Unknown - 23_Cat_In_A_Vegas_Gold_Vendetta

“I’d have smacked him down right in front of the computer,” Molina said.

“Precisely.” Temple stood to make her case, like a prosecuting attorney, pacing on the couch side of the coffee table, while Molina paced on the outside.

“You’d never seen Crawford’s teen-star promotion site before. Never knew that Mariah had posted photos of herself online—glamour photos, or attempts. That she yearned for a kid-star future. Were your eyes on Crawford, or the screen?”

“You’re saying that little weasel could have pulled a Barbie doll from his suit-coat armpit and tossed it onto one of Mariah’s girlie nests without my noticing?”

Alch put in a suggestion. “You were major upset, Carmen, and not in top condition from that long slash wound and always hiding that you’d been wounded. Buchanan is a born sneak. I know I didn’t see it where it was found an hour later.”

Molina corralled her nervous energy and stood her ground.

“And you’re telling me, Morrie, you weren’t distracted from guarding my back at work and at home for weeks, supervising Mariah morning, noon, and night so she didn’t suspect I had anything more than the flu?”

“Whew,” Temple said. “Way too old married couple fighting, for my sanity. I get you two were working under a lot of strain. And, remember, Mariah, being a teen, could have not cared less about your comings and goings. She was plotting a star-making career and totally involved in her own secrets.”

“What about Crawford Buchanan?” Molina asked her. “Could he be the Barbie Doll Killer? Two of the victims were in Vegas, and it looks from the other Southwestern murders that the killer has circled back here. Could Buchanan be the killer and right under our noses?”

Temple had to sit down to contemplate the big picture. She stared at the photo-studio head shot of the guy who’d intruded on her new career in Vegas from the first. He been smarmy and sexist, but that was hardly unheard of, or a crime. He’d crashed her women in media meetings, demanding they “integrate.” Cookies with Crawford. Corny but also … contemptible.

She started thinking aloud. “He’s always had this downtrodden girlfriend.”

“Abusive?” Alch asked.

“His whole personality is an affront to women. One of those sleazy, lechy guys who won’t shut up and be politically correct. Who need to challenge civility. And the way he encouraged his girlfriend’s teen daughter to take on questionable ‘modeling’ jobs, like being ring girl at prize fights and playing up her sexuality to get attention … Then we discovered that he had a site devoted to luring girls into ‘auditioning’ for all these reality-TV shows that exploit them.”

Temple jumped up. “That’s who the victims were—girls near malls wanting to audition for every singing, dancing, cat-fighting reality-TV show that comes along. Maybe Mister Entrepreneur wasn’t getting his jollies running their so-called careers. Maybe he was … oh, my God … amassing victims!”

By now Temple’s pacing had taken her behind the couch and into the kitchen and back out again.

“I’ve always, always hated and distrusted the guy, and he was always picking on me, but I never thought he could be really … dangerous.”

Molina nodded slowly. “Such a loathsome little worm. We think of serial killers as powerful because they seem to come out of nowhere and do so much damage. Yeah, we could all be underestimating Crawford Buchanan. That radio-DJ shtick allows him to go everywhere pretty young girls are, and Vegas is Casting Central for that type.”

Alch and Temple nodded in concert.

“We’d stayed out here in the living room, out of your way, with Dirty Larry,” Alch said. “Then you came down the hallway, propelling Buchanan ahead of you like a push broom once used by Typhoid Mary.”

“You,” Molina told him, “had searched Mariah’s bedroom before that and never found the doll. I shook Buchanan free of all his contacts out here in the main rooms and sent him on his way. I doubt he could have done anything with me there, no matter how upset I was.”

Temple almost jumped up and down with a new suggestion. She really “liked” Crawford for the Barbie Doll Stalker.

“Maybe he didn’t leave,” she said. “Someone could have snuck around the house side and opened the bedroom window to throw the Barbie doll in while we were all out here.”

Alch eyed Molina. “This old house must have sash-style windows. Easy to break into. You reinforce them?”

She shifted her weight uneasily. “Everybody knows this is a ‘cop house.’ The locals don’t foul their own nest, and the neighboring gangs know to stay off their turf.”

“That’s good enough for breakins,” Alch said, “but for a stalker? Didn’t those earlier incidents get your guard up?”

Molina’s head shook so hard her hair shimmied. “That stalker made a point of getting in and out without leaving a trace of a breakin, like he had a key or was a—”

“Magician?” Temple asked. “That’s why you thought it was Max. The seamless entry and exits.”

“That and … some other reasons.”

“What?” Temple wasn’t about to let go of past motivations on a subject she’d always wondered about. “You thought he was after you because you were after him for that Goliath Hotel murder, right?”

“Right,” Molina mumbled.

Molina never mumbled. Temple knew the woman was hiding something. Something embarrassing. Molina was never embarrassed.

“What exactly did that stalker in your house do?” Temple demanded.

“None of your business.”

“Yes, it is. You made it mine when you ordered me here to remember. How can I remember anything if I’m not fully informed? One wild idea leads to another that leads to a productive advance. Nothing happens in a vacuum.”

“She has a point, Carmen.” Alch folded his arms. He wasn’t budging.

Molina pushed her short-nailed hands into the hair at her temples. “You two are worse than Mariah when she really, really wants something. Okay. I made a big mistake. I thought the incursions were aimed at me. They happened in my bedroom first.”

“And naturally you thought that was Max,” Temple said, pouncing.

“First, it was just my closet being rifled. Then one of my performance gowns seemed to be … new.”

“You mean those wimpy pre–World War Two velvet numbers you wear to sing in?” Alch asked.

“I think he means ‘skimpy’ or ‘slinky,’” Temple translated, wickedly.

“Alch means neither,” Molina declared. “He means that bias-cut vintage silk velvet is so … thin and compact in a closet. And they are. The lot barely takes up a foot of rod space. And they’re all dark colors, so I can’t be sure to this day that the one that seemed new wasn’t one I’d bought and forgotten about. It’s not like I did the singing gig every day. Once or twice a month, tops.”

Temple raised and waved her hands. “Wait another minute. You think a stalker went out and found just the right vintage dress to slip into your closet? Vintage shops have gone all eighties and nineties now. You can’t find those really old thirties and forties treasures anymore. Trust me, I look. Who are we talking here being the Good Fairy of your closet, Bob Mackie? Send him over to the Circle Ritz. He can stalk my clothes rack anytime.”

“This is not about me or my wardrobe.” Molina’s voice was edging into a bellow again.

“It is,” Alch said. “You’ve been doing some mighty crooked thinking a lot longer than I thought.”

“Okay. The stalker seemed very adult and focused on me,” Molina said between her teeth, loss of control seeming a syllable away.

“Because it was sexual, you assumed it was Max?” Temple wouldn’t let go. “What do you think you’ve got, girlwise—which I’ve been using all my life while you’ve kept it in cold storage for years, like a fur in Las Vegas—that would attract Max or any other man in that way?”