Unknown - 19_Cat_In_A_Red_Hot_Rage

She felt as if some giant slow-slinking serpent was moving from room to room, about some very vicious business.

And then her mind fixed on the impression of what had been wrong in the kitchen like a grade-school student clinging to a flash card recognized a fraction too late to count.

Metal being honed.

The knife block.

One had been missing in the regular ranks of dark hilts glinting with steel rivets.

A big one.

The biggest one.

The butcher knife.

Holy Saint Ginsu Jesus!

Chapter 41

Transportation

The senior partner of Midnight Inc. Investigations is not the all-knowing oracle he thinks he is.

In fact, there are times when I deeply hope that he is not the dirty dog who sired me and my littermates on my unknown but obviously easily duped mother and took off for other venues.

I admit that I have always had a soft spot for Mr. Matt Devine.

For one thing, he offered me a temporary home for a few days back when I was known as “Caviar,” and had not yet beat all comers to become house detective at the Crystal Phoenix. And I have always felt something in common with the dude, given he was searching for two absent fathers: a mean stepfather and, unknowingly, his birth father. I fear his quests have been as disappointing as mine was.

And Mr. Midnight Louie, dude about Vegas (I would say “dud” about Vegas were he here to hear me), is not the only one wont to drop in on Karma at the Circle Ritz and get up-to-date on the doings of its human occupants.

Anyway, I have a bone to pick with him on what is more important: sheep-dogging his MissTemple through murder among the feather free-for-all at the Crystal Phoenix, or figuring out what is going on with the Mystifying Max.

That dude is sure living up to his performing moniker lately, or maybe not.

So instead of hobnobbing with the chic chapeaux set, I have taken on the thankless job of sitting outside Mr. Max’s residence waiting for something to happen.

Stakeout detail is ungrateful work. You have to sit still until your tail goes numb, both of them in my case. You have to hang out in the shrubbery where the ants crawl in and the ants crawl out and the ants play pinochle on your snout. And these are fire ants!

You have to ignore taunting lizards at your feet and birds chirping and pooping in the bushes above your head. Through heat of day and dark of night, nothing can distract you from your eternal duty.

And, on top of it all, nothing is happening at Chez Max.

I am beginning to think my possibly paternal partner is right. Nothing of interest will happen here and I am wasting my time as another endless day draws to a close and the crickets come out to chatter.

Last night, however, things got interesting for a few hours.

A crew of ninjas pulled up in a train of dark vans about 3:00 A.M., which is when humans are most deeply asleep. Also when my breed is more alert and active, as humans who decide to keep us as indoor domestic pets soon discover.

When I say “ninjas,” I mean ninjas. I have glimpsed those Asian action films. These men were all in black spandex, including hoods and masks. Imagine Spider-Man in mourning. They were nimble, they were strong, and they were fast as a firefly.

Each van was emptied on the lawn, filled with furniture abstracted from the house, and then driven away with suspiciously quiet care. Then the furniture from the lawn was borne silently inside. I watched this surreptitious exchange program go on until the sun was starting to curl its claws into the horizon and pull itself up over the edge of the world.

Not my favorite time.

Twelve vanloads must have been carted out, and in.

Then all was quiet as the sun started getting bold and hot and the lizards stirred and the birds chirped and pooped and nothing happened all day.

No doubt the senior partner would have been off eating and snoozing in his cushy haunts.

I stayed by my post, dining on the occasional grasshopper, until the sun tired of broiling all living things on the surface and slunk behind the Western Mountains to infest the other side of the world.

Except for a few drops sucked off the early morning sprinklers in the neighborhood, my throat was as parched as the sandy dirt surrounding the house, but my curiosity was stronger than my thirst. What would the next night bring? I intend to find out.

So here I am, waiting unseen, when it seems that everybody in the Western world has decided to break into the Kinsella domicile at once. I hunker down, ready to watch and wonder, and draw conclusions. And report back to my partner. If I feel that he deserves to be in the loop.

Chapter 42

Lost in Space

Molina understood that she was no longer the invader.

She was now the resident, and she had been interrupted by one nasty unlawful entrant.

At least that made her home invasion look justifiable.

And made her wonder where the hell Max Kinsella was.

He wouldn’t be slinking through his own quarters.

He wouldn’t tolerate anyone getting this familiar with his territory, or her breaking in. He wouldn’t have left it this easy to get in. Maybe the bastard was dead, as Matt feared.

Matt feared! That man had no normal negative emotions, like jealousy, or wishing a rival dead. Kinsella was no loss. He was her stalker. And now, in a case of poetic justice, he apparently had his own stalker.

Or could he be, God forbid, innocent? Could her stalker and his be the same person? Could she and Max Kinsella both be victims?

Molina rejected that term as violently as she knew Kinsella would. He hadn’t been an innocent since his teens, if Matt’s revelation about the counterterrorist past was true.

So maybe Kinsella was really gone. At least from this house. And maybe someone else had the same hankering as Molina to violate and solve its secrets. Except … Molina was a pro. She was textbook careful, as silent as possible.

The other intruder was breathing hard now, obviously. Angered by something found, or not found, possibly Kinsella himself.

He had left. For real, this time. Molina was suddenly sure about that. The magician had left the building.

Live or dead.

The idea reminded her of the old “she left” case. The killer of the murdered woman found lying with that phrase painted on Molina’s own car at the Blue Dahlia parking lot had been tracked down, tried, and convicted.

But the case of the murdered woman found in the church parking lot about the same time, on whose body the phrase “she left” had appeared at the morgue, that was still open.

Unsolved.

What was the victim’s name? Gloria. Gloria something. Retired showgirl. Or something.

Molina shook her head free of old cold cases. No time to stroll down a murderous memory lane. She had to contend with whoever wanted into the house as badly as she did, and that gave her pause. Okay. She was a trifle obsessed. She was risking her whole career by being here. Right now she couldn’t think of one good reason why if she had to answer to a higher authority.

That man was why! That “demmed illusive Pimpernel,” as the old swashbuckler novel put it. Kinsella drove everybody around him crazy. TempleBarr had apparently shaken loose of that old black magic, but now she, Carmen Regina Molina, had been caught in his abandoned web like a fruit fly on honey.

She pushed the louvered door open. Slowly, cautiously. Bentto touch her ankle. The Beretta rasped as she drew it from the holster. That was the same snakelike, slithering sound the other person in the house had made.

So small.

But all other sound stopped, even the impatient breathing. Molina stepped out into the hall. And saw a descending glint of steel. Where was the shrill music from the infamous shower knife scene in Psycho? She was suddenly Janet Leigh, wasn’t she?