If she couldn't confess the scariest secret of all, maybe she could offer a less vital one.
"It's. . . confidential."
"Everything worth knowing in this town is confidential. Tell me."
Max had followed her into this clinical kitchen so like a surgery of gastronomy. He was doctor; she was patient. She badly needed a nagging thorn to come out. Any thorn.
"There's this woman who's. . . appeared to Matt."
"Virgin Mary, huh?"
"Hardly. Bloody Mary, more likely. I hate telling you this ... but she's the one who told him where Effinger was likely to be found."
"Bloody Judas, maybe?"
Temple nodded. "You don't know how right you are. She appeared to him again after Effinger was murdered. Within a couple of hours, before it was discovered practically."
Max began pacing, listening, absorbing facts into his very bloodstream with a magician's eerie concentration that could hear locked tumblers clicking, audiences holding their breath, and glamorous assistants scratching their high-rise chorus-girl panty lines.
"She attacked him, Max."
Max stopped. Grinned. "He's not that good-looking."
"With a razor."
He sobered so fast the mocking figure of a moment ago seemed like ancient history.
"Sorry. That's serious. That's psychotic. What was her problem?"
"Matt thinks--," Temple felt like a traitor for betraying Matt's confidence, but if she offered Max this truth that he might be able to do something about, perhaps it would atone for withholding the truth that none of them could do anything about.
She was exposing Matt, but not where he was most vulnerable. She hoped. She was using the old magician's trick, creating glittering contrails with one hand, while the real work was being done by the other.
"Yes? You were saying. Matt thinks?"
"It's ridiculous, but Matt thinks this woman thought he was a hit man. That she told him where to find Effinger because she thought he would kill him."
"Interesting. What made her take the ex-priest for a killer?"
"Matt sensed she was one mean mama. He felt he had to take a hard line with her. She asked what he would do with Effinger when he found him and he admitted he didn't know, that he would 'probably kill him.' "
Max nodded. "There are some people I'd 'probably kill' if I found them."
"Some people? Max!"
He shook his head. "We never kill the people we need to. It's something we tell ourselves we could do, but we don't. It's a way of admitting we've known people who deserve killing."
"Never kill them? Even in your line of work? Whatever that is."
Max laughed. "Suspicion becomes you, my lovely sleuth. I'm glad we can talk like this finally.
Frankly. Temple, this can be better than before, because I can be more honest with you."
He stepped closer, and she was comforted. Too bad she had to be less honest than before.
Were relationships always comedies of bad timing? Or tragedies of off-tempo truth?
Temple realized that she had never needed Max's love more than now, when her own feelings were subdivided into searing confusion.
"I know it's hard for you to betray confidences." Max wrapped his endless arms around her.
"But this is for Devine's own good. I'd be willing to bet that the woman who turned over Effinger and accosted Matt later for not killing him is the very same woman who sent the hyacinths and paid for the funeral. I just wish I knew her game. Or her identity." Max tilted up Temple's chin, regarded her with a smile that softened his sharp features. "I give your neighbor credit for his Devine forbearance with Effinger. It's obvious that Effinger was a family abuser who deserved a lot worse than he got from Devine, if not the killer. It takes a lot of moral courage to outgrow the past, even if you were trained as a priest. He's all right. And he'll be all right, Temple. You'd don't have to mother him."
Wonderful. Max the magnanimous. Max the consoler. Max the idiot! Defending the competition because he couldn't imagine any competition worth worrying about. Poor Max!
Max shook her lightly, as if rousing her from a trance. "So let's forget the personal issues and look at the facts, ma'am. Just the facts. Want to hit the computer room? I can show you a graph on the hyacinth orders."
Temple nodded. She could use graphs and cold, hard facts right now. She could use Max's bracing form of self-confidence. She could use distraction.
But the computer revelations were far more interesting than she had thought. She squinted toward the glowing screen.
"The flower orders are amazing. So many little florists, all over the country. One even from Canada. All on telephone credit-card numbers and all shipping every winter-blooming hyacinth they had. It's like a battle plan. Hyacinths in formation. And it must have cost a mint."
"Seventy-six hundred and eighty-nine dollars. And the credit card numbers are all from stolen cards. From all over the country, by the way."
"What? How do you know?"
"I've access to the latest lists of reported lost or stolen cards."
Temple leaned back in the secretarial chair, her accessory to the more substantial throne that Max occupied in front of the computer.
"Sometimes I don't know whether you're Us or Them."
Max grinned again, fondly. "And who are Us or Them?"
"I don't know. Government or insurrectionist. Police or crook. Spy or seditionist. Human or alien."
"You allow for an incredible range of deviation. I admire a lively imagination. But let's stick to the problem at hand. Does this mystery woman have a name?"
"Kitty, according to Matt."
" 'Kitty the cutter,' you called her."
Temple nodded. "If it was the same woman at the funeral home, she called herself Trudy Zelle then."
Max just grinned.
"Why are you laughing at me?"
"Not at you. At her audacity. I just remembered who Gertrud Zelle was."
Temple shook her head. "Yeah, the name does sound vaguely familiar, like I heard it on a PBS station. An opera singer?"
"Only tragic opera, if so. But dance was her ticket to notoriety. Gertrud Zelle was the birth name of the woman who performed as Mata Hari."
"Then this woman is a spy too!"
"Or wants us to think she is. How badly did she slice Devine? I mean, he's still walking among us. Apparently he can still function."
Oh, yes. "A three-inch wound, to the side."
"Interesting. How did she get that close?"
"She intercepted him after work in the parking lot. Obviously, he never expected an assault."
"Why would she do it? Out of pique? This woman is attracting attention to herself. That makes me suspicious. Who or what is she concealing behind the obvious?"
"Efnnger is the key. He's the bridge. Not only to Matt's personal life but to your disappearance and now this whole 'hyacinth' puzzle. The word was on a paper in his pocket, along with some sort of reference to me. Molina won't get any more specific than that." "Not at you. At her audacity. I just remembered who Gertrud Zelle was."
Temple shook her head. "Yeah, the name does sound vaguely familiar, like I heard it on a PBS station. An opera singer?"
"Only tragic opera, if so. But dance was her ticket to notoriety. Gertrud Zelle was the birth name of the woman who performed as Mata Hari."
"Then this woman is a spy too!"
"Or wants us to think she is. How badly did she slice Devine? I mean, he's still walking among us. Apparently he can still function."
Oh, yes. "A three-inch wound, to the side."
"Interesting. How did she get that close?"
"She intercepted him after work in the parking lot. Obviously, he never expected an assault."
"Why would she do it? Out of pique? This woman is attracting attention to herself. That makes me suspicious. Who or what is she concealing behind the obvious?"
"Effinger is the key. He's the bridge. Not only to Matt's personal life but to your disappearance and now this whole 'hyacinth' puzzle. The word was on a paper in his pocket, along with some sort of reference to me. Molina won't get any more specific than that."