Carole Douglas - Cat in a Midnight Choir

It was a mystery.

A challenge.

Something necessary to solve.

“There!”

Ralph carried her where she pointed.

No one gawked. This was Las Vegas. One expected the unexpected.

He set her gently down by a lurid gaggle of overgrown neon kiwi birds.

“How did Domingo know?” Temple muttered.

When a world-famous conceptual artist decides to do something in Las Vegas, there are no holds barred. The entire project, a coup for the Crystal Phoenix, was courtesy of Domingo’s high regard for Matt Devine. Temple might have cleared him of murder, but Matt in his role of hotline-counselor had cured him of a mid-life sexual addiction that was threatening to ruin his professional and personal future.

Behind the kiwis (so prominent in a more recent murder environment) stood the sinister figure of the Wicked Witch of the West holding a flamingo pink neon sign.

“Surrender Dorothy” it read in cursive script, with an added line beneath: “to Mr. Midnight.”

Signed: “Domingo.”

Really, Temple thought. Most…ambiguous.

And her without a pair of ruby red slippers to her name.

Temple pulled into the Circle Ritz parking lot, feeling in the mood for a brass band, but no such luck. It was deserted except for the landlady’s inherited silver VW Bug, millennium model.

Temple pulled in right next to it. Take that, Elvismobile!

For a moment she wondered again why Matt Devine had traded this sleek if funky little car upholstered in blue-suede-shoe cloth for Electra’s groady old pink Probe. Which he’d immediately painted an uninspiring shade of white. Of course, all shades of white were uninspiring on any car but a Stutz-Bearcat convertible to Temple.

She sat there in her snazzy red convertible, contemplating Matt’s depressingly modest outlook on life. If it was quiet, unassuming, and dull, he was all for it. Perhaps that was why he’d never really fallen for her.

It had been a close call, though, interrupted by Max’s sudden return from the missing-in-action lists just when she was beginning to accept that her live-in lover was gone for good. What if Max hadn’t come back? Would she and Matt be sharing the whitewashed Probe now? Or a red Miata? At five-ten, Matt would probably fit in the Miata like Goldilocks in baby bear’s bed: just right.

Temple glanced at the empty passenger seat beside her. Ghosts always rode with a single woman. Maybe some women wouldn’t have taken Max back after he’d vanished for almost a year with no notice. But he was a magician. Vanishing was a professional hazard. And he had left to save her from drawing the attention of the bad guys on his trail. A noble act, really. Besides, they had been monogamous long enough and enough in love to flirt with a real commitment: marriage someday. You had to remain true to your school, and Temple’s alma mater was monogamy in a bed-hopping age. Max had remained true the whole time he was gone, too. Mutual fidelity wasn’t something you threw away.

Temple fluffed her road-whipped hair into a semblance of order in the rearview mirror, which reflected a lot empty of all the working tenants’ cars, including her reliable old Storm.

Too bad you couldn’t keep old cars like you did old pets: till death did you part, and a little box of rust at the end for yourétagère. Then she thought of Max and his rotating stable of “cold” cars, courtesy of his international-operative friends. Temple didn’t know what he’d be driving from one day to the next, and they were all perfectly serviceable, perfectly forgettable vehicles. That was the point.

Temple patted the leather passenger seat beside her, hot in the sun. Maybe that’s why she had made such an extravagant statement with this car. Maybe she wanted to shout that she didn’t need to live the kind of self-denying life Matt seemed married to, or have to follow the kind of enforced low-profile pattern that Max’s undercover work had made his lifestyle if he wanted to keep having a life.

Something tweedled, and Temple jumped. Every new car had its own literal bells and whistles that told you to take the key out of the ignition, or put your seat belt on, or to turn off your headlights.

But this signal was just from the cell phone in the tote bag on the passenger seat. She patted it down expertly, looking for concealed communications devices, and finally came up with her phone.

“Yes?” she asked after the fourth ring, basking in the open air, staring up at clear blue sky of spring.

“I hope I didn’t catch you at a bad time,” the voice said.

“Only on a most unusual day,” Temple caroled back. She was in a good mood and would not be denied.

“This is Molina and all my days are unusual, so don’t flatter yourself. I need to talk to you.”

“You are.”

“In person, where I can see you and you don’t sound half-looped.”

“I am not looped. I am happy. It is a natural human state in parts of Las Vegas you seldom see, Lieutenant.”

“That’s good to know. Can you come see my side of town?”

“Yeah. Now?”

“As good a time as any.”

“For you, maybe.” Then Temple pictured zipping up to the police department building in this jaunty set of wheels. What’d Molina drive, an ancient Volvo? “Okay, I’ll be there in twenty minutes.”

“Thanks,” Molina’s brusque voice said before the connection died.

Temple stared at her cell phone as if it had grown Dumbo ears. Molina gave thanks? To her?

Must be a trap.

Temple resolved to be on her guard despite a New Car High and welcomed piloting her new baby on a mission to Homicide Central. Might as well break it in early.

C. R. Molina’s office was depressingly functional, but Temple had been here before. She sat on the molded plastic visitor’s chair, her feet barely grazing the floor despite platform wedgies that added four inches to her five-feet-zero.

Across from her, Molina was the same stark, brunette figure that sometimes stalked Temple’s nightmares: Mother Superior incarnate, a female authority figure who wouldn’t take no for an answer.

Instead of feeling chirpy about her flashy new car, Temple suddenly felt like a kid with a new red fire engine that all the adults were too busy with Real Life to look at.

This insight reminded Temple that she had often been too busy lately to look at Real Life, which was the only kind of life — and death — Molina dealt with daily.

Molina was shunting some paperwork aside. The statistics of death in Las Vegas. She reminded Temple of a school principal calling a student to her office. Except school principals were seldom nervous, and today the Rock of Gibraltar of the LVMPD was. Slightly.

She sat back, a nunlike figure in her dark navy blazer and denim shirt. “This is off the record.”

“Which way? I’m not supposed to tell anyone, or you won’t tell anyone?”

“You’ve never listened to me before, but I wish you’d prick up one tiny Toto ear and listen now.”

Temple flushed at being compared to a dog. A small dog. A small cute film dog. “Which Wicked Witch are you warning me about now?”

“It’s Wicked Wizard.”

“Max? Don’t you know by now that I don’t listen to propaganda?”

“I do. Which is why I’m pretty stupid for even trying to open your eyes about him. You should know that he is suspected of some pretty serious stuff. That there’s good reason to think he’s committed a felony.”

Temple’s sun-warmed skin felt the sudden frost of an inner chill. “Felony.”

“Grand theft, burglary, robbery, kidnapping,” Molina noted tone lessly. “And murder.”

“You’re not back on that old sweet song again? Max is not a murderer. If he’d done anything even remotely wrong since he came back last fall, you’d have had him arrested by now.”