath the blood were revealed, nasty but not serious.

The bound man on the ground stayed still, knees tented, head bowed into them, face obscured.

Rafi, his fellow worker tended to, suddenly saw Temple with the rifle.

“Hey! Little lady, you can’t do that! Just stand there and let me take that thing off your hands.”

Temple would have been happy to relinquish the weapon. It was darn heavy, for one thing, but she remembered Max’s instructions. He had given them brusquely, against his druthers, she could tell. She had a feeling he was being more merciful to Rafi than to the killer, for some reason of his own.

“Thanks.” Temple lowered her voice as Rafi neared. “The police are coming. In force. You’ve been so helpful, I wouldn’t want to get you into trouble. I think this guy killed Mr. Van Burkleo.”

Rafi’s features sharpened like a hunt dog’s. He swept the rifle out of her grip anyway.

“Killed him, huh? Who belted his wrists behind him? Not you?”

Temple blinked. “I don’t know—” She meant she hadn’t thought up a good story yet. “A masked man?”

“It’s not a joking matter. Murder.”

“Neither are the police, if there’s some reason you’d prefer not to get involved with them.”

It was odd, but Temple saw the same indecision and calculations crossing Rafi’s face that she had seen on Max’s only moments before.

Both men were torn, she suspected, between considerations not quite visible to anyone around them.

Rafi suddenly gave Temple a, well…raffish grin. “Yeah. Never good to let the minions of the law get too hard a grip on you.” He looked over at the threesome still making a human fence in front of the panther. “Hey! Peaceniks. Any one of you fur freaks know how to handle a rifle? We got a human hunter needs watching until the authorities come.”

They stopped singing, stunned. Finally the lone woman stepped forward.

“You mean cover the lowlife who tried to shoot the panther? I can do it in a New York minute.”

Raf eyed her lean, mean, sixtyish form. “I bet you can, Iron Grandma. Here.”

He held out the rifle. The woman marched forward and took it, aiming it at the sitting man.

Raf turned to Temple. “Thanks, Red. I do like to keep a low profile.”

He turned and headed back on a long, circling-around arc that would keep him safely on the fringes until out of sight.

Temple wondered if he and Max would cross paths in their joint but separate surreptitious getaways. No, too surreal.

In the distance, a scream of sirens wailed their intention to get up close and personal.

Temple braced herself for explanations of the inexplicable.

She looked around one last time at the animal fair.

The panther and the killer were there.

By the light of the sun,

The panther was the one,

Who was combing his auburn hair.