Cat In A Neon Nightmare Part 20

"Who's Gandolph?" Matt asked.

Neither Temple nor Max answered him. They were staring at each other, lost in the implications.

"The question is," Max told Temple, "was the ring left there to implicate you, or me?"

"Temple, obviously." Matt ran a hand through his blond hair as if unconsciously pushing away an encroaching headache. "Even Molina's not so obsessed with arresting the great Max Kinsella that she'd blame you for the death of anyone simply connected with magic."

A silence. They were three, but there were islands of knowledge between them shared by only two, and perhaps in some case by only one. Time to build bridges over troubled water.

Temple focused on Matt. "Gloria Fuentes has a more direct connection to Max than mere magic. She was the longtime a.s.sistant to Max's mentor, Gandolph the Great."

The news jolted Matt. "Wasn't that the fellow killed at last Halloween's Houdini seance? And now you tell me this guy's retired ex-a.s.sistant was killed only a few months later?"

"Yes." Max was terse. "You see what Molina could do with those facts, given her hard-on for charging me with some crime or other."

"So-" Matt was perking up from the funk he'd been in since hearing the shocking news of Va.s.sar's death. "That ring being at Gloria Fuentes's death scene was a double whammy for Max, only Molina didn't know it. Doesn't know it?"

"No, thank G.o.d." Temple grimaced. "And don't you tell her. That's why I didn't invite her to our heart-to-heart. Even though she's up to her shield in your recent foray into the local s.e.x industry, she has no idea of how badly someone is out to get Max. It has to be Kathleen 0' Connor."

"Why?" Matt demanded.

"She doesn't let go," Max put in. "I also reacted to Sean's death differently than she expected. Guilt, she got that, an endless peat bog's worth to wallow in. But I went undercover in the IRA, found out who bombed that pub, and turned them in, remember."

"That's right. You were reared Catholic yet you betrayed the IRA."

"I would have betrayed the pope to get the ones who killed Sean." His eyes narrowed at Matt. "You can probably dig that. You were pretty hot to find your evil stepfather. Didn't you ever want to wring his neck?"

Matt nodded. "And now I'd like to wring the neck of whoever hurt Va.s.sar."

"You, ah," Max said cautiously, "can't offer any insight on her last hours on earth?"

"Nothing except that she was alive and well when I left her."

Max refrained from asking how well, for which Temple gave him full credit. The conversation was getting unbearable for all-parties involved.

"I realize," Matt said, looking steadfastly at the top of the coffee table, which was littered with sections from two days' worth of newspapers, "that inquiring minds want to know what happened between Va.s.sar and me. Sorry. No comment."

"What did Molina say to that?" Max asked with his best Mr. Spock raised eyebrow.

"Nothing. She never asked."

Max suddenly laughed. "I love it! You shut down Molina on a case where her own hide is at stake. I've heard of Teflon politicians, but you, Devine, have a Teflon s.e.x life. Nothing sticks but mystery."

"Yet," Matt said. "She hasn't asked me yet."

"And if she does?"

"I tell her the same thing I tell you: no prurient details. Va.s.sar deserves better than that. She deserves a heck of a lot better than what happened to her, however it happened. I didn't know her like a cousin, but I did get to know her enough to realize that."

Another awkward silence.

Temple broke in with her best nonintimidating small wee voice. "Can you tell us, Matt, if you had any reason to think she might commit suicide?"

He stared at the pages of newsprint again, one bearing a small front-page story about a plunge to death at the Goliath. Then his eyes met Temple's.

"I don't know. She had . . . issues. Doesn't everybody?"

"Amen, brother," Max agreed. "Okay. If I'm reading this right, you don't know yourself whether she jumped or was pushed, and you're the last known person to have seen her."

"Yes."

"When exactly was the 'last time'?" Temple asked, eyeing the newspapers.

"Four A.M."

"So you spent, what, six hours with her?"

"More like eight. Call it a shift, if you like."

"I'm not calling it anything," Temple said carefully. "You must have gotten to know her ... talked ... in all that time."

He nodded.

"Tell us about her," Max said in a surprisingly calm voice. "She's just a role to most people in a town filled with hookers and call girls and boys and private dancers. Tell us about her, not about what she did for a living."

Matt nodded, seeming to welcome the chance. He leaned back, clasped his tanned hands around one khaki-clad knee. The casual pose couldn't disguise the darkness in his voice.

"Molina . . . misrepresented her to me. Not her fault. She gave me the best advice she could."

"Humph!" Temple couldn't resist inserting. "You didn't hear anything of the kind from me!"

"I heard it from you, though," he said with a glance at Max. "And Leticia at work. Everybody said this was the best thing to do."

"Not me," Temple said.

Matt finally met her glance. "I wish to G.o.d now I'd listened to what you didn't tell me to do. Anyway, Molina swore that this level of call girl would be smart, comfortable with herself and her ... job, impersonally personal, the solution I so desperately needed. And I don't think even you"-he eyed Max-"know what it's really like to have Kitty O'Connor on your case, day in and night out. She was beginning to seem omniscient."

"Like G.o.d," Max suggested, "or your own conscience. The Hound of h.e.l.l. Impossible to flee."

"And she'd made enough threatening gestures at females I knew . . . Mariah, even Electra, that I was pretty paranoid and ripe for her manipulation. And for drastic solutions." Matt shook his head. "The idea was that she couldn't track me to a call girl the bellman sent up, and I ran all over Las Vegas to lose her."

"Not enough," Max said. "I saw you go into the Goliath that night."

"You!"

Max managed to shrug indifferently and look sheepish at the same time. "I knew Kathleen was stalking you. I wanted to catch a glimpse of how she looks today. You did a d.a.m.n fine job of trying to lose a tail. If I hadn't known you, I might have lost you."

"Max!" Temple didn't mean to sound exasperated, but she did. "Are you telling us you were at the Goliath, that you saw Matt going into the hotel?"

"It was earlier in the evening . . . sixish, wasn't it? Right. I followed him in, checked the surroundings. Certainly didn't see Kitty O'Connor, and then I split, because I was worried about you and the Stripper Killer. If I'd been able to stay . . ." He nodded at Matt. "I might have been curious enough to hang around after you left and seen something. So we get to share the riches of guilt this time, if that makes you feel any better."

"It doesn't and I think you know that. Misery loves company is a sop to the poor of heart."

Another silence.

Temple felt like someone trying to herd a glacier toward the Tropic of Cancer.

"So what did you see, Max?"

"I saw our fair-haired boy check in and go up in the elevator. I saw no one who looked like Kathleen, or Kathleen in disguise, but it's been almost twenty years, Temple. She could look like your grandmother by now."

"She doesn't," Matt said dryly. "You saw the sketch."

"Wouldn't it have been weird," Temple speculated, "if Va.s.sar had been Kitty the Cutter?"

"You mean," Max said, getting it at once, "if she had followed our man Flint into the Goliath and arranged to ring his bell, metaphorically speaking, when the bellman ordered a call girl. That would make her dead, and I can't say I'd be sorry."

Matt shook his head at their lavish scenarios. "Va.s.sar was a tall woman; Kitty was pet.i.te. You can't fake that."

"How pet.i.te?" Temple asked.

"A bit bigger than you."

"Oh. I always imagine her as bigger than life. Like Wonder Woman."

"No," said Max, "she's a wee bit of a thing, rather like a plastic explosive." But he was thinking so hard he was frowning again. "It's possible Kathleen was there. Certainly she could fool me after all these years. It's possible she followed you to the room and killed Va.s.sar after you left. Did you notice anything suspicious?"

"Everything felt suspicious, everybody I had contact with was out of a B movie. The accommodating desk clerk, who let me pay cash for a room and then change the number at the last moment, all by the book according to Molina, by the way."

Max grinned meanly. "She sure knows how to read the wrong side of the law for such an upstanding policewoman."

Matt went on, as if needing to relive each sleazy step toward disaster. "And there was the lurking bellman, happy to pocket a big tip to provide X-rated entertainment. It was like some hokey formula. I felt unreal."

"I've got a news flash for you, Devine. Hiring a hooker is not a 'real' experience."

"I know that. I can't believe I listened to everybody, including you, and did this. I thought you worldly sophisticates knew what you were doing."

"We don't. And we just look worldly. It's all an act, Devine. Magic. Don't believe in magic. It's not real."

"Va.s.sar was more real than any of you," Matt commented bitterly.

That hurt. Temple felt it like a punch to the stomach. She hadn't led him down this particular garden path . . . but she could have made the whole charade unnecessary, she knew that now. And that was another punch to the gut.

She got back to business to hide the pain. "So. No sign of Kitty the Cutter knowing where you were and who youwere with. She couldn't have pa.s.sed as the bellman. Or was he short?"

"He was," Matt said with a certain spine-stiffening motion. "But so was the waitress who brought dinner. I never thought of that. She was . . . pet.i.te."

"Could she-?" Max asked.

"That is such a repellent idea, that woman spying on me even as I'm going to lengths she drove me to .. I suppose she'd like that. What would make a person want to destroy another person?"

"Why did the fundamentalists attack the twin towers?" Max asked. "Envy. They can call it religion or politics, but it's envy and fear. Kathleen is like that. She hates innocence. She hates freedom. She hates anyone with a zest for life."

"Why?" Matt asked.

"Why you?" Max retorted. He sighed. "You trigger her most negative emotions. Don't feel guilty about it. But I did. I was seventeen. You're . . . seventeen, too, don't you see? Kathleen's getting too old to find true innocents cluttering the landscape. I'm too burned-out for her. You're fresh meat. She can really do a tap dance on your head. Let her bring you down, and she's won. Unlike most of Las Vegas and some people of our acquaintance, I don't care to know what went on between you and the dead woman. That's irrelevant. It's what went on between you and the dead woman and Kathleen O'Connor, don't you see? With her, it's always a triangle."

"An unholy trinity," Matt said slowly, "as it was that night: Va.s.sar, me, and Kitty O'Connor rolling in a room-service tray."

Temple felt a certain satisfaction. She had brought the two men together to shake loose some facts, ideas, and maybe solutions.

She hadn't expected it to be pretty, and she hadn't expected to enjoy it. It hurt to watch Max's self-protective cynicism and Matt's injured innocence jousting as if they were each other's worst enemies when their real antagonist, and the truth, was still out there.

And whatever had happened, or had not happened between Matt and Va.s.sar, the call girl's sudden death had made her a permanent fixture in his life, and that of anyone who cared about him Which, Temple thought sourly, included her, dammit.

Chapter 27.

. . . Homicide Alone Molina stood inside and pushed the garage door opener control, waiting until the single wooden door shook, rattled, and rolled all the way shut.

n.o.body like a cop to follow home-safety rules. No neighborhood cat would slip under her closing garage door undetected, not to mention the odd, escaped serial rapist.

When she went through the door into the kitchen, locking it behind her, the house felt cool, dim, and suspiciously silent.

Then she remembered. Mariah was at an after-school game followed by a team pizza party. Some lucky parents with regular hours or even an at-home mom would be dropping Mariah off from a minivan around eight P.M.

So not even Dolores, the trusty neighborhood nanny, was here.

Molina wasn't used to an empty, quiet house.

She draped her jacket over the back of a kitchen chair and pulled the paddle holster from her back waistband, heading for the bedroom to deposit it in her closet gun safe.

Even with Mariah not there, she never left her weapon unattended for a split second.

A sudden thump from the living room halted her instantly.

Only Catarina or Tabitha, thundering over the hardwood floors, slipping and sliding, on almost-year-old paws. The tiger-striped kittens had become cats, but still could revert to an adolescent romp.

"Hi, girls," Molina greeted them as they charged past, one only two feet behind the other.

No answer. Their bowls were full of dry food and they didn't need to make up to her for dinner.

Actually, she was glad they were growing up and settling down. Kittens were appealing and fun, but layabout adult cats were better medicine for the frazzled police professional.