Кэрол Дуглас - Cat In A Quicksilver Caper

If she goes on toward it, she bottles herself up in an architectural cul-de-sac. Just how well does Whoever know her house? Very well indeed. The music must be coming from the radio alarm clock in her bedroom.

No wonder it sounds so tinny. They never put decent sound systems into those cheap dual-function things.

At least Mariah is out, and safe at . . . someone’s house. Try to keep track of a kid nowadays. Try to remember the kind of September — this is May! Concentrate.

Carmen eyes the hall back where she came from. The perp could be out there, escaping. Or poised to bottle her in. Or . . . not.

She edges along, back to the wall, ready to move, or fire, in either direction.

What if this is just the misguided prank of some besmitten teenage boy, trying to get Mariah’s attention? Carmen overreacts, and disaster.

But she’s the one who’s had strange vintage velvet gowns showing up in her closet. Alien gift boxes left on her bed. She’s the one being stalked.

Carmen nears the door to her own bedroom. That door is ajar.

It always is. This is a two-female, two-cat household. The cats bounce between her bedroom and Mariah’s every night. Several times every night. And their litter box is in the bathroom under the sink with its four chrome legs circa the fifties.

Normal is open doors.

Abnormal is someone lurking behind them. Someone more solid than a poster. No posters in her bedroom. She spots a male figure . . . it’s surrender or shoot.

Her own house has come to this. Ticks her off. She adjusts her hands on the metal grip, the trigger guard. She’s got her forefinger resting on the guard, not the trigger. She moves it slowly and carefully to the trigger itself. Her palms are damp. They just stick to the warming metal better.

Her grip is sure.

She kicks her own bedroom door open and backs into it fast, so the door can’t rebound, hiding half the room.

Everything is so damn familiar. So damn static. But this room has a closet. And a gun safe in that closet.

There are a couple more guns in there. The standard issue .38 she got on her first patrol job in L.A. Another .38 she accidentally took during her flight from L.A. when she was pregnant with Mariah. Rafi Nadir’s, with his fingerprints all over it, like they were all over her past. How do you return an accidentally abstracted police department issue gun to an ex-lover you never want to see again? You don’t.

He’d never see the daughter he’d tricked her into bearing, he’d never see his gun again. Bastard.

She’s mad now. A match for anything.

She takes down the room foot by foot, piece by piece. Her own sanctuary, a crime scene.

After twenty sweaty minutes, she has nothing.

The gun safe is secure. Locked. The alien blue velvet dress still hangs among the other vintage velvet gowns for her secret off-duty role as Carmen, just Carmen, the blues singer.

She sits on the bed, her bed, holding the gun, her gun.

No one is here. She’d barged back out into the main rooms, shocked the cats, looked behind and under and over and into every nook and cranny. Nothing.

The bedside alarm clock radio drones on.

She can’t be sure she forgot to turn it off this morning.

There’ve been a lot of mornings like that lately, tainted by serial worry. About her job, her daughter, her stalker.

Then the alarm goes off—buzzing, buzzing—on her bedside table.

She slams the button down. And listens.

The radio, the damn radio is still playing.

From under her pillow.

She tosses the pillow aside like a lightweight Hollywood rock.

Something remains.

A vintage transistor radio.

A flat box, like nylon stockings used to come in. With a note.

After she dons latex gloves, she teases the box open with the muzzle of the gun at arm’s length. As if that would do any good against an explosive device. Just red tissue paper. She doesn’t really expect a literal explosive device. Her stalker is too subtle for that.

She expects an explosive message.

She gets it when she eases the enclosed gift card out of its Barbie-size white envelope. The note reads, “This is what you should have been wearing for a midnight rendezvous in the Secrets’ parking lot.”

The box holds one of those sleazy sub-Frederick’s of Hollywood outfits: black garters and red satin and white lace and underwire bra and filmy chiffon.

Only one person knows about Secrets’ parking lot. She puts the safety on the Glock but not her emotion, which is sheer fury. Max Kinsella with his sick cat-and-mouse games has invaded her home, her privacy, and threatened her child.

This is war.

Home Invasion

Temple heard the knock on her door. Too demanding for Matt Devine, the only one diffident enough to ever knock. And maybe that would stop now.

Max just broke in, born second-story man that he was. As long as it was her second story. Temple used to think that was cool. She was starting to resent what she had loved before.

She opened up.

Whoa . Lieutenant Molina, looking navy blue official, like a nun or a military man. Was there a difference? Wasn’t your guilt and anxiety always to their advantage?

“Excuse me,” Temple said, trying to stretch to at least five four on her three-inch heels.

“I’m here to gather evidence,” said six-foot-something C. R. Molina. “I don’t have a court order. You can kick me out. But then I’d have to put it all on the record. If you want that, fine.”

What a witch! Temple so resented this woman breaking into her life, her condo, her sense of privacy and security.

“What do you want here?”

“Not much, and everything. Something he has touched. Besides you.”

Temple had already been backed up until she dug her heels into the faux goatskin rug under her coffee table. Make that cocktail table, because she could use about three right now. Plus her aunt Kit.

“You have no idea,” Temple said.

“You have a crime scene bonanza,” Molina contradicted Temple. “You believe in Max Kinsella. Okay. Just let me gather my evidence.”

“What evidence?”

“What would still have his fingerprints? Hmmm?” Molina produced a latex glove and snapped it on.

Euww! So like a gynecologist. Temple’s home was a laboratory? Like she had a yeast infection named Max?

“You—” Temple began.

“You give me what I want, I’m outa here. Scared?”

“Of you, no. Of your unadmitted obsessions? Yes.”

Molina marched on. Later, Temple would wonder why Molina did this take-down solo, with no paperwork. But Temple had been caught head-on, like deer being shined. No time to think.

“You live in Las Vegas,” Molina said. “You bet on this town for your livelihood. For your luck. Just something. One thing he has touched. An innocent man leaves no trail but trust. Yes? One little thing.”

They were in the bedroom by then, Temple quavering, thinking madly but not well. She didn’t want this woman in here, tainting the truth of her past and possibly even the present.

Temple’s eyes gave her away. They flashed on the second stereo system. Small but mighty. The rack of CDs. Vangelis, of course, a magician’s musician. Soaring. Dazzling. Mystifying.

“You gaze longingly at the sound system. Music is the food of love. And delusion.” Molina’s latexed fingers snared one CD. Old. Not played recently. Cosmos . Not dusted. Not wiped free of fingerprints, just Max all over it. The music, the mood, the intimate moments.

Molina read Temple’s unreeling memories and anxieties in one glance. The CD was sealed in plastic, ready to be raped of all its secrets.

Temple took that image, that notion, way too personally.