“Where did you last see her?” Garry asked.
“At the Cloaked Conjuror’s estate. Creepy old place near a cemetery. Keeps the tabloids and the tourists away. Crazy young woman, always wears her stage makeup. We had a little talk, she and I, and it wasn’t peace negotiations.”
“What happened?”
“A few months ago, she lured Temple up on stage in her act in an audience-participation gig.”
“Always a crowd-pleaser.”
“Not that time. She did the take-the-item switch, only it was the Tiffany ring I gave Temple in New York. And not only that but she whisked Temple into a transformation box.”
“That’s risky to do with a civilian. Going down that trapdoor in the floor.”
“And then into another cabinet and into a departing semi trailer loaded with magic box illusions and illegal designer drugs. Also napped was Temple’s cat, Midnight Louie.”
As Gandolph regarded him with gaping jaw, Max said, “Don’t ask. I mean it. I got them back again, but it didn’t help my low profile with the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department.”
Gandolph chuckled. “Low profile was always a job for you. So, I get the lethal lady in the sky. What’s the problem on the ground?” Max shrugged in a direction that directed Gandolph’s attention down over his shoulder to a cluster of people way overdressed for the floor of a resort hotel and casino with summer coming on.
Gandolph frowned at the men in suits. FBI? No. Open-necked shirts. Still, pretty boardroom for the New Millennium main floor. And who else? Max would never worry about executive suits. A blond head at three o’clock caught his eye.
Garry reeled off his diagnosis. “There’s the odd one out in that crowd. That little gal. Has to wear high heels for the top of her head to reach the shortest guy’s shoulder. Cute.”
“Don’t say that! She’d kneecap you if she heard it.”
“That your Temple?” Gandolph straightened in surprise, even though it strained his back. At sixty and two-hundred-sixty pounds, life was not a cabaret when it came to sudden motion. Good thing he had retired from the stage. So to speak.
“Maybe,” Max said mysteriously.
“Ah. I saw her at the séance where I ‘died’ last Halloween. She was a redhead then.”
“She is a redhead.”
“Adorable girl. And she’s a blonde now because—?”
“I don’t know,” Max said, visibly trying not to let the tension in his jaw affect his voice. “Obviously, having her on the scene is a huge kink in our operation.”
“Perhaps you should find out why she’s here,” Gandolph said quietly. “And you last saw her as a redhead when—?”
“Just two weeks before last and way too many nights ago.” Max tossed the drills and cords in a long metal workbox the size of a coffin for a midget.
He glanced up to the deceptively frail female figure twirling above. That was Max Kinsella these days. Caught between heaven and hell, only hell happened to be on high in this latest scenario. With Temple on the scene, his assignment for the cadre of magicians he was infiltrating had just become three times more difficult.
He tried not to straighten up fully as he and Gandolph climbed down and shambled out, their blue-collar shift over, right on time.
All right, lady! he challenged Shangri-La from above. Bring it on!
But first he had to catch up with Temple, fast.
Brothers Under the
Fur Skin
I go through the usual contortions to slip into the New Millennium Hotel unobserved. The word “observed” is very apropos, as the hotel exterior is ringed by a giant neon solar system. Mars, Venus, Mercury, Jupiter, Saturn, and that goofy little outer quasi-planet, Pluto, shine luminescent red, blue, green, pink, white, and yellow.
This decorative hallmark hangs about six stories above the Strip, the better to be seen. So a lightweight but heavy dude like me is risking life and limb and family jewels to be crawling around on the hotel signage in the blinding and alternating dark of night and glare of blinking neon.
Still, I have found and used the hotel service channels before, and I do so again. Before you know it, I have slid down the interior laundry chute called a service hatch, and immediately head for the hotel’s backstage area.
This is not hard. I need only follow my nose. Few of us felidae rove and ramble inside a major Las Vegas hotel. Luckily, Vegas hotels are built like anthills or Egyptian pyramids: high and imposing, and slicked up with impressive façades, but basically three-dimensional puzzles riddled with hidden entrance and exit tunnels.
Instead of worker ants constantly plying these routes in service to queens of the insect world, the hotel conduits are so seldom used that I end up with a cobweb mask over my puss by the time I find my quarry.
Calling two acquaintances of the Big Cat family “quarry” is a little nervy on my part, but my part has always been nervy, or I would not be where I am today. Which is in the belly of the beast, in the offstage areas below and above the theater and museum arena, going nose to nose with dudes who outweigh me by twenty times. At least.
If you are going to be intimidated by the canine incisor advantaged in this detection business, you have no business being in it.
Besides, they are caged and I am free range.
I amble over to the bars that separate them from me.
“Hi, boys. I was in the neighborhood and decided to check in. I hear you will be the centerpiece of another custom-bustin’ Las Vegas show.”
“Where is the delightful Miss Midnight Louise?” Lucky, the black leopard, asks.
He will never forget that she finessed him a fine shank of beef when he was being kept in chains and underfed for nefarious purposes during one of my previous adventures. It is one of my previous adventures, and not his, because I am the pioneering feline PI in this town and he is just a main attraction.
“She is having a manicure at the Crystal Phoenix,” I say.
Because she is the house detective there since I moved up to bigger and better things, like heading our own firm, Midnight Inc. Investigations, it is fair to say that her nail sheaths are getting a workout, even as we speak.
“That is one feisty little doll,” Kahlúa, the other black leopard, puts in with a baritone chuckle.
These Big Boys are way too indiscriminating, in my opinion. They have no idea what I have done for them. But a PI is most effective when he is most unnoticed, so I do not belabor the point. Besides, their “points” are way bigger than mine are. An effective PI is not a dummy.
“You are still working with the Cloaked Conjuror?” I ask.
“So far,” Kahlúa says, growling a little.
Lucky adds a bit of a roar in support of his foster brother. I am getting the impression of discontent under the big top.
“What is going on?”
“The Boss has gone soft.”
“No!” This I say with a straight puss, for there is hardly a human on the face of the planet—even the neon ones outside the New Millennium—who is not capable of leaving an animal companion down and out . . . flat!
“He is all taken with this new dame in the act,” Lucky says with a snarl.
“And her damn housecat—no offense,” Kahlúa adds.
“None taken.” I am many things, but housecat is definitely not one of them.
“I am,” so I inform them, “a street cat who happens to maintain an in-town condo and a live-in girlfriend. That is a whole different kettle of moray eels.”
“A live-in girlfriend, really?” Kahlúa is practically panting.