When the car finally turned onto a rutted sandy road, it drove into the encroaching desert for a quarter mile. Then she saw a big wooden sign with white-painted lettering carved into its wind-weathered surface.
“‘Animal Oasis,’” she declaimed and asked at the same time.
“No shills needed here,” Max reassured. “This is where we’ll research your upcoming role. Ever wonder where I got that cloud of cockatoos for the finale of my act?”
“You kept them in that wonderful mesh aviary at the Goliath theater. They looked so gorgeous flitting around that tropical greenery. I’d never seen plants backstage before, unless it was for a production of Little Shop of Horrors.”
“Audrey Junior was hardly a plant,” Max objected, referring to the domineering carnivorous growth that had starred in the cult film and the later musical play and film. He was as much a theater and film buff as Temple was, another reason they had clicked like the opening tumblers of a bank safe.
“I’m just in a gruesome mood,” Temple admitted. “Did you know your cockatoo retreat inspired my idea for an elegant petting zoo at the Crystal Phoenix?”
“That Goliath setup was only for the length of my contract. The birds came from here. And they came back here when I went.”
“Do you miss them? I mean, did you like working with animals?”
“Sometimes better than with people. Well-trained birds are easy to work with. Except for the occasional dropping. A real drawback when wearing black is your trademark.”
“Kind of like really large, gooey dandruff.”
Max grimaced at her comparison. “Luckily, the distance between stage and audience hides a multitude of flaws.”
Temple didn’t mention that sometimes the distance between magician and mate could also hide a multitude of flaws.
She thrust aside past issues, leaning forward to see their destination, intrigued to encounter a place that housed performing animals. Animal Oasis. It sounded like a shelter, but was there really any true shelter for creatures that could be bought and sold like household plants?
They parked behind a low beige-stucco building set into the brown bezel of the usual desert scrub. Beyond it, Temple glimpsed higher stucco walls fringed by exotic greenery. As they left the car, she could hear water trickling in the distance. A lush, damp smell tinged the dry wind that riffled across the sand.
“It does look like an oasis in there,” she told Max, pushing up on her toes to see over the wall. “No! I know. It looks like the wall that kept in King Kong on Skull Island.”
Max laughed so hard that the man coming out of the building to greet them froze in his tracks and looked back to see if a clown car was following him.
“You’re not a bloodhound on the track of crime,” Max told her, “you’re an unlicensed imagination in search of a Stephen King storyline.”
They approached the bewildered man, a typical outdoors guy for these arid parts. Time and the desert had impressed a road map of wrinkles onto his features like a tooling die biting into leather. His teeth gleamed bone white in his weathered face, and his eyes were Lake Mead blue.
“Max Kinsella,” he was saying, with wonder. And warmth. He strode forward to grab Max’s right hand and wring it as much as shake it. “I thought you’d left us for good. Damn, but you look fine.”
Then he turned the weathered charm on Temple, grinning expectantly.
“Temple Barr, PR.” She extended a hand before Max had a chance to explain her. “I’m helping Max out on a project.”
“Kirby Grange.” He didn’t offend her by shaking hands any more delicately, but the grip wasn’t punishing, just firm and brief. “This here’s my outfit.”
“Any great apes in there, Kirb?” Max asked, removing his sunglasses, and glancing at Temple.
“Only some of my crew. But come in outa the sun, folks. It’s already fixin’ to turn into summer on us.” Kirby turned to Temple with a grin. “Not that I haven’t housed an ape or two. Terrific fellas and gals.”
Inside, the building was functional with a capital S as in Spare: Concrete floor, discount office furniture, battered file cabinets and a lot of metal folding chairs sitting around.
Temple got the impression that not a lot of sitting around was done at the Animal Oasis.
“Have a seat.”
They took the only ones available, two folding chairs raked into a rough conversational angle. Kirby Grange leaned against a desk edge. Beer belly, jeans, and rolled-up faded denim shirtsleeves made him look like a ranch hand, and Temple supposed that was what he did.
“Why’d you rush off like that, Max? Not a word. And not that you weren’t paid up, but the birds just left downstairs at the Goliath.”
Max did something Temple had never seen him do before. He fidgeted with guilt.
“I had to leave town fast, Kirby. Personal matter.”
Kirby nodded, craggy face impassive but his blue eyes sparkling with speculation. “It was all right. Got a crew to disassemble the aviary and we moved the whole shooting match out here. You need the birds again?”
“No.” Max took a deep breath. “I’m out of the magic game.”
“Glad to hear it, because I’m out of the performing parrot game too.”
“They were cockatoos, and they didn’t really have to perform that much.”
For a moment tension hung between the two men like an invisible curtain, like the heat giving the desert air a permanent wave right before your eyes.
“For now,” Max went on, “I’m helping out a friend. Not her,” he added as Kirby automatically glanced at Temple.
“No.” Kirby grinned. “You don’t look like jest a friend, miss. Leastways I wouldn’t want it that way if I was twenty years younger.”
It was the kind of gallantry older men felt entitled to make to much younger women. Temple ignored it because it was so harmless in this instance, and because Max might need reminding.
He looked on benignly, as avuncular as Kirby now, as if he had somehow taken on the older man’s coloring like a chameleon.
Temple was shocked to realize that this was what Max did: he presented himself to people and fell into their patterns so completely and naturally that he could blend into any environment, any situation, any persona.
“What can I do for you?” Kirby asked, pleasantries over and business beginning.
“I’m looking into something for a magician friend,” Max said smoothly, seriously.
He was only half lying, Temple noted. The Cloaked Conjuror wasn’t a friend.
“His big cat’s gone missing. We’re thinking it might have been taken by someone who deals in illegal wildlife sales.”
Kirby’s friendly face hardened. “Got a few of those around. Worse varmints than anything on four feet or no feet. How can I help you?”
“First, let me take a stroll through your records. I know you keep tabs on some of the shady operations for the authorities. Then show my friend—” Max grinned and corrected himself. “My not-friend around your compound. And tell her how to spot a big cat that’s not at home.”
Kirby’s eyes played ping-pong between Max and Temple, their expression bouncing from surprise to worry before he fixed his attention on Temple. “Well, now, miss, showing you the Oasis would be a fine break for me.”
He went over to a file cabinet, jerked open a drawer, and eyed Max with much less pleasure. “You’ll find what you want under V. As in ‘vermin.’”
His boot heels clacked the concrete as he came to Temple. “Follow me. I hope you got shoes that can stand a cleaning. These animals don’t always use the bidet.”
She laughed and accompanied him out into the searing sunlight.
Behind them, Max was already shuffling papers. She saw him pull a small object from his jacket pocket and lift it to a page. Too big to be his mascara-size camera. What?
But Kirby Granger was drawling out a guidebook spiel to his animal kingdom. Temple trotted alongside him to the inner gates, to the animal Shangri-la beyond: big, looming wooden stockade gates, now that they had penetrated the electrified cyclone fence that defined the fringes.