Unknown - 23_Cat_In_A_Vegas_Gold_Vendetta

He didn’t answer, just returned to the security panel and torturing the door lock again, while Temple tormented her do-gooder instincts. That impulsive embrace had shaken her. Max hadn’t been that effusive. This house, the night. Max. Being here was playing with fire. Old flames, to be exact.

“Remember,” he admonished himself after a couple minutes of gashing the metal with the Swiss Army knife. His fingers played tune after tune on the keypad, and … “There!”

He pushed the broad door open.

Chill air wafted against their faces like the house’s exhalation. They stared at each other, although the dark was fast becoming total.

Max cocked his head at the hum of air-conditioning units all over the block.

“This one’s running, too,” he said, pushing inside, the Swiss Army knife still clutched in his hand, now as a weapon.

The hall light rained down incandescence when the wall control was depressed.

“This stuff belong here?” Max asked, waving at a console table and mirror.

“From your time of residence, yes. Molina told me everything had been restored only a few days after I saw it gone. Garry should have waited longer to undo his vanishing act.”

“Who knew a rogue homicide lieutenant would break in?”

“She wasn’t the only one.”

Max had felt his way deeper into the house and was too distracted to hear her. “Wish I had a flashlight.”

“I think everyone who wanted to break in here has come and gone by now,” Temple said.

Max doubled back to shut the front door.

“Let there be light,” he announced, moving forward again to turn on any light fixture he encountered.

How strange, Temple thought—that the security system was on, the air-conditioning was on, the lights working, and the door had been locked. She hadn’t thought to check on the house all these weeks, having been so dramatically turned away from the door and the thought of any future with Max.

That was just what Garry Randolph had wanted. Needed. He was protecting his foster son, she supposed. By cutting off all contact with the woman he loved?

Poor Max. Who would love him now?

An exclamation from down the bedroom wing drew her deeper inside. Had he found the opium bed … or the clothes closet?

*

She walked into the dazzle of the master bedroom, with its cove ceiling lighting and mirrored wall of sliding ceiling-high closet doors. Max stood by an open area, holding up shreds of black material.

“Silk. Cashmere. Featherweight wool. These are leavings fit for a moth’s feast. Looks like a pack of feral cats have been at the contents.”

“Try a butcher knife from the kitchen. Molina was concealed in the house when this slasher party went on. Someone hated you.”

“Nothing new, I gather. I suspected my instinct on the run to avoid black clothing was worth heeding. Was I the depressive sort?”

“Not usually. You always said naked was the best disguise.”

“And black’s the best camouflage … unless it’s your signature.” He let the tatters drop from his hands to the floor. “I was letting myself be predictable. Maybe that’s why Garry died.”

“I don’t think so, Max. You’re a guardian. You don’t slack up. Sometimes fate is bigger than even a magician’s ego.”

“Okay. I won’t self-flagellate in front of you.” Max stared at the huge, glitzy master bedroom. “Where did I sleep? It sure as hell wasn’t in here.”

“This house once belonged to Orson Welles,” Temple explained.

“Ah. So…?”

Feeling mischievous, perhaps because she was now firmly in control here—Max’s “spirit” guide to his own house and past—Temple went down the hall and opened the door on the bedroom holding the opium bed and pretty much that was all.

An opium bed is like an internal gazebo, an exquisite, small room meant to be the central jewel within a larger room, an intricate fretwork frame of ebony and mother-of-pearl. Its silk cushions are miniature embroidered artworks.

Max stepped inside the room, feasted on the art object, and sighed. “‘A thing of beauty is a joy for ever,’” he quoted Keats, “but I never slept on this magnificent artifact, nor smoked dope on it.”

“No, you didn’t,” Temple said. “And you would never blunt your perceptions with recreational drugs.”

“But I did ‘sleep’ with you on it?”

“Nor would I blunt your perceptions with bawdy speculations.” Temple smiled. “I can show you two more bedrooms in this house. Game?”

“Play on.”

She retraced their steps to another closed door, which opened, and again lights blossomed in a room.

This one was stacked with elaborately painted boxes reflected into invisible mirrors.

“Illusions,” Max said, stepping into their midst like a late arrival at a cocktail party crammed with old friends.

His long supple fingers caressed the smooth wood and cool glass as if they were beloved childhood pets. Temple knew these boxes and mechanisms were the conjoined artistry of Gandolph and the Mystifying Max, years of experimentation and creativity boiled down into the mechanisms of magic.

“Has anything been—?” Temple asked.

“No,” Max said, his eyes and hands still devouring the landscape of escape. “Some things are sacred even to psychopaths.”

Temple remained quiet. She guessed his touch remembered more than his mind at the moment—years of hearing Garry Randolph’s voice on the stage, in this room, or on the run.

Max turned, done with reruns. “I didn’t sleep in here either.”

Without a word, Temple turned and led him to the fourth bedroom, opening the door with a theatrical flourish.

He stepped over the threshold as she depressed the light switch.

Bare walls. Bare wooden floor. A futon on the floor between two metal-shuttered security windows. A celadon vase holding a pussywillow branch and a silk bird of paradise blossom. A low ebony table holding a Japanese blue-ware teacup. And thou.

“It must have seemed boring to a barbarian,” Max mused, stepping inside and breaking the surface of peace that lay like a seal on the room.

“That’s why it was safe. This was where you slept.”

“Not you.”

“I’m a social being, Max. You were always somewhat Zen. That’s how you kept your sanity.”

“I’m a monk?”

“You could be.”

“Was that a problem?”

“Hell, no.”

“You often talk like that?”

“Hell, no.”

He turned with a smile. “I can sleep here safely tonight.”

“Good. I can go.”

“Can I let you?”

“You will.”

They tell me my name is Michael Aloysius Xavier Kinsella, and I know I need to get the hell somewhere else fast. I guess there’s only one question to ask or answer before I decide where.

He nodded. “Thanks for the tour. I’ll see what my dreams dredge up tonight.”

“Mine, too,” Temple said, mocking herself. “Welcome home.”

Is it possible…? Do you … love me?

Chapter 6

Home, Sweat Home

While my Miss Temple is playing tour guide on Mr. Max’s homecoming trip down No Memory Lane, aka Mojave Way, I need to reconnoiter the exterior of the former Gandolph homestead, and fast, or I may face a long, lonesome hitch or hike back to the Circle Ritz.

Getting myself out of the tiny space between the Miata front seat backs and the door makes my much-put-upon limbs as shaky as Mr. Max’s.

Call it the feline equivalent of a transatlantic flight.

I am really annoyed that my kind is kept out of restaurants. Just think of the wasted food that could be saved if every one came equipped with a “house” homeless feline on the premises.

(I realize that this system would not work for homeless dogs. Even when on their best behavior, they are hopelessly unmannerly. Restaurant patrons would not put up with panting, begging, yapping, drooling, and all the other unattractive canine habits. Nor should they.)