Cat In A Quicksilver Caper

Brass Tactics

“Is she . . . dead?” Temple asked Randy.

He nodded, his face paler than his ash-blond hair. “I’m pretty sure. You don’t have to see for yourself.”

“I do.”

“Then I’ll come too. They’ll only let us so close.”

But he hadn’t reckoned there’d be the sober ring of Fontana brothers circling the death scene like white-suited angels from a 1940s movie fantasy.

Despite their light-colored garb, their serious and handsomely swarthy faces lent the somber air of a Mafia funeral to the occasion. They posed with their broad defensive backs to the victim, legs splayed apart as if for a last stand, hands clasped in front like an honor guard with the muzzles of the black Berettas in those hands aimed at the white marble floor.

Temple could already hear a wave of rising consternation from the casino as emergency technicians and police forged their way through the crowded aisles to this cul-de-sac of tragedy at the very back of the huge hotel.

Probably there was a nearer, more discreet entrance, but emergency crews couldn’t gamble on finding it. This entire museum wing was new and had never required a siren run before.

“Well?” she asked the nearest Fontana brother. He looked down at her, his expression stern as a Marine’s.

“Not pretty, Miss Temple.”

“This is my job scene.”

Ralph nodded and shifted to one side.

She saw the form aptly described as “crumpled.”

The painted face was turned toward her, almost accusingly. The traditions of Chinese opera face painting made American clown-face colors elegant: white face accomplished with fine rice powder, not heavy grease paint. No enlarged fire-engine-red lips, but the crimson petals of a mouth echoed in a red blush over the cheekbones and around the eyes, delicate as a pale rose petal. Slashing black lines exaggerating natural eyelashes and eyebrows.

And a crooked trickle of blood drooling out one corner of the perfectly painted crimson bud of a mouth. A pool of that blood engulfed the horse tail–long strands of dull black hair, probably false, haloing the figure.

This woman had stolen Temple’s ring as part of a stage magic act and probably participated in her kidnapping. So Temple shouldn’t bat an eyelash to see this stagy figure melted into white marble like her darker sister, the Wicked Witch of the West, right?

Temple batted two eyelashes, thick with tears of shock.

Aldo stepped in front of her to conceal the body again.

“Cheese it, the cops,” he muttered, while an adept hand gesture made the Beretta vanish.

The Fontanas had broken rank and melted bonelessly into their ice cream suits, backing into the watching crowd of murmuring hotel and corporate honchos.

Randy pulled Temple aside as a gurney crashed through the mob faster than an Olympic sled. They were called over to the fringes by the murmuring executives.

“Thank God the press was barred from attending,” Pete Wayans noted. “What about the formal opening next week?”

“How soon can the damaged set pieces be replaced?” Temple asked.

Madame Kirkov’s papery skin was a duplicate of Shangri-La’s painted mask. It had been paste white since the first death on the exhibition site. She waved a beringed, shriveled hand that would have seemed natural to a mummy.

“The crew built the set and can rebuild it. The question is, why did it fail?”

“The question,” Temple said, “is who rigged it to fail?”

“If that was the case, ‘who’ is obvious. That man who came plunging down from nowhere. Obviously, another thief. First Andrei, now this. The scepter must be recovered. Nothing can replace it. The exhibition is lost.”

A murmur of deep men’s voices escalated into muted squeaks of despair. The scepter was the drawing card for the entire exhibition.

“This has been a pretty obvious heist,” Randy pointed out in his patented Sominex tones. “Maybe there are also some pretty obvious clues to who’s behind it. Once the authorities give us leave to go, we can adjourn to the conference room to plan the next steps. It looks like this death was accidental. Even if someone rigged the machinery to fail, that’s going to take at least a day to determine. All of us down here saw the same thing.”

“The security cameras,” Temple added, “are the witnesses the police will want most.”

“Security cameras,” Madame Kirkov said sharply. “Up there, too?”

“I’m sure of it. They’d provide a constant overview of the exhibition, and the hotel would recognize the performance tunnels as a risk. Unless,” she added, thinking of someone who was supernaturally security wise, “they’d been disabled too.”

* * *

The police took names and phone numbers and made cursory inquiries, but clearly didn’t think a shocked crowd made for very reliable witnesses.

Temple left them interviewing the Fontana brothers, whom they thought would make reliable witnesses for some reason, or perhaps reliable suspects.

Temple had informed the sergeant in charge that the Fontanas were special security hired by the hotel, which had made him snort and say, “We’ll see how special they are.”

Temple couldn’t afford to worry about the flock of Fontanas, or even Aunt Kit’s Aldo, whichever one he was. She had to hustle off with Randy for a late-night emergency session with the people bankrolling this event.

And then . . . then she had to break her string of bad luck in communicating with Max to find out where and how he was before Molina got on the warpath again.

Because everything about that chaos in the upper air had the mark of a Mystifying Max operation, except for the death.