Unknown - 15_Cat_In_A_Neon_Nightmare

Temple frowned now. “So she was always a psychopath?”

“A shrink would probably argue that label,” Max said. “More like a sociopath with a heavy case of narcissism.”

“What’s the difference?” Temple wanted to know.

Matt answered. “Both a psychopath and a sociopath lack a conscience. They don’t feel hurt, so they hurt, just to see what happens to people who do feel. A narcissist is always trying to prove the world stupider than she is. In a way, a narcissistic sociopath is worse than the average psychopath. She can pass in normal society.”

“Where’d you learn that?” Max asked, sounding impressed.

“Confession,” Matt said shortly. “They’re expert manipulators, and they love to manipulate all that’s solid and sacred.”

“ ‘Solid and sacred,’ ” Max mocked. “Wouldn’t go over in a personals ad.”

“Cut it out, guys!” Temple said. “This woman has ruined both your lives. You want to snipe at each other, or get her?”

“Get her,” Max said without hesitation.

Matt temporized. ” ‘Get,’ sounds so hostile. She needs help.”

“You need help, can’t you see that?” Temple exploded. “That’s what she’s done to you. She’s made you into a murder suspect, and you’re worried about her, for heaven’s sake.”

Max’s frown was back. “Temple’s right. It’s the same pattern. Half a lifetime ago, while I was dallying with Kathleen on the riverbank, my cousin Sean was walking into an IRA death trap. And you, ex-Father Devine, once suggested that might have been deliberate manipulation on Kathleen’s part: seducing me and killing Sean at one and the same time, killing one man … boy, really… . and condemning the other to permanent Purgatory because of it.”

“Purgatory?” Temple asked.

The two men were staring at each other, ignoring her, speaking the same language for once. Catholic. Guilt. Only for one it was the Irish and the Troubles and for the other it was the Polish and the family dysfunction.

“It must have been hell for you,” Matt said, “given how I feel about Vassar’s death, and she wasn’t a relative, an innocent, or anyone I even knew.”

“Still is.”

Matt’s mouth tightened. “Then Temple’s right. We have to find this woman, stop her.”

“All we know about her today,” Temple put in, “is that she ran across Matt several months ago somehow and can’t let go. How? And why?”

“Simple,” he said. “Talk about poetic justice. My hunt for my stepfather drew her attention. I distributed these photos of him with my contact information. That’s when she showed up here at the Circle Ritz, by the pool when I was working out. She thought I was a contract killer looking for him.”

“What does that tell us about her?” Max asked.

“That she expects the worst of everybody,” Matt answered. “If we knew why, we might know how to get to her.”

“No,” Temple said. “It tells us that she wouldn’t have found you, Matt, if you hadn’t been looking for Cliff Effinger. It had nothing to do with you, Max, not then. Sorry.”

He shrugged. “My own sociopathic narcissistic streak is shattered.”

“Effinger’s the key?” Matt said doubtfully. “He’s dead.”

“But he wasn’t then, Temple said. And why is he dead now? He was killed. By someone. Molina nabbed a couple of thugs who for the rap, the guys driving that semi when the drug bust was made, but even the police didn’t have enough evidence to charge them with Effinger’s murder.”

“And that bust was tied to your and Louie’s kidnapping,” Max said, “from the Opium Den stage.”

“When,” Matt put in, “that lady magician Shangri-La used Temple’s ring in a disappearing act and it vanished.” He didn’t quite look at her. “Until it turned up on a murder scene Molina was covering.”

“I love the way everybody knew about my ring being found, except me.” Max’s frown escalated into a glower.

Temple took a deep breath. “I didn’t know this until just recently.”

Max glanced at Matt, immediately realizing what she meant. Matt knew about the ring being found long before either of them. He could only have been told by Molina, and he had kept that from the two people who had a right to know what had happened to the ring, the man who gave it and the woman who accepted it.

“The point is,” Temple said to break the awkward silence, “that the ring was found near the dead magician’s assistant, who was killed at the same time as that other body was dumped at the Blue Dahlia. Her name was Gloria. Gloria Fuentes. Gandolph’s retired assistant.”

“Who’s Gandolph?” Matt asked.

Neither Temple nor Max answered him. They were staring at each other, lost in the implications.

“The question is,” Max told Temple, “was the ring left there to implicate you, or me?”

“Temple, obviously.” Matt ran a hand through his blond hair as if unconsciously pushing away an encroaching headache. “Even Molina’s not so obsessed with arresting the great Max Kinsella that she’d blame you for the death of anyone simply connected with magic.”

A silence. They were three, but there were islands of knowledge between them shared by only two, and perhaps in some case by only one. Time to build bridges over troubled water.

Temple focused on Matt. “Gloria Fuentes has a more direct connection to Max than mere magic. She was the longtime assistant to Max’s mentor, Gandolph the Great.”

The news jolted Matt. “Wasn’t that the fellow killed at last Halloween’s Houdini séance? And now you tell me this guy’s retired ex-assistant was killed only a few months later?”

“Yes.” Max was terse. “You see what Molina could do with those facts, given her hard-on for charging me with some crime or other.”

“So—” Matt was perking up from the funk he’d been in since hearing the shocking news of Vassar’s death. “That ring being at Gloria Fuentes’s death scene was a double whammy for Max, only Molina didn’t know it. Doesn’t know it?”

“No, thank God.” Temple grimaced. “And don’t you tell her. That’s why I didn’t invite her to our heart-to-heart. Even though she’s up to her shield in your recent foray into the local sex industry, she has no idea of how badly someone is out to get Max. It has to be Kathleen 0’ Connor.”

“Why?” Matt demanded.

“She doesn’t let go,” Max put in. “I also reacted to Sean’s death differently than she expected. Guilt, she got that, an endless peat bog’s worth to wallow in. But I went undercover in the IRA, found out who bombed that pub, and turned them in, remember.”

“That’s right. You were reared Catholic yet you betrayed the IRA.”

“I would have betrayed the pope to get the ones who killed Sean.” His eyes narrowed at Matt. “You can probably dig that. You were pretty hot to find your evil stepfather. Didn’t you ever want to wring his neck?”

Matt nodded. “And now I’d like to wring the neck of whoever hurt Vassar.”

“You, ah,” Max said cautiously, “can’t offer any insight on her last hours on earth?”

“Nothing except that she was alive and well when I left her.”

Max refrained from asking how well, for which Temple gave him full credit. The conversation was getting unbearable for all-parties involved.

“I realize,” Matt said, looking steadfastly at the top of the coffee table, which was littered with sections from two days’ worth of newspapers, “that inquiring minds want to know what happened between Vassar and me. Sorry. No comment.”

“What did Molina say to that?” Max asked with his best Mr. Spock raised eyebrow.

“Nothing. She never asked.”

Max suddenly laughed. “I love it! You shut down Molina on a case where her own hide is at stake. I’ve heard of Teflon politicians, but you, Devine, have a Teflon sex life. Nothing sticks but mystery.”