Кэрол Дуглас - Cat In A Quicksilver Caper

This was her solo act. Her debut. Temple without Max.

Her job at stake. Her heart at risk. Her pulse racing triple time.

It would be hard to reveal the scenario she suspected without putting Max into it, without revealing that she knew who had the scepter or what she knew about the Synth and its goals.

That was her trick to perform. To paint him as an anonymous confederate of whomever here in the room had engineered the exhibition disruptions on behalf of the real confederate.

“We have two very different deaths here,” she summed up.

“One was man, one woman?” Dimitri asked derisively from his end of the table. His stooges cracked matching smirks.

“The first was a man, and there really wasn’t much point in his death. It only alerted everyone to the fact that someone had a serious eye on the scepter.” Unless that was the point, but Temple wasn’t going to mention that. Her job was to defuse, not confuse. In fact, Andrei’s death was a huge blow to anyone who planned to steal the scepter. It made any attempt harder.

“Therefore,” Temple said, “it must have been an accident.”

Alch shifted his weight unhappily against his door, though nobody but she faced him. Homicide detectives are not crazy about accidental deaths.

“What was Andrei doing up there, then?” Pete Wayans wanted to know.

“Scouting the setup, of course. He was the first one recruited to do what the man in black eventually did: steal the scepter.

“I see,” Count Volpe said. “His accident . . . his fall from grace, forced the thief to hire a new person to ‘crash’ the performance and steal the artwork.”

“But if,” Wayans argued, “he was competent to do high-wire work, why would he fall?”

“I didn’t say he was alone up there,” Temple said. “I’m thinking a difference of expert opinion. Or he wasn’t really willing to risk his bad leg on such a dicey stunt at his age. He was recruited or pressured because of his background. I think he argued with someone here, and in the course of it he overbalanced and fell.”

“Someone here?” Wayans looked around. “These people are all directly involved in sponsoring or mounting the exhibition, except for the corporate sponsors, whom I’m pleased to see you are not subjecting to this humiliation, Miss Barr.”

“It’s better than death,” she said.

“If someone on staff wanted the scepter,” said Count Volpe, delicately adjusting the silk ascot that obscured his stringy neck, “look no farther than the political functionaries. They do not respect symbols of the aristocratic rule, and see only dollar or Euro or ruble signs.”

Dimitri tried to charge out of his chair, but the boys in black held him down. For his own sake.

“And you worthless spawn of the privileged see more?” Dimitri demanded.

“Not only see it,” Volpe drawled, “but we can read it.”

“A nice show,” Temple said, eyeing the combatants, “but it was all a magic act from the beginning. Who are you diverting our eyes from now with your posturings?”

They weren’t about to look in any direction but their fingernails tapping on the exotic tabletop.

Temple eyed Madame Olga.

“He was your brother. You would have been able to persuade him to do the job. You helped design the installation. You would have been able to show him the literal ropes from a point way up high. You would have been positioned to cajole, coax, command him to do it.”

“Steal the scepter? Why would I? Silly goose girl! It is a symbol of my roots. Why would I want it in crass commercial hands?”

“Maybe you thought this Sin City exhibition was a crass commercial venue for a Czarist treasure,” Temple suggested. “Andrei wasn’t meant to fall, to die. I think you had an argument. I think you reversed roles for once up there. I think Andrei the crippled con man didn’t want to rip off one of White Russia’s most amazing artifacts. I think you had to convince him to do it. What words, spoken harshly under the cover of night? Words escalating into gestures, broad gestures? Forgetting where you were? Turning, stepping—?”

Madame Olga’s face grew paler by the instant.

“What a playwright you would have made.”

“There’s no room up there. Not for mistakes. Not for emotions. Did he demand a reason, wave his arms . . . then overbalance and, waving his arms, in the heat of anger and protest, fall, grab a bungee cord and struggle to climb up, save himself? And instead enmesh himself in it, his safety rope becoming a noose?”

“No, no!”

“And you watched, unable to do a thing, not even report it because that would betray the scheme. He hung there for hours after his death, a human pendulum, your own brother, who had taken a more noble stand than you had.”

Temple had thought and thought about what could have led to Andrei’s plunge from the platform high above the exhibition. She had theorized like a defense attorney on his mute behalf. And now she had made her case before the jury.

Madame Olga Kirkov shriveled into sobs of protest, hiding her quizzical old face in her time-veined hands.

“This is outrageous.” Pete Wayans stood. “Madame Olga is the greatest ballet artist of her generation. She has volunteered her expertise in both arranging for and designing this exhibition. She is an old lady and her brother has died violently. This must stop. My God, she’s an old lady!”

“Sit down,” Detective Alch said mildly from the door.

Pete Wayans eyed him and the silent, unnamed man next to him. He sat.

The room’s only sound was the choking sobs of Madame Olga.

“He had changed his mind about even planning the theft,” she said at last. “Gazing down at the exhibition space he felt a pride of nation I had never seen in him before. He said he would rather die than take the scepter. Andrei! My crooked brother. I would never have asked such a thing of him, but . . . I had to. He was so shocked by my demand, so horrified. He backed away . . . from me, from the very idea. I never touched him. I couldn’t save him. I could only watch, paralyzed, as he fell and . . . run away.”

Volpe had risen to come and stand behind her chair, his knotted hands pressing deeply into its upholstered back.

“It wasn’t murder, then,” Temple said.

“Oh, yes!” Madame Olga’s eyes surfaced from behind her hands. “I murdered his illusions about myself. I was the Sugar Plum Fairy, the good sister lifted twice daily by the prince in white tights. Pure Russian. Innocent! Andrei was no prince, and we both knew it. Until I tried to force him against his . . . his own honesty. Which humbles mine, in the end. Andrei! I not only let you fall, I let you take the blame for your fall. It was I. I was the snake in Eden and he was a better Adam than there ever was.”

Temple’s knees were shaking. She’d hoped . . . she had to . . . clear up a few mysteries, not peel back the top layer of human souls.

Old souls. Old wounds. New perfidies.

She was doing this for Max. One last obligation. He was the odd man out in all of this and shouldn’t have to swing for it. She saw his rueful grin even as she thought that two-edged phrase.

If she convicted someone else, Max would be exonerated, even if only in her own heart. And she knew that this was where it would matter most to him, to her.

“Why did you have to persuade Andrei to take the scepter?” Temple asked the old woman. Gently.

The words came sharp and bitter. “Because my masters demanded it.”

Volpe’s hands moved from the chair back to her frail shoulders with a white-knuckled grip that shouted “Silence!”

Madame Olga had been used to commanding audiences, not being commanded. Not even by a confrere. She lengthened her swan’s neck, hardened her fading features.