For Matt Devine, Max wondered, was Temple a mysterious new gadget in his brave new world, and did he wish that she came with an instruction booklet?
Max laughed quietly to himself, then sobered as he considered the reason he had been called in as a debugging expert. He supposed Devine had hated his intrusion as much as Max had. Max remembered the man’s startled expression on seeing him outside the door, even though Devine was expecting him.
The feeling was mutual, bub.
Most men were too homophobic to much notice the looks of other men, but every time Max saw Devine he was stunned by the matinee-idol handsomeness. It wasn’t just a photogenic face. Real matinee idols knocked other people out: gender or age had nothing to do with it, just some genetic combination of features that stunned everyone.
Max suspected this unasked-for gift was more a barrier than anything. In Devine it was combined with an unconsciousness—no, a disregard—that made the good looks all the more compelling.
Max had met only one other person in his life with that kind of visual impact: Kathleen O’Connor. He laughed again, seeing Sean and himself acting like clumsy clowns, tangling their tongues, their overgrown feet, trying to compete for a colleen like Kathleen.
She was as dewy as the fabled island that spawned her, moist and fecund and lush and intriguingly cloudy, elusive. She made even boys understand why the Cavalier poets had written reams to their mistresses’ ivory white skin, rose-petal lips, and “brunette beauty.”
Max had long since learned to get past beauty, but he wondered what would happen to that if he saw Kathleen, or Kitty as she called herself to Devine, again after all these years. From the sketch Devine had commissioned of her, age had not withered a scintilla of it.
And, yes, he took the threat she posed seriously, though he hadn’t let on to Devine. Max was used to keeping his own counsel, to directing the show of his life and his life’s work. Only part of it, the least important, had been onstage.
So. He leaned against the wall, partly indulging his ego with a paranoid sense of personal competition, partly putting off confronting the ugly certainty that lives he cared about were in danger, and only he could do something to stop it.
In the years between Sean’s death in Northern Ireland, he had atoned for surviving the IRA bombing, for the sin of not being there, by saving strangers’ lives. Now it had come full circle. The lives he needed to save were those as close to him as he allowed these days, Temple principally, of course, but he had to save Temple the loss of those she cared for to save her completely, and that was a wider circle.
And it included Matt Devine, ironically.
And even Kitty O’Connor was not an island. Max had other enemies from his undercover days, and had made new ones during his uncustomary long stay in Vegas. Molina, for one. She worked for the law, and she regarded him as the epitome of lawlessness. No quarter there.
And Devine was right: Max’s past had brought the danger into their own living rooms. His now, Temple’s…when?
Damn, but Devine was too good-looking for any woman’s good! Temple or Molina, maybe even. Or even Kitty O’Connor? Did she have a vulnerable spot she was hiding with her implacable persecution of Matt Devine?
Beauty. Yeats had described the truth and terrible cost of the Irish freedom movement as “a terrible beauty” being born. And beauty was born, not made. It wasn’t an option.
Maybe that was what drew Kathleen to Devine, for worse or for better, the one thing they had in common that infuriated her. And she was infuriated. She had already acted on it by her first, shockingly physical surprise attack on Devine. Where would her fury strike next? And at whom? If she couldn’t find him, and was taking it out on others, could he find her first? Take her out. One way or the other.
Meanwhile…the current show must go on.
Max pushed himself off the wall, straightened his slumping backbone into onstage steel again. Enough wallowing. Back to being the Mystifying Max Kinsella, able to defy gravity and create illusions out of insubstantial air.
He was going to have a busy night of it.
First, he called the private backstage number for the Cloaked Conjuror.
It was well before showtime, but CC would be in. Magicians always came early to triple-check the arrangements for their shows. One slip-up could cause career-terminating embarrassment.
CC sounded very glad to hear from Max, and even gladder to hear that his missing leopard had been found.
“No, you can’t have Osiris back anytime soon,” Max told him. “He’s…quarantined. No, not sick. Only…suspected.”
Max quickly laid out the murder and the leopard’s presence at the death scene. “The Animal Oasis has taken charge of Osiris. The other big cats and the herds remain in place, with their usual tenders. There’s nothing you can do except visit Osiris, which I don’t recommend. The police don’t know whose animal he was, and you don’t want to step forward, because Osiris’s owner would be a prime suspect in the murder. Who else could control the animal?”
“I never even heard of this Van Burkleo guy and his head-hunting ranch,” CC objected in an odd voice: his own, unmasked by a vocal synthesizer. Contrary to his muscular onstage image, his pleasant tenor would serve a bingo caller well.
“Say you. I do wonder why you never got any ransom demand for Osiris. Also about a couple other things involving his abduction. Stay out of it. The Animal Oasis people will take princely care of him. If you want to do something, give the AO a big donation. Having an exotic animal dumped into their facility with no notice puts a huge strain on the staff, the accommodations, and the budget. It’s a nonprofit.”
“Listen, that’s a ‘ransom’ I’m happy to pay. You’ll let me know as soon as Osiris is cleared? I mean, it’s ridiculous that a leopard would be suspected of murder.”
“I agree.” Max didn’t mention his biggest worry: not that the leopard would be charged with murder but that community outrage at any “wild” animal attacking a human might mean a hasty putting down. “All you need to worry about is staying away until the real killer is caught.”
“How can you be sure that he will be?”
“Or she. I guess I’ll just have to see to it myself.”
“My God. You don’t mess around when you set out to do something, do you?”
“Nope. And when it is safe to get Osiris back, we’ll have to abduct him. You really can’t risk claiming him publicly, ever, for a number of reasons.”
“You mean the Synth as well as the police?”
“Yes, and probably the Girl Scouts are involved too.”
“What!”
“Never mind. A bad joke. I have a lot of bases to cover tonight and I’m getting a little slap-happy. I’ll call again when you can do something for me.”
Max punched off the phone and snapped it shut.
Next he had to tackle Temple without telling her too much. That would be difficult, and against his wishes, if not his better judgment.
Maybe he could sic her onto Molina. That would clear his operating field of two complications at once.
She responded to his knock on her door with surprised but rewarding pleasure.
“Max! You’re knocking like a real boy. Your nose doesn’t even look too long from recent prevarications. In a good cause, of course. Come in. I get to be a real hostess. Sit down. Would you like a shot of scotch and a petit four?”
He laughed and let her lead him into her lair.
“I can’t stay.” Max sat gingerly on the sofa cushion edge. “Listen, Temple. Did you ever look into that strange geometric figure we found etched on the floor at the professor’s death scene?”
“Um, no. It hasn’t been a priority.”
She sat on the coffee table opposite him, a red-headed sprite in aqua leggings and matching big fuzzy sweater whom he wanted to pull onto his lap. Her bare feet were thrust into black patent-leather high-heeled mules that would go fetchingly astray if he made any sudden moves, but he had two murderers to hunt and no time for intermission.