Carole Douglas - Cat in a Red Hot Rage

“Louie!" Temple gasped, glimpsing a dark feline face in the door-side plantings.

Except it wasn't Louie, but a fluffier, younger version of Louie. The gold eyes gave it away.

“Looks like the black cat that hangs out at the Crystal Phoenix," Aldo said. "Of course, all black cats look alike." As if Fontana brothers didn't?

“Maybe it's an omen," Temple said.

“Aw, MissTemple. Tell me you're not superstitious?”

Aldo escorted her by the elbow up the rest of the walk.

“Watch it!" He seized her to a stop. "There's a crack. You don't wanna break your mama's back. Especially my mama's back. Any more than you wanna shave her mustache." He glanced at her dumbstruck face. "Just kidding. Trying to jolly you up. You are getting grimmer than a grandma at a mob funeral these days.”

Lord, she wasn't even a peri-menopausal woman and here was a man comparing her to his grandma! Kit had been right: all downhill from thirty. Except for the Red Hat ladies and her red hot aunt.

“So," Aldo asked, standing in front of Max's ultra-secure door like the pale ghost of Fuller Brush salesman from the days when housewives were at home and hucksters went from door to door instead of unsolicited e-mail to e-mail. "This is where the Mystifying Max hides out. He had the coolest disappearing onstage act in town.”

Temple quailed at that "had," but rang the doorbell.

Need any red-feather dusters here? Beat-up Purple Hearts still beating? A memory-erasing vacuum that really doesn't work very well? All returns guaranteed.

But nothing happened, which was a huge relief to Temple. The house was unoccupied. Quiet. Empty. The way Max had designed it to be seen forever. A movie-set facade that only the initiated could see behind.

Temple was sure she wasn't the initiated anymore. And then the faceless front door opened.

“Yes? You did read the NO SOLICITING sign out front?" Temple was speechless.

Speechless.

“So sorry, miss," Aldo said in whipped-cream-on-cappuccino tones. "We were seeking the previous resident."

“I have no idea who that was, handsome. The Realtor found me this perfect place and the price was so very right that I couldn't refuse.”

Temple had used Aldo's charm time to survey the apparent new owner: a leggy brunette about six feet tall with a dangerously curved figure that screamed "showgirl." She was not only stunned, but madly jealous. Go figure.

“Ah," Temple managed. "So you've only been here—"

“A week, sweets. I got this place at a bargain bistro price, and wasn't gonna waste time taking possession before somebody recovered their sanity."

“Was the previous owner . . . was the furniture—?”

“Clean as Whistler's mother."

“No . . . equipment in the extra bedroom?"

“No, I brought my own home gym.”

Temple had been thinking of Gandolph the Great's and Max's retired magic props. "No opium bed in the north bedroom?"

“Hey, I don't do anything heavier than Starbucks, sweetie. You want to come in and sit a bit? You look a lot green around the gills."

“That would be very nice." Aldo grabbed Temple's elbow and swept them both inside, understanding that any peek inside would be insightful. "Miss, uh—?"

“French. Dolly French.”

Oh, please! Temple thought. PseudonymCity in a city made for phony monikers.

The woman batted her double-wide false eyelashes at Aldo. "And you and your lady friend?"

“Aldo Fontana, at your service, Miss French." He somehow made "French" sound mildly obscene, which of course the rest of the world had been doing for centuries. "Miss Temple Barr is an employee of my"—Aldo cleared his throat like an operatic baritone—"Family."

“Say, I've heard of you Fontana brothers. Want a drink?

Your brother's employee looks like she could use one."

“That would be delightful. Would you permit me to mix it?”

“I'd permit you to do a lot of things.”

While this B-movie dialogue was unrolling, Temple'd had time to eye the premises. Oh, man! Oh, Max! Everything was gone. Every bit of furniture or wall decor that she knew. Even the super-security touches, like metal interior shutters, were only a dream in Temple's head.

She toddled after Aldo into the kitchen, which was the whole point in him playing bartender: seeing more of the house.

The stainless-steel appliances and countertops were the same, but the high stools were a whole different breed and the stone floor now echoed to Dolly French's stilettos stomping around on them.

“You in the entertainment biz, sweetie?"

“No, public relations.”

Dolly stopped on a dime, holding three footed glasses expertly in one long-clawed hand and a bottle of vodka in the other.

“Not that kind of public relations," Temple said through her teeth. "I represent the Crystal Phoenix hotel's publicity and promotional interests.”

It was all some ghastly nightmare. A familiar place taken over by unfamiliar things and people. How could what Orson Welles, Garry Randolph, aka Gandolph the Great, and Max Kinsella had created here become so quickly a staging area for a stereotypical Las Vegas woman of iffy morals?

Aldo, as cool as Italian . . . gelato, was making some sort of stirred not shaken martini and trying to catch Temple's eye with sympathy, and caution.

“Did you know," Temple heard herself saying, "that this house originally belonged to Orson Welles?"

“Orson who?"

“He was a boy genius, a noted gourmand, writer, and film director. But he's dead now, of course."

“I thought you said his first name was Orson?" Dolly blinked her fuzzy lashes.

“I did."

“Now you're saying it was `Ormand'? Isn't that French?”

Ormand Welles. Well, it had a Las Vegas ring to it.

Ring. She thought of Max's little emerald one tucked into her scarf drawer now that she was otherwise "engaged," and the gorgeous one she'd forced Matt to hide in a floor safe because she wasn't ready to come out as his fiancé.

Maybe now was the time to "ring" in the new, "ring" out the old. Max was gone. Only her memories of Max in this house remained.

It was as if a brutal hand had erased everything here in the most hurtful, sweeping way to make her face the facts, and the present, not the past.

Nothing here to cling to, but regret. She sipped the drink Aldo had made while he "allowed" Dolly French to take him on a guided tour of the house. Temple kept staring at the Sub-Zero refrigerator like the Abominable Snowman it was: a lurkingvision in a mist, once an old friend, but now mostly an old and fading legend.

“Max, wherefore are thou, Max?”

He had appeared in her life in another place at another time like an answer to a dream. Now the dream had ended, and Max was gone. All trace of him. The perfect exit for a magician.

Maybe she'd better get used to life without everyday magic. Maybe she'd better concentrate on making sure Electra didn't face a nightmare of her own too real to write off.

Chapter 16

Electra's Larks

The Circle Ritz penthouse where Electra lived and presided always felt like it was off-limits, even when you were expected.

Temple had only been up here a few times, so she knocked gingerly on the door, then rang the doorbell right after that, convinced that her petite knuckles wouldn't rouse a flea.

The door jerked open to reveal Electra back to wearing her usual wildly floral muumuu.

“What's happening at the convention?" she asked.

“Not much:' Temple said. "There's more going on in that hot jungle print you're wearing."

“I don't feel up to wearing imperial purple at the moment. But you look pretty in pink. You never used to wear that color."

“I wasn't planning on masquerading as a Pink Hatter before, and it never went with my natural red hair color."