Кэрол Дуглас - Cat In A Quicksilver Caper

“What’ll they do now?”

“What can they do? Welcome me into their ranks as promised. I did steal the scepter, whatever the cost. From their viewpoint, Shangri-La is no loss and rescuing the Cloaked Conjuror is no feather in my cap to them. . . . I’ll say I needed him out of my way to complete the job of stealing the scepter, so I was ‘forced’ to save him.”

Temple shivered a little at the idea of justifying saving someone. “If it was obvious to me that it was you up there, you know that Molina will be right on that and go after you for this.”

“She’d be going after me for something else anyway.”

“No. I negotiated a deal with her during that Teen Idol charade where I was locked up in a mansion with a TV crew and her daughter and twenty-eight rival unnatural blondes. If I watch-dogged her daughter Mariah, she promised she’d lay off you.” She squirmed, knowing that the deal was off because Molina now suspected Max of being her stalker, but she figured that Max had enough on his plate at the moment. He was surely wary and wily enough to elude the Blue Ice Queen.

Max’s own blue eyes paled in the lamplight as he studied her. “I didn’t hear much about that caper. Sorry I couldn’t be there.”

“It worked out. But Molina can’t ignore that there are very few people at large in Las Vegas who could stage that surprise guest appearance at a floating magic show. This is the second death at the White Russian exhibition. Major Las Vegas mojo will come down on the police to solve them both. You are the prime suspect.”

“Good. I’d hate to give up my crown as the town’s perennial Number One Suspect.”

Max leaned forward, took one of Temple’s hands. “Whatever the Synth is, they’re formidable. Forget you ever heard of them, Temple, as you ought to forget me. I’ve got to get out of sight again.”

“I won’t say anything about you. You know you can count on me. Ducking out of sight for a while is wise. But . . . for how long?”

“Maybe . . . forever.”

“Max! What are you saying—?”

“A woman is dead, Temple, one I never meant to hurt.”

“It was obvious to anyone who saw that you were trying to save her!”

“Or trying to kill her? Both actions resemble each other. Don’t they?”

“You threw a safety net around the Cloaked Conjuror and saved his life.”

“Or a snare that only by chance, or mischance, kept him from falling.”

“You risked your life to catch Shangri-La and would have saved her if her cat hadn’t attacked you.”

“Or I always intended to drop her, and the cat merely got in the way. Besides, how many people saw way up there as clearly as you, my dear defense attorney? I disabled the cameras. There’s no record. I sealed my fate, or my reputation, at least.”

Temple was silent.

“Every eyewitness sees what he or she is bred to expect, or want.”

“What saved the big cats from going out on those booby-trapped platforms?”

Max bit his lip instead of shrugging and swigged more whiskey. He was a fast adapter.

“A sixth sense?” he suggested finally. “It was so black over there and I had a lot to think about, all simultaneously.”

“It’s a wonder you managed to save CC. He must be almost twice your weight.”

“And don’t it make my biceps blue? He okay?”

“Fine. Shaken up about losing his partner, of course.”

“Yeah. I know the feeling.”

“What?” Temple sensed sudden alarm bells in the pit of her stomach.

Max regarded her with far too limpidly innocent eyes. “Gandolph, I meant. What other partner would I have lost? I suppose my cousin Sean was a sort of partner for the summer.”

Max reminding her of his losses made Temple want to swear, “Not me. I’m not the next one you’ll lose.”

But she couldn’t say a word. Not if it meant repudiating Matt. She was already half lost, which made her feel all the more adamant about defending Max. Supporting Max. Paying Max back for her wayward heart.

“It’s best you stay as far from me as possible,” Max was saying, urging. “Not that I don’t appreciate first-aid. Or your opinions.”

“Right.” She sipped a little more whiskey, then stood.

He was telling her to go. Pushing her away for her own sake. Pushing her toward Matt, when she’d already leaned way too far in that direction for her conscience’s sake.

What should she do? What could she do? Max wouldn’t fight to keep her. Didn’t he see? Or did he, as usual, see all too well? Damn you, Max!

He’d never tell.

She had to drive home. She had to pull herself together. She had to picture Max colored more than the usual invisible, but absent. But she didn’t have to stop believing in him, his innocence, even if hers was compromised.

“I’ll stick to my job at the New Millennium,” she told him. “And I’ll find out who really did this, because that’s my job and because there was another man killed earlier on that same scene, and I think that there’s a criminal operating there who’s closer at hand than the Synth.”

“You may be right and if anyone can prove it, you can. That’ll keep Molina on her toes.” Max rose to escort her out. “Molina in toe shoes, now there’s an image to stop the heart.”

“Don’t underestimate her. She’s aching to stomp on someone who’s gotten away with something for far too long, and it’s a dead heat between you and Rafi Nadir who’d make the best fall guy.”

“Nadir had nothing to with this.”

“No,” Temple admitted, “but if I could make Molina think he did, she might blink and you’d be able to eel out of her sights.”

Max drew her close to him at the door and kissed the top of her head. Her artificially blond head.

“Always a superb strategician.” He pulled her closer, hugged her almost to death. “I’m sorry, Temple. More sorry than I can ever say and you can ever know. There are some things I only realize now that I just can’t control.”

Temple couldn’t decide whether to take that as a confession, a farewell, or a prediction.

Triple Threat

Nobody much notices what us cats get up to.

That is why we make such good detectives and sneak thieves. There is not that much difference between either role.

Anyway, there is nothing I can do for Mr. Max eeling away like the snake that dropped the apple at Eve’s tootsie tips and then remembered a pressing appointment elsewhere. Nor can I help my Miss Temple in performing whatever acts of Public Relations legerdemain that she finds necessary with the press and the forthcoming police.

Nor can I do much with the Big Cats, who have been sealed up in their portable tin cans and carted away. So much for brawn when the chips are down.

So.

There is only Squeaker and me gazing down on the aftermath of one nasty bit of carnage. And contemplating the ignored but wriggling form of Hyacinth clinging to the unseen back of a dangling platform twenty feet below.

“They assumed she fell,” I note.

“Erroneously,” Squeaker notes in turn.

“She was a witch bat out of hell.”

“Is,” Squeaker says, quite accurately, “and I do not like her either. She could be very sharp with me.”

I examine the tiny blood-red scabs visible around her throat and neck. “She no doubt did not like competition.”

“I was just an anonymous body double. I offered her no challenge.”

“That is challenge enough for one like Hyacinth. Oh, well. Hide-ho. I suppose we might as well consider how to rescue her.”

“You are a noble breed, Louie.”

“Naw. I just do not like to leave one of my own kind on the ropes. I do not know how we will manage it, though.”