Carole douglas - Cat in an Indigo Mood

"do not have a dog's keen sense of smell, Strawberry Lady or no Strawberry Lady. We have three murders here: three women dead who came from wildly different spheres of life and experience, in one case, of age as well. Each was strangled. Each somehow . . . was punished for leaving. Something. This is beyond doggie sniffing."

"Would you take my request seriously if I told you I think I know the murder weapon?" Matt said, like a man who had committed to a great risk.

"You do?'"

"At least in the first murder. Your murder, Lieutenant."

"It is not my murder, any more than it is your murder. But what weapon are you thinking of?"

"It may sound far-fetched, but, if my idea has a possibility of being right, will you look into the dog's . . . suspect?"

"You give me a feasible murder weapon in the first case, and I'll investigate Lassie." She glanced from one to the other, expecting nothing.

Matt took a deep breath. "A rosary."

"A rosary! Much too small. The average rosary is--what? Fifteen inches around. You couldn't even slip it over someone's head."

"Large beads on a chain. Nodules. Regular."

Molina rubbed the back of her neck with an impatient hand.

"Yes, the general pattern, but--" She grew suddenly quiet.

Temple edged forward on her chair seat. What? she wondered. She didn't know a rosary from a string of pearls, but she knew a sudden insight when she saw one a-borning.

"Matt?" She glanced at him.

He was even more intent on Molina than she was. Temple understood that he was playing her, as Max would play an audience--that Matt knew the answers and was making Molina face them despite herself.

When had he become so certain? When had Molina become vulnerable enough to be wrong? To need help to see the obvious?

"The Catholic rosary." Matt said softly to Temple. "Ten spaced beads, a central single bead between two larger spaces, then ten more beads, for a total of five, 'decades.' Not barbed wire, but not unlike it, in a way."

"But the size--" Molina broke in.

Matt's eyes remained on Molina's face. "The size is too small, unless--"

Molina waved away his unvoiced explanation. "Unless you're talking about the oversize rosaries some orders of nuns wore with their habits. They were strung on an extremely sturdy cord. So, is a nun the suspect?"

"Anyone with access to such . . . artifacts would be."

"Look, I concede that you know your religious artifacts, but who would keep such an antiquity today? Nuns haven't worn those old habits for more than thirty years."

"Are thirty year-old guns incapable of being fired?"

"Who would hang onto such things?"

"Who indeed? Maybe you should look into certain people's backgrounds. Lieutenant, and you might start where the dog suggested."

"Idiots!" She stood- "You are both idiots. And l am an idiot for even considering this wild goose chase. I'll look into it, all right? I'll put valuable person-power on this crazy theory of yours. But then how do the other killings fit in?"

Temple stood too, although she was not nearly as impressive as the almost six-foot-tall lieutenant. "Maybe they don't. Maybe assuming they do fit is trying to link the unlinkable."

"That's . . . unthinkable."

Matt stood. "Murder always is. Let us know if we can be of help."

"Of more help," Temple amended.

Molina snorted in disgust and did not look up from her desk when they left.

She sounded like Nose E. on a roll.

Chapter 57

Bead Counting

"Did they really make rosaries that big?" Temple wanted to know as she trailed Matt out of police headquarters, holding her -arms as if embracing an invisible barrel.

"Well, almost. For nuns. Hung from their belts."

"How."

"Wow. It was another time and another place."

"Rosary belts. Sounds kind of kicky. Fashion, maybe. Crosses were big a couple seasons back."

Matt stopped. "An oversize rosary could be a pretty fiendish weapon. I hope Molina takes me seriously enough to reexamine the ligature marks on that first victim's neck."

"You think Nose E. is on to something."

"I don't know about Nose E. It's a cute clog. Maybe it smelled . . . menthol or eucalyptus leaves or tanna leaves to raise the mummy of King Tut. I don't know. But I have a bad feeling, ever since I heard the Blue Dahlia victim was an ex-nun, a nice, harmless ex-nun. It struck me that whoever killed her throttled the vocation, not the person."

"But she wasn't a nun anymore."

"Exactly. And she sure isn't an ex-nun now."

Temple sat down on the low concrete rim edging the weirdly decanted wall towering in front of police headquarters. "Matt, what if I'm right and the murders are philosophically but not physically connected? Like Leopard Lady. She left, all right, left the vocation of being a magician's assistant. And we've seen signs that it's not safe to leave magic."

"We? You and Max. you mean?"

Temple's nod only increased Matt's obvious unease.

"It was bad enough to learn after your recent kidnapping that Max has a counter-terrorist history he can't walk out on. Now you tell me that leaving his front profession could be as dangerous. He's really not safe to know."

"He never was. Hey, don't look at me like that. If what you're saying is true, it's not terribly safe to leave Mother Church, either."

Matt sat beside her, rubbing his neck as unconsciously as Molina had done earlier. "True.

Fanatics are fanatics, whether they espouse a religious or a political cause, or even . . . hocus pocus."

Temple remembered him pointing out that the magical term originated in the Catholic mass, and smiled. "Maybe all those things are connected. Call it mystical entertainment. Okay. Let's assume the murders aren't connected. Where does that leave us?'"

"With one fingered, or pawed, possibility. With a couple of mystery deaths."

"Aren't all deaths a mystery?"

"Now you're sounding theological. Pretty serious stuff for a Unitarian."

Temple nodded glumly. "I hope Molina takes you seriously, because l sure do."

"I wish you took me seriously on matters other than murder."

"Hey, you wanta go somewhere with me P" Temple asked as they approached her car at the curb across the street.

Matt paused for a moment not so much to consider the invitation, as to relish it. "Yeah."

"As part of the case, I mean."

"Molina wouldn't like you calling it that."

"You mean it's her 'case' and our 'conundrum?' " Temple pushed up her jacket sleeves as if mentally preparing to duke the difference out. "I want you to meet some people. Look them over."

"People?"

"Well . . . assorted psychics."

"That's a change of scenery from what I've been used to lately."

"The Halloween seance gang just happens to be in town for a conference. I'd like to renew auld acquaintance and ask them some questions. And I'd like your opinion of them. And, I'd look more . . . innocuous if l showed up with an escort."

She had managed to select the car key from the jillion-thousand keys on her ring (Temple had never met a key she didn't like the shape of) and unlocked her door, but Matt opened it and held it until she was seated.

He shut it and came around the back to the passenger's side, while she started the car and wondered why he made her so nervous lately. He certainly acted calmer himself, sort of dreamy calm around her. Maybe his newfound fame and fortune, relatively speaking, was good for him.

She smiled, nervously, as he got in the passenger side. "You haven't said whether you'll come or not."

"Of course I will." His smile was slow and sweet. "I'm always interested in what you're up to."

That blanket approval, of course, made her undercut her own impulses for the next four blocks.