Кэрол Дуглас - Cat In An Alien X-Ray

“Molina,” came the familiar bark.

Yes! Good doggie, reliable doggie.

“I need to see the body.”

“Which body of the two in question are you hankering to view?”

“The ancient alien.”

“Of course. He’s off-limits to the public, the press, even the President of the United States.”

“ They wouldn’t be able to help ID him.”

“And you are?”

“I think I know him from somewhere.”

“Won’t happen, even if you met him on Mars during your lunch break.”

“I’m dead serious. I need to look at him out of context, not in it. I have temporary prosopagnosia.”

“I don’t care if you have terminal halitosis. That body is on lockdown.”

“Grizzly Bahr would let me in. I know he would.”

“Am I to infer that he has performed some highly unprofessional courtesies for you before?”

“Uh … no. I just suspect he would, like I suspect I know the body. I mean the dead man. I wouldn’t know his body, since I hardly looked at it on your cell phone, and of course I haven’t seen any naked strange men. Or strange naked men. Recently. Ever. But I didn’t really see his face. That’s what I think I subconsciously recognized. The face. But the context temporarily blinded me.”

Molina suddenly snapped at someone nearby. “Just leave the reports.

“I’ll call the coroner,” she told Temple. “If Bahr okays it, you’re in. I’ll let you know later. Much later. Some of us work on actual cases as a career, not a hobby.”

Temple hung up with a smile.

Molina was going to find out that Temple and crusty ole Grizzly Bahr had an affinity that went a lot farther than a last name that sounded the same.

Chapter 37

Bad News Bearer

“Van von Rhine.”

The voice on the phone was as smooth and controlled as its owner’s platinum-blond French twist. Temple knew she was also going to have to get Van von Rhine’s fancy French panties into a double-pretzel twist pretty soon.

“Hi, Van. It’s your PR consultant en route to the Phoenix. I’ve got to talk to you immediately about a nasty public relations turn of events that so far is known only to me, the Metro Police, and the coroner.”

“It involves our hotel-casino?”

“Peripherally.”

“What on earth—?”

“It’s not on Earth anymore. It’s very alien territory.”

“Tell me this has nothing to do with that UFO fiasco on Paradise. Talk about bad publicity for the entire Strip.”

“I’ll tell you that I’m not willing to commit any more info to the cell phone towers. Don’t talk to strangers with media credentials until I get there.”

“Now I’m really alarmed. I’ll call Nicky.”

“No.”

“No?”

“No. We need to be forewarned and forearmed before anybody else hears this, and everybody else will, all too soon.”

“Drive fast,” Van said before signing off, sounding terse.

Temple buzzed the Miata around any lagging traffic, although the Strip was typically a slow-flowing river of hot metal. Temple always felt like Nancy Drew in her roadster in the small convertible. Now she raced like Nancy on a hot crime trail.

“Where’s the fire?” the Phoenix’s parking valet asked as her little red car sped up to the dazzling glass-and-mirror entry canopy.

“Hi, Wayne. Emergency meet inside. Put her someplace in the shade to cool down.”

“Sure thing, Miss Barr.”

Crystal Phoenix parking valets were attired like bellboys from a Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers ’30s movie and had the same pep.

Temple dashed inside.

“Whoa!” She ran into—literally—one of the Fontana brothers.

“You’re breaking the sound barrier,” he commented.

“No time to say hello-goodbye, I’m late,” she threw behind her, White Rabbit–style. She didn’t even have time to ascertain whether she’d nearly slammed into Eduardo, Giuseppe, Rico, Ernesto, Julio, Armando, or Emilio. She knew it wasn’t Nicky, Aldo, or Ralph.

Her toe on its one-inch platform sole (she would go no higher, not even for precious stature) tapped the marble floor in front of the elevators until a set of doors opened.

Temple eeled past the departing passengers and punched the button to the top floor before the elevator had time to change gears and rise instead of sink. And she punched the CLOSE DOORS button on six falling faces of tourists left behind this trip.

Inside, Temple took floor orders from the handful of people who’d slipped in with her and punched them in, toes tapping in rebuke. The other riders got the message. They stayed clear and haunted the elevator doors so they could squeeze out as soon as the car arrived at their floor.

There were times when being petite concentrated a surge of pure energy.

Van’s male assistant was standing by the inner office door to whisk it open while handing her a glass of Crystal Light—her favorite beverage, but one not served at the Crystal Phoenix.

Temple came to a stop at Van’s glass-and-chrome desk and slung her tote bag to the floor. “I’m going to be going to the morgue to identify a body.”

Van, already as pale as the vanilla she was named after, stood behind her desk, caught up in the drama. “Oh, no. Not anybody we know?”

Temple nodded.

“Not anybody we love?”

Temple shook her head, still trying to catch her breath. “Somebody we know and don’t love, which is worse.”

Van was perplexed. “How can that be worse?”

“It’s a murder victim, and I, for one, found him a murder-deserving individual. We could be suspects.”

Van sat in her channeled white leather executive chair. “Us? All? Suspects?”

“Especially the family Fontana.”

Van shook her head and exhaled a hushed “Nooo.” She looked up. “All right, what can we do about it?”

“You don’t want to know who the victim is?”

“I’m sure you’ll tell me when you sit down and catch your breath.”

“Santiago,” Temple said as she did so, “the Phoenix’s Chunnel of Crime designer, personally hired by your husband, Nicky, and suspect for the Cosimo Sparks murder in that very locale.”

“Santiago? Was he still hanging around town?”

“Evidently. That international architectural superstar seemed phony from the get-go. He and Sparks may have planned some shady scheme that kept Santiago here, even under suspicion.”

“The police didn’t have enough evidence to hold him. Oh, if only he’d skedaddled out of the country as fast as he could, Temple! We didn’t have to murder him, we fired him. Given his larger-than-life personality, I’m sure his murder would be spec-tac-u-lar.”

“It was. He’s tabloid news now.”

Van looked puzzled. “Nothing in town has been tabloid headlines lately except that loony UFO dustup on Paradise.… Oh, no!” Van thumped a fist on her glass desktop. “You’re telling me the purported ancient astronaut deposited on ground zero at that loopy UFO project on Paradise was our Santiago? How can you ID him? Wasn’t that man nude?”

“I assume Santiago was capable of that state.”

“And why was he there?”

“He was consulting on the UFO project.”

“Of course. His kind of scam.” Van rested her paler face on her pale hand. “We’ve taken his name off all the publicity for the Phoenix–Gangsters Chunnel of Crime once he was suspected of murder. Isn’t that enough?”

“I’m afraid people—and especially media people—will remember what, and who, brought him to Las Vegas. We need to create a short but sufficiently vague press release saying Santiago had consulted on remodeling projects at the Crystal Phoenix but that position is over and so was all contact with him.”