Кэрол Дуглас - Cat In A Leopard Spot

“Accidental death?”

Su shrugged. “We’ve seen some pretty incriminating death scenes that turned out to be accidents. Remember the alcoholic woman who went into a fit and tore up her living room? The place looked like an interrupted break-in, with attempted rape and successful murder.”

Molina nodded. Anything was possible. The medical examiner had reported head and body blows and bruises, but those could have happened while V. B. was running from the leopard.

“And then, for another theory—” said Su. And stopped.

“Yes?”

“There was the usual black cat on the premises.”

“What ’usual black cat’?”

“The usual black house cat we keep running into on crime scenes lately.”

“If it’s showing up at crime scenes, it can’t be a house cat,” Molina said.

“Big, shorthaired male?” Alch asked Su with interest, ignoring the boss.

Molina kept a dangerous silence.

Su made a point of consulting her notebook, just for show. “Not so big. Not so shorthaired. Maybe not so male. The description sounds female.”

“Oh,” said Alch. “The other one, then.”

“Sorry.” Molina slapped her palms on the desktop for attention. “I refuse to believe that Las Vegas domestic cats could get out into the desert like that. Must be a stray attracted by the big-cat food.”

Su shrugged. “Some of the attendants spotted it, earlier the same day that Van Burkleo was killed. Said it was hanging around the leopard’s cage. A little too coincidental, Lieutenant?”

“It’ll be a little too coincidental if I catch you wearing a jacket that looks suspiciously like cat fur, that’s when I’ll concede coincidence. Forget the house cat. What could a house cat have to do with a murder? We have enough big cats mixed into this case to make even Siegfried and Roy suddenly allergic to the species.”

After they left, Molina finished her too-strong, too-cold coffee, then headed for the women’s rest room, brooding.

The ethical line she was walking was fishing-line thin. If Raf was at the scene of another murder…he should be brought in and questioned. She could let Team Su-Alch do it. He didn’t have to see her at all. She could warn them not to mention her name…no, that would be out of character.

The door whooshed shut behind her the way rest room doors always do. She was alone in here, which wasn’t odd. Not that many women in a police facility even now.

Normally she didn’t check herself out in mirrors, but she glanced up while washing her hands. Granted even the brutal overhead fluorescent lighting, she looked haggard. Not good. Looking frazzled would generate questions, and questions would generate evasions, and then she was down the slippery slope and heading face-first into a tree….

A sound from one of the three cubicles interrupted her self-reflection. She hadn’t felt another presence. Sounded suspiciously like a sniffle. Someone with a cold, or one of the secretaries with a bum personal life.

While she considered how to graciously retreat, she realized that she had been frozen in silence for some time, first while studying her unlovely face, then while thinking…

A cubicle door swung open and Su emerged, stopping when she saw Molina.

Her eyes looked red.

“Merry?” Molina asked.

“Nothing.” Su stomped to the other sink and ran both taps full force, washing her hands with the furious energy of Lady Macbeth.

“Merry—”

“Never mind, I said!”

“It’s not, not Alch’s crack about the coat, the jacket, is it?”

“I just spotted it and tried it on.” Su lifted her hands and shook them, spraying Molina with ice-cold drops. She jerked a fistful of tan paper towels from the wall dispenser. “I didn’t even look at anything besides the price tag. I didn’t think.”

“That was Morey’s point, I guess.”

“Damn!” Su jerked another unneeded wad of paper towels from the wall. “I loved that jacket. Now what’ll I do with it?”

“Donate it to the homeless? They’ll wear it out using it for the right reasons, to keep warm, like the cave people, right?”

Su suddenly laughed. “Yeah, it’d look great on Crazy Clementine, wouldn’t it? She’s sure no size two on the streets!”

Molina smiled at the mention of one of the chief characters along the Strip. “It’s done. Move on.”

“Right. No one is going to wear a bunny in my presence scot-free from now on. Unless it’s Bugs.”

Su headed for the door, then stopped. She didn’t look at Molina.

“I hope it isn’t one of the animal people.”

It was almost seven by the time Carmen Molina slogged from the attached garage into the kitchen.

Something about the silence in the house alerted her.

She charged into the living room, alarmed, to find Mariah making like a hammock on the comfortable old couch, a book propped on her awkwardly swelling chest. A Buffy the Vampire Slayer book. Oh, well, it could be worse.

“Where’s Dolores?” Carmen asked, carefully.

“I told her to go home. She’s got dinner to fix for her family.”

“Dinner.” Carmen sat on the nearest chair.

They had none.

Mariah’s head lifted from the sofa pillow. “You’ve been out all the time lately, even nights.”

“The workload—”

“Okay.” She shut the paperback book and sat up. “I’ll make dinner.”

“You’ll make dinner?”

“You don’t think I can?”

“S-sure, but—”

“It’s okay. You’ve been up late a lot.”

Carmen sat there, stunned. Her twelve-year-old daughter taking on a domestic chore? It would probably be Hamburger Helper and frozen pizza, but at this point…

She kicked off her low-heeled shoes. How did Temple Barr wear those spikes of hers? Carmen’s feet were killing her and she’d spent most of her day on her behind. Maybe it was all psychological. She flinched as she heard banging and rattling in the kitchen. Let the kid do her thing. Don’t be a control freak, you might end up looking like the MGM lion .

Leo.

That was the name of the MGM lion.

Mrs. Van Burkleo’s given name was Leo-nora. Or an assumed name? To match the face. Stop! Stop thinking about the case. Stop thinking about Rafi Nadir . Carmen only calmed down after mentally urging herself to do just that for a few seconds.

She was at home now. Time to restore the frayed synapses. Relax. Spend some quality time with her kid, who was starting to act like a responsive adult, hallelujah. Not like a responsible adult, mind you, just a responsive one. That was something. Dinner was something.

She sighed, pushed her hair off her face, which she didn’t need to do because she wore it in a functional blunt out.

Mariah had even fetched in the mail. Amazing!

A small padded manila envelop lay on the cluttered coffee table facing the sofa.

A surprise. She hated surprises. Not healthy. Okay, we are all kids at heart. I love a parade….

Carmen froze to hear a kitchen appliance whirring. It’s okay. Give the kid space. You can fix anything that can go wrong except chopped-off fingers… She’d been in homicide too long.

She looked at her name on the typed—computer-generated, these days—label. C. R. Molina. Odd. These promo packages usually came addressed to “Resident.”

Still, maybe the day, and the nights before it, had been too wearing, but she felt the slightly giddy curiosity of a child with a surprise present. She didn’t get many of those nowadays. Certainly not at home.

She ripped open the adhesive flap at one end. Who had the energy to stagger into the kitchen—Mariah’s domain of the evening now—to look up a steak knife?

A small boxy item was inside. She practically had to squeeze it out, like a newborn.