Кэрол Дуглас - Cat In A Quicksilver Caper

I let go and close my eyes, calling on Bast.

I see a transparent pyramid coming up at me fast, planning to transfix a very tender part of my anatomy on its sharp, onion-dome tip. I execute a Greg Louganis triple-twist-and-turn dive to make a one-point landing—stomach down— oooof! There goes my Salmon Supreme with Smoked Oyster Sauce—and I am sliding down the steep smooth invisible roof, searching in vain for the 365-carat diamond on the Czar Alexander scepter to wink at me. It is gone for good and I may be a goner for good too.

I have engraved four lines into the pyramid side before I slide off onto the viewing platform surrounding the scepter area. I land on all four feet—whew, that stings!—my head unbloody and unbowed, but my pads burning like Hades and my head aching like Zeus’s before that upstart Athena burst out from his brain.

“Way to go, Daddy-o,” a voice calls from high, high above. Midnight Louise, of course. “I never knew that you had won a Purple Heart in Olympic air skiing.”

My heart is not all that is gonna be purple from this little stunt.

Deadhead Curtain

Raiser

“Sorry,” Detective Alch told Temple way too bright and early the next morning, “but I’ve asked around this entire end of the hotel, and you’re the only one who’d seen Shangri-La without makeup. And that includes her performing partner, the Cloaked Conjuror. So, you’ll have to do ID duty.”

“She was right down here with me the other day, on the main exhibition floor. Dozens of people could have seen her.”

“But they didn’t. You say you did.”

“I thought I did.”

Alch scratched his thatch of salt-and-pepper hair, more from habit than necessity. “At least we’ll know if the Asian woman you talked with was the dead woman, or not.”

Temple sighed. Deeply. “You mean I have to go the coroner’s facility.”

“Not a formal autopsy. They have a viewing chamber.”

“I’ve heard of it,” Temple said quickly, recalling Matt’s description of IDing his dead stepfather.

“Ordinarily we could use a photo,” Alch said, “but this is a pretty critical ID since the victim was anonymous, in a way. Can’t take any chances. Sorry.”

Everyone was telling her he was sorry these days. Except Matt, for a change. A big change. But now she was sorry. She hadn’t told him about Max’s latest gig as Suspect of the Week.

“You’ve got a lot of catch-up work here at the New Millennium, I know, Miss Barr,” Detective Alch said. “I’ll drive you over personally and have you back ASAP.”

“Where’s your partner, the petite fleur of the Crimes Against Persons unit?”

Alch guffawed at that description. “ ‘Petite fleur’ with dragonclaw thorns. Sorry, no Su on board. Naw, they always send me on these unpleasant runs. Figure I’ll ease along the poor civilian who has to gawk at dead bodies.”

“Quite a compliment,” Temple allowed. “Molina knows I wouldn’t do it if she asked.”

“Now of course you would. You’re a good citizen. Clear up this thing with a solid ID, and who knows what suspects we could find other than your boyfriend.”

“You know?”

“It’s my job to put two and two together, and you two have been a duo for a long time.”

“A long time,” Temple repeated.

By then Morrie Alch had her out the door and was ushering her into the front seat of an unmarked police car. It was a nondescript vehicle except for the flat computer screen and keyboard and two-way radio enthroned on the console.

“This Shangri-La,” Alch mused as he spiraled the car out of the shadowy hotel parking ramp into the sunlight glare of jammed near-Strip traffic. “I hear she snookered you once.”

“We talking pool?”

“I’m talking sweet-talking you out of the audience and onto the stage, where she relieved you of a valuable ring. Some magic trick. The lieutenant happened to be there.”

“I remember. But the police couldn’t find any way to charge Shangri-La with anything, ring snatching or drug smuggling. So, now that she’s dead months later, I’m a suspect?”

Alch chuckled like a befuddled uncle. “Maybe. If you really liked that ring, and what’s not to like about a Tiffany ring from your best beau?”

Temple could see why Alch pulled escort duty to the presumed bereaved so often. She appreciated the quaint old-fashioned way he phrased her romantic situation while pointing out her potential for revenge for her traumatic past encounter with Shangri-La.

“No, you’re not a suspect,” he reassured her. “Not to me.” And panicked her. “I’m just saying you had opportunity to study her close-up in her stage costume. And if you saw her bare faced—”

“I did. I was shocked. I’d assumed, as you had, that she showed her face to no one.”

“Musta caught her off guard. You think that ring thing had any hidden personal meaning?”

“No. She just wanted a distraction for her stage trick.”

Alch made a face that was half frown and half pout. On him, it looked good. “We found no evidence at all that she was involved in the kidnapping that followed. So. Innocent bystander, huh? Not so lucky last night.”

“None of us was lucky last night, Detective.”

“ ‘CC’ was. Cute how they abbreviate ‘Cloaked Conjuror.’ Guess it must be a pain to refer to him daily by such a klutzy pseudonym. I can’t get over all these anonymous magicians around town now. Like that new guy at Neon Nightmare, the Phantom Mage. Does all that new-fangled bungee work too. Used to be that breed kept their feet on the ground and lived for the limelight. Like Siegfried and Roy, bless their hearts, or this Mystifying Max my boss has on her hit list.”

Temple didn’t know how to reply to this comment, so she didn’t say anything. Avuncular Morrie Alch might seem as comfy as chocolate chip cookies with milk, but he was a detective with a disarming Columbo-like way of seriously nosing around.

Temple yawned. “I’m sorry.”

“Must have been up pacing all night,” Alch said with a quick glance. “Trying to figure out how to get this hot tamale out of the fire. I notice the hotel press release refers to an ‘accident.’ ”

“I didn’t write it. Randy Wordsworth did. But isn’t that the best public conclusion for now? The stage machinery was defective but nobody fell without a mighty effort to prevent it.”

“Then you’re of the school that the guy in black was trying to save Shangri-La, not torpedo her.”

“Is there any other school among the witnesses?”

Alch concentrated on easing them into a parking spot outside the coroner’s low-profile facility on Pinto Lane. “Not among the witnesses, no.”

Temple knew that he was referring to Molina and her grudge match with Max.

Pinto Lane was a two-block street north of busy Charleston Boulevard and south of Alta Drive, where Our Lady of Las Vegas Church Convent School could keep an eye on the quick and the dead at the Clark County Coroner’s office. Like most public buildings in Las Vegas, this one was pale, bland, and entirely overlookable, if that was a word.

The lobby resembled the waiting room for a dentist’s office.

Alch ambled up to the reception window, flashed his shield, murmured a little, then beckoned Temple to a plain wood door.

A buzzer belched it open. They passed into a nondescript hall. A nose-tickling odor of oranges grew stronger but vanished as Temple was led through another door into a cubicle. The process reminded her of nothing so much as getting a mammogram, except for the male escort. And in fact she’d had her first one recently at the University Medical Center just two blocks away. Turn thirty and all sorts of strange and serious things come at you face first.