Carole Douglas - Cat in a Zebra Zoot Suit

“Not known him, no.” Temple made an apologetic shrug. “But I could have met him.”

“Where? Not at the Circle Ritz, surely?”

“No. Not there.”

“Then where?”

“At the Araby Motel.”

“The—” Matt was speechless.

“I think,” Ernesto said, leaning forward to look them each in the eye, “that the gentleman, since he’s not called upon to answer questions, should have a nice stiff Scotch. And the lady should sit back in silence and compose her thoughts for the forthcoming chat with the police. At least she is known to them as a solid citizen.”

“So is Electra,” Temple complained. “All of this is just plain bogus. And since when does Gangsters chauffeur people to police headquarters instead of to the nearest underground nightclub?”

Ernesto could only shrug his impeccably Emanogildo Zegna-tailored shoulders. Some mysteries even Fontana brothers forebear to question. Temple wondered if Julio’s recent attentions to Molina had made things better, or worse.

Matt had insisted on accompanying Temple into the Crimes Against Persons offices, although Ernesto also insisted he alone was needed as escort.

Temple was further unnerved when she learned that Electra had been interrogated and released, and likely she would be too. She was relieved Electra hadn’t been arrested after seeing the police, but wondered if her account, coming after Electra’s, could inadvertently make things worse, not better.

Even with Matt and Ernesto as escorts, Temple would have felt a lot calmer with Midnight Louie by her side.

21

Vegas Blues

When Matt and Temple heard Lieutenant Molina paged, she appeared so fast that both Matt and Temple started…guiltily, some might say. Especially Temple.

“Wait here,” the tall police officer told Matt, indicating a spare modern chair among a long row of mostly empty ones. “With that.”

He took custody of Temple’s tote bag, as instructed, and sat.

“Excuse me, Lieutenant,” Ernesto said with a rueful smile, “before you rush off, you should know that Miss Barr has legal representation.”

Temple was shocked, but Molina coolly cocked a strongly dubious eyebrow.

“The Fontana family law firm is getting a workout recently.” Molina sighed and stepped away to confer with a colleague.

“I have a lawyer?” Temple leaned up to whisper Ernesto. “I don’t have, like, a lawyer that I know of.”

“No problem.” Ernesto patted the top of her forearm. “We always keep several at hand.” He turned to a person sitting farther down the line of chairs, whom Temple had taken for a bookie about town, like Nostradamus, the rhyming odds maker.

At Ernesto’s nod, a roly-poly balding man with tortoiseshell-framed glasses and a lot of white shirt frontage showing beneath a snugly rumpled suit coat hastened their way.

Temple was even more shocked. How could the fashionably slick Fontana males employ a lawyer who looked like a dropout from mail-order law degree school? And his equally shoddy and bulging briefcase was festooned with untidy paper corners sticking out every which way.

“Lester Savoy,” Ernesto introduced him to Temple. “Our longtime legal eagle.”

He looked more like an adult ugly duckling. He didn’t quack like a duck, though, and rolled out a short introduction-instruction spiel.

“Miss Barr, I’ve also been honored to represent Mrs. Lark and am acquainted with the facts of this situation. Just relax in the interrogation room, but convey the least information possible to answer any questions. I’ll be the Invisible Man unless you are asked a question it would be in our better interests to let go unanswered.”

Invisible? No one was going to miss that Hawaiian-themed tie, which barely reached the fourth button on his wrinkled shirt. An aroma of cigar—not a pleasant vanilla-scented one, but the burned alfalfa-fertilizer kind—screamed “shyster”.

Matt was looking appalled, but Ernesto quickly shepherded this new odd couple of Barr and Savoy into Molina’s custody. “All bright and shining and ready for you, Lieutenant.”

Molina’s eyelids shuddered shut for half a second.

Waving a hand holding a slim file, she gestured Temple and Savoy to precede her farther into the bowels of the building, Actually, everything here was too new and modern to qualify as the usual seedy bowels of a police station. Temple knew that from having witnessed an interrogation here during the recent Black & White rock band murder case.

Now, out of the blue rather than the black-and-white, Temple was going to be facing the other side of the one-way mirror. The wrong side. As the interviewee.

Even an interrogation room that smells as pristine as a new car can’t disguise its unpleasant purpose. Molina gestured her inside to a seat at the familiar bare table.

Somewhere during their progress to the room, Detective Alch had turned into a tail and brought up the rear. The veteran detective, with his salt-and-pepper shock of hair and laid-back manner, reminded her of TV’s Lt. Columbo, Peter Falk. He spun to shut the door behind him while Lester Savoy pulled out the chair next to his and…left Temple to seat herself.

As Savoy sat, he slapped the briefcase to the tabletop, a small mountain of scuffed calf-excrement-color brown leather. It stank of cigars too.

Molina recited the date and names of all present for the recording device. Her voice was as flat and factual as her wardrobe of solid-color pant suits were monotone and her working shoes were loafers to spare the egos of shorter male colleagues or superiors.

Temple wondered how Electra had fared when she had sat in this same room earlier today? Temple wished she’d been able to consult with Electra beforehand. No chance when she’d been whisked from airport to police headquarters, and the Fontana brothers had played accessories before the fact.

Temple also wondered if Molina’s new rapport with Julio Fontana was a cynical plan to use them to her advantage…or the start of a real romance for the relationship-averse single mother pushing forty.

Right now, Molina was all cop and started the session. “To begin, Miss Barr, you’ve just arrived back in Las Vegas after a two-day trip to Minnesota?”

“Yes.”

“The purpose?”

“To see family.”

“Did Mrs. Lark call you or communicate with you in any way during that time?”

“No.”

“Were you aware that she had been questioned in connection with a murder?”

“No.”

“Did you communicate or try to communicate with her when you landed in Las Vegas?”

“No. I hadn’t heard anything—” Temple glanced at the warm hand with hairy knuckles resting on her forearm and stopped her answer with a simple, “No.”

“Before you left town, you accompanied Electra Lark to the Araby Motel last Friday night?”

“Yes.”

“Why?”

“Because it’s in a bad neighborhood. Safer for two.”

“So you knowingly went into a ‘bad neighborhood’ in the middle of the night?”

“Yes.”

“Again why?”

“Electra needed to go there.”

“For what purpose?”

“To see a man about a property sale.”

“This man was known to Mrs. Lark?”

“He…she said he was her ex-husband.”

“Did Mrs. Lark give you a name?”

“She called him Jay, and later, Jay Edgar.”

Molina rolled her eyes at the name. “Was she afraid of him?”