Madame Kirkov’s papery skin was a duplicate of Shangri-La’s painted mask. It had been paste white since the first death on the exhibition site. She waved a beringed, shriveled hand that would have seemed natural to a mummy.
“The crew built the set and can rebuild it. The question is, why did it fail?”
“The question,” Temple said, “is who rigged it to fail?”
“If that was the case, ‘who’ is obvious. That man who came plunging down from nowhere. Obviously, another thief. First Andrei, now this. The scepter must be recovered. Nothing can replace it. The exhibition is lost.”
A murmur of deep men’s voices escalated into muted squeaks of despair. The scepter was the drawing card for the entire exhibition.
“This has been a pretty obvious heist,” Randy pointed out in his patented Sominex tones. “Maybe there are also some pretty obvious clues to who’s behind it. Once the authorities give us leave to go, we can adjourn to the conference room to plan the next steps. It looks like this death was accidental. Even if someone rigged the machinery to fail, that’s going to take at least a day to determine. All of us down here saw the same thing.”
“The security cameras,” Temple added, “are the witnesses the police will want most.”
“Security cameras,” Madame Kirkov said sharply. “Up there, too?”
“I’m sure of it. They’d provide a constant overview of the exhibition, and the hotel would recognize the performance tunnels as a risk. Unless,” she added, thinking of someone who was supernaturally security wise, “they’d been disabled too.”
* * *
The police took names and phone numbers and made cursory inquiries, but clearly didn’t think a shocked crowd made for very reliable witnesses.
Temple left them interviewing the Fontana brothers, whom they thought would make reliable witnesses for some reason, or perhaps reliable suspects.
Temple had informed the sergeant in charge that the Fontanas were special security hired by the hotel, which had made him snort and say, “We’ll see how special they are.”
Temple couldn’t afford to worry about the flock of Fontanas, or even Aunt Kit’s Aldo, whichever one he was. She had to hustle off with Randy for a late-night emergency session with the people bankrolling this event.
And then . . . then she had to break her string of bad luck in communicating with Max to find out where and how he was before Molina got on the warpath again.
Because everything about that chaos in the upper air had the mark of a Mystifying Max operation, except for the death.
My Baby Tonight
Max wasn’t answering his cell phone. Temple hoped it hadn’t fallen during the struggle above the exhibition. Talk about leaving a telltale clue behind. She was pretty sure he wouldn’t weigh himself down with anything unnecessary during whatever he was attempting, but it was hard to be absolutely sure about anything involving Max lately.
The thing was, she’d always assumed that Max had an unseen motive for everything he did, because of his long-time role as an undercover operative, a counterterrorism agent long before the world had felt the true potential of terrorism. She’d aided him now and again in that noble pursuit, and now the furies of lawful and unlawful pursuit were harder on his trail than ever.
She drove to his house in the aging development that had been new when Orson Welles lived out his last years there.
There were protocols for approaching Max’s house, most recently inherited from Garry Randolph, Max’s magic and counterterrorism mentor, known as Gandolph the Great before his retirement years ago.
Protocol one: Temple parked the Miata four houses away. She moved quietly to the home’s front door. Protocol two: she rang the bell twice. Protocol three: she waited.
She waited for so long she almost slunk away into the three A.M. darkness, recalling that Matt would be just home and unwinding from delivering two hours of instant empathy to all comers. She felt a strange pit-of-the-stomach craving for Matt that it was better not to examine right now.
Only streetlights and house security lights lit up this residential part of the city. It could have been Anywhere, U.S.A. Except it was Anywhere But Here. And if Max was home, he might very well be unwinding from botching a high-end heist and failing to save the life of a woman they both distrusted but neither knew. Poor Max! He hated failure, even in an iffy cause.
Finally, the door cracked open.
“You’re crazy; get out of here,” Max whispered through the crack.
“I’m crazy? I’ve got to talk to you, and not just about tonight.”
The door opened a begrudging foot. Temple eeled through anyway. Max sealed it behind her with the sophisticated security system that made this mild-looking house into a fortress.
There was enough light, barely, in the hall to follow him, and then only because he was shirtless and his bare, muscular back reflected a bit of light. His bare and cross-hatched back.
“Max!”
He turned as they reached the living room, which was lit by pools of lamplight like spotlights in the dark.
She stopped him to examine the long, jagged claw marks festering on his pale skin. “Those’ll put you at the scene for sure.”
“If anyone can find me to see this. Besides you.”
“You’ve got to get them treated. Even so, the marks will be visible for weeks.”
“Fine. I don’t intend to be.”
“You’re not really magic, you know. You can’t actually disappear, like the Cheshire Cat, until only your scratch scars are visible.”
“I’ll have to. Drink?”
A bottle of Bushmill’s Irish whiskey sat on a wooden end table beside a juice glass filled either with cider or whiskey neat.
“Didn’t feel like breaking out the best crystal,” Max said, noticing her surprised look. “Nothing to celebrate. I’ll get another glass.”
“I’ll get some rubbing alcohol, antibiotic cream, gauze, tape . . . from the bathroom. Cat scratches can be virulent. You never know where those claws have been. Especially Shangri-La’s cat’s claws.”
“These claws already have been virulent,” he said from the kitchen. “They made me drop her and they sting like they had chili peppers on them.”
By the time Temple had assembled the first aid materials, Max had poured her a fruit juice glass of straight whiskey. No coasters. He was really rattled when he skipped the small civilizing touches. Details were his livelihood and his safety line and his passion.
Temple sat down and had a good belt, then made him sit forward in his chair and tended his back by lamplight, feeling like Florence Nightingale.
“You saw, I suppose?” he asked.
“What there was to be seen. I don’t know why you were there, or what you thought you were doing, or how those set pieces collapsed like that.”
“Why, what, how are the mystery. We know when and where. Answer the first three and the five key questions of a journalist are covered.”
“Max! I’m not asking this as a journalist. I’m not even asking this as someone who’s responsible for the exhibition going smoothly and has had her ground cut out from under her by her own boyfriend. I’m asking this as someone who cares about you. And your bloody back.”
Max bolted more whiskey but never quivered a muscle as she flooded his back with raw alcohol, then patted it down with a towel.
“A Max Kinsella Production gone very wrong,” he said at last. “Some other unexpected stage manager had gotten there before me and booby-trapped the entire set. Everything alive up there was meant to plunge to the floor below.”
“Including you, the mystery guest?”
“I’m beginning to think so. Maybe me most of all, and the others were just a cover.”
“Why?”
“Sabotage on that scale usually has more than mere greed behind it. Maybe a geopolitical motive.”