Cat With An Emerald Eye

Chapter 16

Postmortem

"At least Lieutenant Molina didn't get the case."

Temple sat on her living room sofa at six in the morning, Midnight Louie on her lap. Or on Electra's muumuu's lap.

Electra herself sat at the sofa's other end, patting vaguely at her scarlet hair. "Days like these, I thank God I'm self-employed. You can take a nice nap, dear."

"I don't think so. Since Molina's not on the case, how am I going to find out how the poor . . .

victim was killed?"

"Do you really need to know?"

"Don't you want to know if a ghost did it, or not?"

"No. I have always regarded ghosts as friendly spirits. Oh, perhaps a touch misunderstood, at their worst. I do not believe that anyone who has embraced the afterlife would wish ill on the living."

"Ever heard of demons and devils?"

Electra shook an adamant head. "No. The agency was human."

"What was all that yelling about it being Houdini for sure when that bullet hit the table?"

"The professor explained that to me while we were waiting for the police. As a boy, when he was wandering far from home for a few years, Houdini was shot somehow. He never explained, but all his life he carried the bullet in the palm of his hand."

"Why? Why not have it removed?"

"Perhaps it was safer to leave it in place."

"Perhaps. We should hold another seance and interrogate Houdini instead of gawking at him as if he were a walking White Sale advertisement."

"You don't believe that manifestation was Houdini."

Temple stroked Midnight Louie's satiny ears. He blinked contentment. "And how did Louie get out of this place, and get to the haunted house?"

"You're not suggesting that Louie--?"

"I'm not suggesting anything, except that while we searched after eternal truths we missed a lot of what happened last night."

Louie gave a burst of loud purr, then stretched to knead his front paws on Temple's thigh, still upholstered in the floral muumuu.

She shuddered in recollection as she eyed her thigh. "I never realized muumuus were so suspicious. That search by the woman officer in the haunted-house kitchen--"

"I had to do it too, dear. Everyone did. Face it, anybody participating in a seance is likely to be suspected of concealing some trickery, at least by the police."

"Were they looking for a weapon? I didn't get that impression. I don't think they know yet what killed Edwina Mayfair."

"Natural causes," Electra said with the authority of a justice of the peace. "Trust me. Wild Blue Pike and Eightball O'Rourke say that the bloody battle-ax only nicked her shoulder. I'm sure the poor thing's heart overheated at all the excitement. The police will have red faces by tomorrow morning, and you'll have missed the Crystal Ball for nothing."

"Oh, thanks for calling the Phoenix and explaining why I wasn't there while I was being ...

examined in the kitchen."

"I never did see what you were wearing. Or the Midnight Louie shoes."

"Kind of moot." Temple pulled a pair of individual shoe bags from her tote bag. "You should have seen the going-over these got from the authorities. You'd think I was smuggling Austrian crystals."

"Off with the muumuu. Let Mama see."

Temple was happy to stand and shrug out of the enveloping cotton tent for the last time.

She had worn a black stretch-velvet ankle-length dress, all the better to show off the shoes.

"Very classic, but... well. You certainly couldn't conceal much in that dress."

"So the police intimated. At least I'm cleared of fiddling with the seance."

"I'm not sure that any of us are. This unfortunate death throws the results into question.

What a pity! This was such an outstanding manifestation. It's not Houdini's fault that someone should collapse at his first big show in seventy years. This might scare him away for good."

"You really think it was Houdini in that cloud of obfuscation?"

"Oh, yes, dear. I have seen photographs of the man. The hunched posture, the nearly bare body to prove no tricks, the chains and locks. Absolutely prime-time Houdini. And then the bullet."

"I suppose he has no use for it now," Temple said slowly. "Still, that figure could have been projected."

"That's what all ghostly phenomena are, projections of the living essence of death."

"I mean photographically projected."

Electra looked hurt. "Oh, ye of little faith. How or who? Why?"

"Any one of the psychics might have wanted to boost his or her reputation. You can bet this will be the lead story on tonight's Hot Heads, with panting teasers run at commercial breaks all day. And then there's the local angle: the haunted-house organizers might have rigged their effects to go a bit berserk for the Hot Heads camera, and now that someone's dead, they're not about to admit it."

"Speaking of hotheads, that Buchanan character was pretty antsy to get out of there."

Electra's eyes narrowed. "Either the nose of a newshound heading for a deadline ... or the spur of guilt."

Temple leaned back against the sofa, scratching Louie's tummy. "Even I hadn't thought of that. What a spectacular way to be rid of Crawford Buchanan forever! Could he have killed somebody merely to raise his ratings? Yes. Did he? I'm not so sure."

Temple stood, leaving an abandoned Midnight Louie frowning on the sofa cushion.

"There's only one thing to do, Electra: get better acquainted with the psychics. They're staying on for a while, aren't they?"

"With a huge psychic fair at the Oasis running the entire weekend, I doubt any will skip town before Monday."

Temple smiled nostalgically. "I can see Lieutenant Molina now, growling that this mob of suspects who are only in town for a five-day stay are murder."

"That detective team, Watts and Sacker, seemed pretty laid-back."

"Maybe. But if whatever was fatal to Edwina Mayfair turns out to be murderous, you can bet that will change. Meanwhile, when does the psychic fair open?"

Electra checked her watch. "At noon today, Friday. It's not the thirteenth, is it?"

"Not unless the spirits have rearranged the calendar. Today is November first, All Saints'

Day."

"Better take a nap; I'll get you at eleven."

"You're game?"

"Of course. Someone at the fair may have insight into who did whatever was done."

Temple saw Electra out, wondering if her landlady would still be a redhead by midday.

She grabbed a bagel on her way to the bedroom, deposited the Midnight Louie shoes in their own drawer when she got there, shrugged out of the dress, pantyhose and bra, put on her purple fuzzies and burrowed under the unmade covers.

A few moments later she felt the bed bounce. Louie was ready for a catnap too, and well he should be, after his adventures of the wee hours.

It felt strange and rather decadent to be going to sleep for the night at a time when she was normally waking up. But she fell asleep too fast to think about anything. When she woke up, the doorbell was chiming and a dream-shadow of a big black cat with emerald eyes and a ruby collar was slinking back into never-never land.

Temple reached for her glasses, saw the bedside clock read twelve-fifteen and lurched up to answer the bell.

Electra was standing there, her hair a banana-yellow, her face an ashen blank slate of sobriety.

"Temple. I just heard the noon news. Hang on to your heartbeat."

"It was murder!"

"No, they don't know that yet, or don't say they know yet."

"Then what's the shock?"

"It wasn't a lady."

"The newscaster was no lady?"

"No, the victim! Your hand-holding partner wasn't a woman."

"What was it, then?" Temple blinked, still sleepy.

"A man!"

"A man?"

"Named Gandolph."

Temple frowned and rubbed the bridge of her nose. "That name sounds familiar--"

"Of course. It's the name of the wizard in The Lord of the Rings fantasy trilogy. Only they spelled it wrong on the TV screen. G-a-n-d-o-l-p-h, as if he were German or something. It should be G-a-n-d-a-l-f, you know?"

"No, I don't know. I've never read this Lord of the Rings. Has it got something to do with matrimony?"

"You've never read The Lord of the Rings? But you must have; everybody has."

"Not me." Temple scratched her chin and yawned. "Even though 'Gandolph' does sound familiar. What's the rest of her ... his name?"

"Doesn't have a rest."

"Just G-a-n-d-o-l-p-h?"

"That's right. But, say, doesn't it worry you more that you held hands for almost an hour with a phony medium? A fake? A transvestite?"

"Not at all." Temple felt her eyes screw themselves into focus.

"Wait a minute! I was all worried about Crawford Buchanan playing footsie with me, and instead I had a strange guy in drag nudging and patting my knee! I don't know if I'm sorry he's dead."

"Hush, dear! The recently departed can sometimes hear the harsh judgment of the living."

"Good!" Temple shouted. "What a dirty trick! And I thought the poor dead lady had a hair-loss problem. All that whispered motherly consolation was a sham, you louse! Why don't you go out and get your kicks on Route Sixty-six ... in the middle of the road where they can run you over."

"Temple, he's already dead."

"Not enough for me! That shows you what kind of flakes these so-called psychics are."

"Please, you can't judge all by one."

"I sure can. And why did you wake me up, anyway?"

"We're going to the psychic fair, to see what we can learn there."

"Now you're talking like Nostradamus."

"I've never claimed prophetic powers," Electra demurred modestly.

"I meant the local rhyming bookie." Temple sighed. "I suppose we should see what the fortune-tellers all think about being taken in by a wolf in ewe's clothes."

"Psychics are not fortune-tellers; they would get very upset if you called them that."

Electra was pursuing Temple to the bedroom, anxiously explicating.

Temple shut the door before Electra could follow her in.

"Brew up some coffee while I'm dressing," she suggested from within. "It should put me in a better mood."

Electra's footsteps ran, not walked, over the parquet to the kitchen tile, from where shortly came a great clangor.

Temple sighed again, then rummaged in her closet for something to wear. Unfortunately, Midnight Louie had already found it, pulled it down and made it into a nest to curl up on.

She squatted down to study his cozy arrangement.

"The late lady was a lad, Louie. Imagine that. Named Gandolph. Why is that name familiar?"