Dave had queued up his closing song. “Are You Lonesome Tonight?”
Matt sat in the WCOO parking lot, his silver Jaguar from the Chicago producers the last car left, sitting under a glaring light, for security against theft. Two thirty a.m. and even the engineer had left. WCOO would broadcast canned music until dawn. It was a small station, lucky to have two syndicated shows.
The greenish lamp above highlighted his white-knuckled grip on the leather steering wheel. Visibility was now not a haven, but a liability. He finally started the car and moved it, purring contentedly, to the darkest side of the lot, overshadowed by a high wall of Photinia bushes. Cars were made to run, but maybe ex-priest amateur detectives should consider it too.
Maybe he and the car they gave him should run right to the network TV executives who’d offered him a juicy talk show gig in Chicago, with Temple riding shotgun, literally. The Bonnie and Clyde of the Circle Ritz.
Matt laughed aloud, softly, at his self-mocking scenario. That was something Temple would dream up.
He eyed the dashboard clock. He couldn’t sit and think long now that he and Temple were sleeping at her place. That made his clandestine investigations harder to conceal. The whole point of sleeping together had been to avoid hypocrisy before they married…well, other benefits were the real draw.
He knew a threat when he heard one. Now that Woodrow Weatherly was joining Elvis in stalking him on The Midnight Hour, his quest to unravel his stepfather’s grisly murder was even more dangerous. Trouble was, something just as sinister seemed to haunt the Circle Ritz vicinity, or inhabitants.
He let the idling car off its leash and headed onto the randomly lit two-lane road that led through a flatland of deserted industrial park buildings. Radio stations were built on urban fringes. The Strip’s ever more towering Babel of new hotel-condominiums around the iconic brands of the Caesars Entertainment and MGM Mirage consortiums made the distant horizon glare look like a sunrise was imminent.
Not for him.
He couldn’t feed his need-to-brood mood any longer.
A bright yellow headlight appeared behind him, far and small, but incoming.
The mysterious motorcyclist who had followed him months ago was back. Along with Elvis. Or…Elvis himself?
Matt blinked and saw the oncoming light glaring on his inner eyelids.
The usual suspects burned a similar single-minded path through his brain.
Vengeful psychopath Kathleen O’Connor had left the country for Ireland. Probably traveling with Max Kinsella, the chief object of her homicidal obsession, who was drawing her away from Temple and himself. Also a motorcycle lover.
That left, most whimsically, the King. Elvis, obsessed with anything that had an engine. Cars. Big buses he personally drove to Las Vegas. A private jet. And motorcycles.
And Matt himself, who’d used Max’s ’cycle for a time and had probably drawn an even uglier antagonist down on them all.
Matt glanced at the single headlight.
“Padiddle,” he said under his breath. It was a road game. Call out that word when you spot a car with a single headlight or remove on article of clothing if you don’t.
But this was not a car and he wasn’t into strip poker of any type. So, like Elvis, he needed to discover what kind of engine it had. Had to know if it was Max’s vintage Hesketh Vampire Brit motorcycle he’d left stored in Circle Ritz landlady Electra Lark’s shed.
Only one way to find out. The Hesketh earned its name from the otherworldly scream the motor let out at high speeds.
He had a straightaway to the main highway and a car that did zero to sixty miles an hour in four seconds. He’d never stretched it much over the legal limit. He did now, even though he was doing forty. With spine-numbing speed, he was slammed back in the seat. The Jag leaped ahead, smooth as a steel arrow, a racehorse from the gate, like the famous leaping chrome jaguar hood ornament, already charging.
Matt was surprised by an adrenaline kick of pure escapist joy followed by a grim satisfaction that nothing could catch him unless he wanted it to.
The pinprick of light in the dark of the rearview mirror grew larger, but lagged and seemed to stop.
No wonder. Holy St. Sepulveda. The entry lane to Highway 91 was right…here. Hard, hard right. The car squealed genteel protest at rough handling, but smoothly entered the highway, unclogged by heavy traffic at this wee hour of the night.
Matt tried to spot a motorcycle following along on the access road, but found no sign of a light.
He continued on into Las Vegas proper (if one could ever say that about Vegas) via the notorious “Spaghetti Bowl” interchange at a mannerly and legal sixty-five miles an hour.
That successful maneuver had reminded him of another big cat, this one domestic.
Midnight Louie never hesitated to leap into action against foes bigger than he. He’d lunged for the intruder in Temple’s bedroom and forced him onto the balcony for Matt to attack from the floor above.
Matt shook his head to shake thoughts of his second Elvis audio experience. There would be buzz about that on the social networks, but if you don’t go there, you don’t have to answer for anything.
4
Home Evasions
“And the squad car drove off with Electra in the backseat?” Matt asked six neighbors standing by an outdoor table with an overhead umbrella useless at night.
The scene was surreal.
Matt felt he had driven from one end of the Twilight Zone to the other since leaving WCOO thirty minutes ago. First the reappearance of the mysterious motorcycle rider, now a rerun of Electra Lark being a suspect for a death.
“Drove right off with her, yes,” a balding guy wearing a checked shirt answered.
Matt had exchanged chitchat before with Jim Jordan and his wife, Jan, from the third floor, in the entryway and parking lot. Now they were all part of a buzzing cluster of tenants just outside the Crime Scene tape, watching a forensics crew operate under floodlights in the shrubbery bridging the Circle Ritz’s white marble façade and the pool house decking.
The thirtyish couple was just star-struck enough to stay up into the wee hours to watch the real-life true crime show.
“It was just like on TV,” Jan said, eager to share.
“The shot guy,” Jim added, “fell right in front of Bill Hays’ first-floor patio doors. The whole side of the building was lit up by squad car headlights and those red and blue flashing lights. Inside there, Bill must have passed a pachyderm.”
“It was like one of those ‘Blue Light Special’ lights flashing at K-Mart,” Jan added. “Then the ambulance came screeching and screaming up.”
“What about Temple?” Matt had been scanning onlookers for a glimpse of shoulder-high red hair. She was easy to lose in a crowd, especially without her three-inch heels on.
“Oh, she was here before we were, walked right up and talked to the guy in the unmarked car that came last,” Jim said.
“I wouldn’t have wanted to approach anybody official, like a detective, on a murder scene,” Jan said with a faux shudder. “Draw attention to myself.”
The chills had to be for effect because the temperature at the station had read seventy-two.
Matt pulled out his cell phone and saw he’d missed a recent call. Temple’s.
He muttered “Thanks” at the couple and sprinted around the building to the parking lot door.
Inside the small lobby, he didn’t wait for the quaint elevator but headed for the nearby stairs and galloped up them two at a time as quietly as he could.
All the units had a short private entry hall with a big front door and doorbell. Matt slapped the flat of his hand on the wood. The doorbell’s gong chimed for about five seconds.