Temple turned to see how the luggage-stowing was going, waiting for an assist up the SUV’s first big step. At her height in those heels and that tight skirt, she needed it. At around a hundred pounds, she would get it.
Not a casual girl, in any respect. Max could give her a lift in a second, even with his recovering broken legs, and spin her around. For an instant, his mind flashed inside the building to an earlier time. He saw himself doing just that, and Temple laughing.
His hands tightened on the Volkswagen’s steering wheel. When Matt Devine came to the vehicle’s side to do the escort honors, Max looked away, up the lone palm tree trunk toward the Circle Ritz’s triangular corner balconies. One of those had been his—theirs—once.
A suspicious stirring among the tall oleander bushes edging the parking lot caught his eye. The cause of the suspect motion was a pair of stray cats, one black, one striped.
Neither was Temple’s oddly inseparable guard cat, Midnight Louie. Ah. The oversize carrier was for one oversize black cat.
Max shook his head as the rear of the yellow taxi disappeared from view.
He badly needed to find a hobby.
He’d started the car, when something hurtled atop the hood and pressed against the windshield, making him duck below the dashboard.
A cautious peek revealed no Molotov cocktail, but … Louie? What the—? The resident black cat hadn’t gone a-traveling with the happy couple?
Then he saw that the feline eyes glaring into his, utterly unafraid, weren’t green, but intensely gold.
This cat was smaller and fluffier than Midnight Louie, but Temple had proved that size and delicacy were no issue, not even when recently tangling with a serial killer.
The cat’s gaze was so hypnotically “trying to tell him something,” Max settled back behind the steering wheel and began to open the driver’s door to shoo it away.
And started again at a figure bending down to the window. Opening it admitted a wave of Las Vegas heat.
“Max Kinsella,” Electra Lark said. “Stop lurking out here in the bushes and come in for a glass of iced tea, or stronger. I haven’t seen you in far too long and I’m betting a quick tour of the premises might do your meandering memory some good.”
“I was just—”
“Watching over us, like that colony of stray cats that moved on but still visits. It’s always good to remember where you came from. Isn’t she a beauty?” Electra straightened to eye his new hood ornament. “I believe that’s Miss Midnight Louise, the ‘house’ cat at the Crystal Phoenix Hotel. Not a stray. She’ll find where she wants to go.”
Electra turned and headed toward the building’s rear glass door, her flip-flops slapping the hot asphalt like clapping hands. Max eased his frame out of the Beetle’s surprisingly roomy driver’s compartment. He eyed the black-marble-clad round building not unlike a bunker, except for the architectural frills.
Electra’s hot pink–clad form—and there was plenty of it—was in perfect 1950s sync with the age of her building. Rock ’n’ roll, Cadillacs, and skinny black ties.
She was right. It was good to remember where you’d come from. And he’d just now recalled the place had an attached Lovers’ Knot Wedding Chapel where Electra officiated as justice of the peace.
Despite the view of the departing couple heading for places unknown, Max was not in a mood to dwell on forthcoming weddings.
Chapter 3
Las Vegas Leavings
No one can say Midnight Louise was not there to see the Old Man off.
“Off” is right. He is again subjecting his keen hearing to heights of thirty thousand feet, plus. I suppose it soothes the male ego to board some shiny silver missile-shaped object that punches through clouds at five hundred miles an hour.
But clouds are merely cotton candy, and earth-bound troubles do not go away just because you do.
I was pleased to see that Mr. Max Kinsella also found it wise to oversee the ill-conceived jaunt to Chicago. That man has instincts that would do a puma proud.
Of course, they are a bit tarnished now. It is a sad day when my unexpected pounce would cause him to duck, but I made very sure that none of my exquisitely filed nails would scratch his vehicle’s finish.
The velvet glove. That is my byword. Of course, one must maintain a set of stainless steel stilettos underneath it. My kind often plays five-card stud, so to speak, rotating “hands,” like changing out sets of brass knuckles in a fight.
Right now I play the faithful companion, running to brush past Mr. Max’s pant legs into the Circle Ritz. I have always believed he is the one most likely to succeed at solving the schemes and scams that have woven webs around the Circle Ritz residents. Besides, a top ’tec can always use a savvy partner, whether he knows it or not.
“This cat,” Miss Electra Lark notes, “looks like Midnight Louie’s smaller, fluffier younger sister.”
She could have added “smarter” too, but I am not one to carp, unlike the resident cat in question, though I emit a gentle mew of reproval.
“You seem to have a lot of black cats around the building,” Mr. Max says.
Miss Electra notes his thick dark hair and winks. “Some of us are partial to black cats of all species.”
After that they ignore me, so I am able to take the grand tour of my sire’s famous home turf. I can see why it is dear to both humans and felines. Since the outer design is round, each unit has an interior private hallway with a front door and a doorbell.
I love doorbells, which are missing from all 1,200 doors at the Crystal Phoenix. I love using them for leaping practice so I can operate elevator floor panels. When the CEO of Midnight Investigations, Inc., assigned me to stake out Mr. Max’s house for so many nights, I practiced ringing the neighbor’s doorbells for exercise.
How amusing it was when they answered and thought no one was there, even though I kept myself in plain sight.
For Mr. Max this tour is a memory exercise. Miss Electra shows him into a couple of empty units and then we take the elevator down again. I am so tempted to show off my elevator button-punching skills, but realize it is best to keep my full powers concealed.
She does take him past the main floor wedding chapel, silent and dim at the moment, yet eerie, because she has peopled the pews with soft sculpture figures. I leap up to drape the lap of Elvis Presley’s glitzy white pleather jumpsuit.
Umm, warm and highly worthy of paw-pummeling.
“Off of the King,” Miss Electra orders. “It is the queen cats may look at.”
I always appear to obey in public, so I trail my human escorts back to the charming circular entry hall with its single hanging chandelier.
In moments, Mr. Max and I are jerked from elegant interior to glaring sunlight on parking lot asphalt that duplicates what paves about half of American dirt.
Here I am at a crossroads. I can continue to shadow Mr. Max’s butter-soft black leather loafers or I can go about my own business, which is always, of course, since I am a sleuth, someone else’s.
So do I catch a lift in the silly clown car Mr. Max uses to keep a low profile now? That is a smart move undercover-wise but not what you would call a sweet ride. It does not soothe the savage soul when I know the old man has been hitching rides in limos lately. He is getting soft and could use a showing up, and I am the gal to do it.
Time to investigate on my own.
With that in mind I do a uey and head for the street, perking my ears for the unmistakable shake, rattle, and roar of a UPS truck. They are the unofficial public transportation for the more adventurous of my kind.