Cat In A Quicksilver Caper

“Maybe you thought this Sin City exhibition was a crass commercial venue for a Czarist treasure,” Temple suggested. “Andrei wasn’t meant to fall, to die. I think you had an argument. I think you reversed roles for once up there. I think Andrei the crippled con man didn’t want to rip off one of White Russia’s most amazing artifacts. I think you had to convince him to do it. What words, spoken harshly under the cover of night? Words escalating into gestures, broad gestures? Forgetting where you were? Turning, stepping—?”

Madame Olga’s face grew paler by the instant.

“What a playwright you would have made.”

“There’s no room up there. Not for mistakes. Not for emotions. Did he demand a reason, wave his arms . . . then overbalance and, waving his arms, in the heat of anger and protest, fall, grab a bungee cord and struggle to climb up, save himself? And instead enmesh himself in it, his safety rope becoming a noose?”

“No, no!”

“And you watched, unable to do a thing, not even report it because that would betray the scheme. He hung there for hours after his death, a human pendulum, your own brother, who had taken a more noble stand than you had.”

Temple had thought and thought about what could have led to Andrei’s plunge from the platform high above the exhibition. She had theorized like a defense attorney on his mute behalf. And now she had made her case before the jury.

Madame Olga Kirkov shriveled into sobs of protest, hiding her quizzical old face in her time-veined hands.

“This is outrageous.” Pete Wayans stood. “Madame Olga is the greatest ballet artist of her generation. She has volunteered her expertise in both arranging for and designing this exhibition. She is an old lady and her brother has died violently. This must stop. My God, she’s an old lady!”

“Sit down,” Detective Alch said mildly from the door.

Pete Wayans eyed him and the silent, unnamed man next to him. He sat.

The room’s only sound was the choking sobs of Madame Olga.

“He had changed his mind about even planning the theft,” she said at last. “Gazing down at the exhibition space he felt a pride of nation I had never seen in him before. He said he would rather die than take the scepter. Andrei! My crooked brother. I would never have asked such a thing of him, but . . . I had to. He was so shocked by my demand, so horrified. He backed away . . . from me, from the very idea. I never touched him. I couldn’t save him. I could only watch, paralyzed, as he fell and . . . run away.”

Volpe had risen to come and stand behind her chair, his knotted hands pressing deeply into its upholstered back.

“It wasn’t murder, then,” Temple said.

“Oh, yes!” Madame Olga’s eyes surfaced from behind her hands. “I murdered his illusions about myself. I was the Sugar Plum Fairy, the good sister lifted twice daily by the prince in white tights. Pure Russian. Innocent! Andrei was no prince, and we both knew it. Until I tried to force him against his . . . his own honesty. Which humbles mine, in the end. Andrei! I not only let you fall, I let you take the blame for your fall. It was I. I was the snake in Eden and he was a better Adam than there ever was.”

Temple’s knees were shaking. She’d hoped . . . she had to . . . clear up a few mysteries, not peel back the top layer of human souls.

Old souls. Old wounds. New perfidies.

She was doing this for Max. One last obligation. He was the odd man out in all of this and shouldn’t have to swing for it. She saw his rueful grin even as she thought that two-edged phrase.

If she convicted someone else, Max would be exonerated, even if only in her own heart. And she knew that this was where it would matter most to him, to her.

“Why did you have to persuade Andrei to take the scepter?” Temple asked the old woman. Gently.

The words came sharp and bitter. “Because my masters demanded it.”

Volpe’s hands moved from the chair back to her frail shoulders with a white-knuckled grip that shouted “Silence!”

Madame Olga had been used to commanding audiences, not being commanded. Not even by a confrere. She lengthened her swan’s neck, hardened her fading features.

Temple decided to let that intriguing matter go for now.

“So with Andrei dead, who replaced him? Who was recruited next to steal the scepter?”

“You saw him,” Volpe said. “We all did. “The man in the mock–Cloaked Conjuror costume. He played Andrei’s part: swooped down in masked disguise, disabled the installation case, and grabbed the scepter, escaping the same way he had come, from the magic show flies and wings high above. We don’t know who he was, we don’t know where they got him.”

Madame Olga pressed her thin lips together. Temple knew that Count Volpe was seizing on Max’s unexpected appearance to end these unsettling explanations.

“The police,” Volpe added with a haughty glare at Detective Alch, “haven’t any clue to who he is. I suppose with so many Cirque du Soleil shows in town, the place is crammed with unemployed world-class acrobats. Andrei had been unfit for such a caper, anyway, and too old.”