Unknown - 23_Cat_In_A_Vegas_Gold_Vendetta

“Next they’ll want to give you aquamarine contact lenses. That I put my foot down on. Your brown eyes do not make me blue.”

“It’s all very head spinning,” he said, interrupting his report to grab the last two lone pieces of luggage. “This’ll put your Miata to the test.”

“Nope. I brought your Crossfire. Still not the trunk-space king, but roomier.”

“What would I do without you?”

“Don’t even think about it.” Temple grabbed the rolling bag, but Matt resisted.

She was an equal-opportunity helper, but men needed to keep building their upper-body strength, she supposed.

“It seems like I’ve been gone an age,” he said as they trotted and escalated through the vast airport. “How am I going to update you on so much so fast, when all I want to do is—”

“Ditto. My problem exactly. Which is why I’ve booked dinner at the Crystal Phoenix. Almost a home away from home, but a good place for us to come back to earth and catch up.”

“You’re brilliant, Temple. I’m starving for some one-on-one time on a scale that lives up to the way I’ve been wined and dined almost blind in Chicago. When I wasn’t being berated by family.”

“Poor, suffering media hottie. You need a private PR person to make it all better,” Temple said, wincing even as the words came out of her mouth.

What Matt needed was a couple glasses of wine before she told him of her … their … new reclamation-and-redemption project. The PR whiz did reclamation every day in her job. The ex-priest hopefully had a few more freelance redemptions left in him.

One thing she did know. She and Matt, and now Max again, knew separate pieces of a years-long puzzle that could redeem—or destroy—every one of them and what they most held dear.

*

“You look wonderful,” Matt said, when they were seated at the isolated table they’d requested in the Crystal Carousel rooftop restaurant. “Purely objective opinion.”

“Thanks.” She had tossed the tissue-thin circle coat she’d worn to the airport over the back of her chair. “I spent two hours before I decided on this fifties ballerina dress.”

“What do they call that color? It matches your eyes perfectly.”

“You’re going to have to learn all this arcane stuff to live with me and my wardrobe. Changeable taffeta. Goes from lilac to blue.”

“Yeah, they do. Your eyes. And that neckline?”

Temple shrugged. “Off the shoulder.”

“Your bare shoulders are sexier than Angelina Jolie’s … you know.”

“The fifties was a more gracious, flirtatious, feminine era. And, frankly, I can compete on shoulders and waistlines. On bustlines, not so much.”

“So why are you regaling me with the competitive you and keeping me at table’s length?”

“I’ve been making the rounds of the vintage-clothing shops while you were gone and wanted to show off. And … we have a lot to talk about.”

“Yes, I know,” he began, contritely.

That’s where she needed to have him before it was her turn to be contrite … big-time. He of all people would understand guilt.

“This Chicago media stuff is sudden, I know,” he said. “It was all show-and-tell. Nothing will get serious until my agent gets in on it. I was in phone contact with Tony Valentine all along. He told me to bask in all the perks and pretty talk and commit to nothing.”

“Oprah already retired.”

“Just from network TV, so everybody’s still trying to fill the gap.” He named a mouthy female celeb.

“And for a vote in favor of only one, I’d bet,” Temple said, “she’s abrasive.”

“Humor often is.”

“But Oprah’s appeal is being a sort of overlady of everything family and psychologically dysfunctional and physically healthy and fashionable.”

“That’s a wide swath to follow in,” Matt said. “A lot of new shows will try until something clicks.”

“Or someone.” Temple smiled as a waiter wafted a couple tall, footed glasses in front of them.

“The newest house signature cocktail,” he announced, “compliments of Mister Fontana.”

“Which Mister Fontana?” Temple asked, craning her neck, though it was most likely the owner, Nicky.

But the donor had deserted the dining room.

“What is it?” Matt asked, more to the point.

“A Silver Zombie,” the waiter said, happy to have a bit part. “Silver tequila, of course, lime vodka, Blue Curaçao, et cetera.”

“It’s those ‘et ceteras’ that get your head turned around,” Matt commented.

Temple was thinking that a zombie was the perfect drink to numb Matt’s sure-to-be major reaction to her news about Max.

“Smooth move,” Matt said, making Temple start. Was he reading her mind? “The drink matches your dress and your eyes.”

They clicked rims and sipped. Not bad, Temple thought. Like a Moonlight Margarita on steroids.

“Before we order,” she said, “I need to … address a certain change in status.”

“Believe me, Temple,” Matt put in, “this Chicago talk-show notion is just that—all talk so far. I’ve had time on the plane to think straight, and I realized I couldn’t just whisk you out of Las Vegas, where your business and home are now.”

“Yes, you can. In fact, I’d prefer to be out of town and with you in Chicago right now.”

“You’re serious?”

She nodded. “While you were gone, there was a murder connected to the Crystal Phoenix.”

“You’re right.” Matt had sipped the Silver Zombie a third down. “You do need to leave this town.”

“It also involved the … Synth. I found their hidden headquarters at the Neon Nightmare club. And Kathleen O’Connor may still be alive, Matt.”

“Kitty the Cutter? Can’t be. I identified the body.”

“You saw her, what? A couple times, and she sliced you with a razor on one of the occasions. Besides, she may have had a … body double.”

The waiter wafted a sampler tray of hot and cold running hors d’oeuvres down on the middle of the table.

“Somehow,” Matt said, “this is not the most appetizing conversation.”

“Dig in or drink up,” Temple warned him; “this is going to be a bumpy night.”

“Why?”

“Max is back.”

Chapter 20

Set ’Em Up, Max

“Max is alive?” Matt looked like he’d been poleaxed. “You’ve heard from him, then?”

Matt’s expression remained puzzled. “Wait. You said ‘back.’ In Las Vegas?”

She nodded.

“So…?”

“We were right. Someone tried to kill him.”

“Now he’s back, and the first person he contacted was you?”

“Actually, he called me from abroad and I told him to come back.”

The waiter arrived and handed them menus, waiting to deliver a long, lavish list of the night’s specials.

“We’ll order from the menu, thank you,” Matt said.

“Another round of cocktails, sir?”

“No.” Temple.

“Yes.” Matt.

She eyed their half-full glasses after the waiter left.

“We’ll make short work of these, I’m sure.” Matt grabbed his footed cocktail glass.

“Matt, I told you bald truth, but there are a busload of extenuating circumstances. You would have done the same thing in my place.”

“I kinda doubt that. We’re just getting our new life together … together … and the last thing I—we—need is Max Bloody Kinsella popping out of the woodwork.”

“He’s not Max anymore.”

“Oh, that’d be a real magician’s trick.”

“He has no memory since he came out of a coma a couple weeks ago.”

“He found you fast enough.”

“His, um, counterterrorism cohort, shall I call him?—Gandolph the Great—told him about me. And you. Max didn’t remember us at all. Still doesn’t.”