Cat In An Alien X-Ray

Chapter 26

Going, Going, Going, Gone … Viral

Temple jerked upright in bed, in the dark, her heart pounding. She’d finally fallen asleep after an awkward dinner with Matt. He gave reason after reason for not taking the job in Chicago: his relocation, her relocation, Louie’s relocation. Loyalty to WCOO and Leticia Brown and her “Ambrosia” syndication. Too many relatives in Chicago, including his clingy cousin Krys, his mother who needed a stable family atmosphere to start out her new marriage.

It was all absolutely true and reasonable and Temple didn’t buy a bit of it. You can’t snow a professional snower, a spin expert. The only thing that rang true was the deep, troubled look in Matt’s eyes.

What was going on?

They’d parted when he had to leave for work, both of them miserable, the would-be festive evening out a debacle, thanks to her crazy day job and his late-night job and everything being knocked out of its orbit by some hidden planet Matt would not reveal to her to save his soul.

She’d sobbed her way through War Horse on the DVD and finally was exhausted enough to sleep. She was a fixer, she decided, and she would fix this if it killed her.

Now her cell phone was trumpeting “Hallelujah,” and from the condo’s large living room her landline was chiming in, very much muffled.

She’d shut the bedroom door to keep the dawn’s early light from flooding through the row of glass-paned French doors to the patio. So she didn’t know what time it was until her cell phone face told her—6:10 A.M. An ungodly hour in Las Vegas, when all bad gamblers kissed their assets good-bye and bedded down for the night at 5 A.M.

Jeez, was that unreliable Silas T. Farnum pestering her again? She fumbled for the bedside lamp switch, being careful not to kick her feet as she rolled over to sit up. Didn’t want to give Midnight Louie a punch in the paunch.

The distant phone rang on as she answered the cell.

“Silas T.—”

“This is Temple Barr?” The female voice was brisk and urgent and not Molina’s.

“Yes.”

“This is Madison Wiswallson.”

Madison, Wisconsin? Something to do with Max?

“KXTP-TV news, L.A.”

Alphabet soup. Temple was still disoriented.

The voice continued. “You’re representing Deja View Associates, it says in this release. A Mr. Farnum directed me to you about the UFO scare infecting Las Vegas.”

“UFO? Oh. He’s not officially my client.” No legal agreements had been signed. “I do know he released some helium balloons on his own. I have nothing to do with them, uh, him.”

“Well, he plastered the Internet and media e-mails with a strangely vague release and you’re listed as the contact. And I beg your pardon. We’re not talking ‘helium balloons.’ Do a YouTube search for “Vee Is for Vegas Visitors” and, oh, let’s see … “Alien Intervention” … “UFOs Unleashed” … “Elvis’s Asteroid Belt Lands on Strip” … “Flying Saucer Convention” … “Little Men in Green”…”

Temple had done as instructed and was following a string of tiny films of Farnum’s supposedly quick-peek at the UFO design. Oh, my unmentionables! She quashed any expletives that occurred to her and would be better directed at Silas T. Farnum.

“I know nothing about this, Miss Wisconsin. I mean, Miss Wishywallson. I have no comment. Mr. Farnum is not a client.” And he won’t be quotable the minute I can reach the sneaky old scam artist and shut him up.

She clicked on the bedroom TV, set to a local channel’s morning news show. A huge photo of the revealed UFO top of Farnum’s stealth building occupied the entire screen. It looked as impressive as a movie still from Close Encounters of the Third Kind.

It was replaced by a live shot of the parking lot, the real building invisible to the TV videographers, thank God. A male reporter was doing a stand-up job of a stand-up, gazing soberly into the camera. Oh, no! It was sleazy promoter Crawford Buchanan, with a soul patch and a pea-sized diamond earring. Gross. When did he get a real TV job? His deep, mellow, and oily radio voice oozed into the room.

“Hundreds of people have gathered overnight on this deserted Las Vegas construction site on news that an unidentified flying object was captured in mid-descent by dozens of cell phones and camcorders.”

The camera panned across the milling mob before returning to the reporter.

“Complicating matters,” he went on, “is the fact that part of the area was a recent crime scene when an unidentified body was discovered here three days ago. Many of those gathering now include some who claim they had signed up for a ‘UFO convention’ at this location—an empty lot, as everyone can see.”

Another camera pan of the towering buildings hundreds of feet away on the Strip and the unimpressive shrouded pseudo-building made the point.

“So who invited all these true believers to an empty lot? Did the people just arriving miss the main attraction? A real UFO landing? Or is it all a come-on for a new magic act on the Strip? Maybe the New Millennium Hotel’s Cloaked Conjuror can pay Paradise Road a visit and pull away the curtain.”

How right the annoying twerp was. Temple knew she had to get there to do damage control, whether she was representing Farnum or not.

“This is Crawford Buchanan, the KSOS-TV Night Crawler, up bright and early to see what the cat dragged into Vegas now.”

Temple remembered the small four-legged silhouette streaking away from the temporarily revealed spotlight the saucer’s neon green pillar of light made. Oh, no! Where was Louie? Not here safe in bed.

All she needed was Molina on the warpath and her cat caught fleeing the scene on film.