Unknown - 23_Cat_In_A_Vegas_Gold_Vendetta

“You can call me ‘poor,’” Molina said, “because I haven’t a clue to what you’re talking about.”

“Wait a minute,” Alch said. “Now I remember. When Dirty Larry first showed up off the narc beat, he was using the last name of Paddock. Don’t you remember, Carmen?”

“I go by ‘lieutenant’ in front of civilians. And Paddock is his stepsister’s surname.”

Alch grinned with gusto. “Exactly. He either took on his stepfather’s name or he’d been using Paddock as a tribute to his stepsister, in a way. He switched his narc pseudo to Podesta later when he got the idea of riling you up to get on the Barbie Doll Killer’s trail, so the connection wasn’t evident. Names were close enough we wouldn’t notice. Those guys have identities all over the place.”

Molina nodded, looking shell-shocked.

“We can trace that through later,” she said. “Now I need to know who was the man who died in the fire? What was his connection to Violet and her daughter? Who the flying sweet potato was named in the will that this Jayden witnessed, and where is it?

“And, by the way, why have two cats entered the house in the past two minutes?”

Temple looked down, expecting black and black. She got the white cat who was probably named Whisper and a yellow-striped one, both sniffing cautiously as they prowled the room’s perimeter.

“Maybe they sense their enemies are gone.” Temple thought for a moment and then asked Molina, “Is there anything left of the Chinese chest in the hall outside the bedroom wing?”

Molina passed the question on to Alch with a quizzical look.

“The fire commander said the house’s adobe walls made it into a little Alamo,” he said. “The structure resisted burning, but not the contents, including the perp.”

Temple winced at the memory of the burning man. She’d seen the first flames snatch at his heel and pants leg, and then … he’d run right into the flammable temple of Barbie dolls.

“Can someone check if there are any photo albums or a box in that Chinese cabinet?” she asked.

“I will.” Matt jumped up, treading to avoid circling cats, now four.

“I had a lot of time to think about this last night,” Temple said.

“We’re not interested in your nocturnal adventures, or the lack of them, Miss Barr.” Molina gave a sardonic lift of one eyebrow.

“Yes, I can imagine pillow talk with a hard-muscled, black-haired, alpha male wouldn’t hold much appeal for you.”

Alch’s chuckles made Molina shut up. “That Midnight Louie is an all-round lie-down guy, all right,” he said. “Seriously, Miss Barr, superficial injuries usually hurt more than deeper ones.”

“Over the short term,” Molina added, inadvertently reminding them of her own knifing. She ought to know.

“Where’s, uh, Larry?” Temple asked. Calling him “Dirty Larry” wouldn’t help his case right now, and she sympathized with his misguided crusade after having seen his stepsister’s condition at St. Rose’s.

“He’s not in on this,” Molina said. “It’s us and you. Your required chauffeur, Mister Devine, is here to be seen and not heard, like a good boy.”

“An errand boy,” Matt added just as sardonically, returning to the main room carrying the photo albums and box.

Temple gestured for him to give them to the couple on the sofa.

Her gauze-swathed hands still weren’t good at keyboards or paging through ephemera, as papers and photographs were called, meaning they were dust in the wind of most lives, precious only to those they involved for only as long as they lived.

“Wasn’t there a large portrait photo of a young woman above the chest?” Temple asked.

“It was fire-singed and water-soaked.” Alch shook his head. “Pretty much just disintegrating cardboard with a fading image on it.”

“The candle that started the fire was right in front of it,” Temple told him. “It was big and long-lasting, but it burned night and day and had no one to drain off the pooling melted wax since Violet became bedridden.”

“Candle. Like a church shrine,” Molina said. “Missus Weiner was asking about ‘Alexandra’s portrait,’ and her cats, as she was transferred to a gurney.”

“Those photo albums have lots more photos of her daughter. Violet will want them. And her diaries, in which she fretted about needing to arrange for her cats to live on in the house after Alexandra’s death six years ago.”

“Won’t happen,” Molina said. “No will was found in the house, just a business card from a downtown law firm. I reached the guy earlier this morning. Although he prepared the will and mailed it to Violet a couple weeks ago, unless it’s signed and witnessed, his copy means nothing.”

“Jayden told me last night the will was witnessed,” Temple said. “He acted as one of the two needed witnesses, so Violet must have signed it just before this all blew up.”

“Jayden isn’t able to be interviewed in the hospital yet,” Molina said. “That’s why we’re all here. Just what is ‘this all,’ and how did it ‘blow up’ into a stabbing, a fire, and a death? With you in the middle of it?”

Matt sat forward in his chair to accept the photo albums Alch handed him. More people were looking at and thinking about Alexandra than since she had died.

Temple sat back in her chair. As a TV reporter, she’d been used to doing “stand-ups” for the camera. This would be a “sit-down,” but she wanted to make the report as clear and factual as she could.

“Here’s the story. The young woman in the photos is Violet’s daughter, Alexandra. Something led to an estrangement, and Alex lived in Tucson, where she met a guy named Sylvan Smith.”

“Sounds like another con man like Jayden,” Molina commented. “They always have fancy names. Looks like, estranged or not, the daughter was into the same shaky New Age trends and hucksters her mother was.”

“Maybe they both were susceptible to smooth talkers,” Temple said, “but Sylvan Smith was a construction worker they nicknamed Rowdy on the job, an all-American blue-collar type, a hard worker but not overeducated. More beer than wine. Violet disapproved of him. Probably wanted Alexandra hooked up with a professional guy.”

“This is our dead guy?” Alch wanted to establish that first.

“This is your Barbie Doll Killer.”

“No way,” Alch said. “Of course, roofers are itinerant workers. It might explain the geographical range.”

Temple shrugged. “That’s what I suspect. I also think that Alexandra was his first victim.”

Molina had been shuffling through the Tucson newspaper clippings in the box and lifted them out. “These news stories make her the victim of a drugstore remedy tampering.”

“Rowdy was smarter than he looked.” Temple resumed her emphatic but deadpan on-camera delivery style, and it did seem to command attention from a difficult audience. “What a way to conceal a murder. Rowdy could slip potassium cyanide into an easy-to-open capsule, probably something herbal. Alexandra would be into that, like her mother. Over-the-counter remedies are all caplets nowadays to prevent tampering, after the first headache-remedy tampering murders back in the eighties.”

“Aren’t you a bundle of information?” Molina was not impressed. Probably found on the Internet and highly suspect. “Why would he kill his girlfriend?”

“For the same reasons he picked his victims and repeated the pattern. Alexandra was Violet’s Barbie doll. You can see it in the hyper-girly way she was dressed all through childhood and in the three photos at the back of one of the two diaries.”

Molina quickly checked both leather-bound volumes and found the adult Alexandra photos. “Definitely aspiring-model material. And this wigged-out Barbie doll model?” She held up the photo of the 1988 Happy Holiday Barbie.