Кэрол Дуглас - Cat In A Quicksilver Caper

Temple decided to let that intriguing matter go for now.

“So with Andrei dead, who replaced him? Who was recruited next to steal the scepter?”

“You saw him,” Volpe said. “We all did. “The man in the mock–Cloaked Conjuror costume. He played Andrei’s part: swooped down in masked disguise, disabled the installation case, and grabbed the scepter, escaping the same way he had come, from the magic show flies and wings high above. We don’t know who he was, we don’t know where they got him.”

Madame Olga pressed her thin lips together. Temple knew that Count Volpe was seizing on Max’s unexpected appearance to end these unsettling explanations.

“The police,” Volpe added with a haughty glare at Detective Alch, “haven’t any clue to who he is. I suppose with so many Cirque du Soleil shows in town, the place is crammed with unemployed world-class acrobats. Andrei had been unfit for such a caper, anyway, and too old.”

“He could have done it!” Madame Olga said, her pride pricked again.

She was the one who would confess, because she was the one most offended by whatever forces had pushed them into this scheme gone wrong.

“The man who actually took the scepter,” Temple said, “was obviously a last-minute hire. So much went wrong. It was a wonder he escaped with the prize. No, Madame Olga, there was someone much closer to the exhibition who was the ideal substitute for Andrei. Someone your ‘masters’ spotted and snapped up. Someone you, and Count Volpe on your behalf, felt obligated to protect, so that even Andrei’s death didn’t free you to wash your hands of the affair.”

“A handy substitute,” Wayans asked, sitting up. “Not the guy in black?”

“Were you aware of his participation?” Temple asked Madame Olga and Count Volpe.

He began to shrug, but she said No most definitely. “I’m tired of play-acting and lying, Ivan,” she told him over her shoulder. “It’s obvious we will not leave this room with our reputations intact. I see no reason to spare anyone else’s.

“He was a complete surprise,” she went on, addressing Temple and the room at large, “and he was completely surprised by the breakaway set pieces up there. He obviously saved the Cloaked Conjuror’s life, and almost, almost—” She broke down in sobs, as Volpe knelt beside her.

“She’s been through so much,” he accused Temple. “You are putting her through more for no purpose.”

“For the purpose of an answer so the show that you’ve all worked so hard on can go on and justice will have been done.”

Pete Wayans was looking frankly puzzled. “You seem to know who this mysterious accomplice was. Why don’t you just tell us?”

“Because I have a point to make and it’s always better to let it be made by the suspects. This case is like, and very unlike, Agatha Christie’s Murder on the Orient Express , where everyone did it. No one in this room is a murderer.”

The silence was complete, and Olga let her iron control dissolve as her head sank onto Ivan’s shoulder.

Wayans nodded. “This Andrei guy obviously died during an argument in a place where he shouldn’t have been, a place way too dangerous for civilians. No one is allowed up in that performance area but the performers.”

“And mysterious men in black,” Randy put in.

Temple wished he hadn’t. The less they thought about Max the better.

Time for her to exercise some iron control.

“Exactly, Mr. Wayans. Nobody was allowed up there but performers, and once Andrei was dead, the theft’s masterminds had no literal fall guy.

“Except for a piece of wild luck and coincidence.”

Olga and Ivan were now regarding her with mutual alarm. Temple knew they were involved, but she didn’t know why yet. Or how deeply. Olga already carried her brother’s death on her conscience, but something else deeply personal was still tormenting her.

Everyone in the room was quiet and still, as if any noise or movement would draw unwelcome attention. Dimitri and his twin bodyguards were as stolid as the red marble statues in the Red Planetary Restaurant (although they would look a lot less interesting nude).

The lawmen at the door were stone.

At the conference table, the elderly White Russians made a pair of rather frail mated doves. (And why had they concealed their obviously long-standing relationship until now?)

Temple had a few answers and they weren’t pleasant, but she still had so many more questions that had to be answered before anybody here could move on from last week’s events. So she spoke again.

“There was one person, already on the scene, who could substitute for Andrei. The perfect solution to the problem. So obvious yet hidden that only one careless moment was needed to give someone the awful answer to a criminal dilemma that led to grand theft and disaster and death.”

Randy looked up at Temple with clear, disbelieving eyes. He glanced at Olga and Ivan. He saw where she was going.

“Shangri-La!” he said. “That twirling stunt right on top of the onion dome! She was perfectly positioned to knock off the scepter and bungee cord out of there. Of course, her performing career would be over—”

“As Shangri-La,” Temple pointed out. “She already was a conundrum, as disguised as the Cloaked Conjuror in her own way. She could always have reinvented herself.”

“Still,” Randy said. “On a Las Vegas level? Comebacks are almost impossible.”

Temple winced on Max’s behalf but Randy was right.

“Why would she do it?” Wayans wanted to know. “This is a major venue. The money is princely.”

Against their venal speculations, Olga’s sobs were soft and continuous.

Temple looked over her shoulder at Alch. “Detective, would you mind telling everyone who Shangri-La really was.”

He stepped forward. “Sure. Hai Ling. Member of a Chinese tumbling troupe that defected here in Las Vegas several years ago. They do that. Artistic types from Communist countries. Want the artistic freedom of the West.” He stepped back into position at the doors.

“We defected,” Olga said, her quiet voice clogged with tears. “Ivan. Myself. Andrei. All years ago, when that was the only way to leave Russia by free will. Andrei, he became drunk on Western freedom and destroyed his career, almost himself. Ivan and I met in Paris while I toured with the Russian Ballet. When Andrei and I defected, Ivan joined me in helping other defectors. After the Cold War ended, Russians could come and go, but not the Chinese or the North Koreans.”

“We helped them,” Ivan said, “the younger generation of defectors. Covertly, of course. We didn’t want to cause international incidents. With Hai Ling, she had family back home she feared for. She wanted to work anonymously. We helped her in the beginning. Later, we’d lost touch. We didn’t know her stage name. We didn’t know Shangri-La was Hai Ling until she approached us, very discreetly, after we were all here preparing for the exhibition and show opening.”

“She thanked us,” Olga said, “for helping make possible her participation here. For helping to ensure her continuing career, so that she could perform as a star at this magnificent hotel in America . . . and because of us she was here to be coerced into becoming a thief and to die in a stupid accident caused by such a petty motivation as greed!

“She told us she’d been careless,” Olga went on bitterly. “She was so eager to see the exhibition space going up she darted into the area without her constant concealing makeup on. The area was filled with workmen. How could she have known that our masters immediately spotted her. Defectors—their own or other countries’—were their business. They knew her instantly.”