Unknown - 23_Cat_In_A_Vegas_Gold_Vendetta

However, I am living proof that the feline moocher is quiet to the point of stealthy and as subtle as a shadow.

So I shake out my cramped legs and gimp around to the house’s shrub-sheltered side. This neighborhood is established to the point of being old, and the owners can pay for watering the greenery, although it is a matter of local ecological debate whether they should.

I make good use of the concealing options of oleander bush and canna lily plantings. I do not much go for the native thorny cactus plants, although I run into one of that ilk not more than ten feet along the house side. So to speak.

It whaps me right on the sensitive black nose leather I aim to maintain unscarred, like Miss Temple’s pristine caramel-colored leather upholstery in the Miata.

Of course, I am related to it.

“Nice of you to finally drop by, Go Daddy-o,” Miss Midnight Louise says, welcoming me to the scene of auld lang syne. “While I had to hop a ride in a Vito’s Vegetarian Pizza delivery car, you were cruising the Strip eavesdropping on Mister Max’s traveler tales and visiting high-end dining venues. I could smell the steak on your breath from the moment you put paw and claw on the desert dirt up front.”

Not one to hold back, our Miss Midnight Louise.

“Nothing rare, medium, or well-done has crossed my lips on this most uncomfortable trip, Louise,” I answer virtuously, although a snicker flirts with my fangs. It is her bad luck to have to ride in a vegetarian pizza-mobile.

“I was forced,” I add in an injured hiss, “to share the meager area behind the Miata’s front seats with Miss Temple’s unfortunately named ‘doggie bag.’ Fortunately, she sets her seat far forward.”

“She has nerves of steel,” Miss Louise says, purring with admiration. “She meets her ex-lover after he has barely escaped death and with his mind a blasted ruin, yet she does not hesitate to bring home tidbits from their first reunion feast together. That girl has her priorities right. Most humans in such a situation would have pled ‘no appetite.’”

“Miss Temple is the pillar of practical,” I say, with a certain pride. “She took him to a costly steak house at Planet Hollywood. Why should she not get all that she paid for?”

“Why indeed.”

“And, my esteemed partner in private investigating, Mister Max’s mind hardly seemed a ‘blasted ruin,’ from what I overheard. I myself would not mind forgetting to remember certain episodes of my past.”

“My existence being one of them.”

“Now, now, my dear Louise. I have grown quite accustomed to your skills as an expert ‘tailer.’ I will be able to rest easy after my cramped travels tonight in the Miata, knowing you will be on patrol here, keeping an eye or two on Mister Max.”

“Nothing will happen here … if your Miss Temple decides to leave. If not, we have front-page news.”

“I know you favor Mister Max Kinsella over Mister Matt Devine, but I see no signs that you are in for a happy ending there.”

“It is not a matter of ‘favoring’ one human male over another. I strongly felt you failed to follow up on Mister Max’s chilling fall at the Neon Nightmare and thereby let the trail of the Synth grow cold while you were swanning after another of your roommate’s causes.”

“It would not be wrong to state that your … doggedness … in considering the Neon Nightmare central to all our long-term concerns was well placed.”

“I should think so.”

“That is why I depend on you to keep an eye on Mister Max now, though the site and situation looks pretty barren from an investigator’s point of view. Most of it is wait-and-watch work, Louise. You know that.”

“I know that you know Miss Temple will give you her doggie-bag steak, cut into bite-size pieces served over your never-eaten eternally full bowl of Free-to-Be-Feline.”

“Perhaps,” I say, trying to avoid visibly salivating.

“And I will have a hot, dark night crouching among the fire ants and lizards while Mister Max goes beddie-bye alone inside.”

“Ah. I heard the front door cracking open. I must be gone, anon.”

“Oh, shut up, Shakespeare, Jr. I know you will have nothing to report in the morning but a full stomach and a long nap.”

A consummation devoutly to be wished, but I do not say so aloud.

Miss Midnight Louise is not in the mood.

Chapter 7

Strangers in the Night

Max was beginning to wish he’d booked a room at Planet Hollywood and had stayed there.

The house was rambling and rang no bells of recognition with him. Instead, it felt creepy.

He wandered from the kitchen, which his memory had populated with a glimpse of Temple Barr sitting on the granite island like a ghost on a marble monument, or a Goth girl perched on her idea of a kinky sex site, to the bedroom closet with its hanging shreds of his knifed former clothes.

Where was Garry Randolph’s presence? If he was going to be haunted by ghosts, Gandolph’s was one he’d welcome.

Max began to realize that from the moment he’d awakened with amnesia in the Swiss clinic, he’d almost never been alone. When Garry hadn’t been shepherding him, he’d been on the run with Revienne Schneider, the Sexy Shrink, from the Alps to Zurich. Then there’d been Temple Barr, Girl Guide, awaiting him at the airport.

This Max Kinsella he didn’t much know had been a lucky guy. For a loner with a double life as stage magician and counterspy, he’d had help from a lot of friends.

He hurled himself away from the symbolic carnage in the closet back to the kitchen. Garry had been something of a gourmet. Jerking open the door to the wine cabinet, he hoped to lay his hand on a bottle significant to his mentor’s memory. But the labels were cuneiform script to him. Presumably he’d shared some of Garry’s tastes, but that was gone, and Garry wasn’t here to aim his hand aright.

Max pulled a dark bottle from the rack, feeling unsettled by the meat-rich dinner. He had to search six drawers to find the corkscrew. Pathetic! He slammed a flat hand down on the granite counter, his palm stinging like hell.

At least he remembered how to use a corkscrew. This had better not be a red wine. He stared down the round lip of the bottle. Bullet-hole entry wounds could look almost this neat and intentional. He’d seen the real and brutal results of Garry’s head wound on the car window to his right, blood spattered like rain in a misty Northern Ireland night.

Max poured the bottle contents into a water glass from the first cupboard he’d opened. He wasn’t going to search every one for a wine glass.

White wine, more like lymph fluid than blood. He gulped some down. Where would he sleep tonight? The futon had been fine for a man without injuries to nurse. Garry’s former bedroom had obviously been turned into the paraphernalia storage room, thank heaven for that. He wanted no dead man’s bed for a resting place. That left the opium bed, more of a stage setting than anything. At least it might spur memories of the nonresident sprite.

He was surprised to find his lips smiling as he thought of Temple. She had a lot of guts to take him on in this condition, with a fresh new fiancé to explain to. Or maybe she didn’t answer to anybody. Maybe she’d bring him sweet dreams in that opium bed. That was one new thing he’d learned since coming back to Las Vegas. She knew his recent past as well as Garry had known his distant past. Max would have to probe her memories to regain his own.

Would the fiancé like that? Matt Devine could go to hell.

Max had finished the wine, drinking it down like the water that normally filled the tall, narrow glass, when a barely detectable sound chilled his veins.