Carole Douglas - Cat in a Midnight Choir

“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.

Given how deeply Molina loathed and distrusted Max, it gave Temple chilling pause to wonder what else threatening Molina saw looming in Temple’s own present and future.

The Sign of the Serpent

If Lieutenant C. R. Molina had meant to destroy Temple’s zip-a-deedoo-dah mood, she couldn’t have done better had she gone to graduate school in Killjoy 101.

Temple put the Miata’s top down again, fussing aloud about the process and herself.

“There’s no sense in taking anything that woman says seriously. She’s prejudiced against Max and probably thinks Miatas are the Devil’s workshop, too. What a puritan! She probably has the sex life of a cantaloupe. She certainly has the hide of one.

“I’d hate to be her daughter! Poor Mariah! It would take more than a Xena the Warrior Princess outfit to make that woman halfway human.”

Still, Temple stopped and grinned to picture the towering, no-nonsense detective done up as a credible Xena in leather bustier, studded boots, and kilt. And she already had the Lucy Lawless Olympus-blue eyes down cold. The masquerade had been a ruse to catch a killer at a science fiction convention where Xena clones were about as unique as Bozos at a clown convention. Temple was surprised the buttoned-down Molina would go undercover in such an over-the-top feminine guise, but her daughter had been in danger and mother love is a desperate motive. Actually, Molina’d looked pretty hot for a homicide lieutenant in that get-up. Temple’s grin faded.

Then she broke a fingernail on the convertible-top latch.

“Holy Aeolus! It’s the curse of the Chakram Chick.”

She got in the car and drove away, worrying more about what Molina might know about Max (that Temple didn’t) than was good for her sanity.

She hardly noticed where she was driving, she was so upset. Seeing the ring Max had given her treated like a Cracker Jack token made her stomach churn. Contemplating how Molina might use it to tie Max into yet another murder made the churn start whipping out butterflies. She was hardly Max’s keeper, she told herself. He’d been taking care of himself since high school and then some. Taking care of her, too. Loyalty and faith were hard emotions to defend; they were so totally in the mind and heart of the holder.

Had her supply of both run out on Max? He was mysterious, yes, but that had been a professional qualification for a magician, a charming quirk at first. Later…

She was driving east of town on Charleston. On her left the Blue Mermaid suddenly surfaced from a tangle of junky roofs and signs, her slowly turning serene plaster image a kind of Virgin Mary for the down-at-the-heels set.

And of course the Virgin Mary (which she was decidedly not) reminded her of Matt (which he decidedly was). Virgin, that is. Holy mackeral! What had she been thinking? How could she, a fallen away Universalist Unitarian, deal with an earnest ex-Catholic priest determined to re-enter the single lifestyle with eyes wide shut; to play by the religious rules even some Catholics had found unworkable? Talk about sexual responsibility. Before Max had reappeared, she might have and he couldn’t. After Max had returned, he might have and she wouldn’t. A tragicomedy of timing. Something to film for a joint HBO and Pax TV project: Sex in the Psyche .