Carole Douglas - Cat in a Midnight Choir

Her voice was level, strong, intense. But Molina was worried.

He had been the hardest takedown in her career, and she was half-afraid that he had let her win in the end, not because he was a gentleman but because it suited him.

So now she had Max Kinsella, handcuffed, to put in her personal car, which was equipped with nothing but a police radio.

She sure didn’t want him behind her, so the passenger seat was the only option and it wasn’t a good one.

“Get in,” she said, as if she just loved the idea of putting him there.

She shoved him into the seat, pushing down on his head to force him inside.

His height was still too much for the Toyota’s roof line, and he banged his skull.

Good, maybe it’d daze him a little. It was a twenty-minute ride to headquarters and she didn’t want to distract herself calling in or doing anything but keeping him in custody until he was safely locked up somewhere even an magician couldn’t abracadabra his sleazy way out of.

Kinsella sat hunched forward in the seat, partly because of his height, partly because with his hands manacled behind his back he couldn’t lean back. Tough.

“Temple’s life could be on your head,” he said. Sounded strangled, like he really cared. And getting…cozy with her if it would help get him free. What a creep!

“Can it.”

She snapped on her seatbelt, started the car, put it into gear, checked that he was still bound and pulled out of the Secrets parking lot.

“You don’t know that Temple isn’t in danger,” he said, “and you really don’t have anything solid on me.”

“I’m sure I can work up a probable cause that would curl a judge’s hair. You have been caught on too many dirty scenes too many times.”

“Not caught. Not until now.”

“Why do I think that you think you’re not really caught?”

He shrugged, stared ahead, intently watching the street as if he were behind the wheel, not she.

Just fifteen more minutes and she’d be rid of him.

The radio squawked. She wanted to turn up the squelch dial, but couldn’t risk leaning down into the well of the car. Perfect opportunity to sandbag her.

After a buzz of competing calls, she heard the words, “Baby Doll’s.”

Kinsella thrashed a little against his bonds. Solid-steel suspicion, that’s what she had on him. It would have to be enough.

She had to lean forward to pick up the mike. Had to. Kept her eyes on him as if she was a staple gun and he was wallpaper.

More voices chimed in, sputtering through the static. Action.

She waited for a break and got on. “Molina. What’s going on at Baby Doll’s?”

“Perp down. Victim’s okay. She’s saying it’s the stripper killer.”

Molina hit the brakes so hard her passenger’s forehead tapped the windshield.

She made sure he wasn’t using the distraction to attack her, but he was listening as hard as she was.

“Victim is okay?”

“Yeah. She pepper-sprayed the guy” — Kinsella jerked, and she glared him to stillness — “to kingdom come. He’s out cold yet.”

“Who’s the guy?”

“Some DJ kid for the clubs. Tyler something.”

Molina gave up and pulled the car over to the curb, putting on the emergency blinkers. Tyler. Who’da thunk it? She had a horrifying suspicion who might have.

“And the intended victim? You got a name yet?”

“Tess, from what some people around here said.”

Tess?

“But it turns out it’s really Temple.”

Of course. The awful inevitability of it was almost blinding.

“Yeah,” the radio squawked. “That’s a first name. Temple Barr. Tiny little thing, but she put this guy down flat.”

The radio went silent.

“I think I’ll be going now,” Kinsella said quietly.

She looked over. The handcuffs dangled from one wrist, then the empty one was snapped on her right wrist, the left one jumped from his wrist to snap shut on the steering wheel.

It all happened faster than the blink of an eye, especially an eye controlled by a mind that was busy absorbing vast new vistas on a series of old problems.

“You bastard.” Her tonelessness made the word even uglier. “I ultimately would have had to let you go anyway. This time.”

He opened the door, jumped out, leaned his head back in a sliver of open door.

“I know you would have had to.” Kinsella rubbed his forehead, grinned. “But ultimately it’s more fun this way. You do still have the key somewhere on you, don’t you, Lieutenant?”

He slammed the door shut and vanished…only because she couldn’t move much to see where he had gone.

While she struggled to dig the key one-handed out of her rear paddle holster, fighting the damned seatbelt all the way, the radio buzzed with the happy crosstalk of high adventure and the taunting muted shriek of sirens speeding to the crime scene.

Kinsella had been honest about one thing: a woman in danger.

At least Temple Barr was just dandy, and neither she nor Kinsella would have her damage or death on their conscience.

That would be something in common with Max Kinsella that Carmen Molina absolutely could not bear.

Serial Chills

“I did not raise you,” my mother says, “to leave a lady lying in the street, even if she is human.”

“Look, Ma, you did not raise me, period. It was six weeks and ‘You are on your own, kit.’ Besides, I know my Miss Temple and she is fine, especially after we sang to high heaven to attract attention to her plight. I do not know that Miss Midnight Louise is fine.”

“Usually something ‘stinks’ to high heaven,” Ma says.

“Well, we were not the Mormon Tabernacle Choir, but it got the job done.”

We are trotting along at the head of a feline brigade, if a brigade can be as motley a crew as this is.

Only my mother’s stern matriarchal influence on the cat colony has permitted this rare outing en masse, so I am best off if I do not irritate the old dear too much.

“So this Midnight Louise is your kit, Grasshopper,” she says.

“We have not had a DNA test,” I grumble, “so I am not about to claim relationship. She was known as Caviar until some humans got the funny idea she looked like me and renamed her Midnight Louise. You know how it is, humans think all us black cats look alike.”

“Hmph. Caviar is a pretty fancy name for a nobody. I do not have any grandkits, that I know of.”

“Thank your lucky whiskers! Young kits today have no respect.”

“They did not in your day either,” says she with a sidelong glance. “This will be good for the colony,” she adds. “To leave the safety of their turf, to venture into the Dead Place. They were getting too complacent with the Fixers leaving them food.”

I can see that my mama is a leader of cats.

“The days of free-range cats are ending,” I say. “It is too dangerous out here and there are plenty of humans to be educated into giving us posh retirement homes off the street.”

“And you would be content to sit inside twenty-four/seven and watch the world through a window?”

“Sure.” Again I get the green sideways stare. “If I were retired. But I am a professional. There are not many PIs of my persuasion — although sometimes I think there is one too many trying to muscle into my territory — but for the average cat, which is everybody else but me, the domestic life is the best bet. Even dear old Dad has left the seafaring life for a sweet berth with some old guys who run a restaurant on Lake Mead. Heck, they even named it after him. What more could you want?”