Кэрол Дуглас - Cat In A White Tie And Tails

“I’m innocent of everything,” Temple said blithely. “This table lists suspects the police would find likely for taking the rap. I’m an objective reporter and recorder. I just find some of the suspects likely, period.”

Her impish grin had both men backing away like nervous tomcats. Max left his casual post at the sofa back that had made them a threesome as Matt frowned at the image on the screen.

“You’ve added the Cosimo Sparks death,” he noted.

“If the Synth is a paper tiger,” Temple said, “why was Sparks killed and his scarlet-lined cloak left in the distinctive ‘Ophiuchus house’ shape?”

“Maybe to misdirect the blame.” Max sat back in the upholstered chair and tented his hands to support his chin. “Most of the cast of characters on your chart, Temple, are mentioned in Gandolph’s computer files. What stands out for me is the murdered professor, Jefferson Mangel That killing was off the Strip and there were no overt links to magic.”

“There was one,” Temple said.

“What?”

“You.”

“How would Gandolph miss that?”

“Jeff Mangel was a professor of philosophy, but a magic fan. He was found dead, in that telling Ophiuchus-Synth position, among a classroom exhibition of magic show advertisement posters. People collect that kind of ephemera. And one of your Mystifying Max posters was on display.”

Max suddenly pounded his temples with his fists. “Damn this MIA memory of mine! I’m useless.”

Temple’s dismayed look consulted Matt.

“Not useless enough for someone’s taste,” Matt said with a bit of Max’s own sardonic drawl. “There’ve been two attempts on your life in the time it took us to make a whirlwind trip to Chicago.”

Max lifted his head, the fury dispersing as fast as it had come. “And on Midnight Louie’s life. Apparently me and the cat have too many of those pesky lives for someone’s security. You’re right, Devine. The more I investigate, the more I’ll flush out the rats. Rat bait is an honorable role.”

“We all need to investigate.” Temple said, “Why are these cold cases that involve one or more of us suddenly hot again? The trouble is, when you look at my, ahem, brilliant Table of Crime Elements, there are so darn many ways we could go and way too much ground to cover.”

“Can you get the Fontana brothers as backup?” Matt asked Temple. “We don’t seem to have a choice on staying out of what’s going on, but Rafi’s going to be plenty busy with Kinsella, or Carmen Molina.”

“I don’t want Nicky getting all über-protective about me,” Temple said.

“Do all those big boys tell their little brother everything, even though he’s the hotelier?” Matt prodded.

“Probably not.”

Max held one hand fanned over his eyes and braced an elbow on a chair arm listening to them, as if the light were too bright.

Before Temple could make an alarmed murmur in his direction, he spoke. “The Fontana brothers. Is that a juggling act at the Sahara or something?”

She and Matt exchanged a totally blitzed look. Where to kick-start Max’s memories when he had such serious blanks as already-demolished Strip hotels and Las Vegas legends like the Fontana brothers, high-profile owners of Gangsters custom limo service, not to mention the boutique hotel of the same name?

Temple should change topics to touch on Max’s more immediate experiences. This would also be an apt time to admit her risky Neon Nightmare adventure and the showdown she’d stumbled onto in the Synth’s secret clubrooms there.

“I can’t say I’m much impressed by the local Synth crew as capable of murder,” Temple said, “although its symbol flashes itself around murder scenes.”

“Why not?” Max asked. “I’ve had ‘flashes’ of being at the Neon Nightmare in my Phantom Mage persona and they were certainly planning something. I’m recovering memories in a grid like a Mondrian painting, or pixels when a HDTV picture breaks up … islands of clear images in a sea of nothingness.”

“Uh,” Temple said, “before we leave the topic of my incisive mental powers, I have to mention that I’ve had a close encounter recently at the Neon Nightmare’s secret Synth clubrooms.”

“And you didn’t mention it to me?” Matt was shocked.

Temple grimaced. Time to confess her sins to Matt. “When I went to Neon Nightmare—which every guy I know wants to lecture me for doing, including Nicky Fontana, my boss at the Crystal Phoenix, where I do PR—”

“I know this,” Max said.

“Uh. Okay. It was a very tacky and woo-woo experience, lacking only Rod Serling as narrator intoning, ‘Welcome to the Twilight Zone. ’”

“Extreme stage effects,” Max said, “often are used to divert an audience from what’s really going on. Cirque du Soleil is masterful at that.”

“Also the Mystifying Max,” Temple said with a smile.

“So,” Matt challenged. “You were an audience of one subjected to delusional magic tricks, Temple?”

“Maybe,” she told Matt. “It involves ninja cats and double Darth Vaders.”

“Oh.” Matt sat back.

“Oh.” Temple shrugged. “I had been exposed previously to inferior cocktails, would-be wild and sexy single guys, and the screamingly loud, shrill, and robotic noise that passes for dance music these days, not to mention circling neon laser lights that cast the spinning zodiac signs, including Ophiucus, on the black glass dance floor and walls.”

“Takes me right back to my near-death experience,” Max murmured.

“I figured out, though, that all those lightworks hide entrances to the interior pyramid-shape of the nightclub. I found a narrow upward ramp that has spring-loaded doors into the walls.”

“Temple!” Matt was horrified. “Why would you go there? That sounds like a drug trip.”

“Just think of the doors on fancy home theater equipment storage units. They’re always black lacquered and you just touch a corner and they spring open. That’s how I got into a maze of rooms behind the walls, and the Synth clubrooms, which overlook the dance floor with a one-way wall of black glass.”

“Sounds like a private high roller club,” Max said, “at some of the upscale hotel-casinos where a lot goes on that isn’t legal. So? If a group of fantasizing fakes want to pretend they’re magicians with an agenda…”

“We know from the empty safe built between the underground tunnels where the Crystal Phoenix and Gangsters hotels meet with one from the Neon Nightmare that your old IRA enemies had been amassing money and guns in Vegas for a couple decades.”

“What kind of safe?” Max asked.

“A giant walk-in one. That’s where Synth member Cosimo Sparks’s body was found, wearing white gloves, top hat, and tails.… Well, the top hat didn’t stay on when he was stabbed to death. A couple silver dollars were found on the floor, along with a bearer bond for twenty thousand dollars a rat dug up from the adjacent hidden tunnel to … the Neon Nightmare.”

“Rightly named,” Matt said. “You never told me you’d broken into the Synth’s lair at that nightclub.”

“Well, that’s because what I saw there wasn’t exactly believable.”

“In what way?” Max wanted to know.

“It wouldn’t pass the C. R. Molina test.”

“In what way?” Matt now wanted to know.

Temple kept jerking her head from one interrogator to another. “It does sound a bit too much Mad Tea Party.”

Into the continued silence she had to commit truth. “The club room held a middle-aged woman who looked like a medium, or Gandolph in the guise of a female medium at that Halloween séance. The other woman looked like Morticia, the slinky Goth wife from The Addams Family. And there was a pretty ordinary guy there. They were upset about Cosimo Sparks’s death, and then another spring-loaded door opened and these two … figures … showed up.”