She shrugged and pressed the button.
After some rewinding and squeaking, the thing settled down and replayed . . . Matt's voice.
Thank God. The intonation of calm and reason. "Temple," it said, "I've got something important to show you. I know it's early Sunday morning, but could I drop by later?"
Early Sunday all right, only 11:30 a.m. Matt's call must have come after she'd left at nine-thirty. What was he doing up so early on a Sunday, other than habit? If she'd been at church like other good Las Vegans, she would have avoided the debacle at the Oasis. Temple picked up the receiver and dialed Matt's number, pleased to realize she now knew it by heart.
He answered on the second ring, completely amenable to cocoa and cinnamon rolls. Fifteen minutes.
Temple scrambled to claw the packaged rolls out of the freezer, then ran to dig culottes and a knit top out of her bedroom closet. She even had time to read the funny papers before he arrived.
And he arrived bearing another roll of paper: naked newsprint in the bland, oatmeal color of pulp.
"What is it?" Temple asked. "Not a treat for Louie?"
"If it becomes one, I'll have his ears for it," Matt announced gravely. "It cost me a lot." The second sentence was even grimmer than the first. He glanced at Temple to make sure she was fully awake. "Sorry I called while you were asleep. I was pretty anxious to show you this."
"Wasn't asleep, silly. Was out."
"Out? Already? What's happening in Las Vegas before noon on Sunday besides gambling and church?"
Temple shook her head. "You forgot the other part of Las Vegas's trinity of ete rnal verities, even on a Sunday: food. Obligatory brunches. Cocktail wienies instead of sausages, caviar instead of coarse-ground pepper on your scrambled eggs, mimosas instead of grapefruit juice."
Matt made a face, before sitting on the sofa with Louie. Actually, right beside Louie. In fact, so close that Louie struggled upright and moved down a foot. Matt edged right into the empty spot, so he sat dead center on the sofa. He laid the rolled paper on the coffee table, then waited for Temple to come stand beside him for the unveiling.
She sat beside him instead. "Well?"
He unrolled the top, setting the crystal ashtray that was never otherwise used on one corner. Then he unfurled the rest like an old-fashioned parchment window shade, turn by turn, so the face drawn on the paper appeared inch by inch.
Temple held her breath from the top of the western hat to the dented collar points on the western shirt at the bottom.
"Is that really him?" she asked.
"Close enough for discomfort." Matt shook his head at the likeness. "I don't know whether to tape it on the wall and heave rotten eggs at it, or what."
"Shoot it down in size on a copier and make flyers, even a few laminated 'wallet-size' copies you can flash in person. Then start asking people if they've seen the party in question. So this is Cliff Effinger."
"In disguise," Matt cautioned her, "and aged by an artist's guesstimate."
"Who's the artist and how did you get onto him?"
"Her," Matt corrected swiftly. He kept his eyes focused on the sketched face floating above the clutter.
It must be like looking down at a body in the morgue viewing room, Temple thought.
"Molina called me yesterday, out of the blue, appropriately, and suggested I try a police artist."
"You barely glimpsed the figure you saw on the street."
"But I never forgot the man he used to be."
"And this is the result. Does it look ... right?"
Matt nodded slowly. "A remarkable job. She's really very good, this woman. Makes you remember things you didn't even know you'd forgotten, like a bump on a nose."
"That is some hokey getup."
Matt nodded. "Hokey like a chameleon maybe. Didn't your friend Max say that extremes are a disguise in Las Vegas?"
"Friend Max said that naked was no disguise in this town, only noisy was; loud clothes, loud pose. This dated urban-cowboy getup does it. You remember the hat and the sideburns more than you do the man under and behind them."
"If I hadn't known him from before, I'd have been hopeless at providing a description. Janice aged him to the right degree after I'd described all his features."
Temple clasped her elbows and nodded as she studied this likeness of a dead man walking.
Cliff Effinger was not a savory customer, no matter what he wore or whether he were dead or alive.
"At least you accomplished something this weekend. I got sidetracked and, boy, am I sorry."
"What happened?"
"My brunch was more like a 'crunch,' and I was the main course. I'm still kicking myself for going."
"What could happen at a brunch?"
"Darren Cooke."
Matt finally looked up from the pinched, sketchpad face he couldn't tear his eyes from.
"That name sounds familiar."
"He's a quasi-movie star. A comic actor who's done road shows and now is headlining the new Gangster's revue about Las Vegas's colorful past, that is, the criminal elements we love to sentimentalize once they've safely rubbed each other out."
"That's right! I saw a placard when we came in to the place. So you had brunch with this guy? Why?"
"Because of Savannah Ashleigh. You've heard me mention her?"
"Have I ever. Mother of Louie's Persian playmate and she-devil of Hollywood."
"Well, Ms. She-Devil apparently bad-mouthed me to Darren Cooke."
"Why?" Matt sounded indignant that anyone would bad-mouth Temple.
"She's an ex-fling of his--he's as famous for flings as for his throwaway lines--and apparently the competition was too much with me around the A La Cat commercial. It's being partially filmed on the Darren Cooke set."
"I see," Matt said, looking confused.
"So she called me 'Nancy Drew' to Darren Cooke, which got him wondering why. When he realized that I had been involved in a . . . situation or two, he decided he needed my expert assistance."
"But you don't really ... do anything. You just happen to be front and center at crime scenes."
"Thanks for the vote of confidence. I thought I actually had some insight. So when he sat me down in an Oasis-penthouse suite, I was prepared to do what I could."
"What was his problem?"
"Pretty personal. I don't want to betray his confidence. Lord, I sound like a priest! Anyway, he beat his breast with remorse for his past wicked ways, then ended up propositioning me."
"On Sunday morning?"
"The day of the week isn't the point! The point is that his distress call was only an elaborate ploy to hit on another female victim ... me!"
"You mean his problem wasn't real?"
"Oh, he may be genuinely disturbed about it, but the man is such a knee-jerk Romeo that even his weaknesses become a pretext for chasing some new female on the scene. Any new female on the scene. I can't believe I fell for it."
"What did he do?" Matt looked like he really didn't want to hear.
"Nothing overt. He didn't have to. Made a veiled suggestion I saw right through, at which point I gathered up my Sherlock Jr. mail-order detective kit and left in a fairly discreet huff."
"So now you'd like to see his head on a platter at Hush Money's?"
"No, you can't blame a human hyena for having carrion tastes. If he exposed his tomcat ways, I exposed my own stupidity. I really do think I can solve people's problems. That idiotic Savannah Ashleigh isn't half wrong. I do think I'm Nancy Drew. I told him it was a police matter. I begged him to have it looked into professionally, even if he has to use some pricey Hollywood agency. He lost interest because the object of the game had never been his problem daughter.
He uses everything to excuse his promiscuous social life."
Matt was looking at her oddly.
"What? You're surprised that I could be such a self-important fool?"
"No..."