Temple nodded at Rafi—odd name—and was about to introduce herself when Max interjected himself into the scenario like a leading man treading on the lines of an extra who had stepped out of place.
“Call me Maximilian.” He stepped in front of Temple. “Terrific layout. I’d really like to discuss it with you from a security viewpoint.”
“Rafi is a new hire,” Leonora began.
“Excellent. A fresh point of view is what I want. Care to stroll around the grounds for a moment, if you can spare one?”
Rafi, a sullen type who was immediately suspicious of Max’s enthusiasm, glanced carefully at Leonora.
She shrugged. “Mr. Maximilian is interested in buying the property.”
“You’d sell?” the security man asked incredulously.
Rafi seemed a bit belligerent for a hired gun, Temple thought. And Leonora’s feline face took on an edgy, guilty look that surprised her.
“Don’t worry, my man,” Max said quickly. “I’d keep on the staff. That’s all right, isn’t it, Mrs. Van Berkleo?”
“Of course. If they want to stay. You may want to hire Miss Barr away from the Crystal Phoenix, if you require an assistant,” she added cattily.
“What about—?” Temple began.
“Courtney has decided to leave for greener pastures,” Leonora said demurely. That blunt face did not do demure well.
Max’s attention had wandered, as if bored by discussion of people when a miniempire was before him. He gave the man called Rafi a man-to-man grin.
“Now, about those peripheral fences. Barbed wire? Do you really think they’d keep out interlopers?”
“What kind of interlopers?” Leonora demanded, overriding Rafi’s answer.
Max looked startled. “Every enterprise has its enemies. What about…say, those ethical-treatment-of-animals people. Vegetarians. You know what I mean,” he directed toward the security man.
He was walking Rafi away from the two women, off into the bush, so to speak.
“Quite…commanding,” Leonora commented.
Temple wasn’t sure which man she was referring to: Rafi, who had hauled Temple out of the Jeep like a delinquent twelve-year-old, or Max who had commandeered the security man like he was recruiting for the IRA.
“Yes.” Temple joined her hostess in looking after them. “Do you have enemies? It might explain your husband’s death.”
“You mean—?” Leonora examined Temple carefully, as if seeing her for the first time. Perhaps she was. This was the sole occasion that the distraction of men wasn’t around, and Leonora seemed to concentrate solely on men. Temple wasn’t sure if it was because she was one of those dependent yet manipulative women who loved to coax things out of men (she was still covertly eyeing Temple’s ring every ninety seconds or so), or because she watched them in a purely predatory sense.
One interpretation made her a greedy widow. The other made her a greedy murderess.
Murderess, the old-fashioned form, seemed to fit her to a T-shirt. Animal patterned, of course.
“What did you think of this Rafi character?” Max asked as they drove away.
“Calling him a ‘Rafi character’ predisposes me to not think much of him. Also your hauling him away like he had the plague.”
Max had recovered his equanimity and grinned at her as the car bucked over the rutted desert road. “I’ll rephrase that. What did you think of that guy?”
“I thought of him as the great white hunter from a forties movie.”
“Central Casting is you. So what does that mean?”
Temple had to interpret her own reaction. “He’s one of those apparently smug men in what should be the prime of his life who’s seen it all go sour and is living out on the fringes, recapturing his virility by controlling the uncontrollable. How’s that?”
“Awesome.” Max spoke seriously. “Villain or victim?”
“How about a little bit of both?”
“Dangerous or posing at it?”
“Potential or pose, they’re both dangerous, aren’t they? I didn’t need as much help dismounting the Jeep as I got. There’s a kind of contempt for women that poses as gallantry.”
Max nodded. The dusty drive in the open car had ground sand into the fine lines radiating from his eyes, giving him a steely, early-Clint look Temple hadn’t seen before. But then she hadn’t seen Max in any but an urban environment.
He seemed to get grittier in the desert: more suspicious, like someone out of his element. Temple had never seen Max out of his element before.
“Why are you so interested in the Rafi character?” she asked. “Leonora said he’s a new hire. I doubt he could be involved in the death.”
Max’s hands tightened on the steering wheel, for no particular reason.
“That’s what we came out here for, to study the scene for suspects. Maybe he was hired to move a leopard indoors. Did you notice something odd about the empty leopard cage?”
“It had been washed down today.”
“Right. The leopard’s been gone for three days. Looks like somebody wants to make doubly sure there’s no trace evidence.”
“Of what?”
“Of whatever happened that moved a leopard from a cage outside into a living room.”
As the car jolted off the private road onto the highway, Temple immediately noticed that Max turned north, not south.
“Where are we going now?”
“To visit the only Ranch Exotica suspect we haven’t interviewed.”
“Suspect, singular? Aren’t you forgetting the animal-rights activists? I haven’t seen hide nor hair of them, excuse the expression, under the circumstances.”
“No need. I’ve kept pretty good tabs on them.”
“Oh. So I get to see the indoor suspects and you get an exclusive on the outdoor suspects. Smacks of great white hunter, if you ask me.”
“I can’t think of a good excuse to introduce you to the activists, who are a paranoid lot at best. But this last suspect is an outdoor/indoor variety, and there’s already a precedent for you paying a visit there.”
“So who is it?”
“The leopard, of course.”
Chapter 35
Tiger Paws
The sun comes up like a Pop-Tart, sudden and sweet and hot.
It smacks our trio of hikers in the rear like a Jedi light-sword. We leap forward, knowing that the gentle cloak of night is lifting from the sand and that soon every grain will be burning into our tender, sore pads.
The Yorkshire constabulary have their twin noses glued to that very sand, lifting them only at the usual patches of cacti.
“Are you sure,” I ask again. Panting. Still. “Are you sure you are following the same scent trail that you found in the leopard’s ex-cage at Rancho Exotica?”
They lift heads and once-shiny black noses, now desert-dried to matte black. Their high, squeaky voices are almost inaudible from thirst, but they are still game.
“Yes, Mr. Midnight,” says one, nodding until the wilted satin bow on its head is a blur.
“Yes, sir!” says the other. “We follow the man-steps, as always.”
“That is interesting.” I pause to sit under a spreading, er, Joshua tree, which, frankly, offers about as much shade as an upright crochet needle. “You have been telling me all night that a human has walked into the Rancho Exotica, and out, without benefit of wheels. Most unusual. We must have trekked for miles.”
The silver-gray heads nod, less vigorously than usual. “Indeed, honored Capitain,” says Golda with a sharp salute.
(I have encouraged the pair to adopt a French Foreign Legion approach to rank and discipline on this trek, that being the only desert model I am familiar with. I have never failed to watch old black-and-white reruns of ’50s TV’s Captain Gallant of the Foreign Legion. When it comes to situational etiquette, I would be lost without reruns.)