Douglas, Nelson - Cat with an Emerald Eye

Only when the car makes several turns does she look at Max.

"Ah, is this place we're going to on the west side?"

He nods. She'll have to get used to that ponytail in profile. It doesn't look bad, just different.

Like the car. Temple is terribly afraid that they are heading in the wrong direction, but doesn't know how to say so, so she says nothing, not even when the Taurus turns into the parking lot of the Blue Dahlia.

Disastrous! Temple is speechless. Sick. Shocked. Does not dare say anything. Then she glances cautiously at Max, and suddenly suspects that he knows exactly-- exactly --what he is doing. He grins at her like Sean Connery as James Bond, insouciantly pleased with himself, with her.

"I just discovered this place. Quite unusual."

Temple nods in a daze, trying not to notice the place in the lot where she and Matt collapsed with laughter at the idea of Molina the singing policewoman.

This is getting interesting. Just how much does Max know about the Blue Dahlia, and who sings there sometimes, and when Temple might have been there and with who? Whom?

Whoever.

She is demure as he lets her out like a large little gentleman.

They are like two coiled springs trying to guess when the other will make like a Slinky and flip ... right for the stairs and a hasty exit.

They enter the restaurant, are shown to a table for two lit by the small coral-shaded lamp she remembers from last time.

"This is darling," she remarks, as she probably did last time.

"It's fairly new. Since my ... sabbatical."

"Is that what you're calling it?"

He settles into the chair, which he has to push back from the table to accommodate his legs, as usual. "It's as good a term as any. Do you like it?"

He means the restaurant, of course. Temple looks around. The small dance floor is empty, but a few musicians are shaking out their arms and their instruments under the spot lit stage area. A lone stool sits at the side, unoccupied.

Temple strokes the cold metal purse on the white tablecloth. She should probably tell Max they have to leave now, that Molina could come in at any moment, but when she looks at him he seems so at ease, so in control, so sure of himself that she can't quite warn him.

Besides, then he'd ask her how she knew Molina sang here and she'd have to explain she'd been here before, which would ruin the "surprise" aspect of the evening, always a big thing with Max. And then he'd ask with who--whom?--not out of jealousy but because he always wants to know everything about everything; that's what makes him a master magician, always knowing every situation inside out.

And she'd have to say it was just a dinner out with Matt, hating that "just," because that seemed to put Matt down and he didn't deserve it.

Better to let Molina nab Max and let him break himself out of jail afterward, Temple decides morosely, than to ruin the present with an autopsy of the recent past.

"You seem more serious than usual," Max says.

"Just worried."

"About what?"

"Our being out in public like this. Your being out like this."

"Let me worry about me; I've been doing it for a while." Max's smile could cut through fog.

"Come on, you want to show off those shoes, don't you?"

He takes her hand to draw her up and onto the tiny parquet dance floor.

No one else is there, but Max is used to solo numbers in the spotlights. The musicians have indeed got it together by now and are playing something familiar and forties and vaguely Brazilian (fascinatin'rhythm).

Max can dance and, as he's proving tonight, has even mastered some ballroom moves.

Temple thinks that she is doing the samba or something similar, but it doesn't matter what she thinks she's doing, because Max's lead is so smooth and so strong that she is doing just the right thing no matter what. She had forgotten how easy it was to dance with Max, because she is so small and he isn't. He's right; they'd be great on stage together if she could stand to be locked in cramped cabinets and wear fishnet hose. Well, maybe she wouldn't have to wear fishnet hose...

Max can slow-dance too, and Temple is swung out and drawn in, whatever the music and moment dictates, until she stops worrying and looking out of the corner of her eye to see if the stool is occupied yet or if any yellow-haired ghosts are watching from the sidelines.

They are of course making a spectacle of themselves, exactly what Max shouldn't be doing for his own good, but then her shoes might be drawing a tad of attention away from him.

Midnight Louie would like that.

"You're finally smiling," Max says when the music has them swaying together cheek to shoulder again.

"I haven't danced like this in a while."

"Me neither."

When the fourth number starts and they leave the floor, a smattering of applause accompanies them.

"Honestly." Temple unfolds her napkin with one mighty wrist shake and arranges it carefully on her delicate velvet lap. "What an exhibitionist. You couldn't remain undercover in a dust storm."

While Temple is taking her worry out on the table linen, Max has folded his napkin into an intricate star-shape, which he presents to her like a bouquet. In the center is one breathlessly perfect, perfectly pink fresh rosebud.

She stares at him with the proper amazement, not so much for the trick and the posy, but for the underlying meaning. And suddenly the night is not a dream, but the opening act for just what she needed, distance and a sudden snap back to reality, time for a discussion:

"For your sterling performance among the mediums the other night," Max said.

" Magnifique. "

"You ... you were there?"

"Who do you think stage-managed the entire thing?"

"Max, you couldn't have."

"Of course I could have. It's what I do."

"But you were home, asleep."

"I should have been," he agreed as the cocktail waitress sashayed into place, flouncing her abbreviated ruffles into his shoulder.

"Temple?" he asked.

She waved her hand. "Surprise me."

Max took the waitress's order pad and wrote something on it. She dipped with a wink and vanished.

"How did you even know about the second seance?"

"I didn't, until I called Electra that morning to see if you'd gotten home safely."

"Max, you didn't!"-

"She told me you were resting for the seance that night. She seemed particularly pleased to hear from me."

"I bet she did."

"Asked if I'd been spending a lot of time at the library lately, and what I'd been looking up."

"Grrrr."

"Do you have any idea what that was about?"

"Electra's unquenchable curiosity. Okay, so you then hie over to the haunted house and set up. Didn't the Glory Hole boys get in your way?"

"So you're responsible for that added complication! We were working at cross-purposes, apparently, but it came out all right in the end. The old guys didn't come along until after ten o'clock, so I was mostly set. I just had to make sure they didn't see my illusions in motion and blow the whistle."

"What did you hope to accomplish?"

"I don't know. I only know that magic has always worked for me when I most desperately need it. I hoped, I guess, to flush out the conscience of a killer."

"And succeeded beyond your wildest dreams, as always."

"Not always. I still have some wild dreams left."

Temple toyed with the cut rose at her place. "What effects exactly did you produce?"

He looked as if he didn't know where to start. "The panther."

"Where did you get a panther? You're not working with one now."

"No, but a lot of magicians do. Nice size cat, very dramatic, easier to handle than a lion or tiger.

Kahlua was on loan for the night."

"Then ... the fireplace was lined with mirror ... or you had installed a false back."