She put out a hand to pat Louie’s head. “If this cat could talk, we’d know a lot more, because he was sniffing around up there and may have triggered the landslide effect that brought the concealing plastic and canvas sheets down.”
“And survived,” Max noted. “Midnight Louie and I have more than one thing in common now.” He smiled at the cat and then noticed the silence growing awkwardly long. “We’re both acrobats with black hair,” he added, fooling no one.
Louie yawned, and Max agreed with him. “We can discount the UFO brouhaha,” he told the others. “The gullible are always ready to gather at any hint of a paranormal or conspiratory event. But maybe we’re wrong in assuming the cat being up in the construction started anything. Sorry, Louie. Maybe Santiago was thrown off the top of the building at that time because a crowd had gathered.”
Matt spoke suddenly. “Maybe it was suicide.”
“Who gets naked to commit suicide?” Temple objected. “This guy ate ego for breakfast. And the coroner did find the usual suspicious blow to the back of the head.”
“Which could have happened in the fall,” Devine said.
“Removing his clothes removed a lot of evidence too.” Max frowned. “It does look like someone was trying to stage something for maximum publicity. Why?”
They looked at Temple. This was her area of expertise.
“It could have been someone out to get Silas T. Farnum, my semi-client, who conceived and, as far as I know, bankrolled this project. He mentioned silent partners. He mentioned that both Domingo and Santiago were working on the project design. So … he could have done it. He has a warped idea about publicity. Thinks stunts are the way to go.”
Matt shook his head again. “And you’re still mixed up with this character?”
“Lieutenant Molina wanted me to keep an eye on him.”
“Junior G-girl,” Max teased, getting an I am not amused glint from Temple’s blue-gray eyes and a suspicious narrowing from Devine’s.
He put “humor” on his list of what not to do when with Temple from now on, with or without her fiancé present.
“Look, guys,” Temple said. “I’m the one who figured out who the UFO corpse was. By a process of deduction, I might add. When everyone is used to seeing a fairly public figure spectacularly clothed, like a Fontana brother, and he turns up naked and dead and horizontal on a dusty construction site, his features no longer animated … maybe his own brother wouldn’t recognize him.”
“Be sure you don’t tell the Fontana brothers you used them to make this kind of point,” Max couldn’t help saying.
Devine laughed, one short guffaw. Temple put her hand over her mouth. “The Flying Fontana Brothers. It’s not funny, but…” The more she tried to stop laughing, the less she could, until they were all caught up in helpless mirth.
The only one not laughing was Midnight Louie.
“Please don’t tell the Fontana brothers I envisioned them as candidates for ancient aliens,” Temple implored them when she regained her sobriety. “We’ve had a fit of the black humor that crime pros depend on to keep them sane.” She sat up straighter, like a schoolmarm.
“Okay. Santiago’s South American features spawned the ancient-alien mania. No one could have known that. The crowd jumped to the conclusion. Was revealing his death deliberate, or just an accident? He was bound to be found soon, now that the secret of the ‘stealth’ building was out and workmen would be doing their jobs by daylight, instead of as Farnum’s night crew.”
“You still haven’t said how you made the identification?” Matt pointed out.
“It was the scarring left by so-called alien surgery. I was just sitting here alone at this very cocktail table—”
Midnight Louie roused himself from his “seated sage” with forepaws tucked in posture and sat up commandingly, to match Temple.
“I was studying the newspaper’s photo of Santiago right after his fall to earth, sent by some reader from his cell phone, and the temple carving of a Mayan ‘astronaut.’ And I not only began to see the resemblance to an upright Santiago, but for some reason I also thought about the scars and remembered the pair dressed in Darth Vader–like masks and cloaks who tried to intimidate the magicians’ cabal at Neon Nightmare … were attacked by a bunch of black cats who jumped on their backs and clawed them into submission—into dropping their firearms and running away, at least.”
Midnight Louie had started growling softly during her recital. When she finished, he leaped onto the cocktail table, skidding across the folded newspaper section and making a sharp cut across the pages as he hightailed it out of there for the office. They all gasped.
Max lunged to keep the beer pitcher from overturning.
“I wanted to keep that section with the photo and sketch,” Temple wailed, leaping up.
Devine had already gotten there to grab it and smooth the cut, not torn, section in question. “Look,” he told Temple, “the cut’s below the graphics. You still have Exhibit A.”
Max couldn’t help smiling at this tableau: Temple wanted to preserve the evidence, Devine wanted to heal the wounded and solace the lost, and he wanted to save the beer that he loathed, the tabletop, the rug … and the day.
“It’s my fault,” Temple said, sitting back with a sigh. “Louie just reminded me. He did that paper-cutting trick the other day, which is what made me think of cat scratches at the same time I made the connection between the dead man and Santiago.”
“Uh,” Devine said, “you’re attributing a lot of motive to a cat. Not only in the first place, but in the miffed second place.”
“Get used to it,” Max put in.
Temple glared at them both.
So did Midnight Louie.
Chapter 40
Frank Talk
Matt sat in his living room directly above Temple’s. He was glad she couldn’t see through ceilings, or read thoughts. His fingers were entwined, prayerfully, but the grip was white-knuckle tight and he didn’t know what to pray for.
He ran what he knew through his troubled mind.
Two armed and masked people in Darth Vader–like garb had confronted members of a secret cabal of magicians calling themselves the Synth. They’d invaded the group’s hidden clubrooms at the now-defunct Neon Nightmare club. Temple had just found and entered the scene, undetected. So apparently had Midnight Louie and his alley cat cohorts.
Matt had seen the cat act as Temple’s guard dog and realized Louie shared a remarkable bond with his onetime rescuer. So Matt wasn’t surprised that a gang of cats had gone feral-wild and attacked the invaders from behind, climbing their robes and clinging to their masks and inflicting multiple claw trails on their bodies.
Matt supposed it was like having Freddy Krueger’s razor-tipped gloves slicing you on Elm Street. He’d never liked horror movies, but he’d had one razor wound from Kathleen O’Connor that earned her the Cutter nickname. He remembered the painless puzzlement of the strike and then the shock and burning sensation. That was just from one cut. Having your body used as a scratching post for a pack of fifteen-pound cats clawing and hanging from your skin would be like medieval torture.
No wonder the corny but scary shrouded figures had dropped their weapons and escaped the way they’d come.
Now a prominent international artsy architect had been found stripped and striped with vertical healed wound tracks on his rear torso and legs. One Darth Vader down. One to go.
Neither Temple nor Max knew—and could not know—that Matt had been blackmailed into consorting with the number one suspect for the role of Darth Vader Number Two. Kathleen “the Cutter” O’Connor.
He looked at the expensive watch the TV producers had given him as part of the courting procedure for his own TV talk show. It was only 5 P.M. His Midnight Hour advice radio show ran from midnight to 2 A.M. By two thirty he’d be at the Goliath locked into another battle of wills with Kathleen O’Connor.