Cat In An Ultramarine Scheme

“Why’d you think the Crystal Phoenix put the Haunted Mine Ride in the Jersey Joe Jackson attraction, girl?” Spuds asked. “During those early construction days, rails ran right nearby. We were miners, for mercy’s sake! We just excavated ourselves under the hotel-to-be property and scooted those silver-dollar-loaded cars down there and covered up the shaft.”

Temple’s mouth was open again.

“Only we ended up getting the shaft,” Wild Blue complained. “Nothin’ we could do about it. Jersey Joe seemed to have spread the wealth from there, to hiding places in the distant desert and right under our feet, and nothing we could do about it but stew.”

“Then the lost vault was real?” Temple asked.

“Sure.” Eightball shook his head at that latest travesty. “It was real hard to keep our composures, watching that sucker getting opened in front of God and TV cameras and that weasely Crawford Buchanan and fancy man from down Rio way.”

“Looks like that dead magician fellow inside got the same shaft we did,” Pitchblende said, puffing on his now-smoking pipe.

“What if the vault had been loaded to the gills with silver dollars from that robbery?” Temple wondered.

Eightball chuckled. “That’s been dead to us for decades. Those ill-gotten gains are too infamous to do anybody any good now. ’Cept gettin’ new greedy fools killed. Poor Boots started the chain letter of deceit from hell, and Jersey Joe was the next recipient.”

“So you’re thinking Jersey Joe never gave the mob the money, but he never had a worry-free day in his life from then on,” Temple said.

“Yup.” Cranky had returned from the test kitchen with an opened longneck. “That’s why he never faced us guys again.”

“Maybe he thought you’d get the ‘concrete bathtub’ treatment like Boots if you were linked to the robbery,” Temple suggested.

The stunned silence showed they’d never thought of that.

“Jersey Joe was cheatin’ us because he was protectin’ us?” Pitchblende asked in slow, four-four time.

“He didn’t live much of the high life after the Joshua Tree went up,” Temple pointed out. “After all, he’s famous for what he hid and didn’t use. And, Eightball, didn’t your granddaughter, Jill, find some of the stash?”

“Yeah, that was a fluke,” Eightball said, “and by then any money we couldn’t give Jilly for college and such was moot. She was already grown.”

“But she’s played the World Championship Poker game,” Wild Bill pointed out, “and is the top-ranking female. Wouldn’t have happened it she hadn’t grown up playing Gin Rummy and Old Maid and poker with us old coots when we were all hidin’ out for years in that ghost town.”

“I guess,” Eightball said, beaming even as he shrugged at their ward’s accomplishments.

“And now,” Temple pointed out, “the very drying up of Lake Mead that revealed the resting place of your old associate, Boots, is putting the light of day on the puzzling actions and motivations of another old associate who may have betrayed you all for your own good.”

Eightball considered, nodded his head, then glared at her.

“You are an inveterate and unreformed Little Mary Sunshine, did you know that, Miss Temple Barr?”

“Not really.” She cringed a bit inside. These guys had endured forty years of deprivation, loneliness, and justifiable anger. Who was she to put a better spin on it?

“Get a whole round of those beers, Cranky,” Eightball ordered. “We need to drink a long-delayed toast to Boots Benson and Jersey Joe Jackson, may they finally rest in peace, boots and bolo tie together, and to Miss Temple Barr: may forever she wave, at Lake Mead or elsewhere, wherever it’s needed.”

An Inspector Calls

When Temple told Van she’d work on the death in the vault solo, she’d hadn’t realized how really solo she was these days.

She was used to a sounding board, but Max was as gone as a Las Vegas tourist on a three-night jag. Now Matt was in Chicago, doing a daily live Amanda Show gig and having serial dinners with his relatives, especially his wary mother and his newly discovered birth father.

“I’ll do some groundwork for you flying up with me on a later visit,” he’d told Temple on the long-distance phone call when she checked in from her car. “I understand you’d want to have a formal wedding in Minneapolis or Chicago for both families, but mine is a mess right now. I don’t want their ancient issues clouding the biggest day of our lives. Believe me, I’ve seen how a couple of feuding family members can make a wedding into a battleground no one will ever forget, including the happy couple.”

Temple had nodded, though he couldn’t see. She’d witnessed that too, had attended wedding receptions where pregnant brides’ bitter fathers had too much champagne and blabbed their daughters’ condition to all and sundry, or where best men had needed to confess during the wedding toast that they’d known the bride “in the biblical fashion.” Or worse.