The treasure, looking more like junk now that it balanced on the brink, had pulled away from the silver-white material, now flat instead of fluffy. No shoe like shapes lurked behind or under it. Slack, it drooped over the trove lip, flashing a single star-shape of silver glitter.
Eightball was dragging the stool back into place. "Lucky for you security is on a rum break," he grumbled. "Messing with casino decorations is mighty suspicious behavior. You're probably on tape, close up. Let's get out of here before they make you walk the plank."
Temple did not argue.
She could barely keep up with Eightball's blue-jeaned and booted legs as he wove through the gaming area. They were soon dodging tourists through the lobby toward the building's main entrance.
"You still didn't say what you were doing here," Temple said when she caught up to him.
"Same case," he said shortly. "Only I found my way here on my own."
Temple could hardly complain, given her uncommon luck. Only two people had noticed her studying the treasure chests: Hester Polyester and Eightball. Neither was fond of hotel security. Maybe there was something to zen gambling, after all.
They broke into fading daylight through another set of skull-handled doors, reminding Temple that it was past 7:00 p.m. She glimpsed a hillside of quaint architecture and exotic landscaping to her left.
Before them a wooden walkway thronged with coming-and-going people all the long way to the Strip.
Something large loomed on her right. She looked up at yet another dinosaur of the new Las Vegas Strip--an eighteenth-century sailing ship, its sails rolled up like window shades, tucked into snug harbor against the towering cliff side of the Treasure Island Hotel. People four-deep crowded the railings on both sides.
She stopped to gawk.
"Ain't you seen the show yet?" Eightball asked.
"You mean the battling pirate ships?"
"Well, that one there's the pirate. The other one's the Royal Navy, and that comes along later."
"Who wins?"
"Wouldn't be fair telling if you ain't seen it yet."
"Is that why those rope barriers divide the bridge? To keep show-watchers separate from the traffic in and out of the Treasure Island?"
"What a gumshoe! Exactly."
"When's the next show?"
"Anytime between now and forty minutes from now." Eightball edged over to the left wooden railing to gaze down on an expanse of water lapping at the walkway's piers. "Everything's peaceful now, which means they're setting up for the next sail-bashing."
Temple joined him at the rail, which came up to her collarbones. Across the way, a large bay window framed a glint of cutlery and metal lamps. The diners at table were strictly contemporary, so she was peeking into one of several hotel eateries. But the exterior scene made a course of a far less formal flavor. Cables and barrels littered the landscape. A presumably stuffed parrot roosted on a post. A ship's female figurehead thrust out from a second story, busty enough to give the one on Caesars Palace's Cleopatra's barge an inferiority complex and a yen for a Wonderbra.
The scene was obviously a pirates' rookerie on some uncharted island.
Water licked at the bridge's support structures and lapped at the artificial lagoon's faraway edge near the Strip, where more people lined up. The scene, the water, the distant diners instilled peace in a place more noted for haste and hustle.
Temple lay her forearms on the sun-warmed wood, joining the waiters and watchers.
"Quite a show," Eightball observed. "Worth the wait."
"I suppose I'm obligated to see it, being a PR person."
He nodded.
The crowd had that air of mass expectancy found in theaters and sports arenas. What a perfect place to murder someone, Temple thought. One quick stab and away into the mob. No! Her mind was not on murder. No hunks lurked here as victim or perpetrator (unless some manned the ship), and the Treasure Island sat next to the Mirage, far from the Crystal Phoenix.
Temple noticed that the waves kissing the distant pilings were now administering slaps. Yet there was no wind, only the long slow sunset simmering at their backs.
"If we're lucky, it'll be twilight by showtime," Eightball said. "Enough light to see by, but more dangerous in the dark."
Temple shivered as she felt an imaginary breeze and watched its ghost riffle the cool water below, in which the nearby lamp reflection twinkled like a falling star. Fair wind, fiery star. Yes, the water was making waves now, small ones that snapped at the pilings, fell back and grew bigger. Was that possible in an artificial lake with little wind present? True, Las Vegas would try anything for a special effect. Did some eggbeater-like machine lurk beneath the waterline? Creepy!
Temple suddenly noticed a small wooden boat on the water, two men rowing like mad toward the bridge. Voices from the anchored pirate ship behind her urged them on. The men rowed under the bridge and vanished. Their voices ebbed.
Eightball was right. The day was dimming. A candle-glow brightened the faraway restaurant window, reflecting from knives and forks that rose and fell like waves. ... The lagoon water was really heaving against the pilings now. How ... and more puzzlingly, why?
"See there!" Eightball pointed like a lookout.
Temple stared where directed and saw the diners gazing back at her. Then something moved. To the right. A high black prow nudged into her line of sight, sharp as a dagger shearing the fading sky in two.
How amazing ... A huge, gliding full-sailed ship edged into view on a toy lagoon. The ruffled waves had been silent emissaries of the unseen yet approaching ship. The silence ended. Music, orchestral and ominous, welled up all around them.
Voices called behind them again.
Turning, Temple watched the buccaneers swarm up the rigging, the pirate ship now lit by hidden spotlights like a stage set. Crew called each other to readiness.
Then British barks of orders boomed from the oncoming ship. Temple switched her attention to the left. And so it went, the Royal Navy ship sliding around the point to furl its sails and take up a firing position, the pirate ship behind them all loud chaos as the surprised buccaneers readied for battle.
Temple felt as she had at the authors' lunch at the Debbie Reynolds hoteclass="underline" like a spectator at a tennis game who was seated along the net. Voices bounced back and forth above her head, exchanging volleys of priggish British demands and lusty pirate defiance.
I'm getting dizzy," she complained to Eightball over the hullabaloo.
"Worth it," he answered with a grin. "The folks along the Strip get a wider view, but we're right in mid-action."
"I could use a seat right now." Temple shifted her weight from right to left foot. High heels didn't bother her, unless she was forced to stand in the same place for a long while.
The British captain was bawling orders to his navvies: open the gun ports. A row of tiny doors in the ship's keel popped ajar. The ship's cannons made their politically incorrect appearance, thrusting out en masse in a phallic salute.
Instantly a red, booming burst exploded at the gun ports. Whipping around, Temple saw the pirate ship's masts bloom like fireworks, all flame and outward-flying flotsam. A screaming sailor plunged headfirst from crow's nest to deck, checked only a few feet before impact by the rope tied around one ankle. A perfectly timed stunt.
"Shiver me timbers," Eightball observed with a chuckle.
"You've seen this before. Who wins?"
"Who do you want to win?"
"Well, the pirates were lazy and off-guard--"
"So you're for the forces of law and order?"
"But the British are such bloody martinets--"
Barroom! The martinets fired again on relentless, crystal-clear command. And again.
On the pirate ship, masts and men tumbled deckward together. The light and heat of the disintegrating ship flickered on Temple's and Eightball's faces. Around them, people hooted in excited disbelief.