Кэрол Дуглас - Cat In A Quicksilver Caper

My pads touch hot asphalt at last, and I reflect that solid ground is indeed my medium.

Unfortunately, my current case is an air-bred one, and I am off to the New Millennium to reconsider the sisters Siamese and just who and what is going on there to put my Miss Temple’s stilettos in a sling.

As for whom I wish to back in the Circle Ritz bedroom sweepstakes, my mind is torn between the elements of water and air. One a fellow can drown in, and the other can break a dude’s neck.

Looks to me like my little doll had better watch her backside.

Old Acquaintances

Not Forgot

Back at the scene of the tragedy, an airport metal detector now provided a nice paranoid touch at the entrance to the museum area. A young uniformed guard was manning it.

Sure enough, Temple “tinged” when she walked through. She had to remove her emerald ring from Max and the small studs in her ears and go through again. Ting .

“Sorry, ma’am,” the guard said. “I’ll have to wand you. Maybe it’s something metal in your clothing.” His eyes skimmed and nervously deserted her bust area.

An underwire? He’d thought Temple was wearing an underwire bra? And her a measly 32B since high school? Bless him! The notion was flattering, but Temple couldn’t bask in it for long and still get on with her sad business.

“Are you kidding? You have no future in lingerie sales. Look. It’s probably a steel arch in my shoe.”

Temple went back though, stripped off her Beverly Feldman spikes, and this time waltzed through without producing any rude noises. By then the barely twenty-one-year-old screener was redder than cranberry sauce on Thanksgiving.

“They should have an ID badge ready for you,” he muttered.

But when Temple pawed through the plastic-laminated cards, hers bore the image of her old curly redheaded self, not the straight and sleek-locked blond temptress with the Little Orphan Annie chest measurement the Teen Queen show had recently made of her.

“Old photo.” She sighed, then proved it by flashing her driver’s license. “New look.”

“No problem, ma’am, just step up to that tape mark and I’ll have this new photo ready by the time you leave.”

A computer captured her digitally and the guard nodded to indicate that the shot was taken. “Nice change,” he added, auditioning a shy smile.

Maybe blond hair magically inflated the viewer’s perception of bust measurement. Temple sighed again as she walked into the museum proper and turned about six male heads.

She had to dump this bleach job if she wanted to get any work done! Maybe a temporary rinse close to her natural color; anything that would cover platinum blond.

Crews were still finishing work on the display structures and connecting electrical gizmos for light and security when they weren’t ogling her. Temple eyed them back, which she’d normally never do. Any one of them could be a shill checking out the art installation for future tampering.

Uniformed guards stationed around the perimeter added an air of seriousness to the central chaos. Scaffolds ringed the area too. Temple’s eye was drawn up to the dark dangling V of line still pointing like an arrow to the top of the scepter’s translucent housing.

He’d been turned to show a clown-white-faced man wearing a greasepaint mask, black spandex tights and leotard like an acrobat, apparently strangled by the hammock of bungee cord that spanned one side of the museum ceiling to the other.

“Awful to think about, isn’t it?” an unearthly voice said behind her. Think James Earl Jones as Darth Vader.

Temple spun around, gawked, looked up. And up. And then decided that the men had not been ogling her and her electric blond hair, but the awesome oncoming form that had just now caught up with her.

He was well over Max’s six foot four and robed like a Klingon crossed with an Egyptian lion-faced god.

Towering over her five foot zero in his built-up boots, he was clad in superhero spandex all in black, the better to emphasize healthclub muscles. His head was a mask of two-tone black tiger stripes and a mane of dreadlocks. Add the funereal basso and you had that always anonymous but never shy performer known as the Cloaked Conjuror.

“I almost didn’t recognize you with the hair redo,” he said. “You were the little gal involved in getting that bad guy at TitaniCon a few months back.”

When Temple gaped at him for even remembering her after the chaos of that night, he added, “I never forget a face.”

“Yes, well, your own current face is pretty unforgettable too.”

He didn’t comment but joined her in gazing up at the place where the dead man still hung.

“One of my stunt doubles died high up in the stage flies at TitaniCon,” the Cloak Conjuror’s disguised voice rumbled. “Good man. They never determined if it was an accident. Or murder.”

“This one also iffy?”

“I suppose. Could have been some nutcase working up a publicity stunt. Could have slipped and died with no one around to help. Could have been murdered.”

“Las Vegas leans to aerial murders,” Temple mused, remembering the dead bodies in the ceiling at the Goliath and Crystal Phoenix hotels, both of them connected, perhaps circumstantially, to men she knew and loved.

There! Her subconscious had tricked and kicked her into a reality check. She was a total romantic schizo! Her outer blonde and her inner redhead were of two minds and hearts as well as two Lady Clairol shades.

Temple didn’t think she should be having an emotional epiphany right here amid the rubble of museum construction, but there it was.

“ ‘Aerial murders’?” The Cloaked Conjuror was struck by the phrase. “My guy was killed up on the catwalk up top.” The ponderous head tilted to view the black-painted upper third of the space.

“Is there a catwalk up there too?” Temple asked.

“Of course. To service the lights and the magic act rigging.”

“Which is pretty Cirque du Soleil.”

If a mask could grin, the voice behind this one did.

“Imitation is sincere. No one in this town can put together a new act without taking Cirque into account nowadays.”

That made Temple wonder again what Max was dreaming up in that direction now that he had recommitted to a performing career. She knew the discipline was fierce and all engulfing. Something else occurred to her.

“Are your big cats involved in this museum act too?”

“Of course they make an appearance. I need to limit their time up there. Too risky. Even for magicians.” He chuckled. “But I’ve a got a new cat woman in my act, so that provides the feline presence so effective in magic shows.”

“A catwoman?” Temple feigned ignorance all the better to pump CC on his fishy new partner. “To your Batman/Catman? Interesting. I’m supposed to be skewing publicity toward the high-end art audience, but I could probably get some pop culture media interested in your new partner. Where’d you find her? In one of the Cirque shows?”

“Nope, though she was right here in Vegas. Did a little act at a place called the Opium Den. Shangri-La’s the name, so I guess she’s a Siamese kind of cat herself.”

A thieving kind of she-cat! While Temple was struggling mightily not to go Scarlett enough to outright swoon with fury, he added, “Even has a Siamese cat she used in her old act. Damn agile and clever little thing. Hyacinth. Those two communicate like a witch and familiar. Ought to be a few publicity angles in that.”

Temple could just see the headlines: EXTRA! READ ALL ABOUT IT! LAS VEGAS PR WOMAN GOES CODE RED IN CZAR EXHIBIT.

The Cloaked Conjuror was walking away to chat up Randy. Temple guessed that she had held up, as any delicate blossom must when she hears her most fatal female bête noir is on the scene of a very ugly possible crime. She already knew Shangri-La was a thief. She’d taken the diamond and opal ring Max had bought Temple at Tiffany’s.