Unknown - Cat_In_A_Midnight_Choir-spaces_ru

The smoke was making Temple’s eyes and throat clog, but she could hardly ask an expert witness to give up an addiction. So she blinked hard to clear her contact lenses and eyed the room again.

She wasn’t sure what she would turn up if she visited the strip clubs, but something would be better than nothing. She already had a new angle on Nadir: all bark and less bite. This from a woman who had made it her career to size up men in a New York minute.

Nadir was Molina’s bête noir, but there were always two sides to a story. Despite his trashy background, he might not be a killer.

Did Molina think so also? Is that why she let him escape the compromising circumstances, and therefore had to let Max go too? Or was she simply too desperate to risk bringing Nadir in? If he knew she was in town, he could find out about her. He probably would. A man of bluster would not want to leave the past alone. And then he would eventually hear about Mariah. Temple pictured Nadir demanding parental rights, and shuddered.

“You okay?” Lindy said after a hacking cough subsided. “I said I thought Rafi could be less dangerous than he looked, not more.”

“I was thinking about something else. Who do you think killed Cher Smith?”

“Oh, hard to tell. Someone who just ran across her, I think. Stinking luck. If she hadn’t been in that parking lot at that exact time, if he hadn’t happened to have been there. That’s the kind of crime it usually is. He probably propositioned her and didn’t think she ought to go turning him down. She probably panicked instead of kneeing him and running. Sniffled or tried to scream. That’s how these things happen. He panics and is afraid she’ll tell.”

“So if he’s afraid, the killer, there must be somebody he’s afraid of.”

“Besides the cops?”

“Yeah. If it’s all one thing leading to another, escalating. Maybe he’s a pillar of the church, or just married. But he’s got somebody to answer to.”

“Don’t we all?”

“Do you?”

“No. But I worked at getting this way a long time, honey. This is all we old broads have to show for the struggle. No one much bothers with us anymore.

“Now. When do you want to become the little G-string girl? I have to get one my suppliers to fork over some of her wares.”

“I could sell them for her. I mean, I’d need to look legitimate.”

“That’s already your problem, Temple. You look way too legitimate to be in here.”

“You’re right. I don’t want to attract undue attention in the clubs.”

“Coming in with quick-change stuff will help that. But you need to lose that red hair. Can you get a wig with a kind of hippie bandeau around the forehead, like retro flower child? If you look slightly street-person you can come and go as you please.”

The idea of a wig hunt perked Temple right up. Not only was it an instant disguise, she always liked to see herself as other than she was. It was her version of the human potential moment, or her long-buried theatrical urges coming out.

The right wig and not even Max would spot her! Maybe.

“When do I get the costumes?”

“I’ll get ’em if you can give me a hundred down. Then, whatever you sell you get to keep.”

“Down and done,” Temple said, slapping palms with Lindy before digging in her tote bag.

“You didn’t say why you want to do this.”

“Oh, research for an upcoming job.”

“PR work certainly gets into weird areas.”

“Certainly does.”

Temple spun off the bar stool and passed through the dim and mostly empty club into the dazzling daylight of the Strip. Strip was sort of the key word in Las Vegas: a town that would strip you of your money and your clothes as soon as look at you, and it often did if you were stripped.

Why did she want to do this?

Because she needed to do something to hold off the tightening noose Molina had thrown around Max. Now she could see how quickly his conscience had led him into a quagmire, how much it would suit Molina’s hidden and public agenda to arrest Max for Cher Smith’s death. They were engaged in a secret duel to the death. A referee was desperately needed.

Max had said the homicide lieutenant was driven by the desire to protect her daughter at all costs. Temple didn’t share that maternal fierceness, but she’d seen it before. It was considered a noble urge, but it also could be blinding and dangerous.

Temple had her own to protect, though not a kid, decidedly not a kid. Max had always done everything he could to protect her. It was time she returned the favor. Her conviction about that was very…fierce.

So, c’mon, mama. Let’s see who can nail whom first.

The House of Midnight Louise

It is a long hike over to the Crystal Phoenix and along the way I have plenty of time to brood about Karma’s usual mystic mutterings.

I must admit that I have had an itchy-twitchy feeling that has nothing to do with psychic channeling and everything to do with plain old instinct.

I am worried about my little doll.

You will observe the startling new use of the plural.

Miss Temple, in my opinion, has been lower than a polecat at a limbo contest of late.

I know that she is worried about Mr. Max. And Mr. Matt. And Miss Lieutenant Ma’am C. R. Molina. In some cases she is worried about the sanity and safety of the persons in question. In others — well, one — she is worried what the person in question might do to threaten the safety and sanity of the others.

And I know Miss Louise. She is not one to miss an opportunity to tweak my tail. Yet here I have proceeded, completely tweakless, for almost half a day. Is it possible for a hardnosed dude to miss abuse? I do not think so. But it is possible to deduce that Miss Louise may not be absent of her own free will, because she would never choose to loiter around a spooky old mansion when she could be persecuting me with her presence.

I must proceed logically. Miss Temple is relatively safe with Mr. Max for the night. That is to say, she is safe from anyone other than Mr. Max, and she apparently thinks that is an all right place to be.

So I must first make sure that Louise is missing in action, and then return to the scene of the crime and decide how to find and spring her from Los Muertos. If I did not cross her trail in the house during my previous visit, she might be held prisoner someplace secret and inaccessible, of which that joint has as many such places as a slab of Swiss cheese has mouse holes. What? You thought they were air bubbles?

The Crystal Phoenix’s showgirl Big Bird is fanning its neon tail feathers three stories high as I approach. I avoid the sweeping entrance drive and veer around to the side, where the lights are low and the tourists are utterly absent.

I do not expect to be seen, but still dart from palm trunk to palm trunk.

Imagine when I find one of my refuges already occupie.

He growls and I hiss. We face off. It is too dark here to tell exactly what our opponents are, other than natural enemies.

I swipe the air and snag a shiv on a hairy bit of coat.

The growl deepens.

“Listen,” I say. “I am just minding my business. I suggest that you mind your own business and we go our separate ways.”

I head forward and bump brows with something knee-high to a dump truck.

“I will go right, and you will go left,” I suggest.

“No dice. I go right.”

“Fine.”

We move again. Right into each other.

“Uh, do I go to my right, or your right?”

Oh, great. A Ph.D. candidate. A Doctor of Phoology. “You go to your right and I will go to my right.”

We move, dancing in the dark. We stub our toes on each other’s hangnalls.

Apparently the tree trunk is no longer between us.