Unknown - 23_Cat_In_A_Vegas_Gold_Vendetta

Kinsella propelled D. L. to the sofa like she’d propelled Crawford Buchanan to the door a few nights before. She had to admire his total control, despite a forced, stiff-legged gait. It still served for a perp walk. She understood now why his pounding had been so urgent. He hadn’t expected to maintain control of a pro like Dirty Larry for long.

“You have any idea,” Kinsella asked, breathing hard after dumping D. L. on the couch, “how much time this bozo spends tailing you?” He paused for more breath and to smooth his hair with his fingers.

Dirty Larry wouldn’t have been an easy takedown.

“That’s what you’re paid the big bucks to find out,” she told him while regarding Larry, who was massaging his right shoulder and keeping his eyes down.

“What was Temple doing here?” Kinsella asked.

“Okay.” She returned her weapon to the drawer, a gesture Kinsella saw, but not Larry. Molina shook her head. “Even without a memory, you’re her self-appointed guardian angel. Now we know why you broke your cover and muscled Dirty Larry inside. Did I want this degree of disclosure? No.”

“Look.” Kinsella eyed her beer. “How about one of those? I’ve been getting as buggy and sweaty as Podesta eavesdropping on your big confab. You know this old house’s windows are doors … and listening devices.”

“Just another thing I was going to fix someday,” she said. “Okay, I’m going to let you two duke it out in my living room to do what I seem to do best tonight—fetch beer.”

She got two bottles from the fridge, put them on the breakfast bar, and returned to the living room to sit in a chair opposite the couch.

Then she eyed the two men. Kinsella had collected the beers and was handing Dirty Larry Podesta one. Had she ever dreamed of such a day…?

“There’s no one here but us and the cats,” she told them, “so … spill. Guts would be nice, but explanations will do for a start.”

Dirty Larry cracked his shoulders and accepted the cold brew from Kinsella. Even Temple Barr could handle twist-off tops, so the opening ceremony offered no macho one-upmanship.

“I was just protecting you,” Larry said, after his first long pull on the beer.

“From what?” she wondered.

“Yourself, maybe.”

Molina eyed his angular face with the faint glint of gold beard growth and the slitted, defiant eyes. She remembered Temple Barr’s comment: grew up as a military brat or a plain street punk.

“You had no reason to be lurking outside now, Larry.”

“I came over, saw you had company. Figured you didn’t want your underling and that Sally Field on K-9, er, Kat-9 patrol to know too much about me.”

“And what would be ‘too much’ to know about you, Larry?” Molina braced an elbow on one knee and her face on her hand. “That you transferred to traffic from undercover at your request, not your superiors’? That you weren’t ‘burned out’ on drug casework? That even a distracted, concerned mother like me figured out you had some hidden reason for worming your way into my office, my confidence, my life?”

“You’d listen to a freaking cat? These old walls are Swiss cheese. I heard that black devil’s owner saying that he ‘liked’ me.”

Larry’s burning blue gaze fixed on Kinsella’s deceptively casual figure upholding the low wall between the kitchen and the living room. “You’d listen to this questionable guy even you pegged as a killer?”

“I agree he’s questionable, Larry,” she said, “but so are you.”

She eyed Kinsella, not fooled. He’d braced his back to the wall, legs straight out. That’s about all they’d do after the exterior tussle. He looked like he’d taken a stance far from the fray, but his injuries had forced it.

Molina sighed. She had a gimp and a cop with a lot of gray areas on her hands. Both were probably armed.

She resumed her interrogation of Dirty Larry. Kinsella had faced her with that prematurely, the bastard, and had forced her to conduct it in his presence. On the other hand, he wouldn’t have been able to do that if she hadn’t hired him to tail the man and if Larry hadn’t been lurking.

Just like on the night Mariah had disappeared?

Tabitha and Caterina came tearing through the room again, rushing past Larry’s back and making him duck.

“Merely the thunder of little cat feet, Larry,” she told him. “Nothing to be nervous about here but me. So. Did you plant that messed-up Barbie doll in my house?”

“God, no, Carmen. Sure, I sniffed around the place. I was trying to help. I’ve had a lot of experience with runaways. The drug beat is filled with them.”

“That night you told me that Mariah wasn’t a runaway. Not the type, you said. And you were wrong.”

“Not really. She wasn’t running away from home, or from you. She was running to something—that constant media and Internet hype that kids can be stars. Look at Justin Bieber, the pre-boy-band phenom, and the preteen wannabe Pussycat Dolls freaking out on alcohol and drugs and S-and-M fashion. I don’t blame you for being a hard-ass about your kid. You’re right.”

Molina eyed Kinsella, drinking beer standing up.

He shrugged. “You want me to leave, since you two are so in tune on the horrible state of teendom nowadays? Not my field.”

“I want you to shut up and sit down.” Molina saw his eyes flare with defiance. Max Kinsella didn’t need to sit down, not him. “Sit,” she spat out.

She jerked her head at the breakfast bar with its high, hard stools. He could manage that better than a mushy upholstered chair, and she sure didn’t want him on the sofa with Podesta. This smelled of her first, horrific days of seniority on the force, when every guy “under” her needed to prove a point. To prove his superior force and masculinity.

“Larry,” she said. “I don’t see any reason why you’d want to hurt my child or my career.”

“Swear to God, Carmen.” His voice was hoarse with emotion. “Never. I have the greatest respect for you as an officer and a detective. You have always laid it on the line for the job. Never a gender thing with me. I wouldn’t be here if I didn’t think you had the drive and the stones to catch the Barbie Doll Killer. Me, I just put away scum who kill people slowly with drugs. You take down murderers.”

The sound of two hands clapping, slowly, ended the Law & Order moment.

Max Kinsella, of course, ever the cynic, even without a functional memory.

“I believe you, Larry. Every word,” she said.

And she did.

“Get along now. It’s been a long, nasty night. I’ll set Kinsella straight.”

Behind Podesta’s back, Kinsella toasted with his beer bottle and a crooked grin. No one could have “straighter” legs than he did.

Dirty Larry fidgeted on the couch, rubbing his neck and alternating with slugs of beer to finish the bottle. Molina understood his reluctance to leave the scene to this iffy newcomer at the breakfast bar. She had to swallow a grin. Setting up these guys against each other was the smartest move she’d made lately.

Dirty Larry finally stood and heel-dragged out of the house as if his dingy Reebok sneakers sported steel cleats. He’d been so sure he’d had her confused, wounded, and alone, like a stray dog, so he could play the hero.

Only after the front door had slammed shut did Kinsella move.

First he held the beer bottle to his forehead. She could get that.

Then he finally rested his rear on the stool she’d sent him to. The only thing missing was the corner and the fool’s cap.

“He’s a low-life wrangler and a midnight tangler,” Kinsella said. “You choose your stalking horses well.”

She lifted an eyebrow with her Dos Equis bottle. “What’s the difference between a ‘stalking horse’ and a ‘cat’s-paw’?”