Douglas, Nelson - Cat in a Flamingo Fedora

The motorcycle seat was longer and broader than she had thought. But she had ridden horses, great huge beasts, so this would be a piece of coconut cake. Maybe. The lift-over was as thigh-stretching as a horseback for her short legs, and she settled onto the hard leather seat with an unintentionally punishing slap. Next, she couldn't find the footrests, not until she stretched her legs way out and pointed her toes. Of course there was nothing convenient to hang onto but Matt, and her passenger position wouldn't really work unless she scooted up right behind him, which she did, snaking her bare hands into the faux-sheepskin side pockets of his jacket.

"Ready?" he shouted.

She just tightened her grip and then the Vampire leaped into the street like a runaway horse.

Galloping gallons of gas! She had never noticed that motorcycles tilted this way and that so much. As they turned into the street, Temple felt almost parallel to the pavement and clutched onto the flannel pocket linings until she thought they would rip out. The wind, absorbed by Matt ahead of her, still had plenty of pummel left in it for her.

And the traffic loomed all around them like an encroaching herd, pale circles of headlights and highly polished rumps... er, rear fenders ... of neighboring vehicles.

Temple curled her fingers into the lining of Matt's pockets for dear life.

Luckily, nowhere was far from anywhere else in Las Vegas, which still adhered to its simple desert-town layout.

"Oh, look!" Temple couldn't help shouting to the wind. "Domingo's flamingos are lit up at night!"

She actually unclutched and removed a hand to point, but a Ford Taurus sped by so fast she was almost about to be known as "Knuckles" for the rest of her life.

She replaced her hand in a hurry, remembering that Matt couldn't hear her no matter how well she projected. A motorcycle was no bicycle built for two; it was the eye of its own howlingly cold hurricane. No matter how cozy motorcycle couples look, pasted to each other as they are, she was finding it to be a solitary ride.

Soon, though, the Vampire turned into the deeper dark of the parking ramp behind the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department--again almost scraping Temple off on the concrete floor--and purred into an empty third-level space.

Temple sighed her relief as the engine rumbled to a muffled roar, then quieted entirely when Matt turned it off and kicked the stand into place. Temple wasn't sure her legs would ever desert their wishbone position; she would be doomed to bowleg around like a broncobuster forever. Her lovely shoe collection would look laughable at the ends of her pathetic, hooped legs. She would be drafted for croquet games the rest of her life!

Unbending, she tried to hop off; Matt caught her before she could fall over.

"Took me two weeks," he said, "to get comfortable on this silly thing."

"Will it be safe here?" Temple wondered, eyeing the impressive machine as they walked away.

"I locked it; that's the best you can do. If I ever have to tell Electra it's been stolen, I'd hate that."

"You'd most hate having lost something that was once Max's," she added astutely.

Matt stopped to stuff his buff leather gloves in his jacket pockets. "Yeah. I should have told you to wear gloves."

"That's okay. I had to hang onto your pockets anyway. We better forget about our mode of transportation and start thinking about how to handle Molina."

"She'll handle us, as always," Matt said dryly. "I never saw anyo ne so seriously devoted to her calling, except maybe me. Who wants to go first?"

"I should. I have the guiltier secret. She'll be mad, and rightly so."

"Temple. Don't look like an abandoned basset hound!"

"Oh, thanks! But I ain't gonna like this."

"I'll be there." He put his arm around her shoulder.

A sudden warmth and confidence spread through her chilled frame. This was better than a motorcycle ride any day.

Inside the garage stairway, signs directed them down to the ent ry level, where they had to check in with the desk sergeant. One just didn't waltz into the back door of a police station; that would mean too many could simply waltz out.

The large entry area was brightly lit, a shock after the darkening night and the parking ramp's blackness. Its wall of windows faced onto the concrete area between this building and the Hoover Dam-sheer face of the opposite building.

The sergeant gave them no guff, being a disappointingly pleasant, helpful type. He called up , and they were duly instructed that someone would be down for them.

They had been here a couple of times before, and knew there was nothing glamorous about a police headquarters, except its lack of glamour. That's what gave it flavor, the sense of overworked people coping as best they could, with littered desktops and crowded offices and squad rooms, with busy bathrooms and eternally plugged in coffeepots.

Matt and Temple followed their uniformed guide into the elevators in silence, and were finally shown into a long, narrow office cramped for space but crammed with file cabinets and folders.

Molina sat at the room's far end, behind a desk covered with neat paperwork piles.

"This feels like going in to see the principal," Temple gritted through her teeth to Matt.

"Wouldn't know," he gritted back.

"Goody Two-shoes," she gibed.

Molina put her fingertips to both sides of her eyes, as if acknowledging a headache, or the sight of two such approaching.

"Sit."

The chairs she indicated were plain and wooden, a lot less comfortable than the Vampire's hard leather seat.

"From your call, apparently you both failed to tell me relevant information about the Darren Cooke death. It's not really my case, but when your"--she nodded at Matt--"hot-line card was found in the deceased's possession, someone had to check it out and I had the overriding interest."

Her vivid blue eyes floated in pale maroon circles of fatigue. Her abstract tone of weary disappointment was even more marked.

"I won't do it again, Mother!" Temple was tempted to shout. She glanced at Matt. He was giving Molina his rapt, polite attention, like a perfect student.

"I'm surprised you would hold back relevant information," she told him. He winced ever so slightly.

"Matt felt he couldn't violate the confidentiality of a client," Temple said.

"Unfortunate, but understandable. And what is your excuse for keeping my daughter at the sitter's long past suppertime?"

Now Temple winced. "I thought you--the police--would find it. I didn't realize until recently that you hadn't."

"And what didn't we find?"

"For one thing, my card, which Darren Cooke had possession of at the time of his death, apparently." Temple was falling right into the police patois. Had possession of indeed.

"You think this card is a witness, or what? And how did you learn that he did have it?"

"From his wife. She found the card, and incorrectly assumed that I ... was an inamorata of his."

"Again, please. In English."

"Oh, you know what inamorata means, all right! A musical person like you, Lieutenant. You just want me to squirm. I was attending his regular Sunday brunch, at his personal invitation."

"Why should he invite you?"

"We were working on the same set at Gangster's. Theater people make quick acquaintances and slow friends."

"And this happy crossing of paths made you bosom buddies with the late Mr. Cooke."

"No, but he had heard Savanna h Ashleigh, who once was very bosom buddy with Mr. Cooke, refer to me as 'Nancy Drew.' So --"

Molina pushed back her seat and almost laid her cheek on the desk. She laughed. Finally, her head lifted and she examined the objects hung on her wall as if inviting them to participate in her merriment. She even glanced at Matt with tear-filled eyes, expecting him to join her hyena act.