Кэрол Дуглас - Cat In A Leopard Spot

“Oink,” Alch contributed.

Su laughed. “It’s a fashion thing, Morey. How can a mere man get it?”

Molina had to admit that Su’s eyebrows were the most elaborate and striking she had ever seen…with the odd exception of the brows drawn on the forehead of that vanishing lady magician, Shangri-La. Who had nicked an opal-and-diamond ring Max Kinsella had given to Temple Barr, in Manhattan, no less. Which very same ring Molina had found a couple weeks later at the church parking-lot death scene of a former magician’s assistant…another unsolved case. Not to mention the dead professor at UNLV and a third man falling dead at the New Millennium Hotel to match the earlier ceiling deaths at the Goliath and the Crystal Phoenix Hotels, one almost a year ago.

“Did I say something, wrong, Lieutenant?” Su’s face sobered.

“No. I’m just thinking about our case load. So, Morey. You were about the enlighten us about the widow Van Burkleo.”

“Like I said, inquiring minds want to know, is it nature or is it human error? Since Leonora Van Burkleo’s appearance is so noteworthy, I tried to find out if she had it done to her. On purpose.” He waited, trying not to look at Su’s on-purpose eyebrows. “The answer is a resounding, if puzzling, yes.”

“Plastic surgery.” Molina nodded. “How’d you find out?”

“Used the phone records. A lot to a local doctor. Some were out of the area code. The L.A. and Manhattan ones were fancy-shmancy plastic surgeons. These guys do movie stars. Their minions weren’t about to say much to a homicide detective, except to confirm that the way she looks is the way she wanted to look.”

“How long have the surgeries been going on?”

“Three years.”

“Interesting. She was married to Van Burkleo for six.”

“So,” said Su. “The lady aimed to please. Maybe she was being coerced into this freaky remodeling job and decided to kill him. Involving the leopard was a way to make a statement at the same time: he made her into a cat-faced woman, a cat would bring him down.”

“Perhaps.” Molina sipped her coffee and made her usual face on first tasting it. “I don’t see this woman as the type to alter herself to anyone’s specifications, though. If anything, she’s the control freak.”

“Affirmative,” said Su. “I like my Leopard Lady theory, but it’s pretty out there. The plastic surgery is probably just an extreme expression of that tendency to control nature. The word I got nosing around the ranch was that she was the one who really ran things, and with an iron fist. Van Burkleo was the client back-slapper.”

“He got his back more than slapped by that antelope horn,” Alch observed.

“The scenario we’re being asked to buy,” Molina said, “is that the leopard got loose in the house, scared Van Burkleo, and he ran himself through trying to get away from it.” Molina leaned back in her chair. “The introduction of the leopard brings our attention out of the house and onto the grounds. At the least it implies an outside accomplice to handle the leopard and let it indoors.”

“The place is crawling with keepers,” Su said, “and private security types.”

“Any of them recent hires?” Alch asked.

Su consulted her own narrow notebook. “Three. Two animal guys and one security guy.”

“I’m sure you ran all the names through records.” Molina looked at Alch.

He nodded. “Nothing major. One had a hobby of collecting traffic tickets. One had a couple altercations at a club, but he was a bouncer, you’d expect that. Cost of doing business. The other was as clean as a dinosaur’s tooth.”

“Dinosaur’s tooth,” Su jeered in retaliation for the eyebrow crack. “Your age is showing, Morey.”

“Let’s see the list.” Molina held out a palm.

“My notes are kinda scrawled.”

“I know your notes. If anything happened to you we’d need an Egyptologist to translate them….”

“See something, Lieutenant?” Alch asked hopefully.

Molina didn’t answer right away.

Because even in Morey’s scrambled handwriting she could translate the recognizable letters, Rfff Ndr. The letters “alt” followed the name. Short for altercations. This was the strip club bouncer.

Talk about turning-point moments. How far did she go to protect Nadir from official inquiry while she ran her own half-assed unofficial inquiry? If he was more than suspect, even a real live perp, at what point did her personal interest add up to endangering the public while protecting her daughter and herself? Now? Sic ’em on Rafi? Alch and Su to the manhunt? Kinsella hadn’t panned out, that was for sure. Molina cleared her throat, swallowed duty one more time. She simply didn’t believe Nadir had done it, not for personal reasons, but in her professional judgment. Now Alch wanted to know what had given her pause, something plausible, besides conscience.

“Just your execrable penmanship,” she told him affectionately. “You need to have these things translated, Morey.”

“I can read ’em better than I can type. You should see my typing, you want hieroglyphs.”

“It could cause trouble in court,” she said. “You can have the captain’s secretary type them up.”

“Captain wouldn’t like that.”

“You mean you can’t sweet-talk Arietta into doing you a favor? Just show her these pathetic notes. Her sense of order will put her at your disposal.”

“You overestimate his charms, Lieutenant,” Su told her. “Morey’s bashful act doesn’t go over with uptown women like Arletta.”

“Then you type ’em up for him, Su. You are partners,” Molina told her with a frigid smile that meant business. “You’re supposed to compensate for each other’s weaknesses. But do it after this case is over. We have a lot of folks already involved at Rancho Exotica. And we haven’t even looked into the upscale clientele.”

“You mean the sick weekend hunters,” Su said.

“You think the animal-rights people have a cause?”

“Darn right they do. Saw a feature on one of those TV news magazines. Had some kind of wild ram pinned against a fence. Shot so many arrows into his body he looked like a pincushion. Poor thing was panting and heaving, just lying there, waiting for the macho incompetent to kill him inch by inch in order to spare the head and chest for mounting. I’m a homicide cop and it made my stomach turn. I was ready to off the hunter myself.”

No one wanted to break the silence. Then Alch shifted to look at the scowling Su. “That cute little fuzzy jacket you wear when the temp dips below sixty, what’s that made of?”

“The magenta one? I guess, well, maybe, fur. Something they raise on farms. It’s not the same thing.”

“They don’t waste time with arrows, I bet, but I also bet that Peter Cottontail didn’t want to die for your fashion sense, either.”

Molina raised her hands to head off a serious spat in the detective team. Morey was right, a lot of things were easy to swallow if you didn’t know, or think, or see too much about them.

“That part of the case is not our jurisdiction,” she reminded them both. “We’re here to get people-killers. We don’t even have proof that Van Burkleo’s place was a hunting ranch, and we’re not about to waste man, or woman, power on that. It’s only relevant as a motivation for the animal-rights protesters, and I have a hard time buying a group kill. That only happens in Agatha Christie mysteries.”

“Maybe not a group kill,” Alch said. “Maybe one did it and the others are protecting him, or her. Or just don’t know. Somebody let that leopard into the house.”

“How about Van Burkleo himself?” Su asked, engaged again. “Maybe he liked to live dangerously. According to his wife, he was alone in the house that night because she stayed over in town.”