Кэрол Дуглас - Cat In A Leopard Spot

“I quite understand. People identify with beasts, don’t they? I know I do. I am a lion person from start to finish. Besides the snow leopards, and it would be a shame to break up the pair, the only spotted leopard I have is still too new to be kept in an environment. You’d like to see it?”

“Of course.”

Leonora headed for a low set of doors built into the mountain that Temple had overlooked while gawking at the animal habitats, which were as impressive as any modern zoo’s.

They left the heat and sunlight behind them as they entered a metal door after Leonora clacked a code into a keypad with her overgrown fingernails.

Instantly, the air felt dank. Water pooled on the concrete floor.

Temple inhaled the stench of animal hair and waste and raw meat.

“The holding cages aren’t as aesthetic as the environments. You will need similar facilities behind the scenes for your animals at the Phoenix.”

“Luckily, we have plenty of room for that.”

Temple followed her guide past empty cages. She saw huge water bowls, and pieces of half-devoured meat of some kind she chose not to speculate about.

Finally, she came to an occupied cage. A lithe leopard paced back and forth, its golden eyes burning in the eternal twilight of the cage area.

“This one is…fresh,” Leonora said. “It’s a bit nervous. Cats like stable environments and he was just brought in.”

“How long ago?”

“I don’t know. A few days?”

“Where is he from?”

Leonora turned to stare at Temple. “I don’t keep the records. Cyrus’s secretary does. I see he has plenty of water. He should be calming down.”

She moved toward the bars. The leopard suddenly brushed against that side, then turned and screamed at her.

Temple jumped back three feet. The cry had been wild, furious, pained.

Even Leonora retreated. “I don’t know what’s got into him. Perhaps homesickness for his former environment. If he doesn’t settle down, no one will want him and then what will we do with him, hmmm? Don’t be a bad boy!” She shook a predatory claw at the animal.

It apparently read the same unspoken threat in her tone that Temple heard in her words, slinking to the opposite side of the cage, where it paced, back and forth, back and forth.

“It looks kind of skinny,” Temple said.

Leonora whirled on her. “The big cats are in superb condition. Not an ounce of fat, all muscle. Lean, as nature meant them to be. We do not keep them to grow fat and lazy, like house cats.”

“Of course not,” Temple said hastily, wondering if she was overfeeding Louie on Free-to-Be-Feline. “He looks in peak condition. I’m sure we’d be interested in him. And the black one. But of course it is up to…Horst.”

“Horst?”

“Our animal guy. Consultant. I’m the scout, as I said. Horst will want to make the final decision.”

Leonora nodded.

Temple was already wondering if Max could do a believable Horst. Why had that name popped into her head? Van Burkleo would no doubt see right through a phony Horst. Who did they know who was German that they could trust? Maybe Max knew someone.

She looked at her watch. Galloping Guccis, she had been here for two and half hours. Max must be fricasseed by now.

“Oh, I must get back. Things to do. Thank you so much for such an informative meeting.”

Leonora’s face had become the lordly mask of a dozing lion. She turned without comment to lead Temple into the sunlight and the fresh air.

Behind them, the leopard screamed protest again.

This time Temple didn’t jump. She just gritted her teeth and wished she had been a lion tamer in a previous life.

Chapter 11

Portrait of a Shady Lady

Janice lifted an eyebrow when she saw the Probe in her driveway, but didn’t comment on Matt’s “new” old car.

She looked like a schoolgirl with a sketch pad and a street-map guide to Las Vegas balanced on the crook of her right arm. She wore jeans for the first time since he had met her, and the arty earrings were gone. She noticed him noticing her outfit.

“What does the respectable self-employed woman wear to a strip club?” she mused, arranging herself and her gear in the Probe’s front seat. “Something casual but nonconsensual? That’s what I concluded. What do you think?”

“You don’t look like a stripper, in civvies or out.”

“That was the idea, but how would you know?”

“I’ve been backstage at some of the big hotel shows. I figure strippers don’t dress, or undress, much differently from showgirls.”

“Were these topless showgirls?”

“Ah, no.”

“Well, the ones we see tonight will be. Maybe I should leave you in the car.”

“I don’t think so, Janice.” Matt checked the rearview mirror for headlights. Nothing. Maybe Kitty the Cutter wasn’t infallible, after all.

“What’s with the car?” Janice asked at last.

“I’m trading my landlady for the Elvismobile.”

“For this? Why?”

“I like a low profile.”

In the strobelike flash of a passing streetlight, he could see her eyebrows lift skeptically.

“Okay,” she said. “Who am I to cavil with low profile? I’m racing out to sketch felons in a strip bar.” She squinted at the map under the rapid strafe of the next streetlight. “We need to turn left on Paradise.”

He followed her directions religiously, trying to pretend he wasn’t nervous about going ever nearer to a long-forbidden zone. Once Matt had parked the Probe in the brightest section of the flat, featureless parking lot that surrounded Secrets like an asphalt moat, a material black hole of night, they regarded the building through the windshield.

“Grim, isn’t it?” Janice said.

“No windows, just that big winking neon sign and that little windowless door. It reminds me of an ugly mausoleum.”

“Shabby. No advertising gimmicks outside. Like someplace you disappear into and never come out of.”

“Apparently some woman did just that, or Molina wouldn’t want a sketch of a killer.”

“You always call her that?”

“Some woman?”

“The lieutenant. No title, no first name?”

“Almost always.” Matt wasn’t about to admit how deviously he used the lieutenant’s despised first name. Knowing someone’s secrets was definitely like holding a weapon. A weapon you didn’t give away to anyone else.

“But not always.” Janice waited for more.

“I guess always,” Matt said firmly.

He recalled another secret he kept, and winced internally. Molina had custody of the opal-and-diamond ring Kinsella had given Temple in New York City. The elegant ring, instead of enhancing Temple’s finger, reposed in a plastic evidence baggie: found at the scene of another death, of a woman killed in a church parking lot. Matt wondered where the woman whose killer they were tracking tonight had been killed. Here? Or somewhere else? She hadn’t ever had an opal-and-diamond ring, Matt was willing to bet.

Was the victim even a woman? Molina hadn’t said, and Matt had assumed stripper club meant dead stripper. He asked Janice, who shrugged her mystification. “I’m supposed to ask for a bartender named Rick to get a description of a guy named Vince. That’s all we mere translators need to know.”

“Translator. An interesting description of the art of suspect portraiture.”

“All portraiture is suspect. It’s filtered through the eyes of an artist. We make very unreliable witnesses.”

“But you’re good at drawing out witnesses.”

She nodded. “Ready? To be honest, I’ve never been to a strip joint before either.”

Although a few cars were scattered around the parking lot, no one was coming out or going in when Matt and Janice approached the graffiti-etched door.