Douglas, Nelson - Midnight Louie 05-Cat in a Diamond Dazzle

"I'm afraid I can't discuss the details, but the Mystifying Max will most certainly be arrested as soon as I can get a hold of him."

"What for?"

"Irritating an officer? Don't worry, there will be something I can pin on his pony tail one day soon."

She watched his face tauten with the belief that she really had seen Kinsella. That's why she had added the telling detail of the ponytail. And now she knew that Devine had seen this "demmed elusive"

creature as well.

"What did you think of him?" she asked next.

"Funny. I was going to ask you that."

She shrugged. With a wary soul like Devine, going first often meant getting what you want last. "How would they say it in the old days? 'A smooth customer.' But mine is a professional evaluation. I'm not interested in the personal."

"My summation is professional too," he said coolly enough, finally relaxing into their verbal fencing match. "A complex personality. Charming, of course. Alarmingly bright, but... somehow uneasy. And dark. A deep, dark streak, quintessentially Celtic."

"Celtic. Not the usual word you find on police blotters, Mr. Devine. I'll have to take it into consideration."

"Why are you baiting me?"

"Oh, because I have nothing better to do, or because I'm frustrated with the current case and it's more amusing to worry at old ones."

"Current case? Another murder?"

"Which murder did you think I meant? Or is there one I don't know about?"

"There have been so many since--"

"Since you met Miss Barr. I know. Well, now there's another. One of the competing cover hunks.

Arrow through the back sec-onds before a dramatic entrance--and exit--at an onstage rehearsal. Didn't she tell you about it?"

"I haven't seen Temple in a while."

"So she doesn't know you're here?"

"No. And I didn't--"

"Know she was here. Where did you think she had gone?"

"I--I don't know. I didn't want to ask. I figured--"

"No. No, my son. She is not with the Mystifying Max, at least not that I can tell. I would expect her to be less interested in the cover model murder, if that were the case, and no such luck. However, I wouldn't get too complacent, if I were you. She's with thirty-some half-clad muscular male models."

He frowned, ignoring her jibes. "Temple shouldn't be involving herself in that."

"I agree, but she does not. This time she has a guilty conscience."

"Guilty? Temple?" He sounded more alarmed by the latest murder than by Max's return, Molina noted.

"The victim had asked to speak to her alone the night before the murder. She knew him--slightly, she says--from the stripper competition a few months ago."

"I didn't know much about that," Devine muttered, distracted.

Molina suddenly realized why he was so disoriented. "That's why you were talking to Saltzer! You knew nothing about the latest murder, you were inquiring about the Effinger death. Oh, great, another amateur detective on the loose."

"Not an amateur anything." He flushed again, a victim of the ex-priest's innocence of ordinary social give-and-take beyond the charmed circle of a clerical collar. "I'm a concerned party in that case. Effinger was my stepfather. Or was the dead man really Effinger?"

Molina reared back, ambushed by an astute question. "What do you mean?"

"What do you mean, Lieutenant?" he added more softly. "You misled me. Why? I finally ... realized that there was no need for me to trek to the morgue and view the remains. Effinger had a police record.

His fingerprints would be available here, and in Chicago. Why did you put me through that identification mummery? For fun? Is that what you learned in Catholic schools, Carmen?"

Molina discovered that she had inherited the Catholic flush of guilt, too, especially when an ex-priest had caught her being officially devious and then used her hated baptismal name to bring the venial sin home.

"I needed your input," she said stiffly.

"Input?" His tone made the word an epithet. "Is that what you call it? I didn't have much input.

Standing in that vacant place, with those vacant corpses in various stages of dissection, with that . . .

smell like bitter orange blossoms strewn atop a cesspool, waiting for the beige curtain to be drawn so I can look down on some still, beige body under a white sheet. Death warmed over posing as cold oatmeal. Why, when you already knew-- knew --who he was?"

"But I didn't," she confessed in a low voice. "I still don't, since even you couldn't be certain."

"But the fingerprints--!"

"Don't match," Molina admitted, hearing the bitterness in her own voice. The failure.

"Don't match?"

He stared into her face, a handsome man her own height, who couldn't, wouldn't dream of intimidating her except with the moral indignation he had rightfully leveled at her. Using him without telling him why was part of her job. Most parts of her job were not nice.

Matt Devine settled into his own uneasy speculations, his emotions finally as readable as face-up playing cards. He was starting to learn the game of self-defense. She frowned. Using someone as undefendedly honest as Devine was more than mean; it was rotten. She suspected that his family history was tortured, now she could see the proof of that.

"It's a good thing I didn't call my mother--" He thought aloud, making her kick herself again for good measure.

Yet the reflex of official suspicion would not be denied. If the Devine/Effinger family history was so tormented, Matt Devine could have killed the man who called himself Cliff Effinger, not knowing any better than she who he really was.

"Thanks for finally telling the truth," he said, looking up.

She wished she could be sure enough to say the same.

Chapter 26

Another Opening, Another Shoe

Shades of the late, great Gridiron Show! Temple was once again racing through the theatrical underbelly of the Crystal Phoenix, thinking about skits, costumes and crime. This time she was in cover-model costume, so she had long, heavy lavender brocade skirts to drag along. Good thing she had packed her Guthrie costume.

Off-the-shoulder necklines may be tailor-made to drive historical romance heroes crazy. They are also designed, she found, to drive anyone who wears them--except a broad-shouldered linebacker--

insane. She shrugged as she ran, wanting the material either on or off. It persisted in riding her shoulder rim like a gargoyle clinging to a cathedral ledge.

Her ice-cold fingers jerked up one brocade shoulder . . . what self-respecting romance heroine wouldn't have cold fingers when she was about to rehearse a pose-down with a cover hunk? Heavy on the hunk, no doubt, and light on the rehearsal. She'd heard the author escorts buzzing about a contestant who'd tried to goose any passing female last year.

Though Danny had promised to steer obstreperous sorts away from her, he wasn't God and couldn't control everything. And with Crawford Buchanan's stepdaughter Quincey, a not-so-sweet sixteen, among the cover models, Temple was bound to inherit some of the lusty overflow directed away from Quincey. Temple could hardly plead maidenly qualms at thirty.

She circled her neck to ease a cramp, rebelling against a fall of hot, heavy red hair, also part of the complete covergirl's costume. The hairpiece still felt prone to ebb down her back like an auburn sun sinking slowly in the West, so she jabbed oversize bobby pins into her coiffure as she went, hoping to hit hair, wig or something anchor able, even scalp would do in a pinch....

Of course she had to wear extremely flat-footed satin slippers, so naturally she slipped on the slick concrete and went skating ahead of herself until she caught a costume rack pole, tilting it to perform a fancy circle-stop against the wall.