Cat On A Hyacinth Hunt

Chapter 45

Shoe Time

Matt felt a phantom cut.

This time he knew it for what it was, if not why it was.

Like all bad things that happen to supposedly good people it was swift, savage and puzzling.

Kinsella finally spoke. "Someone knew. Someone knew that I would be here to open this device."

Matt stood in the background, faintly reflected beyond the mirrored Max. Matt stood silent, knowing the words had a special, searing meaning for him. And him alone. Didn't they?

Molina's voice was clinical. Calm. "This does seem personal.

Anyone here care to confess?"

After the dead silence, Kinsella laughed.

"Confession requires specifics, Lieutenant. This is far too vague. But you're right. It is personal. With me, from now on."

An angry howl from the floor caught their attention.

Louie was pacing back and forth, his tail lashing against the tarps, thumping like a snare drum keeping background rhythm.

His next vocalization was a yowl.

He snaked back and forth against a box shrouded by tarpaulin, rubbed his nose on its corner, first left then right, like a chef honing a knife-edge.

*********************

No one wanted to articulate the message they each were getting loud and clear: Midnight Louie wanted them to open this box.

"Must be something fishy," Max said finally.

Kinsella, Matt reminded himself. The man was only a last name and an occupation: magician. He was not a person. He was not Temple's . . . sole savior.

"I don't know about you two, but I'm about ready for ouija boards," Molina said. "Open this thing."

Matt bent to strip off the tarp, anticipating Kinsella.

What they unveiled was another oblong box. Odd how every magic-show container was so coffin like, Matt thought. How the tricks all involved confinement and escape. Maybe he was missing some subtle erotic content; he wouldn't doubt it. But he was struck by the defiance of death that ran through the art: rising from the dead. No more, no less. Easter Sunday for the unthinking masses. Rolling away the stone.

"Another sword-trick box." Kinsella's voice had lightened for the first time.

They stared at him, shocked by the lilt in his tone.

"Don't you get it? There are already holes slit through, for the blades. Breathing slits."

Molina's glance crossed Matt's, like dueling foils. They were wondering where the swords were, and what they might have already done. Here, among the props of his trade, the magician was an optimist, the master of illusion.

Matt and Molina had no such expectations of defeating the obvious. They pictured the unthinkable. He, from his anxious heart. She, from her professional pessimism.

Max . . . Kinsella . . . bent over the box, checking top and bottom.

"The head and foot slides are shut. Sealed with ... duct tape!" He laughed. "We've got it! The one. That damn cat must have smelled something, or he saw her put into it." He rapped on the lid. "Temple, we're coming."

Who could demur in the face of such theatrical confidence. Matt found his eyes anchored on Molina's when they weren't darting nervously to Kinsella's delicate maneuvers to crack open the box.

If Temple wasn't here, where was she?

The top of the box lifted off in hinged sections.

They glimpsed a painted interior, something colorful in the bottom. They smelled a potent floral not quite like perfume.

Midnight Louie suddenly leaped atop the closed bottom portion.

The box was like a coffin: top ajar, bottom covered.

Fragile red silk lined the interior. In the open upper portion, next to a satin cat toy in the shape of a gaudy ice-cream cone, lay several blood-red commas, fifteen or sixteen scattered like rose petals.

They were the nail guards one might glue onto a cat's claws.

Kinsella shoved the box hard against the truck side, so the impact rang with a dull, bell-like thrum.

"The dressing room at the Opium Den," Molina said. "All that was left of Shangri-La were a few makeup tins, and the mandarin nail shells."

To Matt was left the logical pronouncement. "The cat Hyacinth was here. That's what Louie smelled."

Louie paced, and rubbed his nose against the corner of the box, like a chef honing a knife.

Max Kinsella began breaking down every cabinet left untouched in the trailer.

Matt and Molina watched as if caught on the sidelines during a sudden-death overtime.

"If she's not here," Matt said, "she must still be there. And the issue of air--"

"He's damned if he does, and damned if he doesn't. Either way we go, we risk everything."

Molina leaned against the truck side, looking weary. "I could phone in a search, but they wouldn't be able to open most of the remaining cabinets. And the company probably left behind what they did for good reason. Kinsella's got to eliminate the odds somewhere. We're here. It's most economical timewise to stay."

"That's what it comes down to? The least waste of time?"

Molina nodded solemnly. "We've committed. We've got to see it through here before we waste time going somewhere else."

"I'm glad I'm not a cop. Or a magician."

Midnight Louie, as agitated as they were, lurched back and forth from Max Kinsella to the two of them, meowing and pacing, only stopping to sniff at the uncovered cabinets.

"I had no idea," Matt said, "that so much could fit into the back of a semitrailer."

"Great smuggling device." She watched Kinsella shove a rejected cabinet aside.

"We can't help him?" Matt asked.

She shook her head. "Oh, we could shuffle furniture around, try to feel useful. But we'd just obstruct him in an attempt to soothe our own feelings. He's our drug-sniffing dog; let him work."

"Temple isn't 'drugs.' "

"She is if she's hidden in a magician's maze."

"Why can't we hear something, if she's here?"

"She could be gagged. Drugged."

"Or dead."

"Or dead."

Matt found himself looking at Molina as if she were the God of Death itself. But she was only the messenger.

"Is this what I get for tracking down Effinger? Does justice always have a hidden price?"

"Justice is usually damn well out of it."

"But you . .. that's your job."

"No. My job is many things. Justice is something separate. You see it sometime, you let me know."

Matt watched Kinsella, amazed by his stamina. Temple had told him magicians were strong, but he had assumed that meant raw muscular power. It was intelligence, skill and heart, he saw, not brute strength. On those thin threads, on Max Kinsella's magician's instincts, Temple's life now hung.

Another casket lost its tarpaulin. Molina held the flashlight now, quietly led Kinsella's search with its focused beam.

Kinsella bent to pull the latest box from the wall, paused, looked up at them.

"Heavy," he said.

Matt had never suspected the word "hope" was spelled "heavy," but it was here and now.

He and Molina rushed to pull and tug away the ebbing tarp, letting the maestro get to work.

The casket's outside was smooth, unmarked, almost anonymous.

That very smoothness seemed to frustrate Kinsella. His fingers slid over the entire surface, searching for hidden hinges and springs.

He looked up, hopeful. "This is a demonic box. It must be it. And so heavy ..."

He laid his ear against the polished wood, a guitar player tuning his instrument-. His fingers fretted the liquid sienna surface, hunting pressure points like an acupuncturist.

Matt didn't know about Molina, but he held his breath, not wanting to impede Kinsella's sense by so much as an inhalation.

At last Matt heard a tiny click, like a mechanical heartbeat.

Kinsella's breath hushed over the rich veneer. Another click, then the entire top lifted like a grand piano wing. The box was lacquered black inside, with a yellow satin lining. Angled into the lining like a pry tearing it from the wood, was the heel of a magenta suede shoe.