Unknown - 23_Cat_In_A_Vegas_Gold_Vendetta

The screams continued for a long time, until someone lifted Temple up by the elbows and dragged her out of there with her heels trailing—ouch!—while big moonwalking spacemen smelling of smoke blocked the view of the bedroom and poured out a flash flood of epic Las Vegas proportions into the flames and on the room and all its contents.

Chapter 46

Burned Out

The spinning red lights of three ambulances and two fire trucks, along with the carousel of red, white, and blue flashing lights from two cop-car headache bars made an insane wonderland of the street outside Violet’s house.

Temple had somehow been taken outside, a shivering, bloody, drowned rat. She wasn’t too out of it to spot the coroner’s van among the confusion of vehicles.

Emergency technicians had her sitting on the back edge of one ambulance while they sprayed her with stinging antiseptic and applied gauze pads to all her visible joints.

“Oh, my God. Temple. I couldn’t come over to you sooner. They had me in custody.”

Matt was suddenly beside her, all reaching concern that couldn’t touch any part of her. Only his eyes, which were as burned-out as Rowdy’s last-glimpsed figure.

“Who?” she asked. “Where?”

Then appeared the looming figure of Molina, no Barbie doll she, with news.

“Violet is alive, smoke-inhalation-free, and en route to a hospital. The man in the pale clothes is also alive.”

“Jayden? Or Rowdy?”

“I don’t have a cast-of-characters list, Miss Barr. That will have to wait until tomorrow. The one you were found clutching by the ankles is en route to the hospital. The stab wound in his back missed the heart and vital arteries. The firemen were too late for the other man. Grizzly Bahr has a new Crispy Critter.”

Temple winced. She knew what medical examiners and staff called dead burn victims. It helped them disassociate from the inhumanity of seared muscle and skin.

“She’s hurting.” Matt’s voice challenged Molina. “And she’s the hero of this scene. Get off your high horse and act a little human.”

Temple could have hugged him, except it would hurt too much. Instead, she pushed her lips into a grin and was amazed to find them obeying. Man, she needed moisturizer!

“After all,” Temple told Molina, “I did help ID D. L. and C. B. as possible BD planters at your … um, place of residence.”

“ID? D. L.? C. B.? BD? Are you babbling or just mad?”

Temple realized Molina must have dismissed all thought of that joint attempt to come up with a Barbie Doll Killer suspect now that the actual killer had convicted and executed himself, even that Dirty Larry and Crawford Buchanan had been hot candidates then for planting the Barbie doll in Mariah’s bedroom.

And Molina had much more to worry about now, too.

“That guy … what’s left of the guy in the burned-up room—” Temple choked up from smoke and trauma. “He’s the Barbie Doll Killer.… It’s a long and … winding story, but Dirty Larry … wanted you to smoke the BDK out, and here … I … finally did … accidentally, and—”

The more Temple talked, the more she coughed. She had so much more to say, but tears ran down her face and anything she tried to say was foiled by hiccups.

“So … Violet still alive? And Jayden?” Temple needed to be sure.

Molina gave an impatient nod. “What did Dirty Larry do? To who?”

“Enough,” Matt told Molina. “You can get her statement in the morning.

“If you say so,” Molina answered.

She suddenly crouched down, eye to eye with Temple. “You were ahead of me on all aspects of this case. I don’t know who’s who or what’s what. When you feel better tomorrow, I’d much appreciate being brought up to date.”

Molina stood and glared at Matt. “That okay?”

The glare kind of ruined it, but Temple just blinked, glad to hear the ambulances had so many customers. Her?

She eyed the woman who was efficiently tending her wounds.

“No burns, just scrapes.” The EMT smiled to make such a mild diagnosis in this one case, on this terrible scene. “You can take her home and keep up the OTC treatments?” she asked Matt.

“Absolutely,” he said.

“OTC, is that serious?” Temple asked. She still felt a little … muzzy.

“Over the counter,” he translated. “Drugstore preparations for you, baby, that’s all.”

Temple sighed. She hurt way too much for Walgreens, but she just wanted to go home to the Circle Ritz and rest and sleep and … oh!

“Where’s Midnight Louie?”

“Nowhere on the scene to be found, for once,” Molina declared from on high, now that she was standing again and looming over them.

Temple frowned. “And all the cats inside?”

“Also missing, every damn one. Highly suspicious,” Molina said, “but that just clears up the crime scene.”

“Wait? Violet’s will?”

“No idea what you’re talking about.” Molina grinned evilly, like Cruella De Vil. Or maybe Temple was hallucinating.

“The elderly home owner—” Molina said, “apparently this Violet—was raving about ‘Father Hell’ when she was wheeled away. She couldn’t have been referring to your fiancé. One hopes. You have a lot to nail down after you get your beauty rest and become coherent. Let me know. It might be interesting. Meanwhile, if you’re well enough, the pair of you can join my little private postmortem at the flood-control channel up the street.”

She left.

“Thanks for bailing me out of an interrogation right now,” she told Matt. She sipped the water the EMT had handed her. “There’s a lot more going on here than meets the eye,” Temple whispered to Matt in a dramatic rasp. “Don’t let them shuffle me off to Buffalo.”

“You’re pretty beat up, way more than I can live with.”

“You have not seen ‘beat up’ until I’m left out of learning the real story.”

“I don’t have wheels. Molina hijacked me in the backseat of a squad car. No exit.”

“Really? That was drastic of her.”

“She somehow knew that things were going to turn bad at Violet’s place.”

“I gotta get to the end of the block and find out what’s really happening.”

“I doubt one of these emergency vehicles is going to give us a lift.”

“Oh, no! My Miata keys were in the tote bag I dropped near Alexandra’s shrine, which I’m sure is burned out, too.”

The EMT dredged up a dripping-wet object from the ground. “The fire guys said you grabbed this as they were dragging you out.”

Temple nodded. “I never go anywhere without my tote bag. Maybe the car keys stayed in it.”

Matt felt inside it until he pulled out the keys.

Temple regarded him with pleading big baby-blue-grays.

“Okay. You stay here. I’ll get the Miata.” He picked up her tote bag and headed outside the claustrophobic circle of huge, pulsing, squawking, flashing emergency vehicles.

“Here are three NSAIDs,” the EMT said, handing them over with a paper cup of water. “It’ll dull the pain.” She looked over her shoulder to where Matt had vanished. “So will that.”

Temple felt grateful to have no more injuries than, say, a fall off a skateboard in a flood channel. The kids were always sneaking off to them for practice. Superficial wounds was the term.

The Miata’s low red nose soon threaded through the maze of heavy-duty trucks.

Matt got out to come around and lift her into the passenger seat. Temple had to remember to keep her gauze-covered palms from contacting anything. And her knees would burn like heck when she tried to walk, but she just had to get in and out of the car twice more.

“You’re crazy to take Molina up on that odd invitation. We should go straight home,” Matt told her.