Кэрол Дуглас - Cat In A Leopard Spot

“Maybe you put a lot of yourself into your job.”

“Hey! I’m no floozie. I’m a PR professional.”

“You haven’t had me for a client yet.”

“Well, I guess if I can covet chain-mail bikinis from Macedonia Jones, I could pretend to be impressed with a client’s special customer.”

“Especially if he bought you a bauble from Fred Leighton’s at the Bellagio.”

She made another face, this one stronger. “I’ve heard PR people called corporate prostitutes before. I just never thought I’d be living up to the lowest level of the profession so soon. I don’t think I need a bauble as a cover.”

“No, but you’re missing a ring.” Max’s expression was even more masked than usual. Temple couldn’t tell if the emotion behind the mask was anger or sorrow, but it was something much darker than his deliberately whimsical tone. She wished he and Louie didn’t share a certain catlike inscrutability. “I can provide another,” Max said a trifle wistfully.

“You’ve given up on getting the other one back?” She found herself talking around a sudden lump in her throat, as if they were discussing replacing a dead pet.

“I never give up on getting anything back.”

“Are you just talking about the opal ring? Or about me, or even your preundercover, fancy-free lifestyle?”

“How about all of the above?”

“You dream big.”

He took her hand, her bare left hand. “I know nothing will replace the ring Shangri-La stole onstage at the Opium Den in front of God, Lieutenant Molina, and everybody. I promise you, I’ll find her and I’ll get it back.”

“It’s all right, Max. Really. Rings like that are only worth what they mean. You’ve got more important things to worry about.”

His grip tightened. If she’d been wearing a ring, it would have pinched her finger. “No. I don’t.”

Who could look away from the Mystifying Max when he was being this intense, and this truthful? Not Temple.

She smiled around the lump that still hadn’t gone away. “I know you don’t, and I know you will. Get it all back.” His grip eased as he smiled and gave her hand a small shake. “So, about the stage prop. From Fred Leighton’s? Really?”

“Just as a cover, of course,” Max amended, careful not to crowd her. But was it a cover for something more than the current charade? Was Max still insecure about her?

“I’d need a pretty convincing cover,” Temple said airily, moving onto less serious ground. “And you’d have to look like a pretty convincing high roller.”

“Absolutely.”

“It’s returnable, of course.”

“Absolutely.”

That was how Temple reentered the Van Burkleo household wearing a ten-carat vintage emerald ring surrounded by diamond baguettes. Temple always found it intriguing that bread—a slang term for money, like dough—also came in baguettes. French bread, of course. From Paris.

Even Leonora Van Burkleo’s mascara-smudged, mourning eyes widened to do a quick mental computation.

“I’m so terribly sorry,” Temple began.

It wasn’t clear if she was apologizing for the ostentation of her ring or for an intrusion on a house of mourning.

Leonora Van Burkleo spread beringed, inarticulate hands.

It wasn’t clear if she was acceding to or expressing the callous fact that the universe must go on. As the heart must go on. Après le Titanic, le déluge, c’est commerce .

“Mr. Maximilian”—Temple gazed moistly at her escort—“has most-favored-nation status at the Crystal Phoenix. Perhaps you can guess why.”

“I can indeed.” Leonora prowled within scratching distance of Max, who was dressed more expensively, and thus more quietly, than ever. “I am sure we can offer him something worth…bagging.”

“Actually,” Max said, taking a hasty spin around the two-story hall with the long-horned antelope heads mounted high like once-living chandeliers, resembling a man casket hunting at a cut-rate funeral parlor, “I’m interested in buying the total operation.”

“Really?” Leonora’s lean, mean eyes paid tribute in exact turn to the Patek Philippe watch (no mere Rolex for Daddy Maxbucks), the Roman ring, the Zegna suit worn with…gasp!…a Gap turtleneck.

Where did he dig up these things? Temple wondered. Was there a Wardrobe Anonymous Warehouse somewhere for undercover operatives? The same place where rotating cars were stored? Someplace where it can be easily done. Perhaps out on Highway 375 near Area 51.

“My condolences,” Max said with scintillating sincerity, taking Leonora’s paw. Hand. The golden menagerie of charms on her wrist jingled like spurs. “Perhaps it’s too soon to discuss business.”

Leonora’s long, lacquered nails curved possessively around his fingers. “Business?” she purred. And she did purr. Temple wondered if all her plastic surgeries had damaged her vocal cords somehow, had given her that contralto rumble. Or was it another affectation, like her new face?

Temple restrained a warning growl.

“I’m sorry, madame,” Max continued, not sounding it at all, “to intrude at such a time, but an enterprise like this needs a guiding hand”—her lethal nails curled harder into his fingers—“or at least a front man with international connections.” Max was suddenly all brisk business. “I’m in this country only a short while. I was interested in seeing the facilities, if you don’t object.”

“Not at all. But I’m afraid that the assets will be tied up for some time. Cyrus was not one to share his financial dealings.”

Max reclaimed his hand and stuck them both in his blazer pockets as he strolled around the vast, southwestern-style entry area.

“Quite an impressive layout. I understand from…Miss Barr that you have an equally impressive, ah, head shop, so to speak, here also?”

“How quaintly you put it.”

At that moment another woman entered the huge hall, moving more like its mistress than an employee.

Temple sensed Max’s immediate interest as Courtney Fisher, as tall and tan as the girl from Ipanema, came swaying into their charmed circle.

“Is there anything your guests need, Leonora?” Courtney asked. “Refreshments? I’ve finished copying all the computer files.”

Leonora lifted a languid wrist and opened her mouth to perform hostess duties, striking Temple as a trained animal warming up for a familiar act. She spared her the effort.

“I met Mr. Van Berkleo’s assistant on my earlier visit. Maxi, this is Courtney Fisher.”

“Charmed.” Max took her hand, bowing so low over it in a European fashion that his face gazed at the vee of her maize linen suit and any presumable décolletage anyone so slender might be expected to have.

That’s when Temple tumbled to the fact that Courtney probably had been a mistress here: Van Burkleo’s.

Max had sensed it instantly, in the way the two women prowled at just too much social distance around each other, like nervous tigers in a too-small-for-territoriality cage.

“I don’t care for anything, do you, darling?” Temple responded to the recent beverage offer.

Max hesitated just long enough to flatter both women. “No. We are here to see the animals.”

“Then you must start here, which is, oddly enough, the ending point.” Leonora’s strangely immobile face managed the tiniest moue. “For the animals as well as poor Cyrus.”

“You needn’t show us.” Max sounded amazingly sincere for someone who meant the opposite.

“It is nothing.” Leonora’s face grew smug. “Cyrus died among his beloved beasts. If he could still be here with them, I’m sure he would be. In fact, I’m having him cremated so he can remain with them. You would have no objection to agreeing to his eternal residence, Mr. Maximilian, if you purchase the ranch?”