Cat In An Indigo Mood

Chapter 57

Bead Counting

"Did they really make rosaries that big?" Temple wanted to know as she trailed Matt out of police headquarters, holding her -arms as if embracing an invisible barrel.

"Well, almost. For nuns. Hung from their belts."

"How."

"Wow. It was another time and another place."

"Rosary belts. Sounds kind of kicky. Fashion, maybe. Crosses were big a couple seasons back."

Matt stopped. "An oversize rosary could be a pretty fiendish weapon. I hope Molina takes me seriously enough to reexamine the ligature marks on that first victim's neck."

"You think Nose E. is on to something."

"I don't know about Nose E. It's a cute clog. Maybe it smelled . . . menthol or eucalyptus leaves or tanna leaves to raise the mummy of King Tut. I don't know. But I have a bad feeling, ever since I heard the Blue Dahlia victim was an ex-nun, a nice, harmless ex-nun. It struck me that whoever killed her throttled the vocation, not the person."

"But she wasn't a nun anymore."

"Exactly. And she sure isn't an ex-nun now."

Temple sat down on the low concrete rim edging the weirdly decanted wall towering in front of police headquarters. "Matt, what if I'm right and the murders are philosophically but not physically connected? Like Leopard Lady. She left, all right, left the vocation of being a magician's assistant. And we've seen signs that it's not safe to leave magic."

"We? You and Max. you mean?"

Temple's nod only increased Matt's obvious unease.

"It was bad enough to learn after your recent kidnapping that Max has a counter-terrorist history he can't walk out on. Now you tell me that leaving his front profession could be as dangerous. He's really not safe to know."

"He never was. Hey, don't look at me like that. If what you're saying is true, it's not terribly safe to leave Mother Church, either."

Matt sat beside her, rubbing his neck as unconsciously as Molina had done earlier. "True.

Fanatics are fanatics, whether they espouse a religious or a political cause, or even . . . hocus pocus."

Temple remembered him pointing out that the magical term originated in the Catholic mass, and smiled. "Maybe all those things are connected. Call it mystical entertainment. Okay. Let's assume the murders aren't connected. Where does that leave us?'"

"With one fingered, or pawed, possibility. With a couple of mystery deaths."

"Aren't all deaths a mystery?"

"Now you're sounding theological. Pretty serious stuff for a Unitarian."

Temple nodded glumly. "I hope Molina takes you seriously, because l sure do."

"I wish you took me seriously on matters other than murder."

"Hey, you wanta go somewhere with me P" Temple asked as they approached her car at the curb across the street.

Matt paused for a moment not so much to consider the invitation, as to relish it. "Yeah."

"As part of the case, I mean."

"Molina wouldn't like you calling it that."

"You mean it's her 'case' and our 'conundrum?' " Temple pushed up her jacket sleeves as if mentally preparing to duke the difference out. "I want you to meet some people. Look them over."

"People?"

"Well . . . assorted psychics."

"That's a change of scenery from what I've been used to lately."

"The Halloween seance gang just happens to be in town for a conference. I'd like to renew auld acquaintance and ask them some questions. And I'd like your opinion of them. And, I'd look more . . . innocuous if l showed up with an escort."

She had managed to select the car key from the jillion-thousand keys on her ring (Temple had never met a key she didn't like the shape of) and unlocked her door, but Matt opened it and held it until she was seated.

He shut it and came around the back to the passenger's side, while she started the car and wondered why he made her so nervous lately. He certainly acted calmer himself, sort of dreamy calm around her. Maybe his newfound fame and fortune, relatively speaking, was good for him.

She smiled, nervously, as he got in the passenger side. "You haven't said whether you'll come or not."

"Of course I will." His smile was slow and sweet. "I'm always interested in what you're up to."

That blanket approval, of course, made her undercut her own impulses for the next four blocks.

"Well, l don't know what l hope to accomplish. I'm not going to find, you know, a suspect.

It's just that it's awfully coincidental that they're all in town just when Gandolph's old assistant is killed. Well, she wasn't that old, although she was well over former assistant, is what I mean."

"I know what you mean. You want someone else to look over the suspect pool."

"Right. l . . . we never did buy that one of these sleight-of-psyche artists didn't cause Gandolph's death. And now, with his former assistant killed--"

Matt nodded affably.

"You don't have to agree with everything I say!"

"What's bothering you?"

"Ah . . .I guess I should tell you that we--Max and l--have discovered that there's this secret society among magicians. It makes sure their secrets stay secrets, the inside info on all the illusions. Gandolph wasn't just unmasking phony psychics. He was planning a book on the subject. Max decided to finish it."

"Write a book? Kinsella?"

"Wrote a book. Yes, he did. Don't sound so dubious. It's not bad."

"But, Temple, psychics aren't magicians. What would this group have to do with this sinister society of sleight-of-hand artists!' Whew. Try to say that fast three times."

"Try it after you add the name of the society. The Synth."

"Sinth? As if you want to say 'since' and you lisp?"

"It's spelled with a y."

"Kind of like that designer drug, Hyacinth?"

"Exactly. Maybe the Synth was behind that smuggling operation. Well, they do exist. I've seen documents from them."

"What kind of documents?"

"Threatening letters. On parchment in Old English script. Like--"

"Like props in a high school Shakespeare play?"

"Maybe. but I've also seen threatening computer messages from them."

"Where? At home?"

"No, at---On Gandolph's old computer. Max showed one to me."

"This 'Sy"nth' sounds like all shadow and no substance."

"It could be just that. Or not."

"What's really bothering you, Temple? You're talking a mile a minute. I don't think a couple pretentious messages from this Synth could do that."

"Well, there's another reason I'd kinda like you along on this outing."

"You don't have to tell me why."

"It's just that I'm not really, really keen on visiting the Opium Den again."

She could tell he was searching her expression with a sudden concern she'd rather not look straight in the face. It reminded her of that awful night out on the highway, and what had gone before.

"I'm not crazy about it either," Matt said, "your visiting the Opium Den again. Even though she's gone. Shangri-la is a fraud and thief for sure, and maybe even worse."

"Matt!" Temple hit the brakes, realized that her rear view mirror showed a van close on her tail light, accelerated rapidly enough to jolt them both, and finally pulled over at the first empty stretch of curb she spotted.

"Matt? Do you know what you just said I"

"I said that Shangri-La is a bad lady, but nothing to be afraid of anymore." His face tautened, as if he had just remembered a secret he wished he had never known. "She left."

" 'She left!' Yes! The message on Molina's car."

Matt's face remained empty of every emotion but concern and confusion. "But . . . the ex-nun had nothing to do with Shangri-La, or magic."

"But the Leopard Lady did! Gloria Fuentes. Gandolph's former right-hand woman. And the

'she left' showed up on her body in the morgue. Okay, at the medical examiners. But I still like

'morgue' better. It has class, 'morgue.' "

"I don't see what you're so excited about."

"Well, you might think the second strangling was an imitative killing. Copycat, they call it. But maybe the message was the copycat part, not the killing. Somebody knew, or learned of, the message on Molina's car, and duplicated it, after the fact."

"Why? Just to bug Molina?"

"Maybe. Wouldn't you like to bug Molina now and then?"

"Not really. She's done a decent job--"

"Oh, come on. She rides right over whoever she pleases to get what she wants."

"It's her job."

"Is persecuting Max her job too ?"

"Maybe. He's been involved in some dicey things, if you'd just look at him with a little distance--"

"Oh, like from he's on Alcatraz and I'm in Las Vegas, is that enough distance for you?"

"Not. Quite."

"What would he? Aldebaran in the Hyades?"

"Huh! Temple, you're getting overexcited."

"Of course I am. It's what I do best." She leaned back in the seat, let her hands fall from the steering wheel. "Molina and Max aside, the fact is that those words appearing on the Leopard Lady's corpse are pure . . . theater."

"Magic."

"Magic, if you will. So, say the murders aren't connected."

"I don't think they are, because what I think happened to the woman Molina found . . . well.

I know who did it, Temple. Nose E. though so too, for whatever reason. Some smell. But we're just humans. We can't convict a man on something only a dog can smell."

"We can on DNA." She checked her rear view mirror again.

"Look. Help me check out these ESP types at the Opium Den, and I'll go back to church with you and we'll try to smoke out your murderer on the homeboy front."

"You think we can?"

"I think you can, if you just set your mind on it."

"Temple."

"Yes?"

"Let's go. Wherever. But . . . I'm sorry you lost your ring."

"My ring--? Oh."

He was silent for an International Coffee moment.

"Well," she said, sighing, "I am too. It went so well with your pendant."

When he looked up, amazed and hopeful and appalled, she was absorbed in putting the car into gear and pulling away from the curb.

The sudden acceleration knocked him back in the seat.