Douglas, Nelson - Cat with an Emerald Eye

Max shrugged modestly.

"But, Max, you were the walking dead when I left you at Gandolph's house."

"And after I talked to Electra I'd had, oh, four hours sleep, so I walked right over to the haunted house and started setting up. You know how much intense effort is involved installing a magic show; same thing. I'm used to working under pressure."

"But how could you know that the psychics would react to the phenomena?"

"Modesty is not one of my weaknesses, of which there are many."

Temple rolled her eyes.

"I guess you know that from experience," Max added modestly. "I happen to believe that any competent magician--and I am far, far more than competent--can outdo any fraudulent medium. I figured if I put their tawdry tricks to shame, they'd be so unnerved they'd begin to believe they had conjured something real. Even fake mediums hope for genuine success. They wouldn't be in the spook business if they didn't half believe."

"Well, it worked like a charm, Kinsella. I'd have you take a bow, but you're a wanted man."

"Wanted here right now, I hope."

Temple glanced toward the stage. "I hope not."

"She's not coming."

"What?"

"I love it when you're surprised silly and trying not to show it. You do such a good job, but not quite good enough. Molina isn't singing tonight."

"You know about her performing here?"

Max nodded. "She's on a case; not a chance in homicide that she'll turn up."

"And you brought me here, with me thinking you were walking into the lion's mouth? Why?"

"It's a fun place. It's where I wanted to be with you, sans the songstress, of course. Why should I let a detail like Molina stop me? All I had to do was check the duty roster--"

"In the police computer!"

"Right. It's never magic, Temple. It's just damn good planning."

Like magic, a drink in a footed glass appeared in front of Temple. Foamy, pink. A Pink Lady.

The waitress dipped to position a matching green drink in front of Max. A Grasshopper.

Together, the two drinks looked a lot like Electra's Probe and Temple's Storm: Miami Vice colors.

"I think you got it wrong this time, Kinsella." Temple sipped her drink through the straw.

"Dessert first, substance later."

"The mediums and son of medium nicely confessed, didn't they?"

"To harassing Gandolph to death. None of them necessarily killed him, or even meant to. No arrests, no trial, no case closed. No vengeance either."

"The book will be vengeance. I'm hoping you can help me with it."

"With the writing?"

"Nope. Oh, maybe some light editing. No, I need a front woman."

"A flack to hype it?"

Max shook his head. "A ghostwriter to take credit. I don't care to be in the limelight. You'll do nicely. Of course it will be a coauthor credit with Gandolph the Great."

"Max, it's a pity you can't do it; you'd be much more promotable as co-author."

"Can't. Anyway, I won't be able to finish it for a year or so. Gary had lots of research and notes to cull through. At least the project will keep me off the public streets."

Temple picked up the rose she'd laid by her water glass to inhale the indescribably wonderful scent again.

"Aha! What about the bats, the hundreds and hundreds of bats?"

"They did scare the goblins right off the rafters and tangled my many lines of illusion. I assume they were imported to have at the happy haunted-house patrons. Or has Houdini adopted a familiar?"

"Not a genuine bat in sight when I did my tour of duty at the Hell-o-ween Haunted Homestead, and nothing to do with Houdini, or Welles. Some protesters were picketing the Halloween attraction for vilifying spiders and snakes and rats and bats. I bet the zealots salted the empty premises with a brood of bats once the attraction had closed to make a point how peaceful the critters are."

"As you have made a point." Max bowed his head in her direction. "I'm delighted that I didn't suffer the slings of bat guano for some more sinister reason."

"So you created everything: the panther, Houdini's second appearance, the flying martial arts weapons, the fog, the figure in space."

"Or amplified what was already there. What figure in space?"

"The Gandolph-like figure in the Edwina hat and cloak that everybody saw floating in the darkness and the distance."

"Mass hysterical delusion." Max dismissed the phenomenon. "Didn't hurt the impact of my effects, though."

"I think there was something there."

"Of course. There's always something there when people see things. Reflections, or just an expectant state of mind."

"No. That figure was real. I saw it at the previous seance, in three stages: boy, man and elder prophet. So did Agatha Welk. The others saw something then too, but they took it for a hologram programmed by the haunted-house operators. They never saw it with the detail I did, especially when it appeared last behind Gandolph, before he was dead, the mouth saying something--"

"Temple, you've had a trying time. Sit back, relax, drink your drink."

"You're sounding complacent, Max, and I find that annoying."

"I know better than to annoy a redhead, unless she wants me to."

"Well, you're rubbing me the wrong way now. I know what I saw. I mean it! I finally know what I saw, and it wasn't Houdini and it certainly wasn't phantoms from the ingenious mind of Max Kinsella."

He was silent.

Temple picked up the rose. "This is lovely. Thanks. But.. .you gave it to me for the wrong reason."

"How so?"

"You remember when I was trying to come up with the word?"

"Wonderfully ingenious. I had no idea you had researched Houdini enough to know the whole Rosabelle routine. Worked perfectly with my illusions to unhinge the mediums. That's what finally did the trick and loosened their tongues. When you came up with 'Rosabelle.'"

"That's just it, Max. I didn't come up with 'Rosabelle.' "

"But... you said it."

"No, I started to say something like it, and the mediums jumped on it. We've all been looking for the wrong ghost. It's like you always say. People see what they expect to see. People hear what they expect to hear. Even Max Kinsella. Sometimes."

He was listening now, his face serious, sober.

"I was trying desperately to remember the one true thing I saw at the other seance: the figure through the window. And the last time I saw him, the last thing I saw was his lips forming a word over and over. A last voiceless word. He stood right behind Gandolph, and I think he was trying to warn him of danger."

"Why would any ghost want to warn Gandolph.. . unless it was his dead mother--?"

Temple shook her head. "This ghost has a lot in common with Houdini and Gandolph. And you. 'Ghost' isn't an adequate word. 'Spirit' is better. This was a spirit that would not be quenched in life, despite many reasons. A man who was born in Wisconsin on a date very near Houdini's amended birth date. A man who was deeply attached to his mother, though she died when he was still a child. A magician with an intimate connection to Gandolph, and even to you.

"And I didn't realize that until I searched for the word. I work with words. I write them. I used to say them in front of a camera. I can't lip-read, but I have a certain instinct. So I was trying to sound out that unspoken two-syllable word."

"Not 'Rosabelle'?" Max looked bewildered, but like a believer.

Temple shook her head.

"I was just getting it when they interrupted me and declared it to be 'Rosabelle.' But it wasn't."

"What was it, then?"

"One word, a last word, from long ago."

"Temple, don't tease me."

She took a deep breath and inhaled the rose's scent first. And last.

"Rosebud."

Max and Temple were back on the dance floor, stunned in the spotlight.