Unknown - 19_Cat_In_A_Red_Hot_Rage

“I don’t think he’d stalk a woman. A man, maybe. Sure. He was—”

“Two words very important there. ‘Was’ and what you were going to say right after it.”

“He’s out of Temple’s life now. Mine too, because of that fact. And because of what he was, a spy. He was a good guy, Carmen. He had been a counterterrorist in Europe since the age of seventeen. While I was in the seminary climbing the seven-story mountain to the priesthood, Max was out there on the line, trying to save lives.”

“He was wanted by Interpol. There’s a record.”

“He planted that record, him and his mentors. He was a teenage counterterrorist. The magician part was always the cover. That’s why I don’t see him stalking you. Oh, sure, he’d probably enjoy tweaking your whiskers, like he did mine. We’ve both done it by the book, and he hasn’t. And he probably foresaw we’d win in our plodding, methodical ways.”

“This is how you won Temple? Plodding and methodical?”

“Probably.” Matt shook his head, tossing off her rude questions. That was her job. He just didn’t know why she had to do it on his time.

Temple had to deal with it being over with Max. Matt had to deal with there being no Max to act as a counterforce to his own will anymore. He actually missed that.

“He may be dead,” Matt heard himself saying, and the thought disturbed him. Would Max really have faded like this on Temple? If he could help it?

“No! That bastard would never leave us alone, and just die!”

“Carmen …” Matt slowed the car, hit the button that closed the windows so she could hear every word. “He may very well be dead. That’s what Temple’s secretly afraid of. He had enemies from beyond Las Vegas. From far away and way back. And, contrary to appearances, he was not infallible.”

“ Was’ again, Matt?”

He nodded. “I’m very much beginning to be afraid so.”

“You want a live rival?”

“Definitely preferable to a dead one. You know for sure then.”

“A little sin of pride, there?”

“Definitely.”

“And if he’s dead, who done it?”

“That’s your job.”

She nodded. “If my stalker never shows up again, and Max Kinsella never does, then we’ll know the answer to that question.”

“Maybe.”

“Maybe? That’s proof positive.”

Matt eyed her quickly. “Maybe. Enough proof for you. If we were talking about anybody else but Max. Me, I’d have to see it to believe it.”

Chapter 34

Molina Mia!

Temple had some time to kill the next day before tracking down Detective Alch, so she dropped in on one of the “perkshops.” This one featured the Red Hat Candies Clown Princess vocal group, with Candy Crenshaw performing solo as “Obrah Spinfree.”

Really, Temple just wanted to get a load off her Stuart Weitzmans—she was no Iron-ankled Natalie Newman or Iron Maiden Molina—and to think for a while.

The Crystal Phoenix’s conference theater made a perfect double for a live talk show set.

After the five hugely mugging Red Hat Candies sang a few song parodies, Candy “Obrah” came trudging onstage in a black curly wig and false black eyelashes two inches long. (Oprah had been wearing glam lashes for some time, so Candy was up to snuff on her impression.) She was clad in tight jeans and a rhinestone bra and dragging a little red wagon behind her, heaped, not with pounds of ugly Oprah fat but with piles of red and purple feather boas.

“You see, ladies,” she said, “you can uplift your lives by forgetting about the fat and converting to feathers.”

She flapped her elbows like a bird, releasing a pair of feathered helium balloons that hefted the glitzy cups of her 0-bra.

“Take a load off, ladies. Go, 0-bra. It’s not Oxygen, but Helium that will make us free.”

The act was corny but won lots of giggles and applause. And, in a way, it emphasized that women were always being converted to something: this diet or that guru or this self-help system or that celebrity role model.

At the end Temple checked her watch. Time to find and interrogate a police detective. But he was nowhere to be found.

She finally spotted him near her special conference room! Good. With Su. Bad. And with, amazingly, the interesting combination of Candy Crenshaw and her estranged husband, Cal, of the Black Hat Brotherhood.

Offstage, Candy truly mixed the clown look with her P and R persona. She was an Uma Thurman–skinny gal who accessorized it with extreme fluff. The curly purple fright wig made her head watermelon-big and her face and neck the small stem of it.

Her purple fishnet hose emphasized knobby knees and ankles. A short skimpy red chenille fabric looked more like a bed skirt than a girl skirt. Her elbows were as bony and gawky as her knees, and the huge purple, red, and black eight-foot-long boa constrictor of feathers draped over her shoulders dwarfed her toothpick-thin body. Candy’s limbs looked like they could stab somebody, but her jokes were a lot blunter.

Cal, on the other hand, was a comfortably middle-aged man with billowing belly and double chin.

“You are the cutest little thing,” Candy was cooing atDetective Su despite the glower she was getting in return. “You look like you’d wear a double-zero-size parachute.”

Su was not buying. Or laughing.

Alch swallowed a chuckle in spite of himself, more for seeing Su’s Great Dane–size dignity tweaked than the effectiveness of Candy Crenshaw’s jokes.

“This is not an occasion for levity,” Su told the woman. “It is a murder investigation and our field of suspects is very wide.”

“‘Wide’ is not a word you know the meaning of,” Candy cracked.

“ ‘Suspect’ is not a word you know the meaning of,” Su shot back. “Alch, I want to talk to her in the interrogation room.”

Normally that destination would give Temple an edgy feeling, but here it was just a posh Crystal Phoenix conference room. She was delirious, however, to see slight little Su herding away her giraffe-tall exotic quarry.

“I need a word with you,” Temple told Alch.

“Fine,” he said, jerking his head at Cal Crenshaw. “We’re done for now. No skipping town.”

“The Black Hat Brotherhood is here for the duration, Detective.”

“The investigation might outlast the convention.”

“Great. That’ll give us time to get our guys on some of the local talk shows.”

Temple and Alch watched Crenshaw stomp away on his black cowboy boots, spurs jingling like reindeer harnesses.

“All spur and no spine,” Alch diagnosed. He turned to Temple with a grin. “So what do you want to con out of me now?”

“I think we’ll need to talk privately in my interrogation room.”

“Yours? You mean the conference room where you’ve set up shop to irritate Su?”

“You do read my mind,” she answered.

“That’s only fair. You want to pick my brain.”

Temple produced a guilty look.

“With that pink hat on, you could pick the brain of a slug.”

Temple had the grace to blush. Morrie Alch was such a smart, sweet guy, and was single with a grown daughter, she’d heard. Why didn’t Molina get off her high horse and grab him?

She relied on him at work. Temple supposed a lady lieutenant couldn’t marry down, but someone had to break stupid conventions and rules. Temple also supposed that Lieutenant C. R. Molina would be the last woman on earth to do that.

“So what’s your agenda?” Alch asked as he sat on one end of the long conference table that had recently hosted red-hatted ladies. Temple turned around from shutting the double doors.

Mr. Affable was gone. The arms folded on the detective’s chest indicated that he may be nice, but he wasn’t going to be easy.