Cat In A White Tie And Tails

Mira was threatening to get teary, so Temple jumped in with a comment. “Technological and spiritual. That’s our media guy, Mr. Midnight.” She shuffled through the high school yearbook again. “These sketches aren’t bad. Captain Marvel fighting off the octopus is pretty anatomically correct. I mean muscle-wise.”

“Why would Captain Marvel fight off an octopus? That would be Aquaman.”

Temple was amused to see Matt grabbing the page and turning it his way to study the raw pencil sketches. She exchanged a knowing “boys will be boys” look with Mira.

Matt was frowning even more once he had the sketch right side up.

“This is … this is traced. It’s a copy of that classical sculpture in the Vatican collection.”

Mira was astounded to the point of laughter. “Clifford? Drawing a classical sculpture in high school? Matt, maybe he was just a regular boy once, but he got caught up in the gangs once he got out. He concentrated on dressing sharp and getting jobs he could hang out on street corners to do.”

“You married him graduation summer,” Matt reminded her, and himself. “Maybe you saw the boy who drew.”

“I was one of ‘those girls’ who graduated with whispers, not hope and celebration. Clifford didn’t seem so bad at first. No one else would have me.”

Temple looked down, finding her fingers smoothing the slick cover of the old yearbook. The same whispers haunted her high school graduating class. This girl. That condition. And then she vanished. It never ended. Odd about the Vatican preserving all those old Greek and Roman statues, most naked and anatomically correct, and all revived in the age of Michelangelo. Comic book supermen were modeled on those muscular ancient gods and heroes.…

Temple grabbed the sketch Matt was regarding with an expression half puzzled and half repulsed.

“I know what statue you’re thinking of,” she told him. “It was the man who angered the gods and they sent a sea serpent to kill him and his sons. It’s an amazing evocation of sheer human struggle and agony … and it’s also—wait for it—very similar to the man fighting a serpent constellation that was just in the news recently.”

“Serpent. Constellation?” Mira was confused. “Isn’t Constellation a jet plane name, like those you drew when you were a kid, Matt?”

“Not in this case,” Temple said. “I mean the constellations of stars in the sky the ancient Greeks named, just as they sculpted the ‘man versus sea monster’ statue. Matt.” She eyed him in triumph. “This is not the star map, but the full, founding image of the constellation called Ophiuchus.”

“Oh-fee-you-cuss?” Mira was seriously confused. “Or ‘Oh, fie! You cuss?’”

“The accent is on the ‘you’ part,” Matt said. “And nobody cusses.”

“It’s ancient Greek,” Temple explained.

“It certainly is to me.” Mira’s smile was bemused.

Temple spelled it out for her. “Just think of it rhyming with ‘mucous.’”

“I’d rather not. You kids.” Mira was chuckling now. “Krys, and now you two. I think the younger generations speak in code.”

“This may have been used as a code by some very bad people,” Temple said. “Ophiucus is the lost thirteenth sign of the zodiac that a secret society in Las Vegas called the Synth took for its signature. Matt’s tracking Cliff Effinger to Vegas might have kicked off a sequence of crimes tied to the conspiracy of magicians and … other worse elements.”

“The mob?” Mira asked.

“Those two catnappers sure were.” Temple was also thinking of the international terrorists Max had been tangling with half his life.

“Whatever is going on,” Matt said, “Effinger must have salted away something in these memorabilia that will shake Las Vegas to its criminal roots.”

“Clifford was still using me,” Mira said, furious and showing it. “That ends here and now.”

Krys came charging in from the depths of the apartment … the two hundred private square feet of it otherwise known as her bedroom.

“Squee!” she shouted. “People! Where’s that so not-Manx cat? I’m gonna make him a YouTube star.”

“You don’t like him,” Temple pointed out. “Or me.”

“That’s before I saw the local TV news hot flash on the Internet. That is so cool what he did. A major piece of pussycat performance art. And the centerpiece is that totally shallow materialistic icon, the leopard-pattern purse-pet bag! All the scene lacks is a stiletto heel, so if you’ll leave one behind, Tempie dear, I’ll immortalize it in 3-D.”

Temple rose, trying not to overturn her kitchen chair. “If I leave it behind, it’ll be implanted in someone’s shallow, competitive irreverent rear end.”

“Tush,” Krys said. “All’s forgiven. You rock. You all have to come into my room and get a load of Five News footage.”

Temple opened her laptop on the kitchen table. “Show us right here and now.”

“O-kay.” Krys commandeered Temple’s seat and moved the laptop cursor to a browser, then a news page. Listed along the right side were the local items.