Cat In A White Tie And Tails

“Sure. You think it would help solve the case?”

“I think it might make my sick friend happy.” Or not. She had no idea what would break through Max’s memory loss, or what would set him back.

Temple rose and tucked the photo carefully into a hard-sided folder in her tote bag. “Thanks, Louise. You’ve been a great help.”

“Ditto.” Louise stood to shake hands with her.

Temple trotted out to the clickety-chuckle of computer keyboards, hoping they weren’t laughing at her for pursuing such a long shot.

Chapter 42

Back to School

Max strolled through the shady thronging university campus. It was almost as incredibly lush and green as Ireland. Acacia, sycamore, and oak trees thrived among the cacti and majestic desert willows. Discreet signs advised that the landscaping was desert-appropriate and water-saving. Max tried to let natural beauty and memory wash wavelike over him under the blazing blue sky, though he doubted he’d had many reasons to visit the site when he’d lived here earlier.

Students rolled past him in waves, energetic and vital, chirping like grasshoppers. They made him smile. Why did he feel so old?

“Mr. Randolph,” a female voice hailed him, stunned him.

It was throaty and mature.

He turned. She was blond, she was confidently striding toward him, and she was the only woman he remembered ever sleeping with.

“Miss Schneider.” Revienne. Her lovely first name, the word in French for “return.” And here she was again, a beautiful but bad penny turning up?

Her smile remained dazzling yet mysterious. “So whom do I discover on this amazing campus in the entertainment capital of the world but my very recent … shall we say, exchange student from abroad?”

He stared at her, suspicious yet enthralled.

“And you’re walking well. Very well,” she added encouragingly. Like a teacher.

Normally, people would say, “You’re looking well.” No. This was a renowned psychiatrist, and a clever one. With one phrase she revived every moment of their recent escape/escapade through Switzerland. You’re walking well.

“Thanks,” he said. “Care to stroll, then?”

She hoisted a gold-metallic leather bag large enough to hold papers to her shoulder. A Prada silk scarf was loosely knotted around one strap. The gesture released a whisper of perfume into the dry desert air.

“This entire campus is designated as an arboretum,” she commented, adopting the role of tour guide. “Isn’t it lovely? I have no pressing engagements so I took a walk.”

“That’s lovely too.”

“What about you? What are you doing here, Mr. Randolph?”

“Not skiing in St. Moritz,” he said, reviving the fiction that he’d been injured in a skiing accident and had naturally ended up at a Swiss clinic. The four-week coma had not been so natural. And he’d let her think Garry’s surname was his. That was how he had been registered at the clinic.

“And your memory, it is returning?” she asked.

“In bits and pieces. Enough to make things … interesting.”

They ambled together, staid adults among hurrying students on foot and riding bikes.

“What an astounding coincidence,” she said in her perfect but charmingly inflected accent, an icing of German, a tantalizing trace of French, to match her genes.

“Astounding,” he agreed. Affably.

“I had no idea you had links to this area, this city.”

“I didn’t either.”

“How are you really doing?”

The question was hardly casual. “Fine, as you see. And you? What brings you here?”

“Business, although an old school friend lives here and we enjoyed a reunion visit. I’d committed to assisting a former mentor from Lyon in a study of his, and am enjoying a visiting professorship on this beautiful campus.”

“In what subject, may I ask?”

“You may ask anything.” Her smile was more Da Vinci Code than Mona Lisa. “Psychology, of course. Herr Doktor Hugo Gruetzmeyer has a guest professorship here.” She stopped walking, not because he needed to. “Why are you here?”

Of course, he was currently pondering the existential meaning of that common query, but he couldn’t afford to seem needy with her, especially of information.

“An excellent place to recuperate. Lots of walking required.”

“On campus, or on the Strip?”

“Both,” he said.

“You seem … more stressed than when you left Zurich.”

“American life. We’re more stressed by nature than Europeans. The ‘save the world’ complex,’ I suppose you’d call it.”

She looked around so he had a chance to sum her up on his supposed turf. Cool, controlled, blond. The Hitchcock thriller movie femme fatale who seemed unapproachable, but who’d unravel at first contact with a stressed Hitchcock everyman who knew too much, or not enough.

She dressed, he realized in this American setting, like so many of the politically ultraconservative women pundits, high heels, short skirts, long blond hair. Barbie for the Tea Party set. This short-skirted suit was ivory linen over a familiar olive green silk camisole.

“You’re wearing part of the ensemble I bought you in Zurich,” Max noted, sounding pleased.

“Yes, thank you. You noticed.”