Carole douglas - Cat on a Hyacinth Hunt

"Illusions. Always the best place to attack. In this case, quite literally. Can I take you to a scene of the crime?"

"Fine." Temple left her tote bag by the computer and followed Max out into the single-story home's bedroom hallway.

He led her to the room filled with magic, with painted boxes and curtained mirrors and other arcana.

"You know how valuable these artifacts are?" he asked.

"I guess. They must be custom-made."

"Temple! They are magician-made. They're worth literally thousands and thousands of dollars. Each magician's tricks are his stock-in-trade. When he retires he can sell them to one inheritor. Never more than one. It's the professional code. We never betray each other. We perfect our signature acts in solitude and keep their workings secret. We're worse than the Masons used to be."

"Sounds creepy."

"It is creepy. But I inherited Gandolph's equipment, and I've been exploring it. In this--,"

Max pressed an elaborately painted upright box, a sarcophagus shape again. A small drawer in the base snicked open. "--I found these." He presented her with a hand-written book bound in heavy parchment, thongs of suede tying it together.

"What is this? The Necronomicron of the mad Arab himself?"

Max managed to look both intrigued and mystified.

"Never mind. Just jump out of the way if drops of blood start dripping onto the text from the ceiling."

"There's nothing up there but crawl space."

"Crawl space is named that for a reason, trust me. Can I sit down somewhere with good light and look at this?"

"Of course, Madame Detective. May I interest you in my parlor?"

"As long as the ceiling doesn't drip blood."

Max's "parlor" was what every good female fly would fear it would be: in his case, an opium bed.

Just the name of the thing carried a freight of exotic superstition. It was the size of a latticed garden gazebo, a lacy carved wooden structure meant for the swooning upper classes of China as they inhaled from the elegant sterling opium pipes curling around their thumbs like ophidian rings.

Temple knew the artistic provenance of the piece; she just didn't like its social history. Or maybe she didn't like the fact that one was likely to start living up to that history once reclining on the cushioned fabrics within its architectural boundaries.

But she had to admit it was the perfect site to sit, propped up by silk and suede-covered pillows of every shape in a geometry book, gazing on mysterious papers by the warm light of the craftsman-style floor lamps hung with fringed brocade shades.

"This setting reminds me of Fu Manchu's brothel," she complained while settling in after kicking off her black velvet tennis shoes.

Max bent down and wordlessly presented a tiny pair of embroidered satin Chinese slippers.

"Your feet could get cold."

Temple curled her toes into the silken mules and focused her new custom lenses on the thick calligraphy.

" 'Sacred secrets shall never be shared,' " she quoted the first page of parchment. "Well, the author has an overdeveloped sense of the poetic. Not only four instances of alliteration, but the first two are a simple 'ess' sound and the second two are the 'sh' sound so dear to librarians.

Pretty hokey."

"It gets hokier." Max leaned on one elbow, settling beside her like a warlord being entertained by a favorite geisha. No, that was Japan.

Temple frowned and read the second sheet, identically penned on identical paper.

" 'The Synth is like a battlement, safety. The aberrant brother is like a match, fire.' Were all the sheets folded in quarters?"

Max nodded. "Why?"

"It's an odd, old-fashioned way to fold messages, as if they weren't sent by mail."

"I found no envelopes."

Temple moved to the next crackling sheet of heavy paper. "Sherlock Holmes would no doubt have something enlightening to say about the paper source."

"It's handmade, high rag content. No maker's markings. A labor of love by a skilled craftsman."

"Or craftswoman."

Max nodded solemnly.

Temple recited the third message. " The aberrant brother shall be declared anathema. The price upon his head shall be death.' "

"Or her head?" Max wondered.

"This is a brotherhood," Temple pointed out. "I think we can take that literally. No need for equal opportunity pronouns. They were sent to Gandolph, presumably."

"Presumably." Max committed a private smile. "It's taken me more than a month to find and figure out how to open that particular hidey-hole, so I doubt anyone else has been paging through them. Gary was a talented magician long before he was a talented psychic debunker."

" Anathema.' That almost sounds like . . . excommunication from the Synth."

"Is that your broad liberal arts background talking, or your hard-headed Unitarian ancestors, or a touch too much of Matt Devine?"

"Maybe a little of all three."

Max took her hand, her left hand. He turned it so the lamplight caught the opal in his--her--

ring and turned it to pale fire. "Do you dress for the part, or for the partner of the moment?"

"Max, I am not going to bang anybody over the head with our relationship. What if Lieutenant Molina should spot this ring and ask about it, and she would, believe me. She's like a hawk looking for any trace of you in my life."

"Maybe she should get a life of her own."

"And maybe you shouldn't worry about controlling mine when I'm not with you."

"But you're so often not with me now, not like before, when I was foolish enough to think we could live together openly."

"So I don't wear my ring openly."

He nodded. "I know. I just don't want to know." He lifted her hand and kissed it. "Let me take those tacky illuminated threatening notes away before they give you a headache."

"A headache was never a reason to say no in my book."

"No. But why take any chances, when we've so few of them?"

Chapter 11

Midnight at the Oasis

Midnight. Murder. What's the Diff?

When one is short, short of cash, and persona non grata at most of the establishments in town (through no fault of one's own except accident of birth, I might add), finding entertainment in Las Vegas is still as easy as even odds. There is no more democratic town than Vegas when it comes to playing to the rabble of any species.

One just has to get there early enough to ensure a good seat.

So it is that I find myself perched upon the lip of an ancient looking wharf, gazing into the rippling waters of an ersatz Mediterranean Sea. No doubt my Egyptian ancestors sat in just such a pose to contemplate the mighty yellow delta of the river Nile.

My dubious descendent, one Midnight Louise by popular acclaim but no input of mine, sits beside me currying her tail with her tongue.

She makes a great deal of this common beauty routine, rather like a human female applying fresh lipstick at a dinner table in the Paris Ritz. No doubt the grooming fetish is meant to remind me that she has Longhair on the one side of the family--not mine-- for my rear member is long, but bears a buzz-cut rather than a ponytail. This suits me fine.

Not that I am admitting any paternity here. I was not born yesterday, and the Esquire I use after my name on occasion is not just for show: when they use the phrase "street legal" they are thinking of my gaming-house-lawyer nose for what is permissible, performable and preferable.

Although the New Year has not quite turned, I am still in a holiday mood. Thus I attempt a gesture of reconciliation with my namesake.

"These are pretty cheap seats, Daddio," she sniffs once she has deigned to lift her face from her rear quarters to regard mine. My face, that is, not my rear quarters. Miss Midnight Louise has been "fixed" so that her only interest in the aft of the male animal is to see it walking away from her.