"Aw," Temple moaned, beginning to realize what an utter mess she was.
"And don't flail your legs. Electra put antibiotic ointment on the cuts and scrapes."
She sighed, and Max sighed soon after.
His voice lowered to an intimate tone she would have called pillow talk except that there was no danger of any hanky-panky here and now.
"Temple, I can't tell you how sorry I am that this happened again. Those first two thugs look like goners by now, and I was complacent enough to assume new goons wouldn't spring up to take their places. Electra thought you hadn't been under attack for very long when she got there, but two seconds is too long, as far as I'm concerned. Damn my past! I've no right to think you can have anything to do with me."
It was a very nice speech, Max beating his breast with copious mea culpas. She was almost tempted to leave things as they were, nurse Kinsella clucking over her, the pet patient, and feeling so deliciously guilty. She deserved pampering and penitence for at least a few more minutes.
"Oh," she commented astutely, making noise more from moral than physical discomfort.
"This hasn't got a darn thing to do with you, Max, you conceited ass."
"It doesn't? You were simply mugged? Any self-defense expert could warn you that you're most vulnerable entering and leaving your car, in parking garages, parking lots. ..."
Temple was even more tempted to leave him there, stubbing his toes on his next half-baked conclusion. But her conscience writhed as much as her over sensitized skin.
"Not exactly any old mugger."
"How can one be 'not exactly any old mugger.' "
"He can be a shady character known to someone of the victim's acquaintance."
Max was silent, translating her reluctant, roundabout confession.
"You knew the creep?"
"Only by description."
"Don't play with me, Temple." Max's lips brushed her unhurt cheek. "I'm tired of half-meanings."
"This had nothing to do with you. At least not directly. It was. . . Matt's stepfather."
"Cliff Effinger? But why would he mess with you? I know that Devine turned him in to Molina. ..." He moved his face parallel to her mostly immobile features. "He took it out on you, is that it, to get to his stepson?"
Temple swallowed, then regretted it. All the muscles on the left side of her face protested major movement. Even talking was wearing her down. As was Max.
"Was that it?" he persisted. "Just. . . blink your eyes 'yes.' "
She tried to laugh, another painful procedure. "What's 'no,' then? Or don't you want to hear any of those?"
"Effinger went after you in revenge for Devine's tracking him down?"
"A warning, he said."
"Matt Devine." Max savored the name as much as spoke it. His tone was not so much antagonistic as rueful. "His purely personal quest stirred up a hornet's nest, I'll give him that.
And now the wasps are stinging everybody in sight. Nobody wanted to see Efflnger located by the police. Nobody," Max added in particularly grim tones.
"Your eyes are green again," she said out of the blue.
"What? Oh, I forgot. These are my Las Vegas eyes."
"And your Minneapolis eyes. Maybe I'll try to lose these stupid glasses again, see if I can adjust to contact lenses. Give it another try. I could have kaleidoscope eyes then, too. A new color. A new me. What about. . . violet."
"Lovely." Max's finger touched the tip of her nose. "But not you."
"Who says? Mr. Chameleon the shape-shifter?"
"True. I'm no one to discourage a changed appearance." His fingers toyed with her hair again, as his mouth nibbled delicately at the good side of her face. "You'll be better by morning, Temple, and then you can make appointments with your dentist and optometrist. At least you should be pretty well healed by New Year's. We'll go out, in disguise and dark glasses, someplace extravagant to see the New Year in."
"Ummm," she agreed, distracted from aches and pains and everything else by Max's minor amorous attentions. She was definitely not up for the majors this evening.
Then her sedated memory and its coconspirator, guilt, kicked in again.
"No, Max, I can't go anywhere with you New Year's Eve, not even with dark glasses!"
"Why not?"
"Urn, I have an appointment."
"An appointment on New Year's Eve?"
"A meeting."
"With whom?"
"You're so grammatical in crises; I should have known there was something suspicious about you from the first."
"Forget the first, what about the first of the New Year?"
"I'm going out. With Matt."
"Devine?"
"The very one."
If she had not been banged up, he would have dropped her like a hot potato, his shock was that palpable.
"Why? After New York--"
"This is to finish up before New York business. Matt asked me as soon as I got back. I haven't heard the gory details of his track-down of Effinger."
"You have plenty of gory details relating to Cliff Effinger yourself. If that's why you were attacked, why hang around the cause?"
"Because. I haven't told him yet."
"About us. Simple. There's a phone right on the nightstand. Call him and tell him."
"Max! I can hardly talk right now."
"You won't be that much better by New Year's."
"You just said--"
"That was before I knew you had other plans."
"I'll feel better if I'm with you?"
"Yes! And you'll be safer too."
"I don't know. You two are about even when it comes to safety factors."
"My wasps are dead."
"Presumed dead. Some of them. Should I, like, tell Molina about this?"
"God, no! Your instincts about the police are dead right. Otherwise I'd never let you sweat this out at home."
"Freeze is more like it."
Max sighed at the reminder and drew closer. "I shouldn't agitate the invalid."
"Exactly. Especially if you intend to hang around all night."
"I do."
"Whatever happened to Louie?"
"He dove over the side when I showed up."
"Oh, poor guy, he's feeling shunted aside."
"Poor guy is pretty bright."
"He's used to sleeping next to me."
"Funny, I'm used to not sleeping next to you. Guess we'll have to work it out."
"He'll think you're moving in on him."
"I wish I could, but it's better I stay under the radar for now. I'm still partially responsible for your problem, Temple." Max rested his chin oh-so-lightly on the top of her head. "Effinger is one of my problem players too. He doesn't just belong to Matt Devine. And neither do you."
"I don't 'belong' to anyone."
"I know. But let's pretend."
"Urn, Max. I'm not supposed to do anything strenuous."
"Nothing strenuous," he agreed, as incorrigibly amiable as always.
Chapter 4
The Bums Rush
I knew something fishy was afoot.
And I am not referring merely to the stocking-clad human foot that has been well aged in Bruno Magli footwear.
I knew it before I was fully awake, when I felt my muscular form being shunted aside by a force dark and vast and as elemental as the universe.
In this case, by the time I opened my eyes to observe the cataclysmic change in my situation, I had identified the Force's current manifestation as the Mystifying Max. (And I was much faster at this elementary deduction than my dear Miss Temple Barr was a few minutes later when she opened her baby blue-grays to the Change.)
I cannot say how it happened, save that I was supplanted in my slumber. Swept aside by mere sleight of hand. Slid out of my accustomed place before I had blinked the sleep from my eyes. Left the lower corner of the coverlet for my reduced lot. Claim-jumped.