Кэрол Дуглас - Cat In An Alien X-Ray

Molina stirred uneasily on the couch. “What makes you bring up that old cult TV show?”

“Not old, classic,” Max corrected her. “Like us. And the songs you sing.” He grinned before going on. “Now, what did you want to see me for? I’m at your service for anything not horizontal. I do have some standards.”

* * *

It took a couple of minutes for Molina to exhaust such nouns and adjectives as “gall,” “arrogance,” “amoral,” and “treacherous.”

All he said at the end of it was, “I’ve e-mailed you her photos. Her name is Revienne Schneider, and it’s real. Dig deep. This could involve your career.”

“As if you care about my career.”

“Deeply,” he said. “I need solid contacts.”

“Look here, Kinsella, I am using you, not the opposite.”

“Let’s compromise. We’re using each other, in a purely platonic way, of course. There’s one big nasty conspiracy underlying the sometimes silly excesses of Vegas. You might look into the movements of Cosimo Sparks for the past couple of years.”

“He’s a victim of an unsolved murder.”

“No reason he couldn’t also have been a perp beforehand.”

“You give me a headache.”

“Great. Then we can never have sex.”

“As if I would—”

He cut her off, as fun as it was to smash into the iron wall of her professionalism. “I know. You’re all business and no personal life. So…”

“Anybody else you want me to investigate for you?” She’d reverted to sarcasm.

“Well, in the larger picture, why Las Vegas is going prerecorded and interactive. Artifacts from real life and movie crime on display, guests interacting with 3-D holograms of movie mobsters and live actor guides, deciding if they want to become part of the ‘Family’ or else—”

“An ‘immersive experience,’ they call it,” Molina said. “Ask your ex-fiancée. She was up to her pert little nose in using that Chunnel of Crime ride to freak out a possible murderer.”

“Cosimo Sparks’s murderer,” Max said.

“He was a magician, not a mobster.” Molina’s tone tightened. “Or was he both?”

“I hear the suspect for his death is some notoriously flamboyant international architect. Not your usual slasher.”

“He had his suspicious hands on the murder weapon—an ice pick—but I’m not convinced he used it lethally. Sparks was known to you?”

“Most likely not. Different generation. Different level of professionalism.”

“By that, I’m to gather that he was a penny-ante has-been?”

“You seem to be admitting that I’m a high-dollar up-and-comer.”

“You were. Once. Do you even remember your signature illusions?”

“You ever see me perform?”

“Not on my wish list.”

“Too bad. You’d know that magic is as much in the fingers as in the frontal lobes. The hands remember.” Max waggled his particularly long and strong hands.

“Really, how viable is your memory nowadays?”

“Going forward, it’s wizard.”

“And backwards?”

“Dicey. Arbitrary. I don’t seem to remember intense emotions.”

“Lucky for the happy couple at the Circle Ritz.”

“I wish them eternal bliss,” he said seriously. “But most of all, I wish them safety, and that won’t be possible until I solve what will stop this nemesis on my tail from endangering anybody else.”

“I solve that.” Molina said, “It’s my turf, my city, my job.”

Max raised his bottle. “And you do it superbly. Las Vegas is lucky.”

Her olive skin flushed again, barely detectable. Not from anger, but from pride. That was a step forward. “So who is our common enemy?”

“I didn’t say that.”

“It’s obvious,” she said.

He nodded. “Okay. I had a stalker in my house when I was gone, as you know, since it was you.”

“Good thing I stopped by. Someone wanted to cut you to shreds.”

“Instead my wardrobe—and you—got shredded, I hear. So you were stalking me,” Max asked, “because you thought I was stalking you?”

“Someone was. You were the only suspect I was after who had the obvious … skills … and gall to do such a subtle and thorough job in my own house.”

“More kudos. I may take up my abandoned onstage career yet.” Max grinned.

“You still want to remain a mystery man for some reason. Until it suits you.”

“We’ve both had ‘closet’ issues.”

She didn’t quite get the connection at first. Then she tumbled. “You think my stalker was your stalker?”

He nodded. “My closet’s contents were obliterated. Yours apparently acquired alien articles of clothing.”

“Why me and mine?”

“She wanted to make you more suspicious of me, angry enough to hunt and hassle me even more.”

“ She? I hadn’t figured on a woman stalking a woman. Why would it be your nemesis? You’re just habitually cynical about women.”

“I wasn’t always. Not until her. ”

“Weren’t you very young then?”

“Seventeen.”

“Only … three years older than Mariah.” Molina seemed stunned by the comparison.

“Kids were more naïve back then.”

“Your same-age cousin died in a pub bombing at the same time.”

Obviously Temple had thoroughly briefed Molina on Max’s history with the IRA, probably to defend him.

“More like a brother,” Max said brusquely. “So how were you stalked in this house? That takes a lot of nerve, going after a police detective.”

Molina hesitated, reluctant to change the subject, then moved on. “It could have been someone I closed a case on. What happened … ended. It was a warped, sick scenario. I don’t want to talk about it.”

“Temple Barr knows.”

“Yes,” she admitted. She stood, walked around the sofa behind him, leaned her hands on either side of his shoulders, and asked, “Matt Devine knows?”

He paused to decide what to say, what to admit. “Yes.”

Molina took an audible deep breath. She leaned in, so the meter of her words huffed across his skin. “That’s too many already.”

“Why can’t I know?” Max asked.

“Why do you have to know?”

“It might affect your detecting ability. I want your objectivity working for me.”

“You think I could be objective about you?” Molina asked.

“Yes, I do.”

She came around to the front of the couch, looming as only a five-foot-ten woman could. “The stalker tried to manipulate me. I’m willing to concede now that wasn’t you. Probably. But even I don’t claim I’m objective about you.”

“Everything and everyone needs to be questioned now—motives, goals, what strings are being pulled by whom. We all do the best we can to pull back the curtain, don’t we? While still keeping a veil over our deepest fears and oldest sins.”

“Heavy.” Molina let herself sink back onto the couch. “This time you fetch me a beer from the fridge.”

* * *

The second soldier was empty on the snack bar between the kitchen and the living room, and Max was crawling around in the bottom of Molina’s closet. “A shrink would have a lot of fun with your shoe collection.”

“More so with Temple Barr’s, I’m thinking.”

“It’s all about height, or the lack of it, with women. She overcompensates for short physical stature, you temper your ability to intimidate male coworkers with an array of low-heeled loafers for work. Even at home you wear moccasins.”

“I see your association with Miss Barr has made you a sidewalk connoisseur of shoes and psyches.”

“And sometimes you just want to break out of the career closet. What’s this?” Max looked up, one forefinger dangling the ankle strap of a pale nile green satin sandal with a half-inch platform on the sole. “Lady Gaga boots it isn’t. Don’t tell me you share a vintage clothing jones with Temple Barr.”