Кэрол Дуглас - Cat In A Leopard Spot

This Vince character was the only missing piece in the puzzle. She hoped Janice—wry, solid, talented Janice—would piece enough of Vince together to give her detectives a face to find. A face that wasn’t Rafi Nadir’s. Ironic, how much she needed him to be not guilty this time.

Matt was surprised when his phone rang again so soon after he’d hung up. He jumped as if guilty of something, but the only possible offense was still feeling guilty about the call he’d made on that phone only half an hour ago. Guilt only goes around to come back and give the owners a good hard kick.

“Matt?” Her voice came breathless, unusual for Janice, and not at all like it had sounded a half hour ago when he had called. Before he could acknowledge that she had indeed reached him, she rushed on. “Listen, I don’t blame you for canceling our dinner tonight. That was pushing it. Inviting you here for dinner, I mean. Kiddies off. Home alone. Actually, you didn’t cancel it, you just didn’t accept it. I don’t blame you.”

“Janice, that isn’t it at all.”

“No? What else could it be? I feel like the Venus fly trap that failed.”

While Matt pondered an answer to that, she rushed on. Her anxiety to smooth over an apparent snag in their tentative relationship both aggravated his guilt and intrigued him. He was glad his late-life entry into the dating game was rattling someone else besides him.

“Just listen,” she was saying. “Right after you called, an identification job came up. Just now. I could do it tonight. But. The neighborhood’s not the best. Want to come along? I could use a bodyguard.”

“You don’t know how much. But it’s not me—”

“It could be fun. Well, okay. Interesting. Secrets. It’s a strip joint. I’ve got an uncooperative bartender to deal with. I feel like a gun-fighter strutting into a new saloon. Draw, partner, draw!”

Matt laughed. “Janice, where on earth did you get this assignment?”

“From your friend the homicide dick.”

“Molina sent you into that kind of a situation?”

“Why not? She’d go into it. Why shouldn’t a sensitive artist type like me soak up the scintillating ambiance too? Besides, she’s paying extra and I could use the money.”

“It’s not an environment I’d visit in a million years.”

A long pause. “I know. I’m asking too much. It might freak you out.”

He was feeling too guilty about saying no to dinner, at home alone, to let her go unescorted into a seedy situation like a strip club. He was already figuring a strategy to make sure that Kitty O’Connor knew nothing about it, or about Janice.

“Janice. Why’d you say yes?”

“I need the money. I could use something weird in my life. I’m trying my damnedest not to drive you away.”

Matt shook his head at the phone, where the gesture didn’t do any good. As Janice had caved in to Molina, he was about to cave in to her. Maybe life’s everyday plotline was constructed by a daisy chain of cowards. He couldn’t let her face a strip club alone. For the moment, Secrets sounded a lot more hazardous than Miss Kitty.

“I said yes to the job,” Janice admitted, “before I really thought about what it would mean.” Another pause. “And…you wouldn’t be trapped with me. Plenty of other female competition to think about.” She was still coaxing. “A dozen topless dancers will be our chaperons, honest.”

“I don’t feel trapped. At least not by you. I can see I’m going to have to explain myself, and I’d better do it in person. All right. I’m off work tonight. When do you want to do the dirty deed?”

They settled on what seemed a reasonable time, if there ever was a reasonable time for going to a strip joint. Matt hung up finally, pondering how to completely rearrange his life in a few short hours.

Living alone meant that the apartment was utterly silent when he was. He wasn’t used to solitary living. Rectory life bristled with people always coming and going, both residents and visitors.

He sat on the red sofa savoring the silence. And then he wondered if the place was bugged. He couldn’t underestimate Kitty O’Connor. Her uncanny way of knowing where he was, and when, was probably based on years of undercover experience.

His skin crawled at how easily the most innocuous life could be compromised. One determined monomaniac could weasel her way into every crevice of his routine.

Matt stood.

He left and locked the apartment, for whatever good it might do, and took the elevator to the building’s main floor.

The Circle Ritz lived up to its name both in its rotund construction and its aura of faded 1950s glory, when it had been architecturally reasonable to slather black marble on floors and exterior walls as if it were Russian caviar on Melba toast.

He passed through the modest lobby, his reflection on the black marble floor making him feel like he was walking on water, on very dark, deep water. At least the hall leading to the chapel was paved in step-softening walnut parquet.

A wedding was in progress.

Matt slipped into a white-painted pew as discreetly as he could. From much past experience of weddings and funerals, it was very discreetly indeed. He only glanced at his seatmate once his settling rustles had quieted.

Oh. Of course. Elvis.

Elvis sat as still as a corpse. Matt couldn’t see beyond the dark, silver-framed aviator shades to anything resembling eyes. Electric candelabra stationed at the pew ends threw dancing lights on the colored stones studding Elvis’s wedding-white jumpsuit. His pompadour and sideburns were angel-hair white too.

Platinum Elvis took up a lot of space. Matt squeezed against the pew end. Wouldn’t want to crowd the King. He put his respectful attention on the ceremony. He had, after all, crashed this wedding.

Electra, looking like a late-life girl graduate in her black JP’s robe, officiated. In a few minutes she released the fortyish couple to a slow walk back down the aisle between a smattering of friends and the host of soft-sculpture figures with which Electra populated the pews so every couple would have a full house.

Taped music—Hawaiian Wedding Song—played until everyone involved had hula-ed down the aisle and out, except Electra and himself.

Matt stood as she noticed him. “Got a few minutes?”

“Got scads of minutes,” she said. “Las Vegas weddings are much less impromptu now. Everything’s scheduled. Like real life. Kinda boring.”

“I see the organ is a stage prop these days.”

“Oh, yes.” She shrugged out of the robe. “It’s easier not arranging for Euphonia to come to play it. Besides, couples want a high-tech ceremony today: their favorite songs; videotapes-to-go; balloons released; all the wedding bells and whistles.”

Matt moved to the silent organ, his fingertips pausing on the pale keys. “Kind of a shame.”

“You’re welcome to come and play any time the chapel’s dead.”

“Dead?”

“Not hosting a wedding.”

“Speaking of dead—” He looked questioningly toward Elvis.

“My newest.” Electra fondly regarded the figure. “He just didn’t want to be left out. And, you know, I met this neat Today Elvis guy at the big Kingdome Hotel opening with all the impersonators present, and have never seen hide nor snow-white hair of him since. I thought we had something special. So this is a memorial to Izzy.”

“Izzy?”

“Too complicated to explain, Matt. Aren’t there some things in your life too complicated to explain?”

“How about everything?”

“Such ambition,” Electra joshed. “You’re too young to be that mysterious.”

“Not mysterious, just mystified. Anyway, I want to offer you a deal you can’t refuse. I’m hoping that Elvis in the pew is on my side.”