Unknown - 19_Cat_In_A_Red_Hot_Rage

“Maybe she was using us as the first line of assault,” Alicesuggested, “but she seemed sincere. She’d joined three years ago and was hugely gung ho. In fact, she planned to debut her Red Hot Hattery Shop at this convention, then open one in Reno.”

“She set up shop here for the first time.” Temple seized on that. “Just in time for the ‘Big Wheel in Las Vegas’ convention.” Temple considered. “That’s savvy marketing, but does it also disguise a different agenda here? We need to ask the other members of the Reno Scarlet Women what Oleta seemed like. Does the Red Hat Sisterhood Web site list all the different chapters in the country?”

“Sure thing, sugar.” Starla snapped her cinnamon gum, exhaling a spicy scent. “We’re a network. We like to know all about each other. Our Red-Hatted League was even featured in one of the recent magazines.”

“Was Electra mentioned or pictured in the national magazine, say, recently?”

“Of course!” Judy said. “Yes! That’s right. Oleta would have seen that. Mentioned and pictured. She is our Red-Hatted League headwoman, after all.”

“Hmmm.” Temple was thinking that she ought to look up the Sherlock Holmes short story that gave this particular chapter its name. Might be some vague connection to events in the here and now.

Who knows?

And speaking of that, she needed to find out what the police knew by now about the attack on Elmore, if it was attempted murder. Who was prime for squealing?

The ever-sympathetic Morrie Alch, of course.

Chapter 32

Ms. Sherlock Strikes a Holmes Run

It was amazing what you could find on the Internet, Templemused for the millionth time when she hit her home computer that evening.

So, thinking of “headed,” Temple had typed “The RedHeaded League” on a search engine along with the surname “Doyle.” She’d found a version of the story in question as fast as you could say “Sherlock Holmes.”

She’d read all the Holmes stories as a kid, but had forgotten most of them. Luckily, this particular tale had been read by a girl already being teased about her “fire-engine” red hair. Some of her sixth-grade classmates, mostly boys, would wail like sirens whenever she came into view.

Her mother said it was because they liked her, but that had never made sense to Temple. Her older brothers were supposed to like her, and all they could do was ditch her and dis her. Only they didn’t call it dissing then.

So when she read the tale of Mr. Jabez Wilson in far-off, old-fashioned London, who was given a mysterious but well-paying job because of his red hair, young Temple treasured it.

Although the notion of a RedHeaded League seeking out red-haired people for easy work and good pay turned out to be a hoax to cover a bank robbery, Temple had thrilled at the idea that red hair was special and valued and would bring her adventure and rewards.

Her mother had previously tried to console her with that “special” idea, but she believed it more from reading Doyle’s story. She wished she’d had an interesting name to go with her interesting hair, like Mr. Jabez Wilson in the story. It took her a few more years to appreciate being named “Temple” instead of “Ashley.”

For a couple of years, on school documents, she had written her required middle name as “Jazabelle” instead of the hated “Ursula.”

That ended in junior high when the phys. ed. teacher, a sixtyish woman built like coach John Madden but with a plainer face, had called her “Temple Jazabelle Barr” aloud when she flunked out of basketball. (Who would put a four-foot-eleven girl in as a guard anyway?) That whole moniker being repeated twelve times a day by the girls in junior high was worse than the siren shrieks of the boys in grade school. So “Ursula” duly appeared on her school cards again, and thankfully no one ever said that out loud. Even the aunt for whom she was named Ursula went by the nickname of “Kit.” Temple wondered if Aldo knew that.

Still, reading the story again had been fun. Like a lot of the Holmes stories, it showed a naive person being dragooned into a puzzling situation because a hidden schemer had a secret purpose.

It was not unwise for a modern-day Sherlock to keep that classic formula in mind.

Chapter 33

Big Wheels

It was 6:00 P.M. and Matt was wondering where his wandering SO was. So he was surprised to hear an alto female voice when he answered his cell phone.

“I need to talk to you,” C. R. Molina said without any greeting, as usual, the busy, brusque homicide lieutenant personified.

“Your place or mine?” he asked, determined to be playful in the face of such unrelenting social sobriety.

“Neutral ground,” she specified.

“Is there any in Las Vegas?”

“For you or me, probably not. Say, seven?”

“Charley’s Hamburgers?“He was a radio shrink. He could hear the hesitation before she answered. Apparently, for some reason, Charley’s wasn’t neutral ground for her.

“Fine.” The shortness of Molina’s answer showed her annoyance with herself for what she’d felt when she heard that name and location.

Matt would have to try to finesse the reason out of her when they met, simply because it was his job. And it never hurt to know what a homicide lieutenant thought and felt when you’d literally been front and center at a murder scene.

“Seven, then,” he said.

“You still driving that silver flash?”

“Yeah. You want a spin in it?”

“Maybe. Just maybe I do.”

Matt eased the Crossfire into an unpaved parking spot near Charley’s. This was his first real new car, paid for and picked out by him. Being a Catholic priest with a vow of poverty for seventeen years made getting a nice car both a cherished luxury and a venial sin.

He recognized Molina’s personal aging Toyota wagon a few spaces over and ambled over to lean down to the open driver’s window.

Again, she wasted no time on sentimental greetings.

“The blue cheese bacon burger,” she told him. “Hold the ketchup. Mustard, no fries. We eat in my car. When we’re all tidy again we take that spin in yours.”

Matt lifted an eyebrow, but nodded and went to the window. Charley’s was a small, tumbledown shack on a lowly street, no glitz, no glam, just the best darn hamburgers in town. And they were way politically incorrect on the fat and grease meter.

Molina was right. No amount of napkins could save a car from the lethally good grease of a Charley’s burger. He ordered the Philly steakburger for himself, then made his way over the lumpy dirt of the lot to the passenger’s side of her car.

She had the driver’s seat pushed way back to accommodate her almost six-foot frame. Matt scooted the passenger seat, setfull forward for Molina’s teen daughter Mariah, back all the way so they could talk face-to-face.

First they bit into the huge burgers, chewing them down to eatable height.

“What’s new?” she finally asked. “Besides having your fingerprints all over a possibly lethal pitcher of hotel water?”

“That what this is about?”

“Among other things.” Molina bucked in her seat.

Probably the semiautomatic at the small of her back felt bulky against the car seat, Matt thought. Packing iron must get uncomfy in this overheated climate.

Molina was an interesting woman, strong, complex, unpredictable. Temple scoffed at her no-nonsense looks. Matt had seen nuns in civvies who dressed with more style. Her dark blunt-cut hair and strong, unmanicured eyebrows suited her. He liked her a lot, but she was a cop and she never let you forget it. And at the moment he was the dork in the center spotlight with a possibly poisoned man two places to the left and languishing in Never-Never Land at the local hospital.