Unknown - Cat_In_A_Hot_Pink_Pursuit

In a few moments, the unlatched door pushes open and girls silver and golden slide through. They are looking a bit mussed about the muzzle and decidedly annoyed.

“Louie!” Miss Yvette is in fine fettle, good mettle, and superb Ma Kettle mode. “You led us on zee wild goose chase. And affair we had done zee hokey-pokey on the intruder’s epidermis.”

(When stressed, the Divine Yvette resorts to B-movie French.)

“Poor fellow,” I say. “But I gathered lots of good intelligence.”

“Somezing new pour vous, I tink.”

Yvette is really, really mad. She is starting to sound like a voyageur. Wrong continent, wrong period.

“Those stairs were very sudden,” her sister Solange rebukes.

And I am duly chastised. “But you both have the impeccable French nose for strong cheeses and rank fruit. Did you trace the raspberry/strawberry scent through the tunnels?”

“And banana,” Solange adds.

“Banana?” I think she is making a value judgment. But non. I mean, no.

“There was a distinct undertone of banana. I ought to know. Our mistress uses a banana-scented sun screen.”

Banana! Of course!

The scent that leads from the mall to here is not that of a mere ice cream treat; it is that of a healthful fruit smoothie!

Now I have nailed the full spectrum of ingredients that will lead to a murderer. Brought down by a high-protein health-food shake.

Somehow it is poetic justice.

I would boast of my breakthrough, but the Divine Yvette has lofted onto Miss Savannah Ashleigh’s bed and wrapped herself around her percussive head.

Not only dogs are devoted.

Solange sees me to the door. “Was it something I said, Louie?”

I allow her to polish my sides with her softest, foxiest furs.

“Exactly. What a rare and subtle nose.” (The French love these kind of compliments.) “Brilliant! Now I must prepare for the takedown tomorrow.”

She wafts her fulsome plume under my own nose. “I am sorry Yvette is being such a pill. Perhaps you will come to tell me the outcome.”

Perhaps I will. I chuck her under the chin with my most flexible member.

“Wish me luck, sweetheart.”

“Bonne chance, Louie!”

Having restored international relations with our allies of old, I push out into the ordinary hall, walking on air and the inescapable scent of a spilled fruit smoothie that will trip up a murderer.

Chapter 54

No Glimpse

of Stocking

Max’s watch read five past midnight when he climbed the Circle Ritz’s conveniently stepped black marble facing up to the second-floor balcony of his and Temple’s unit.

He was still officially half-owner. That’s how he could make this clandestine expedition, knowing she was gone, with a semiclear conscience. No, nothing was clear about this intrusion except the night sky, spangled with stars.

He’d told enough necessary lies in his undercover work to recognize a story that was stapled together. Temple was gone, all right. Not to Minnesota though, and not to tend an ill father she hadn’t even mentioned to Electra Lark. No, she’d just asked the landlady to look after the cat.

Speaking of Midnight Louie, Max had better be on the lookout for him. He wouldn’t put it past the territorial old boy to trip him in the dark, since they both always wore black and were fairly invisible at night.

The French door lock gave to a few passes of Max’s tiny metal wand. He’d told Temple to secure these doors again and again, but she probably didn’t want to interfere with Louie’s comings and goings.

The main room was unlit. Faint night-light glows came from the office and kitchen, another concession to Louie probably.

He pulled out his slim high-intensity flashlight. The coffee table looked normal, including its clutter of scattered newspaper sections. Temple, an ex-newsie, was lost without newsprint nearby. None of the stories laid face up seemed relevant to anything: long security lines at McCarran Airport; one hotel mega-conglomerate offering billions for another; a reality TV show setting up shop in a deserted Vegas mansion. The usual nonsense that had made Las Vegas famous.

Max ran the light around the floorboards but no Louie lurked. Either crashing on the king-size bed or out to play while his mistress was away.

The bedroom would tell the tale of the trip. Max paused in the doorway, then shut the door and turned on the light.

Temple had definitely left in a hurry. Louie was not lounging on the bedspread because it was carpeted with clutter. Clothes, underclothes, and shoes were scattered everywhere. Everything but pantyhose. Temple hated hot, sticky hose. Never wore them. An admirable habit.

Empty thin plastic shopping bags also dotted the landscape, bearing names Max had never seen here before, like the Icing and Marvella’s Marvelous Wigs.

Temple needed a wig to visit her sick father? Max started a serious search of the closet. Was she on some crazy undercover crusade again? All of her seriously dressy heels were still here. Her summer slides were scattered over the parquet floor, obviously tried on and stepped out of, but never put away.

She’d been in a hurry. She’d put a wardrobe together ina flurry. At the dresser by the wall, a drawer had been plundered and left open, shutting askew and sticking, and then abandoned.

Max smiled to imagine Temple’s hasty explosion of creative swearing. She never cursed with common expressions when a wacky euphemism was at hand.

The offending drawer was Temple’s Sacrosanct Scarf Drawer, holder of every maternal Christmas present that had been found wanting, along with rosy purchases that soon proved completely wrong. All the things she didn’t use but couldn’t bear to throw out for one reason or another.

Max realized he missed the intriguing and amusing clutter of a female housemate. He missed Temple’s clothes and sound and smell. He went over to set the drawer on its proper track, to stuff the colorful, gauzy scarves that refused to knot and tie properly for her back into their place of exile. As a magician, he had a far better way with scarves than she did. Maybe he’d make a bouquet of all her rejects and surprise her with it when she got back. From … wherever.

A tiny round box caught his eye, the cover off and something winking at him from inside it.

What winked was a ring, an inexpensive sterling gilt and cubic zirconia ring. The bottom of the box still had its adhesive price tag, thirty-eight dollars. One step above a Cracker Jack box trinket. Yet uncannily like the Tiffany opal and diamond ring he’d given Temple last Christmas when he’d come out of hiding and entered her life again. The ring that had been taken from her by a renegade magician named Shangri-La and had ended up in an evidence baggie in Lieutenant Molina’s gloating custody.

Temple had spotted this cheap substitute somewhere and had bought it. Not worn it. Bought it. To remind her of the real one, and then tuck it away like something shameful.

Max could have strangled Molina if she’d been there. Could have kicked himself. He’d only learned what had happened to the ring recently. He should have gotten Temple another one ASAP, not left it to her to comfort herself with a substitute.

Not left it to her to comfort herself with a substitute. The echo of that phrase sounded suddenly sinister.

He sat on the bed and stared at the ring, then glanced at one of the abandoned shoes and picked it up. It lay on his large, strong hand like a curio. A curve of red silk-covered sole, a slender heel, a bejeweled band across the instep. Size five. Cinderella accessory, hands, and shoes, down. Made for a foot fit for a prince. One who actually showed up for balls.

Max put the shoe back down. He put the cover back on the box because he couldn’t bear to look at the ring. Temple didn’t wear her heart on her sleeve, or her disappointments on her finger. Obviously, his ring and its loss meant more to her than she’d allow to show. As had the promise he’d given with the ring that someday he’d be free to be a real boy, with a real girl for a wife and a public career again and a house somewhere full of the magic of her laughter, with a dragon of a scarf drawer he could tame into submission with the flick of one finger.