Unknown - Cat_In_A_Midnight_Choir-spaces_ru

“How many other spots around town do you patronize?”

“Uh, none. Not since I stopped hitting the joints looking for my stepfather.”

“She’s just covering all the bases, like a good terrorist. But you’re right. She’s tailing you twenty-four/seven. Or someone is.”

“That’s why I’m sneaking around to see Molina.”

“Strictly business, huh?”

Matt remembered the subject of his last discussion with her and felt a reddening surge of guilty fluster.

“Sorry. None of my business.” Kinsella’s smooth smile annoyed the heck out of Matt.

“Just business,” Matt managed to say, “sordid as it is when that O’Connor woman’s involved. You know she’s only tormenting me because she can’t find you.”

“I don’t know that. Why would she think you had anything to do with me?”

“We’re not complete strangers. She devotes all her time to it. She’s superhumanly omniscient, remember?”

“So she is.”

Matt couldn’t resist an urge to flash some omniscience himself after contemplating the varieties displayed by these two mortal enemies.

“Temple knows where her ring is now. Your ring.”

“Ring?”

It was Matt’s turn to look smug. How could Kinsella have forgotten Temple’s almost-engagement ring? “How many have you given Temple? The one the magician swiped. Sha-nah-nah or whatever.”

Max reclaimed the newspaper section and folded it into crisp thirds as if trying to bury something inside it. “The ring? Where is it? Who found it? When?”

“I don’t know when. I guess we could figure it out if we tried.”

“Why should we?”

“Because Molina has it. In a plastic evidence baggie. She’s had it for some time but just showed it to Temple a couple of days ago, along with a warning that it tied you to yet another murder and that Temple had better ditch you fast.”

“Another murder? How?”

“I’m not too sure, but Temple sure didn’t like the connection.”

“Where did Molina find it?”

“It’s evidence from the case of that woman killed in a church parking lot about the same time as Molina found the other poor woman’s body in the Blue Dahlia parking lot. I’m not sure why Molina’s so convinced the ring’s being found there links you to the murder. We all saw the ring taken by a third party.”

“Seeing things with her own eyes wouldn’t change Molina’s mind about me,” Kinsella said absently. “She’s like Kathleen, absolutely blinded by her wacked sense of political correctness. That dead woman in the church parking lot had been a magician’s assistant years ago. That’s the connection Molina sees. And she probably believes I got that ring back the night it disappeared because I got Temple and Midnight Louie back. She probably figures I palmed it and then dropped it while strangling Gloria Fuentes. That was the dead woman’s name. She used to be quite well known in magical circles in this town.”

“I’m sorry.” Matt Kinsella’s bleakness when speaking of the dead woman made it seem as if he had known her. Not good if he had. It only bolstered Molina’s theory.

“Magic is dead,” Kinsella pronounced with finality, the way Matt had heard some people chant “God is dead” twenty years ago. “There’s more profit in debunking it.”

“You could say the same thing about religion.”

“So you could. We invested in the wrong careers for the times, didn’t we? But you’re still trying to save souls on the radio and I’m still trying to save lives with magic tricks.”

“At least we’re trying.”

“Very trying.” Kinsella grinned, unfolding the newspaper into a tattered patchwork that Matt took dazed custody of when Max put the car into gear. “Especially you. You must drive Kathleen nuts, as if she needed any help in that direction. Want to hop in the back again?”

“Not really.” Max opened the passenger door to admit a wave of pure dry heat. It felt clean. “What are you going to do?”

“What I’ve always done: my Invisible Man act, try to control everything and be seen nowhere. As for your question, sure, give Molina the portrait of Kathleen. I’d appreciate it if she’d get off on persecuting someone else for a while.”

“Can anyone actually persecute a psychopath, even if they’re the police?”

“I could. If I could find her.”

“Looks like you and Kathleen are at an impasse.”

“I think we have been for almost twenty years. So don’t sweat Miss Kitty. I outrank you.”

Matt dropped the magically savaged newspaper on the passenger seat as he moved to his place of concealment in the back.

Men in Motion

Matt rang the Circle Ritz penthouse doorbell, feeling oddly nervous.

He hadn’t seen his landlady, Electra Lark, in so long that he felt like a fraud to be calling on her for a favor. A menial favor at that.

And he still hadn’t thought up a good excuse for asking her to do it. Kitty O’Connor had driven him to the point that the truth was only a method of last resort.

The door swung open.

“Matt! I was just thinking about you.”

“Why?”

“I get these sort of premonitions.” She dimpled like a teenager. Not bad for a sixty-something. Electra and her apparel, the usual blooming Hawaiian muumuu that more often seemed to wear her, stepped back to admit him into the tiny octagonal entry hall that was covered in vertical Mylar-faced blinds.

It was like walking inside one of those spinning mirrored balls that hover like UFOs over scenes of mass ballroom dancing.

“Gracious, you haven’t taken up wallpaper sales on the side, have you, dear?”

Matt lofted the cardboard tube he held like a clumsy sword. “No, this is why I came up. I was wondering if you could mail it for me. It’s awkward for me to do it myself, I can’t quite explain why —”

“If you were going to be late with your rent I’d need an explanation. If you need a favor, I’m not about to demand one.”

Being a good guilt-ridden Catholic, Matt gave her one anyway. “It’s a poster.” A Wanted poster, in its fashion. “I taped an envelope to the top; what’s inside should cover the postage.”

Electra waggled plump fingers of dismissal at his scrupulous accounting. “Listen, Matt, I’m so pleased to have a media celebrity residing at my modest little residence I’d probably send a hundred-pound box of Ethel M for you gratis.”

“A hundred pounds of Ethel M candy? That would be overkill.”

She took the cardboard tube and leaned it against the doorjamb. “This is a featherweight. I’ll mail it this afternoon. Can you come in for a minute?”

“Sure.” Matt didn’t like to beg and run. Besides, he was curious to see the penthouse.

“I keep things rather dim up here,” Electra warned, preceding him through a split in the mirroring blinds.

The large room beyond was indeed bathed in eternal dusk, thanks to more vertical blinds, although these were a lot less flashy.

“I grew up with furniture like this.” Matt eyed the sprawling, overupholstered forms that grazed on the dark wood floor like baby elephants.

“It that a complaint or a compliment?”

“I don’t complain. It becomes chronic.”

“That’s for sure. Especially in my age group. If it isn’t ‘my aching angina’ or ‘my inflamed tendon’ or my ‘inverted intestine’ or whatever, it’s a marathon discussion of doctors and HMOs and prepaid burial plans. No thanks!”

Electra plopped down on a long, dark sofa shaped like a ’40s Ford. Matt tried a ’50s sling chair.

“So why did you paint my Probe white?” she asked. “It looks like a bathtub on wheels. I know the pink was a little sun-faded, but you could have gone for something zippier.”