Кэрол Дуглас - Cat In A Leopard Spot

Temple nodded, sipped, then thought. “You know, she was really disappointed. I had the funny feeling she could have used the money.”

“Now, don’t ruin your victory by worrying about the loser.”

“Worry? Me? About Savannah? I can really use the money. I’ve been so busy putting the finishing touches on the Crystal Phoenix campaign that I haven’t taken another job in weeks.”

“If you need any money—”

“I know. You’ve got it. Or is that It? ” She smiled wickedly as she put the capital I in her inflection. “I’m fine. It’s nice to know I have a chump to fall back on, but I’d really rather do it myself.”

Their waitress came to take their orders and by the time she had gone their cocktails were at half-mast.

“So,” Temple said, feeling really relaxed for the first time in ages. “That was my day in court. How was your day?”

He told her.

Temple’s jaw dropped about two minutes into the recital, and stayed that way until she finally could round up a question or three hundred.

“You’ve been back out in the desert with a pack of wild animal-rights people?”

“Just three.”

“And…hit patrols?”

“‘Security’ is the formal term.”

“Why didn’t you mention it earlier? So where I was snooping a couple days ago really is a top-secret, high-dollar canned-hunt ranch?”

“Not so secret now.”

“And the owner got killed last night? That man I met? Van Burkleo?”

“The medical examiner’s report hasn’t said homicide yet.”

“Like you know all this stuff! Out of the mouths of the police and into Max Kinsella’s ear?”

“The worst part is the nature of the killing.”

“A killing of nature, what with the leopard on the scene, I bet. Do you think the animal did it?”

Max shook his head. “Too…pat. Especially when you know who the leopard is.”

“You’re sure the Rancho Exotica leopard is CC’s? Do leopards have identities?”

“Doesn’t Midnight Louie?”

Temple nodded. She was starving, but the information download at the table was far more taste-tempting than anything she had ordered, as good as it sounded.

“But I know Louie. Big cats I only glimpse. I’ve seen Kahlua, the black panther you borrowed for a special effect once, but I never knew who owned it. Gandolph didn’t ever work with a big cat—?”

Max shook his head at mention of his mentor. “No.”

“There are probably lots of leopards in Vegas. A dozen magicians around town must use leopards. They love to change them into human vixens. You once said maybe I could be your assistant. I suppose I could change into a snarling, sensuous leopard lady.”

“Maybe you could, but get your mind back on who might use a leopard as an accessory. In the criminal sense. You already were in a position to see who would use a leopard as an accessory in the magical sense, even if I hadn’t told you who the kidnapped leopard belonged to.”

“I was in a position? To see? When? Oh.” Temple nodded sagely, finally getting his reference. “TitaniCon was crawling in Khatlords from Space Trooper Bazaar wearing spotted masks like the Cloaked Conjuror’s. And then I saw CC in person at the judges’s table in his leopard facial appliance…but, Max! How would you know that I saw the Cloaked Conjuror at TitaniCon? You weren’t there, except on the outside.”

For a moment he seemed startled. “Elementary, my dear. TitaniCon was held at the New Millennium, which is where the CC does his act, so you might have seen him. You managed to keep Molina Junior from evil influences, remember?”

“That was the strangest thing. Her mother, particularly—”

“What about the esteemed lieutenant?”

“Oh, nothing.” Temple wasn’t about to describe TitaniCon’s dramatic denouement to Max, particularly since it put her archenemy Molina in a favorable light. If you considered personally tackling the perp a favorable light…and Temple did. At least she did when she or Louie managed it.

“Whoever the leopard is, the police think it killed the guy,” she concluded. “And you?”

“I think that there are loads of likely suspects, all of them able to walk on two legs. What I want to know is who you saw inside the place.”

“Oh. Oh! The wife. The widow now. Wow. What a weird woman. I think she was having herself surgically altered to look like a big cat.”

“This is a motive for murder?”

“Maybe her husband made her do it? Or maybe she wanted the ranch and the money?”

“Anyone else around the place?”

Temple grimaced. “It’s so hackneyed. The comely secretary. Thin and tall enough to pose as a straw. Snooty too. Let’s have her do it.”

“You don’t know anything about her?”

Temple shook her head. “I imagine Molina’s people are assembling dossiers on the dramatis personae.”

“If they haven’t been dazzled by the leopard at center stage.”

“Molina wouldn’t fall for that, would she?”

“From what I gather, the murder scene looked enough like an accident to confuse the issue. And most people have no idea of what performing leopards are about, or what they can and cannot do.”

“Which means?”

“The leopard was a pro. He was people-friendly. True, you can never fully trust a wild animal, especially one big enough to hurt or eat you, but he wouldn’t just go berserk and attack a person. Unless he’d been goaded into it.”

“Teased, you mean?”

Max nodded. “Animal instinct is powerful and rapid. These foolish people who keep big cats as pets always underestimate that a second’s worth of sheer instinct taking over could gravely harm a human.”

“Sounds like murder in the human kingdom too. You obviously think that Molina and company won’t investigate the leopard angle, or won’t investigate it well enough. Why not?”

Max grinned and drained the dregs of his long, potent drink. Rum and everything.

“Because my friends in camouflage, the animal-rights protesters, are going to tell all about the man in black they saw lurking in the desert before Van Burkleo died.”

“You! That’s right. You were out there. And you were on the scene. You’re a likely suspect.”

“And wait until the widow and the snooty secretary tell the police that you were there.”

“Oh, no!”

“Worried?”

“Only that Molina will have a nervous breakdown trying to decide which of us she’d most like to nail with murder.”

Chapter 23

Déjà Vu

Reno, as she called herself, was too short to be a stripper. Maybe five four on a good day and the right high heels.

She was in superb shape, though, especially for a relatively recent mother. And she made the most of it. Even at two in the morning.

He watched her from the smattering of audience: bored guys trying to decide how many dollar bills it was worth stuffing down her G-string to give them some reflexive kick, some nervous system surge that could be identified as erotic through the smoke and the sound and the booze and the damn emptiness of life itself.

Strip clubs were the most depressing places in the world when you stripped away the jacked-up sound, the rote sexy motions, the scent of money and sweat.

Max had donned Vince with the same professional dispassion and distaste that cops pull on latex gloves these days: it was a habit, it was useful, it was a protective device from the unnameable stains of life in the sleaze lane. One hoped.

Onstage, Reno grabbed her ankles in their four-inch-high heels, bent over, back arched, and showed where life began. And sometimes ended.

Max stared at Reno’s splayed high heels, so different from the high-fashion form Temple wore.