Cat In A Topaz Tango

“Max would have been gone by then.”

“Right. And he was.”

“Then how did you get in?”

“You don’t have a need to know.”

“You broke in. But what about the woman who lived there?”

“What woman? The house was unoccupied.”

“The aging chorus girl.”

“Really? You saw her?”

“Yes, I went to the house and she said she’d bought it. She was moved in totally, every stick of Max’s furnishings was gone, even the magical props in storage.”

“The opium bed?” Molina asked quietly.

“The opium bed, the trick boxes . . . wait! How do you know about the opium bed?”

“I saw it. The house was fully furnished.”

“I was there on a Tuesday night.”

“I was there the following Sunday.”

Each was silent and each communed with her drink again.

“Then—” Temple began, choking back fear, pain, and rage.

“It was a magician’s trick,” Molina declared, “a vanishing act on a house-moving scale. You saw the illusions, the end result of it. I saw the stage restored to normal.”

“But why?”

“He wanted to be completely out of your life, leaving you free to do what you did. Forget him, marry Matt.”

“But . . . why?”

“A rolling stone gathers no moss. Maybe the same old story. The demons from his past were after him again and he wanted you out of danger.”

Temple sat there feeling Zoe Chloe Ozone melting off her body like a greasepaint clown face. Was Max gone, or dead? Dead or gone? Or were they just the same thing?

“You said no one was there,” she told Molina, looking for a hole in her story. “Who cut you then?”

“I have no idea. True. The house was dark. I heard someone moving around after I’d gotten in. A strange tearing sound in one of the rooms. I can tell you Kinsella’s clothes were slashed to ribbons in one closet.”

Temple gasped. “Who’d do that?”

“I’d had a stalker at my home the past few weeks. I thought it was Kinsella.”

“Max? Stalk you? Are you crazy?”

Molina shrugged that one off. Temple noticed she wasn’t sharing what Matt had gleaned: that she thought Max had come on to her once, during a physical showdown that had turned psychological.

“Now,” Molina said, all policewoman, “I’m beginning to think that same stalker was in his house that night. That’s when I began to believe that he might be ‘innocent’ in some ways. I almost could make a case for my stalker being his stalker. And don’t ask me why, because that motive is very cloudy and twisted.”

“And the stalker cut you?”

Molina nodded. “I confronted the person in the hallway. A large butcher knife was missing from the kitchen block as I came in, I recalled too late. My scar will make Matt’s look like a needle scrape.”

Temple nodded. “Someone hateful after Max. I’d almost think it was that woman who cut Matt, except she’s dead. But her associates need not be.”

“The woman from Max’s counterterrorism past that Matt keeps talking about?”

Temple nodded, dazed and almost feeling knifed herself.

“Could be,” Molina said. “That’s all IRA stuff, though, and they’re pretty old news. Inactive. Terrorism is a wholly owned subsidiary of Al-Qaeda and suicide bombers now.”

“You don’t suppose Max went off to work on that front?” Temple asked with a shudder.

“Wouldn’t seem his culture, but he is a chameleon of sorts. No, there’s something rotten going on in Vegas tied into all this, but I have no idea what it is.”

“So,” said Temple, finishing her martini and actually debating ordering another. “Matt will be okay now that you told me it looks like Max stage-managed his own vanishing act and is alive and well and somewhere far away?”

“He didn’t want to be the one to tell you he knew Max had pulled another now-you-see-him, now-you-don’t. But he didn’t want to be the one to keep you in the dark, either.”

“Matt has a pretty fine meter on his conscience, doesn’t he?”

Molina nodded. “Yes, he does. An excellent thing in a man.” She drained her glass. “You do realize that Max made it look like he was gone to end any hope you might have of a relationship.”

“He’d been . . . drawing away lately. In a way, I wasn’t surprised.”

“Or . . . he could have known that he was again the target of some nasty international assassins and he wanted you out of the way forever.”

“Possible. Max takes his personal responsibilities seriously.”

“Or, to be totally realistic, he may have been taken out by those same shadowy figures and the scene set up to convince the one constant in his life that any search for him was futile.”

Temple would not tear up in front of Molina. Or choke on her words. “Yes, that too.”

There was a pause. Was it possible that Molina was choking on something too, like regret?

She finally spoke again. “What say we get another round and toast your fiancé.”

Temple assumed she shouldn’t ask which one, the old or the new.

Maybe this round they could discuss the possible sins and saving graces of Rafi Nadir and Dirty Larry Podesta. Who would ever have thought?

“Where’s that pesky cat of yours, anyway?” Molina asked as they returned from the bar.

“Louie seems to have made some new friends at the Oasis. It’s always good to have connections in this town.”