Douglas, Nelson - Cat with an Emerald Eye

"Molina."

She sounded as official as if she'd just alighted from a squad car. Matt wondered where she was, what she was wearing, if her daughter was anywhere nearby.

"What about Cliff Effinger?"

He could afford to speculate at leisure; she couldn't. She zeroed in. The call, the name, the need to know. Matt could jerk her chain anytime, with just that one magical name. A dead man linked to another dead man, and both linked to a missing magician, now back from the dead.

Only one dead man was linked, as yet, to an ex-Chicago -boy, ex-priest with his own need to know.

No hello, no frosting, just need to know. He could understand that, but in Molina's case, he didn't understand why.

"I think I saw him."

"At the morgue? You're convinced now it was him?"

"No. I'm less convinced than ever. I think I saw him on the street, just now."

"Now? Where?"

"Tonight. Three hours ago, crossing the Strip at Sahara."

An accusing silence. "Why did you wait so long to call?"

"I... wasn't sure. He looks different. But the walk. I've never seen anybody walk quite that way."

"The walk."

"I know it sounds--"

"It sounds ... like this man, whoever he was, is long gone from the corner of Las Vegas Boulevard and Sahara. What are you calling me now for?"

"Now" was rife with accusation: I'm a single mother, it said; I'm off duty. I don't need to be given false hopes any more than one of your pathetic callers does.

"I want to know what you'd want to know, what you'd need if he were alive, and in Las Vegas."

She laughed, not a very humorous sound. Not a sound that someone who loved to sing the old blues classics would make if she'd been listening to anything with swing.

"Fingerprints. Chase the guy down and wrap his fingers around a nice clean water glass, like they do on Murder, She Wrote . Or fly back to Chicago and dig up some extant examples, 'cause the Motor Vehicles Department here and there don't have any, the schools don't have any, the military doesn't have any, and right now, Mr. Devine, I'm not having any. Walks don't cut it in a court of law. Happy Halloween, but I'm even out of pennies."

She hung up.

He stared at the cup cooling between his hands. He was warm now, all over. With embarrassment, and something else. With anger. God damn it, and he meant the words as few do, he knew what---who--he had seen. He had hoped someone else, this detective, cared as much as he did, for her own reasons and in her own way. But she didn't. , He would have to track down this ghost on his own.

Chapter 24

Calling All Cats. . .

Temple was in a tizzy. She had to admit that, at least to herself alone, often the best person to confide in.

She hesitated in the hall outside of Electra's penthouse, wondering who besides her hostess would be inside. Certainly not the obnoxious Mynah. Perhaps poor D'Arlene Hendrix, fresh from her grilling downtown. Temple could certainly compare notes and sympathies about that!

And the professor, probably. Agatha Welk was a maybe; a little fragile for Electra's taste, Temple thought. No Oscar Grant. No Crawford Buchanan. No Max, boo hoo. But . . . maybe Matt?

Temple sighed and lowered her shoulders so she had a soldierlike posture when she rang the doorbell. This should be fascinating.

As usual, it took the requisite Ice Age for the door to open, and then it opened just to peeking width, despite the magnifying peephole the resident could rely on.

Electra peered out, her hair in a condition Temple had never seen before: obscured.

The obscuring mechanism, however, was even more brash than Electra's round of washable spray-on hair colorizers. It was a gold lame scarf arranged like an Egyptian pharaoh's headdress.

Electra checked the usually deserted hall before admitting Temple.

"No one followed you?"

" Nope. Louie's resting comfortably on my bed downstairs."

Electra nodded solemnly.

Standing in her circular entry hall, with the mirrored vertical blinds reflecting slices of each of them, felt oddly like the hall-of-mirrors scene in some old intrigue movie, say The Lady from Shanghai, with Orson Welles and then-wife Rita Hayworth.

In the spirit of the evening already, Temple could hardly wait to penetrate the heart of darkness beyond, often glimpsed but never explored. Already she could see light gleaming from the huge green ball atop Electra's vintage TV set.

Electra turned and led the way into the inner sanctum.

"Does that work?" Temple couldn't help gushing the minute they were in the large room.

Electra glanced at the TV set surmounted by what resembled a huge green glass turban.

"Like a top."

"Really? You can pick up contemporary signals with no trouble?"

"Contemporary, old-time, anything your heart desires."

"Cable even?"

Electra frowned and turned halfway to the television set.

"Cable? Do you mean 'Gable'? I've never been one to try for the celebrity spirit, dear. I've been tempted, but that's kind of amateurish, if you know what I mean."

She lifted the green globe by its complicated brass base. "Clear that end table and we'll sit right down here and get to work."

Temple obediently swept away several alternative health magazines, an issue of Modem Maturity and ... a Frederick's of Hollywood catalog?

Well, she was learning something, albeit nothing unworldly yet.

"Sit," Electra said, beaming, as if instructing a favorite Pekingese.

Temple sat.

"Is this it, Electra? Just us? We're the only 'true believers'?"

"Almost. Our most important seance partner has not arrived yet."

" I'm breathless with suspense. Let me guess."

"No, don't! Expectations can destroy a seance. While we're waiting you can fill me in on the latest developments in your love life."

"Electra! Why would I do that?"

"I have gingersnap cookies, with icing. And raspberry zinger tea. And it does one good to unburden one's soul."

"You can't bribe me with tea and cookies."

"Besides, you might get some good advice from the spirits if you come clean."

"What spirits? You might conjure up Bluebeard. Not my idea of Ann Landers."

"Well, while we're waiting for our special link, we could at least discuss my fascinating tenants."

"Get the cookies and tea, then."

"All right!"

Electra bustled off to what must be the kitchen, allowing Temple time to give her place a long look.

Wow. The sofa she sat on was almost seven feet long, upholstered in a nubbly fabric with gilt threads here and there. The big green glass ball was not entirely smooth, but nubbly in its own right. Must be sixties glass, when wavy-everything was decoratively chic, especially in pole-lamp shades. Ooof. Speaking of pole lamps, a rather rank example held up a corner, its lights aimed hither and yon.

This place was a paradise of the Truly Tacky. Kitsch in Full Flower. As Temple looked around, she even discovered a brandy snifter filled with colored marbles, an aquarium occupied by multicolored crystal growths, a black-and-chrome institutional cigarette snuffer, a stuffed squirrel on a very inauthentic-looking tree branch (the squirrel was absolutely true-to-life) and, well, lots of unbelievable junk. The odd decorative marble lay scattered here and there. In fact, two of them glowed a desultory green from under the very sofa she sat on.

And then they moved.

Temple lifted her feet from the floor and shrieked in the lady-like manner of a vintage cartoon lady who had seen a mouse.

"What is it, dear? See something awesome in the globe?"

"I saw something sentient under the sofa. Do you have rats?"

"Oh, good. She's warming up to you."

"What is 'she'? Cleopatra's asp?"

"Silly! She's just the psychic we were waiting for. Remain calm and I'll bring your goodies out and we can begin. Just pretend you didn't see her, and she'll relax and come right on out."