Cat In An Ultramarine Scheme

Czarina sits up straight. “You are accusing Cosimo of being a traitor? Now that he is dead and cannot defend himself?”

“He has no need to defend himself, because he is dead,” Vader Two observes coldly. “And we thought you had dealt with any traitors in your midst when the Phantom Mage hit bottom. Nice spectacular end, by the way. Should have discouraged other weak links, but apparently Sparks—”

“You have no idea whether Cosimo was a traitor or a victim,” the Synth man declares.

“Do you?” is the icy retort.

A silence holds during which you could hear a cat scratching at a flea.

Luckily, Miss Midnight Louise’s constant fishy breath from her high-end Asian cuisine, and my own personal magnetism that repels all vermin as if by magic, have kept us from any such rude personal grooming impulses at the moment.

Obviously, none of the Las Vegas branch of the Synth had considered that Cosimo Sparks could have died a traitor.

“While you lot are examining your consciences,” Vader One says, “and hunting traces of your brains, we will be watching all of you and the case with keen interest.”

“We have kept our eyes too closely on the international situation,” Vader Two further notes, “and left you to your own sorry devices, relying on your self-interest to keep you out of trouble.”

“Alas,” Vader Two purrs again, overdoing it this time in a poor imitation of the real thing, “that approach has not worked. You can count on being the objects of concentrated but hidden observation from now forward.”

“What can we do?” Czarina wails. “Cosimo is dead, and the rest of us might swiftly follow.”

“Consult your crystal ball,” Vader One snarls, sweeping the long cloak back as if brushing them aside so swiftly that the heavy faille material hisses. “Perhaps it has more intelligence than your conjoined brains.”

I am only able to avoid their dramatic exit and accompanying foot stomps by sucking in my stomach and flattening against the black wall.

Another long silence commences, which is unfortunate because I cannot let my breath out until they start yammering again, and the longer they do not, the more certain my breath is to release in an audible windstorm whoosh!

Perishing from self-strangulation is considered pretty kinky these days, and I have no wish to succumb to something the tabloids would have a field day with.

“What nerve!” Carmen finally says, standing up to pace, whipping her own silken cloak around as stylishly as the recently departed Darth Vaders. “They play the long-distance puppet masters for several years, holding us back from our big, uh, reveal, as they say on the extreme-makeover shows, and then dare to blame us for Cosimo’s death.”

“Ah, those extreme make over shows have moved from facial reconstruction to major house renovation,” the Synth man points out.

“I do not care about any of those stupid shows, Hal Herald! Apparently you have no better things to do than watch them. I am thinking about the magic show of the century we were planning for Las Vegas.”

“Last century or this?” Czarina asks dispiritedly, which is a rather sad condition for a medium. “We have been involved with these mysterious money backers almost that long.”

“You did not see this coming,” Hal points out.

“Please,” Czarina urges, “we do not need to quarrel; we need to solve Cosimo’s murder so we can get the foreign investors off our backs.”

“What about the Phantom Mage’s ‘accident’?” Carmen asks. “Or was it murder?”

“Did any of us do it? What about Cosimo?” Hal continues the questions.

“You mean we might have a serial killing going on?” Carmen demands.

“He wasn’t one of us,” Hal notes dismissively. “Just a hokey half-acrobatic magic act that gave a few thrills to the drunken postmidnight crowd. He did no real magic.”

“As if ‘real magic’ is on any of our résumés,” Czarina finally jibes back. “You and Cosimo and the other old-timers, like that Professor Mangel, might have wanted to diddle around tracing magical, mystical schools of history, but we were always a cadre of dreamers and schemers. I happen to think the schemers had the right idea all along. Looks as if Cosimo was more on the schemer side than anyone thought, and maybe the Phantom Mage was too.”

“You are not going back to that old notion that he was Max Kinsella?” Carmen asks.

“Kinsella vanished about the time the Mage crashed, did he not?”

“Yeah, but that was a pattern with him,” Herald points out. “Nothing new.”

“Maybe the reason was new, Hal.”

“That is crazy, Czarina. The Mystifying Max lost his Goliath gig. He may have pretended his contract just expired, but so have all our contracts expired as our venues dried up here in Vegas. Siegfried and Roy were retired by tragedy. Cirque du Soleil kicked the pants out of magic acts, face it. Dumb as the Phantom Mage’s act was, at least he was in the bungee-jumping, costume-wearing vanguard. We’re—” he snaps a flat disk on the mantel into the magnificence of a classic magician’s “topper”—“old hat.”

It is enough to pull a tear out of an aged duct. Not mine, mind you.