Douglas, Nelson - Cat with an Emerald Eye

Max turned ruefully from the stove, bearing the steaming pizza on its slightly singed cardboard circle. "Still hungry?"

Temple nodded and jumped down to the quarry tile. "Very."

They spent the night at the computer.

Exquisite wine in iridescent glasses had given way to cans of Classic Coke.

Forbidden files had segued into Gandolph's files, for his investigation, for his book.

Apache dances on kitchen islands had been replaced by weary sparring sessions with a computer keyboard.

"I found a file," Max began, hunting two-fingered over the keys.

"You really need a touch-typing course."

"Later. Anyway, this was not intended for the book, but for himself. It was a diary he began keeping fifteen years ago. Rather sad."

"A diary."

"About his mother. Explains everything, in a way... there it is. I'll print it out for you."

Temple leaned into the screen to read the beginning. "He must have been into computers early."

"Yep. Before he retired. The other magicians thought he was cracked, but I can certainly see the attraction now. Poor Gary. He never discussed this with me, and we were pretty good friends."

"I'll read it on-screen. I couldn't focus on typed pages now to save my soul."

"And a very pretty little sole it is too." Max leaned back to eye her bare feet under the desk.

"Thank you, Mephistopheles, but I'm keeping mine for a while." She scrolled down a few pages, reading, then frowned. "I see why you think this might be important. Gandolph's mother was addicted to psychics, it sounds like."

"And you haven't seen the financial records. Apparently, Gary hadn't either. He found out just how much when his mother died. Thousands."

Temple questioned him mutely.

"It wasn't the money she spent on them that enraged Gary. He had sufficient unto his needs.

It was the idea of her vulnerabilities being used to bilk her."

"She lost a child at an early age."

"There's nothing worse, they tell me," Max said, his voice bleak.

Temple eyed him sharply, but he was rising to retrieve the print out. He'd spent most of the night crouched beside her, showing her the way through Gandolph's labyrinth of files.

"This book of his would have really blown things open, wouldn't it?" she asked Max when he came back to drop a fat pile of printouts onto her lap.

He nodded. "In the paranormal community, yes. And it will still do it. There's nothing here I can't finish."

"Writers do have a reputation for being reclusive."

"It's something I can do that Gary would want. I have to admire him as both man and magician. To pull off this long-running impersonation of Edwina Mayfair, in drag yet! If you had known the man, you'd appreciate that he was as straight as General Eisenhower. No one could have imagined him doing this, which was why his investigation was so effective. He must have been fanatically determined to unmask them; as he writes, he did it not simply for the sake of his mother, but for all the people whose grief over lost loved ones has been exploited."

"I've been jumping ahead to skim the mother file. Max, she apparently skimped on her simplest needs, even her prescribed medications, to finance her quest among the psychics."

He nodded. "I never took that ghost-hunting stuff seriously. I used to consider us all brothers and sisters under the skin, players in a wonderful show. After reading Gary's story, and about the other bilked poor souls he found and championed, I understand him a lot better. I appreciate him more. If he was killed, Temple, it was part of a very dirty and secret war. We've got to expose his killer."

"How?"

"I don't know yet. Maybe when you read all your homework, you'll put the key clue into focus, and I'll trap the killer by some clever illusion. Then we'll let Lieutenant Molina nab the perp and all the credit."

"She's not on this case."

There was a silence. She glanced suddenly at Max. He was looking at her, and it was no glance.

"You didn't tell me Molina was a woman," he said.

"I guess it didn't seem important."

"Perhaps it wasn't." He rapped the printouts on the desktop with one sharp blow so that they were neat-edged as a fresh ream, and cleared his throat. He wasn't looking at her anymore but his voice was as smooth as when he was introducing his next illusion. "Well, I know now, so I can desist in my fantasies of punching out the flatfoot's lights for doubting you."

"Did you harbor such violent fantasies?"

"It's a bit late for discussing fantasies of any nature." Max checked his watch, grinned at her, then sat back on the floor. "God, I've got to get some sleep."

"I've got to get home and feed Louie breakfast."

"And here I said you couldn't cook."

They staggered upright much too soon, then shuffled through the silent house.

"What will the neighbors think?" Temple wondered when the broad front door cracked open to admit a thin trickle of dawn light.

"That the real estate lady is a bit weird for sleeping over in empty houses. Thanks for supper," Max added, catching her and kissing her good-bye like a drunken man, which he was by now.

Temple lurched out into the cool daylight, her tote bag packed with papers, her eyes blinking.

She turned back to the door, still open a crack.

"When you wake up again, Max, don't forget to shave. You could give a cactus razor burn."

She tottered off to the car, managing to start it and zoom away before any neighbor poked nose out of house to get the morning newspaper.

Someday soon, one of those newspapers would read: MAGICIAN'S MURDER CAUGHT.

Chapter 36

Reincarnation

"So where have you been?'"

Electra Lark, pink plastic rollers in her silver hair looking as natural as tofu, asked that question in the lobby of the Circle Ritz like a dorm mother forbidding access to the elevators until the answer was given.

"Don't get overwrought," Temple said. "You're not my den mother."

"It's almost seven o'clock in the morning and you're just getting home, wearing the same clothes you left in last night."

"At least I'm wearing them. Fret not, I was busy researching the seance murder."

"And I know how too. After you left last evening, Agatha Welk called me up to warn me about your alarming tea-leaf reading and mentioned that you were on your way to a drink with the Count Dracula of the seance set: that smarmy Oscar Grant."

"All true, but contrary to Agatha's tea leaves, I was just fine."

"Oscar was a gentleman?"

"No, but the Fontana brothers rescued me."

"How many Fontana brothers?"

"Only three."

"Dear, I consider myself broad-minded, and Lord knows I have a few ex-husbands, and the Fontana brothers are rather adorable, but drowning your current frustrations in late nights and wild sex is no answer."

"Electra, my personal life is not a proper subject for your speculation, especially when your speculation veers in such improper directions. I assure you I was not with any number of Fontana brothers all this time. Now will you step aside and let me get an elevator so I can get to my condo in time for brunch, if not breakfast?"

Electra folded her arms, crushing the printed parrots on her muumuu. She did not budge from the elevator doors.

"You were somewhere all this time, and there has to be a man in it somewhere."

"How about a dead man? I was doing some heavy reading-up on Gandolph the Great."

"The library was open all night?"

"This is Las Vegas, Electra. Everything's open all night. Get with it"

Temple brushed past her, amazed that Electra had been stopped cold in questioning her whereabouts. Maybe the libraries really were open all night. She'd have to check that out when she had time, for future reference.