Matt had never suspected the word "hope" was spelled "heavy," but it was here and now.
He and Molina rushed to pull and tug away the ebbing tarp, letting the maestro get to work.
The casket's outside was smooth, unmarked, almost anonymous.
That very smoothness seemed to frustrate Kinsella. His fingers slid over the entire surface, searching for hidden hinges and springs.
He looked up, hopeful. "This is a demonic box. It must be it. And so heavy ..."
He laid his ear against the polished wood, a guitar player tuning his instrument-. His fingers fretted the liquid sienna surface, hunting pressure points like an acupuncturist.
Matt didn't know about Molina, but he held his breath, not wanting to impede Kinsella's sense by so much as an inhalation.
At last Matt heard a tiny click, like a mechanical heartbeat.
Kinsella's breath hushed over the rich veneer. Another click, then the entire top lifted like a grand piano wing. The box was lacquered black inside, with a yellow satin lining. Angled into the lining like a pry tearing it from the wood, was the heel of a magenta suede shoe.
Chapter 46
Panama Purple Haze
Who would guess in their wildest dreams that Midnight Louie would ever wish to be a dog?
Perhaps I should be more specific. I have not actually been wishing complete dogdom upon myself these past tense minutes since my own rescue. I am not that debased, not even in an emergency. Not even in a case of life and death.
No, I merely feel a certain frustrated longing for the nose of the breed in question. They are superior at one act only: smelling. And often, I fear, smelling what is bad as well as what is good.
So, in a certain sense, I am glad that any drug-sniffing dogs, such as they are, were pulled off the case in favor of Mr. Max Kinsella, much as I dislike owing my current freedom from the semi to him.
What frustrates me most at the moment is my inability to aid in the discovery and rescue of my lost roommate.
No matter how I sniff up and down and around these magical mystery caskets, I am unable to smell so much as a rat. This is unprecedented.
Why? Why is my sniffer so deficient?
Because all I can smell are three unforgettable scents: that of the demure flower known as hyacinth, that of the far-from-demure hellion from Siam, also known as Hyacinth, and that of the tart, heady aroma of Panama Purple.
So when the Mystifying Max and Mr. Matt Devine pop the lid on a likely-looking casket, there I am, reeling around like Dopey the Dwarf without a hint of what we will find inside. My superior feline sense of smell is of no more use than a smudge pot of sensory confusion.
I cannot sniff life or death or even the likelihood of the contents being human, much less the one particular human we all seek.
I bury my useless nose in my mitts, and swear upon Bastet's right rear paw's left toenail that I will never again knowingly touch the substance called "Panama Purple."
Chapter 47
Found and Lost
The two men stared at the shoe, immobilized as it was.
To Molina, it looked like it was either jauntily hooked there for a fashion shoot. Or like it was impaled there in its owner's extremis.
Molina's job was to know first which case fit the scenario. She stepped forward to aim the flashlight at the casket bottom, automatically using her body to block the others' view.
No use letting the nearest and dearest view the situation first.
The flashlight picked up the steel glint of handcuffs. Molina relaxed slightly. You don't handcuff a dead body. Then again, lack of air, a drug overdose . . . Her flashlight beam on the face produced squeezed- shut eyelids. Molina began to turn.
But as if sensing her verdict, the men jerked into motion again, both reaching for the contents of the casket.
Remarkably, they managed to work in concert. Kinsella pulled up Temple's shoulders; Devine picked up her ankles.
In seconds she was sitting against the box that had confined her, woozy and blinded by the light.
No one asked if she was all right. They simply watched her, trying to gauge her condition.
Midnight Louie had no such inhibitions. He meowed in a forlorn tone and came stalking up to her, rubbing his side against her flexed knees, pushing his face into her arm.
"Louie?"
Temple's voice, always husky, was a dry desert rattle.
"He came along for the ride too," Molina explained. "In his own carrier."
" 'Carrier.' " Temple tried to laugh but it was hard to do with no sound effects. "Pretty good."
Devine knelt beside her. "Water. Is there any way, any-where--?"
"Gas station," Molina said. "On the way back."
Kinsella also knelt beside her, picked up her handcuffed wrists as if they were Dresden china.
He thrust the stubby file from the nail clipper into the mechanism. Presto changeo, the cuffs sprang open like Tiffany bracelets.
Kinsella handed the implement back to Devine.
Temple's wrists separated into a poignant, empty gesture, as if she'd begun it hours before and had been stalled from finishing it. The note of panic in her voice was heartbreaking.
"Max. She took my ring. She never gave it back. It's gone."
He gathered her against him as someone would a hurt child. "It's all right. There are other rings. Dozens and dozens of other rings."
And only one Temple.
The unspoken sentiment was echoed by Matt Devine's silence as he stood, stepped back, ebbed out of the picture.
"Where are we?" Temple finally asked. "It was so dark and the box was jostled around so much . . . and they stuck me. My elbow."
"Left?" Kinsella asked.
"How'd you know?"
"That's usually where right-handed people administer injections, and most people are right-handed." He held her inner elbow up to Molina's flashlight beam.
"Ultrafine needle," she diagnosed. "Probably some of their 'hyasynth' in liquid form. She seems exhausted and disoriented, but not in the throes of an O.D."
Kinsella nodded, a curt agreement.
"Can she stand?" Molina asked.
"Does it matter?" Kinsella's anger was as sudden and clean as a switchblade.
"Yes," Molina said much more gently than she felt like saying. "See if you can get her upright."
Temple rose on the support of his arm, shaky. "My shoe."
"Here." Matt Devine had retrieved it. "But you better not wear it right now. Better give me the other one."
He went down on one knee like Prince Charming while she balanced herself against Kinsella.
The absence of the single shoe restored balance to her body. She leveled her shoulders, looked stronger, leaned less on Kinsella.
"How did you find me?" she asked, looking at them all in turn.
Her unspoken question was: what are you natural enemies all doing here, together?
You, child. You.
"Mr. Kinsella realized something was wrong when you disappeared," Molina began.
" Before she disappeared," he corrected.
She ignored him. "Mr. Devine noticed Mr. Kinsella was gone from his seat--"
Temple looked at Matt, with a lucid and questioning gaze that made even Molina look away and hurry on. "Then I decided to explore the understage areas. Devine tailed me, I found Mr.
Kin-sella shaking up empty prop boxes and a few empty-headed ninjas. We suspected that you were gone, and since the DEA was tailing the show's semitruck, which took off about when you did, they followed, I followed, your swains twain followed. I would say even Midnight Louie followed, except that he was already aboard in his own traveling compartment."
Temple quirked a smile at her. Molina was actually, deeply, momentarily afraid she might have to like her.
"Sounds like Keystone Kops." Temple put more weight on her hose-clad feet. "With accessories before and after the fact." She whispered like The Shadow from the old radio show.