Cat In A Quicksilver Caper

“You’ve got a lot of catch-up work here at the New Millennium, I know, Miss Barr,” Detective Alch said. “I’ll drive you over personally and have you back ASAP.”

“Where’s your partner, the petite fleur of the Crimes Against Persons unit?”

Alch guffawed at that description. “ ‘Petite fleur’ with dragonclaw thorns. Sorry, no Su on board. Naw, they always send me on these unpleasant runs. Figure I’ll ease along the poor civilian who has to gawk at dead bodies.”

“Quite a compliment,” Temple allowed. “Molina knows I wouldn’t do it if she asked.”

“Now of course you would. You’re a good citizen. Clear up this thing with a solid ID, and who knows what suspects we could find other than your boyfriend.”

“You know?”

“It’s my job to put two and two together, and you two have been a duo for a long time.”

“A long time,” Temple repeated.

By then Morrie Alch had her out the door and was ushering her into the front seat of an unmarked police car. It was a nondescript vehicle except for the flat computer screen and keyboard and two-way radio enthroned on the console.

“This Shangri-La,” Alch mused as he spiraled the car out of the shadowy hotel parking ramp into the sunlight glare of jammed near-Strip traffic. “I hear she snookered you once.”

“We talking pool?”

“I’m talking sweet-talking you out of the audience and onto the stage, where she relieved you of a valuable ring. Some magic trick. The lieutenant happened to be there.”

“I remember. But the police couldn’t find any way to charge Shangri-La with anything, ring snatching or drug smuggling. So, now that she’s dead months later, I’m a suspect?”

Alch chuckled like a befuddled uncle. “Maybe. If you really liked that ring, and what’s not to like about a Tiffany ring from your best beau?”

Temple could see why Alch pulled escort duty to the presumed bereaved so often. She appreciated the quaint old-fashioned way he phrased her romantic situation while pointing out her potential for revenge for her traumatic past encounter with Shangri-La.

“No, you’re not a suspect,” he reassured her. “Not to me.” And panicked her. “I’m just saying you had opportunity to study her close-up in her stage costume. And if you saw her bare faced—”

“I did. I was shocked. I’d assumed, as you had, that she showed her face to no one.”

“Musta caught her off guard. You think that ring thing had any hidden personal meaning?”

“No. She just wanted a distraction for her stage trick.”

Alch made a face that was half frown and half pout. On him, it looked good. “We found no evidence at all that she was involved in the kidnapping that followed. So. Innocent bystander, huh? Not so lucky last night.”

“None of us was lucky last night, Detective.”

“ ‘CC’ was. Cute how they abbreviate ‘Cloaked Conjuror.’ Guess it must be a pain to refer to him daily by such a klutzy pseudonym. I can’t get over all these anonymous magicians around town now. Like that new guy at Neon Nightmare, the Phantom Mage. Does all that new-fangled bungee work too. Used to be that breed kept their feet on the ground and lived for the limelight. Like Siegfried and Roy, bless their hearts, or this Mystifying Max my boss has on her hit list.”

Temple didn’t know how to reply to this comment, so she didn’t say anything. Avuncular Morrie Alch might seem as comfy as chocolate chip cookies with milk, but he was a detective with a disarming Columbo-like way of seriously nosing around.

Temple yawned. “I’m sorry.”

“Must have been up pacing all night,” Alch said with a quick glance. “Trying to figure out how to get this hot tamale out of the fire. I notice the hotel press release refers to an ‘accident.’ ”

“I didn’t write it. Randy Wordsworth did. But isn’t that the best public conclusion for now? The stage machinery was defective but nobody fell without a mighty effort to prevent it.”

“Then you’re of the school that the guy in black was trying to save Shangri-La, not torpedo her.”

“Is there any other school among the witnesses?”

Alch concentrated on easing them into a parking spot outside the coroner’s low-profile facility on Pinto Lane. “Not among the witnesses, no.”

Temple knew that he was referring to Molina and her grudge match with Max.

Pinto Lane was a two-block street north of busy Charleston Boulevard and south of Alta Drive, where Our Lady of Las Vegas Church Convent School could keep an eye on the quick and the dead at the Clark County Coroner’s office. Like most public buildings in Las Vegas, this one was pale, bland, and entirely overlookable, if that was a word.

The lobby resembled the waiting room for a dentist’s office.

Alch ambled up to the reception window, flashed his shield, murmured a little, then beckoned Temple to a plain wood door.