She digs her trusty cell phone from the bottom of her signature tote bag and pushes a single button.
I can guess who she’s dialing: my rival for her affections, the first and only Max Kinsella, the once and future Mystifying Max. The man who would be king, and still her live-in, except that I am here now, bud.
I figure I better earn my pride of place and bestir myself tocozy up to her hip, running my tongue down her wrist, always a ploy
that drives the ladies crazy.
She waves me away, redialing.
“Answer, Max! Answer,” she beseeches the cell phone, poor little thing. Oh, man! This is so lame. “Answer. I need you!”
No. She needs me. Usually she knows this. How can I get through to her? We communicate without words, but right now she is too
distressed to sense our usual rapport.
She punches another button. And waits.
“Matt? Oh, thank God!”
Well, I thank Bast myself, but that is a somewhat old-fashioned practice, I admit. Still, it is better than thanking Elvis, which I have
been known to do on occasion. Any deity in a storm.
I recall my own traumatic reunions in recent hours and resort to the self-soothing regimen that proved so effective for catkind. I
stretch out along my Miss Temple’s hip, purring up a furry hurricane. She strokes me absently. Absently! “Matt, I just had to tell Danny Dove that Simon Foster, his significant other … oh, God … is dead.”
Is my Miss Temple saying that God Is Dead? That is so over.
Well, there is no one faster to intervene in a crisis than a priest, even if he is an ex (the most dangerous kind, in my opinion).
“No, I’m all right,” she says, clearly not.
Why do people lie about their states of affairs? When I am . down in the dumps or fit to be tied, everyone around me knows it, and can take appropriate measures. But no, people have to waylay each other with polite lies. No wonder homicide only happens to Homo sapiens. Hey, that is kind of catchy! Not to mention alliterative. Too bad I am not a tunesm ith.
Well, Mr. Matt will be here in a Las Vegas minute, which is how long it takes to lose fifteen hundred dollars at the craps table.
I roll away, miffed. No one notices. Still, despite the humiliation, I should hang around to overhear what’s going on. So low has the role of the private dick sunk in the present day. Sam Spade would never have put up with this.
Miss Temple cannot even wait for him to arrive, but starts for the door on her little cat feet, barefoot. On her naked pads! Without defensive shivs!
If my petite miss were a vegetable, she’d be a radish: small and colorful, with bite. Right now, her bite has become all gum and no fang. I hate to see her acting like an overcooked broccoli, which is pretty limp to begin with.
Mr. Matt Devine’s knuckles barely brush hardwood before she has the door wide open.
I sneak behind the sofa, so as not to inhibit my subjects, and crouch into position with my ears cranked forward, on high
fidelity.
Chapter 26
Sudden-Death Overtime
Matt seldom saw Temple without any shoes on, and particularly without any shoes on that added height.
She looked shrunken and sad today, and the out-of-focus blur of her eyes alarmed him.
“Temple?” He followed her into the living room. “I’m sorry. I don’t know who Simon is.”
“Sure you do. You must have met him at the Maylords opening. You saw Danny there too, didn’t you?” “Yes, but-”
“Well, I met Simon there. Danny introduced us.”
“I didn’t know that Danny . Matt decided it was safer not to say what he didn’t know about Danny Dove. He knew three things, none of them apparently sufficient for this situation: that Temple had known the famed choreographer for longer than anybody in Las Vegas except Max Kinsella, that they were fond of each other, and that Danny was gay.
If Danny were dead, God forbid, he could understand Temple’s emotional state. But … who was Simon?
She shook her head. “How could you have missed him? Simon was way too good-looking to be let off a movie screen.
Blond, like you. In fact, when I saw him, his body, at first I thought-”
“You saw his body?”
“It fell out of the Murano at Maylords during the orange-blessing ceremony.”
Matt couldn’t help looking completely lost, no matter how much he knew that it was important right now to look sympathetic and knowing.
“Murano?”
“That was the orange SUV crossover that’s the Maylords opening door prize, there by the entrance.”
“Oh, that’s what that orange thing is called. He died in the, urn, crossover vehicle?”
Temple clapped a hand to her mouth. “You’re right,” she said through her fingers. “I guess it was literally a ‘crossover vehicle,’ all right. I’ll have to get him to replace it. Kenny Maylord. Get a new giveaway car. One nobody died in. Yet.”
“Hey, don’t get hysterical.” This sentiment seemed to require stepping nearer to Temple, and putting a hand on her shoulder.
That seemed to require her to look up at him through teary eyes and edge into an embrace.
Comforting the afflicted had never felt so good.
Matt cleared his throat. “You’d better sit down.”
Or he had better. He got her perched on the end of the couch and looked around for large black impediments before he sat beside her.
“Simon,” he said again. “The name doesn’t ring a bell, but I do remember some blond guy moving around opening night.”
“Like you.”
“Well-”
“A t f i r s t g l a n c e crossover … car door opened and he tumbled out onto the floor, I h e l o o k e d l i k e y o actually assumed for a moment-”
“He didn’t really look like me. Maybe similar hair color, similar height.”
“Maybe that’s enough! Matt, Kenny Maylord told me that at the hospital they discovered he had been stabbed in the back.” Matt patted her shoulder. Why did people always pat people who were feeling sorrowful? Because of how mothers instinctively soothed infants? Did we try to mother others in times of sorrow? People who pat people … are not the luckiest in the world, maybe just the most inarticulate.
“What are you saying, Temple? That I was the target?”
“No … just that it’s odd.”
“Look. I’m tired of being a target. Anybody’s target. I never would have been anywhere near Maylords if it weren’t that-”
“That what?”
Matt sure hadn’t wanted to spell this out to Temple, of all people. “That I was there with Janice. She’s the Maylords connection. I was just a casual escort.”
“Casual? Didn’t look like she thought so.”
“We’re friends, all right?”
“Of course it’s all right,” Temple said. “Why wouldn’t it be?”
“It is. So this Simon was Danny’s-”
“Partner. Life partner. I know your Church doesn’t-”
“Spare me. You’re not talking to my Church. You’re talking to me. And you had to be the one to tell Danny? Why, Temple?”
“Who else was gonna do it? Some … I don’t know who they would have sent. Probably a detective. Would you want
Molina telling you your life partner was dead?”
“She wouldn’t do that. Not herself. She’s an administrator.”
“Oh, great. So he would have gotten a what, a beat cop? Or some snarly old detective who thinks there ought to be a law against gay people?”
“You’re stereotyping the other way, Temple, but I can see why you wanted it to be you.”
“It was worse because I’d just found out about Simon, had just met him. Danny was letting me into a part of his life he didn’t open up to just anyone. It was much worse. They seemed so happy with each other.”
Matt could say nothing to that, so he just patted her back as she choked up and tried to stuff her feelings back down with a crumpled tissue and a fist at her mouth.
After a while he asked, “You don’t really think someone mistook him for me? She’s dead, Temple. Thoroughly dead. I saw the body in the morgue myself.”