Unknown - 16_Cat_In_An_Orange_Twist

Ottoman Empire

Since everyone is leaving Maylords as if fleeing the Titanic, I find it expedient to trail the human footwear leaving my cushy gilded cage, a.k.a. the scene of my recent retail triumphs.

Despite having been hailed as the most chichi household accessory since the Teddy bear, my ears are twitching as if fleabitten. I have heard more than I wanted to during my day undercover atop the upholstery, and do not yet know what to make of it.

And then there is the bloody murder I have witnessed. No, I did not see the abrasive Beth Blanchard done in and hung as decoratively as a string of dried red peppers. But I did witness the epic reunion of Miss Lt. C. R. Molina with her long-absent former squeeze, Rafi Nadir. Was that an emotion-wringing spectacle! I love to watch humans spat.

Meanwhile, I slip out with the Wong party and the media mob. The videographers carry long black boxes full of lighting equipment that I can trot under like a shadow. Anyone of my acquaintance might spot my tricks.

Luckily, my Miss Temple is so fascinated by the Molina-Nadir scene that she would not notice a giant cockroach

hitchhiking on her instep.

I split off from the crew outdoors and scurry for the store’s foundation plantings. I have not reckoned on a surprise reunion of my own, however.

Miss Midnight Louise leaps out of an oleander clump and claws me on the shoulder.

“Not so fast, partner. When can I expect to see the holiday line? A skeletal you for Halloween would be truly chic.”

“I imagine you noticed that I was quite a hit among the home furnishings set.”

“I noticed that you were about as `undercover’ as an orange on St. Paddy’s Day. So. What did you learn? Who killed the latest corpse? What is going on? What does the lady lieutenant have against the Maylords security guy?”

I burrow out of sight, not wanting to be seen being harangued by my own associate. “Let me catch my breath, Louise.”

“Like you were not catching your breath, and about forty thousand winks, on the Maylords cushions all day?” “A lot has gone on.”

“So I observed through the windows. But what does it mean?”

“Unfortunately, I was not near the murder scene before my poor Miss Temple happened upon the dead woman.”

“That was no doubt the time you played dead when the woman moved you to the other sofa to see how you would look against gray suede.”

“How did I look against gray suede?”

“Puffed up, lazy, and unobservant.”

“Louise! I had to act like I did not have a bone in my torso. It was bad enough that she would have detected my body heat in a few seconds, had she not set me down.”

“I am surprised that you did not go into the usual comatose state that you adopt on furniture. That reduces your metabolism to dust-bunny level. So you have nothing to report that I could not have seen from my outside watching posts?”

“Actually, though I was on lunch break at the Dumpster out back at the probable time of the murder, I did happen upon it soon after. And I saw a lot of suspicious characters slinking in and out of the model rooms beforehand. There was the late Miss Beth Blanchard herself, who had a fetish for rearranging pictures. There was a squat, chubby man in a linen suit who seemed to be spying on everybody. There was Mr. Rafi Nadir, who also seemed to be watching everybody. I noticed a nondescript man with a beard who was keeping a close eye on the murder victim as well. That list does not include a rather scruffy, tall fel-low wearing a great quantity of cow leather, who apparently had come in the back way. I saw him watching La Blanchard hang pictures, but then he just vanished. He was wearing boots and sunglasses.”

“Hmmm.” Miss Louise does not allow her comment to es calate into anything so pleasant as a purr. “It could have been the hit man … or I wonder if that could have been your roomie’s previous live-in, Mr. Max Kinsella? He has been strangely absent lately.”

“That is fine with me. It is a lot less crowded on the king-size without him. Do you think he could be working undercover at Maylords?”

“No more so than you,” she says acidly.

I immediately get the implication. “I have made a lot of progress, Louise, it is just not obvious yet.”

“And when will it be obvious? At the rate people are dying in Maylords, customers will have to schedule s�ances to consult

the staff.”

“Clients,” I correct her. “Only low-brow establishments have ‘customers.’”

“I see.” She looks me over as if I were human belly-button lint. “So you are well rested, but you have learned nothing

useful.”

“What I have learned will be very hard to convey to these insensitive humans. I will need to develop a long-range plan.

Do not rush me, Louise. I must have time to lay my plans.”

“You sound like a hen.”

Before I can respond to this rank accusation, Miss Louise stares in the direction of the parking lot.

“I see your roomie is going off with the sinister-looking Nadir guy that gave Lieutenant Molina the heebie-jebbies. Maybe you should follow her.”

“No,” I say, surprising the vibrissae off of her. “Miss Temple can take care of herself, but there is something else only I, and you, can do, and it is not around here.”

She presses me for details, but I only have a hunch, and am not about to blow it. Besides, I am eager to get outside and eavesdrop on what is going on inside Molina’s car.

Chapter 44

I t ‘ s M y P a r t y …

In the Maylords parking lot, Molina had hurled herself into the passenger seat of the Crown Vic and sat there, arms crossed on her chest, staring through the windshield into the glare of the Las Vegas lateafternoon sun.

Morrie Alch got in, and started the engine. The fan, set on high, washed them with lukewarm air.

“Su do any prosecutable damage?” she asked.

Alch chuckled. “You got eyes in the back of your head, don’t you? No. Just cooled him down some. I get a charge out of how she can ice those macho guys. She looks so dainty and acts so alpha.”

“Yeah.” Molina sighed. “The psychology of surprise. I could never use that. I’m too big. For a woman.” “Not in my book.”

She shot him a glance, half surprise, half warning. She didn’t encourage fraternizing.

Alch figured this was no time to accommodate what Carmen Molina didn’t encourage.

“This is bad,” he said.

She didn’t answer.

“Very bad. Want to tell me why?”

“No.”

“Need to tell me why?”

She nailed him with a don’t-mess-with-me glance, then, seeing it wasn’t working, sighed again.

“Off the record,” he said. “Out of the ball park. Like we, weren’t cops, weren’t superior and inferior. Like we were . veterans of the same war, reminiscing years after.”

“You’re not anybody’s inferior.”

“Chain of command says so. But screw chain of command. Command isn’t going to help you on this one, is it? When we

get back to headquarters, why don’t we grab our own cars? I can meet you at, oh, some barbecue joint or pizza parlor. We can talk and no one will overhear us.”

Molina shook herself out of her atypical funk long enough to eye him suspiciously. “Is this a date you’re proposing, Alch?” “Naw, Lieutenant. It’s a friendly bull session between coworkers.”

“Bullshit.” She rubbed her left temple with the heel of her hand. “All right. Tell me where.”

He named a favorite of his, just a strip shopping center BBQ joint, and gave her the coordinates.

His lieutenant nodded, as surly as his daughter when she had been a typical teenager. Thank God Vicky was safely married and someone else’s problem. Doing fine, really, past all that youthful single-girl angst and on to young-married stress.