Unknown - 23_Cat_In_A_Vegas_Gold_Vendetta

Temple would bet Savannah was equally removed from the actress’s christening name. She would love to know what that was, and probably would before this sad story was over.

“My name is Temple Barr.” She put her hand out to the thin one that reached up from the bed linens in an automatic gesture. The wrinkled skin felt dry and hot. “I understand your concerns and must admit that Pedro’s death looks suspicious, Miss Weiner.”

“Call me Violet, dear.” The woman’s voice had an eerily light and girlish lilt, like Savannah’s. Her wrist wore a string of purple beads the same color as the prominent veins in her claw-thin hands. “My name is a good omen,” she added. “Amethysts and emeralds are healing gemstones for my kind of cancer.” She looked to the other side of her bed. “Isn’t that true, Jayden?”

A figure sitting in the shadows beyond the bed stood to capture Temple’s attention as much as the dying woman’s. In the house’s naturally dim lighting, he seemed to rise with the supernatural smoothness of an animated corpse in a horror film.

Savannah’s heels stuttered forward a pace as if she felt compelled to challenge the man.

“Mister Jayden?” Temple went around the foot of the bed to shake hands.

She needed to get a quick fix on this guy, and was instantly assaulted with a theatrical costume, a white muslin Cossack shirt embroidered by way of Sedona, Arizona. He was heavily accessorized for a man, with a thick turquoise bracelet on his left wrist and a chunk of amethyst crystal at his neck.

“Just Jayden,” he corrected her. “Surnames are required by bureaucracies, not our natural impulses. The individual outweighs the tribe. What a potent first name you have, Temple. You need use no more. In fact, your karma would improve if you dropped your surname. Barr is negative, implying barriers. And you don’t like barriers, do you, Temple?”

“Who does?” she said. “Miss Weiner’s employee was found dead in a big concrete gash in the desert—talk about negative barriers. I don’t care to be taken for a place of worship, and I’m not that interested in being omnipotent, so I’ll keep using my last name, thank you anyway, uh, Jayden.”

She wondered if he’d ditched a plain-Jane surname like Johnson. He was too old to have been christened something as currently trendy as Jayden. Under that sun-worshipping natural tan his facial wrinkles were as fine as spiderweb lace. He was pushing fifty, at least. The package had a certain televangelist charisma without the obvious smarm. She found her eyes reluctant to leave his gaze for some reason. And she had two highly charismatic guys preoccupying her mind, heart, and conscience.

“The Earth is our place of worship.” Jayden smiled at Violet as he dropped Temple’s hand to circle around the bed’s foot to Violet’s side, deftly inserting himself between auntie and visitors.

Temple was shocked silent to observe in the better light that Jayden’s left eye was an unearthly turquoise blue and the right was … purple. She’d seen semiprecious stones combine veins of both gems like that, and also color-enhancing contact lenses that were spectacularly unnatural. The teens today were all Lady Gaga about wearing oversize contact lenses that made their eyes look as anime-winsome as the artist Margaret Keane did with cats’ and kids’ eyes fifty years ago.

Jayden bent over Violet like Dracula over a sleeping Victorian lady. “You must rest, dear lady.” He laid his right hand on her forehead, the second finger wearing a silver ring set with an amethyst the size of a teaspoon bowl.

For an instant, Temple feared his nimble golden-brown fingers would retreat down Violet’s pallid features and shut her eyes as a doctor might do for the dead. Instead, his hand lifted to make a dismissive gesture that seemed to start as a sign of the cross, but turned loopy.

Oh. His fingers had sketched out the crosslike form of an Egyptian ankh.

“It’s time for our nap,” Jayden said so softly Temple had to strain her ears. He regarded Savannah as his voice turned from molten to adamant. “You should leave.”

“Hell’s bells,” Savannah said. “We just got here, and I’m kin. Closest kin that she wants to see or hear of, that is. I want to show Temple around. Maybe some of that first-name mojo you rave about might rub off on poor Violet. I’m not leaving unless Violet asks me to, Mister Jayden, and you’ve got her zoned out. What kind of tea have you been pouring into her now?”

“I ease her pain by psychic, not physical means, Sue Anna.”

Sue Anna? Temple swallowed, hard.

“You don’t want to upset her by making a scene,” Jayden added. “From what Violet has told me, you were always good—or should I say bad?—at that.”

Sue Anna Weiner?

Temple was struck silent despite the minor spat brewing beside her.

Savannah Ashleigh was really Sue Anna Weiner? Temple knew that double ns often read like an m. So Savannah could be Sue am-a Weiner.

“You are a bigger phony than I am,” Savannah was telling the equally artificial Jayden now. It takes one to know one. “And a worse actor,” she added. “I am going to have you investigated by my PI.”

“You’ll never get in Violet’s will, Sue Anna. Trust me. I know.”

“Unlike you, I don’t care. I actually care about Violet.”

Temple eyed the sick woman, who lay with her eyes closed, apparently hearing none of this talk. She spied a Garfield mug on the bedside table, but no tea bag tag dangled over its rim. Whatever Jayden was giving Violet was home-brewed.

Her hand tightened on the tote-bag straps over her shoulder. These roomy carriers sure came in handy. The house was a monument to clutter and cats. That Garfield mug was leaving with Temple, and she’d at least give it the sniff test, or, better yet, take it to a tea shop for diagnosis. Many health shops in the suburban strip malls offered exotic tea varieties. Or … maybe the coroner, Grizzly Bahr, would be interested enough to analyze the stuff. Their similar surnames made the pair unlikely soul mates, as did loving the weird little details.

“I’ve brought some treats for the poor cats,” Savannah announced, as importantly as if it were the Second Coming.

She extracted a sealed packet from her bag and rattled something Louie had never seen the likes of, interrupting Temple’s plotting.

“There’s plenty of kibble already set out all over the house,” Jayden said.

“Pedro used to give the cats treats,” Savannah answered. “I’m sure they miss that dreadfully by now. You are obviously not a cat person, which is very odd since you claim to be psychic.”

“I claim to draw on the universal healing calm we all can tap into if we only will.”

“Speaking of wills,” Savannah said, “it’s amazing how the ghouls show up when an old lady who’s determined to cut out any relative is sick. Old Pedro was the only man who ever did look out for Violet, and it’s very convenient for everyone but Violet that’s he’s gone now. I’d think it would be good karma for you to help give out treats to the cats.”

She turned to Temple. “We’re going to the kitchen,” she announced. “You can get acquainted with Violet and bring her mug along later for a fill-up. Then we’ll both leave Jayden to work more of his mental mumbo jumbo on poor, helpless Violet’s psyche.” She looked at the floor. “Watch out for random litter boxes,” she warned Temple over her bare shoulder as they left the room.

Temple saw that aliens had indeed landed: aluminum turkey-roaster pans filled with litter and … leavings … lay like sand traps on the concrete floor. Who was going to deal with the cat boxes now? Jayden was far too elevated for such earthly matters.