Cat In An Orange Twist

“You’ve never been at a loss with me.”

“I’m talking about a whole, semisecret culture, not a person from it.”

“What do you mean?”

Temple sensed a withdrawal in Danny, an Us-versus-Them realization.

She was a PR person. A communicator. Somehow she would have to communicate across the unspoken. She would, like the Murano, have to be a new animal, a crossover vehicle. Did that have something to do with Simon’s death? Was he a “crossover vehicle” somehow? Is that why he had been killed?

She decided, like a trial attorney, to sum up, even if it was premature.

“Here is what I’ve learned about Maylords. It’s a mass of contradictions. It’s supposed to be a classy, artsy operation, but it raids competitors for employees.

“It’s supposed to offer high-end furniture and service and it gives lip service to hiring the best employees in town and spending mucho money on training them for the opening… but on the other hand it tells them that they are all expendable. Management starts culling out employees from the full-pay orientation period on.

“It has,” Temple said nervously, “an all-gay management structure, which looks way enlightened and realistic, given the environment.

“But the management sexually harasses straight men, and some gay employees.” “Simon?”

“I think so, but he was handling it.”

“He never said anything.”

“Women don’t say much either. And when they do, their initial silence is pointed out as a sign of lying. Who wants to admit to that kind of pressure? I wouldn’t. I’d be embarrassed. I’d think that people would believe I’d ‘asked for it’ somehow. I’d decide I had to handle it myself. It’s a male patriarchalworld. Who’s going to believe women … or gays and lesbians? That’s how they cow us, isn’t it?”

Danny stood. Wiped his forehead as if to erase wrinkles. “If it was that bad, Simon would have told me.”

“Why? I wouldn’t have. I wouldn’t have told anyone. Stiff upper lip. Don’t cave. Running for help is the worst sign of weakness in an environment like that. How do you think I got to be Pepper-Spray Girl? I’m so afraid someone will take me for one-a girl-and take advantage of that vulnerability. Amazing how a whole gender is so worth denying. Not so amazing that gender preferences are worth denying too.”

“But you said the management was gay friendly.”

“I said it was gay dominated. Have you ever heard of a cat-fight? You must know Clare Booth Luce’s ’30s play, The Women, and the film? Being downtrodden doesn’t automatically mean you have empathy. Sometimes it means you have issues. Matt-you know this-used to be a priest. And he once told me, in view of all the instances of pedophile priests and he wasn’t one, believe me-but he once said, trying to explain this utter betrayal of his religion and his profession, that three things contribute to sexual abuse: privilege and secrecy.”

“That’s two.”

“The third was patriarchy. But you could interpret that as merely power. Management. It struck me. Gay life has secrecy, it has privilege among the initiated, and, in the case of Maylords, it has management. Power.”

Danny shook his head. “We’re a minority.”

“Are minorities incapable of abuse of power? Or are they even more ready to do it when they finally get some?” “You’re talking human nature, not sexual preference.”

“Exactly. Say the Maylords management was all African-American. Or Hispanic. Or all women. It would be an exclusive club, not possible most other places. The management `team’ would be grateful, and loyal. It would have privileges, and with that power comes the opportunity to abuse it.”

“There are always hierarchies, Temple darling. And you’re right. There is often some underground sexual component.”

“Power equals potential for abuse, and sexual abuse is the most demeaning. I’m not saying it was obvious, or even

rampant. But it was a nasty little undercurrent.”

“And nasty undercurrents escalate to murder?”

Temple sipped the last of the delicate martini. “There’s the rub. I don’t think so. I think nasty undercurrents usually stay at that level, roiling around making people’s lives miserable. But that’s the point. It’s more fun to torment the living. Why kill anyone?”

“Then you have no idea why Simon was killed, or even this annoying Blanchard woman?”

“No proof, certainly. Danny, have you ever heard of a gay motorcycle gang?”

His face puckered with confusion, then he burst out laughing. “No, but it’s a heck of a concept. Mind you, the ultrabutch has always been a gay-lesbian icon. Look at the Village People singing group and ‘Macho Man.’ “

“Straight people love that song too.”

“It’s a great song.” Danny frowned. “But a real street biker gang? No. Why?”

“They tried to cream me outside of a Chunk-a-Cheez restaurant.” “Tried?”

“I greased their skids with the extra-virgin olive oil cooking spray in my tote bag.”

Danny regarded the bag bunched at Temple’s ankles like a lapdog. “Awesome.”

“So you’ve never heard of such an outfit?”

“How did you know they were gay?”

“I went by outright stereotype: pink and baby blue motorcycles, outrageous rider names on their helmets. It just seemed

over the top.”

“Gays don’t own that in Las Vegas.”

“I know. So maybe somebody’s trying to give them a bad name.”

“That’s redundant, kiddo.” Danny stared into the empty bottom of his vintage cocktail glass. “I’d hate to think Simon died because of stupid sexual politics. A hate crime.”

“Well, I’ll just have to prove the motive was something else,then. You wanted me to investigate. You should get an outcome you like.”

“When have I ever?”

Temple didn’t like the bleak tone in Danny’s voice.

“The truth is out there,” she said, parroting the catch phrase created by The X-Files TV show, now itself dead and gone.

“Far out there,” he assured her. “Too far for most of us to catch up with it.”

“Hey,” Temple said, sticking her size fives into his downcast range of vision. “Most of us don’t wear Timothy Hitsman running shoes.”

Since Timothy Hitsman produced some of the most fashion-futuristic high heels on the block, that was a contradiction in terms.

Danny regarded her iridescent snakeskin-pattern pumps with gilt coils for heels.

He nodded. “Winged Mercury. You go, girl.”

She did, shutting the door behind her on the way out, leaving Danny alone in the elegant silence that would always be Simon’s last dance.

Chapter 50

Ring of Fire

I am a dirty dog.

I have, for self-serving reasons, convinced my battle-worn mother, my old lady, that she was right to want to relocate her

clan to Maylords territory.

The police have combed the empty field across from the store for all evidence from the volley of automatic weapon fire.

They found no weapons of mass destruction, only spent shells.

Nothing is safer than the last place anyone looked for anything, I tell her.

What I do not tell her is that the northern gangland territories are no longer safe for her and hers. Or for me and mine, for

that matter.

Like all ulterior motives, mine is both noble and ignoble.

I could use some trustworthy sharp night vision on the Maylords scene. Louise and I cannot do it all, even in split shifts, not with two murders already occurring on the premises and my Miss Temple mysteriously bereft of her main backup muscle, Mr. Max Kinsella.

And her secondary main backup muscle, Mr. Matt Devine, already works the night shift elsewhere.

Of course I am always and everywhere Miss Temple’s secret main muscle.

Pardon me if I do not consider the Fontana littermates to be worth more than eye candy and comic relief. Sure, they are all armed,

but I consider a handy shiv to be far more useful than a fancy Italian shooter anytime, be it weapon or wielder.

Shivs are fast, silent, deadly, close-up and personal. What more could the effective operative want? And those Fontana boys have

all that expensive custom tailoring to worry about, whereas we furred dudes have no such vanity issues … until after the fray, of course. And then we can lick ourselves into svelte shape again pronto.

Besides I do not trust dudes who hail from litters that large. Nine is a very … doglike … number. It bespeaks a certain

indiscrimination on the part of their mama.

So I have convinced my own dear, obviously discriminating, ailing, old mama that what is good for me and mine is great for her and

hers.

I am a worm and no feline, but I truly do believe that this will all work out to everybody’s advantage.

“You want to move Ma Barker now?” Miss Louise asks, snippily, when I propose my plan. “She is wounded, and no spring chicklet.”

“We are talking a better neighborhood.”

“Yeah … also a target for who knows what?”

‘That is our problem, Louise. We should know not only what but who by now. Midnight Inc. Investigations’s reputation is on the line.”

“So is your mother.”

“And your possible grandmere.”

“Get off that Divine Yvette-speak, Cher Papa! You have never admitted paternity, to me or any other living thing, including the lowly

cockroach. How is Ma Barker supposed to hoof it all those miles from the northern part of town?”

“I was going to leave the logistics up to you.”

“Right. When the tough get going, you get going in the other direction.”

“I am wounded, Louise

“Not as bad as your mama,” she spits. “I am only overseeing this stupid scheme of yours because I think the old dame

deserves a better neighborhood. It is a damn shame that you will still be in it.”

She can be very sharp, Louise. So can my mama.

I have no doubt that I shall be called to answer in the maternal court once Ma Barker is up to full snuff and snort again.

Still, I am pleased with myself. While Ma Barker’s gang keeps an eye on Maylords, I can keep an eye on Ma and the gang. And by irritating Miss Louise so predictably, I have ensured that she will be supervigilant in watching out for the old lady.

This is called, by the diplomats, killing two birds with one stone, or, actually, saving two skins with one brilliant plan.

I also have a plan on how to move the whole cat crew in one easy swoop. You might call it an attention-getting device. It takes a village to create a cat colony, and it takes a bus to move a herd. Or something like that.

I have spied just the cushy ride we all need cruising the northern neighborhood, and have tracked it to a seedy warehouse lot. Now I round up the troops so we can be ready to pounce when the truck of my choice opens its double-wide back door to Ma Barker’s gang, thanks to my having stuffed a cleaning rag in one hinge when I spotted it unattended a few days ago.

Miss Louise and I should be able to jimmy it open with our naked shivs and a bit of hit-and-run power from the heavier dudes in the gang: bang and enter, then ride home free. That is the motto for our exodus from bad neighborhood to new stomping grounds. We should arrive just in time for a midnight snack, when all the mice and rats are out.

Now if only I had a brilliant plan for trapping the Maylords killer.

But I do not. Yet. So I must keep a shiv-sharp eye out in case my Miss Temple figures out more than is good for her and somebody bad notices.

Chapter 51

Rafishy Doings

Temple had discovered that despite all the exciting events in her life, she was doomed to spend Wednesday night alone.

Max was distracted and obviously busy with projects other than hers.

Matt had made his move, such as it was, and had moved on to his demanding schedule of nightly radio shows and out-oftown speaking gigs.

Louie was off on errands of a peculiarly catlike nature, and was not talking.

She was all alone by the telephone, so she was surprised when it rang.

Her hopes ran high: in this order: Max. Matt. Matt. Max.

She was hopeless! Maybe it was Electra. That was a step forward. Maybe … her mother. A step backward. Maybe a wrong number? A desperate step.

“Hello?”

“Yeah.”

Gulp. Could it possibly be …

“Something’s going down.“Her hopes, yes.

“At Maylords.”

“What do you expect me to do about it?” she asked Rafi Nadir, for she could recognize his voice over the phone now. He must have got her phone number from the Maylords computer. Scary. She had inherited Molina’s nightmare, it seemed.

“The police-and one member of the force in particular-aren’t going to listen to me. Maybe they would to you.”

“What’s happening?”

“The loading dock. Out back. There’s a shipment.”

“Coming in, or going out?”

“I can’t say. Well, I look forward to sampling your muffins too, Buffy baby. Here’s lookin’ at you.”

He hung up.

Temple blinked. She hoped his call had been interrupted by someone he had to put on an act for. She really, really hoped

that.

Rafi’s warning had arrived on the eve before Amelia Wong’s last night in town. Coincidence? Temple wondered. Or prior planning?

Loading dock? Tonight? Alone? With Rafi Nadir? Maybe the moon was full and his Mr. Hyde personality was about to come out gibbering and slathering in unfettered lust. She just had his word that something fishy was happening at Maylords. What was she supposed to do about it? Call in reinforcements? Max was barely reachable. Matt was working. Heck, even Midnight Louie was off somewhere.

Right. She’d been through that scenario about five seconds before. Feeling a teensy bit ignored, are we? Every formerly overprotective male of her acquaintance busy out and about?

That left … little her.

Temple sat up straighter. Nadir had called her. Apparently he thought that was enough. If the big bad wolf thought little Red Riding Hood was reinforcements … maybe she should whip the napkin off her basket and pull out an Uzi. Or a Plum, as in a Stephanie operation. Temple considered the zany mystery series, then got a damn skippy idea.

Temple picked up her tote bag and went to the bedroom. For once the zebra-pattern coverlet had all its stripes on straight.

But Temple’s pride in housekeeping paled in comparison to the fact that the only partner in crime fighting she had tonight was … Rafi Nadir?

The tote bag hung heavier now, and it should. In it now reposed the small Colt Pocket Lite Max had bought her back in the days when he thought her salvation would be self-defense.

Silly boy. Salvation was always a lot more complicated than firearms. Trust a woman to know that.

Temple had decided that the more of a fashion victim she appeared, the more useful she would be.

She marched in the front entrance of Maylords, looking so chic and confident that the society photographer for the Las Vegas Review-Journal shot her with a blinding strobe of light.

This sudden new image was easy: she borrowed a page from Max. All black. Black boot-cut spandex jeans; black clunky, flat-footed Asian Mary Janes; black jersey top with Renaissance-fluted sleeves; black fanny pack adhered with black chains that were crying in vain for a revealed belly button. Black Colt, weeping for concealment.

Amelia Wong’s two boys in shades looked like cartoon cutouts in comparison.

What had they done to protect anyone?

Interesting question.

Tonight.

After the ceremonials.

After the Wong was over.

After all the hoopla.

And the hopes.

Meanwhile, the band played on for the 8:00-to-11:00 P.M. reception hastily assembled to celebrate Maylords new support of drunk driving issues. MADD delegates thanked the Maylords delegates for the generous donation. TV crews got their pallid sound bites and left. Hors d’oeuvres were eaten. The “wine” was ginger ale, in deference to MADD and the occasion. The celebrities left and the crowds thinned, leaving Temple little excuse for remaining.

So she called an impromptu strategy meeting in the employee lunchroom.

The banks of fluorescent fixtures highlighted the strain in everyone’s faces. Temple wondered if she looked ten years older

too.

“The police and the media have been very discreet,” she noted, “but we can’t expect that to go on forever. Give us one slow news day, and they’ll be all over the `Maylords curse.’

“What’ve you done to prevent that?’ Mark Ainsworth asked, taking the lead.

“Called in a few IOUs I’ve got with the media in this town.”

“The coverage has been pretty low-key,” Kenny admitted, but his shoulders were slumped. “Just everything’s gone wrong,

from the Las Vegas Now! deal on.”

“I don’t need this,” Amelia Wong put in. “Matt Drudge, well-named alternate media weasel, is doing a whole investigation of my ‘empire.’ Murder is the ginseng on the rice cake for him.”

“Then maybe,” Temple said, “what we need most is a solution to the crimes.”

“Yeah, right.” Ainsworth sneered. “I’ve got my crack security people right on the scene and they haven’t seen a thing.”

Temple refrained from mentioning that one of his not-socrack security men was hinting at a break in the case, and that she was hoping to be there when it broke.

“I’m thinking that we might be better off anticipating the publicity. You, Ms. Wong, could go on Las Vegas Now! to discuss the transcendental elements of these misfortunes, the power of chi, the life force, and the disharmony of evil acts in all our lives.”

“lf we have to,” Kenny said, standing. “I’d like to go ahead with the week’s events. Carry on. It’s almost over, thank God.”

He was the CEO. People nodded even if they didn’t look like they believed him. Wong and her contingent swept out. Ainsworth passed right by Temple’s chair, looking down his nose at her.

Kenny Maylord stopped in front of her, shook his head, and said, “I appreciate what you’ve done, but a PR person can’t do much about murder.”

Temple remained behind in the lonely assemblage of Formica-topped tables and plastic-upholstered chairs, Maylords’s equivalent of the servants’ kitchen and so very unchichi. No good chi here. But maybe, somewhere else in Maylords tonight. Could Rafi Nadir really be her salvation?

Temple melted down the travertine trail and into the darkest, dimmest vignette she could find to await her date with destiny. Come to think of it, Rafi Nadir was proving to be as loyal and useful as Midnight Louie his own self. Grrrrrr!

It was almost midnight before Rafi showed up.

Matt was almost on the air.

Max was … hunched over a hot computer … or halfway to Ireland in his mind … not here.

Rafi suddenly peeked out from behind the fake wall of a vignette. Nobody noticed him. Temple edged over until she stood

on the opposite side of the wall.

He glanced away. “You got the LVMPD on your hot dial?” She nodded.

“Is she on your instant dial?”

Temple nodded. “I know her number, all right, but I don’t want to use it except as a last resort.” “Ballsy little broad.”

Temple nodded. “Where and when does this all go down?”

“Out back. Midnight. You got backup?”

“Ballsy big dudes.”

“Really? Not police?’

“I don’t do police.”

“Neither do I. Anymore. Are you sure?”

“No. But the price of not being sure isn’t worth it. This one’s for Danny.”

He considered. Didn’t like it, but he considered. “For whoever you say.”

Temple nodded. “You’d be surprised.”

“Maybe I would. Let’s roll.”

*

The back of Maylords after midnight was spooky. Empty. Dark. A loading dock with nothing to load. A parking lot with nothing to park.

Temple lurked-that was the only word-behind the roll-down garage door, Rafi at her side.

She held her suspiciously heavy fanny pack in her hand. From it had come a big black beret to cover her betraying red hair. She was as black as she could be.

“What else is in there?” he asked in a whispered rasp. “Nothing. My … protection.”

“Shit. Don’t tell me, girl, that you’re not carrying anything more than condoms?”

“None of your business. And if I am, I’m qualified.”

“You have a permit for that vague ‘protection’ of yours?”

“I’ve shot it off a few times at a firing range.”

“That’s the problem.”

“The few times?”

“And shooting off at a firing range. This isn’t a firing range. There’ll be real people here. You better give me the gun.” She was silent.

“Or I bail.”

She gave him the gun. He tucked it in his suitcoat pocket like it was no more dangerous than a pack of Juicy Fruit gum.

Or Doublemint gun. Gum!

The sound of a serious engine growled like a Big Cat in the distance. Coming closer.

Rafi nodded. “Behind the Dumpster. Quick.”

Sure, she was always eager to Dumpster dive… .

Temple crouched behind the huge, dented wall of painted steel. Something on claws scurried away as she and Rafi settled behind the Dumpster.

Not even the odor of orange peels left over from the blessing ceremony could cover the conjoined reek of dead cigarettes and food.

“Everybody left,” Temple complained in a whisper after a while.

“Yeah. Me too.”

“Won’t they miss you being on duty?”

“Nah. I was let go yesterday.”

“Let go!”

“Yeah. That’s why we’re here.”

“You’re not supposed to be here?”

“Are you?”

“Well, not out back here sitting on my heels inhaling dead shrimp. But you’re not supposed to be here! What good can you do?”

“You don’t wonder why Maylords would let the hired security go a day early, before the Wong to-do is over and done with?”

“Oh. They don’t want impartial witnesses.”

“Yeah. Only I’m not impartial to anything. Maybe you’ve noticed.”

“I have,” Temple said, “and that’s what makes me nervous about this.”

“Stay nervous, then. A little sweat would improve on the Dumpster cologne.”

“I do not sweat. I use a really good deodorant.”

“Couldn’t tell it by me, kid.”

She didn’t have a comeback to that one, so she didn’t try.

Okay. They were here, their knees ready for a rack, inhaling leavings the rats didn’t stick around to protect, and no one else was to be seen. Rafi was an ex-employee. She was about to become an ex-employee. Wow. Together, they didn’t have one leg to stand on for being here.

“I’m actually glad they’ve all left,” she whispered, wishing she could do that too.

“They appeared to have left,” Rafi said.

A bit of overhead parking light caught his profile. It was hunter-intent. Temple realized she’d been allowed along on this outing, like a bird dog, not like a partner. Not that she’d want to be Rafi Nadir’s partner! That was something even C. R. Molina had run screaming from over a decade ago.

Or was it?

“Shhhh! “

Jeez, he could hear her thoughts?

She heard the grinding gears, the squealing breaks, the creaks of a big truck turning into the Maylords lot. A lot of big trucks pulled up to the Maylords loading dock. All day.

Not all night.

Stealing the slightest glance, she saw the usual furniture delivery truck, big and square and bearing the Maylords name on

the side.

What was it doing here now?

The brakes squealed as it backed up to the loading dock, and silenced as it finally stopped.

The night grew quiet again. Nothing more happened with the truck. No door opening and slamming shut, no driver dismounting. Nothing.

Then she did hear something. A faint whine, like a radio that’s on with the volume turned down, so you only sense a presence, not what it is. Not what’s causing the hair to rise at the nape of your neck.

Temple wished for her firearm back.

The almost imperceptible noise increased, in waves, like a gust of wind coming closer at forty miles per hour. The weather forecast tonight had been clear and calm. She’d checked.

Rafi Nadir’s hand closed around her forearm.

Closer. Coming closer.

It was a strange sort of purring sound really, like Louie at the foot of her bed, heard but not yet felt.

The purr became a grumble, became a rumble, became a loud, grating noise and then a coughing sputter.

Temple recognized that mechanical throat-clearing: slowing motorcycle. Slowing motorcycles, plural. A gang.

She gasped, but Rafi’s hand covered her mouth. Not a New Age experience. She forced back her automatic gag-bite reaction. This was the only partner in crime busting she had at the moment.

While she mentally fussed, she heard the snap of metal hitting asphalt, the snick of something-switchblades?-sliding open.

Whoever or whatever they were, they were settling in for a while.

Rafi touched her lips with an icy finger. No! With the cold steel of gun barrel to caution continued silence.

He had it.

Temple did so want to be at home in her own bed, with her knees not jackknifed and the reek in her nose not nauseating her, with Louie. Or Max. Or Matt. Or a NOW magazine. What the hell.

Rafi had scrambled to the other edge of the Dumpster and was peering around the edge. The gun barrel he held up and behind him caught a gleam of light. Temple thought of Darth Vader’s metal-gloved trigger finger.

Temple heard the loading dock’s small side door opening. Grunts. Something heavy hitting concrete. Muffled laughter.

Steps walking back and forth between the loading dock and the slap of something against metal.

She was so busy interpreting the unseen sounds that she was startled when something soft and live and tickling brushed her cheek. On her face.

She blinked and caught a fan of passing hair in her eyelid. It floated like a marabou boa, stung like a diving hornet.

Temple spit out hair. Louie! She’d know that tail anywhere.

“What the hell?” The voice was male and astonished. “Put up your X-actos, boys. Looks like a buzz saw has already been at this stuff. Make that a real big wood chopper. Man, our grass is cooked and our powder blowed. Something’s big-time wrong.

Let’s get outta here.”

No sooner had the mysterious man gathered his troops than the presence that had air-kissed Temple’s cheek rocketed out into the parking lot proper, screaming like a V2 rocket over England during World War II. A whole bombardment of Screaming Mimis poured out of the parked truck back and whistled past her.

She stood despite a hand pulling on her elbow.

The growling sound that had followed the truck into the lot was a mob of motorcycles now mounted again and revving their engines, a whole gleaming circle of them.

“No, not yet!” someone was screaming at her back.

That wasn’t all. A bunch of someones were screaming at her front.

Scruffy-looking men were erupting from the weeds and cactus surrounding the lot. They seemed to be wearing vests with

big letters on them. What was this, a fraternity initiation?

At ground level, Midnight Louie, for it was indeed he, and his cadre of cats were circling the motorcycles like berserk windup toys, howling and hurling themselves claws out at stalled tires and the canvas saddlebags hanging from every machine.

Temple had barely identified the bikes and riders as her Rainbow Coalition Gang when she noticed a vertical Louie dragging his front claws with all his pendant weight through one of the saddlebags. A thin white line leaked through.

Drugs.

Of course. And it had been trucked here inside a Maylords furniture van. Furniture that wasn’t stuffed with down but drugs.

And this gang was here to make the exchange after the stuff had been successfully smuggled in.

The rider whose saddlebags were leaking tried to kick-start his machine, tried to kick Louie off the ripping side of his drugstuffed bag.

Temple ran forward, forgetting she no longer had the gun, or that her pepper spray was too small and too far.

“No!”

The word was bellowed behind her, so like a parent’s howl at a two-year-old about to touch a hot stove that Temple paused to look behind her. She saw Rafi Nadir over her shoulder, her own gun in his hands leveled just beyond her.

Louie was falling onto the black asphalt, but another black blot ran at the compromised saddlebag even as the rider revved

the bike.

The oncoming men on the fringe were tightening like a noose, shouting and aiming.

Temple somehow was trapped in the dark, bloody heart of it, still standing, her ears roaring, looking for Louie.

A bike, the oddball black one amid the screaming colors, came swooping straight at her, veering like an ice skater around the dozen or so cats crisscrossing the parking lot like demented lemmings.

“Drop it!” voices shouted from the fringe. “Drop your weapons. Hit asphalt or we shoot.”

Well, she had no weapon to drop, and before she could hit asphalt the motorcycle hit her. An arm like a stage hook swooped her sideways onto the bike’s spiffy painted gas tank in front of the long leather seat.

She saw a low, dark form leap at its rear saddlebags. The bike shimmied as if skidding on black ice. Temple was pulled halfway over the gas tank. She saw a small black silhouette hit asphalt and roll into the path of another revving motorcycle.

The roar of the competing engines was blasted to bits by the ear-splitting drone from an overhead helicopter drowning all

sound. Its blare of spotlight turned the turmoil below into a silent film overpowered by a flying freight train.

And standing solo in the center of the spotlight, bewildered or maybe just chagrined, was the film’s instant star: Rafi Nadir. He was holding up his bare hands, as something really small and dark hit the pavement between his feet. It was not furry for a change.

Oh, no! Her pristine, hardly used Firearm Lite.

Something spat up asphalt only two feet from her face. A bullet.

Temple shut her eyes. The rider’s body jerked as more bullets kicked up asphalt all around them. Temple was in a maelstrom of heat and noise and vibration, hanging on and hoping to at least take out a Wicked Witch when she finally landed. The bike she was on roared into the desert darkness so near the Strip and all its works, so near the massive fantasy buildings squatting on ancient sands and calling themselves megahotels.

She had glimpsed the biker’s nom de road on the Darth Vader helmet: Gay Blade.

At least, Temple thought, she probably didn’t have to worry about being raped as well as killed.

Just the latter.

Which wasn’t as much of a relief as it should have been.

Chapter 52

Snow-blind

“You jumped the gun.”

I pick myself up, dust myself off, and see that I have made a five-point landing right atop a shiny black firearm that bears a sickening resemblance to one I have seen in my Miss Temple’s possession at the Circle Ritz.

I do not pause to admit the accuracy of Miss Midnight Louise’s observation.

Instead I observe twelve men in LVMPD vests advancing on us both, and the gun. And Rafi Nadir now making like a

starfish flat on the asphalt. I find myself in the grip of an urgent feline need for a luxurious roll on that very asphalt.

While I am making like the overbearing tar scent is catnip, I make sure to writhe and rub and lick any trace of fingerprints from the weapon in question.

By the time the hobnail boots are close enough to kick us, I have spurted away, having ensured Miss Louise’s equally fast

exit by giving her a high five in the face followed up by a low four in the posterior.

Ma Barker and her gang have also engineered a discreet exit, leaving the humans to sort it all out for themselves, which is what they deserve after tonight’s boggled performance on all sides.

One of the humans so being sorted is Mr. Rafi Nadir. That will have high-level repercussions, I bet.

“Are you not worried about your roommate?” Miss Louise asks.

“Not at the moment.”

“She was abducted by a rogue biker.”

“I have a feeling that she can handle him better than I can. I am more concerned that the DEA guys round up all of those

buzzing bikers still trying to breathe free.”

“Then we had better give them a hand.”

So begins a long and lively session of the road game people call “chicken.”

The Barker Gang and Midnight Inc. Investigations take turns playing apparent roadkill, sending biker after biker careening out of control and into the handcuffs of the Vegas police.

When we have wiped up the parking lot of all the evildoers, the only thing that remains untouched is a pale trail of cocaine. (For some reason this human drug of choice always reminds me of flea powder, so I would as soon sniff that line of powder as I would vermin poison.) Sirens wail in the distance as I approach Ma Barker, who has mustered her troops from the sidelines with Gimpy as her aide-de-camp.

“So, Grasshopper:’ she says in a demanding maternal rasp. “All your big talk about relocating the colony in the convenient truck was pretext for using us to rat out a human smuggling operation.”

I hang my head. Actually, it is a little muzzy from all that pavement hitting and not too happy about being upright anyway.

“And when you told us to make ourselves right at home and paw the contents into prime napping conformation, you were actually using us to rake open hidden drug caches. `Scratching Posts Are Us,’ you said. Dig in.““I cannot deny it.”

‘The thieves would have slit the seams anyway and the phony truck would have disappeared with them after the transfer of the goods.”

“Yeah, but I wanted the ‘goods’ in free-falling condition, of use to nobody. It is bad, bad stuff, Ma.”

“Not to mention stuffing. You used us, Grasshopper.”

“Uh . yeah.”

“Fine job. We worked off every dead claw sheath in the colony tonight, and in a good cause too. That dreadful white powder,” she adds, shaking her head. “It is like mainlining eraser dust, but these headstrong humans have no control. I had hoped to leave that behind in our previous territory, Grasshopper. You did not tell me we were moving into snow country here.”

“A fluke,” I say. “We have made the case for the LVMPD, although we will get no credit.”

Ma Barker touches the tip of one shaky mitt in the lethal white trail. “It does not do a thing for me. Why does it make these humans perform such capers, including the risk of trying to smuggle it?”

“To each his-or her-own,” I say. “I wish I was a little bird on the wall of the CAPERS unit when Mr. Rafi Nadir is brought

in for questioning.”

“You wish you were a little bird?” Ma Barker’s disgust comes through loud and clear despite her weakened state. “What are you supposed to be? A parakeet? A canary?”

“I am not colorful,” I say with great dignity, “and I do not sing for my supper. And were I literally a bird, I would be a big one. A big black one. A raven.’

“Raving mad,” says Miss Louise, “but he certainly knows w h i c h s i d e h i s F r

glances at the empty spot where Miss Temple’s erstwhile gun and her equally erstwhile ally laid. “Though he is oddly complacent about where that bread butterer is now.”

“That is because I have superior knowledge, Louise.”

“How superior?”

“That is for me to know and you to find out. Too late.”

Chapter 53

Blinded by the Knight

Temple had ridden pillion on a motorcycle before. Well, once. But she had never been slung over the gas tank facedown like a sack of produce. Mashed tomatoes, say.

By the time the machine grumbled to a swaying stop somewhere in the unlit night, then tilted onto its kickstand, her fillings were doing the rhumba and her sinus cavities echoed like the Carlsbad Caverns.

So when she was hauled up by the cowl collar on her sweater and set like a Beanie Baby on the long leather seat facing backward … which meant she was facing straight into the helmet of her captor, she was too jolted to bolt.

In fact, all she cared about was that the ceaseless, shuddering motion had stopped, and her with it.

Presumably, she faced the ringleader of the foiled expedition.

He had certainly zoomed out of nowhere and taken prisoners, solo. Her. Still, he had taken her along for the ride.

Presumably he didn’t intend to kill her until she squawked. Er, talked. When she did, she would surely stutter.

He dusted her off, patted her down-way too well for a gay guy-and pulled up the smoke Plexi visor on his helmet.

Even in the wan light of a desert moon, with dust acting like gluey mascara on her lashes, she could see the obvious.

“Max? How the heck did you become a gay biker?”

“Knocked one out and took his place.”

“How did you know about any of this?”

“Temple, Temple, Temple. Do you really believe, that no matter how stressed out I am, I could hear about all the dangerous action in your life and not keep an eye on things?”

“You haven’t been around.”

“You haven’t noticed that I’ve been around. Maybe you’ve been seeing too much of the wrong people.” “And not enough of you, obviously.”

“I can’t change that, for the moment,” he warned her.

“How did you know what was going to happen here tonight?”

“Finding out about the drug transfer was easy. Bribes, lies, and videotapes. Finding out what you were up to … priceless.”

“Poor Rafi. He was left holding the bag.”

“Is that a reference to Molina?”

“Max! That was mean!”

“I’m feeling pretty mean right now.” He winced, and shifted in the seat.

She noticed that his face, never bronzed, looked paler than usual. Must be the moonlight. That didn’t stop the forthcoming lecture, though.

“Why on earth, or anywhere in the galaxy, would you partner up with a loser like Nadir? You almost got caught in the

crossfire.”

Temple gulped back a giggle, a slightly hysterical one. “You think that’s funny? You should take my blood pressure right now.”

“A lot seems funny when life and death is involved. It’s either that or go crazy.”

“You can’t go any crazier than you are.”

“But I was right, wasn’t I? Something was rotten at Maylords, and I was there for the kill.”

“The takedown,” he corrected her. “Let the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department get the credit.”

“Molina will look good.”

“She could use that.”

“That was meaner. You as much as brought Molina and Rafi together again.”

She could see his grin in the moonlight, those white pirate’s teeth. “That ought to be interesting. Too bad we’re not going to see the best part.”

“The police will want to talk to me.”

“Let them wait. Better hop on back.”

Max detached a passenger’s helmet that fit her head like an upended fishbowl. It didn’t have any cool name written above the visor, drat it. She scrambled shakily up behind him on the idling, pulsing motorcycle and fastened the helmet strap. “Max! There are holes in the back of Gay Blade’s jacket!” “I know,” he shouted back.

“Are these bullet holes?” Her forefinger explored two. “Yes.”

“You didn’t, like, shoot Gay Blade off his bike, did you?”

“He’s fine. Just his jacket isn’t.”

“Then … Omigosh, they shot you as we were riding away. Max. Say something.”

“Yeah. And it hurts. So let’s get somewhere so I can get off this bone rattler.”

“You really are a magician!”

“Call me Kevlar the Magnificent. I’ll be fine. On and buckled up? Let’s ride.”

He pointed the motorcycle back toward the city. The Las Vegas lights were blazing: bright warm white and Technicolor neon.

It felt like taking off for the moon, free and daring, and quite splendidly alone.

Temple pressed one hand against the leather jacket, feeling the rough round hole of a bullet, and wondered how or when or why she had ever thought she could resist the truly mind-blowing magic that was Max.

Chapter 54

Counterinterrogation

Molina stood with her hands wrapped around her elbows, watching through the one-way glass.

Alch stood slightly behind her, hating the occasional foot shuffles that showed he was more nervous than the guy at the

interrogation table.

“I suppose the drug task force would let you interview him after they’re through,” Alch suggested finally.

“And give Nadir the steering wheel to this squad car? Everything we said would be on tape. I do not want anything I have to say to him on the record. Look. He’s glancing over, letting us know he knows we’re watching. “He doesn’t know who is watching, that you’re watching.”

“Yes, he does, he certainly does.”

Molina turned so fast she nearly walked over him on her way out.

“Let’s hope the narcs nail him good for this one.”

*

But when Alch discreetly followed up on Molina’s instructions later that early Thursday morning he discovered that Nadir’s story had been iffy, but plausible enough to get him released.

So Alch immediately reported to Molina in her long narrow office.

“I was called because of the Maylords murders, but how did you hear about this stuff going down?” Alch asked.

Molina shuffled papers even while he struggled to glimpse their contents upside down.

“I was working late.”

“Leaving Mariah alone at home?”

“No, not that she isn’t claiming she’s old enough for it. I still have a neighbor lady sit with her nights, and, boy, do I hear about it every time. How long before they stop saying they’re old enough?”

“Until they’re old enough. Guess I’ll go home to my English bulldog. He’s twelve too, but he’s a lot less demanding than a

preteen girl.”

“Get outta here, Morrie.” She smiled thinly and waved a hand.

He left, as uneasy as when his Vicky had promised never to smoke. She still was smoking today.

Some headstrong preteen girls were pushing thirty.

Molina rapped her fingers on her chair arms until she had counted one hundred and Alch had to be through the hall and on

the elevator.

She stood, unconsciously pushed her blazer sleeves up as if expecting hard work, then jerked them down again before the cheap polyester blend could wrinkle.

She knew what she wanted to do, had to do.

She went into the hall, down three doors to the day-watch commander’s office, and brushed her knuckles against the ajar

door, moving in right after.

She was ranking here, even if she had no authority over the drug task force.

She paused to observe the man lounging at Sergeant Roscoe’s desk.

Roscoe would have a heart attack to see this. You had to love those narcs from their filthy tennis shoes to their low-riding pants that bunched like accordions at their ankles. Add long, matted hair, tattoos, BO, and facial hair that gave scraggly a bad name. They were almost ready to audition for the Antichrist.

“Lieutenant Molina,” the man greeted her. “Aren’t we looking natty for the night shift.”

“No competition for you, Paddock. You’re Prince Charming.” He laughed. “Man, I can’t sit up straight now to save my soul. So consider yourself saluted. What can I do for you?”

“You see right through me,” she joshed back, taking the chair across from him. “Fascinating as the drug bust at Maylords

is, I’ve still got two unsolved murders on my roster.”

“They’re related, right?”

“I’m not so sure. That Maylords operation is a snake’s nest of sexual and office politics.”

“Tell me about it! I could hardly arrest those biker dudes; they kept mistaking it for an especially assertive pickup.” “You have any trouble making the case?”

“Nah. We’d been tipped off. The drugs were smuggled in imported furniture. The stuffing wasn’t goose down like it should have been, but it was white and fluffy and all neatly plastic wrapped.”

“So who’s behind it?”

“The so-called security staff was mostly all in on it. The bikers picked up the goods when they said so, and then the stuff went into the distribution chain. Your CAPERS detectives might be of use to us in pursuing the insider angle. I don’t want to drag people in for questioning and alert the contact.”

“Sure. They’ve plenty of questions to ask. We don’t have any solid leads on the murder, or murderers, yet. What about … wasn’t there one guy you let go?”

“Yeah. Ex-cop outta L.A. Turned out he’d been the one who tipped us off. Had some nutsy notion of playing the hero and

tracking them before we got there. I mean, you’re off the force, stay off the force.”

“Right. An amateur detective might be useful to us, though. What’d you get on him?”

Paddock’s dirty fingernails rifled through a slew of paperwork. Finally he turned to the typewriter and rolled a sheet out of

the platen.

“Here it is. Rafi Nadir. Made sergeant in L.A., for about one month. I’ll call down there to check his story.”

Molina scanned the familiar form, memorizing the only two facts she needed. “Looks like a loser,” she commented. “If we can use him, that’s good enough.”

“Right.” She stood. “Don’t stay up too late. You could use a beauty sleep.”

Dirty Larry Paddock laughed as she eased out the door. She heard the one-handed typewriting resume while she paused, repeating the numbers over and over to herself.

Address and telephone number. That was all she needed. Not what she wanted, but what she needed.

Chapter 55

Same Old Song

The apartment was like a million buildings in a thousand Sunbelt cities: three stories, pale stucco, rust stains running like tears from the window air-conditioners.

Dogs barked ceaselessly in the distance, always three streets over and five doors down. Not quite traceable, so no one could call the cops, who wouldn’t come anyway.

Molina always thought that owners who staked their dogs out and left them to bark ought to be staked out and left to whine for at least three days. Minimum.

But she was in a bad mood now, and nothing about this shabby neighborhood did anything but exacerbate her anger. And fear. Where goeth anger, there always goeth fear.

This was the last thing on earth she wanted to do, and the first thing she had to do to take steps to protect her world from

the asteroid heading right for the heart of it.

Molina slammed the car door of her aging Toyota shut.

For a moment the lost dogs paused in their chorus, then their raw, mechanical barks resumed.

No one listened to them anymore. No one heard. She could have been an ax murderer and no one in this neighborhood would peek out.

The apartment lobby was six steps up and paved with brutalized mailboxes. No Social Security check would rest safe here.

She checked the apartment number she’d read on the Maylords employee sheet. Listed in fading pencil to an R. A. Reed.

Right.

She went up eight more stairs that bent and wound up another eight steps.

The hall rug was sculptured pea green poly, disfigured by an ancient eczema of stains.

A fire door led to a dingy hallway with bug-dotted brushed glass light covers.

At 2C she rang the buzzer.

And waited.

Not long. The occupant had been up late. Oh, yeah.

He pulled the door almost all the way open, challenging whoever had the guts to call at this early morning hour. He hadn’t expected her.

The door swung partly shut again, before she stuck her sturdy loafer in it.

“Mind if I ask you a few questions?”

Rafi needed a shave. He had needed to shave twice a day anyway when he was regulation. Now, after a postmidnight

interrogation, he looked like a Kabul terrorist.

“Why not before?” he said. “You were there.” - She didn’t bother denying it. “I don’t like to be recorded. Do you?”

“I might, if you were there.”

“Won’t happen. My middle name is ‘Off-the-record’ on this.”

” ‘This’ is me, right? My life.”

“I am armed and dangerous. Are you? I think they took your toy gun away.”

“That Colt wasn’t mine. I’d never carry a pussy gun like that.”

Molina raised her Mr. Spock eyebrow. It had always drivenRafi nuts. “It was in your hands in the Maylords lot. Picked up from right beside you.”

“How’d you know that?”

She was a desk jockey now, an expert at scanning reports in a few seconds for the meat, that was how. But she had more clout if she didn’t say so. She was beginning to understand the weasley Kinsella modus operandi.

“I’m working the Maylords murders. They don’t look like drug hits.”

“No, they don’t. They aren’t. At least I don’t think so.”

“Oh, were you hired to think?”

“I thought enough to see the drug smuggling going down.”

“Yes. Rafi Nadir, Boy Scout snitch. Quite a change.”

“Me change? Hell, Carmen, you changed first and biggest.”

“I won’t talk about the past.”

“Too bad. That’s all I’m interested in.”

“Your problem. Just tell me what you’re doing here.”

“Here? Living, if you can call it that.”

“In Las Vegas.”

I-k shook his head, shrugged. “All roads lead to Las Vegas. I follow all roads. If I’da known you were here, I’da been in

Reno.”

“Wouldn’t we have been lucky?”

“I’m not leaving. I like the place, even though you’re here.”

“You may not have a choice. If the drug task force doesn’t like you, you can be sure they’ll make you leave.”

“They let me go, Lieutenant Chief Petty Officer Carmen, Sir. I know the routine. They had anything, they’d have kept me.

They can’t prove I did anything but call in the Maylords action.”

“And the gun?”

“Not mine. One of those wussy Wild Bunchette guys dropped it at my feet like a bouquet.”

He was looking intolerably smug about something. It had to be more than his knee-jerk disdain for anyone not macho. Something about the Colt story was dead wrong, but Molina didn’t know where to find the lie. Meanwhile, he was continuing to justify himself, and his presence at last night’s incident.

“Wasn’t I right to arm myself in that shooting gallery? Had a nice talk with the narcs about all the drug action in L.A. Who we knew in common. I’m one of the boys still, Carmen. You’re just an uppity woman taking some guy’s job.”

She expressed her anger by pushing past him to eye the premises.

Living room, eating bar between that and a tiny kitchen, a short hall probably leading to one bedroom and a bathroom.

Everything was neat and in its place, despite the shabby surroundings.

For a minute she felt the room was rocketing away from her. She was standing someplace else, on a different planet, in an apartment they’d shared in L.A. In the bathroom. Holding a diaphragm up to the light. Revelation through a pinhole. Mariah.

Her daughter should know about this man, and this apartment? Alch was nuts. Never.

“You look a little queasy,” someone was saying. “The way you always did before singing. Sit down. The bedbugs won’t bite. I Raided them out.”

Someone had thrown a blanket depicting dog breeds over a chair. Molina perched on that, aware of the paddle holster

digging into her right rear hip.

Rafi Nadir passed a palm over his face, as if hoping to wipe it clean of fatigue and anger. “I didn’t do anything wrong

tonight. Nothing illegal. I’m not afraid of the drug guys. I’m clean. You, though, I’m afraid of.”

“You? Afraid of me?”

“Well, leery maybe. I got some Sprite. Settle your stomach. You want some?”

The Sprite didn’t surprise her. The offer did.

“You can drink it out of the can, all right? Only the rats and the cockroaches in the grocery store stockroom ran over it.

Untouched by my hands. Pop your own top.”

The last comment was inciting, but she was too tired to take it up.

Instead, she took the refrigerator-chilled can of soda he brought back, sweating with icy condensation.

“Everything went wrong tonight,” he was saying. “Youthink you’re worried about me? I’m worried about that little gal the biker took hostage. The narcs shot their clips and got into rounding up the gang, and me. Her, they didn’t give a shit.”

“Little girl?” Molina parroted, thinking about Mariah despite herself.

“Ballsy little broad. Red hair. I helped her out at Secrets and she’s got some sort of nerve for a squirt.”

Molina stood, the Sprite can’s contents baptizing the apartment’s hopeless carpet.

“Temple Barr was kidnapped? From Maylords’s loading dock? Why the frigging hell didn’t anyone tell me about it?”

“Maybe because it wasn’t your case, Carmen. You are Homicide, right?”

“CAPERS we call it now. Crimes Against Persons.”

“Same diff.”

“I can’t believe the drug task force would overlook that.”

“They had big, bad me to round up. Probably on your orders.”

“No. I had nothing to do with that. I want nothing to do with you, get it?”

“Yeah, but maybe you better forget that long enough to find out what happened to this little red-haired girl.”

Three o’clock in the morning.

Molina barreled into the Circle Ritz lot and killed the motor.

This was a world away from the tawdry neighborhood Rafi Nadir had bought into. Quiet. Crickets screaming, but quiet

crickets, relatively speaking.

The black marble building shone like a polished shoe in the night lights, everybody in it decently abed.

Except possibly Temple Barr.

Molina got out of her serviceable Toyota and shut the door as quietly as she could. She paused to survey the lot.

Something softly echoed her car door’s bang and she turned. A sleek silver car puddled like mercury under the big palm tree.

A man stood by the car door. The security light made his blond hair a molten gold.

“Matt.”

He walked toward her. “What are you doing here, Carmen?”

“And you, I might ask.”

“I just got off from work.”

“So did I. There was a big drug bust at Maylords tonight.”

“My God, you’re kidding.”

“You know me. I haven’t got a kid in me, excepting Mariah.”

“Yeah, but … why are you here, then?” His eyes flashed up to the Circle Ritz’s second floor.

“I just learned your neighbor was there, and whisked away by a rogue motorcylist.”

Matt met her eyes for the first time. “Rogue motorcyclist? You don’t think Elvis-?”

“Forget Elvis! That was a demented fan. This was a drug-dealing biker gang, rendezvousing at Maylords, and one got away.”

“With Temple? Why aren’t you shaking the city down for her? Why come here?”

“I have to start somewhere. If she isn’t here-”

They both turned for the building, trotting.

Banged through the lobby doors. Took the stairs without waiting for the elevator.

Rushed down the short hall to Temple’s apartment and rang the buzzer. She rang. He rang. They waited.

Suddenly Molina looked down. “Ugh! Poison cat hair on my navy blues.”

Matt confirmed her sighting. A big black cat was silently twining though their legs, depositing hair as if they were twentyfour-hour banks.

“It’s Midnight Louie. Why’s he locked out in the hall? He always goes in and out through the bathroom window, which is always left open for him.”

Molina’s grim blue glance crossed his. “Unless it wasn’t left open tonight, as usual.”

“Then Temple wasn’t here earlier-”

“I don’t know when she was here,” Molina said, “I just know that if she isn’t here now we’ve got something to worry about.” Matt rattled the door handle until the hinges shuddered. Molina stepped back and unholstered her weapon. Temple opened the door, and gaped at them.

She was wearing a Bugs Bunny T-shirt and bunny slippers. “Yes? Thank heavens! At least I opened the door to reinforcements.”

“Weren’t you kidnapped from the Maylords parking lot tonight?”

“You mean this morning, Lieutenant? No, not exactly kidnapped. I left, hastily, when I realized I was interfering with police business.”

“Nadir said-”

Temple turned a limpid gaze on Molina. “A well-meaning guy, but sometimes he sees conspiracies everywhere.”

“Well-meaning guy?” Molina was stunned.

“Thanks for stopping by,” Temple told them, glancing from one to the other with sleepy, innocent eyes. “I’m fine. I just

need to get a little rest.”

The door shut. The dead-bolt snapped to. The chain lock grated into place.

“She’s safe,” Matt said.

“She’s lying,” Molina said.

“I’m happy to have her alive and lying,” Matt said. “Then you’re a fool.”

“Maybe, but I’m a happy fool. Can you say the same about yourself, Carmen?” She took the fifth, and left.

Chapter 56

Louie, Louie

Naturally, I have eeled unnoticed back into my home, sweet home before my Miss Temple slams the door shut on unwanted humans.

Despite the aplomb with which she answered the door and shooed away human interference, I can tell something is wrong. If she has failed to notice me she is nervous.

She immediately trundles herself into our bedroom, where I am distressed to find Mr. Max Kinsella stretched out on the king-size bed as if he owns the place. Not lately, buddy.

It does not matter that he is pseudowounded. He has no right to be hogging my zebra-pattern comforter, not to mention the

midnight comforts of my little doll.

‘Who was it?” he asks.

“Your favorite couple: Molina and Matt.”

He grins, devilishly. “Didn’t I tell you they were an item in the making?”

Miss Temple concentrates on pulling the comforter up under his chin. “I wish I knew what had happened after we left”

“Give me twentyfour hours to recover from that rubber bullet and I’ll look into it.”

“Max, those weren’t rubber bullets. That was the real thing. And the only reason you’re even conscious now is that you wore that Kevlar vest.”

He lays back, right where I am accustomed to burrow my weary head nightly, and sighs.

“Yeah. Man of Steel meets Bullet of Magnum Force.”

“I cannot believe you got me out of there.”

“I cannot believe you put yourself into a position you needed to be gotten out of … actually, I can, and rather fondly recall

-”

“You’re delusional.”

She notices my faithful bedside presence and has the grace to turn scarlet. I do so love the human capacity to change fur color. Also the fact that my Miss Temple takes my presence personally.

“Just rest,” she tells Mr. Max, “and we will figure out what happened in the morning.” Righf. That is what they all say.

Chapter 57

Dead Ends

If a horse throws you, you’re supposed to get right back on it. If a motorcycle gang throws you, maybe you just breeze back into work the next day as cool as you please.

That’s what Temple did, leaving Max dreaming the dreams of the young and the restless. He hadn’t been kidding about being exhausted. Temple, awash with gratitude for all his good points, regretted that their reunion wasn’t a bit more up close and personal.

She also wondered what else he was doing besides writing Gandolph’s book and secretly following her adventures at Maylords. It would take a lot more than that, and a bullet or two in the back, to put Max down for the count in the sack.

Midnight Louie had awakened her with an orgy of licking and purring, seeming to press a certain advantage.

He too looked a bit worse for wear-could he really have been among those lean and hungry feral cats that had mixed it up with the motorcycle gang? Nah. She must have hallucinated his presence. Not Louie. Another black cat. Poor homeless creatures. They probably thought those saddlebags contained food.

She’d have to see that Maylords did something to help those poor cats, and Maylords, i.e., Kenny and Barb, would probably be eager to do anything now that would result in good publicity.

Temple could just see the sound bites and headlines: “Drug Bust Results in Homeless Cat Rescue: Catnip Trumps Cocaine.” Temple sighed as she reached the Miata in the Circle Ritz parking lot and hit the unlock button on her key-ring remote control.

Matt and Molina together? At her door. At an ungodly hour of the morning. Both looking equally desperate.

Now, that was a story she was dying to cover, chapter and verse.

Apparently they’d heard about her rip-roaring abduction.

She expected Matt to care about that, but Molina?

Okay. The woman was a law enforcement official. No matter how much she harassed Temple about Max, she certainly didn’t want an innocent bystander like Temple spindled, folded, or mutilated by some anonymous druggie biker. Maybe.

Temple still felt twinges about turning Matt away from her door.

He’d just gotten off work, poor guy. He comes home and hears about Temple’s spectacular vanishing act. From Molina, probably. He must have been frantic. He would have been tired, but maybe not too tired to demonstrate just how frantic he had been… .

Arrgh! Temple yelled at her own overripe imagination. Just get in the car and go to work like the rest of the working stiffs. Do not

go there.

Go to Maylords, and do your job. Especially the part that is none of your business.

At least this time shattered glass didn’t strew the store’s public areas.

All the damage had been done out back, where it didn’t show, as she ought to know.

The storescape seemed oddly peaceful, especially without Beth Blanchard around to bully the staff.

Temple peeked her head into the designers’ area, and noticed a lot of empty cubicles. Either madly out working, or …

mad at the management and … out, for good. Hard to tell which.

Rafi wouldn’t be here. He’d been let go a day early. So she’d lost her inside man.

Molina would love the inside man on the drug deal to have been Raf, but Temple didn’t think he was. Last night was not an act. The incriminating thing was that he had her gun, and no one knew it was her gun. She was sure Molina wouldn’t think to ask, and Rafi would be too stubborn to say so if she had.

Of course there were fingerprints, but Temple had never been printed, although Raf probably had, even if just for the police job. If Molina tried to say he was part of the biker gang, and if he didn’t kill her for it and end up with a murder charge, Temple might just have to come forward and speak up for him.

Imagine. She was not often a potential advocate for everybody’s worst enemy.

She shrugged to herself as she wandered the circling stone path, hearing Amelia Wong’s fountains and bells tinkling in the distance. They were pleasant sounds in a sere desert city, Temple had to give feng shui that.

Some people laughed at the idea that fountains and hanging bells could affect an environment. Not Temple. She had read that feng shui translated to “wind” and “water.” Look what those unseen and liquid elements had done to shape the desert landscape and the life upon on it: animal, insect, reptile, and human. Sometimes it seemed that reptiles and some humans were more closely related than thought possible.

But that was giving reptiles a bad name.

Tonight Amelia Wong would end her duties with a bang and another cocktail reception. This event would climax with the drawing for the winner of the Cadillac CTS.

Wouldn’t it be great if tonight would also unmask the inside man? Or woman. Too bad Beth Blanchard wasn’t around anymore to take the rap.

And she would miss Simon, just because he had been so nice to have around.

It didn’t make sense! The nicest and nastiest Maylords employees had been killed. They had nothing in common except their workplace.

Now that the drug deal was history, the inside person had to be nervous. And angry. Money was not going to be forthcoming. Rafi had helped queer the deal (would he love that expression!), but he was gone. Temple had done it too. She still had one more night to work, and then she’d be gone as well.

She stopped’ near the kelly green vignette, again aware of how easy it was to get lost and isolated in this circuitous floor plan equipped with several dozen rooms leading into each other or sudden dead ends.

She heard a shoe scraping stone, as if someone had abruptly turned. Or ducked off the path of the hard surface flooring, so as not to be heard.

Ooh. She was as good as alone here.

The inside person would know she had suspicions about the operation, or she wouldn’t have been out by the loading dock

last night.

That person would have no idea how much she knew. Temple turned in a circle, seeing only gorgeous, empty rooms.

Water pattered into bronze bowls. Bells swung and rang in the draft from the air conditioning.

Temple examined every dust ruffle in sight, the sides of every entertainment unit or bookcase, hunting a lurker. Whoever had stabbed Simon and Beth or just Beth if Beth herself had stabbed Simon), was still in the store.

Another sound. Temple jumped. Then followed it, setting her rubber-soled clogs down flat and silent on the polished stone.

The rustling had sounded almost like an animal worrying at something. Maybe the cat colony from last night had sneaked

into the store during the confusion.

Temple moved into a room setting filled with heavy furniture perfect for lurking behind. The sounds seemed to come from

there.

She peered around the false wall dividing the setting from its neighbor and saw a pair of suede shoes protruding from the bed’s brocade dust ruffle.

Another victim!

But then a shoe moved, and the owner backed out into the room.

“Jerome! What are you doing here?”

He turned to see her over his shoulder, looking startled. And guilty as sin.

“M-Miss Barr. What are you doing here?”

“I asked first.”

He pushed up on his knees, then pulled himself upright by a bedpost.

Jerome’s plaid shirt and baggy khaki pants made him seem like a little boy, but she noticed that his upper body strength when he pulled himself up was pretty effective. He’d done a lot of carting and toting for the late Beth Blanchard.

“I was replacing the lamp.” He pointed to a floor model topped by a fringe-draped shade. “There’s supposed to be an outlet

under the bed, but I can’t find it.”

“I guess it’s tough not to have Beth Blanchard around to direct the displays.”

“You must be kidding. Nobody misses that woman but the Grinch Who Stole Christmas. Now I can get some real work done, instead of undoing everybody else’s at her command.” He gave Temple a pointed look.

“I’ll leave you to it. We do want Maylords nice and shipshape for tonight’s gala.”

“At least it’ll bring the press in. They always show up when there’s free food. As for customers, looks like the only steady clients we had were the ones ripping off the place from the loading dock.”

“Do I take it you won’t be working for Maylords long?”

“Oh, they won’t can me. I do the daily grunt work around here when I’m allowed to, and I don’t have any stockpiles ofcustomer names to feed into the computer for the Furniture Fairy to download.”

Temple nodded. Rafi had told her the same thing. The interior designers had been hired only to be ripped off and abandoned.

One could have figured that out, and decided to get even.

She edged away from Jerome’s area. It was like talking to prussic acid, he was so bitter. Part of his irritation was no doubt because she was Matt’s friend, and he was just an old acquaintance.

Temple started down the beige brick road, and then stopped at the next vignette.

This one had busts of Caesar and his legions everywhere, with rounded columns marking its boundary.

And around one column a string of pearly fingertips protruded.

Temple stopped. Watched. Someone had been watching her. Someone was still there, lurking. Inside accomplice? Temple

edged right to see more of the barely visible hand. The fingers slid left and out of sight.

Temple edged farther right, following the fingers. They kept retreating.

This was ridiculous!

She leaped left, into the travertine pathway.

And saw a hunched, suited form cowering behind the pillar.

It edged farther away, then glanced over a wrinkled polyester shoulder, showing a red face surmounted by a thinning tuft of

gelled curly hair.

The eyes beneath that unattractive poll finally noticed her watching his undignified, posterior-backward retreat.

He decided to embrace his embarrassment and wrapped both arms around the pillar. Struggling to lift it enough to move, he nodded at her and shuffled it sideways three inches.

That moved it half up on the area rug, so it tilted like Pisa’s Leaning Tower.

He gave her an ineffectual grin. Stepped back. Dusted off his hands as if he had actually accomplished something other than spying on her from behind a featherweight Styrofoam pillar.

Mark Ainsworth was the manager of this store and creeping around like a frat boy on a panty raid?

Not executive material except in a Three Stooges movie! So … not a murder suspect?

Temple gave him a withering look and turned her back.

Even incompetents can kill. If he was this interested in her movements, he might very well have a lot to hide, besides his

unappetizing profile.

Temple gave up on wandering the aisle and headed for the central area.

Beyond the foyer atrium, and the customer caf� with its wrought-iron fence and another Amelia Wong fountain, lay the Accessories area.

This was Temple’s favorite, because everyone could afford a lamp, or a vase, or silk flowers, or a hip-high statue of a sitting black panther, which is what Temple’s lustful eye was really on.

Or … a piece of wall art, framed.

Framed.

Hmmm. Could Janice be a suspect?

Just because Molina, and Matt, knew her didn’t exempt her.

She was a sturdy woman. She was an artist. She used picture wire. She probably matted and framed her own sketches and paintings. That took strength. Upper body strength.

She had been hassled by Beth Blanchard, who probably recognized and went after the one other woman of power employed by Maylords. Some of the women interior designers had looked hard, but none had looked strong like Janice did.

Darn. She looked a lot stronger than Temple herself.

Maybe that was why Matt … but she would not go there.

Also, if Janice were the murderer, she certainly was centrally located enough to slip to and from any vignette with no one

the wiser.

The minute Temple spotted Janice in her long linen Blue Fish dress laying prints out on the handsome work island, she knew she didn’t want her to be guilty.

She was a craftsperson … well, personified. Temple watched Janice’s total absorption in her task, an enviably childlike concentration despite her innate adult dignity.

Drat! She liked the woman. Janice could not be the inside tipster. What she could be shortly was unemployed again. Temple felt a twinge of anger with the Maylords system, that hyped its employees’ hopes and best visions and then callously bled them dry and threw them away.

Such a policy could easily result in bloody murder, and Temple had to wonder where it came from. And from whom? Kenny Maylord? He was CEO. But it didn’t mean he was in control.

So then … who was?

Janice must have sensed Temple’s scrutiny, because she looked up.

“Hi. Hear about the mess last night?”

Temple just nodded. She didn’t want to explain her inglorious part in it. First she’d lost her weapon. Then she’d lost her verticality for an ignominious exit rear-up on a motorcycle.

“What an operation.” Janice didn’t even look around to see if anyone was eavesdropping. Way too straightforward for a crooked joint like Maylords. “No wonder they had so many private security people on the payroll. Drugs. I thought this place was paranoid-you had to fill out a form to check out a Band-Aid if your mat cutter slipped-but I guess the management had reason.”

Temple struggled up on one of the high stools provided for customers and hooked her ankles around the top rung.

“What’s the word around the floor? Was it really just the security force themselves who was in on it?”

“Oh, yeah. One of the guards who was let go just yesterday was taken away by the police. Plus this whole biker gang. They were the … middlemen, I guess you’d call them. Mark Ainsworth is strutting around here like the head cop on Law and

Order. He says it was his ‘sting’ operation that revealed the smuggling plot.”

“What does Kenny Maylord say?”

“Haven’t seen him. Or his Barbie-doll wife. He’s always been a lame-duck leader anyway.”

“Then Ainsworth is the real big cheese around here?” Janice laughed and pushed away a print of a tearful clown holding a bouquet of balloons. “Little Mozzarella Lite? Yeah, I’m afraid he’s it. Sad, isn’t it? I haven’t been handed my walking papers like three-quarters of the design department, but I’ll be shuffling on too. I’m an artist. I don’t look back. And I don’t take direction easily.”

“I thought you needed the job.”

Janice’s level hazel eyes studied Temple. “Matt’s been tattling. Ex-priests. They don’t really understand girl dynamics, do they?”

“So what has he been tattling to you?”

Janice stood, towering over Temple. “I’m not sure he knows, and I’m not sure you could handle it.”

“Oh.”

“Right. Well, your job here is over after tonight. I envy you freelancers. I need to stick out the full week so I get a last paycheck. Boring but realistic.”

“That’s so sad. This store concept has a lot of promise, particularly in the people it hired. And will apparently fire just as

fast.”

“And a lot of problems.” Janice shook her head as if dislodging cobwebs of hope and disillusion. ” ‘Of all sad words of tongue or pen, the saddest are these: “It might have been!”’ “

Janice shrugged, grinned, and pulled her t-square toward her to mat the next crying clown print.

Matt.

They weren’t art, but they were popular.

Temple wasn’t sure if Janice had quoted Whittier’s “Maud Muller” for Maylords, or for something … or someone… else.

Matt.

She decided she really didn’t want to know. Matt and Janice were delivering so many mixed messages lately that she felt like a dyslexic Western Union clerk. If they wanted to get mysterious, she could outdo them at that game anytime.

Because she had just decided what she needed to do next.

It was risky and it was far out, but something was needed to upset the rotten apple cart around here.

Chapter 58

Luck of the Draw

That evening was Thursday, end of the week-long event schedule. Temple found Team Wong fully accounted for in the

atrium and ready to rock ‘n’ roll.

Free-standing fountains tinkled like bladder-challenged poodles in a circle around the outr� orange Cadillac. Somehow Temple couldn’t picture someone singing “Orange Cadillac.” But she could picture Clint Eastwood in a movie of that name. He was definitely not a pink kind of guy.

Tonight was the night. Amelia Wong would draw from the huge Plexiglas barrel that contained the names of every last soul who had visited during Maylords’ opening week and had lusted after the prize Murano, now turned, like a pumpkin into a carriage, into an orange Cadillac.

Temple eyed the low-riding luxury sedan with relief, glad the compromised Murano was gone. She would never have cared to own such a big, high vehicle even before it had housed Simon’s dead body.

Maybe the mood of the country was growing less pugnacious and obvious.

Maybe her mood was appreciating the quiet versus the obvious.

Matt versus Max?

Why was she thinking like this? She was on her own here. Neither man was on the premises. Only the notion of them.

Which was more than enough for her.

They were all here:

The Maylords “fiber management couple. Kenny and Barb.” The thinning ranks of hot-shot (literally) decorators (already the predicted personnel slaughter had begun). Which meant the numbers of suspect disgruntled ex-employees had swelled. Amelia Wong and her now-familiar minions.

Jerome, still looking whipped despite the loss of his personal crown of thorns.

Janice, arms crossed as if she were daring the evening to be interesting.

A suite of potential Maylords clients, all middle-aged and prosperous looking, but not Steve Wynn level.

Chef Song, alert at the buffet table with his ultrasharp cleaver cocked in the crook of his white-coated arm.

And Danny Dove, pale and terse, but all business, as a choreographer-turned-inside-man should be. He’d played a key role in tonight’s setup, and Temple wanted him to witness the denouement he deserved.

Temple nodded imperceptibly at Song and Wong. Both had risen to the occasion and buried the hatchet (or cleaver) in service of the common good.

She was careful not to acknowledge Danny, but his presence reassured her about the informal, even secret, safety precautions she’d put into place Dancers were artists with rhythm, you know. She knew.

She didn’t see Rafi Nadir anywhere, but … at the rear, back and center, stood her angels with dirty faces: the Fontana brothers in almond-pale suits with a really butch five days’ growth of beard. White chocolate with a discreet drizzle of dark, to mean business: the beards and the invisible Berettas, of course.

Tonight the huge Plexiglas drum would turn … and turn.Hundreds, even thousands of hopefully-filled-out contest entry forms would tumble in a spin-dry cycle of luck.

Until Amelia Wong reached in a French-manicured hand and pulled out a plum. A winning entry. Then the orange Cadillac would have a home and all the hoopla and homicide at Maylords would be over.

Or would it?

This was her final night as Maylords’s Las Vegas PR rep. Temple was dressed to kill, but her handy Colt was still in police custody. Like they needed more firepower.

New Age music with an Asian accent wafted from the sound system, Enya in Mandarin. The delicate scent of freesias

reminded Temple of … yes, a funeral parlor.

While the Wong party and Maylords brass lined up for the usual unimaginative shots for the newspaper society pages, Temple edged as quietly as she could in high heels down the beige travertine road.

Her weight was on the balls of her feet. She glimpsed her passing self in lacquered ebony cabinet doors, in glints of mirror, on polished brass.

No one else was moving among the maze of model rooms, dimly lit with accent lights for the evening. Everything looked

like home, if you’d spent $40,000 per room.

Temple moved along, her soles scraping ever so softly on the polished stone floor. There were rumors of ghosts. Some of the departing employees hadn’t been forced out by discovering Maylord’s hidden cut-and-slash method of management; some had been unnerved by the two murders on the premises and quit.

Temple knew she would see Beth Blanchard’s body spinning as idly as a soft-sculpture mobile for a long, long time in her nightmares.

She gazed at the hanging art, so oddly static in its usual places now that Beth’s nervous, commanding energy was gone, now that she didn’t need to endlessly undo others’ good work simply to put her own stamp on the whole place.

She had been an obnoxious woman, so much more eminently killable than the likable Simon Foster. Yet something linked the two murders, Temple was convinced.

No one would kill the sweetest guy and the sourest woman on the staff just because … because sweet and sour was a Chinese condiment.

And Amelia Wong had something to do with it. What a murderous triangle: A gay man and two presumably straight women, one an uppity employee, the other a media diva. Surely the murderer made it a quadrangle. But who?

Temple couldn’t even hear the echo of the droning speeches now. She was deep within the Maylords maze.

Alone. Accompanied by ghosts.

Her steps faltered.

Something pale moved in one of the vignettes.

Temple stepped onto the cut-plush wool of a model room carpet to muffle her steps. She edged into the slim cover of a

pillar of pooled velvet draping the four-poster bed.

As her eyes adapted to the low mood lighting she saw a pale-suited man moving in Simon Foster’s Art Deco vignette. Moving and … moving pictures.

It was … Simon Foster. The casually perfect highlighted and styled hair, the impeccably cut suit. A ghost in Gucci, moving Ert� prints from one position to another. Over and over again, as if perpetually restoring what. Beth Blanchard had wrought, over and over again.

Temple held her breath.

His arms raised as if worshiping something unseen. The Ert� glided down onto its hook and held. The next one was hung. He stepped back, presenting a welltailored suit back of featherweight wool blend with Italian double vents at the sides. Maybe not Gucci. Maybe Zegna. Still expensive.

And then the man again approached the false wall, lifted his arms and took down one print, then another. And switched their places. Over and over again.

His movements mimicked an automaton. Down, back. Up, switched. Step back. View. Pick up and change. A strange eerie box waltz with the dead. With dead intentions. Change and restoration, like the seasons. Death and rebirth.

Temple was too mesmerized by it to move.

Someone else wasn’t.

Another pale figure suddenly bloomed in the vignette. One moment it wasn’t there, in another it was.

Its pale arm was raising too. Just one. It needed to do nothing as symmetrical as lift a framed print from a hook. It was poised for a downstroke. This arm was armed. Something dark and thin glinted in one pale fist at the end of one pale sleeve.

Ghosts were murdering ghosts?

Temple’s muscles tightened as she prepared to test dream with reality.

But another pale suited figure multiplied in the dark vignette. And another. Another. A gaggle of ghosts.

Temple’s fingers tightened on the top of her weapon-empty evening bag. Her role was decreed. Witness.

She heard grunts, explosive breaths muttering four-letter words.

“Got the bastard,” someone muttered behind her.

She turned. It was Rafi Nadir, staring toward the scene as tensely as she was.

“It’ll be your capture,” she said. “I’m the witness.”

“That oughta fry Her Lieutenant Highness’s kneecaps. Okay. Confess. Who is it?”

“I think we can move in. He looks pretty unconscious.”

“I figure one of those freaky Fontana brothers knows the Vulcan neck pinch, is what I think.”

Another pale-suited figure vaulted into view, then joined them in gingerly approaching the scene of the almost-crime.

Danny Dove.

“Who is it?” he said. “I want to know who it is.”

“I’m with you, brother,” Rafi said. “I don’t like being down-sized to backup.”

“Amen.” Danny sounded grimmer than he ever had. “But it’s probably just as well for my future liberty.”

Temple, flanked by her Odd Couple of attendants, was as deeply curious. She’d figured out why, but not who. Although she had her suspicions.

The plethora of pale suits so typical in sunny Las Vegas confused matters in this pseudoroom.

One Ert� print hung on the wall. The other leaned against it.

On the floor a crowd of bent backs held someone down. “Simon” stood alone, upright, watching.

He turned to face the oncoming trio. The pinpoint spotlight meant to illuminate an Ert� print edged his face.

“It’s all right,” Matt told Temple the moment he picked her face out of the crowd, which was almost instantly. “He never got near me.”

A bent back straightened and turned.

“Are we not sheer lightning in Gucci loafers, Miss Temple?” Aldo asked. Or Eduardo. Or Ralph.

“Slicker than a yellow raincoat,” she said. “So who is buried under Mount Fontana?”

Danny’s hand on her elbow tensed. He’d insisted on being here for the “kill,” even if it was a metaphoric one.

The brothers stepped aside as two of their number dredged up their half-swooning “catch.”

By the wrinkled linen suit ye shall know them.

Ainsworth the manager! Temple thought in triumph. A thoroughly dislikable but likely candidate. “Where’s the weapon?”

A Fontana brother pulled a latex glove from an abnormally flat side suitcoat pocket and dove for and then flourished a decorative pewter letter opener. Temple recognized the Chinese character hilt. Maylords must have bought and laid out a dozen of the things for the Wong week of events.

“Baggie,” he ordered. Several brothers whipped out lunch-size plastic bags from which he selected with great care, depositing the weapon within.

“Operation over,” another brother pronounced. “Who gets the capture credit?”

Rafi stepped forward. “I do.”

For a mad, mad moment, Temple imagined a wedding ceremony including Molina. But she didn’t have time for surreal dreams. She found herself edging forward to peer at the captive. The height was right, the build, even the hair. But this wasn’t Ainsworth. This was his literal evil twin.

By now Janice had edged into the picture, standing next to Matt. God, he looked great!

Temple refocused on the exceedingly less great-looking Ainsworth clone.

Fifty pounds overweight, dressed and coifed to imitate, done up to pass unnoticed in Maylords, to be avoided even, like the micromanaging Ainsworth. A makeover, as Matt was for the murdered Simon, thanks to Danny’s sleight of hand. How that must have hurt.

“What’s going on?” a whiny voice queried petulantly from behind them all.

Will the real Mark Ainsworth please stand up?

The eyes that had turned to regard him were now all coming to rest on Temple.

She considered the captive, his head hung as low as possible to hide his features. But she didn’t need a road map now; she had found the destination. It was a dead end, in fact.

Two dead ends.

“This is the guy. He murdered Beth Blanchard at least, and maybe Simon. Take it away, Raf.”

The words had the effect of inviting Jackie Gleason to consort with chorus girls. Nadir stepped forward to clamp the poor man’s Ainsworth into his custody.

Temple weighed her cell phone in her hand, ready to speed dial Molina herself. She really deserved this collar. And Temple really deserved to see Rafi hand over the perp to Molina personally.

Instead, Temple thought a little longer. If the criminal events at Maylords-high-powered rifle attack, two murders, and a drug bust-were to fit together nicely in a box for the LVMPD, some fancy ribbon tying was needed to gift-wrap the package.

Temple was good at ribbon-cutting events. Maybe she had even more to offer in the ribbon-tying department.

And she knew she had to present a fully wrapped package to turn the media coverage into a positive instead of a negative. There was no getting away from the fact that Maylords had been the scene of some major-league evil deeds. But if it could be shown at the same time that Maylords itself, and its employees, i.e., her, solved their own mess … it would make the survivors heroes instead of idiots.

So far her plans had proved productive. But, she hoped, the best was yet to come, the Sting of Stings. All she needed was Redford and Newman, and, heck, Matt was a pretty good Redford substitute. Max wasn’t Newman, by any means. Newman was too medium cool for Max. But he’d done a pretty good Mel Gibson imitation with the motorcycle… .

Whatever, she wanted Simon, and Danny, to rest easy with a job well done. Her job. So much more than mere public relations. Some good people had gone down and some not-sogood people would have to answer for it.

If all went well. And why wouldn’t it. She was a primo events manager, wasn’t she? Call her Nemesis, wired.

Temple holstered her cell phone and set about doing what she did best: arranging successful public events. Even when they revealed very private motives.

So half an hour later Temple stood demurely on the sidelines while Amelia Wong stuck her Prada-suited arm into the open door of the Lucite drum and plucked forth a plain white folded sheet of paper, origami for the wagering set.

Temple, Matt, Danny, and the Fontana boys hovered hear the inner circle, watching for a winner. “And the winner of the 2004 Cadillac is . .”

Everyone waited.

Amelia Wong was oblivious to the lurking further revelations.

“The winner of the car is Jerome. Jerome Johnson. Is he here?” 4 A roar went up. TV cameras focused on Amelia Wong with Ken and Barb Maylord beaming behind her.

“He’s an employee!” a voice protested from the crowd.

“Employees were eligible for the drawing,” Barb Maylord said. Firmly. “We at Maylords,” she added, “are as delighted to see our hardworking employees do well as we are our customers.”

“Put that lie in your crack pipe and smoke it,” Rafi muttered behind Temple.

Jerome had to be pushed forward by his fellow workers into the glare of TV lights. Even then he gawked at the shining car, afraid to approach it. The scene was dying.

A dapper figure from the crowd vaulted to the driver’s side door. “Call me Vanna White,” Danny Dove said, flourishing open

the car door like a valet.

The crowd laughed and applauded in recognition of a Las Vegas superstar.

Jerome had no option but to take the offered driver’s seat, almost blushing with surprise.

Temple sensed Matt standing behind her. “That’s … such poetic justice,” she said.

“Poor Jerome. He’ll make a capitalistic materialist yet.” Temple turned slightly. “What did Danny do to you?”

“I suspect I’m the product of the Las Vegas edition of `Queer Eye for the Straight Guy.’ I never knew it would hurt to be

hip. Bleach burns, did you know that?”

“Yeah, and waxing stings. You’ve seen that show on cable?”

“No, I’ve just heard about it. Does a redo make that much of a difference?”

“Subtle but significant. Don’t you feel it?”

“Do I feel pretty? I feel foolish. But in a good cause.”

“Does Michelangelo’s David need a final polish? I guess we all can use one. This was just the right touch, though, supplying the ‘ghost’ of Simon to bring our psycho killer out of the shadows.”

“Danny’s job is to make people over, into great dancers usually. In this case, the remodeling was tragically personal. I feel most weird about impersonating someone’s dear departed, yet it gave him closure, I think. A bizarre feeling, to have a fairy godfather, you know?”

“I bet. But making Danny a part of this did him a lot of good, don’t you think?”

“Changing me to evoke Simon was touch and go. Maybe it allowed him to design a living memorial.”

Matt and Temple watched Danny work the floor to bring off the evening’s event with panache. His energy made Jerome’s modest diffidence into an asset for the cameras, not a problem.

Matt nodded, seeing the same dynamic. “Jerome badly needed to win something. I guess it was worth getting my hair streaked. You know any quick way to get that out?”

Temple smiled. “Just go with it. It’ll wash out in time.”

“Washed in the blood of the lamb.” Matt looked very serious. “Surface and substance. It’s hard to separate them sometimes, isn’t it?”

“Always. Especially in this case.”

Matt wanted to work it out. “Like Beth Blanchard being so petty as to rearrange other designers’ furniture? Just a cover for a deeper motive. Or Danny Dove playing the ever-eccentric gay choreographer. It’s just a cover for being different from the norm, and the norm often ends up being abnormally cruel, or hypocritical, or greedy.”

Temple shrugged. “It’s so hard to judge. Maybe we should let a jury do it.”

“Juries are us.”

Chapter 59

Model for Murder

The lights, action, and cameras had departed Maylords. So had the invited guests.

Only insiders remained: the store’s management staff-and Jerome, still giddy with the rare feeling of winning-and the Wong party.

Temple had requested that they linger. That they did: the Maylord couple, Kenny and Barb; Mark Ainsworth, clearly present as his own self despite the captured man’s close resemblance to him. Then there was Amelia Wong with her world-class gofers: Baylee and Pritchard, tall blond-and-black twins; Tiffany Yung, Temple’s short twin in black Asian bob and spectacles instead of contact lenses; Carl Osgaard, the tall blond Swede who personally trained Amelia Wong in who-knows-what. These things get nebulous among the rich and famous.

In turn, these separate but allied camps eyed Temple’s impromptu staff, the Magnificent Twelve: Matt, Danny, Rafi, the nine Fontana brothers, with a certain disapproval. Temple made it the Unlucky Thirteen. It did look like the road show of some musical comedy not yet written.

And then Midnight Louie jumped into view from a nearby sofa, did a belly-brushing-floor stretch and swaggered into their midst. They were now the Fortunate Fourteen.

Whew. Temple was glad to see that Thirteen made history.

“How’d that cat get in here?” Kenny Maylord asked.

Temple was surprised by Louie’s presence, but even more by the fact that he’d finally announced it publicly. She was too cool to show it, though. She was always accompanied by her trusty feline companion. Right.

“You’d be better off,” she told Kenny, “asking how drug smugglers and murderers got into this store.”

Barb Maylord frowned. “Someone tried to buy him the other day. That cat. The sales associates were frantically searching for a SKU number and price on a stuffed black cat that the cust-er, clients wanted.”

“He’s priceless, believe me,” Temple said. “But a stray cat is the least of Maylord’s problems. I think we all better get our stories straight before the police come.”

“Our stories!”

“The police?”

“All? We’re not all Maylords employees.”

Temple watched the Maylords and Wong factions eye each other with resentment once their incredulous gazes had left

her.

“We’ve got,” she said, “ladies and gentlemen, and cat, the person who killed Beth Blanchard locked up in the fruitwood

Mediterranean wardrobe on the bedroom furniture aisle.”

This shut them up and sat them down. Everyone sank onto the nearest seating piece, except Amelia Wong.

“How splendid for you, Ms. Year of the Tiger. I imagine that you and your cat are quite proficient rat catchers. My Lhasas confine themselves to Jimmy Choo shoes. But Wong has nothing to do with these matters. We will leave before the police come.”

“I agree with you.” Temple was firm about this part. “Wong has nothing to do with the strange events at Maylords. And everything.”

Amelia frowned even more. “You are being exceedingly yin and yang at one and the same time.”

Temple smiled but eyed Mark Ainsworth.

“We have captured a twin. An evil fraternal twin. I know it’s clich�d, but there it is. Maybe we should haul him out and see who recognizes, or claims, him.”

The discomfort level of all parties rose. Temple heard shoes shifting on carpet and polished tile, throats cleared. She watched eyes shift and retreat.

Raf and three Fontana brothers turned and left the scene.

Louie lofted up onto a chair and leaned down to pat at the ankle ties on Amelia Wong’s nine-hundred-dollar Jimmy Choos.

Wong’s upper lip lifted in a petite canine snarl, but she didn’t move, or even acknowledge Louie’s familiarities.

Temple’s minions returned four minutes later, the same, wrinkle-suited, pudgy man in their custody.

“It’s Mark!” Barb Maylord announced with a gasp. Ainsworth himself stepped forward to greet his craven image. “I can’t believe it!” he said. “We never used to look alike.” Amelia Wong had involuntarily stepped forward as well.

“Can it be? Really?”

The man refused to look up, his hands, bound with drapery cords and trailing tassels, clasped in front of him. His face was as red as Ainsworth’s hypertensive features.

Amelia Wong edged forward, then pronounced a verdict.

“Benny! Benny Maylord. I wondered what had become of you, but Kenny said that you were handling the international furniture buys. You’re supposed to be in Ulan Bator.”

“I’m not.” Wong’s words had loosed his tongue. “I never was.”

“The World Wide Web,” said Temple into the elongated silence, “is a wonderful thing. I wondered when you mentioned, Ms. Wong, that your early mentor at Maylords had been Benny, not Kenny, where Benny had got to. But I didn’t pay that comment much attention. I’d researched the company on the Web. I knew all the latest articles and mentions, going back to the mid-’90s. Then, when all this bad stuff started happening here, I looked up earlier incidents in the Indianapolis and Palm Beach newspapers. They went back, I discovered, to the early ’90s. The shocking events we witnessed here, the shooting out of windows, happened long before, as well as recently.”

“But no murders.” Ainsworth was still staring at his living effigy, as if shell-shocked by his own tawdry image.

“No:’ Temple admitted. “But Amelia Wong Inc. was not present at the other stores in person then, not after the early ’90s. After that, Kenny ruled, and Benny was … banished. Vanished. Why?”

The man in custody finally lifted his head.

“My brother:’ he said with loathing. “It was a coup. Our father started the business, and I nursed it along, made it, but somehow baby brother Kenny decided he wanted it all. He assembled a management team loyal to only him, because only he knew all their secrets. I was out before I knew what happened.”

“Out:’ Temple noted, “but not inactive. You disappeared, like your brother wanted. Only then you started harassing the corporation. Hiring local thugs to shoot out windows.”

“I had to. Kenny was turning the family business into Medici Inc. Maylords had always employed gay and straight people. Talent was the criterion, but Kenny made it an Usagainst-Them operation. He had no confidence in his management skills. I’d done all that. He needed enforcers who owed him. Everything changed. I was ashamed.”

“So,” Temple said, “you tried to bring down the Evil Empire. Shootings, I can see. They weren’t meant to target anyone, just cost the company. But drug smuggling?”

“I didn’t do it.” Benny fought his luxurious bonds. “I didn’t kill anybody either.”

Temple was not impressed. “You just resented Kenny, and drowned your sorrows in food and drink and eventually realized

e you could pass as Ainsworth when this stor was opened.”

“Who would recognize the Prodigal Brother?” He stared at Amelia, looking sheepish. “And I wasn’t handling foreign accounts. I was ousted. Kenny turned the old man against me for the good things I was doing with the store. Made it sound like I was the problem. Who would believe your brother would do you in for a furniture store?”

“Benny.” Amelia moved toward him. “I thought this was the business you built. I thought you were still involved. I never would have gone out of my way to do this low-end personal appearance, except I honored the break you gave me when I was starting out.”

Kenny Maylord had been looking more and more uneasy during this interlude.

“You’ve got him in custody,” he told Temple. “My sainted brother must have done something wrong.”

“Well, he ran at our Simon Foster double with an upraised letter opener.”

“See!” Kenny looked at Amelia. “He’s the Bad Seed Brother.”

“But he really wasn’t very effective:’ Temple added thoughtfully. “I’d say Benny is capable of hiring the hit men to shoot up the store. He’s capable of ‘going undercover’ and sneaking in and out in the guise of Mark Ainsworth, who everybody on the floor avoided anyway, because he was such a petty, ineffective manager. And he was capable of exploiting the deaths at Maylords to further his revenge and really bring the enterprise down, enough to make a faux attempt on the life of our Simon plant just to stir things up, including bad publicity … but he didn’t actually stab anyone. Now, or then.”

“Then who did?” Amelia Wong was sounding imperial again.

“The person who had a bigger stake than mere revenge in Maylords doings. The person who’d enlisted Beth Blanchard in a major international drug-smuggling scheme, using Maylords and its imported furniture as a conduit. The person who was planning the biggest score of the whole scheme by subverting the Amelia Wong appearance to bring in tons of Asian opium and was mightily miffed that Simon Foster was innocently interfering with the whole plan.”

Of course everyone, from Fontana brothers to Temple’s personal allies like Matt and Danny, to the Wong contingent, was watching her with stupefied expressions.

It was a real shame she knew all about the motive and opportunity, but she just hadn’t figured out the actual perpetrator

yet.

A yowl indicated that Midnight Louie was rising from his resting spot and stretching his jaws in a Mighty Joe Young yawn.

The King Kong of yawns, in fact.

Louie looked around until he was sure that he had everyone’s attention, then sauntered over and with great deliberation used an onlooker’s pant legs, and the flesh beneath them, as a scratching post.

Talk about being “fingered.” The pants so honored belonged to Mark Ainsworth.

Even as the man pulled back, screeching, Fontana brothers bracketed him fore and aft, port and starboard.

Temple turned to Benny Maylord.

“You were passing as Ainsworth in the store. You made sure to duck out of sight when he was around to keep the masquerade going. You saw him kill Simon, and you attempted to implicate him by attacking the ‘new’ Simon working the vignette tonight.”

Benny shrugged. “Petty crime to embarrass my brother, yes. I did it. I used their corrupt management tactics against them. That biker gang they hired to transport drugs would take my money and shoot out their windows before and after. Same difference. It was all cold cash.” Benny shook his head. “This store, this enterprise, used to mean something else to me. Now I’m a loser. Kenny outflanked me so fast I didn’t know what was happening. Revenge seemed the only thing left that I could build into a center in my life. I wouldn’t have stabbed the guy. I wanted to keep the ‘ghost’ rumor going. Anything to piss in Kenny’s soup. It was stupid, but it was all I had left.” “Why kill Beth and Simon?” Temple asked.

Benny shrugged. He didn’t know.

Louie yawned. He didn’t care. He’d nailed the principal perp, what more did anyone want from a feline detective?

Temple took a deep breath, and thought as she spoke.

“Because … it wasn’t just petty picture swapping. It was a code. A signal. Beth was Ainsworth’s accessory. When the pictures were changed, they signaled a delivery or pickup. Andsome days there were both pickups and deliveries, so the prints signaled each phase at various times. I bet some security guy was the conduit to the gang outside. But Simon kept messing up the code, despite Beth’s best efforts to reinstate it. So he had to go. And then … why kill Beth?”

Temple didn’t know honestly.

“Beth got greedy,” said a new voice. Jerome’s. He stepped forward to testify. “She was always asking for ‘a bigger piece’ of something. Now I know what.

“I saw them always hobnobbing. Her and Ainsworth. I knew he was her secret supporter, the reason she dared to walk all over everyone else. And it certainly wasn’t because she was sleeping with him. So I kept my eyes and ears open for why. She treated me like a dog. Carry this. Take that. Eventually she didn’t think I could even hear. I didn’t understand her tete-a- fetes with Ainsworth, but I made sure to overhear them. Now I get it. The security guys were in on it, half of them were the bikers. The Ert�s reversed meant a pickup that night, the other way, a delivery.”

Temple turned to Rafi. “You notice any of this?”

“Some. But it didn’t add up. Until now.” He pulled free the tassels confining Benny Maylord. “Welcome to Schnooks Anonymous.” Raf corralled Mark Ainsworth next. “So this is the real Molina bait.”

“Hook, line, and sinker,” Temple said.

“Hey!” Ainsworth squirmed in Rafi’s seriously intense custody. “I’m just the manager. I had nothing to do with all this. What we’ve got here is a lot of disgruntled employees and ex-employees. Like you. Get your filthy hands off me!”

“They weren’t filthy until I laid them on you, buster,” Rafi said, sounding very Law and Order.

Molina would have been proud … not!

Temple savored the ironies for a moment, then decided. “Let the police ferret out the rest of the gang.”

“Probably to be found in the Biker Babe Revue,” Danny put in with a bawdy laugh. “Are you sure, Temple darling, that you have the ultimate villain that I can truly tap-dance to death?” He eyed Ainsworth with murderous intent. “I wouldn’t go for anything less than a life sentence of dismemberment, you pathetic toad.”

Kenny Maylord was gazing at his brother as if contemplating recommending him for an Extreme Makeover.

“Benny. I thought you were handling our Bali office.”

“Bali outpost, you mean.” The fatter, poorer brother wasn’t about to go quietly. “Head basketweaver for Accessories. Looks like your management-team-cum-secret-society used that to rip you off. Wish I’d thought of it.”

“Family reunions should wait until the police get here,” Temple said. “I’m still wondering where the drugs came from. You

don’t set up a ring without a ringleader.”

Shoes shuffled restlessly on the travertine. No one was volunteering to walk down that beige brick road.

Temple turned toward Team Wong.

“Palm Beach. If drug smuggling was involved, then the Maylords store had a beachhead in Florida, a favorite entry gate. But that’s for Colombian drug lords. Las Vegas, on the other hand, and the coast, has Asian connections via the Pacific Ocean.”

“Wong was not involved,” Amelia objected.

“You travel internationally, you ship your lines of furniture and accessories. You appear at furniture markets and expos. You have a personal entourage so large that its members barely register as anything other than functionaries. It would take only one rotten orange in the crate to turn a blessing into an opportunity for crime.”

“Who would you accuse?” Amelia demanded.

“It would just be a guess, but maybe the police can dig up some evidence.”

As the uneasy faces massed behind Wong frowned in unison, they heard the sound of ripping fabric.

Louie had bestirred himself again and was takig it out on a suede sofa side.

Kenny and Benny whined in tandem. Louie strutted forth again, pausing to insinuate himself repeatedly around Amelia Wong’s slim, fishnet-hosed calves.

Fishnet hose! Probably Christian Dior. Temple held her breath that Louie would not snag them.

But he had meatier prey in mind, and in an instant was leaping up at a burlap-fabric sport coat behind Amelia Wong, claws

fanned full out.

“Ah, jeez,” came a nasal complaint. Louie lunged and fell while his victim backed up, never able to step back far enough to avoid the next onslaught of felix domesticus.

In less than a minute, while everyone watched, paralyzed, Louie had torn the unconstructed pocket loose and punctured the small sack of white powder therein.

“Carl!” Amelia Wong’s shock said everything.

Fontana brothers swarmed on cue, surrounding Nordic guilt with Latin vengeance.

“It’s not my fault, Amelia,” Carl said. “My life is the integration of mind, body, and soul, like yours. They hooked me in

Hong Kong on a buying trip, deliberately, to use me and your organization.”

Amelia Wong was not impressed. “If you had truly integrated mind, body, and soul, you wouldn’t have been vulnerable to these toxic foreign substances. But I will hire defense attorneys for you, Carl. Addiction is so destructive. Seeing the MADD efforts has made me much more aware of that, fortunately for you.”

Amelia Wong’s support made Carl slump in his captors’ custody. “I’m sorry, Amelia. I knew better. I was just … weak. I was so strong physically, and then, they gave me this powder, and I felt so much stronger. The weak came later, too late.”

“Now,” someone asked with gritted teeth, “can you call Molina?”

Temple turned to Rafi Nadir with a smile. Mark Ainsworth was in his firm custody. Raf wanted only one more thing: to hand the Maylords murderer over to his ex-squeeze. In person.

Temple upholstered her cell phone from its red pseudocroc leather case and pushed a button to let the good times roll.

Chapter 60 M o d e So,” l says PMiss IMidnight Louise the moment I amble onto the asphalt surrounding

Maylords. “You call this a collar?”

She has been glued to the repaired display windows for the last hour or two, after patrolling the exterior for the last twentyfour hours. I observed her presence, but was busy breaking a major case within.

In a partnership, the work must be divided. Equally. And I am clearly the inside man for the Maylords job, as I had

explained to her long and loud earlier.

This obvious fact does not quiet Miss Midnight Louise, but then what would?

“I have to pace around and around this twelve-acre store in the gritty wind and sun looking for phantom drug drops while you loll around on high-end furniture-its high end, not yours-in the air-conditioned inside waiting for your roommate to figure things out?”

“You forget, Louise, that I was there as indisputable triggerman. I literally nailed both perps. Actually, two perps and a

stooge. All without uttering a word, or a growl, actually.”

“You were asleep at the switch, Pops. Miss Temple did all the work in laying out the precedents. You just shredded a few

tailoring fabrics.”

“I doubt the human olfactory abilities would have sniffed out the betraying cocaine among the Wong flunkies.”

“A blind kitten could have sniffed that stuff, not to mention ripped that pocket free. Burlap, Daddy-o? Just the most loose—

weaved fabric on the tailoring horizon. Kit’s play.”

“You are showing quite an unexpected fashion sense, Louise. The savvy operative can afford to overlook no field of knowledge. Consider Sherlock Holmes.”

“I have, Shredlock Homes! Why is Miss Temple letting Mr. Rafi Nadir get the credit for the collar?”

“Oh, some complex human territorial dispute. You know how that is. Now. Our duties here are ended. We can repair to a nearby Dumpster for a celebratory dinner or … I can escort you back to my digs at the Circle Ritz. I understand there is a full bowl of Free-to-beFeline on ice there.”

“Free-to-beFeline! You are speaking of the new gourmet line, I presume?”

“Uh … yeah. You like that stuff? Do you not indulge in Asian cuisine daily from the cleaver of Chef Song at the Crystal

Phoenix?”

“Yes, but it is not formulated for the feline epicure. The new gourmet Free-to-beFeline. I must reevaluate your redheaded roommate. Apparently she has hidden depths.”

Well, knock me over with an ostrich feather and call me Sally Rand! Miss Midnight Louise actually digs that awful, dry,

army-green feline health food. Far be it from me to disillusion her. Have I got a dish for her!

“The Circle Ritz it is, partner,” I say. “And en route I will reveal the scintillating clues and marvelous deductions that led me to shred my way to the truth.”

She sighs, dreaming of Free-to-beFeline.

What a wonderful world.

Chapter 61

Neon Nightmares

Rafi Nadir insisted on escorting Temple to her car.

She objected. “Really, the danger is over.”

“Some of those freaked-out bikers haven’t been caught yet. You’re lucky the one who nabbed you let you go.”

Temple was too tired to argue.

“I owe you big-time,” he said. “I bet Carmen won’t be getting a wink of sleep tonight. When she saw that you and me had bundled up the Maylords perps I thought her face would freeze off.” He chortled. “I know she hates my guts, but I can’t figure why she hates you so much. What’s not to like?”

Temple was too exhausted to go into her whole history with Molina. She shrugged as she tapped the button to unlock her car. Rafi dove to open the door, quite the gentleman.

“Get some rest, kid.”

“Can’t for long. I’ve got to figure out how to handle the media now that all the ugly truths behind Maylords are Out in the open.”

“Can’t you wash your hands of this loser outfit?”

“I took on the job of doing PR for them, and have to see it through to the bitter end.”

“Hey, look!” Rafi was gazing down at the asphalt. “It’s that nutso cat with a taste for cocaine.”

“Louie?” Temple leaned out to look. Not only was Louie sitting patiently on the asphalt, but he was accompanied by a

smaller, fluffier black cat.

Both sat there like statues, waiting.

Temple got out of the car. “Well, hop on in,” she told the cats. “Must want a ride home,” she told Rafi. “I don’t have a

safety setup for cats; I guess I better keep a soft-sided carrier inside just in case.”

“I’ll be darned.” He watched the two cats hop from the asphalt into the front seat and move into the passenger seat. “They

act like damn dogs. I thought cats didn’t follow orders.”

“It was an invitation. That’s different.”

“You know the second one?”

“I think it’s the cat that replaced Louie at the Crystal Phoenix after I adopted him. They call her Midnight Louise.”

Nadir just shook his head, then watched her belt herself in and take off.

Her departing headlights reflected from a number of gleaming gold eyes in the shrubbery fringing the lot. Louise jumped down to the carpeted floor, but Louie remained in the passenger seat, bracing his front feet on the window frame and looking around with interest.

Temple’s busy brain kept bouncing from the professional to the personal. Rafi was still hyped from tonight’s triumph, and Temple felt that excitement too, which is why she’d turned down his offer of a drink. It was a sad day, or night, actually, when the most available co-celebrator was Molina’s despised ex-squeeze!

Maybe she could help rehabilitate Maylords’s image by having them do something for the feral cat colony that had so thoughtfully shredded the drug-laden furniture shipment for them. That was weird, how they took shelter in that truck and ended up ratting out the whole scheme… . Maybe they were like Louie, obviously attracted to the scent of cocaine, like it was sort of people catnip. She’d have to watch Louie; he was developing expensive tastes, not to mention lethal.

She turned on the radio. Mr. Midnight was on. Matt’s voice filled the small car, sounding both soothing and compelling, which was why he had the job he did. He was advising a woman estranged from her sister. Well, gee. Temple was feeling estranged from everybody. She was dying to retell the night’s events and had no one to listen. Maybe she could phone the Midnight Hour when she got home. Hah! She could always phone Max, but he didn’t seem to be in nights much anymore, or answering.

When she parked in the Circle Ritz lot, the cats accompanied her in and up to her unit.

Louie headed right for the pale sofa, where he arranged himself in a sprawling yet regal pose usually reserved for purebred Persians. He looked pretty pleased with himself. Louise, and it was indeed she-Temple recognized the yellow eyes and longer hair that distinguished her from Louie-headed right for the Free-to-beFeline bowl and dug in. Temple hadn’t heard so much crunching in the place since her knees had nixed an extreme exercise video she’d tried for a few days.

She dialed Max, of course, and was instructed to leave a message. Of course. She knew his tape wouldn’t shut her down

after thirty seconds, so she left a long, breathless report of the night’s events.

And so to bed, as Pepys or somebody used to close out his days a couple centuries ago.

There Temple tossed and fell asleep briefly, woke, dreamed a little, and woke again. Fragments she recalled explained why she didn’t linger in Dreamland long: She was going to the high school prom with Rafi Nadir! Then she wasn’t in a prom dress, she was in a bridesmaid dress, wearing the Louie shoes, and Molina and Matt were getting married! Then Max was doing a highwire act at the top of the Goliath atrium and he fell twenty stories, but turned into Midnight Louie and landed on his feet. And she was fleeing in a red stretch limo with the Fontana brothers while a biker gang surrounded them and she threw a Mumm’s Champagne bottle out the window and the whole street burst into fire… .

“Max, you won’t believe it!” Temple’s voice on the phone at 2:00 A.M. was triumphant, yet endearingly raspy. “Oh, I wish you could have been here!”

So did he. Instead he’d been swinging on a star at Neon Nightmare, chasing a phantom that sometimes looked like himself.

He almost said, “I’m performing again, Temple. In disguise, undercover, but I’ve put together a new act. Maybe we can put

together a new act…”

“You should have seen it! I had Rafi Nadir hand over the Maylords killer to Molina. In person! I can’t wait to tell you more.”

I can’t wait to hear more. See more. Of you.

“Molina was … well, everything I’d ever hoped for. Chagrined. Speechless. Furious. Pissed.”

That he could picture, since he’d caused it often enough.

“And Louie must have followed me to work at Maylords, and made himself right at home on the seating pieces. He sniffed out the insider cocaine link. Although almost everybody there was guilty in one way or another, from Kenny Maylord acing out his young brother in the business; to Benny going undercover to sabotage the operation; to Kenny letting the manager, Mark Ainsworth, put together a predatory secret-clique management structure, all based on greed. The setup produced more disgruntled employees than Caligula. The two murder victims either knew too much or inadvertently interfered with the in-house drug-smuggling operation, hence the gay bikers. They were transport. I’ll let Molina and company figure out who offed whom and why, but Simon Foster was definitely an innocent who got in the way. Poor Danny. I wonder when he’ll be up to working again?

Gosh, this town has been unlucky for performers, what with the Siegfried and Roy tragedy and now Danny Dove’s new show is temporarily darkened, and you were driven out of your profession by murder at the Goliath … Now I’m getting depressed. Home alone by the telephone. I’ll just shut my eyes and think of Molina’s expression when she first saw Rafi Nadir again.

“Call me back as soon as you can. Heck! Why don’t you come up and see me sometime?”

On that mock-suggestive Mae West note, Temple’s voice was gone. It was 2:00 A.M. Max, the wee-hours wonder, was still hanging on a star at Neon Nightmare. He shut the cell phone and its voice-mail message away and stowed both on his tool belt.

Then he swung out again over deep black nothingness.

The beat from below bellowed in his ears. The lights stung like bees. He defied gravity, sanity.

He couldn’t make a personal appearance at the Circle Ritz tonight, but he’d call Temple first thing in the morning.

Max Kinsella awoke in the dark. Five A.M.

The utter dark. Too early to call Temple.

He remembered dragging the futon into the bedroom used to store magic paraphernalia. He must have collapsed rather

than slept.

And after everything that had happened lately-martial arts chases in magic dungeons, illusions, motorcycle nightmares, bullets to the back, death and resurrection-why not?

He rubbed a hand over his eyes, checking how he felt. Good. Very good. Very, very good.

Oh. Right. It had been an erotic dream, the kind so vivid you woke up almost satisfied. Temple had been in it, which was gratifying. When you had erotic dreams about your significant other, it was a good sign the flame hadn’t died. Also that you’d been a good monogamous boy… .

He remembered following her flashing red heels down the long dark hallways and around the abrupt corners of the nightclub called Neon Nightmare.

Then they were lying together in an emerald green meadow, with a chorus line of sheep singing Rod McKuen’s “Jean.” He was undoing the front of Temple’s dress, a lace-up affair that Temple would never be caught dead in, even in a production of The Sound of Music. She wouldn’t be keen on the sound of sheep either. Temple was an utterly urban chick.

The hills are alive … spies were poking heads up all over the glen, Boris and Natasha, and the owner of the milkmaid bodice and its inner accouterments wasn’t Temple, after all, but Kitty! Kathleen O’Connor. His first love, first everything, now lying on stainless steel in the Las Vegas medical examiner’s facility.

The dream images lingered in his drowsing mind. Temple’ s red hair had become black, her blue eyes green, like Kathleen’s.

Max rolled over in the dark and patted the wood floor until his fingers curled over the electric cord snaking through the

dark. He found the control dial and turned it.

Light flooded his corner of the room, which was piled like an Egyptian tomb with the arcane boxes and claptrap of the magic trade.

The bright light made Max shut his eyes for an instant, and in that black moment, the last part of his dream came back.

“God, no!”

His romping partner at the very end hadn’t been dead Kitty, after all. She had morphed into someone all too alive. Molina.

Lt. C. R. Molina. Carmen Molina, black hair, electric blue eyes, ice-water veins.

Max didn’t feel so good after all.

Tailpiece

Midnight Louie

Uncovered

All right.

There are a lot of makeovers in this book, and I can see how they relate to the theme, plot, crime and punishment.

But is there any reason to make me the object of such wholesale repositioning? Was I not a handsome bloke just as I was, pulling down my curtain like some crafty peeping tomcat?

Nobody asked me if I wanted to share my solo cover status with bits and pieces of my Miss Temple. Granted her bits and

pieces are tasty, but I am not one for double billing.

I must admit that at least the new cover representation emphasizes my sleek and muscular physique. The previous artistic portrayal was a little porky in the rear area.

And this is the first time that readers can see my keen and suspicious green eyes in living color.

Plus my natty white whiskers.

Maybe it is not such a bad renovation, after all.

Call it Cat Eye for the Crooked Guy. I can be as media-hot as the next fad.

Midnight Louie, Esq.

P.S. You can visit Midnight Louie on the Internet at: http://www.carolenelsondouglas.com

To subscribe to Midnight Louie’s Scratching Post-Intelligencer newsletter or for information on Louie’s

T-shirt, write: PO Box 331555, Fort Worth, TX 76163-1555