Carole Douglas - Cat in a Midnight Choir

“Easier said than done with the Mystifying Max. Magicians have a criminal edge second to none.”

“Ex-magician.”

“Too bad he’s not an ex-boyfriend.”

“Maybe he is. You don’t know anything about us, really.”

“I know more than you do about Max Kinsella.”

“Now, really, that’d be going some.”

“You’re blinded by your relationship to the man. You so resented the implication when you were assaulted in the parking garage that the emergency room staff assumed you were a battered woman. But what does sleeping with the stripper strangler make you?”

“Max? Killed that poor girl? Cher Smith?”

“For starters.”

“You think I wouldn’t know if he were capable of that?”

Molina nodded. “Most of the worst serial rapists had nice little wives at home who were totally ignorant of their real natures. And some didn’t. Some had willing partners in their crimes; women who preferred to see it done to other women than to suffer it themselves. Abused to the point of becoming accomplices.”

“You have no idea of who Max is,” Temple said, stunned at the darkness of the crimes under discussion, but unshaken. “I wish I could tell you, but you wouldn’t believe me.”

“Who’s more liable to be deceived here: the girlfriend, or the police professional?”

Temple just shook her head.

“Remember that I warned you. He could go down for something seriously criminal, and then you really will be an accomplice, as well as a witness for the prosecution.”

“Why do you need to prove Max guilty of something so badly?”

“Because it’s my job to find and arrest the guilty. He may be guilty of more than you can imagine.”

Temple had a Cecil B. DeMille imagination, so this was a real threat. If Molina was even more convinced now than a year ago that Max was guilty of something heinous, the situation was as serious as she said.

Temple answered seriously. “I know it looked suspicious when Max disappeared right after that dead man was found in the spy network cubbyhole over the Goliath Casino, but he had just finished his performance contract there. If — and I say if — he knew about the death, he might have gone underground because he was afraid of whoever did it, or of being arrested for it. Maybe he was set up —”

“You’re telling me you lived with the man and he never explained his vanishing act to you?”

“Max keeps his own counsel. He said it was for my own protection.”

“He’s not doing a very good job of protecting you, or what’s yours.”

Molina finally lowered her laser blue eyes — so like that beautiful blue light of the glaucoma test machine at the eye doctor’s that you’re supposed to hold absolutely still for while staring right into it without blinking as it pushes closer and closer…and even though you can’t feel it you know that gas-blue flame is drilling right into your cornea — ick! Temple blinked from just thinking about the eye test.

Maybe it had made her nervous (that epic imagination at work again), because she jumped when Molina tossed something across the desk that hit the papers with a thunk.

This was the usual police evidence baggie that you thought should be holding somebody’s leftover tuna-fish sandwich, which usually turned to be something sad, like one earring, or grisly, like somebody’s leftover bloodstained wallet….

The object inside the bag was small and lumpy with a glint of gold.

Temple’s ghoulish imagination conjured a flashy molar pulled out by the roots….

“Oh.”

She reflexively reached for the object. It was hers, after all.

It weighed heavily in her palm as her memory assayed it. She’d forgotten how utterly beautiful it was, the opals, the diamonds, the gold setting.

It had been hers for only a few days.

“Where? When?”

Molina was happy to dispatch the dispassionate facts. “In a parking lot. A church parking lot. Several weeks ago. Near another parking lot body. It was identified, but the perp remains at large. A female victim, of course.”

“My ring was by the body?”

“By the edge of the parking lot, actually. A bright young uniform found it. The body was thirty yards away.”

“I don’t understand.” This time Temple could meet the laser eyes: she stood on firm ground. “You know this ring was on my hand the night we all attended the Opium Den to see that woman magician’s act. Shangri-La called me onstage as the willing audience schmoo, took my ring, and then vanished with her whole retinue.”

“You vanished too, and that black alley cat of yours, who gets around like a case of the clap.”

“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.