Unknown - 22_Cat_In_An_Ultramarine_Scheme

“I’m stumped,” Temple admitted, after he had done so, looking at the odd silver shapes.

“ ‘Stumped,’ ” Grizzly echoed, eyeing the truncated leg bones. “You will force me to hire you just for the very punny commentary. Quite unconscious, of course.”

Temple rolled her eyes. “Do you have any idea who this guy was? Besides a marked man?”

“He certainly was a heel,” Grizzly mused.

Temple stared, still stumped, at the silver shells. They still reminded her of dental caps. She mulled the coroner’s broad hints.

“I’m shocked,” he prodded. “It’s right up your alley.”

Temple knew that shocking and awing civilians was Grizzly Bahr’s favorite pastime. No one would have dared to nickname him if he didn’t relish word games. He was right. That was right up her alley, along with “spin.”

Spin. Wait! She took the odd artifacts from his hands into hers and … spun them.

“Caps, or taps! Taps come on shoes. But this guy is getting called Boots. Aw, cowboy boot heels, high, wide, and handsome! These are sterling silver boot-heel caps.

“Hi-ho, Silver,” Temple finished up by quoting the Lone Ranger. “Away!”

“Very good. Care to examine them further?”

“It won’t hurt the evidence?”

“We’ve already tested and photographed them for the Hall of Exotic Evidence Fame.”

Temple let her curiosity loose.

“These marks aren’t concrete damage or sand crust. They’re … engraved.”

“Engraved,” he repeated, going off in wheezing laughter.

“A stylized leaf motif. Looks Mexican.”

“Very fancy.”

Temple knew enough to look for marks on silver, at least a “925” for sterling silver content.

She turned the heel caps around, wondering what kind of guy was secure enough to flaunt these things, besides a Fontana brother. Aha! On the inside of the heel cover just under the sole. Very discreet, but a complete artist’s stamp. Who and where. Not Taxco, the sterling silver Mexican stamp of the mid-nineteenth century, but … Hollywood. Of course. Singing movie cowboys were peaking then—Gene Autry, Roy Rogers. Outfits were extravagant.

And …

“IOHLANDMADE … CALIF … HOLLYWOOD … STERLING,” Temple read.

“Whew. This is real signed silver,” she added. “And collectible. And it might even be traceable, if you find an expert on cowboy boots of the period.”

“Just what I thought,” Grizzly said, beaming. “The faded first letter of the name is B, as in Bohlin. And I’m counting on you to find that expert, Miss Vintage Rag Wearer.”

“I’ve been a little busy for vintage collecting lately,” Temple said, frowning.

Literally “losing” one boyfriend and getting engaged to another didn’t leave a girl a lot of shopping time, unless it was for a shrink.

“But you know the vintage scene,” he said.

Temple nodded. “I know the scene.” Even better, the Internet probably knew it too. She could hardly wait to track down this late, great Hollywood artisan.

“Hold your horses,” Dr. Bahr said as she turned to leave, lifting a gloved palm.

She’d forgotten to lose her accessories.

Temple was into vintage, but latex gloves and a plastic visor weren’t her idea of going-to-tea wear, and she was happy to leave them. They made her sweat. She wasn’t eager to linger, but Grizzly Bahr held up another steel dish, and these contents did roll around.

Temple peered inside. “Silver dollars! You have no idea how these might connect—”

“I have plenty of idea. These were evidently once bolted onto the rotted away boot sides. Too bad they aren’t nineteen-thirty-four San Francisco mint dollars, worth a bundle today. Still, Boots appeared to be a silver-lovin’ dude.”

“Did they call guys ‘dudes’ back then?”

“Sure did. There have always been dudes. Do silver dollars mean something to you more than a gleam in your eye? They were once more common than fleas here in Vegas and were melted out of existence by the thousands every time silver prices went up.”

“I know,” Temple said. “The last big silver-dollar roundup and meltdown was in the seventies, when the Texas millionaire H. L. Hunt cornered the silver market and drove the price so high my spinster great-aunt sold the family silverware. Hence I inherited stainless steel.”

“Minting of silver dollars stopped in nineteen thirty-five,” Bahr said, “so this guy could have snagged these from then until the seventies. His bones say he was last running around about nineteen fifty, give or take a few years.”

“But his footwear says there may be a motive for his murder some folks still alive may know about.”

“It’s always better to consult the living,” Grizzly Bahr agreed. “Better hurry, because this guy’s peers would be getting so up there in age, St. Peter might be already reaching down for them.”

Synth You’ve Been Gone

I decide I must take the lead with Miss Midnight Louise as decisively belowground as above it.

“I must admit that this space just cried for something dramatic to happen in it,” I tell her. “I had a tad of trouble finding a way into the underground tunnel from Gangsters, which is a chichi little venue that could use a dash of Fontana make over magic, so I went back to the Phoenix, and underground there. Worked like a charm, so, all in all, I would be able to give my blessing to this Chunnel of Crime notion. Linking two enterprises in these days when people want more for their money is a good idea,” I pronounce.

“Three,” she says.

“I beg your pardon?”

“Three.”

“Three what?”

“Three venues.”

While I am still blinking like a blind bat at what she is implying, the little minx adds the codicil.

“I did not ‘amble over’ from the Crystal Phoenix,” Midnight Louise explains, with a quick smoothing of what bristles pass for her eyebrows. “I walked, all right, and the route was subterranean and a bit tight at times, but I came from the underbelly of the Neon Nightmare.”

The Neon Nightmare club? Where the cabal of disgruntled magicians known as the Synth keep secret meeting rooms? Where Mr. Max just tragically crashed and maybe died not two months ago?

You could knock me over with a magic wand.

Luckily, Miss Midnight Louise is not packing any, but she cannot smother a huge smirk as she starts grooming spidery cobwebs off of her whiskers.

While I have resigned myself to letting Miss Midnight Louise lead when it comes to exploring the third and most secret underground tunnel in this below-street-level maze, I had not counted on the pathway being so paltry.

“Hurry up, Pops,” Miss Louise is nagging from ahead of me, like Charlie Chan’s number-one son.

Fact is, I cannot!

The passable concrete area around the vault is a glorified rat maze, and the human-fist-size rift at one dark corner of the vault opened up by a small earthquake or construction vibrations is mouse-size to me.

In fact, delicious as my surprise exit from the opening vault door was, I was so low to the ground, the cameras overlooked me and Louise entirely, and I nearly lost my midsection coat from my innards being squeezed through the raw-metal-edged hole.

Now we must retrace our path around the vault exterior. It has been jolted into rubble by the recent tawdry pneumatic drilling on the front door, so it is an even tighter squeeze for any creature other than a snake.

Fine for a sylph like Miss Midnight Louise to wriggle through when she is all of nine pounds soaking wet.

I am a feline of size. I do not “wriggle” like an earthworm; I “bull” my way, like a dozer. (Not the kind that sleeps, I hasten to add.)

So there I am having clods of stone and sand kicked up into my face as I follow the narrow path she has forged.