Unknown - 19_Cat_In_A_Red_Hot_Rage

You say to yourself: she came to you with this. And that’s a very important thing.

“I’m sorry, Temple. Everything’s crashing down all at once for you. But I’m not. I’m here. I’ll help you. I’ll do whatever it takes to find out what happened to him, if you can’t.”

“I’m sorry for laying this on you. I’ve got to go back out here and play perky PR woman with everything in hand, and get Electra off the hot plate on the side. What do you think, though, Matt? Why is Max doing this to me?”

“I think Max is doing what he has to, for those undercover reasons nobody has a need-to-know about. I do think he’d given up on being able to offer you the open commitment you needed. I picked that up from him, lately, you know, an ebbing away. I think he foresaw that we would happen if he stepped out of the picture. I think he let that happen.

“Temple, if you don’t mind having Max Kinsella for a matchmaker, I sure don’t. Trust the man. You always have.” She laughed, shakily. “Thanks. I told you breaking up was hard to do, I just wish I could do it. Formally. I’ll see you, later?”

“Later.”

“Sorry to be such a weak sister. I’m lucky I didn’t short-circuit this stupid cell phone.”

“You can come home and short-circuit me anytime.”

She laughed. “Thanks for the motivation. Back to the hubbub and the funny, tragic, lethal human circus.”

“Love you.”

“Love you too, Matt,” she whispered back.

It was some comfort that she’d used his name

Chapter 18

Vanishing Powder

“It was bad,” Miss Midnight Louise says, “very bad.”

Well, these girls. Always exaggerating. I cannot believe that Miss Midnight Louise, usually as hard as nails, is even a tad breathless as she reports back to me.

Then again, she has hightailed it from Mr. Max’s home on the city fringes back to the Circle Ritz by means of sneaking into the six inches of space behind the passenger seat in Aldo Fontana’s Viper.

am not sure whether it was the squeeze or the speed that put a kink in Miss Midnight Louise’s tail. I do know that I am not going to yank her chain farther by asking which.

Either way, she has returned to the Crystal Phoenix agitated and expecting me to do something about it. She does not even care that I have been nosing around her turf in a criminal matter.

We have rendezvoused under the tropical greenery edging the lobby bar.

“Listen,” I tell Louise. “The scene of the crime as far as we’re concerned is now here at Crystal Phoenix Central. Midnight Inc. Investigations can no longer afford to have you gallivanting from the Neon Nightmare club to former residences of former MissTemple squeezes when our beloved landlady’s reputation and freedom are at stake.”

“You mean your MissTemple’s and your landlady. I live here at the Phoenix, thank you. So you are willing to give up on investigating Mr. Max’s whereabouts and condition–or lack of living condition–after the terrible impact he made on the Neon Nightmare side wall?”

I am indeed disturbed about that, but I am more concerned right now with restoring the Circle Ritz’s landlady’s reputation. I have just moved Ma Barker and her gang of feral felines to the Circle Ritz. There is not much sustenance around there unless the place’s residents get on with the program. Miss Electra Lark is the best general for the job. Ergo, my task is to get her off the homicide hook.

So I answer Louise in a way to take her mind off the current obsession.

First, I reassure. “Mr. Max knows how to take care of himself and about six others at once, and always has,” I say. “And he is forever doing things that are not what they seem. That is the magician’s credo.” Then I tempt her weakest spot, her curiosity. “Anyway, it does not look like his long frame will be jousting me for comforter space in the future. MissTemple has embraced the light.”

“No! You mean Mr. Matt? He is the best-looking shaded golden human I have ever met, but I think you would dislike seeing a black alpha male unseated from the communal bed, even if you did knock toes and claws sometimes. When did this new set of sleeping arrangements happen?”

“Recently. They conducted their courtship off the premises, but there is a ring with enough carats to keep Bugs Bunny forlife and they almost forgot themselves on the zebra-striped comforter in MissTemple’s boudoir the other day. With me in the next room, mind you.”

“In the daytime! With you present! That is indeed serious,” she agrees. “Mr. Matt is the most diligently serious human being I have ever seen. Does he not require papers and witnesses to take a mate?”

“Oh, they want ‘papers’ for everything these days, including us. Big Brother is watching even the cockroaches now. But I know how romance can turn a dude’s head. And my MissTemple’s head is pretty turned too. Frankly, Mr. Max was not making the scene often enough lately to preserve his territory.”

“I am thankful I have been fixed to prevent such unpredictable periods of insanity,” Louise sniffs.

Although I always aim to use the utmost courtesy with the females of any species, the chit does claim to be a descendant and has recently forced me into making our purely professional association formal. Midnight Inc. Investigations, of course, is mainly me.

I return to our most satisfying bone of contention.

“So you say that my MissTemple and Mr. Aldo Fontana paid a visit to the house formerly known as Mr. Max’s. And so you saw that it was occupied by some foreign dame with a great figure. So what is new in Las Vegas? The city is all about great figures, on the stage and on the list of house gambling rules.”

“That must have been a terrible shock for your roommate. It would be like your returning to the Circle Ritz and finding that no one you knew was there.”

“With Miss Electra Lark suspected of murder, that could happen.”

“Your MissTemple would be missing, her furniture gone.”

“My living room sofa? The zebra-patterned comforter on the bed? My litter box under the sink in the second bathroom? No!”

“You are certainly the self-sacrificing sort, Pops. And you do not even deign to use the litter box in MissTemple’s digs, which is a mighty inaccurate name for her unit, given your habits.”

“Where I go is my business, and my business only.”

“Thank goodness,” she says, swiping a dainty claw over her eyebrow hairs. “Anyway, Mr. Footloose and Fancy Free, I am sure you have seen some pretty swift set changes on a Las Vegas hotel stage.”

“For sure. And the ones at Mr. Max’s magic shows, when he used to perform at the Goliath, were faster than a cardsharp’s deal.”

“Well, that is the way it was at that house of his. After I checked out the Neon Nightmare from top to bottom and learned some very interesting and alarming things, I nipped over to the house you had told me about.”

“Only MissTemple is supposed to know that address.”

“And you? How did you manage that, then?”

“I make it my private business to know where my MissTemple goes.”

“And you dropped mention of it to me.”

“When?”

“Long ago, when you were thinking I was a stupid unrelated female and not listening.”

“I did not do that!”

“What? Think I was a stupid, unrelated female?”

“No. That ‘thinking you were not listening’ part.”

“Trust me, Daddio. If it were not for you dominant males forgetting to remember that we listen, half the stuff in the world would not happen, except thanks to us stupid unrelated females.”

“Louise! I cannot follow your flawed logic, not to mention your Sin Tax.”

“I know that Sin Tax is very big in Las Vegas,” she answers, exposing her fangs in one of those so-called Cheshire Cat grins that toney Brit cats affect.