Chapter 19
When a Body Meets a Body, Part II
January Second dawns bright with the kind of chill that sits well on a martini glass.
I am making my way home from a murder scene that has turned into a long walk down the Las Vegas Strip past scenes of my past triumphs both personal and professional. There is a time in a dude's life when he has to question why he is finally wending his way home, sleepless, at some abominably cheerful hour of the morning like ten a.m., when all others have risen gladly, breakfasted cheerily and headed off to decent, daytime occupations.
If twilight is the Children's Hour, the late morning is the Rascal's Hour. It belongs to the debauched of the world, the all-night gambler and rambler, the person who has reason to wonder who has been sleeping in his or her bed because he or she certainly has not been there.
I keep my natural sunglasses slitted against the bilious morning rays and swagger into the parking lot of the Circle Ritz, planning to make a discreet entrance at the rear. Perhaps Miss Temple has even missed me.
This thought so cheers me that I lash my pace to a medium slink. The lot is usually deserted at this in-between hour: residents gone for the day, and visitors not yet come.
So as I slither around the shed used for housing Miss Electra Lark's Hesketh Vampire motorcycle (now ridden routinely by Mr. Matt Devine), I am shocked to stride snout-first into a dawdling pair of human legs and feet clad in black slacks and tennis shoes.
Imagine my surprise to find that it is my very own roommate. Though she is usually clad in ladylike skirts and shoes of an ambitious nature in the heel department, today she looks like a nightcrawler: rumpled, disheveled and disreputable.
I cannot believe my eyes, and neither can she.
"Louie! Where have you been all night? You look awful."
As if I were not wont to roam of an evening! She is the one who is supposed to stay put and be waiting when I return from my nightly business. And a little more perkiness would be in order too.
"Come on," she says, "let us hurry inside. I am hungry enough to eat hors d'ouevres. Or maybe even Free-to-be-Feline."
This threat to my ever overflowing bowl of dried spaghnum moss (or whatever it is) is no skin off my pads, but I fall into step with her, aware of exotic new scents radiating from her person. This reminds me of the strange scent Midnight Louise detected at the Oasis barge. She let me sample some on her paw before we parted company in the wee hours.
I notice that Miss Temple is practically tiptoeing. I never have to worry about making undue noise when I come and go, but I can see that she is not eager to be spotted in her casual getup looking as if she were up to something not casual at all in the past few hours.
Surely she cannot have discovered her own dead body?
She opens the side door into the building and we ankle inside, discreet as cockroaches.
The lobby is shining and empty. Miss Temple sighs her relief and scuttles to the elevator to push the Up button.
"No Electra," she is muttering while she fidgets before the closed elevator doors. "No Electra, please! No awkward questions. Just a quick fade into my own little home, sweet home."
I do not know what unseen force she is addressing. It cannot be Bast; as far as I know, Miss Temple Barr has no cat-headed goddesses in her personal pantheon, unless she has converted recently.
We are standing there, her impatiently, myself with my usual air of unshakable calm, when the front door whooshes open and shuts with a decided thump.
Miss Temple gives a little scream, and I am so startled by her nervous behavior, that I arch my back and hiss at the intruder.
Who, it turns out, is not an intruder in the ordinary sense, in that he lives here, but who certainly seems to be the last person on earth Miss Temple Barr wished to see, to judge by the winding-cloth pallor of the skin between her freckles.
Speaking of pallor, Mr. Matt Devine is setting some records of his own in that department.
He has always been a modestly attired and behaving person, but now he seems to have faded to a shadow of his former modest self. His clothes are wrinkled and disheveled, as if he had slept in them (which, come to think of it, is the exact condition of Miss Temple's garments), and he moves with great delicacy, as if unsure that the marble floor beneath us might remain solid.
His jacket is carried over one arm, which is crooked before his midsection.
"Matt!"
It is hard to tell if Miss Temple is more shocked by his appearance than his ... er, appearance on the scene.
"Temple!"
It is hard to tell whether Mr. Matt is more shocked by Miss Temple's appearance than her presence here and now.
No one calls my name. That is what happens when you are vertically challenged. You are invisible. I sit down and lap my coat into order, having been so recently reminded of the importance of neat outer garments.
"Are you just . . . getting home?" Miss Temple blurts out a question she would probably kill another person for asking her.
"Ah, yes. There was an emergency at the hotline. I had to stay on, overtime."
"Oh. Suicide or something?"
He winces visibly. "Something like that. But you--?"
"Ah, still so tired from my trip. I overslept and ran out to get... a New York newspaper, got used to reading it, but they were all out."
Mr. Matt Devine frowns. "You shouldn't be going out alone like that, not after what happened. I thought I saw a black car pulling out of the back. You-know-who could be lurking."
"I'm fine."
He frowns more deeply. "Don't you need a . . . that big purse when you go out?"
"Not for a run to the convenience store. Just a few dollar bills in my pocket."
Mr. Matt Devine studies her outfit, which even I can tell is a clingy black two-piece affair with not much evidence of pockets.
Meanwhile, she is staring rather fixedly at a dull brown stain on his crumpled sheepskin jacket.
Neither one, it is clear, believes the other's explanation of their atypical presence in this time and place and atypical condition. But they are so busy trying to fool one another that they hardly notice where their own stories go wrong.
What this means and what it will lead to, I have not a clue. But I can tell you this: my Miss Temple is the more inventive liar in a pinch, if that is any sort of recommendation.
Chapter 20
Postmortem Post-it
Lieutenant C. R. Molina studied the waterlogged scrawl through the clear plastic bag that contained it.
"Traces of adhesive on the upper edge. Probably a Post-it note," Detective Alch said.
"We're lucky to get anything off this scrap."
"He used a ballpoint. A felt-tip wouldn't even have left an impression. But you can see the hardest strokes retained some ink. Good thing the Good Ship Suicide never goes underwater more than ten minutes a performance."
"Good thing the crew noticed something extra bound to the figurehead in the dark."
"Some fighting cats on the dock drew the crew's attention to the prow of the boat. Barge.
Whatever."
Molina kept her face deadpan, but it wasn't easy. Those damn cats. Every Las Vegas homicide cop needed a couple of fairy godmother cats, right? She squinted her eyes at the smudged writing in a dead man's messy hand.
Six little words. The lab interpretation suggested: "deadhead at Circus rich." And something
"on Hyacinth."
"We figure it was a tip-off to some easy mark at Circus Circus," Alch added. "From every indication, the dead man was a petty criminal. Just the type to be scamming some big spender."
Molina only nodded. She didn't agree, but she had inside in-formation. Cat magic. Who would she hit on first? That was the question.
Maybe Matt Devine. He was the most vulnerable, the least guarded, the most intrinsically honest. Knowing that made her job easier, and his life harder. Too bad. For a cop, a conscience is a terrible thing to waste.