Unknown - Cat_In_A_Midnight_Choir-spaces_ru

“But Max found me, and Louie too.”

“I found you. Max was along for the ride.”

“He found us. You were along for the ride. Maybe that’s why you hate him.” Temple found a lump as big as the ring blocking her throat. Holding the ring brought back her Manhattan “honeymoon” with Max last Christmas, reminded her of his hopes, promises, that he’d be able to duck out of the undercover life, live a normal existence someday with her.

“Max had nothing to do with this ring!” Temple said, her wits gathering. “It was stolen from me by a woman no one has been able to trace. She must have been involved with that drug-smuggling ring you busted that night. Somebody must have pawned the ring and it ended up in that parking lot. Why would this be evidence incriminating Max, except that he gave it to me? Is giving me rings a crime?”

“Not to my knowledge. Unless it was stolen.”

Temple stared at the object in its sheath of cheap plastic, aghast.

“It wasn’t,” Molina admitted. “Purchased in New York, at Tiffany’s. For cash.”

“Really? Tiffany’s?”

“He didn’t brag?”

“Quality doesn’t brag. So how does this being on the scene of a murder implicate Max? You admit the ring was his to give. You know that it was taken from my possession in front of a theater full of witnesses, including you. You know that the entire magic act was a cover for criminal activities. Why drag Max into it?”

“You haven’t mentioned the murder victim. Of course you wouldn’t have noticed or known about her death. It got a three-inch mention in the local news section roundup column. Still, she was just as dead, brutally strangled. Not a young woman: sixty-two. Gloria Fuentes would not ring a bell with you or most people who read the paper that day.”

Molina was wrong. The name Gloria Fuentes almost made Temple drop the evidence bag, but she clutched it tight instead.

“And the connection to Max Kinsella,” Molina went on. “She was a former magician’s assistant, long since retired. Still, magic is the link, isn’t it? Between Shangri-La, the vanishing magician, between the late Gloria Fuentes, and between Max Kinsella, formerly the Mystifying Max and lately your non-live-in lover. I’ll take that bauble back now. It’s police evidence.”

No! Temple wanted to shout. It’s mine! It’s precious. Valuable. Mine.

How cruel Molina was to flaunt her possession of Temple’s only engagement ring. Temple felt a wash of anger, but it was rinsed away by fear. What if Molina knew what Temple knew: that Gloria Fuentes had been the longtime assistant to Max’s mentor in magic, Gandolph the Great? She would really be able to add several rows of bricks to her wall of circumstantial evidence closing him off from the normal life he hoped for.

Temple held the baggie out to Molina. “Handle it carefully. Opal is delicate and the ring is valuable. You probably know just how valuable more than I do. If it’s damaged in your custody, I’ll sue.”

While Temple met Molina’s hard gaze with her own steel blue fury, the desk phone rang.

“Molina,” she answered.

Then she was quiet. “I’m in the middle of something,” she said finally, sounding much friendlier than she had to Temple. “I’ll call you later. Yes. As soon as I can.”

The call didn’t sound totally professional, Temple diagnosed expertly. A public relations professional knows a lot about phone voice language. So if this was a semipersonal call, who was it from? Not Molina’s preteen daughter, Mariah. There had been none of that annoying Mother Superior-knows-better tone that Temple got by default.

A man. It was a man who Molina didn’t need to intimidate, but liked. Since a female police supervisor needed to intimidate men all around her into giving her an even break, Temple deduced that the man on the line was not a colleague, but a…friend? When did Molina relax enough to have friends, of any gender?

“Where were we?” the lieutenant asked.

Temple raised an eyebrow. It wasn’t like Molina to lose track of anything, especially something so potentially lethal. “I was requesting that you take good care of my ring, and you were talking about how I was married to the Mob.”

“That would be better than the state you’re in,” Molina retorted. “This is a friendly warning. Kinsella is trouble and he’ll take you down with him, no matter how many pretty rings he tosses your way. If you see him do anything that makes you think twice, let me know.”

“If I do, I will, but I haven’t yet.” Temple itched to reveal Max’s secret good-guy past, but secrets were supposed to stay that way and Molina would only call it defensiveness anyway. “Are you through with me?”

“For now.” Molina eyed Temple as she stood up, barely looming over the seated police officer even when standing. “You see much of Matt Devine nowadays?”

“Around the Circle Ritz. But he’s been…busy lately. Out of town on speaking engagements.”

“I hear he has other engagements on his calendar, too.”

“Oh?” Temple recognized a leading dig when she heard it. She braced herself again.

“Only that he’s been working himself back into the social mainstream.”

“Dating, you mean.”

“I guess I do.”

Temple gritted her teeth. She would not ask who. “That’s good. Single guys should date.” She narrowed her eyes like daggers at Molina. “Single gals, too.”

Molina shrugged. “A lot of single gals Matt’s age are single parents, though.”

Temple resisted catching a gasping breath. Molina had that daughter, Mariah. Was this her way of announcing that she was dating Matt?

“I’m a single gal with a dependent myself,” Temple said breezily, “only he’s a cat.”

“Doesn’t count as a dependent, especially given Midnight Louie’s untrammeled ways. I’m surprised you haven’t figured out who Matt’s new interest is. I thought you fancied yourself an amateur detective.”

“In criminal matters. There’s no crime in Matt’s having a social life.”

“There’s a crime in that it took him so long to get around to getting one.” Molina let her pencil rap back and forth on a manila folder, but kept silent.

Guess you could call this, Temple thought, a second “Manila Thrillah” only instead of Frazier and Ali going another brutal round, it was her and Molina. A Manila Molina, maybe? She be darned if she went down first.

Molina finally straightened, her mouth making a moué Temple couldn’t interpret as approval or not. “Janice Flanders. He’s been seeing Janice. I think they’re well matched.”

Temple had seen the sketch artist’s portrait work, but never hide nor hair of her in the flesh. Curiosity was killing her.

“She’s a wonderful artist,” Temple said smoothly. “She must share Matt’s insight into people and their problems.”

Molina paused on the brink of saying something, then seemed to remember her own secret. “That midnight radio job keeps him off the streets during prime time. Not too conducive to a social life. Probably for the best. Funny, there was a time when I thought you’d go with him over Kinsella.”

Temple was so flummoxed she couldn’t say anything for a moment. “I don’t think personal relationships are your long suit,” she said finally. “Obviously, you were wrong.”

“Oh, the show isn’t over yet.” Molina’s Midnight Margarita-blue eyes narrowed speculatively at Temple, like she was an undercover operative Molina was unleashing on the world at large. An unwilling, ignorant undercover operative. “Just watch yourself. It’s dangerous out there,” she added, turning back to her papers, dismissive.

Temple tottered out of the office to the elevator, weak-kneed for a moment. The last admonition had sounded reluctantly sincere enough to be real. And it wasn’t just Max that the woman was warning her about, Temple sensed.