Unknown - 23_Cat_In_A_Vegas_Gold_Vendetta

“Is that what Grizzly Bahr said?”

“Oh, you know the old goat? I should have guessed. He’s a leg man, even with corpses.”

“Lieutenant!”

“A joke. What’s your footwear of the day?”

“Sensible Easy Spirit pumps.”

“I do put a crimp in your operating system, don’t I?”

“Yes, sir.”

Molina chuckled. “That’s the attitude, Private. Private Investigator, is it now? As it happens, the Gomez death report was buried in File Cabinet Limbo with a lot of other ‘unexplained’ and unglamorous deaths. My ‘Bahr’—I doubt ‘Grizzly’ will ever be a nickname of yours—finds the cause of Mister Gomez’s death ‘vague.’ He could have had a heart attack at the top of the concrete spillway and fell into it. His head could have been bashed in at the top, and then he fell into it, impact masking the initial, deliberate blow. He could have been alive when he was pushed into it and died from the impact.

“This is a case that will only be prosecuted and decided on a reasonable motive for killing an elderly yard worker. A wealthy disabled employer who might name him in a will could very well be one. I can’t tell you not to interfere, except to note that if Gomez was murdered, as you suspect, you should keep yourself miles away from that invalid and that house.”

Molina tapped the manila folder on the tabletop. “Violet Weiner is listed for lots of crackpot calls to the police in the past year, men coming in and out of her bathroom window, Peeping Toms, and suspicious neighbors. That would make her latest fixation on Gomez being killed sound overwrought and like more of the same.”

Molina rose—towered—all almost-six feet of her.

“You know, Miss Temple Barr, PI, sometimes it also depends on a vic’s last name how much attention an unexplained death gets in this town, or any town in the lower forty-eight. I’ll have the case given a new look-see. Good work.”

She left Temple clutching her cup of orange pekoe and blinking with … relief, exhilaration, and pride. Guess she’d finally made the senior-high newspaper staff, after all. So to speak.

*

Such unexpected recognition, the euphoria, and the cold cup of orange pekoe made Temple decide to visit an herbal tea shop familiar with more exotic varieties. She had Captain Jack’s purloined tea bag from Violet’s house in her tote bag, and a wise PI would never look a gift purse pet in the mouth. Especially with sharp little teeth like that.

The Teahouse of the August Moon in bustling Henderson had a quaint, ersatz-Asian exterior, and a man inside named Augie Moon actually ran the place.

“Which came first?” she asked the portly, silver-bearded proprietor after making a deeply scented tour of the shelves. “Did your name or the novel, play, and movie’s title give the shop its theme?”

“Aha. A young lady with some long-range knowledge. However, if you’re as perceptive as I take you to be, you’d know I pre-date the fifties play by about ten years.”

“Really, Mister Moon?” Temple looked mock skeptical.

“Call me Augie. Even more perceptive than I thought. I’m following my life’s obsession, so I’ve certainly shaved at least a decade off my years. Not enough to court you, of course, Miss—?”

“Temple Barr.”

“Now there’s a name that already decorates establishments from the high and mighty and British to the low and Las Vegas.”

She had to chuckle. “You know the territory pretty well yourself. You have a wonderful place here. You wouldn’t be insulted if I told you I was led here by a ferret.”

“A ferret? Great hunters, ferrets. What are you hunting for?”

Temple pulled the Garfield mug from her tote. “The original contents of this cup and this tea bag.”

Augie seized upon the mug with as much relish as Captain Jack had retrieved the tea bag.

“You have to have a nose in this business,” he said, burying his rather large red one in the mug. “I’ll need to consult the shelves on both of these. Please step over to the tea bar and have a savory something on the house, the Teahouse of August Moon. I recommend a cinnamon-chili brew for one of your temperament and hair color.”

“I can change my hair color.”

“But never your temperament. Some paprika might do you very well, too.”

That flustered Temple into blushing.

“Hmph. I see the spice is not new to you.”

“Can tea have such exotic seasonings?”

“Tea can be made of anything.”

“Including narcotics or poisons?”

Augie hoisted the mug and the tea bag in both hands. “As you suspect? Are you a private investigator?”

“Moonlighting as.”

“‘Moon’-lighting. Then you’ve come to the right place. Sit and I’ll search.”

Temple perched herself and her tote bag on the cocktail-height chair while the slightly pierced girl behind the counter showed her a menu and offered a glazed ginger cookie to go with her choice.

Augie Moon was back with her items in a brown paper bag in fifteen minutes. He refused to let her pay and escorted her to front of the shop.

“I should let you pay for one of my greatest challenges?” He shook his head. “The tea bag was the easiest, but it was not what had been brewed in the cup. It’s a soporific. I’m assuming a clever puss like you knows what that means.”

“Inducing sleep.”

“Exactly. Ages-tested ingredients. Chamomile, lavender, valerian, catnip, passion flower, skullcap.”

“You pronounce those last three ingredients with particular zest,” Temple noted.

“Catnip for the Garfield figure on the mug, skullcap because you are investigating naughty doings, and passion flower because you are young enough to find it stimulating rather than soporific.”

“Augie, are you flirting with me?”

“I’m warning you. The tea bag is nothing you wouldn’t find in the most innocuous herbal-goods chain. The cup holds faint traces of less innocent concoctions.”

“Such as?”

“It’s not on my shelves but it is in my impetuous youth. Yes, I had one. Cannabis.”

“For medicinal purposes?”

“So they say now. I detect a slight milk scum. Cannabis in a water-based tea is weak stuff. With milk and its higher fat content, not so weak. In India it’s been referred to as bhang and used for medicinal purposes, despite its name.”

“I thought I smelled marijuana smoke in the house.”

“Not from the tea. What I think has been in this cup—and is very dangerous—is poppy seed.”

“Ooh, that knocked out Dorothy and everybody but the Straw and Tin Men on the way to the Emerald City.”

“Exactly. Poppy pods give us morphine and codeine for the ill as a sedative and painkiller, but it can be overdosed on.”

“So neither item is harmless, and each could be lethal?”

“As with everything, so it is with tea, Miss Temple Barr. A little of it is bliss; excess is dangerous.”

Temple allowed herself to be escorted out, still unsure whether Violet was being dosed for benign or malign reasons.

The custom blends in the bag and in the mug had been passed on, or under, the best “nose” in the house. They were strong combos of blends good at inducing sleep, which is what a sick old lady might crave and need. Nothing at all lethal.

Even the poppy seed was useful in the right dose.

Yet, she thought glumly, between Violet’s own flaky moments and the flakes she was surrounded by, anything evil was still possible.

Chapter 12

Return Engagement?

Morrie Alch pounced the moment his boss returned from her errand and knocked at the hard-won private office door then peeked in.

The room wasn’t much wider than Lieutenant Molina’s desk, yet having a hidey-hole at homicide headquarters had been invaluable when she’d been semiseriously wounded and had to keep it hush-hush.