Cat In An Alien X-Ray

“Whoa!” She ran into—literally—one of the Fontana brothers.

“You’re breaking the sound barrier,” he commented.

“No time to say hello-goodbye, I’m late,” she threw behind her, White Rabbit–style. She didn’t even have time to ascertain whether she’d nearly slammed into Eduardo, Giuseppe, Rico, Ernesto, Julio, Armando, or Emilio. She knew it wasn’t Nicky, Aldo, or Ralph.

Her toe on its one-inch platform sole (she would go no higher, not even for precious stature) tapped the marble floor in front of the elevators until a set of doors opened.

Temple eeled past the departing passengers and punched the button to the top floor before the elevator had time to change gears and rise instead of sink. And she punched the CLOSE DOORS button on six falling faces of tourists left behind this trip.

Inside, Temple took floor orders from the handful of people who’d slipped in with her and punched them in, toes tapping in rebuke. The other riders got the message. They stayed clear and haunted the elevator doors so they could squeeze out as soon as the car arrived at their floor.

There were times when being petite concentrated a surge of pure energy.

Van’s male assistant was standing by the inner office door to whisk it open while handing her a glass of Crystal Light—her favorite beverage, but one not served at the Crystal Phoenix.

Temple came to a stop at Van’s glass-and-chrome desk and slung her tote bag to the floor. “I’m going to be going to the morgue to identify a body.”

Van, already as pale as the vanilla she was named after, stood behind her desk, caught up in the drama. “Oh, no. Not anybody we know?”

Temple nodded.

“Not anybody we love?”

Temple shook her head, still trying to catch her breath. “Somebody we know and don’t love, which is worse.”

Van was perplexed. “How can that be worse?”

“It’s a murder victim, and I, for one, found him a murder-deserving individual. We could be suspects.”

Van sat in her channeled white leather executive chair. “Us? All? Suspects?”

“Especially the family Fontana.”

Van shook her head and exhaled a hushed “Nooo.” She looked up. “All right, what can we do about it?”

“You don’t want to know who the victim is?”

“I’m sure you’ll tell me when you sit down and catch your breath.”

“Santiago,” Temple said as she did so, “the Phoenix’s Chunnel of Crime designer, personally hired by your husband, Nicky, and suspect for the Cosimo Sparks murder in that very locale.”

“Santiago? Was he still hanging around town?”

“Evidently. That international architectural superstar seemed phony from the get-go. He and Sparks may have planned some shady scheme that kept Santiago here, even under suspicion.”

“The police didn’t have enough evidence to hold him. Oh, if only he’d skedaddled out of the country as fast as he could, Temple! We didn’t have to murder him, we fired him. Given his larger-than-life personality, I’m sure his murder would be spec-tac-u-lar.”

“It was. He’s tabloid news now.”

Van looked puzzled. “Nothing in town has been tabloid headlines lately except that loony UFO dustup on Paradise.… Oh, no!” Van thumped a fist on her glass desktop. “You’re telling me the purported ancient astronaut deposited on ground zero at that loopy UFO project on Paradise was our Santiago? How can you ID him? Wasn’t that man nude?”

“I assume Santiago was capable of that state.”

“And why was he there?”

“He was consulting on the UFO project.”

“Of course. His kind of scam.” Van rested her paler face on her pale hand. “We’ve taken his name off all the publicity for the Phoenix–Gangsters Chunnel of Crime once he was suspected of murder. Isn’t that enough?”

“I’m afraid people—and especially media people—will remember what, and who, brought him to Las Vegas. We need to create a short but sufficiently vague press release saying Santiago had consulted on remodeling projects at the Crystal Phoenix but that position is over and so was all contact with him.”

Van nodded through Temple’s presentation, still stunned.

“And, Van, luckily I’m in place to control the Phoenix link from the other end too.”

“What other end, Temple?”

“Ah, the place on Paradise.”

“You don’t have anything to do with that UFO nuttiness?”

“Don’t I wish.”

“You do! What would make you take on such a flaky client? A supposedly invisible building with a spaceship restaurant on the top?”

“I didn’t really take it on. Officially. I had just started talks with Deja View Associates when the first corpse on the site was found.”

“What?” Van was livid with shock, almost as livid as … a corpse.

“The death didn’t happen there,” Temple assured her. “The police are pretty sure. The site was just used as a body dump.”

“‘Pretty sure’? ‘Just used as a body dump’? And now a second body has been dumped, one associated with the Phoenix. I’m not at all happy about that, Temple.”

Van was amping up her Ice Queen act. She ran a Strip hotel-casino and could take the heat … and dish it out in that icy Devil Wears Prada fashion Meryl Streep had mastered for the film.