Midnight Louie lay curled atop the bedspread like the dark center of a daisy. Making the colorful petals scattered around him were half the items in Temple’s entire wardrobe, it seemed.
He still looked miffed from overhearing Savannah Ashleigh play fast and loose with his unique, entrancing street name. Or maybe, Temple thought, he remained in a state of high dudgeon over the cavalier way Yvette and Solange had been passed from flaky niece to possibly delusional and seriously ill aunt.
Temple drove the afternoon’s distractions from her mind.
Normally, she wasted no angst on what to wear. She enjoyed being a girl, as the petite female usually can. Being a freelance public-relations professional required more business suits and heels than the average Sunbelt wardrobe, but “business” in Vegas could be flashier than the whole navy-blue Elsewhere beyond it.
No, she was agonizing over remembering what Max Kinsella had seen or might remember seeing her wear or not, and whether she should try to jog or confuse his missing memory of her when she picked him up at McCarran Airport in … her wristwatch’s inescapably bold dial told her, seventy-five minutes. A PR person is on perpetual deadline; she can’t always be digging out a cell-phone face for the time.
“Louie,” she exhorted in a blend of aggravation and plea, “must you exercise squatter’s rights on my bed every day? If you’re going to lie there like a lump, pick something for me to meet Max in, then.”
He slit open his blasé green eyes, yawned to show much tongue and teeth, and stretched a lazy foreleg to a chartreuse polished-cotton suit.
“He’ll sure spot me in a crowd if I wear that,” Temple admitted, “and it matches the lighter streaks in your eyes—not that you’re going with me this time.”
With the outfit determined by a clawing instead of drawing lots, Temple next had to confront a deeper problem. To wear her Miracle Bra or not, as she usually did with that figure-flattening suit.
No. She should dress as if retrieving a maiden aunt … although her aunt Kit Carlson, now Mrs. Aldo Fontana, was much too chic for the role. A Miracle Bra would be … calculating … could be misinterpreted. In no way would it be actually inciting, despite her foolish hopes when buying it.
Red patent high-heeled sandals and matching tote bag lifted her spirits if not her bustline. She surveyed herself in the mirror. A petite woman can wear just about everything that is not voluminous or large-patterned. At least her longer, dark strawberry-copper hair color softened the red-and-lime-green, escaped-from-a-jelly-bean-jar look.
Max was not the jelly-bean type. He could spot her easily and then go, Ick, I could never have slept with that woman, even in my right mind. And it was true; they’d made an odd couple—the tall, dark, mysterious master magician and the short, firecracker-red-haired PR hotshot.
You’re supposed to know me.
Those were among the first words she’d heard on her cell phone only moments after she’d finished talking to Matt just last night. She hadn’t instantly recognized the voice, but the call was from Northern Ireland, and the caller admitted he’d been drinking.
Temple was not used to hearing from melancholy, drunk ex-boyfriends. She didn’t have that many, for one thing. For another, Max had been far more than a boyfriend.
She glanced at the glittering Art Deco ring on her left hand. Matt had bought it where the movie stars shopped (and borrowed for the Red Carpet), Fred Leighton’s Vegas vintage-rocks store. Matt had gone from a vow of poverty to making enough money to needing an agent. He’d rather give it away and knew she cherished vintage things, but sometimes she didn’t wear the valuable ring going out alone, for security reasons.
To wear or not to wear. Rubies matched her red shoes and tote bag. Diamonds matched everything. Wear. Max had always been a realist.
So. She’d do her duty, shepherd him back into town, and then get as far away from him as fast as possible … except duty, she knew, had a way of slopping over established borders of behavior. If only Aunt Kit had returned from her honeymoon a day earlier than she had to advise her! She was sure Kit would be there to lap up the gory details afterward, though.
Temple marched out of her condo to follow the circular hallway to the single elevator, not reveling in its touches of burled wood and chrome as she usually did. The fifties-era round building had an eccentric array of differently laid-out units. It was only five stories at the penthouse level, and the small lobby was usually deserted at midday.
“Well, don’t you look spiffy, kiddo!”
Oops. Today of all days, Electra Lark, landlady, would happen to be waiting for the elevator. Or just lurking to make trouble for Temple.
“Um, thanks,” Temple said. “You don’t think this outfit is too … garish?”
“Since when did ‘garish’ bother you or me or Vegas, Temple honey?”
Electra’s halo of white hair was zebra-striped today, with black glitter. Her capacious muumuu was leopard print, and her lipstick was orangutan orange. She was a zoo gone amok.
“Silly of me to worry,” Temple said. “I’ve got to run.”
“Oh?” Nosy landlady was a cliché Electra took pride in living up to.
“I’ve got a quick pickup at McCarran. Kit’s back,” she semi-lied. “Can’t wait. I’m late, I’m late.”
And she clattered out the door, her spike heels echoing in the high, empty space.
The sun-softened parking lot asphalt forced her to dig in those heels at a sober pace and don her sunglasses before she reached her red Miata. She decided to leave the top up. Some vague notion about not messing her hairdo, or maybe about not being seen going to pick up Max.
You’re supposed to know me.
The voice repeated pitch-perfect in her mind. Every word of that one-way conversation was etched on her memory. No amnesia on this end, unfortunately.
You’re supposed to know me.
That works two ways, dude, Temple thought, starting the Miata. If he didn’t recognize her, that might be the best solution.
Forty minutes later she was in Terminal D, wandering among the famous desert-wildlife cast-concrete sculptures crouched on the shiny terrazzo floor. All five sand-colored critters were larger-than-life enough to dwarf kids and most adults. Temple couldn’t decide which one to station herself beside.
The sluggish bulk of the desert tortoise really wasn’t her speed. The black-tailed jackrabbit hunched into his awesomely long rear legs was the only furry one and reminded Temple that she presently felt like Alice plunging down a dark and mysterious hole.
The scorpion’s upraised stone stinger looked too hostile, as did the low, long Mojave rattlesnake.
The horny toad was spined and spiked like a punk rocker, so ugly it was cute, but had an unfortunate name under the circumstances. Luckily, there were no nameplates on the critters, and the horny toad’s foreleg was just the right size for Tiny Alice to sit upon, so Temple did.
Her watch told her she was twenty minutes early for the first passengers exiting Max’s flight to get through the security checkpoints for arrivals from foreign countries. She began scanning the people pouring from the terminals toward the baggage-claim area anyway, mentally phrasing how she’d explain this to Matt, in person, when he arrived on his flight from Chicago in three days.
He was stranded in Ireland without a memory, but with the IRA after him again. Or somebody. His traveling companion was dead. No, I don’t know “Why me?” Someone must have told him about me. I couldn’t just … leave him out there. Christian charity.
“Only redhead sitting on a toadstool. You must be Temple,” said a voice behind her.
She jumped up and spun around at the same time. “How’d you get through so fast, and past me?”
“I’m told I was a magician.”
They stared at each other, strangers.
“You look…” she began.
“Ghastly?”
She almost retorted, Ghostly.
His skin was washed out, not just pale, despite the deliberate smudge of a three-day beard. His expensive wrinkle-shedding clothes weren’t the invariable black, but a designer shade of ultradark moss green. He seemed even taller, maybe because he was even thinner. A huge duffel bag crouched like a giant desert lizard at his feet, and he was leaning on a cane like Dr. House of House, the TV show.
“You look … not like yourself,” Temple finally answered.
“Good,” he said.
Max wore sunglasses, so she couldn’t see his blue eyes, but she sensed him looking her up and down, too. Someone needed to say something next; it might as well be her.
“I, ah, wanted to make sure you couldn’t fail to spot me.”
“Your eye-catching ensemble does remind me of a Christmas ornament that’s gone terribly wrong … but this is the first time I’ve smiled in four days. Your hair color alone would have done the recognition job, Red.”
“You never called me that.”
“What did I call you?”
Your paprika girl.
“Temple. Doesn’t allow for nicknames. And you’ve never seen my hair this color.”
“What color was it?”
“The natural, really red.”
“You needed a new look?”
“I needed a disguise. Long story.”
“At least you have one. What are you going to do with me?”
Good question. Luckily, she had an answer. “I thought you’d want to see if the Strip rang any bells, and at least eat something other than travel food.”
He nodded as they joined the crowds flowing around them. Temple was used to keeping up with taller people, but she found herself slowing her pace.
I’ve got two recently broken legs that will ache in this blasted damp weather for the rest of my life if I stay in the damned country.…
“I’m in the parking lot,” Temple said, “but I drive a … Miata.”
She saw the fine lines at the outer edges of his eyes wince.
“You own a Maxima,” she reassured him.
He winced again. “Am I that egotistical, or do I just have a corny sense of humor?”
“A bit of both.” She smiled. “The car is black, like what you always wear.”
“I had a feeling I was drawn to the color too much for my own safety.”
“I’m … taking you to dinner. An orientation exercise.”
“I suppose I owe you whatever explanation I can remember. Will that restaurant have a bar? This could be a ‘bumpy night.’”
She smiled again, this time at the famous Bette Davis line. He remembered some things just fine.
“You’ve had a long flight,” she said. “I planned on stopping for an early dinner so you can stretch your legs. Or would that be too much right now?”
“I’ve been alone for four days. I could use some apparently familiar company.”
“Aside from the awkwardness,” Temple confessed, “I’m dying of curiosity.”
“Me too,” Max said.
* * *
“Why are you doing this, curiosity aside?” Max asked ten minutes later. He’d folded himself like an origami napkin into the Miata’s front seat after jamming his crushable duffel bag into what passed as a trunk.
“I’m supposed to know you.” Temple paused in unfastening the convertible top.
He didn’t recognize the near-quote as his. She got out of the car to fold down the top. As she’d anticipated, not enough headroom for Max. He’d never ridden in her Miata, although she’d been a frequent passenger in his cars.
His head turned to follow her around the small car. “You’re ‘supposed to know me,’ but now you don’t, I see. I don’t even know ‘me.’”
“Do you … remember … know … me at all?”
He shook his head. “Oh, wait.”
Temple’s breath caught in her chest as she stood still.
“I know you’re a generous woman to do this,” he said.
Letdown.
“Girl Scout,” she agreed.
They were back to banalities, which was a relief, Temple thought, as she returned to the driver’s seat.
McCarran Airport was on Wayne Newton Boulevard, and you could see the multinational panorama of the major Strip hotels on the flat desert landscape. Temple drove up the Strip, passing the landmarks: the Luxor, the MGM Grand, the Goliath, the Crystal Phoenix, Caesars Palace, the Bellagio, the Paris, the Wynn, and the Venetian. She turned around and cruised down the Strip’s other side. Max’s sunglasses gazed at the exotic views on both sides, but his mind seemed a continent away.
“I made dinner reservations at a steak house,” Temple said at last. “I know it was an ungodly long flight. I can cancel.”
Her words seem to jolt Max out of his spell. “Yes, but no. Long flight, don’t cancel. A prime, rare American steak is just the medicine I need.”
“We’ll be the first seating, so the place will be quiet at this hour. It’s white-tablecloth expensive but four-star. And I reserved a banquette table for four, so you can sit on cushy leather and stretch your legs out under the empty seat kitty-corner.”
“And I let you get away?”
Temple didn’t answer. She couldn’t. He had let her get away, probably for her own safety, judging from what had happened to him.
“That was too … too flip,” he said. “Sorry.”
“Wait’ll you see this place and the menu, then you’ll really be sorry,” Temple said, her usual composure back and sassy. “I need to … orient you to some things. We can answer each other’s burning questions over dinner while you get a break from riding in my pip-squeak car.”
“Thoughtful, but don’t let this cane mislead you. I stopped using one, then I … reinjured myself a little recently, and then came the endless flights. You’re right that explaining myself and your explaining me to me should be on neutral ground.”
“Gosh, you’re way more agreeable than you used to be.”
He grinned for the first time. “I was hoping to learn I was a cantankerous bastard.”
She just smiled and concentrated on her driving.
He read the giant “ph” sign as she turned off the Strip into an entrance driveway. “Isn’t that something to do with skin care?”
“Planet Hollywood.” She nodded at the building’s top that spelled out the words in uncapitalized white neon, understated for Vegas.
“It’s an entire hotel now,” he asked, “not just a restaurant?”
It had been for four years, and Max had only been gone a couple months. She felt a sharp interior wrench to realize how much personal history he’d lost in such a short time.
“Yup,” Temple said. “I find this the classiest interior on the Strip, aside from the Crystal Phoenix. We’re a bit early because you came through faster than I anticipated, so we can have a cocktail at the Living Room bar.”
“Sounds cozy,” Max said, struggling to exit the Miata while the doorman held out a hand for his cane. The parking valet saw Temple out.
“Do you remember any Vegas hotels?” she asked as they entered and were instantly immersed in a gigantic, dim, cool space where even the gaudy slot machines looked primped for a Red Carpet stroll.
“The Crystal Phoenix rang a bell,” Max said. “Lots of high-end crystal.”
“A client of mine,” she said.
“This place too?”
“Not. I’m a one-woman operation. I just like the ambiance here.”
“Aha. That’ll betray a lot about you.”
“Not hard. I’m wearing a fifties-vintage suit and this place is understated Art Deco, unless it’s overstated Art Deco.”
“Vintage is your thing, really?”
He had to study the damn suit, of course. Temple felt an unreasonable pang for her missing Miracle Bra.
“Chartreuse was hot in the nineteen-fifties,” she said, “and classic suits are classic suits.”
“Chartreuse is hot in twenty-somethings, too.”
No comment. Temple bustled across the busy patterned carpeting all casinos demanded for maintenance to a pair of escalators set between towering, color-changing rectangular lights.
“I forgot. Can you do escalators?” she asked, looking back. “Where’s your cane?”
“Sure. Saves steps.” He patted the side pocket of his long, European-styled blazer. “The cane is collapsible.”
They glided up, surveying the subdued casino below, nearing the solid ceiling blocks of marquee-shaped neon lighting that kept shifting colors.
“I commend subtle,” Max said.
“I’m not,” Temple said.
“I like honesty better.”
“You must be drawing on memory to venture opinions.”
“I know what I like,” he said. “I just don’t remember why or who or when or where. Or what.” He slipped his sunglasses into his inside breast pocket.
Even in the muted lighting, she could see his features’ new gauntness and a healing forehead gash the frames had obscured. And a haunted look of loss in his eyes.
Or what with whom. Temple diverted herself back to the tour-guide role. “Come into my fave parlor on the Strip.”
They turned left and they were there. Venetian glass-framed mirrors seemed to float on hanging walls of red velvet curtains. The Living Room was furnished with low bronze leather sofas and tiny bronze metal–sculpted cocktail tables. A spectacularly gilt-rimmed dome hosted a glittering chandelier that reflected in the metal and glass bar.
Thankfully, Max was impressed. She was more Hollywood than he. “Gloriously decadent. Something from an Anne Rice vampire novel.”
Max had read Rice? She’d never known that before.
Only a few customers impeded the view. When the sleek cocktail waitress offered a small padded menu of signature drinks from the polished black altar of the towering bar, something quickly caught Temple’s eye.
“An Albino Vampire?” Max asked, following her gaze. “Like a Chocolatini, the menu says, but with white chocolate and Chambord.”
“White chocolate and raspberry.” Temple needed to loosen her tension, and this sounded like dessert. “What about it, Rice reader?”
“A little girly, but you’re driving, after a long dinner.”
“It’s got surprising kick,” the waitress told Max.
“A Vegas motto,” he said. After she left, he noted, “I hope you can stake me for a couple days.”
“I was planning on it. Do you have access to any operating funds here at all?”
“Since I’m told I was pulled out of some local nightclub dressed as a bungee-jumping maniac advertising himself as the ‘Phantom Mage,’ I had no ID, no credit cards, nothing. But I did have—”
Max stopped. “I need a drink before I go any further. What about you?” He glanced at the vintage ruby-and-diamond ring on her third finger, left hand. “What did you know about my sudden … absence?”
“Next to nothing. You’d been … withdrawing. You’d never told me about your Phantom Mage escapade. There were reports a nameless performer had crashed into the polished black walls of the Neon Nightmare club when a bungee cord broke. Rumors said he’d died and had been taken away by an emergency crew. Yet no one matching those circumstances had ended up at a local hospital. So was it you, or some other masked magician? I didn’t like to think you’d leave without telling me if you could, but you’d been acting strange lately.”
“In what way?”
“In pretty much encouraging me to encourage a friend into turning more than.” She fanned the fingers on her left hand.
“Another magic trick. I was told about Matt Devine, yeah.”
“You remember him?”
“Only from the radio station Web site I saw in Europe. I saw yours, too, so you really didn’t need to don the jelly-bean colors.”
“How? Where?”
“It’s called the World Wide Web for a reason.”
He paused while the martini glasses and their white contents with a setting sun of red in the bottom’s V were set before them. Temple raised a right forefinger for the bill. They had a dinner reservation to get to.
“We’d better sip some booze before I go on,” Max suggested. “It’ll get a little heavy from here on.”
She lifted the glass. “I’m sorry, but ‘Cheers’ anyway.”
“Cheers,” he replied in the hasty, absent, British way.
Their glass rims tinged together. After a couple sips, Max asked, “What’s in these things?”
“Vodka and white Crème de Cacao, besides the other liqueurs.”
“All booze,” he said. “Great. Are we there yet? Because I’m afraid I need to report a resurrection and death.”
Temple was struck by the phrase’s reversal of the religious “death and resurrection.” She was wishing Matt was here; this was starting to sound like a confession.
“Did you know,” Max asked, “a man named Garry Randolph?”
“I’ll do like you and say the name sounds vaguely familiar for some reason, but I can’t attach any memories to it.”
“Maybe because you never knew him, except in disguise.”
She shook her head and sipped her drink. She could feel the tension draining down her neck and arms.
“And shortly after, dead, at that,” Max added.
“Are you talking about the recently dead Synth magician from the Neon Nightmare? I thought his name was known.”
“No. That place is really knocking off magicians, isn’t it?”
“Apparently. Back to Garry Randolph. It’s not an exactly memorable name,” she said.
“Gandolph make it easier?”
“Gandolph!” Temple sat up and put her drink down. “The Great. The magician and your mentor and partner in counterterrorism. He died last Halloween at the crazy Haunted House attraction, where a bunch of psychics were trying to bring back Harry Houdini. He was disguised, and was rather scarily convincing, as a flaky, overripe female psychic.”
Max’s lips quirked on the glass rim as he drank more Albino Vampire.
“Oh, Garry could carry off anything. No, Temple, if I may call you that, he didn’t die. Like a lot of magicians, he was accustomed to using doubles in his act, and did so there, which was a subtle tribute to Houdini, because Harry’d done that too.”
“How did … Garry get away with it?” Temple asked. “He must have put his ID on the dead double and allowed him to be buried in his place.” She glanced hard at Max. “Like you, it was convenient to vanish completely from the hounds of your earlier counterterrorism work on the Continent and in the British Isles.”
“Brava,” Max toasted her, shutting his eyes as he swallowed.
Temple had to continue speculating aloud. “You said … ‘resurrection and death.’ You don’t mean … Gandolph?”
The man who was my only family for half my life is dead, as good as assassinated, and I suppose I’m next on the list.
Temple wanted to be sure she understood. “Garry … Gandolph, your old mentor and former partner in magic and espionage. He’s really dead now?”
“Really dead. Not a double in sight, would God there had been. Irony incarnate. I’d made him fasten his seat belt as we were fleeing both illegal surviving wings of the IRA. Never had time to fasten mine. I was driving.”
“Despite your mending legs and mussed-up mind? Oh, Max! You hit your head on the windshield, didn’t you? And your legs and body must have been brutally jolted.”
“Yeah. Absolutely accurate deductions. You are good. Can you deduce what happened when our car got caught in the crossfire?”
She shook her head.
“I had to brake fast then spurt away to get our pursuers shooting at each other instead of us. Braking so hard thrust me forward just as the bullet meant for my head passed behind me and—”
“—and into Gandolph held upright by his seat belt. Max. That’s beyond awful. I’m … so sorry.”
“Got this gash”—he touched it—“from the windshield, not the bullet. Garry died instantly, but I couldn’t leave him.”
“You had to.”
Max nodded. “That’s what he said.”
Temple didn’t have a reaction to that solemn belief. She didn’t doubt Max had “heard” his mentor’s voice between the daze of his head blow and realizing the older man was dead.
Max set down an empty martini glass with a few watery drops of red at the bottom. Her glass was still half full. Or half empty, like Max’s eyes.
“I couldn’t even make arrangements for the body. I had to drop him and the car off near some of the Irish contacts he’d made. He had colleagues over there from years ago. I trust they had the decency to bury him with some ceremony. He had no … other family.”
The man who was my only family for half my life is dead.…
“Speaking of family,” Temple said, “you must not remember, even know, how to contact your own here in the U.S. now.”
“Apparently we’ve been estranged for almost twenty years, since my cousin Sean died in that IRA bombing in Ulster. I would imagine the Kellys and the Kinsellas had trouble dealing with one son lost, one son saved.”
“That’s true,” Temple said. “You told me that pulling away from both families was your choice. Survivor’s guilt infected your immediate family as well as you.”
Max rubbed the back of his neck as if reliving the fatal impact. “I have a double dose of that now, for sure.”
“So maybe you should just concentrate on the surviving part for a while.”
He looked up at Temple. Her tone had been matter-of-fact.
“I can’t argue.” He sounded surprised.
“And we need to move downstairs for dinner.”
“Garry was right about you.”
“In what way?”
“You’re easy to underestimate, but hard to beat.”
I’ve been told by the only man I ever trusted you’re a pretty smart and gutsy girl … .
Temple handed him her glass. “Finish my Vampire. It was fifteen bucks. Then we’ll go downstairs to get you a decent dinner and you can continue your traveler’s tale.”
“Yes, ma’am,” he said, draining the glass.
He sat back, then heaved himself up from the low couch without needing Temple’s support, although she’d come around to stand by him.
“If I leaned on you,” he commented, “you’d snap like a toothpick.”
“Try me.”
But he didn’t have to. He moved slowly but certainly out of the Living Room to the escalators. Temple let him lead, watching his steps. Gandolph still alive all those months … Max must have known that. He had been living in “dead” Gandolph’s house, had “inherited” it. Which now was absolute truth.
She would have given them both hell for the secrecy, and Max for leaving her in the dark so long, but who could lay recriminations on an injured, mourning man?
Not Temple.
Not until Max was well and himself and then … she might not be Irish but she had the temperamental fire to match her natural hair color.