Cat In A Quicksilver Caper

Depend upon It

“The police?”

Temple was astounded by what Randy told her when she buzzed by the New Millennium to check on things and ran into him in the lobby. He looked frazzled.

“A body was found about five A.M. this morning. On the damn exhibition site,” he whispered, hustling her back to the area. “There’s no way we can duck the disastrous publicity consequences.”

Temple didn’t contest the word “we.”

Randy paced when they reached the entry area, then pounded his forehead with one palm. “This exhibition opening is starting to feel like a season debut of CSI: Crime Scene Investigation.”

Temple thought for a moment. “Not necessarily a bad thing. Maybe we can get a ‘curse of the Romanovs’ rumor going. Did a lot for King Tut.”

“We’re supposed to support rumors of vivified czars strutting around nights stringing people up?”

“Not as creepy as mummies, I agree. What do you think it really is? A botched robbery?”

“Why? Not one priceless artifact has been taken out of the vault and displayed yet. This is not encouraging for that ever happening. The insurance will skyrocket.”

“It does seem . . . premature. Why would anyone with designs on the artifacts tip his hand like this? Security will just get tougher.”

“Maybe someone likes a challenge.”

“Or needs a distraction,” Temple suggested.

“Or maybe someone wanted to warn us. Because someone sure has.”

“Or maybe someone wanted to short-circuit a heist.”

“Why?” Randy asked. “Who?”

“Almost a million new whos arrive in Las Vegas every week,” Temple said. “You should put casino security on red, white, and blue alert. What do the executives say to do next about the exhibition?”

Randy shrugged. “This is Las Vegas, a twenty-four-hour town. The show must go on. And it’s our job to see that it does.”

Temple sighed. How dismaying to think that the pristine white exhibition space, before it had been used for the first time, had already been the scene of someone’s death, even if he had been up to no good. Was it her presence on the job? Did Death have a yen for good PR? Was she the Typhoid Mary of PR women? What else could go wrong?

“I’m afraid,” Randy said, “you need to see the scene of the crime too.”

“What’s to see?”

“The body’s still hanging there. Obviously dead, so the CSI people want to examine every square inch above and below it, and probably every cell of the air around it.”

* * *

Temple thought she was cool with seeing the body.

She’d had a habit of tripping over murder victims. Maybe it was her red hair. Unlucky. Fey. But it wasn’t looking red these days. So she could rule out the hair.

Yellow crime scene tape kept Randy and her by the cushy stadium seating ringing the exhibition area.

CSI techs in latex gloves were swarming like worker ants over the sleek cone of the spiral exhibition space and up in the dark flies above it. They were laying out grids, like archeologists, preparatory to recording every element of the huge crime scene.

It was the single limp figure in black suspended halfway between the literal “heavens” of a stage set and the milk-white curves of the high-tech exhibition mounting that riveted her glance and then her emotions.

Trouble was, she’d nearly had a heart attack, seeing that black-clad body dangling from a bungee cord cradle high above. It was so Max: solo, daring, dangerous. Thinking ahead, she knew she couldn’t blame Molina for thinking the same thing when she saw the death scene photos. Well, she could blame her, but that was hard to justify.

Temple hadn’t been able to reach Max by cell phone recently, but what else was new? He’d been putting her off for weeks, telling her he was working up a new “act.” She had a muzzy memory of him visiting her bedroom, way late. She’d been unusually loopy on wine and Tylenol PM. Not a good date prescription. The hour had been too late for her to wake up enough to take advantage of that hit and run visit of his. Something was eating up every spare moment of his time, night and day. Something too consuming to be the easy suspicion of another woman.

If Max was making a comeback as a magician, it would take months of secret preparation. On the other hand, if he was planning to knock off the New Millennium’s White Russian exhibition, he’d be on the same impossible schedule.

“Art Deckle,” Randy said out of the blue. Or the white haze, rather.

The bizarre name echoed in the huge New Millennium exhibition space. Randy shrugged after saying it.

“They found an ID on the body.”

“That’s the real name of the dead man? Not a nom de huckster?’ Temple asked, still envisioning Max twisting silently in the air-conditioning wind, although this man looked far shorter than Max’s limber six foot four.

“Could be an alias. He has a record under it.”

“Not the music industry kind, I take it?”

“Thief. Would charm the lonely lady tourists, get to their rooms and run off with their credit cards.”

“Doesn’t sound very profitable. They’d be onto him pretty early the next morning.”

Randy smiled. “In a twenty-four-hour town you can buy a lot of bling with a credit card between two and ten A.M.”

“So he played the happy winner. Hitting big at the tables and buying the girlfriend a big gift? On her card.”

“Right. A lot of these gambler guys owe everybody. And some of them do hit once in a while.”

Temple gazed at the vaulted space above the exhibition area. “A con man, but not a world-class art thief.”

“His reach exceeded his grasp. That’s what the police think.”

“Including Lieutenant Molina?”

“Who?”

“You haven’t met the homicide queen-pin yet?”

Randy shook his head. “So you’ve an in at the LVMPD?”

The initials referenced the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police department, as opposed to the separate and smaller North Las Vegas force.

“I did think so,” Temple muttered.

“What’re we gonna do about the media?” Randy asked her.

“Smother them with sound bites on how high security is on this show. The flypaper caught a fly, didn’t it?”

“You mean he killed himself.”

“Can the police prove otherwise?”

“Not . . . yet.”

Temple sighed. “I better run home and get my full address book of general contacts. I can prepare e-mails and releases from the computer setup here once I have that. I, um, know some magicians and high-wire acts around town. I’ll look into what they think really might have happened here.”

“Could you? That’d be great. We could get a local story about their opinions on it. If they suit us.”

“Let me talk to them first and see.”

“Right. No spills from uncontrolled leaks.”

Temple doubted that Max had ever been uncontrolled in his life.

At least he wasn’t maxed out in a black spandex body suit, twisting in a deadly vortex for all to see. And whoever had killed Art Deckle, improbable name, had blown the whistle on the exhibition as a serious target for someone.

She returned to the Circle Ritz one downhearted frail, as the blues songs called sad women. Ick! She didn’t want to even think of Molina the torch songstress.

So running into Danny Dove bouncing out the back entrance to her building was not the upper it should have been. He looked puckish again, though, instead of as shrunken and sere as an autumn leaf.

“Why, Miss Temple. Imagine meeting you here.”

“Are you renting at the Circle Ritz after all?”

“Almost.” He doffed his sunglasses, revealing eyes still blasted with strain. “And how are you doing? Looking a little peaked for a Teen Idol contender, hmmm?”

“Please, Danny. That was undercover.”

“Speaking of undercovers—”

“I wasn’t,” Temple said severely. Danny was like a favorite old-fashioned uncle, always trying to fix her up with a steady beau.

“Well, I’d think you’d be dying to see our friend Matt’s new improved look.”

“I didn’t think he could improve on it.”

“Not personally,” Danny said, rolling his eyes with some of the old spirit. “I’m talking about his . . . decor.”

It occurred to Temple that she could learn everything she wanted to learn about that right here and now. From Danny, if she worked it right.

“You’ve been helping Matt out,” she said in a leading way.

“Au contraire. The dear boy has been helping me out.”

Temple remained silent, the key to good interviewing technique.

Danny looked down to watch himself swinging his fragile designer sunglasses by one bow. It was a new quirk, as if he were measuring the seconds the concealing tinted lenses were away from his face, his eyes.

“He’s a damn good counselor.”

Temple smiled, proud of them both. It must be an uneasy alliance: a celibate ex-priest and a gay man bereft of his partner. Somehow they had bridged the cultural and religious divide, and it said a lot for both of them. It showed her hope, and her anxieties about Life in General lifted a little.

“He doesn’t have the slightest notion,” Danny added.

“About what?”

“Anything, my dear one.” He leaned close, voice lowered. “I’ve brought him kicking and screaming into the twenty-first century as far as decor goes. Someone else will have to drag him in the rest of the way. Not my type, if you know what I mean.”

Temple did, and tried not to blush. “So, what worked?”

“You.”

Oh. She’d hoped Danny didn’t know about that.

“What a little motivator you are.” He took her arm, walked her farther out into the parking lot.

“I’m engaged,” Temple said. Firmly.

“You’re between engagements, as far as I can tell. Honestly, Munchkin. You know he’s—well, divine. He needs guidance. Be still, my . . . heart. You’re lucky I’m bereaved, or I wouldn’t answer for myself here. And, he’s depressingly straight. What’s holding you back?”

“You know.” Temple couldn’t quite keep her voice even.

“I know even you can’t keep up the pretense that you’re sufficiently spoken for to keep the strings of your heart from zinging in another direction.”

“Danny! This is none of your business.”

“It’s all the business I have left.”

Temple couldn’t meet the blaze of anger and loss in his eyes. Nor could she argue with his accurate diagnosis. Still, she said, “I am not your matchmaker project. Not even if it would . . . ease something for you right now.”

“Matt has become my project. Such a dear boy. Reminds me of myself before I dared come out, even to myself. There are such standards for a boy, Temple. Being manly. Being hard and callous. Being tough. Being a braggart about women, even if they’re not your thing. Demeaning everything honest and soft and true for fear you’ll show a weakness some boy who’s even more uncertain than you will kick a hole through, just to prove he’s all right.”

She felt tears sting her eyes. Danny was talking universals. She remembered how girls had to hide too, pretend to be blithe and uncaring in the face of relentless bitchiness. To pretend when your heart was breaking.

“Awful years,” she said, thinking that pretending and heartbreaking could track one for many years afterward.

“No argument. We must speed him through them.”

“We?”

“It’ll take both of us. Now, I’ve civilized him in the decor department. It would help if you would . . . bless my efforts with your approval.”

“Just how much approval are we talking here?”

“Follow your heart and your healthy libido. At least back up my efforts.”

“You make a very odd advocate,” Temple said.

“I’m only following the path you trail-blazed. That red suede Kagan couch is to die for.”

“It’s a Goodwill find.”

“I can guess who found it. And you let him have it?” Danny frowned playfully. “You were caving even then. I’m afraid my domestic improvements have been more upscale. Was that naughty of me?”

Maybe frowns were catching because Temple was doing it now. Despite the grisly crisis she had to hie back to at the New Millennium, she was dying to see Matt’s new “home improvements.” She would also die before asking him to show her personally. Maybe she could talk Electra into a private preview . . .

“I see it was,” Danny said. His thoughtful expression had turned bleak again.

“Oh, dammit, Danny! I’ll, ah, say . . . I don’t know what I’ll say.”

“I already said it. I told him he needs a woman’s touch for the final fillips. Linens, silk flowers—nothing allergy prone in the bedroom and none of those beastly throw rugs you women are always having underfoot.”

Temple thought of the faux goat hair rug under her coffee table and winced.

“You don’t!” Danny sighed. “I see I must offer my discerning services in your quarters next. A girl who would let somebody else have a fifties Vladimir Kagan couch! Tsk. You are an angel on earth.”

Danny donned his sunglasses, bussed her cheeks with Italian film star gusto, and left in the silver Spyder convertible that made her Miata look like a Barbie car.