Кэрол Дуглас - Cat In A White Tie And Tails

… one Miss Kathleen O’Connor, deservedly christened Kitty the Cutter by Miss Temple. Finding Mr. Max as impossible to trace as Lieutenant Molina did, Kitty the C settled for harassing with tooth and claw the nearest innocent bystander, Mr. Matt Devine.…

Now that Miss Kathleen O’Connor’s sad and later sadistic history indicates she might not be dead and buried like all rotten elements, things are shaking up again for we who reside at a vintage round apartment building called the Circle Ritz. Ex-resident Mr. Max Kinsella is no longer MIA, although I saw him hit the wall of the Neon Nightmare club with lethal impact while in the guise of a bungee-jumping magician, the Phantom Mage.

That Mr. Max’s miraculous resurrection coincides with my ever-lovin’ roommate going over to the Light Side in her romantic life (our handsome blond upstairs neighbor, Mr. Matt Devine) only adds to the angst and confusion.

However, things are seldom what they seem, and almost never that in Las Vegas. A magician may have as many lives as a cat, in my humble estimation, and events now bear me out.

Meanwhile, any surprising developments do not surprise me. Everything is always up for grabs in Las Vegas 24/7: guilt, innocence, money, power, love, loss, death, and significant others.

All this human sex and violence make me glad that I have a simpler social life, such as just trying to get along with my unacknowledged daughter …

… Miss Midnight Louise, who insinuated herself into my cases until I was forced to set up shop with her as Midnight Investigations, Inc.…

… and needing to unearth more about the Synth, a cabal of magicians that may be responsible for a lot of murderous cold cases in town, and are now the objects of growing international interest, but as MIA as Mr. Max has been lately.

So, there you have it, the usual human stew—folks good, bad, and hardly indifferent—totally mixed up and at odds with one another and within themselves. Obviously, it is left to me to solve all their mysteries and nail some crooks along the way.

Like Las Vegas, the City That Never Sleeps, Midnight Louie, private eye, also has a sobriquet: the Kitty That Never Sleeps.

With this crew, who could?

Chapter 1

Underwater

She was in the water, drowning.

Her hands pressed against her constricted chest, thumped it as if she could force the liquid from her lungs. She couldn’t … breathe. Move.

She’d fallen from the top deck of a ship, a huge ship like the Titanic. Another ship was heading toward her, not like the Titanic, more like the Black Pearl pirate ship.

She knew she was dreaming then, knew she had to struggle to wake up because a nightmare had her by the throat. She knew someone was by her side to do it, if she could only move her paralyzed lips or body before the dark water sucked her under.

She could see the oncoming ship’s billowing black sails scudding like storm clouds above her. It was as colorful and clear as a movie scene. She should remember this and write it down.…

Oh, God! The ship’s bowsprit was a solid metal lance twenty feet long, and the ship was wallowing deep in the waves to strike her right in the heart. The figurehead poised below that lethal weapon … was no naked mermaid.

It was a blindfolded and blinded man with blood trickling from his eyes, his battered body bound to the ship’s bow, his mouth distorted around a dirty rag of a gag that bottled up his silent scream.

He was a dead man sinking.

And she knew just who he was and how long he’d been dead.

“Temple. Temple.” Someone was shaking her awake. Her hero.

She looked into Matt’s dark eyes blinking in the bedside table light. As she blinked herself, he crushed her into his arms. Hmm. Strong arms, warm bare chest … Her heart was considering a different reason to race.

“You’re here, Temple. You’re with me. You’re safe.”

“Yeah. Yeah! Oh, my God, it was an awful dream.”

“About what?”

“Oh, high seas, and falling into the ocean to drown, and a ghastly, ghostly pirate ship and a handsome buccaneer to rescue me.” She felt like Dorothy Gale explaining a Darkside Oz.

Matt laughed, relieved to hear her making sense. “You’ve never had a nightmare with me here. They common?”

“No, Matt.” She sighed.

“We’re going up in an ‘airship’ of sorts tomorrow morning. Maybe you’re nervous about the flight.” When she hesitated, he added, “About meeting my family?”

“Or maybe it’s Chinese takeout for dinner?”

He laughed again and rolled her over atop him as he turned out the light. “Fiancées the world over go out of town to meet the future in-laws every hour. Granted, my family’s a bit messier than most, but they don’t bite.”

She nodded and murmured as he rubbed her back and let him think what he wanted, needed to.

When she shut her eyes she could still see the grotesque dead man racing toward her. She’d never seen him dead until now, just knew about it. Knew his name. He’d roughed her up once. Clifford Effinger. Sleazeball, petty crook, family abuser, deadbeat, Matt’s detested stepfather, and victim of an unnamed killer or killers, slain just the way she’d dreamed him, on the Oasis Hotel’s famous sinking sailing ship attraction months earlier. This could not be a good omen.

Chapter 2

Let the Mind Games Begin

A man without a memory’s greatest enemy wasn’t vulnerability. It was boredom.

That’s what Max Kinsella was discovering. Here he sat in a parked car in Las Vegas, unemployed magician and ex-counterterrorist, staking out the Circle Ritz condo and apartment building.

After spending several days driving on the left side of the road, he had more memories of doing it in Ireland and Northern Ireland than in the U.S. So a car with the driver seated on the left side felt “wrong.”

His recent visual memories still featured his slain mentor sitting in the place Max occupied now, as if Max were occupying the lap of a ghost.

Pathetic. Almost as pathetic was spying on a couple he didn’t remember and hadn’t “known” in his current state of amnesia until last week. He watched them walk out the Circle Ritz’s rear door, luggaged up for a trip out of town. And he wondered like crazy where and why.

Blond Matt Devine wore his usual impeccable yet casual beiges. Temple Barr was dressed to impress in a shiny red pencil-skirted suit that looked like leather. Her dark strawberry blond hair glowed redder in the naked sunlight. A leopard-pattern tote bag and matching high heels spiced up the look.

A white-haired older woman in a hot pink muumuu and orange flip-flops shepherded them into boarding order as a Yellow Cab pulled up.

Used to the soothing grey greens of the Irish countryside, Max’s eyes almost winced shut at all the bright colors glaring in the sunlight. Despite his ultra-dark sunglasses, it was like watching a Technicolor silent film. Matt Devine gestured to instruct the cabdriver on the proper order in loading the three bags. Temple hefted her bulky tote to the floor of the SUV’s second passenger row behind the driver, and then hugged the landlady, Electra Lark.

How odd to observe people he had known and who knew him as if they were pantomiming strangers.

Temple turned to see how the luggage-stowing was going, waiting for an assist up the SUV’s first big step. At her height in those heels and that tight skirt, she needed it. At around a hundred pounds, she would get it.