Douglas, Nelson - Cat with an Emerald Eye

"I don't know. Those were the days when they used to have to jump up like jackrabbits every few minutes to light a woman's cigarette." Electra nodded dazedly. "I guess those were the days when there were a lot more smokers."

"It all sounds like people lived as if they were in an old movie."

"We were, hon! It's called your own past. And it was a time, frankly, when a woman knew her place in a situation like that: quietly ebbing away to give the other woman a clear field."

Temple shook her head. "I don't see why that Sigmund woman is such a vamp. Like I say, it's so obviously phony."

"Men don't get much of that these days," Electra said. "Maybe they miss it. It may be phony, but it's all for their benefit, which must be rewarding."

"Well, I'll just visit the other booths, then, and get the scoop on Mynah."

"Very wise. Now you have something to ask them about."

"What?"

"Edwina Mayfair was really a man, wasn't he?"

Temple nodded.

"Maybe he was in disguise because he and Mynah were in cahoots."

"You're kidding! Why would she bother with an elderly skeptic like him when she already had a husband in tow and Pa Cartright on the side?"

"As you said, she's a phony broad. They never stop handing that stuff out, because they never have enough."

"Seems to me that the motive for killing the old guy had to have been because he planned to expose someone's trickery."

"Sure. But it doesn't have to be paranormal trickery, Temple. It could simply be old-fashioned hanky-panky."

While Temple paused in mid-aisle to weigh that idea, Electra grabbed her arm with alarming pressure. "Oh, look! Crystals to die for. Come on!"

Electra dove for a booth across a stream of people. Temple tagged along, thinking.

A feeding frenzy of excitement broke out in the aisle ahead of them. Over it all beamed a bright white camcorder light.

"Crawford!" Temple felt like she had sighted Moby Dick.

"Something's up!" Electra hallooed back. "Let's go."

They weren't the first on the scene, which was now watched by an audience of fifteen fascinated fair-goers.

Stage center were Crawford and the cameraman, Watts and Sacker and ... D'Arlene Hendrix.

"This could have been discreet," Sacker was saying, glancing around to find the reporter that accompanied the glaring camcorder.

"But I... I'm innocent!" D'Arlene protested. "I didn't do anything."

"Come along," Watts urged. "This is just for questioning. We are not about to cuff you for the TV cameras or anything."

"You!" Sacker barked. "Shut that off."

The two detectives turned and pushed through the crowd, D'Ar-lene between them and casting anguished glances backward.

"D'Arlene Hendrix?" Temple said. "Talk about an unlikely suspect. I wouldn't have thought the Martha Stewart of the paranormal set would have the nerve to skewer an olive."

"She wouldn't." Electra tried to work her way out of the crowd to follow, but was stymied.

"Oh, this is nuts. She'd never kill anyone. Temple, you have got to do something about this."

A breathless, low voice spoke at Temple's rear.

"A distraught New Age onlooker has just asked Temple Barr, crack Las Vegas lady sleuth, to prove the Halloween ghost-killing suspect innocent. Will she do it?"

A mesh fist of microphone zoomed toward Temple's mouth like a mobile metal ice-cream cone, tempting her to bite, hard. The television light engorged into nova-brightness.

"Will you?" Crawford Buchanan demanded dramatically for the camera.

"I'll... No comment." Temple turned her back on the camera, grabbing Electra's arm and diving into the crowd. She felt the heat of the light follow them until it veered to pursue the detectives hustling D'Arlene away.

"That was thrilling," Electra said in shaky tones. "I feel like a district attorney or something."

"How about like a victim? Crawford is the consummate grandstanded You'd think he was working for Court TV ."

"I can't get over D'Arlene Hendrix being arrested. Her work with families of lost children is outstanding, and has even been praised by some police detectives. They have the wrong person."

"Electra, the police are just taking her downtown for questioning; that's hardly arrest, as you know from my experience."

"But it's a scandal now that your Crawford friend has latched onto it for TV." Electra's jaw set, a new expression for her. "I don't care how corny you feel about being named a sleuth, D'Arlene's quality of life and career are at stake. You've got to do something."

Temple shook her head, a mistake, because it felt loose enough on her neck to fall off.

"What I've got to do is go home and get some sleep. And so do you. Don't say another word.

Not until later when we can read about it in the morning paper."

Electra frowned. "Sherlock Holmes would never wait until he could read about it in the morning paper."

"Maybe he had ESP," Temple growled, turning on her heel to leave Crawford Buchanan, the psychic fair and her New Age Watson behind her.

Chapter 18

Maxnapping

A Friday-afternoon nap.

What a luxury.

Temple stretched as she awoke, ghosts and panthers circling in her subconscious.

Louie was an out-of-focus lump curled up on the end of her bed.

At least he was safe at home. Again. How she would love to interrogate him !

She stretched again, blinking at the black haze on her bed.

Louie was putting on a lot of weight.

She patted the bedside table for her glasses, unfolded the earpieces and pushed them on.

Oh.

Midnight Louie had morphed into Max Kinsella, who did not have to lose weight, and who--

while sitting on the end of her bed--could by no means be described as "curled up." Unless it was as in: "curled up like a steel spring" and ready to pounce.

Temple wished that she was really awake. She wished she had not put her glasses on. She wished she was wearing Chanel No. 5 and a Victoria's Secret chemise, say in teal silk satin. She wished she was wearing a potato sack. She wished she was not here. She wished he was not here.

She smiled.

"Max! What on earth brought you back?"

He just shook his head. "Tell me about the murder."

" We don't know it was a murder."

"Too bad 'we' don't. I do." - "You do? How? Did I miss the news?"

He found the television remote control she was patting the covers to corral, then clicked on a station. A group of hundred-year-old teenagers, pierced on every visible inch of skin, except on their ears, seemed to be speaking out passionately on the benefits of purple hair.

"No news on yet this afternoon but bad news." Max clicked the talk show off. "Tell me what happened. You were holding hands with Gandolph, after all."

"I was not! I did not know the woman was Gandolph. I was happy to be not holding hands with Crawford Buchanan, unaware that I had been cruelly deceived and was actually pressing palms with an elderly, cross-dressing male magician nobody had heard of in a cat's nine lives."

"Lots of people had heard of Gandolph the Great. He was retired, true."

"Retired to transvestism."

"He was a showman," Max said. "He was ... a Don Quixote. He was there because he had something to prove, not because he wanted to pass as female."

"How do you know?"

"Because it's an honored tradition in the seance-exposing game. Even Houdini wore wigs in disguise when he was investigating mediums. Possibly women's clothes as well. And, besides, I know Gandolph. He was ... my friend."

"Max--" Temple was shocked. Max had never mentioned having a friend before, come to think of it. "He must have lived in Las Vegas when we moved here, but you never mentioned him."

"Yes, I did, but not often."