Unknown - 22_Cat_In_An_Ultramarine_Scheme

His surname, tall bulk, and untamed, curly, reddish gray hair had earned him the “Grizzly” nickname. Also, like most medical examiners, he dealt with death and the dead in a matter-of-fact, sometimes wickedly humorous way.

“Come in, come in,” he greeted her, the soul of professional conviviality. “You are looking very lively,” he confided as he showed her into an empty conference room.

The vanilla-bland Formica tabletop and surrounding black chairs could have been in any business office.

“Let’s see today’s shoes,” he suggested before they sat at a pair of meeting corner seats. “Oh, the dead will like that open-toed look, especially the bloodred toenail polish. Tagless toes are a big turn-on here.”

“High praise,” Temple said, putting her perpetual tote bag, this one red patent leather, on the empty chair seat next to her.

“You could almost smuggle out a body in that giant bag, Miss Temple.”

“I’m here on behalf of Gangsters renovated mob museum, but I am not their ‘bag’ lady.”

“You are nobody’s bag lady,” he said gallantly. “What exactly can I do for you?”

“Did you ID the vault victim?”

“Ex–Vegas magician named Cosimo Sparks. Bizarre death.”

“How did he die? I found the body. He was in formal dress, and I didn’t see a mark on him but the studs on his shirt front.”

“Sure one of them wasn’t a stab wound?”

“That would take a pretty ‘anorexic’ weapon.”

Bahr nodded. “Like a supermodel in spikes. I can’t leak any more confidential info, except to say there were odd hesitation marks. Usually stabbers overdo it, over and over again. Sparks’ wounds were an odd combo: A half dozen trial cuts—hesitations—then a bold killing stroke, one clean, deep drive to the heart. An angry, powerful, but initially timid murderer.”

“Glad he or she was long gone before I got there,” Temple said, with a mock shiver. “Okay, I could also use any details on the Lake Mead … find. That would be super helpful.”

“Ah, yes, a cold case. I can spill my guts on that one. Just a figure of speech. So you are intrigued by our old pal ‘Boots.’ Too bad he’s too dead to enjoy having a lovely young lady like you on his case.”

“You have a name for him already?”

“We always nickname our corpses for in-house reference. Numbers are so impersonal.”

“ ‘Old pal’ is not a total figure of speech?”

Grizzly pouted his lips and shook his head. “Those leg bones are eligible for AARP, at least.”

It took thirtyish Temple longer than usual to get his meaning. “Oh, fifty years old or more.”

“That’s going by what’s left of the leg bones. The only parts of the feet and boots that didn’t decay, dissolve, or were eaten are some scraps of the soles. Cowboy boots.”

“I suppose many men wore cowboy boots out here in the forties and fifties.”

For answer, Grizzly shifted in his chair and stuck out a foot.

Temple glimpsed a stitched, pointed black toe.

“Not necessarily just them,” Grizzly said, stating the obvious.

How could she have omitted checking out footwear just because it was on a man, and a respected professional man, an older man!

“My bad,” Temple admitted. “Those are mighty good-looking boots.”

Grizzly shrugged. “The higher heels and steel arches support your feet when you’re standing over a cold body all day. You gals aren’t the only fashion victims. Besides, height is a psychological advantage.”

“Don’t I know it,” Temple said glumly, thinking of the perfect Revienne Schneider.

On the other hand, Kitty the Cutter wasn’t more than five-three, to hear Matt tell it. He was the only man to have seen her alive and in person, and then again, among the naked and the dead, here, where she had finally been both.

Wow, Temple realized, Max and Matt are the only men who’ve seen both Kathleen O’Connor and me naked. Not a happy thought! Thank goodness women today didn’t have to marry any man who’d seen them naked.

This place made her mind run in wild, morbid veins. Veins! Oh, no. No wonder Grizzly and his staff practiced black humor. The mind loved to play gruesome tricks on itself. Maybe it was the notion of all the naked corpses concealed here in windowless rooms and on sheeted gurneys.

“Would you like to see him?” Grizzly asked.

“Him?”

“What’s left of Boots.”

“Ah, sure.” She could check that the wax replica—taken from a photograph someone had obtained illegally at the morgue, probably a Fontana brother, and she did not want to know which one, ever—was accurate. “If it’s all right for a member of the public to view the body.”

“Sure. I have lady ‘cozy’ crime writers in here every month. They are much cooler with it than some of those male slice-and-dice thriller authors. I do have to make the ladies promise not to eat and drink during the autopsy, though.”

“Not a problem with me,” Temple said as she rose to walk in his boot tracks back into the hall and then into an area of shining stainless-steel walls, gurneys, tables, sinks, and instruments. All that wall-to-wall steel reminded her of the fatal vault.

At the door Temple donned latex gloves and a Plexiglas face shield with the coroner.

Everything smelled fine, but on every inhalation she expected a hint of decay. The suspense was really hard on one’s breathing rate.

Coroner Bahr didn’t notice. This was his daily arena, and he was busy commanding it.

“I had the remains brought out for you. The TV stations were satisfied with the discovery footage. You can’t beat the human interest of those cats sniffing around old Boots here. I knew you’d want to see the real thing, sans snacking pussycats.”

Temple’s stomach finally reacted and skydived. She wasn’t going to admit she knew those “cannibal” cats, especially that she often shared a bed with one. TMI.

Bahr’s large, latexed fingers pulled a sheet back from a beach-ball-size lump that looked a lot larger than the “appetizer with toothpicks” Louie had uncovered.

That was because a “doily” of caked lake bottom had also been excavated with the concrete and leg bones in place.

Grizzly smiled fondly at the mess. “Makes me feel like an archaeologist for a change. Ah, the good old days of crime, not drugs and bodies in the street, but bullet-riddled bodies dumped in strange and secret ways.”

He picked up a surgeon’s scalpel and used it as a pointer. “I decided to chip my way in from the rear. If there were any footwear remnants, the heels would be the easiest to uncover and offer the most information. As it happened, I struck pay dirt.”

“Literally.”

Humming relevant bits of the old song Temple recognized with a sinking heart as “Clementine,” as in “… was a miner, forty-niner,” Bahr produced a steel tray that clanked with the moving metal on it.

Temple peeked. It wasn’t a rolling bullet, but something both bulkier and thinner.

“Silver?” she asked. “You hit silver?”

“Yup.”

“That’s a mighty big tooth cap, Dr. Bahr. Boots must have been a giant.”

His laughter rang off all the surrounding stainless steel. “Most amusing. And apt. I hadn’t thought of it that way. No, Miss Barr, since we are being formal, it is not a tooth cap for a giant. It is a cap of sorts, and it is—ta-da!—signed.”

“Dentists do that, don’t they, with fillings?”

“True, but let’s drop the orthodontic comparison, unless you wish to posit that the victim had a set of choppers in his heels.”

Temple bent to study the find close up. “Oh. There are two! Nested together.”

“Simply a convenient storage option. Let me … unnest these lovely twins… .”