Кэрол Дуглас - Cat In A Topaz Tango

Matt, fresh out of the priesthood, had instantly fallen in love with Temple. Like many petite women, she made up for size with energy, spirit, and an Imelda Marcos– size high heel collection. Temple was smart, savvy, funny, and kind. As a freelance public relations person, she had to get along with all types of people to keep major events with casts of thousands running smoothly.

Sometimes that included fending off bad publicity; sometimes that had come to include solving crimes, even murder, if they threatened the event. Temple always put her heart and soul and exotic soles into her work.

Matt was smiling. He always did when he thought of Temple, even when he saw her at a distance, being Temple as only she could. His first flush of infatuation had nearly burned a hole in his soul and newly liberated libido, but he’d had to take cold showers and wait. Max came back.

Max Kinsella.

Molina despised this man without ever having met him. She’d pegged him as a murderer who had gotten away unscathed, thanks to a dead man at the Goliath Hotel and Casino. Temple loved Max with a fortitude Matt had thought would never flag. She knew he was innocent. After all, she’d finally learned he’d been an undercover counterterrorist since his teens as well as the world-class magician she’d met in her native Minneapolis and followed to Vegas.

Max was a good guy, but Molina didn’t know that and wouldn’t believe it, even when Matt told her so. And Max would never deign to defend himself from her false impression. It was Pride and Prejudice all over again.

Now Max was gone. Again. Disappeared without warning. Again. For good?

Matt felt guilty about hoping so in his secret soul. He also knew that Temple would be better off knowing how, and why, the ex-magician had vanished, and if Max was alive or dead.

Matt picked up his cell phone and speed-dialed the pent house number of their landlady, Electra Lark.

“Hi, Electra, are you recovering okay from being a murder suspect? Who knew attending the big Red Hat Sisterhood convention in town would entangle you with ex-husbands and murdered bodies? All okay now? Good. Say, can I borrow my old Probe back tonight? No, I don’t want to be anonymous. I just don’t want my Crossfire ripped off. Yeah, it’s a pain owning a sexy car. Had I but known, I’d have bought a Prius, which is now an even hotter car. Can’t win. I’ll be right up for the keys.”

Five hours later, Molina darted out of her house and into his idling white Probe like a fugitive.

“Let’s get going.”

The drive wasn’t far. Tio Julio’s was a much-added-onto ram-shackle wooden building, the kind of restaurant that has served really good food with no fuss and minimal atmosphere for three generations. It was so crowded you couldn’t tell waitperson from customer and they were all mostly Hispanic. Vegas ran on chutzpah and illegal aliens well mixed among the legal ones.

Matt felt embarrassed by his Chicago Polish-pale face and blond hair that screamed “gringo” as he waited for Molina just inside the door while she visited the ladies’ room, wondering why the homicide lieutenant had picked such a busy venue.

When Molina reclaimed him, it was literal. She slipped an arm through his and pulled him into the restaurant, machine-gunning Spanish at a passing hostess. They followed the young Latina through a noisy mélange of people sipping margaritas and Dos Equis, through a fragrant miasma of picante sauce and sizzling fajitas, into a smaller room as crowded and noisy.

Molina was almost his height. She muscled him into place on a bench against the wall, so they sat side by side, with a 180-degree view of the room and its diners.

Now he could see she was wearing some kind of sequined multicolored shawl. Her usual black bob had been roughened with gel and swept behind her ear on one side. She was sporting huge gold hoop earrings and, when she took off her sunglasses, enough eyeliner and eye shadow to pass as an aging Goth girl, a disguise assumed in the rest room.

“ Dios, ” she said. “Learning undercover makeup tricks from my teen kid; who’d have thought I’d need that at my age? How are you, Father Matt, the about-to-be-married man?”

“Don’t call me that!” he said, though no one could hear. “You need my help, you cut out the harassment.”

She made a face. “Just kidding.”

Which he knew. He was still sensitive about his ex-profession because it had been a vocation, a sincere one he’d honored to the day he left, and beyond. It was hard to explain to civilians. Maybe police work was too.

“So what’s this all about?” he asked.

“Patience. First we order. I highly recommend the enchiladas fiesta. And a pitcher of beer.”

The waitress made it to their table in three minutes, the beer in another five, and the food in ten. They’d passed the time with what passed for chitchat with Molina. Was Electra going to come out with any loot from her ex-husband? He looked a bit tired, was being a fiancé all that stressful? No, he told her, rehearsing for a charity dance contest at the Oasis was. Radio guys were always doing bizarre gigs, she said. Did Temple plan to keep taking on big conventions and meddling in murders after they were married? What kind of hombre was he, who couldn’t keep the little woman at home having niños and niñas ?

He finally broke in. “I get that you think we can’t talk about anything relevant until we’ve got our food and drink and have ditched the waitress, but you don’t have to be ridiculous. So, Carmen Miranda, where did you leave your Banana Republic headdress?”

Carmen was C. R. Molina’s first name, and she saw to it that damn few people knew it. The only Latina Carmen the public knew was the long-ago goofy movie singer with the fruit basket headdress. Not a positive image. Carmen Electra was more up-to-date, but another stereotyped hot Latin honey.

“It’s confession time, Padre ,” she said, drinking from a frosty mug into which she poured Dos Equis beer. “I want no witnesses, no sound recordings, and no snickering on your part.”

Matt was hammered with a bolt of curiosity. Carmen Molina was the most self-controlled person he knew. Now that his profession was radio shrink, he’d put her at the head of his most-intriguing-person-to-psychoanalyze list.

He was getting his chance in the most frantic, frenetic, screeching, and screaming environment on the planet. God surely had a sadistic sense of humor, but then He’d earned it for creating and dealing with Homo sapiens.

Matt was glad he’d ordered enchiladas, which were soft and easy to eat while asking leading questions.

“What hot topic of the month is this about?” he asked.

“The eternal enigma.”

“Max.”

“Kinsella.” She didn’t even grant the man the familiarity of a first name.

Was she about to confess what Max had confessed to Matt not too long ago? That she’d caught up with him once in a strip club parking lot and they’d decided whether he’d go with her as an arrestee with a private martial arts session? That the fight had gotten physical and heated in more ways than one? Molina had accused Max of getting sexual with her and had told Temple as well as Matt. Temple hadn’t believed it, but Max had told Matt he had . . . a little, as a diversion during the fight. Anything to get an opponent off guard. That was Maxus operandi.

A deliberately single career woman like Carmen would resent that bitterly. And, face it, Matt told himself, strong emotions could turn on a dime. The other side of antagonism between women and men could be attraction denied on one side or the other, or both. Being a celibate observer of the mating game for seventeen years gave him a certain insight.