Cat With An Emerald Eye

Chapter 35

Piece-a-Pie

The pizza had cooled enough to require oven-warming.

Max went around opening cupboards until he found some heavy pottery plates, and a couple forks.

"No dried red peppers," he announced, spinning a spice rack.

"This is an awesome kitchen. It's as big as most people's living rooms. Whatever possessed you to buy a house with a kitchen like this?"

He stopped playing host long enough to stand still and consider it. "I never really asked myself that. Welles, of course, was a gourmand.

Not a mere gourmet, a true gourmand. He ate well."

"And often."

Max nodded. "And it showed. Like a lot of creative people he was at odds with himself. He adored the filmed image, but loved his food too well to keep his image svelte on film. As for me, I suppose ... I suppose, with the vagabond life I had to lead, a kitchen says stability. A big kitchen says you're there to stay."

"And a small dollhouse kitchen in the Circle Ritz says?"

"You've found a girl just like the girl who married dear old dad; she hates to cook."

"Really? Your mother hated to cook too?" Temple was pleased-- not only to hear that he was used to noncooking females, but because she'd never heard Max talk about his family and hadn't known she'd missed that until now.

"You don't hate to cook; you just haven't done it with someone who likes to." He came over to her, which, in that kitchen, was a fairly big commitment. "This house was leased when we arrived in Las Vegas. If I'd been alone, I'd have stayed with Gary."

"So you bought another place you didn't need?"

"Such Midwestern indignation," he said, teasing. "You wanted to have the fun of looking, and the Ritz is a jewel. You still like living there, don't you?"

"Love it."

He seemed about to add something, then stopped himself, glancing at the countertop instead. "You've hardly touched your wine and it's almost as expensive as some of your shoes."

"You know I get most of those on sale."

"Extravagance in specialized areas is permitted. Though. .." He looked down at her legs like Crawford Buchanan, but with interest sans leer. "That's a very attractive outfit."

"My tea-leaf reader said I might have a dangerous romantic encounter, so I dressed for it."

"Really?"

"Actually, she said I'd have a dangerous encounter and a romantic encounter, but I thought it would be more economical to combine them."

"The ever-practical Temple. I don't know how you stand on those heels on hard floors like this, though."

"You get used to it. Like one gets used to rocketing around on an overpowered eggbeater."

"Extravagance in specialized areas is permitted. So is sitting."

He lifted her atop the central island, a forbidding travertine-topped stainless-steel-sheathed block that screamed "human sacrifice" in very high style.

All the countertops were above normal height to relieve back strain. That meant that Temple perching and Max standing put them on a very similar level. She remembered sitting on the Storm fender with Matt on their desert "Prom Night." This was not Matt and this was not Prom Night. Temple swung a foot against the block.

"I feel like an Island virgin."

"You haven't touched your wine," he said again, reaching over for the glass and bringing it to her lips.

His hand was at the back of her head as she tilted her chin to take a sip, and when the glass was gone his mouth was there instead.

This was not Prom Night.

It could have been one kiss and it could have been sixteen; whatever, it was just an introduction. A reintroduction. Max ended it and spun her around so she sat facing the island's long way, then lifted her legs up and laid her down and that could have been the start of something that had to finish ...

Only he stepped back and leaned down near her head and rested his chin on his crooked elbow.

"I've been thinking," he said, smiling into her face, "while I was away. I've never worked with a lady assistant, but if I made a comeback, and if I was to do so, you are perfect for the job."

She raised an eyebrow, that being about all she could manage when under the erotic spell of a master magician.

He straightened and spun her around on the smooth marble as if they were on a stage and he was explicating an illusion for an audience. Temple was also part of that audience.

He stepped back from the kitchen island to address that invisible audience who was Temple.

"I could, for instance, work a variation on the lady-sawed-in-half illusion. Always a tacky thing to do to a perfectly lovely lady, don't you think? I could put that tradition in less lethal terms, and you are the ideal size for all sorts of illusions."

Temple rolled onto her side and braced her head on her elbow. "I've experienced an illusion or two in my time."

"Ah, but those were hasty, improvised affairs. I'm talking an entire act here, from conception to climax." He leaned down again, laying his elbows along the travertine, so they were face-to-face. He still wore his suave magician's mask, but his eyes were dancing. "Houdini worked for many years with his wife, did you know?"

Temple didn't know, and didn't know what to say. What was Max saying? He didn't have to propose marriage to make love to her. And her deep-down female-nesting hope for stability never had any strings on it.

Before any more could come of this intriguing idea, the stage manager stepped in to jerk them both offstage. The oven buzzer shrilled, making them jump. Temple sat upright, heart pounding, Max flew to the scene of the crime to turn the bloody thing off, and the moment was not about to be warmed up by any amount of extra oven-time.

Max turned ruefully from the stove, bearing the steaming pizza on its slightly singed cardboard circle. "Still hungry?"

Temple nodded and jumped down to the quarry tile. "Very."

They spent the night at the computer.

Exquisite wine in iridescent glasses had given way to cans of Classic Coke.

Forbidden files had segued into Gandolph's files, for his investigation, for his book.

Apache dances on kitchen islands had been replaced by weary sparring sessions with a computer keyboard.

"I found a file," Max began, hunting two-fingered over the keys.

"You really need a touch-typing course."

"Later. Anyway, this was not intended for the book, but for himself. It was a diary he began keeping fifteen years ago. Rather sad."

"A diary."

"About his mother. Explains everything, in a way... there it is. I'll print it out for you."

Temple leaned into the screen to read the beginning. "He must have been into computers early."

"Yep. Before he retired. The other magicians thought he was cracked, but I can certainly see the attraction now. Poor Gary. He never discussed this with me, and we were pretty good friends."

"I'll read it on-screen. I couldn't focus on typed pages now to save my soul."

"And a very pretty little sole it is too." Max leaned back to eye her bare feet under the desk.

"Thank you, Mephistopheles, but I'm keeping mine for a while." She scrolled down a few pages, reading, then frowned. "I see why you think this might be important. Gandolph's mother was addicted to psychics, it sounds like."

"And you haven't seen the financial records. Apparently, Gary hadn't either. He found out just how much when his mother died. Thousands."

Temple questioned him mutely.

"It wasn't the money she spent on them that enraged Gary. He had sufficient unto his needs.

It was the idea of her vulnerabilities being used to bilk her."

"She lost a child at an early age."

"There's nothing worse, they tell me," Max said, his voice bleak.

Temple eyed him sharply, but he was rising to retrieve the print out. He'd spent most of the night crouched beside her, showing her the way through Gandolph's labyrinth of files.

"This book of his would have really blown things open, wouldn't it?" she asked Max when he came back to drop a fat pile of printouts onto her lap.

He nodded. "In the paranormal community, yes. And it will still do it. There's nothing here I can't finish."

"Writers do have a reputation for being reclusive."

"It's something I can do that Gary would want. I have to admire him as both man and magician. To pull off this long-running impersonation of Edwina Mayfair, in drag yet! If you had known the man, you'd appreciate that he was as straight as General Eisenhower. No one could have imagined him doing this, which was why his investigation was so effective. He must have been fanatically determined to unmask them; as he writes, he did it not simply for the sake of his mother, but for all the people whose grief over lost loved ones has been exploited."

"I've been jumping ahead to skim the mother file. Max, she apparently skimped on her simplest needs, even her prescribed medications, to finance her quest among the psychics."

He nodded. "I never took that ghost-hunting stuff seriously. I used to consider us all brothers and sisters under the skin, players in a wonderful show. After reading Gary's story, and about the other bilked poor souls he found and championed, I understand him a lot better. I appreciate him more. If he was killed, Temple, it was part of a very dirty and secret war. We've got to expose his killer."

"How?"

"I don't know yet. Maybe when you read all your homework, you'll put the key clue into focus, and I'll trap the killer by some clever illusion. Then we'll let Lieutenant Molina nab the perp and all the credit."

"She's not on this case."

There was a silence. She glanced suddenly at Max. He was looking at her, and it was no glance.

"You didn't tell me Molina was a woman," he said.

"I guess it didn't seem important."

"Perhaps it wasn't." He rapped the printouts on the desktop with one sharp blow so that they were neat-edged as a fresh ream, and cleared his throat. He wasn't looking at her anymore but his voice was as smooth as when he was introducing his next illusion. "Well, I know now, so I can desist in my fantasies of punching out the flatfoot's lights for doubting you."

"Did you harbor such violent fantasies?"

"It's a bit late for discussing fantasies of any nature." Max checked his watch, grinned at her, then sat back on the floor. "God, I've got to get some sleep."

"I've got to get home and feed Louie breakfast."

"And here I said you couldn't cook."

They staggered upright much too soon, then shuffled through the silent house.

"What will the neighbors think?" Temple wondered when the broad front door cracked open to admit a thin trickle of dawn light.

"That the real estate lady is a bit weird for sleeping over in empty houses. Thanks for supper," Max added, catching her and kissing her good-bye like a drunken man, which he was by now.

Temple lurched out into the cool daylight, her tote bag packed with papers, her eyes blinking.

She turned back to the door, still open a crack.

"When you wake up again, Max, don't forget to shave. You could give a cactus razor burn."

She tottered off to the car, managing to start it and zoom away before any neighbor poked nose out of house to get the morning newspaper.

Someday soon, one of those newspapers would read: MAGICIAN'S MURDER CAUGHT.