She eased the case to the hot concrete and sighed as her shoulder joint assumed its normal alignment. The vet was right. Louie desperately needed a diet.
A distant droning she took for bees in the honeysuckle vine draping the pierced concrete wall grew louder. Temple frowned and eyed the cat carrier. Was Louie growling again? He had not accepted his trip to the vet in the best of graces. The noise increased into a surflike roar.
Temple peered through her sunglasses toward the side street as the roar crested, then slowed into a chatter. Something large, silver and meaner-looking than a robotic junkyard dog, Terminator-style, turned into the driveway and rolled directly toward Temple.
She felt the nasty little twinge motorcycles had inspired since The Wild Bunch. They conjured visions of Nazis and Hell’s Angels. Today’s anonymous riders, now helmeted with obscuring black visors, did nothing to improve the image.
This motorcyclist wore a black nylon windbreaker and rolled its mount right up to Temple, the engine still clattering.
Temple eyed machine and rider, ready to dash through the gate should it or he/she jump either the concrete car-stop or her person. Then she read the hot-pink words emblazoned over the smoked-Plexiglas visor.
“Speed Queen?” Temple articulated incredulously.
The engine died with a final clank as the rider’s ankle-boot-clad feet hit hot asphalt. One hand lifted from the handles and whipped up the visor.
Electra Lark’s genial sixtyish face peered past the bowling ball of silver metallic paint that covered her head. She was grinning like a Halloween pumpkin.
“Just me. And wait a minute. You gotta see this.” Electra slung a leg over the long black leather seat and engaged the kick stand as soon as she stood on her own two feet.
Temple watched nervously as the older woman stepped away from the motorcycle. It tilted but did not tumble. At her high-heeled feet, Louie growled warning. No chattering silver metal beast was going to intimidate him, not even after a dose of something as civilizing as “shots.”
“A beauty, isn’t it?” Electra demanded.
“If you like cold steel.”
“Hot steel, honey.”
“It will be if you leave it parked in this noonday sun for long.”
“Oh, no! This baby will shelter in the shade of the gardening shed at the back.”
“Has it always been kept there?”
Electra’s open glance shifted. “Not always. But it’ll be coining out a lot more now. I just got my license today.”
“Hey, that’s wonderful!” Temple was always primed to applaud another person’s self-improvement program. “It can’t be easy to drive one of these monsters. But, Electra... why?”
The woman pulled off the sinister helmet, revealing a spiky crew cut of silver hair ending in a long pigtail in back. On most late-middle-aged women such a hairdo would seem a pathetic attempt at kicky youth, on Electra it looked funky and even elegant.
Electra’s head tilted until her ear cuffs chimed. She eyed the silver motorcycle and tried, “Because it was there?”
“But why was it there?” Temple persisted with the determination of an ex-TV reporter. “You never mentioned having one. I’ve never seen—or even more to the point—heard it before.”
Electra’s hand patted the leather seat as if stroking the flank of a favorite steed. “It was Max’s.”
“Max’s?” Temple hadn’t meant to sound sharp, or shocked, but she did. Both.
Electra’s silver-metal boot toe kicked the asphalt. “A cycle’s real practical with all the traffic jams in Vegas. And it is a beauty.”
Temple stared at the thing as if it had landed from Mars. “I had no idea that Max liked—had—a motorcycle.”
“Hey, he used it as the down payment on the condo.”
Temple eyed her landlady incredulously. She was getting tired of learning things about Max after he was gone—long gone. Four months gone without a goodbye, with no explanation.
“Speaking of the condo,” Temple began uncomfortably, “I had to take Louie to the vet and it cost a fortune. I might be a little late with the monthly maintenance money, but not the mortgage.”
“Don’t worry about it, dear.” Electra’s waving hand ignited a shower of glints from the many rings on her fingers. “I know it’s tough when suddenly one person is paying on a place instead of two. Besides, according to folks who know their motorcycles, this baby is worth major moolah. It’s a classic.”
“How classic can a motorcycle get?”
“Plenty. It’s a Hesketh Vampire.”
“No wonder it gave me the shivers when I heard it coming. Why on earth is it called a vampire?”
“Maybe because it sounds dangerous. It howls in prime gear when the wind whistles by.”
Temple shook her head. “Hesketh Vampire,” she repeated numbly. “Any relation to a Sopwith Camel?” That was some early biplane, she thought.
“Well, it is British-made.” Electra proudly circled her new toy, ticking off its assets. “A full-liter engine, one thousand cee-cees. Nickel-plated and overbuilt to go literally millions of miles.”
Temple followed Electra around the massive machine, eyeing the steeply raked windshield, the fluid silver front casing—not shiny like chrome but matte-soft, classy—and the emblem of a crown surmounted by an angry rooster head above the Cyclopean front headlight.
“Max had this, really?”
“Yup.” Electra’s finger stroked the word “Hesketh” under the regal but surly rooster. “The famous Hesketh flying chicken. Now it’s chicken à la queen.” She chuckled and lifted her emblazoned helmet.
Temple just shook her head. “I don’t know much about motorcycles—and apparently knew even less about Max—but this is a humongous machine, Electra. Is it safe to drive?”
“Ride,” Electra corrected quickly. “Driving is for sissies.”
“Can a woman handle it safely?”
“Safety is not the idea with a superbike, dear,” Electra explained sweetly.
“But a woman your age—”
“A woman my age can use a little excitement. They say women are horse-crazy, but those ninnies are living in the last century. This thing rides like a rocket. Besides, it’s a good way to meet men, if you’re so inclined. I found me some guys who knew something about cycles and they taught me the ropes.”
“Where’d you find bikers?”
“They’re not bikers, just some older guys who tinker a bit. Wild Blue works mostly on vintage planes, but Eightball has played with a bike or two.”
“Eightball? Not Eightball O’Rourke?”
“Yeah, how’d you know him?”
“He’s the private detective I hired to tail the ABA cat-napper.”
Electra looked bemused. “No kidding? Until not too long ago, he and his pals were fugitives.”
“Fugitives? Eightball claimed he had a security background.”
Electra nodded sagely. “And so he does. Nobody around Las Vegas has been as secure as Eightball all these years. He and the Glory Hole Gang hid out in the desert looking for some silver dollars they hijacked during World War Two and hid so good they couldn’t find them again themselves. Buried treasure. The statute of limitations had run out by the time anyone found out about them, and now they run Glory Hole as a tourist ghost town. It’s in that string of abandoned settlements off of Highway 95.1 think Eightball got so used to looking for that lost treasure that he decided to get into the business of looking into this and that. Hooked on hunting, if you know what I mean.”
“But he had a license, he said he’d been employed in detection for years.”
“What would you say if you had a dicey background and were trying something new at age seventy or so?”
“I can’t believe you know these people, Electra.”
Electra eyed Temple for a long moment. “I’m not responsible for what my friends or acquaintances do or did, but these are sweet old guys. Helped me out a lot, for nothing. They even had to chop the seat padding down so my legs could reach the ground.” She slapped the black leather again, and Temple winced. “Hated to do it, but face it, Max isn’t coming back. No sense letting a primo machine rot.”