Кэрол Дуглас - Cat In An Alphabet Endgame

“I hate to crush your diplomatic-level wedding ceremony dreams,” he said, “but you do remember that’s Lieutenant Molina’s parish?”

“So? Let her help with the Flower Committee. I might even let her whistle a happy tune.”

Matt laughed. “That’s an image to bring nightmares.”

“Here we are, talking and making compromises like an old married couple,” she said happily.

“Uh, yeaaah,” he drawled, “I was beginning to think the same thing.” He pulled the slipping nightgown spaghetti strap off her shoulder. “We need to do a lot more living in sin fast if the wedding is looking so logical and so soon.”

So they did something about that.

“You’re a hell of a negotiator, you know that,” Matt said when all had been said and done. “All I have to do to win the princess is to storm black-ice mountain of Max Kinsella’s family past.”

“I’m a public relations expert. Why wouldn’t I be great at private relations too.”

“Oh, you are, baby doll. You really are.”

Reassured, Temple fell asleep with her small but firm fist curled in his, pressed against the middle of his chest above his heart.

Max bloody Kinsella was the least of Matt’s problems. The faces of Effinger, Woody, the soul-patch man with the jackhammer in the junker trunk, Rafi, and even Molina, floated past his closed eyelids like a montage from an old black-and-white film.

Some would take what had happened at the Circle Ritz tonight as another colorful episode in its seventy years of solid Las Vegas history.

He was wondering if it would solve everyone’s problems but his own.

Woody Wetherly and his veiled threats hung over him like the ghost of Cliff Effinger getting his own twisted revenge on him and Temple from beyond the grave.

5

The Wrong Arm of the Law

“So you think you can breeze into headquarters like Miss Temple Barr, P.R., on a tear and get a warm welcome from a homicide lieutenant?”

Matt found his welcome with local law enforcement much cooler and more skeptical than Temple had envisioned.

Lieutenant C. R. Molina was wearing one of her high-summer khaki pantsuits which were the same wrinkle-resistant fabric as her winter navy-blue and black twill pantsuits. Her office at the new headquarters building had fancier modern chairs and computers, but was still the same narrow dimensions.

She leaned her impressive height against the front of her desk, arms folded over her plain blazer and her mannish black loafers on full view. You would never imagine her in blood-scarlet nineteen-forties silk velvet crooning torch songs at the Blue Dahlia nightclub, and, sadly, she hadn’t been taking that Carmen persona out for a bluesy walk for some time.

Matt shrugged mentally.

He wasn’t going to remind the all-business homicide lieutenant of her kinder, gentler side. Seeing Molina about this matter might lead to awkward questions, but Temple felt he was more likely to find out why the Circle Ritz landlady was in custody. She was clearly the homeowner. She’d shot at an intruder already in her fifth-floor penthouse. At night. Alone in her residence. He didn’t see why she’d been taken away for questioning.

Unless they had evidence of a relationship between Electra and the intruder, which was ridiculous.

“All we Circle Ritz residents are understandably worried about last night’s intrusion”, he began.

“I imagine that ‘we’ is principally your fiancée, Miss Temple Barr.”

Matt smiled. “She thought she’d spare you the sight of her inquisitive face.”

“Detectives are surveying residents even now. So, no worry. Her doorbell will soon be ringing and she’ll be able to give her no doubt breathless account quite soon. I thought I would spare her the sight of my inquisitive face .

“And where were you at one a.m. this morning?” Molina pulled her cell phone out of her side pocket and started tapping.

“You know I’m covered, Lieutenant. On the air at WCOO-AM radio, doing my call-in counseling show, The Midnight Hour .”

“And it doesn’t bother you that The Midnight Hour is now actually two hours?”

“When the show became popular they upped the hours, but the title was unique, and syndicated.”

“Hmm,” she muttered at her cell phone, tapping away so fast she might have been Fred Astaire. “I assume the engineer can attest to your presence.”

“Yes, he was there. It’s a live show. Somebody has to program the canned music until six a.m. after I leave at two a.m.”

“And by two thirty you weren’t home yet? The resident Circle Ritz amateur detective didn’t call you the minute the shots were fired?”

Matt hesitated. “Midnight Louie is good, but his claws are murder on cell phone screens.”

“Oh, you kidder,” Molina said in a flat tone. “That was an evasion. Why?”

“Temple did call, but I had my cell phone off.”

“Is that usual?”

“It has to be off during broadcast, of course.”

“But leaving and driving home?”

“I work nights, Lieutenant. Temple doesn’t.”

“The drive would take, what? Almost half an hour. No two twenty-five in the morning ‘welcome home’ surprises? You’re only a floor apart.”

“Are you trying to prove we’re co-habiting, Lieutenant?”

“She’s the nosy one. I’m trying to determine if you have an alibi for the Circle Ritz death.”

“Death? The man has died? Me? Why would I be a suspect?”

“Not so far-fetched. After all, I hear you tossed a man off your fiancée’s balcony recently.”

“He was attacking Temple in her bedroom and she yelled ‘Fire!’”

“Smart of her.”

“By then he’d retreated to the balcony. I jumped down atop him from my balcony. It was a fierce, quick struggle. No one could see well in the dark bedroom or the dark night beyond. He broke my hold and scrambled or fell over the railing. I didn’t ‘toss’ anyone. We reported the incident to the police.”

“Did they find a prowler?”

“I don’t know. Last we saw, and heard, he staggered away to the fringes of the parking lot and encountered the neighborhood feral cat pack. They seemed to do more damage than I did. How does anybody know what happened to him?”

“Your starry-eyed bride-to-be described the scene and your role as a WWF smack-down hero to Mrs. Lark when she arrived to help.”

“You can see why Electra might overreact to another home invasion.”

“Hmm . The same M.O. at the same place begins to sound like an appointment rather than serial mayhem.”

“Oh, my God. You think I could practically kill someone and deny it?”

“We certainly know you are fit enough, not only to fight, but to climb those balconies like a Malayan flying lemur.”

“What on earth is that?”

“A kind of pre-primate. On the brink of extinction, of course.”

“Do I get the idea I’m on the brink too?”

“You came here, so you saved Detective Alch a trip. This will be an exchange of prisoners.”

“Bail, you mean. So Electra’s homeward bound?” Matt asked. “If it has to be that formal.”

Molina straightened. “It has to be that formal. We are talking D.B., approximately five-nine, two-hundred and forty pounds.”

“Dead body built like a bowling ball. Not the man I encountered on Temple’s balcony.”

“Say you . It makes a colorful comparison. Stuck by a bullet in the shoulder and falling forty feet backwards, four stories, with impact on the back of the skull. Head trauma likely killed him. He died in the ambulance, so until the coroner rules whether the bullet or the fall killed him, we have to treat your landlady as a suspect.”