“Would you like to see him?” Grizzly asked.
“Him?”
“What’s left of Boots.”
“Ah, sure.” She could check that the wax replica—taken from a photograph someone had obtained illegally at the morgue, probably a Fontana brother, and she did not want to know which one, ever—was accurate. “If it’s all right for a member of the public to view the body.”
“Sure. I have lady ‘cozy’ crime writers in here every month. They are much cooler with it than some of those male slice-and-dice thriller authors. I do have to make the ladies promise not to eat and drink during the autopsy, though.”
“Not a problem with me,” Temple said as she rose to walk in his boot tracks back into the hall and then into an area of shining stainless-steel walls, gurneys, tables, sinks, and instruments. All that wall-to-wall steel reminded her of the fatal vault.
At the door Temple donned latex gloves and a Plexiglas face shield with the coroner.
Everything smelled fine, but on every inhalation she expected a hint of decay. The suspense was really hard on one’s breathing rate.
Coroner Bahr didn’t notice. This was his daily arena, and he was busy commanding it.
“I had the remains brought out for you. The TV stations were satisfied with the discovery footage. You can’t beat the human interest of those cats sniffing around old Boots here. I knew you’d want to see the real thing, sans snacking pussycats.”
Temple’s stomach finally reacted and skydived. She wasn’t going to admit she knew those “cannibal” cats, especially that she often shared a bed with one. TMI.
Bahr’s large, latexed fingers pulled a sheet back from a beach-ball-size lump that looked a lot larger than the “appetizer with toothpicks” Louie had uncovered.
That was because a “doily” of caked lake bottom had also been excavated with the concrete and leg bones in place.
Grizzly smiled fondly at the mess. “Makes me feel like an archaeologist for a change. Ah, the good old days of crime, not drugs and bodies in the street, but bullet-riddled bodies dumped in strange and secret ways.”
He picked up a surgeon’s scalpel and used it as a pointer. “I decided to chip my way in from the rear. If there were any footwear remnants, the heels would be the easiest to uncover and offer the most information. As it happened, I struck pay dirt.”
“Literally.”
Humming relevant bits of the old song Temple recognized with a sinking heart as “Clementine,” as in “… was a miner, forty-niner,” Bahr produced a steel tray that clanked with the moving metal on it.
Temple peeked. It wasn’t a rolling bullet, but something both bulkier and thinner.
“Silver?” she asked. “You hit silver?”
“Yup.”
“That’s a mighty big tooth cap, Dr. Bahr. Boots must have been a giant.”
His laughter rang off all the surrounding stainless steel. “Most amusing. And apt. I hadn’t thought of it that way. No, Miss Barr, since we are being formal, it is not a tooth cap for a giant. It is a cap of sorts, and it is—ta-da!—signed.”
“Dentists do that, don’t they, with fillings?”
“True, but let’s drop the orthodontic comparison, unless you wish to posit that the victim had a set of choppers in his heels.”
Temple bent to study the find close up. “Oh. There are two! Nested together.”
“Simply a convenient storage option. Let me … unnest these lovely twins… .”
“I’m stumped,” Temple admitted, after he had done so, looking at the odd silver shapes.
“ ‘Stumped,’ ” Grizzly echoed, eyeing the truncated leg bones. “You will force me to hire you just for the very punny commentary. Quite unconscious, of course.”
Temple rolled her eyes. “Do you have any idea who this guy was? Besides a marked man?”
“He certainly was a heel,” Grizzly mused.
Temple stared, still stumped, at the silver shells. They still reminded her of dental caps. She mulled the coroner’s broad hints.
“I’m shocked,” he prodded. “It’s right up your alley.”
Temple knew that shocking and awing civilians was Grizzly Bahr’s favorite pastime. No one would have dared to nickname him if he didn’t relish word games. He was right. That was right up her alley, along with “spin.”
Spin. Wait! She took the odd artifacts from his hands into hers and … spun them.
“Caps, or taps! Taps come on shoes. But this guy is getting called Boots. Aw, cowboy boot heels, high, wide, and handsome! These are sterling silver boot-heel caps.
“Hi-ho, Silver,” Temple finished up by quoting the Lone Ranger. “Away!”
“Very good. Care to examine them further?”
“It won’t hurt the evidence?”
“We’ve already tested and photographed them for the Hall of Exotic Evidence Fame.”
Temple let her curiosity loose.
“These marks aren’t concrete damage or sand crust. They’re … engraved.”
“Engraved,” he repeated, going off in wheezing laughter.
“A stylized leaf motif. Looks Mexican.”
“Very fancy.”
Temple knew enough to look for marks on silver, at least a “925” for sterling silver content.
She turned the heel caps around, wondering what kind of guy was secure enough to flaunt these things, besides a Fontana brother. Aha! On the inside of the heel cover just under the sole. Very discreet, but a complete artist’s stamp. Who and where. Not Taxco, the sterling silver Mexican stamp of the mid-nineteenth century, but … Hollywood. Of course. Singing movie cowboys were peaking then—Gene Autry, Roy Rogers. Outfits were extravagant.
And …
“IOHLANDMADE … CALIF … HOLLYWOOD … STERLING,” Temple read.
“Whew. This is real signed silver,” she added. “And collectible. And it might even be traceable, if you find an expert on cowboy boots of the period.”
“Just what I thought,” Grizzly said, beaming. “The faded first letter of the name is B, as in Bohlin. And I’m counting on you to find that expert, Miss Vintage Rag Wearer.”
“I’ve been a little busy for vintage collecting lately,” Temple said, frowning.
Literally “losing” one boyfriend and getting engaged to another didn’t leave a girl a lot of shopping time, unless it was for a shrink.
“But you know the vintage scene,” he said.
Temple nodded. “I know the scene.” Even better, the Internet probably knew it too. She could hardly wait to track down this late, great Hollywood artisan.
“Hold your horses,” Dr. Bahr said as she turned to leave, lifting a gloved palm.
She’d forgotten to lose her accessories.
Temple was into vintage, but latex gloves and a plastic visor weren’t her idea of going-to-tea wear, and she was happy to leave them. They made her sweat. She wasn’t eager to linger, but Grizzly Bahr held up another steel dish, and these contents did roll around.
Temple peered inside. “Silver dollars! You have no idea how these might connect—”
“I have plenty of idea. These were evidently once bolted onto the rotted away boot sides. Too bad they aren’t nineteen-thirty-four San Francisco mint dollars, worth a bundle today. Still, Boots appeared to be a silver-lovin’ dude.”
“Did they call guys ‘dudes’ back then?”
“Sure did. There have always been dudes. Do silver dollars mean something to you more than a gleam in your eye? They were once more common than fleas here in Vegas and were melted out of existence by the thousands every time silver prices went up.”
“I know,” Temple said. “The last big silver-dollar roundup and meltdown was in the seventies, when the Texas millionaire H. L. Hunt cornered the silver market and drove the price so high my spinster great-aunt sold the family silverware. Hence I inherited stainless steel.”
“Minting of silver dollars stopped in nineteen thirty-five,” Bahr said, “so this guy could have snagged these from then until the seventies. His bones say he was last running around about nineteen fifty, give or take a few years.”