Кэрол Дуглас - Cat In A Quicksilver Caper

“She’s got a right to be angry. The stalker has been breaking into her house. She has a young child there.”

Max chuckled. “From what I heard went down at the Teen Idol reality TV show, that kid is hitting puberty big time. Maybe it’ll keep Mama off my tail.”

“I don’t think so. This latest visit, the stalker left a trail of rose petals to Mariah’s bedroom as well as hers.”

“That’s really sick! No wonder she’s unhinged.”

“And she’s convinced you’re the stalker.”

For once, Matt had rendered Max Kinsella speechless.

“Me?” Kinsella said. Then frowned. “That’s crazy.”

“That’s what I thought. At first.”

“I don’t care what you think. What has this got to do with Temple? That’s all I care about.”

Matt kept himself from saying “Me too.”

Max was still on a tear. “Let Molina rant and roar and chase a phantom. She can’t touch me.”

“Maybe not. Maybe this time . . . yeah, maybe. But she’s already touched Temple.”

Kinsella’s motorcycle boots crunched desert shale as he stalked back over to Matt, looming at six four with two added inches of boot heel.

Matt felt enough bottled fury, and a nasty edge of guilt, to take him on and take him out if he said anything dismissive about the threat to Temple.

But Kinsella never satisfied in that way. He cared about her as much, maybe, as Matt did. That knowledge was as bitter as an arsenic pill in his throat, but it was also why Kinsella was the first, and last, person he’d gone to about this.

“What did Molina do?” Max asked.

“Barged into Temple’s place at the Circle Ritz”—Max didn’t correct him on that. A magician was, above all, a realist, but it had once been theirs, that place, his and Temple’s. “Took something likely to have your fingerprints still on it.”

“Took? Without a warrant? Why didn’t Temple—? Never mind. It was a lightning raid, wasn’t it? What did Molina take?”

“A CD.”

“Damn. Temple never did share my tastes, or like to run the VCR or even the multiple-CD player. So. Molina is now the only cop in the Western World with possible fingerprints on me. So what? She has nothing to compare them too.”

“That makes anything she finds on that CD all the more likely to be yours. She already printed Temple way back when.”

“I’m going to swear, Devine. You can put your fingers in your ears if you want.”

“Go right ahead. On that I’m with you.”

Max sighed, not a weak sigh, more like the hissing sound a weight lifter makes during ultra-heavy reps. “That damn . . . woman . . . will not leave well enough alone. If she had a decent sex life, she wouldn’t have to mess with mine so much.”

Matt shut his eyes. He didn’t want to hear about this. Think about this. “That’s what she said you told her in the parking lot of Secret’s. That’s why she thinks you’re obsessed with her.”

“Me. Her? Obsessed? Get a life! That’s what I told her in that damn parking lot, while she was trying with all her might to keep me from going where Temple was in fatal danger. How has she explained her stupidity in fixating on hogtying me when a major capture of the Stripper Killer was going down with Temple playing the next victim?”

Max had grabbed his sleeves, was shaking Matt in agitation.

“Hey!” Matt slapped Kinsella on the leather lapels, forcing him to back off. “That wasn’t me standing in your way then, pal. Molina did give you a chance to fight her for your freedom from what she said.”

“Couldn’t shoot me cold. I wasn’t carrying. Yeah, she had the guts to go hand-to-hand with me, risky considering how frantic I was about Temple. Guts were never her problem. She’s not a lightweight. She’s been trained. I finally had to play possum; live to fight another day, and get her in a situation where I could win without wasting time: handcuffed in her car. You know about magicians and handcuffs. Anyway, I let her grind my face into the asphalt, cuff me, and lead me away like Mary’s little lamb. What more does the woman want?”

“That’s all it was? Her not daring to shoot you dead? You two mixing it up? You letting her ‘win’ so you could escape faster to race to Temple’s defense? Her hung up on catching you and losing you?”

“That was it. She’d got me cuffed and in her Crown Vic. I was already working on the handcuff’s release mechanism when the call came over the radio that the cops had nailed the Stripper Killer while he was attacking a certain Miss Barr masquerading as a club costume seller. The minute I heard Temple was safe, Molina was wearing her own cuffs attached to the steering wheel and I was outa there.”

“Interesting,” Matt said.

“This stuff we’re talking about is way more important than ‘interesting’.”

“I’m just replaying it. You’re Molina’s prisoner, then she’s a police professional handcuffed to her own steering wheel, and not only that, wrong about you being the Stripper Killer.”

“It might freak her out,” Max said, a smile in his voice.

“It might freak her so far out that she’d violate Temple’s space and her trust to take you to the cleaners.”

“You know what I think?” Max’s voice had lowered. It sounded dangerous in the dark. “You and Molina are a pair. You’ve got that blind Catholic standard that makes everyone else substandard.”

“You were reared Catholic.”

“I got over it.”

“She said—”

“He said. It’s a draw.”

“Molina said you came on to her. She said you said all she needed was a—I guess you might be kinda conceited—’good screwing.’ ”

Kinsella laughed. “That’s ridiculous. Not that it might not be true. I don’t know what I said, did. I was fighting for my freedom to go and protect Temple. You might know what that feels like, someone you love in mortal danger. You might know what that felt like for me.”

It was Matt’s turn to keep silent. He did, way more now that he and Temple had become . . . closer.

“Carmen distrusts you,” Matt said at last. “I guess she hates you. She might take whatever you said or did to get free of her as the God’s truth. That you would have screwed her to make her let you go. That you thought she would have liked it.”

It was Max’s turn to be silent. “Maybe that’s true,” he said. “Maybe I found her weakness and it was me. Hate is fear, and sexual fear hides unadmitted desire. If that’s what it would have taken. As it happened, I preferred to let her grind my face into the ground and feel she’d beaten me physically. Pride isn’t worth a penny if someone you love is at risk.”

“Nope,” Matt agreed. That’s why he was here, warning Temple’s lover, instead of letting Max go down so he could have Temple all to himself.

“So,” Max said. “Now your face is asphalt dust. Maybe you’ll have to screw Molina to get her off Temple’s case. No sacrifice too harsh.”

“You can laugh. I guess it’s a kind of defiance. But if Temple thinks you’d ever thought of betraying her with Molina—”

“Oh, shit,” Max said. “Oh shit oh shit oh shit.”

“Did you?” Matt asked, because he had to and because he actually enjoyed asking it way too much.

Matt couldn’t believe how much he relished the idea of Max being unfaithful, how down and dirty he could get, for the right wrong reason.

But he had to know.

“Because, if so, I’m going to have to warn Temple, to tell her something. I’d like to include your self-defense.”

“Sanity? Look. Why would I? I don’t need this right now. I have no idea where this nonsense came from. And I don’t need some do-gooder John Alden playing go-between for me and Temple. Even you should know by now you want her.”