Douglas, Nelson - Cat with an Emerald Eye

"Nine P.M.," Electra said with a forefinger-wag that threatened to dislodge her pineapple-gold-painted nail. Unlike Temple's, Electra's long nails were false. "Be there, or be sorry."

She bustled down the short neck of hallway leading to Temple's unit. Temple knew how it must feel to have Woody Woodpecker as your local neighborhood enforcer.

Of course she would go, if only to get another look at psychics in action. If an act of God or Houdini hadn't killed Gary "Gandolph" Randolph, then maybe someone else at the table had.

Then, too, she was extremely interested in seeing Electra's digs from the inside out. Temple had one of her psychic serial-killer-hunter hunches that there were hidden reasons for holding the seance in Electra's penthouse. In a way, she wished that Max could attend. If there was one area in which she was still willing to trust him implicitly, it was in knowing what was real and what was not at a seance.

Meanwhile, there was another method, less glamorous but more reliable. Why didn't she just ask the special effects whizzes?

***************

Six semi-trailer rigs lined up in front of the Hell-o-ween Haunted Homestead when Temple parked the Storm in the huge trucks' intimidating shadows. Those iron-pumping tires were as tall as her car.

She knew that stagehands and rock-band roadies could strike sets in record time, but she hadn't expected to see the inside of the haunted house stripped of its ghosties and ghouls already.

"Are the people who designed this attraction still around?" she asked the first scurrying workman she could stop. He was a she on closer inspection, a burly woman in denim overalls with dirty blond hair pulled into what had become a unisex ponytail under an orange hard hat.

"Yeah, but you shouldn't be in here without a hard hat."

"Show me the special effects crew and I'm sidelined forever."

"The boyos in body paint." The woman pointed to a wall-hugging trio that looked like a rock band whose act was being disbanded.

Temple joined them in the tortuous hallway that she had wound through twice in recent days.

"Are the police letting you dismember the seance room too?"

"Dismember. Cool expression." The one with a tattoo of a spider web veiling half his face shook his head. "Nope. We never unplug that ski-lift room. It's our centerpiece. Not that the police care that much. Why do you?"

"I'm interested in your tricks and technology. I represent a Strip hotel--"

"Strip hotel?" Even the guy's spider web was smiling. "Hear that, Crash? Guess sudden death hasn't frozen our act yet."

Crash looked like he had been in a few, all nearly terminal. He was bearish, beefy and pierced on all visible folds of flesh. Despite the biker body armor, Temple thought she detected the sweet souls of asocial computer nerds beneath an exterior of warriors trying to escape the latest update of the arcades' most gruesome and gory game, Fatal Wombat.

"You guys designed all this, really? Holograms and everything?"

Flattery will get you information.

"Sure."

"This is nothin'."

"Want something really cutting edge? You should see our studio, man."

"Well, I'd love to, but mostly what I'd like to know now is what the moneybags at the hotel want to find out."

"Yeah?"

"Did you guys, you know, skew the seance effects just to shake things up a little, with Hot Heads there? I hear those nasty weapons and a few uninvited spirits were really jumpin\"

"Hey." All three shook their untidy hands. Two, she noticed, had tatooed knuckles that read

"Dweeb" and "Dreck." She wondered if those were their nicknames. Crash, Dweeb and Dreck Productions, Ltd. had a certain crude appeal.

"We didn't tweak a timer," Crash said.

"In fact," Dweeb added, scratching his topiary buzz-cut with dirty fingernails, "our stuff was all screwed up. Those spirits must have been playing Ouija board with our master panels, I tell you. And that's what we told the police."

"What did the police say?"

"Nothin'." Dreck swigged from a can of... Gatorade? "The police think we're punks."

"We are," Dweeb said promptly.

"That doesn't mean we can't put on a bitchin' show for your hotel, lady." Crash, the ever-alert salesman, added an invitation impossible to refuse. "Come over to our studio and we'll knock your socks off, or whatever else you put on that passes for underwear."

"Where is your studio?"

"North Las Vegas."

"And you've been doing this Halloween attraction--?"

"Since we were in high school," Dreck said, still swigging.

"Which was--?"

Crash shrugged shoulders the size of a polar bear's. "Couple years ago."

"Thanks, guys. I'll definitely keep you in mind."

Temple edged out on that vague promise, slipping into a stream of grunting laborers who seemed as inclined to smash her like a bug, with the heavy equipment they were toting, as not.

As murderous riggers, Crash, Dweeb and Dreck were as likely suspects as Grumpy, Doc and Dopey, but they were also just the types to let "art" sweep them away into malicious mischief.

Heigh ho, heigh ho, it was off to work in other suspect-mines she would go. Maybe Electra's mysterious homemade seance would prove more productive than any performance at this madhouse from Helloween.

Chapter 23

End of the Line

Matt almost hung up the phone three times, at each unanswered ring on the line's other end.

The irony of a phone counselor freezing when making his own critical calls struck home.

Behind his cubicle, the buzz of other voices lulled him. Of course the party he sought wouldn't be there at this time of night, but he had to try now, while the impulse was too intense to ignore.

At last he heard a voice, a woman's voice. Though he was calling for a woman, this wouldn't be her.

"I'm trying to reach Lieutenant Molina."

"Is this an emergency?"

"No. I have some information."

"Can you call back during working hours tomorrow?

"Not until after noon."

"Just a minute." , She was gone, and Matt wondered if they were tracing the call.

He knew it was being recorded.

"Your name."

He gave it. Gave the address, the work phone number, home phone number. When it came to what the call was about, he simply said, "Cliff Effinger."

After he hung up, he felt wrung out. He shared sudden empathy with the people who called ConTact. People pitched to the breaking point. People uncertain. People hoping for help. People lost.

His hands were clammy as he rubbed them on each other. How critical a phone call could be only a veteran of ConTact--or of calling the police department--could testify to.

"It's cold out," a voice noted over his shoulder. "Like some coffee?"

He turned. Sheila was hanging over him, looking helpful, looking hopeful. Steam rose from the mug in her hand in separate puffs like messages from an Indian blanket.

"Something's bothering you," she said, quite accurately. She was a hot-line counselor too, after all.

He recalled all the brusque denial that kind of accuracy merited over the ConTact lines . No.

I don't need anything! I just happened to call. You can't help me ... so help me!

"Yeah." Matt wrapped icy fingers around the hot ceramic mug. "Unseasonably cold."

"That's the trouble. It is seasonal. Even Las Vegas has to go through a touch of fall and winter." Her smile didn't do much for that face, that voice, and he never used to notice such disparities. Why did feminine wiles in such an unfeminine face irritate so? "It's Halloween. This time of year the temperature can drop nights."

He nodded, then jumped as the phone rang.

"You're still on break, want me to get it?"

"No. I will." Though why he thought that Lieutenant C. R. Molina was anywhere out there on her time off, just waiting to take a call from him ... "Hello."