"As long as I'm here and my tennies are scuffed beyond redemption ..."
The light snapped on again. "Where do you want to start?"
By the glow, Temple found her way to a tufted leather sofa and sat. "At the beginning. With some background on this house, Gandolph the Great and you."
She saw his smile quirk in the upcast glare of the brass lampshade. "I've ended where I should have begun, maybe." He rose and went to a Chinese chest along the wall. A touch opened an inlaid door. Max stood back (like a black curtain being drawn) to reveal the dim twinkle of crystal. "Care for a brandy?"
Temple shook her head. After clinking crystal for a minute, Max brought her something anyway: a whisky liqueur in a shot-glass-size cut-crystal container. Her tongue decided that a drop of this potent stuff should last her about as long as a cough lozenge.
Max sat on the sofa, cosseting the brandy snifter until his hands had warmed it enough to drink. His hands were always active, never still. Occupational hazard.
"This is a fetching house," he said. "A bit conventional, but nice for all that."
"Like me?" she wondered.
I'm not talking about us. Or about now, or about the recent past. You didn't ask for that. I'm talking about six years ago, and more than fifteen years before that, when I first met Gary. Gary Randolph. Magicians' last names vanish faster than their lady assistants from a cabinet. And, in Gary's heyday, magicians all used hokey, made-up stage names."
"Like Houdini."
Max paused to sip, then sighed. "Like Houdini. Gary's official performing title was Gandolph the Great."
"Was it from that darn book that everybody but me has read?"
Max shrugged. "Maybe. It doesn't matter. I know that, at least. Gandolph had a very respectable act. He just missed being part of the new generation that went on television: Doug Henning, real name; David Copperfield, unreal name. Ever notice how in the seventies all the performers were cadging stage names from literary and historical figures? David Copperfield, Tom Jones, Englebert Humperdinck, Jane Seymour."
"Temple Bar," she put in wryly.
"That's not a stage name, but it would make a good one."
"Subconscious recognition factor," Temple agreed. "The titular heroes of novels, a nineteenth-century composer, a wife of Henry the Eighth. I always toyed with 'Katharine Howard' as a fantasy stage name; she was another of Henry's head-losing spouses. Besides, it sounds so veddy, veddy British, RADA and all that."
"I auditioned for the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art in London," Max noted with a certain rueful nostalgia.
"Really? Did they admit you?"
"I was a punk kid of sixteen. Hell, no."
Ah, Temple thought, a secondary lark during the IRA summer abroad. Someday would she dare ask him about that?
"Did you know that there's a Temple Bar on Lake Mead?" she asked instead.
"No!" Max's somber expression lightened. "I never saw much of anything out here but the Strip. Really? How ... piquant."
"Thanks. I haven't been called piquant since you left."
"A strange condition, piquancy." He looked around. "This house was piquant after I got done with it. Gary was planning to retire, I was due to tour, and it has four bedrooms, so I rented it to him. It has a history."
"All houses do. Even ... our place has a history."
Max leaned forward, studied the room as if it were brandy to savor. "It belonged to Orson Welles."
Temple sat straighter on the commodious sofa, as if thinking she might be impinging on Welles's generous lap. "Him? The Napa Valley wine man?"
Max laughed. "Paul Masson wines. And do you know what blasphemy it is, sitting in this house and remembering his least achievement?"
"Maybe, but when I was a kid, the Napa wine man was pretty big stuff. Yeah, that's right; the TV commercial was for Paul Masson: 'Paul Masson will sell no wine before its time,' "she declaimed in deep, rotund tones. "That's the most famous wine line since Bela Lugosi's 'I do not drink... vine' in the original Dracula movie. I used to think Welles was Paul Masson. In my immature mind, Masson' was kissing cousin to 'massive,' and that's how Orson Welles looked."
"I saw those TV commercials too, but I knew so much about Welles before then that they hardly registered on me. You do know his history?"
"Oh, sure, I learned it later, when I dabbled in theater. Boy wonder and that Martian Invasion radio broadcast just before World War Two started, and making Citizen Kane and some other classic films, peaking early and never regaining lost glory."
Max blinked and sipped. "Did you know the police were called out to this house Halloween night, before Gary ... Gandolph died at the seance?"
"No? How do you know?"
"Neighbors told me. I played the worried out-of-town owner reclaiming his property after a tragedy. Which I am."
"Won't the police--?"
"I asked after they'd made their neighborhood sweep this morning. In fact they did me a favor. They prepared my way by announcing the death; I merely had to step in afterward.
Everybody was shocked enough to spill whatever beans they had."
"And why were the police called to come out here?"
"Voices. The neighbors heard agitated voices from the house."
"At what time?"
"Between midnight and one A.M."
"But... Gandolph was at the seance all that time. The house should have been empty, unless he had relatives."
Max shook his head. "Lived alone. Stored his magic equipment in the extra bedrooms, along with mine."
"Agitated voices ... arguing?"
"Loud enough to waken or disturb the immediate neighbors. You have to understand, Temple, that people in this development are very discreet. Most of them are celebrities, or at least used to be, so their names still ring bells all over the place. They dislike publicity and attention, and they all swear none of them called the police. But a squad car did drive through and make inquiries. Perhaps your pal Molina could look up the information on the call."
"Umhmmm. She's not even on this case."
Max stroked a hair loosened by his breaking-and-entry exertions from his forehead. Under it lurked a cynically lifted eyebrow. "You must appreciate that."
"Actually, no. I now realize that I used to get tidbits of information out of Molina when we had our little verbal sparring matches. From Watts and Sacker, I get nada, though they're a lot more polite."
"Perhaps Molina is more susceptible to your considerable charm than you think."
"No. Impervious' is her middle name. And if I told you what the C in C.R. stood for--"
Max tented his long flexible fingers. "Tell me. In my position it's always useful to have an insight into members of the local constabulary."
"You don't have a position, that's the trouble. You're just a Missing Man. And 'local constabulary,' honestly, Max. Sometimes you talk like someone from an Agatha Christie play."
"I lived abroad for a while, in my youth."
"Oh, right. Your Interpol days."
"We're not here to weasel background out of each other."
"I'll need more than I have now if I'm supposed to shed any light on Gandolph's death."
Temple tasted another drop of liqueur, then let it soak into her tongue. "So it's possible someone was here while Gandolph was at the seance; more than one 'someone,' or else Voices'
wouldn't have been heard. You've looked the place over, anything moved?"
"Hard to tell; it's been a while since I saw this stuff. But... yes, the magical equipment appears to have been moved, considerably."
"Gandolph's? Or yours?"
"Both. You realize that a magician's equipment is his stock-in trade and worth thousands, his professional secrets all bundled up into a few tables and trunks and boxes?"
"You think someone was searching--?" Temple sat up. "Why do you assume it was Gandolph's things they were disturbing? Why not yours? Not too long ago, somebody was looking for you, hard. Why not for your equipment?"