Electra, looking like a late-life girl graduate in her black JP’s robe, officiated. In a few minutes she released the fortyish couple to a slow walk back down the aisle between a smattering of friends and the host of soft-sculpture figures with which Electra populated the pews so every couple would have a full house.
Taped music—Hawaiian Wedding Song—played until everyone involved had hula-ed down the aisle and out, except Electra and himself.
Matt stood as she noticed him. “Got a few minutes?”
“Got scads of minutes,” she said. “Las Vegas weddings are much less impromptu now. Everything’s scheduled. Like real life. Kinda boring.”
“I see the organ is a stage prop these days.”
“Oh, yes.” She shrugged out of the robe. “It’s easier not arranging for Euphonia to come to play it. Besides, couples want a high-tech ceremony today: their favorite songs; videotapes-to-go; balloons released; all the wedding bells and whistles.”
Matt moved to the silent organ, his fingertips pausing on the pale keys. “Kind of a shame.”
“You’re welcome to come and play any time the chapel’s dead.”
“Dead?”
“Not hosting a wedding.”
“Speaking of dead—” He looked questioningly toward Elvis.
“My newest.” Electra fondly regarded the figure. “He just didn’t want to be left out. And, you know, I met this neat Today Elvis guy at the big Kingdome Hotel opening with all the impersonators present, and have never seen hide nor snow-white hair of him since. I thought we had something special. So this is a memorial to Izzy.”
“Izzy?”
“Too complicated to explain, Matt. Aren’t there some things in your life too complicated to explain?”
“How about everything?”
“Such ambition,” Electra joshed. “You’re too young to be that mysterious.”
“Not mysterious, just mystified. Anyway, I want to offer you a deal you can’t refuse. I’m hoping that Elvis in the pew is on my side.”
“Really?” Electra’s thinning gray eyebrows lifted as high as they were capable of.
“I want to make a trade.”
“Trade?”
“My Millennium Volkswagen Beetle for your Ford Probe.”
“Your silver Elvismobile for my old faded pink Probe?”
“Right.”
“But…I’ve loved Elvis since 1955, and he gave that car to you.”
“Exactly.”
“To you, not to me.”
“I don’t believe in Elvis. I’m sorry, Electra, but I just don’t. I believe in the Holy Ghost, but I don’t believe in Elvis. Maybe he just isn’t holy enough. So I can’t accept a car from someone I don’t believe in. It’s fitting that you have the Beetle. It means something to you. And…I could use a less high-profile car.”
“But your new VW is worth six times more than my old Probe.”
“That’s why I’d like you to throw in the Hesketh Vampire. You can keep occasional riding privileges, though. I’d hate to see you hang up your Speed Queen helmet for good.”
“I thought you loathed that motorcycle.”
“Did it show that much?”
“And how! This deal is saccharine sweet for me. But I hate taking advantage of you.”
“You’d be doing me a favor, but I’d probably get the Probe repainted.”
“Color it purple; see if I care.”
“I was thinking…white.”
“Oh.”
“Practical in this hot climate.”
“At my age, I don’t want practical and white unless it’s a private nurse. But suit yourself, dear boy. No doubt it’ll be a tropical-weight white linen one.”
“White may be practical in cars, but it’s murder on suits. Besides, I got used to black.”
Electra winked. “If you get too lonesome for black, you can slip on my justice of the peace robe and stand in for me.”
“I’m not qualified to perform civil ceremonies. Besides, I always hated doing weddings.”
“For goodness’ sake, why?”
“So many of them end in shreddings and sheddings. A lot of them start from a position of insanity and go on from there.”
“I guess I know that from experience.” Electra, obviously recalling one or all of her vaunted five husbands, stared at the soft-sculpture audience as if searching for answers.
“And,” Matt said quickly, before she was permanently lost on Moonlight Bay, “I need the Probe tonight, if that’s all right. We can take care of the title changes any day this week after that.”
“Borrow my car? Sure. I’ll bring the keys down to you this afternoon about four.”
“Great,” Matt said, relieved.
The first part of his self-defense plan was going so well he was beginning to feel optimistic.
Chapter 9
Heads or Tails?
As soon as the denizens of the Circle Ritz have finished their chitchat in the chapel and departed, I remove myself from where I am curled up next to the Lady in Black and decamp to the side of my old friend Elvis.
He is looking a little pasty-faced today and quite unlike himself in the bleached hair with which Miss Electra Lark has saddled him. It makes me wonder in what state I will be represented after my demise. Bald or bleached is definitely not my style.
I curl up by the King and thoughtfully knead my front shivs into his overstuffed knee, occasionally scratching my chin on one of the prong-set stones bedewing his stretch polyester. Of course, the real Elvis’s jumpsuits were fashioned from the finest Italian wool, but one cannot expect Miss Electra Lark to underwrite that level of authenticity.
I am quite pleased with myself, and for once that is for a reason. I sicced…er, sent Miss Midnight Louise to tail Mr. Max Kinsella and find out what he is up to while on the trail of the missing leopard. No doubt Mr. Max is sympathetic to the Cloaked Conjuror’s loss, as he himself worked with a black panther named Kahlúa during our Halloween caper. Actually, panther is a Miss Nomer. The beast in question is really a black leopard, so Kahlúa is a sister under the skin to Osiris.
Obviously, that is one big wild cat chase, as no one even knows where Mr. Max resides, except perhaps my Miss Temple, and she has been exceedingly canny about keeping even me in the dark as to his usual whereabouts.
Meanwhile, I have stuck to my base at the Circle Ritz, and have come up with a destination and a means of transportation without hardly batting a drowsing eye.
Of course, Mr. Matt is not on the trail of the cat, but he is up to something unsavory. I can tell by a certain air he wears when he feels guilty, which is frequently. I wish that they would bottle guilt and sell it as a unisex cologne. I can smell it from a hundred paces and following its trail never leads me astray.
So after lavishing my manicured attention on poor old Elvis for a while, I regretfully leave my cushy situation and hie out to the Circle Ritz parking lot to wait by Miss Electra Lark’s pink Probe. I am hoping that Mr. Matt’s appointment is after dark, so I can slip into the back seat as he enters the front without being detected.
Then we shall see where he goes and what happens there. I hope it is somewhere more exciting than an ex-priests’ meeting at Maternity of Mary in Henderson.
I am not the churchy type, and especially not the maternal one.
Chapter 10
Animal Instincts
“What was that masked thing?” Temple asked as the Maxima jolted over the dusty road taking her and Max away from the Animal Oasis.