Midnight Louie 14 - Cat in a Midnight Choir (13 page)

“Now, really, that’d be going some.”

“You’re blinded by your relationship to the man. You so resented the implication when you were assaulted in the parking garage that the emergency room staff assumed you were a battered woman. But what does sleeping with the stripper strangler make you?”

“Max? Killed that poor girl? Cher Smith?”

“For starters.”

“You think I wouldn’t know if he were capable of that?”

Molina nodded. “Most of the worst serial rapists had nice little wives at home who were totally ignorant of their real natures. And some didn’t. Some had willing partners in their crimes; women who preferred to see it done to other women than to suffer it themselves. Abused to the point of becoming accomplices.”

“You have no idea of who Max is,” Temple said, stunned at the darkness of the crimes under discussion, but unshaken. “I wish I could tell you, but you wouldn’t believe me.”

“Who’s more liable to be deceived here: the girlfriend, or the police professional?”

Temple just shook her head.

“Remember that I warned you. He could go down for something seriously criminal, and then you really will be an accomplice, as well as a witness for the prosecution.”

“Why do you need to prove Max guilty of something so badly?”

“Because it’s my job to find and arrest the guilty. He may be guilty of more than you can imagine.”

Temple had a Cecil B. DeMille imagination, so this was a real threat. If Molina was even more convinced now than a year ago that Max was guilty of something heinous, the situation was as serious as she said.

Temple answered seriously. “I know it looked suspicious when Max disappeared right after that dead man was found in the spy network cubbyhole over the Goliath Casino, but he
had
just finished his performance contract there.
If
— and I say
if
— he knew about the death, he might have gone underground because he was afraid of whoever did it, or of being arrested for it. Maybe he was set up —”

“You’re telling me you lived with the man and he never explained his vanishing act to you?”

“Max keeps his own counsel. He said it was for my own protection.”

“He’s not doing a very good job of protecting you, or what’s yours.”

Molina finally lowered her laser blue eyes — so like that beautiful blue light of the glaucoma test machine at the eye doctor’s that you’re supposed to hold absolutely still for while staring right into it without blinking as it pushes closer and closer…and even though you can’t feel it you know that gas-blue flame is drilling right into your cornea — ick! Temple blinked from just thinking about the eye test.

Maybe it had made her nervous (that epic imagination at work again), because she jumped when Molina tossed something across the desk that hit the papers with a thunk.

This was the usual police evidence baggie that you thought should be holding somebody’s leftover tuna-fish sandwich, which usually turned to be something sad, like one earring, or grisly, like somebody’s leftover bloodstained wallet….

The object inside the bag was small and lumpy with a glint of gold.

Temple’s ghoulish imagination conjured a flashy molar pulled out by the roots….

“Oh.”

She reflexively reached for the object. It was hers, after all.

It weighed heavily in her palm as her memory assayed it. She’d forgotten how utterly beautiful it was, the opals, the diamonds, the gold setting.

It had been hers for only a few days.

“Where? When?”

Molina was happy to dispatch the dispassionate facts. “In a parking lot. A church parking lot. Several weeks ago. Near another parking lot body. It was identified, but the perp remains at large. A female victim, of course.”

“My ring was by the body?”

“By the edge of the parking lot, actually. A bright young uniform found it. The body was thirty yards away.”

“I don’t understand.” This time Temple could meet the laser eyes: she stood on firm ground. “You know this ring was on my hand the night we all attended the Opium Den to see that woman magician’s act. Shangri-La called me onstage as the willing audience schmoo, took my ring, and then vanished with her whole retinue.”

“You vanished too, and that black alley cat of yours, who gets around like a case of the clap.”

“But Max found me, and Louie too.”

“I found you. Max was along for the ride.”

“He found us. You were along for the ride. Maybe that’s why you hate him.” Temple found a lump as big as the ring blocking her throat. Holding the ring brought back her Manhattan “honeymoon” with Max last Christmas, reminded her of his hopes, promises, that he’d be able to duck out of the undercover life, live a normal existence someday with her.

“Max had nothing to do with this ring!” Temple said, her wits gathering. “It was stolen from me by a woman no one has been able to trace. She must have been involved with that drug-smuggling ring you busted that night. Somebody must have pawned the ring and it ended up in that parking lot. Why would this be evidence incriminating Max, except that he gave it to me? Is giving me rings a crime?”

“Not to my knowledge. Unless it was stolen.”

Temple stared at the object in its sheath of cheap plastic, aghast.

“It wasn’t,” Molina admitted. “Purchased in New York, at Tiffany’s. For cash.”

“Really? Tiffany’s?”

“He didn’t brag?”

“Quality doesn’t brag. So how does this being on the scene of a murder implicate Max? You admit the ring was his to give. You know that it was taken from my possession in front of a theater full of witnesses, including you. You know that the entire magic act was a cover for criminal activities. Why drag Max into it?”

“You haven’t mentioned the murder victim. Of course you wouldn’t have noticed or known about her death. It got a three-inch mention in the local news section roundup column. Still, she was just as dead, brutally strangled. Not a young woman: sixty-two. Gloria Fuentes would not ring a bell with you or most people who read the paper that day.”

Molina was wrong. The name Gloria Fuentes almost made Temple drop the evidence bag, but she clutched it tight instead.

“And the connection to Max Kinsella,” Molina went on. “She was a former magician’s assistant, long since retired. Still, magic is the link, isn’t it? Between Shangri-La, the vanishing magician, between the late Gloria Fuentes, and between Max Kinsella, formerly the Mystifying Max and lately your non-live-in lover. I’ll take that bauble back now. It’s police evidence.”

No!
Temple wanted to shout.
It’s mine! It’s precious. Valuable. Mine.

How cruel Molina was to flaunt her possession of Temple’s only engagement ring. Temple felt a wash of anger, but it was rinsed away by fear. What if Molina knew what Temple knew: that Gloria Fuentes had been the longtime assistant to Max’s mentor in magic, Gandolph the Great? She would really be able to add several rows of bricks to her wall of circumstantial evidence closing him off from the normal life he hoped for.

Temple held the baggie out to Molina. “Handle it carefully. Opal is delicate and the ring is valuable. You probably know just how valuable more than I do. If it’s damaged in your custody, I’ll sue.”

While Temple met Molina’s hard gaze with her own steel blue fury, the desk phone rang.

“Molina,” she answered.

Then she was quiet. “I’m in the middle of something,” she said finally, sounding much friendlier than she had to Temple. “I’ll call you later. Yes. As soon as I can.”

The call didn’t sound totally professional, Temple diagnosed expertly. A public relations professional knows a lot about phone voice language. So if this was a semipersonal call, who was it from? Not Molina’s preteen daughter, Mariah. There had been none of that annoying Mother Superior-knows-better tone that Temple got by default.

A man. It was a man who Molina didn’t need to intimidate, but liked. Since a female police supervisor needed to intimidate men all around her into giving her an even break, Temple deduced that the man on the line was not a colleague, but a…friend? When did Molina relax enough to have friends, of any gender?

“Where were we?” the lieutenant asked.

Temple raised an eyebrow. It wasn’t like Molina to lose track of anything, especially something so potentially lethal. “I was requesting that you take good care of my ring, and you were talking about how I was married to the Mob.”

“That would be better than the state you’re in,” Molina retorted. “This is a friendly warning. Kinsella is trouble and he’ll take you down with him, no matter how many pretty rings he tosses your way. If you see him do anything that makes you think twice, let me know.”

“If I do, I will, but I haven’t yet.” Temple itched to reveal Max’s secret good-guy past, but secrets were supposed to stay that way and Molina would only call it defensiveness anyway. “Are you through with me?”

“For now.” Molina eyed Temple as she stood up, barely looming over the seated police officer even when standing. “You see much of Matt Devine nowadays?”

“Around the Circle Ritz. But he’s been…busy lately. Out of town on speaking engagements.”

“I hear he has other engagements on his calendar, too.”

“Oh?” Temple recognized a leading dig when she heard it. She braced herself again.

“Only that he’s been working himself back into the social mainstream.”

“Dating, you mean.”

“I guess I do.”

Temple gritted her teeth. She would not ask who. “That’s good. Single guys should date.” She narrowed her eyes like daggers at Molina. “Single gals, too.”

Molina shrugged. “A lot of single gals Matt’s age are single parents, though.”

Temple resisted catching a gasping breath.
Molina
had that daughter, Mariah. Was this her way of announcing that she was dating Matt?

“I’m a single gal with a dependent myself,” Temple said breezily, “only he’s a cat.”

“Doesn’t count as a dependent, especially given Midnight Louie’s untrammeled ways. I’m surprised you haven’t figured out who Matt’s new interest is. I thought you fancied yourself an amateur detective.”

“In criminal matters. There’s no crime in Matt’s having a social life.”

“There’s a crime in that it took him so long to get around to getting one.” Molina let her pencil rap back and forth on a manila folder, but kept silent.

Guess you could call this, Temple thought, a second “Manila Thrillah” only instead of Frazier and Ali going another brutal round, it was her and Molina. A Manila Molina, maybe? She be darned if she went down first.

Molina finally straightened, her mouth making a moué Temple couldn’t interpret as approval or not. “Janice Flanders. He’s been seeing Janice. I think they’re well matched.”

Temple had seen the sketch artist’s portrait work, but never hide nor hair of her in the flesh. Curiosity was killing her.

“She’s a wonderful artist,” Temple said smoothly. “She must share Matt’s insight into people and their problems.”

Molina paused on the brink of saying something, then seemed to remember her own secret. “That midnight radio job keeps him off the streets during prime time. Not too conducive to a social life. Probably for the best. Funny, there was a time when I thought you’d go with him over Kinsella.”

Temple was so flummoxed she couldn’t say anything for a moment. “I don’t think personal relationships are your long suit,” she said finally. “Obviously, you were wrong.”

“Oh, the show isn’t over yet.” Molina’s Midnight Margarita-blue eyes narrowed speculatively at Temple, like she was an undercover operative Molina was unleashing on the world at large. An unwilling, ignorant undercover operative. “Just watch yourself. It’s dangerous out there,” she added, turning back to her papers, dismissive.

Temple tottered out of the office to the elevator, weak-kneed for a moment. The last admonition had sounded reluctantly sincere enough to be real. And it wasn’t just Max that the woman was warning her about, Temple sensed.

Given how deeply Molina loathed and distrusted Max, it gave Temple chilling pause to wonder what
else
threatening Molina saw looming in Temple’s own present and future.

The Sign of the Serpent

If Lieutenant C. R. Molina had meant to destroy Temple’s zip-a-deedoo-dah mood, she couldn’t have done better had she gone to graduate school in Killjoy 101.

Temple put the Miata’s top down again, fussing aloud about the process and herself.

“There’s no sense in taking anything that woman says seriously. She’s prejudiced against Max and probably thinks Miatas are the Devil’s workshop, too. What a puritan! She probably has the sex life of a cantaloupe. She certainly has the hide of one.

“I’d
hate
to be her daughter! Poor Mariah! It would take more than a Xena the Warrior Princess outfit to make that woman halfway human.”

Still, Temple stopped and grinned to picture the towering, no-nonsense detective done up as a credible Xena in leather bustier, studded boots, and kilt. And she already had the Lucy Lawless Olympus-blue eyes down cold. The masquerade had been a ruse to catch a killer at a science fiction convention where Xena clones were about as unique as Bozos at a clown convention. Temple was surprised the buttoned-down Molina would go undercover in such an over-the-top feminine guise, but her daughter had been in danger and mother love is a desperate motive. Actually, Molina’d looked pretty hot for a homicide lieutenant in that get-up. Temple’s grin faded.