Cat In An Alien X-Ray

Chapter 3

Ménage à Murder

An hour later, Temple was clinging to one concept: creative tension.

A public relations specialist could handle conventions hosting up to twenty thousand or more people, and Temple was well aware that major events weren’t orchestrated in environments of tranquillity, concord, and camaraderie.

No, it often took chaos on the scale of Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony—the one with the booming cannon—to move all the players and pieces around the board to reach a successful conclusion.

She was an expert at that.

Creative tension.

So.

One might think a mere party of three sitting at a round card-slash-dining table in her vintage condo could accomplish wonders with a minimum of fuss.

Temple shook her head mentally.

Two guys and a gal made a symmetrical but always awkward trio, especially if one guy had occupied the California king in the adjoining bedroom … and the girl was now a semi-permanent fixture in the other’s guy’s bedroom right above this very second-floor unit.

Would her mother ever be shocked! She’d think the Circle Ritz was some sort of swinging singles place when most of the residents were long-term and middle-aged-plus. Maybe what would shock her mother the most was that the triangle was still locked into place in mutual support because of criminal matters. How could Temple explain, if she ever had to, that each relationship was seriously monogamous? True at the time. Temple had never intended to be a serial monogamist. How had it happened?

Temple took the chance to study Mr. Now and Mr. Then from a distance as she hovered unnoticed in the kitchen archway.

A warm brown-eyed blond was as irresistible as a golden retriever, and Matt Devine had the inner warmth of empathy to light up her life and the room. A rotten childhood followed by years of dedication as a celibate priest had made him into someone who’d seen past his own hurts to tend to other people’s pain. That included healing the unwed mother he’d defended since a boy.

On the other hand, and side of the table, Max’s looks were compelling rather than handsome. His angular face, black hair, and pale blue eyes could make him seem mischievous … or dangerous. His great, all-American happy childhood had been followed by a hellish young adulthood that put his life on the line forever and had estranged him from his family and, ultimately, even her, despite his oodles of mercurial charm. She’d never before thought of the two men’s histories as being in exact reverse.

She’d truly loved them both and they knew it.

Max Kinsella himself had “disengaged” from her, bowing to the inevitable draw of Matt Devine. She was Matt’s first love, and nothing could stop their union … except themselves.

So now the three were joined into an uneasy alliance, forced to work together to declaw a psychopathic chameleon from Max’s past, a possible serial murderess with as many lives as a cat.

That last thought made Temple smile. Midnight Louie, her alley cat roommate, was sitting as unnoticed as a furry black statue of Buddha on the narrow buffet, his glossy black velvet paws tucked in and his slitty eyes indicating either napping or a disgusted meditation on human follies. Such as romantic triangles.

Temple sighed. Aloud. Not meaning to attract either guy’s attention.

Both men looked up from the centerpiece on the table and said, “What?” On that they were united.

“I’m in mourning,” she said, matching her tone to the sentiment.

Both men frowned in concern.

She pointed to the piece of paper they were all staring at. “My wonderful, logical Table of Crime Elements is ‘Mangeled,’ rubbed out, and Xed-out to bits, thanks to recent deductions.”

She followed her dramatic announcement by delivering bottles of sangria wine cooler to the guys. Max was Black Irish and favored whiskey. Matt wouldn’t care what he drank.

Temple set down a tall glass of her favorite mixer, even when it was solo: Crystal Light. She sat down at the third place and tapped the center of the table. “That single sheet of typing paper before you holds the most left-brained creation of my career. I feel ready to audition for CSI: Las Vegas.”

A mutual chuckle broke the tension.

Matt spoke first. “It’s brilliant. It’s methodical. It’s wonderful.”

“What’s wonderful,” Max Kinsella said after a swallow of wine, “is that you’ve managed to rule out several unsolved deaths in one swoop.”

“Yeah.” Matt Devine sipped his drink. “How did that happen? One day this flaky group of disgruntled magicians who call themselves ‘the Synth,’ are secretly running the Neon Nightmare club and hunting a hidden stockpile of Irish terrorism money and guns. The next day they’ve disbanded and the nightclub has gone dark overnight. Kaput. Closed. And you say—” He looked at Temple. “—they’re no longer a danger and their recently murdered member, this Cosimo Sparks, is probably a serial killer.”

“A multiple murderer,” Temple corrected. “All his victims could have revealed his plans. He was the mastermind for the Synth’s mounting the most astounding magical illusion ever staged in Vegas as cover for a huge heist and making off with the hidden IRA funds too.”

“So the theory,” Max said, “is that the Synth was on a recruiting jag for their illusion of a lifetime, treasure hunt, and heist in the making?”

“Yes,” Temple said, for Matt’s benefit. He was new to this scenario. “And the three surviving founders of the Synth and Neon Nightmare realized that Cosimo Sparks had the motive to recruit other professional magic workers. What if he panicked when they turned him down and thought they’d, er, squeal on him and the plan? The Synth founders even believed Sparks tried to recruit Gandolph, Max’s mentor in magic.”

“Ridiculous,” Max said. “Once ‘Gandolph the Great’ retired, Garry Randolph was on his own crusade against phony mediums.”

“He even faked his own death,” Temple told Matt, “so he’d be available to help Max when the angry IRA guys from the past came after him.”

“So.” Matt pinned his finger on a row of the table in turn. “You think Gandolph’s former onstage assistant, Gloria Fuentes, was also approached to be recruited, along with the Cloaked Conjuror’s assistant, Barry, and Prof. Mangel at the state university. When they all backed off, Sparks killed them one by one to shut them up. Sounds like that board game, Clue.”

Temple nodded.

“It’s important we remember,” Max said, “that the Synth members considered themselves the high priests and priestesses of magic, which had lost out on the Vegas Strip to artsy acrobatic productions by Cirque du Soleil and actual magic trick revealers, like the Cloaked Conjuror.”

“And,” Temple said, “they weren’t primarily after the hidden stockpile IRA loot and guns Kathleen O’Connor and her allies had amassed, now up for grabs. They wanted to provide the massive illusion that would astound the Strip and distract from the hoard being claimed. Maybe they were being used by the mob, and maybe by O’Connor. And who was using whom more, Kathleen O’Connor or the mob, I don’t know.”

“That’s impressive,” Matt said.

“My theory?” she asked.

“No, I don’t know where the heck that’s coming from. But you did use the proper usage of ‘who’ and ‘whom’ in your last sentence.”

She had to laugh. “Comic relief. Always welcome.”

“Especially,” Max said, “when you’re unraveling a cosmic tangle.”

“Cosimo Sparks,” Matt said, “is now a murder victim himself, any murders he might have committed are just speculation.”

“So,” Max noted, “is the Table of Crime Elements before us, but Temple’s adjustment makes sense. There was a mini-attempt by the remaining Synth members and their followers to heist the million-dollar treasure chest at the Oasis last week.”

Max glanced ruefully at Temple from under quizzical brows. “Now that you’ve cleared away the underbrush, we stand a better chance of finding out where—and why—Kathleen O’Connor was lurking during the past two years of unsolved Las Vegas crime scenes.”

“Kathleen O’Connor.” Matt picked up the sheet of paper, then tossed it back down as if wanting to wash his hands of it. And her. “She’s become a myth, an invincible antagonist at the edges of all our everyday lives. If you believe,” he told Temple, “that the Synth guy, Cosimo Sparks, accounts for several deaths, that doesn’t leave much to blame on this … implacable banshee from Kinsella’s Northern Ireland past. How and why did you get so cozy with the Synth that they told you all about these murders and then just faded away?”

“They may not have completely faded,” Max said. “The IRA didn’t either.” His pause left a silence Temple had to fill.

“Surely, Temple, you didn’t go back alone to that hellish nightclub?” That’s what Matt really wanted to know. “It was bad enough you were snooping around it enough to crash one of the Synth’s meetings a bit back.”

This was awkward. She indeed had gone back there, and Max had been on scene as well. She didn’t want to lie to Matt.…

“I wasn’t alone,” she said.

She could feel the rising tension in Matt from two feet away. Max and she had not only once been live-in lovers heading toward marriage, but he’d also been the professional backup on her amateur investigations from the very beginning. Before Matt moved into the Circle Ritz.

“Midnight Louie and some of his feral cronies were there,” she said, quite truthfully.

The cat took a bow by rising and thumping down to the tabletop. He cocked a head at the paper under discussion, then yawned and thumped down to the floor. And Midnight Louie, all twenty pounds of him, did thump. Yet not a thing on the table had moved during his ponderous passage.

He lofted up to the couch arm right behind Temple, a bodyguard settling into position.

“That cat follows you like Mary’s little lamb in a Big Bad Wolf suit!” Matt sounded exasperated. That unlikely fact was true and they all knew it. Midnight Louie got around Vegas like a tumbleweed—fast, erratic, and often ignored. “After I saw his performance on our trip to Chicago, I have to admit he’s pretty formidable.”

Temple beamed with pride as she turned to view his latest perch. Louie had assumed a Cheshire cat position, his eyes narrowing, basking in the sunshine of full credit for his übercatness. He almost seemed to be smiling, but maybe that was because some of his snazzy white whiskers turned up at the ends. Any moment, she expected his lazily watchful form to vanish … everything but those whiskers.

“Plus,” she said fondly, “Louie makes a darn good ring bearer at weddings.”

“All hail the cat,” Max said impatiently. He’d been out of the country during the recent weddings of Temple’s Aunt Kit and Matt’s mother, both mature brides. He’d never seen a dapper Midnight Louie wearing a white formal tie with a ring box tied to it. “We’re not here to discuss weddings.”

Temple and Matt exchanged a glance. She was struck by how much of her life Max had missed during only a couple months of absence.

Max was still talking. “Tell Devine how you managed to solve several murders with one fell swoop of inspiration.”

Matt’s eyebrows remained arched inquiringly.

“First,” Temple said, “we need to consult the Table of Crime Elements, because my new version shows the theoretical crimes committed by Cosimo Sparks before his own recent death.”

Matt tapped the paper. “I see you’ve still got me down for Vassar’s death at the Goliath. Don’t I get a free pass for being your fiancé?”

Max snorted. “You just don’t like being paired with your slasher, Kitty the Cutter.”

Temple had expected Matt to challenge that one, but instead he just glared for a second and looked away.

Awkward, awkward, awkward. She and Max had never been formally engaged, but Matt probably hadn’t realized that. If she wanted to practice crisis-managing PR, doctoral level, she had the chance here and now.

“Sorry, guys. I am an equal opportunity speculative sleuth. I still have Max down for the Goliath murder that seems to have started this sequence.”

“I have to admit I’m cloudy on the latest happenings on the Las Vegas crime scene,” Matt said, “what with my career and family matters going full throttle in Chicago lately.”

“Come to think of it,” Max said, leaning back in his chair and then leaning back the chair to balance on its rear legs, “the Chicago mob was involved in founding Vegas. What?” he added, as Temple and Matt exchanged significant glances.

“What don’t I know?” Max asked.

Temple and Matt spoke at once, the sounds gibberish because they were saying different things.

“Okay,” Max said, “what I’m hearing is that Matt’s evil stepfather, Effinger, was kidnapped by the mob.”

“True, the unfortunate Effinger was bagged, gagged, and sent to a watery grave here in Vegas months ago,” Temple went on solo, “but in Chicago, last week, Louie was kidnapped from Matt’s mom’s apartment by a couple of lame mobsters who wanted something from a locked file box Effinger had left behind long ago in Chicago.”

Max leaned forward to stab the pertinent line in the table with his forefinger. “If any death on this list reeks of mob involvement, it’s Effinger’s. I happen to know that certain parties do not want folks snooping around at the Oasis and especially near that sinking-ship attraction. Or around that casino ceiling at the Goliath where the first guy on your unsolved list died and I was suspected of being the perp.”

Matt folded his fists atop each other on the table and leaned his chin on them as he studied the paper again. “The other mob death could be Sparks’s. Back in the day, they liked to leave their victim’s bodies messy and where they could be found.”

“True,” Temple said. “The suspect in the Sparks death is a way-out Chilean architect who goes by one name like a rock star. Santiago. There’s some blood evidence, but not enough to indict.”

“He still in town?” Max asked.

“I doubt it,” said Temple. “Speaking of ‘mob,’ in a good way, the Fontana brothers put the fear of God into him.” She couldn’t help smiling.

“What’s to smile about?” Max asked.

“Oh, I just found out my aunt Kit has been reporting on me to my mom back in Minnesota, who now thinks ‘a nice big Italian family’ is looking out for me here.”

“They are,” Matt said. “Not to mention the alley cat Mafia.”

“The Cat Pack,” Temple corrected him. “Louie and the ferals make the human Rat Pack in ’60s Vegas look lame.”

“Who was that?” Matt asked, speculating. “Singers Frank Sinatra, Sammy Davis Jr., and Dean Martin, right?”

“Yes,” said Temple, “and comic Joey Bishop and sometimes actress Shirley MacLaine, Warren Beatty’s older sis.”

“If you worked in clubs back in the ’50s and ’60s,” Max said, “especially if you were Italian like Sinatra and Dino, you played by mob rules.”

“Magicians were never under mob influence?” Matt asked.

“Naw,” Max said. “As you’ve both noticed, we’re too egomaniacal to control. Also, we’re pretty good at defending ourselves. So,” he continued, “did Midnight Louie find what Effinger had hidden away while the three of you were in Chicago?”

Temple nodded. “We all did, and it’s pretty weird.”

She lifted the Table of Crime Elements to reveal a crude drawing of a muscleman wrestling a serpent as thick as his gigantic quads.

“Ah.” Max grinned. “Our old friend Ophiuchus, the lost thirteenth sign of the zodiac and the symbol of the vanquished Synth. I know Professor Mangel’s dead body was found arranged in the houselike shape of the constellation’s major stars. And that the Neon Nightmare zodiac lighting effects included that sign.”

“So where else did Ophiuchus turn up?” Matt wanted to know. “Obviously I’ve missed a lot by never patronizing this now-closed Neon Nightmare joint.”

“Cosimo’s red satin cloak lining,” Temple said promptly. “It was arranged in that same houselike shape, with his body in white tie and tails on it.”

Max gave a small theatrical shudder. “A magician would appreciate that ‘hidden in plain sight’ element of the death scene. Magic is all about loss, death, and restoration. Too bad a surprising resurrection wasn’t in the cards and we could interrogate him.”

“If Sparks hadn’t been killed,” Temple pointed out, “the Synth members wouldn’t have tried their big plan out on a smaller heist that failed. I think Ophiuchus was just a cover. What the left hand is doing when the right one is robbing the bank.”

“So his death spooked the Synth conspirators,” Max explained to Matt. “They jumped the gun with the attempted mass illusion.”

“I thought,” Matt said, “that Oasis Hotel prize presentation Temple emceed was just … a piece of stunt PR.”

Temple winced. She considered herself more serious than that, but couldn’t deny that had been a larger-than-life event. “It was a heist attempt foiled in a way to look like crazy Strip business as usual.”

“And the mob,” Matt said. “Just how much mob is really left in Las Vegas?”

Temple shrugged. “That’s a complicated question. Everybody’s touchy on that subject now, with a forty-two-million-dollar mob museum operating downtown and the Tropicana and Gangsters Hotels adding smaller exhibitions of their own. Many iconic Vegas hotels, long ago imploded into nonexistence, were constructed with mob money. The Mafia skimmed profits from the front men and then invested in nightclubs and in country clubs and shopping centers and housing developments far afield from the Strip. That’s what’s meant by the mob ‘going corporate.’ They disappeared into the larger business climate. I know mob killings persisted into the ’90s, even after the FBI came in and shut down the scene in the ’80s.”

“And,” Max added, “there’s still illegal activity from meat hijacking to running prostitutes and drugs.”

“So lingering mobsters could still be active,” Matt said.

“And, like the displaced traditional magicians of the Synth,” Temple said, “they could still be hankering for that one last big score.”

Max nodded. “The object of everyone’s greed being the massive stash of money Kathleen O’Connor and her IRA hardliners collected from North and South America over the years and never delivered. Many former IRA malcontents want anything raised for their cause for reparation to the families who lost members in the struggle.” He paused. “Not for collateral damage like my cousin Sean, though.”

Temple hastened to move past that bitter truth. “We think much of the hoard is in bearer bonds, from what was found in the walk-in safe with Cosimo Sparks’s body. They’re not used much today, but are still valid. So the cache of cash, to put it in homonyms, would not have to be physically huge, although it might include serious weaponry.”

“Cosimo Sparks. Not a forgettable name. Who killed him?” Matt asked.

“You’re asking all the right questions,” Temple said. “I’m thinking the mob or ex-IRA members after the stash. It could have been stored in the hidden walk-in safe where Sparks was found. But it’s now gone. Someone could have suspected Sparks of moving it, and he could have. There were ‘prod’ stabs on the body, as if someone wanted to force him to talk.”

“Like my stepfather, Effinger.” Matt frowned. “Were the marks … slashes?”

“Ice pick,” Temple said. She noticed Max eyeing Matt narrowly.

“Any of this theorizing provable?” Matt asked.

“No, but the other three surviving Synth leaders saw the light at the same time I did. Sparks indeed could have accounted for the magic-related cold cases that have littered Las Vegas lately.”

“And your only witness to this mass confession is Midnight Louie—?” Matt asked skeptically.

“Yup. It wasn’t a confession, Matt. More of a clearing the smoke and mirrors from their eyes to see the truth as the scenario came to me.”

Matt took a long swallow of sangria and sat back. “So tell me the scenario.”

“If I can stand. I was used to doing ‘stand-up’ on-scene reporting when I was at the Minnesota TV station.” Temple did as requested and “reported” her overhearing the morose Synth survivors commiserating until she realized what the truth could be and stepped out of the dimness to say it.

“I don’t think the Synth members were killers, and Sparks was probably pretty unhinged by grandiosity and paranoia. I wouldn’t be surprised if he was bipolar.”

“And you think the lady magician Shangri-La also was approached to join the renegade magicians?” Matt shook his head. “She was already suspected of being a drug smuggler, and now we think she was really Kathleen O’Connor in disguise under all that full-face Asian makeup.”

“We do know she brought Temple onstage and made her ring disappear and then Temple herself,” Max said. “Louie fast behind Temple, of course, into the understage escape area. The entire sequence was designed to kidnap Temple.”

“For a ring?” Matt asked, surprised.

Temple glanced at Max. Kitty had claimed his “promise” ring to Temple.

“Yes,” Temple told Matt. “A trophy of her power, I suppose.”

“What happened to it?” Matt asked. He obviously sensed their unspoken thoughts.

“Molina kept it as evidence,” Temple said.

“Molina doesn’t strike me as having a leg to stand on in doing that, and she sure isn’t into bling.”

“It doesn’t matter, Matt. We were having a girly showdown over that, and she finally gave the ring back to me.”

Max was now staring at Temple with the same puzzlement and a new tinge of shock. “Where is it now?”

“In my scarf drawer, I guess. It was just something I bought at the women’s exposition when I was handling that.” She said the lie as casually as an amateur college actress could manage.

“Oh, that fatal bottomless pit,” Max said, “your scarf drawer.”

Temple laughed. “I know I’m impossible at managing scarves, but they’re too pretty to throw away. Look. I don’t know where Shangri-La fits in all this,” Temple admitted. “She was sabotaged during her act with the Cloaked Conjuror at the New Millennium and fell to her death. The body was definitely that of an Asian woman. Unless,” she told Max, “the corpse was switched on the way to the morgue and the tender mercies of Grizzly Bahr and his staff. Gandolph managed that for himself and a semi-switch for you when he spirited your unconscious body from the Neon Nightmare to Europe. Why couldn’t the all-powerful Miss Kitty pull off the same kind of illusions?”

“She could,” said Max. “Although I swore the woman who died pursuing me on a motorcycle was her, from information I got in Ireland, she’s very much alive. Magicians use body doubles. Houdini did. Gandolph and I didn’t. I suppose an international terrorism money-raiser like Kathleen could have insisted the doubles have facial plastic surgery to seem identical to her.”

“And then she let them die in her place whenever anybody got too close.” Now Temple shook her head. “What a totally irredeemable human being.”

“Maybe not,” Matt said, staring at the Table of Crime Elements. “The only person Jesus specifically invited to His Father’s kingdom in heaven was the thief being crucified beside him who went from reviling to believing in Him.”

“Deathbed confessions,” Max said, “are notoriously insincere.”

“Still.” Matt sat back. “I have to believe every human soul is redeemable.”

“You don’t have to believe it,” Max said. “You just do. And I guess that’s admirable.”

He leaned forward, stabbing the Table of Crime Elements with a forefinger. “Here, here, and here. Somewhere in these unsolved crimes are clues that will implicate and lead us to Kitty the Cutter.

“We’re getting closer than we know. I sense it. This time she won’t die on me to run away and die another day in another guise, and another after that. This time it’ll be a permanent demise. Even knowing what I know now about Kathleen’s beyond-brutal childhood, I won’t find peace until I know that she is off this planet for good, and unable to harm Temple, you, and me.”

Temple felt a chill run up the back of her neck, sheer anger. What a rabble-rouser Max would have made.

She eyed Matt, sitting back, his expression both troubled and intense, his arms folded across his chest as if holding something in.

She wondered what thoughts or emotions held him captive. Something she didn’t know, she sensed, kept him quiet.

And that couldn’t be good.