Cat In An Alien X-Ray

Chapter 17

Short Stack

From the Wynn’s Terrace Pointe Café located near a Ferrari showroom to a Circus Circus breakfast buffet was one of those weird juxtapositions the Strip offered. The bounteous, cheap breakfast buffet was fast becoming a threatened species. Las Vegas had gotten so high-end that low-end had become a nostalgic and exotic experience.

Young children cried for Cheetos over Cheerios, rejecting healthy for salty, air-filled, and permanently dyed orange fingertips. Harried parents loaded up on sausages and bacon and hash browns. And Temple found that pancakes with butter and syrup on the side were infinitely more nutritious and less messy than anything else at the copious food islands.

Silas T. Farnum piled his plate with such noxious early-morning fare as bloody roast beef. Lotto numbers announced over the loudspeakers punctuated Temple’s interrogation … er, breakfast chat with her would-be client.

“You really handled that long drink of Aquafina with a badge this morning,” Silas T. chortled. Not many people chortled anymore, especially while eating, but Farnum did. “Not to mention witch-slapping those media people.”

“I am not a witch,” Temple growled, trying not to see his plate. Somehow it seemed very, very wrong to eat fried shrimp and fruit crepes for breakfast.

“Only a good witch, like Glinda.” Farnum seemed prone to use Wizard of Oz comparisons. “But I warn you, I am a warlock, not a wizard.”

To hear Silas T. Farnum make this declaration before 8 A.M. in the morning over a dripping forkful of kung pao scallops and pancakes was a sure appetite killer.

“What is really going on here?” she demanded, undercutting the surrounding clamor by using her best stage whisper, which made her sound hoarser than a B movie hit man. “Or I’ll walk.”

“And you do that so very well.” The slightly lascivious twinkle in his beady eyes really wasn’t forgivable in a man of his age, say eighty-two. “Especially over that uneven ground. Tell me, you’ve seen a corpse before. Do you think he was marched over all that rough ground before he was shot?”

“I didn’t see this one. He was shot?”

Silas T. patted his lips with the linen napkin. “A small tidy hole right here, where headaches begin.”

Temple put her own fingers to the knob behind her ear. Yes, that would probably do it. “Execution style. You saw that? How?”

Silas T. snickered smugly. “I’d gone over to check the site and saw the reeling young couple acting strange at a certain point on the site. They headed back to the disgusting nearby nightclub from whence they’d come. Probably to call the police and then vanish. So when I looked into what they were messing with, I saw the body.”

“And left without reporting it? That’s interfering with a crime scene! The techs will find their footprints. And yours.”

“Maybe so, but I ruffled the sand around with my shoe toe. I used to dance the soft shuffle years ago, you know, which is tap dancing on sand. I’m used to keeping my balance.”

“Don’t tell me. You were in vaudeville.”

“The club circuit, but that was more than fifty years ago, my dear. I’m a rich man now and don’t have to shuffle for anybody.”

“That won’t help you. You interfered with a crime scene. I’m not going to defend you if the police find evidence of your tampering.”

“Fine. It’s good to have such an upstanding employee. I tell you, that body was old.”

“I know he was a senior citizen.”

“That too, but it looked longtime dead, maybe buried in the desert. Nothing as juicy as features on all the prime-time forensic shows. Did you notice how the corpses got gooier, the more popular those TV shows became?”

“Yes, I did, and the perps sicker, which is why I don’t watch them.”

“Just as well you live in Las Vegas, where in real life road kill nicely toasts away to nothing.”

Temple pushed her plate away. “So what secret will that building reveal when it’s done? If the discovered corpse doesn’t queer all your crazy secret plans?”

“A surprise.”

“Mr. Farnum, I cannot work with such an uncooperative client.”

“You’ll see,” he said, sitting back against the leatherette booth and untucking his napkin from the neck of his shirt. “And sooner than you think. I promise I’ll give you the big reveal once the police are through with the site. And that won’t take long. There can’t be much trace evidence.”

“None of that will matter if I quit.”

She got up from the table and stomped away through the crowds of couples with children.

“I’m paying for breakfast,” he called after her.

You bet he was.