Douglas, Nelson - Cat with an Emerald Eye

After a long time, Max spoke.

"The arguing voices the neighbors heard Halloween night."

"Yes?"

"I have an idea, but we'll have to go back to the house."

"Fine."

"Can you wait until after dinner?"

"No."

"Too bad we're not talking about something else."

"First things first."

"I still can't believe it."

"I don't expect you to."

"It changes everything."

"Not everything, but a lot. We'd better go."

Max pulled her closer and rested his chin on the top of her head. "One more number; it helps me think."

"That's a new one."

"The music. Cryptographers use music to get themselves in a decoding mood. Very mathematical and inspiring, music."

Temple smiled. After what she'd told Max, she felt like being held, because the implications were very scary. Being held on a dance floor was both stimulating and safe. Max seemed to think so, too, as they swayed together.

"Oooh! What was that?" Temple asked after a dramatic move.

"A dip. I understand that they're all the rage."

"Where'd you learn to do a dip?"

"Danny Dove isn't a bad example."

"You were all over the romance convention too?"

"Maybe I needed to learn a thing or two."

"I don't think so."

They spun in a tight circle as the music shifted into the intro for another instrumental.

Words were running through Temple's mind. Rosebud. Halloween. Ghosts. Midnight Louie.

Black magic. Spells. That old black magic . ..

Those last words weren't thought, or merely mouthed without sound, or even spoken. They were sung! Temple looked up, appalled, at Max.

He was staring over her head, appalled. "Damn! She's supposed to be investigating a transient murder on the north side."

Instead, Molina's contralto was crooning softly over the micro-phone.

Max backed them out of the light and off the dance floor. They slunk along the sidelines to the door, where Max thrust some bills at the headwaiter.

"Emergency. Got to leave. For that table over there. Waitress in the ruffly thing."

"Max, they're all in ruffly things," Temple whispered as they tiptoed out, much good as discretion did now. "Did she see us? I couldn't bear to look."

"She's onstage. The lights are in her eyes. She wasn't expecting us."

"And vice versa. So she couldn't see us."

"Probably did." Max sounded resigned.

"My purse!" Temple stopped dead in the parking lot.

Max reached into his jacket and produced it.

"Oh, thank God."

She stopped again. "My rose!"

He reached into his pocket, came up with a ten-dollar bill folded into a rose. "I'll have to make you another one."

Temple shook her head. "If she's seen you?"

"What can she do?"

"Arrest you."

"Find me first." He let her in the car and went around. "Sorry about dinner."

"At least we hadn't ordered yet."

"I've still got the linguini Alfredo."

"Done."

The drive back to the house wasn't as self-conscious as the earlier drive.

"I'm almost afraid to go in," Temple commented when they stood in the garage before the connecting door to the house.

"It's not haunted."

The kitchen was so big and impressive it was impossible to be scared once Max had turned on all the under- and over-counter lights.

He rummaged in the cabinets, then turned to consult her. "Do you want to eat here or on the opium bed?"

"You don't eat on that priceless bed?" Temple envisioned cracker crumbs in the fretwork.

"Ah, no," Max admitted. "I thought we could eat... after."

"I think we better talk ... first."

"First wine, then." He ducked through the glass door to emerge with another rare bottle of something. "At least we can drink on the opium bed."

"You seem a little fixated."

"It's comfortable. Besides, all Gary's furniture is huge and clubby. It's my turn to confide a few home truths; let me choose the confessional, at least."

Glasses and wine bottle accompanied them to the bedroom where the opium bed provided the exotic centerpiece.

Temple had to step out of the Midnight Louie shoes like a good little geisha girl before climbing onto the embroidered satin coverlet. The bed was built like a latticed house, even a sort of gazebo, with open roof and sides. It was as cozy as a children's playhouse on a rainy day, despite the inlaid cinnabar and mother-of-pearl Temple could see why Max liked lounging there; it was vast enough to accommodate his length both ways. He installed the wine bottle on a table behind the bed's low back, then settled into a pillow-piled corner.

Temple sat cross-legged beside him, sipping her wine.

"What's your theory?" he asked.

"I think that Orson Welles's ... spirit felt protective toward Gandolph. It also was drawn to Houdini."

"Welles called himself 'The Great Orson' when he performed magic. And he was born, forty-one years after Houdini, a month later, to the day: May sixth, nineteen-fifteen."

"And of course Halloween is a key date for him, too."

"The Martian-landing radio broadcast on Halloween in nineteen thirty-nine that half the country took for real. It was the first time he shocked the world, but not the last."

"The 'noises' heard here on Halloween night, that could have been a spectral radio replay!

And Welles, like Houdini and Gandolph, was devoted to his mother. Didn't he live mostly with her as a child?"

"Yes. She was a superb singer, a very cultured woman."

"So, given these similarities and Houdini's death on Halloween and his tremendous will, I think Orson Welles's spirit drew somehow on this conjunction offerees and learned that Gandolph could be in danger."

"Then he appeared to warn him. But he didn't save him."

"How do we know he didn't? The battle-ax might have killed him otherwise. What no one--

and maybe not even a spirit---could know was Gandolph's cardiac vulnerability. He had no history of heart disease, but I think the stress of the seance killed him."

"Hmm." Max nodded and poured more wine in his glass.

"There's something you're not telling me."

"For one thing, I've had the advantage of poking through Gary's files on mediums. He had all your seance partners on disk."

"And--?"

"They all did have motives for killing him. Obviously, Wayne Tracey might have had much more lethal feelings than he confessed to, but Oscar Grant was not simply the respected host of a rather unrespected television show, he--"

"Had a gang history in LA. Maybe drugs. Maybe still drugs today."

Max let his eyebrows lift in tribute. "Very good. Very true. And of course the treacherous bitch--"

Temple interrupted him again. "How did you know about that?"

"You think I would rig the room and neglect a microphone and tape recorder? Anyway, the lovely Mynah's extramarital affairs were legion, including a revived encounter with her own ex-husband, Oscar. I wouldn't be surprised if she was getting it on with the spirits in between more fleshly engagements. Exposure would not have helped her, and besides it could hav endangered her marriage."

"Why would she care?"

"Because William Kohler made all the money. He financed her New Age retreat."

"No! That... slouch potato? Where'd he get the money?"

"He's a stockbroker, and not a very ethical one, according to Gary's investigation. He also operates a lucrative financial newsletter. A scandal about Mynah and her New Age psychic and physical escapades would undercut his creditability."

"And the others?"

"Well, D'Arlene Hendrix seems to have done some good on the psychic front, but the reason the police took her in for questioning is that they discovered that Gandolph had been questioning police departments she worked with about her methods. That sort of thing makes the police suspicious, and his inquiries certainly weren't helping her reputation with law enforcement. Her work is her life, so..."