Кэрол Дуглас - Cat In A Leopard Spot

Chapter 32

Animal Wrongs

“You look tired, Lieutenant.”

Morey Alch’s voice floated over Molina’s head like a dampened volcano of rumbling concern.

“What are you, my mother?” she growled back. He didn’t retreat.

He stood at her office door, knowing enough to keep his distance. He usually knew better than to get her back up by suggesting she was doing too much. Today he was right: she was too pooped to overreact.

“We’ve got a lot of cold cases to solve,” she went on mildly. “And then this nutso leopard killing—”

“Definitely nutso. You eyeball that woman?”

“I think it’s a woman.”

Alch had poured two mugs of coffee—overbrewed sludge—at the big urn near the door. Now he nodded and transversed the long, narrow office walking like a man on a tightrope. He set one mug down at her place before settling at the other side of her desk. His own white mug was artfully decorated with dried-coffee drips of various lengths and intensity. He tossed her packets of creamer and sugar and ripped into his own duo.

Molina sighed. “You and Su getting anywhere on the likely suspects in that case?”

“Besides the leopard, you mean.” He looked up quizzically from his coffee ritual.

She laughed, as he had intended. “Right. The Leopard Man did it. You ever see those old black-and-white movies when you were a kid? You know, the African cult that dressed up in leopardskins and clawed their victims? Am I hallucinating, or does this Van Burkleo case smack of jungle drums, my friend?”

“ The White Zombie ,” Morey declaimed. “Movies like that. Great stuff. The leopardmen in those movies wore these, uh, you know, gloves, with claws in the fingertips. Reminds me of my trip to England. Me and the wife, before…well, before. Anyway, I got into the Black Museum at Scotland Yard. Only me. Only pros. Don’t let spouses in, which was just as well. Anyway, they got Jack’s letters there. The Ripper. And they had all these confiscated weapons, and I’ll never forget, a Freddy Krueger glove.”

“ Freddy Krueger Goes to Blighty? ”

Alch sipped and nodded. “This crude canvas glove with razors for fingernails. Thing is, the Brit coppers found blood on the blades. Human blood. Never found who it came from, though, or who wore the gloves. Said it was time a little censorship got put into play.”

“That’s the trouble.” Molina sipped, shook her head. “There is no such thing as ‘a little’ censorship. So what did you find out about Maison Van Burkleo, overlooking the animal-rights activists for now?”

Molina stopped him before he could answer by looking steadfastly over his shoulder. “Come in, Su. We’re comparing notes.”

Merry Su paused at the coffee urn, shook her head and minced past it on high chunky heels, those Minnie Mouse oversized Mary Janes so popular with the young and kicky set. Temple Barr would look ludicrous in those gunboats, but somehow the equally petite Su didn’t. She dragged a side chair next to Alch’s.

“That stuff’ll kill you,” she pronounced, drawing a bottled water from the low-slung bag at her side with as much slow satisfaction as if it were a gun. “You’d be better off drinking straight whipping cream and cyanide, given the chemicals in those innocuous packets. Corporate murder.”

“Alch was just about to run through the Van Burkleo suspects,” Molina said.

“Before Morey does his old professor act,” Su said, “I’d like to raise an issue. We all know that the animal people are right and Van Burkleo was probably running a high-dollar hunt club there.”

Nods. “That’s not our jurisdiction,” Molina pointed out.

“I know. But…if the leopard didn’t do it, like animal-amok stuff, what about who used to own the leopard? Maybe somebody found out and didn’t like where it had ended up, playing pincushion for some would-be he-man bow-and-arrow hunter. If my Bichon ever ended up like that, I’d go hunt some two-legged game myself.”

Alch, taking notes, stopped on a pen point. “Your what? A bison?”

“Bichon. Bee- shown B-i-c-h-o-n. My Bichon Frise.” Bee- shown freeze- ay .

Alch was awe-stricken. “My God, it’s a hairstyle as weird as her eyebrows,” he told Molina.

“It’s a dog, dummy.”

“That’s verbal abuse,” he noted with both tongue and pen.

“Children.” Molina leaned her head on her hand. “Su makes an interesting point. But, as I understand it from the animal-rights people, and I believe they know the chapter and verse on this, the animals that Van Burkleo offered to target shooters—okay, target mis -shooters—were either raised for it, like the hooved animals, or the big cats were obtained from private owners who couldn’t handle them or caring for them anymore, or zoos who had old or excess animals they needed to get rid of.”

“Zoos?” Su was steaming now. “ Zoos would sell their animals to outfits like Van Burkleo’s?”

“Why do you think the protesters were out there in the desert?” Alch pointed out. “They had something legit to protest.”

“I’m told,” Molina put in, “that in some parts of the country some zoo board members actually own canned-hunt ranches. Cozy, huh?”

“That does it.” Su was surefooted now. “The killer could even be a zoo employee who learned that an animal he, or she, tended had ended up there. That leopard is a beautiful animal. Did you see it before they took it away?” She looked at Alch. “Shooting it would have been a sin.”

Molina was surprised. “I hadn’t thought about the condition of the leopard. Su, since you’re a bee-shown freeze-ay expert, call the guy over at Animal Oasis, what’s his name?”

“Kirby Granger.”

“Granger. Right. Call him and get a statement on the leopard’s age, state of health, probable source, that kind of thing. Maybe Van Burkleo planned to keep it as a personal trophy, if it was that fine a specimen.”

“Specimen! “Su huffed.

“I had no idea you were a cat lover,” Alch put in slyly, “from your attitude to certain black members of that species.”

“I’m not. I’m a dog lover. But a beautiful animal is a beautiful animal, especially if it’s an endangered species.”

“Passions would run high,” Molina agreed. “Alch, you seem to have an affinity for the widow. See if you can get the leopard’s provenance out of her.”

Molina felt pleased with herself. Su was a good choice to handle the gruff Animal Oasis founder, and Alch had a way with women that wasn’t obvious, but was effective. Precisely because it wasn’t obvious.

He was even now twinkling at her, aware of how she was dividing and conquering the sources.

“I expect you to make some real headway with Leonora Leopard-Lady, Morey.”

Alch promptly pulled out a narrow notebook and flipped through with the satisfaction of a thorough man.

“Okay. The wife. The widow now. I’m sure you’ve been wondering about—”

“I heard. The wife-turned-widow.” The obvious always made Su impatient, and nothing was more obvious than Leonora Van Burkleo. “You don’t need to go far to run her down. What a freak!”

“Oh, I don’t know.” Alch did a patented old duffer act of riffling his notebook pages and looking out from under his shaggy eyebrows. “I’d say that gals who pluck their eyebrows to resemble a pair of broken chopsticks are, uh, a hair on the freakish side themselves.”

Su’s exotically shaped brows lifted, lowered, and took flight, simultaneously. “Lieutenant, we have sexual and ethnic harassment here, all at once.”

“Go after the perps, not each other,” Molina advised. “You know Alch wouldn’t say a word about your eyebrows if he didn’t love you like a paternalistic sexist pig.”