Кэрол Дуглас - Cat In A Topaz Tango

“Disturbing?”

“Shut up and sip. I can’t say this won’t hurt me more than it will you.”

Temple felt a cold chill curl around her innards.

Molina took a good swallow of scotch, and began. This was obviously both a reluctant confession and a kind of story.

“As you can see, I’m a certifiably lousy judge of men,” she said. “First there was Rafi Nadir, now Dirty Larry. Perhaps the colorful names misled me.”

Temple’s PR genes revved up. Time to soothe the anxious client. “Rafi doesn’t seem so bad now, maybe to you too. And Dirty Larry was useful in this case.”

“Useful,” Molina repeated with odd emphasis. “Yes, I suppose he is that, among other things.” She smiled. “You’re always looking for the rainbow behind the rain, Little Miss Sunshine,” Molina mused, gazing into the distance, her eyes unfocused. “I wonder if that’s what attracts them?”

“Who?”

“Men.” Molina’s eyes met Temple’s, blue as the bottle of curaçao on the shelves behind the bar.

“Which men?”

Molina ignored her. “I suppose I shared my . . . predicament with Matt because it was something we had in common.”

“Being Catholic?”

“No. Being knifed.”

Temple felt her eyes widen in a way Zoe Chloe would never allow. “So that’s what—”

“That’s what is wrong with me. It’s been six weeks, but Matt can tell you eighty-six stitches have a way of reminding you about them for a long time.”

“Eighty-six! Who? Why?”

“A moment, kiddo,” Molina said in an almost motherly voice. “I gotta brace myself a little longer.” She swallowed again. Then sighed, and sat back in her chair. “I’m actually glad this is just us girls,” she said sardonically. “Men do require keeping one’s guard up.”

“Your men, maybe,” Temple answered almost as sardonically. “Rafi is always edgy around you and Dirty Larry is half manipulative and half scared . . . ah, spineless.”

“Is he really?” Molina asked, surprised.

“Who, what?”

“Rafi is edgy?”

“From my viewpoint, he’s been coming on like gangbusters,” Temple said.

“Maybe. But it’s for Mariah, not me.”

“You going to let him escort her to the father-daughter dance?”

“She’s gone beyond gaga over the new Matt.” Molina grinned. “Even I may have. Who knew? Maybe you. If I decide to come clean on this before the fall dance, Rafi will have to overcome that.”

“She’ll just be glad that Matt isn’t a father figure. By then she’ll probably be into Los Hermanos Brothers. It’s great that Danny Dove is giving Ekaterina a personal scholarship for classes and Mariah’s ecstatic that Adam wants EK in their next video. She’s been pretty selfless about this whole thing.”

“Yeah. Surprise. Maturity peeking through. She’s actually being apologetic to me. So”—Molina took a slug of her drink—“you don’t think much of Larry.”

“Don’t know. He’s one of those guys who could be bad news. Or not. What does my opinion have to do with your slashing?”

“Too much.” Molina made a sour face as she swallowed more scotch. “It’s how I got slashed that’s the literal sticking point. It was in your ex-fiancé’s house.”

“Ex?” It took Temple a moment to identify Max as an “ex-fiancé.” And then, really out of left field, “House?”

When she did, she rejected the whole phrase: “ex-fiancé’s house.”

“Max doesn’t have a house.”

“He did. No sense to deny it. He lived somewhere and it certainly wasn’t with you at the Circle Ritz, at least not in residence.”

“Why on earth were you and Matt discussing Max and his house?”

“That’s where I got knifed.”

“Excuse me, are you trying to lay another bogus charge on Max? He’s out of Vegas, was planning to before—I don’t know where he’s gone, or why, or when. Just that he’s gone. For good.”

“I would have said that a few weeks ago myself. Gone for good. And good for you, though you didn’t want to believe it. But I’m not so sure now. That house on Mohave Way says different.”

“You were there? That must have been during the Red Hat convention.”

“No. I was there later.”

“But . . . there was nothing there later. Nothing in the house. Why would you go there?”

“I can give you reason to stop excusing Dirty Larry. I had him follow you, and one time he followed you to Max’s house at 1200 Mohave Way. That’s how I knew where to go myself. Later. Alone.”

“Max would have been gone by then.”

“Right. And he was.”

“Then how did you get in?”

“You don’t have a need to know.”

“You broke in. But what about the woman who lived there?”

“What woman? The house was unoccupied.”

“The aging chorus girl.”

“Really? You saw her?”

“Yes, I went to the house and she said she’d bought it. She was moved in totally, every stick of Max’s furnishings was gone, even the magical props in storage.”

“The opium bed?” Molina asked quietly.

“The opium bed, the trick boxes . . . wait! How do you know about the opium bed?”

“I saw it. The house was fully furnished.”

“I was there on a Tuesday night.”

“I was there the following Sunday.”

Each was silent and each communed with her drink again.

“Then—” Temple began, choking back fear, pain, and rage.

“It was a magician’s trick,” Molina declared, “a vanishing act on a house-moving scale. You saw the illusions, the end result of it. I saw the stage restored to normal.”

“But why?”

“He wanted to be completely out of your life, leaving you free to do what you did. Forget him, marry Matt.”

“But . . . why?”

“A rolling stone gathers no moss. Maybe the same old story. The demons from his past were after him again and he wanted you out of danger.”

Temple sat there feeling Zoe Chloe Ozone melting off her body like a greasepaint clown face. Was Max gone, or dead? Dead or gone? Or were they just the same thing?

“You said no one was there,” she told Molina, looking for a hole in her story. “Who cut you then?”

“I have no idea. True. The house was dark. I heard someone moving around after I’d gotten in. A strange tearing sound in one of the rooms. I can tell you Kinsella’s clothes were slashed to ribbons in one closet.”

Temple gasped. “Who’d do that?”

“I’d had a stalker at my home the past few weeks. I thought it was Kinsella.”

“Max? Stalk you ? Are you crazy?”

Molina shrugged that one off. Temple noticed she wasn’t sharing what Matt had gleaned: that she thought Max had come on to her once, during a physical showdown that had turned psychological.

“Now,” Molina said, all policewoman, “I’m beginning to think that same stalker was in his house that night. That’s when I began to believe that he might be ‘innocent’ in some ways. I almost could make a case for my stalker being his stalker. And don’t ask me why, because that motive is very cloudy and twisted.”

“And the stalker cut you?”

Molina nodded. “I confronted the person in the hallway. A large butcher knife was missing from the kitchen block as I came in, I recalled too late. My scar will make Matt’s look like a needle scrape.”

Temple nodded. “Someone hateful after Max. I’d almost think it was that woman who cut Matt, except she’s dead. But her associates need not be.”

“The woman from Max’s counterterrorism past that Matt keeps talking about?”

Temple nodded, dazed and almost feeling knifed herself.

“Could be,” Molina said. “That’s all IRA stuff, though, and they’re pretty old news. Inactive. Terrorism is a wholly owned subsidiary of Al-Qaeda and suicide bombers now.”