Max had wandered over to the bookcase, selected a volume and was smiling at the pages.
"What have you found?" Temple asked.
"Nothing mysterious. Just my favorite collection of Isak Dine-son. I thought you might throw me out when I came back, but I knew you'd never get rid of my books."
"You did not think I'd throw you out. You thought I'd be waiting here like an unplayed CD or an unread book, frozen in time until you came back to remind yourself of what I was like."
"Maybe I used to be just a little overconfident. But I got over it, didn't I? Now I'm just as insecure as your average guy. Suspicious, paranoid, jealous. Happy?"
Temple rolled her eyes and replaced the book. Show time was looming.
But Max exchanged the book for her left hand. "You're wearing my ring tonight."
"My ring." Temple flared her fingers to admire the opal. "I put it on after Molina left."
"Molina was here?"
"Oh, yeah. She just comes to call on her favorite all-around suspect any old time. After she left, it suddenly dawned on me that I was letting what I was afraid other people would think run my life. I never used to do that. I've caught your habit of concealment, and I don't like it.
Besides, how many million years will it be before I run into Molina again?"
"Obviously you're a dead end for her on this case."
"This case--" Temple picked up her small evening bag; only bag ladies kept tote bags on their laps in theater seats. "--is a bust. If the only clue to who killed Effinger, and why, is the word 'hyacinth,' it's a lost cause."
"Then you don't think Shangri-La and her performing cat Hyacinth at the Opium Den are our last, best hope for resolution?"
"No! Do you?"
Max hesitated, then sleeked the hair back at his temples and laced his fingers contemplatively behind his head.
He gazed at the ever-fascinating arched ceiling that acted as a movie screen for the play of evening shadows.
"I've tried to trace the act," he said, "having never heard of it here or abroad. I can't."
You said this Opium Den was a low-end venue."
"But even second-rate acts have a history. And then there's the magician's name."
"Shangri-La? Kind of Eastern mystical. Not bad for a lady magician."
"Shan-gri-La," Max repeated so slowly that she could have read his lips.
"Shang-ri-La. Kind of like frangi-pangi, I guess. I think of Lost Horizon . . . Shanghai. . .
shantung. Chinese stuff mostly." Then she got Max's meaning. Shan! The directory name for the files involving mysterious brotherhood on the parchments."
Max smiled, as if a slow student had finally managed to withdraw an elephant from a top hat. "It struck me as interesting. I have a vivid imagination."
"Max, Effinger isn't worth all this mumbo jumbo."
"Maybe it isn't about Effinger at all. Maybe it's about someone else."
"Who?"
He shrugged. "Let's go see a magic show."
Temple snaked her beringed hand through his right arm (his sport coat was baby-soft black cashmere), caught her knit jacket collar together against the evening chill, and they left the unit, as they had so many times before in less uncertain days.
"My God, wait!" Max ordered in the cul-de-sac.
"What's wrong?"
He clapped a hand to his forehead. "How could I have forgotten? I have been a selfish beast.
I didn't check out the shoes."
****************
Temple spun to exit the Taurus, admiring her strappy magenta suede Via Spiga pumps with the radical heel to which Max had given his highest seal of approval in the hallway. Shoes were wearable sculpture; they satisfied something in her sole . . . probably the endless kid years when she'd been too little to be seen, heard or even blinked at. Not until she'd acquired literal stature with her grown-up lady shoes. Somehow, one could face anything in the properly spirited shoes.
The entrance to the Opium Den required facing. Max dropped the car keys into the valet's waiting hand with a stern expression that somehow conveyed, "Park it six blocks away at a respectable establishment. And don't strip the gears."
Despite the valet parking, necessary because of virtually no on-street parking and no adjacent lot, the Opium Den's entrance canopy smacked of third-string Mann's Chinese Theater.
The sidewalk outside was gritty with refuse, including crushed private-dancer flyers picturing scores of vacuous pouts. In the en-trance facade, missing neon bulbs lent a gap-toothed grin to the garish dragon hanging over all who entered.
Yet tourists poured in, the ladies clad in spike heels and glitter-threaded sweaters with faux mink collars, the men in sports coats over knit golfing shirts. Going out to a show was Las Vegas's most gala event, even if the show wasn't a top ticket like Siegfried and Roy, Cirque du Soleil or Lance Burton.
"Why do the women magicians get the short end of the wand?" Temple wanted to know.
"It's a cruel sexist world," Max answered lightly. "I admit that I'm curious to see her act."
He was gazing at a poster of a woman with a ghostly white face and the dramatic, drawn-on features of Asian drama, strands of flat-black hair whipping around her like a cat-o'-ninetails.
Her quasi-Oriental robe was slashed at implausible points to reveal sinuous white arms and legs up to the firm white thigh muscles.
"Dragon Lady," Temple murmured. "With kick."
Max laughed as they entered the lobby and that's how they came face-to-face with Matt Devine and Carmen Molina.
Stupefaction would not have been a strong enough word to describe the general reaction, which was no reaction, because everybody froze as if suddenly playing the children's game
"Statue." That was where one was spun around by the hand and suddenly released with instructions to freeze in whatever position one could stop in.
Temple was caught stepping forward on her right foot with her left hand reaching up to brush the hair from her face, a pose which highlighted her ring like a de Beers diamond ad.
Max had been guiding her ahead of him so the crowd wouldn't smash into her, as it was wont to do with one of her short stature.
Matt had been checking his watch, left wrist raised and twisted, a comment on his lips iced into a sudden silence.
Carmen Molina had been turning her head to scan the crowd, and had spotted them both in one eagle-eyed sweep, had eagles ever been blessed with morning-glory blue eyes.
Like a camera, Temple took in the entirety of the pair before her. Matt's bronze velvet jacket (how could he? So soon. With another woman. Well, sort of woman). Molina's totally uninspired boxy navy suit, just the formal side of career dressing for an accountant's office (so tacky, but then it was probably boxy to hide an arsenal).
Matt was staring at her hand as if she had just punched him with it.
Molina was staring at Max as if she'd like to tackle him.
Max was staring at them both as if they were Martians.
But he spoke first
"Is this a . . . date? Are congratulations in order?" Sometimes Max was the reincarnation of Cary Grant in a James Bond movie.
"Work," Molina barked.
"Command performance," Matt said. "What's your excuse?" But he was looking at Temple.
She didn't have to answer. Lieutenant Molina was taking command.
"This isn't my bust, or I'd take you right now," she told Max. "But I'm not supposed to make a scene. So consider yourself lucky."
"I don't know--" Shock had ebbed and he was starting to enjoy himself. Max thrived on other people's tension. "I don't expect much from the show. We could probably have put on a much better one out here."
Molina's strong features hardened, but she resisted a reply.
"We'd better find our seats," Matt the peacemaker suggested. But the look he shot Temple was far from meek.
"What if we're seated near them?" Temple whispered hoarsely to Max as they moved away through the crowd.