“Max is alive?” Matt looked like he’d been poleaxed. “You’ve heard from him, then?”
Matt’s expression remained puzzled. “Wait. You said ‘back.’ In Las Vegas?”
She nodded.
“So…?”
“We were right. Someone tried to kill him.”
“Now he’s back, and the first person he contacted was you?”
“Actually, he called me from abroad and I told him to come back.”
The waiter arrived and handed them menus, waiting to deliver a long, lavish list of the night’s specials.
“We’ll order from the menu, thank you,” Matt said.
“Another round of cocktails, sir?”
“No.” Temple.
“Yes.” Matt.
She eyed their half-full glasses after the waiter left.
“We’ll make short work of these, I’m sure.” Matt grabbed his footed cocktail glass.
“Matt, I told you bald truth, but there are a busload of extenuating circumstances. You would have done the same thing in my place.”
“I kinda doubt that. We’re just getting our new life together … together … and the last thing I—we—need is Max Bloody Kinsella popping out of the woodwork.”
“He’s not Max anymore.”
“Oh, that’d be a real magician’s trick.”
“He has no memory since he came out of a coma a couple weeks ago.”
“He found you fast enough.”
“His, um, counterterrorism cohort, shall I call him?—Gandolph the Great—told him about me. And you. Max didn’t remember us at all. Still doesn’t.”
“You’ve seen him already? While I was gone? And isn’t that Gandolph guy dead?”
“His real name was Garry Randolph. He and his magician persona were presumed dead after that séance at the haunted house last Halloween, but he wasn’t. He was shot dead in Northern Ireland about a week ago days ago. In a car. With Max at the wheel.”
Matt shook his head and worked on the Silver Zombie. “And you say Kitty the Cutter may still be knocking around somewhere, too? Everybody we presumed dead … isn’t. Except for poor Gandolph?”
“That’s about it.”
“Chicago’s looking better every second.” Matt buried his face and expression behind the tall padded menu.
“Matt,” Temple said.
“We’d better eat to offset the drinks. And think.” Matt clapped the menu shut so definitely, Temple jumped.
He sighed and shook his head. “That’s why I love you. Wounded birds will not be left flapping on your doorstep, even when they’re hawks. But I am not deliriously happy.”
The waiter edged toward them. Matt ordered New York steak, medium. Temple wanted to order crow, but settled on flounder.
Matt picked up the “discussion.”
“I see why you wanted to lay this on me in public.”
“No. I wanted you to be relaxed from the flight and the hullabaloo in Chicago and whatever your family’s been up to.”
“You are a born referee, Temple. You want everyone to get a fair chance before they tear each other part. Where’s the resurrected Wonder Boy now?”
“I left him at the house he inherited from Garry Randolph, where he’d lived in hiding after his, um, first return to Las Vegas.”
“After his first abrupt, unexplained disappearance,” Matt said.
“I haven’t seen him since.”
“And that’s been?”
“For two days.”
“And you couldn’t have called me? Warned me?”
“You’d want this over the phone? Look, Matt, you’re not really jealous, are you?”
He thought about it. “No. The counselor in me realizes you’re better off knowing what happened to him. You need the closure, but me, I just want a past that’s laid to rest.”
“As with your stepfather.” Temple nodded, remembering Matt’s tenacity in tracking down the louse. That’s what had brought him to Las Vegas and the Circle Ritz and her. “Laying a past to rest can’t always be literal,” she argued. “Your stepfather is truly and sincerely dead, and he was also pretty harmless by then. If Kathleen O’Connor is still out there … not the case. She seemed to have it in for you as well as for Max. He and Garry found out all about her in Ireland.”
“I wish they all had stayed there,” Matt said as their salads arrived.
The pair of Caesar salads were too lavish to be ignored. They came with a Crystal Phoenix twist: capers instead of anchovies in the dressing. Temple didn’t remember ordering salad. She guessed they both had mechanically OK’d the first item on every course the waiter had thrown at them.
“So,” Matt said, picking at the greens, “Kinsella knows nothing of his past except a lot of juicy stuff about Kathleen O’Connor that he and the late Garry Randolph uncovered in the last week or so?”
Temple nodded. “I didn’t press him for details. He’s … not the same. Both his legs were broken as well as his head in that arranged Neon Nightmare accident. I thought the new revelations were something we should discuss together.”
“You and me.”
She nodded.
“And Max Kinsella?”
She nodded.
“Because…”
“I don’t think any of us will be safe until we lay the mystery of Max’s past with Kathleen O’Connor—or Kathleen O’Connor herself—to rest.”
Matt literally chewed it over.
“You’re the girl gumshoe,” he said. “Look. Here comes our second round and we’ve just killed our first Silver Zombies. Too bad ghosts of the past aren’t that easy to get rid of.”