Cat In A Diamond Dazzle

Chapter 25

True Confessions

C. R. Molina cruised the Crystal Phoenix hotel lobby, cursing casino floor plans that always forced people to pass gaming attractions on the way in or out.

She disliked the constant clatter of slot machines, especially when she was trying to think. Not that she had much to think about: only the inevitable end of the romance convention, and with it the exit of all likely suspects in the Charlie Moon murder.

She knew that the odds on solving the case by Monday were longer than the odds on a nickel slot machine payoff. So the chugchug-chug of doomed coins down mechanical gullets sounded like the Failure Machine engine revving up before running her over.

This annoying convention murder case particularly rankled, coming, as it did, on the heels of her unexpected and spectacularly unproductive encounter at the Blue Dahlia the very night before the morning of Charlie Moon's demise.

Recalling the frustrating skirmish with Max Kinsella brought to mind her always-annoying head-to-heads with a known associate of the elusive magician: Temple Barr. Molina could not believe she had encouraged the woman's nosiness on this case. But in some instances, any sort of information was worth the effort. Even as she mentally stalked the thin grungy line of her remaining options during a swift passage through the gaming area, Molina's professional eye was on automatic record. One anomaly pricked her consciousness: a pit boss engaged in deep discussion. Pit bosses watched, they did not talk. Especially not to rank casino amateurs like ...

Molina stopped in her tracks, letting tourists jostle her as they scurried for their slot machines of choice. The stance of the person with the pit boss was even more naggingly out of place than the becalmed supervisor.

She spun into a different direction and quietly circled the pair beside the inactive craps table, approaching so she faced the pit boss.

Spike Saltzer was a casino veteran, a seventyish man with supernaturally shiny, full black hair and a perpetual tan. The tan was his only Las Vegas vice; Spike didn't smoke, drink or do drugs. Sometimes she even wondered if he slept. He had been married since Bugsy Siegel had died, to the same woman, and attended the Golden Light Church. Despite all that, or perhaps because of it, he missed no abnormal action on a gaming floor, so he had spotted Molina almost as soon as she had him. He didn't show it, except to back off from his conversation partner.

Pit bosses were the casino ringmasters, captains of the Good Ship Fun (yours) and Fortune (theirs).

They kept the action constant and clean, weather eye always alert for fraudulent patrons-- or employees, which was more often the case. That's why pit bosses seldom stood around to chitchat with--Molina was close enough to the blond man to confirm her first impression--Matt Devine. Well, well.

She managed to materialize beside both men before Devine, at least, knew what was happening.

So how long could--" He glanced at the nearing motion and saw her. Conversation stopped.

She enjoyed the confused, possibly guilty, expression on his striking face.

"I got no more time," Spike announced in a voice fogged by decades of second-hand smoke. His hooded eyes paused on Molina for a split second, then he was back cruising the tables like the seasoned land-shark he was.

"Lieutenant," Devine greeted her, his face still slack with surprise.

"Too bad I can't return a title," she said, smiling as his confusion deepened into wariness, if not resentment. "So. What were you and Spike talking about?"

"Nothing . . . important. Nothing of interest. To you."

"Everything is of interest to me, especially when it's adjacent to a murder scene."

If anything, Devine looked even more guilty. It was almost mean of her to prolong his misery and confusion, but her current need for the upper hand was probably a reaction to her split decision set-to with Max Kinsella the other night. Yes, it was mean of her, she decided, to transfer her rage toward a more expert opponent to a lesser quarry.

"Miss Barr is backstage or downstairs, I believe," she said brusquely, assuming Temple was the reason he had come to the Crystal Phoenix. "Why did you stop to pester Saltzer?"

"I was curious about how this place is run, that's all. Temple is here? Alone?"

Devine looked even more puzzled, and more worried, if possible.

"Alone? Not if she can help it. I believe about thirty paperback heroes are flitting about her general vicinity."

"Paperback heroes?"

"Cover hunks. Models. Male models. Romance-novel cover hunks. You do know about the romance conference?"

Devine shook his head.

"Isn't that why you're here? Because she is, yes, once more dead center of a murder investigation. Or are you here to protect the officers of the law from the patented brand of Barr interference, dare I hope?"

"The murder is . . . old news," he said cautiously.

"How blase you amateurs become. Yeah, the guy died a whole thirty hours ago, but the case file has hardly grown cobwebs." Molina studied his still-blank face and took mercy, in her own way.

"Did you know that a certain someone is back in town, by the way?"

"Did you?" he replied warily.

"Would I ask otherwise?"

"How did you--?"

"The power of the police," she answered, her tone self-mocking. "I suppose that this bodes quite a change of weather for you."

"What do you mean?"

"Well, you were the escort of record, and now 'Max is back.' " She was paraphrasing a line from "Mac the Knife," but it was lost on Devine.

"That's between Temple and . . . him."

"Is it? I think not. It's between him and the law."

"Have you arrested him?"

"Don't get your hopes up."

Devine flushed slightly. She really was vile to pick on someone so ill-suited for performing the courtship gavotte. She smiled again, this time nicely.

"I'm afraid I can't discuss the details, but the Mystifying Max will most certainly be arrested as soon as I can get a hold of him."

"What for?"

"Irritating an officer? Don't worry, there will be something I can pin on his pony tail one day soon."

She watched his face tauten with the belief that she really had seen Kinsella. That's why she had added the telling detail of the ponytail. And now she knew that Devine had seen this "demmed elusive"

creature as well.

"What did you think of him?" she asked next.

"Funny. I was going to ask you that."

She shrugged. With a wary soul like Devine, going first often meant getting what you want last. "How would they say it in the old days? 'A smooth customer.' But mine is a professional evaluation. I'm not interested in the personal."

"My summation is professional too," he said coolly enough, finally relaxing into their verbal fencing match. "A complex personality. Charming, of course. Alarmingly bright, but... somehow uneasy. And dark. A deep, dark streak, quintessentially Celtic."

"Celtic. Not the usual word you find on police blotters, Mr. Devine. I'll have to take it into consideration."

"Why are you baiting me?"

"Oh, because I have nothing better to do, or because I'm frustrated with the current case and it's more amusing to worry at old ones."

"Current case? Another murder?"

"Which murder did you think I meant? Or is there one I don't know about?"

"There have been so many since--"

"Since you met Miss Barr. I know. Well, now there's another. One of the competing cover hunks.

Arrow through the back sec-onds before a dramatic entrance--and exit--at an onstage rehearsal. Didn't she tell you about it?"

"I haven't seen Temple in a while."

"So she doesn't know you're here?"

"No. And I didn't--"

"Know she was here. Where did you think she had gone?"

"I--I don't know. I didn't want to ask. I figured--"

"No. No, my son. She is not with the Mystifying Max, at least not that I can tell. I would expect her to be less interested in the cover model murder, if that were the case, and no such luck. However, I wouldn't get too complacent, if I were you. She's with thirty-some half-clad muscular male models."

He frowned, ignoring her jibes. "Temple shouldn't be involving herself in that."

"I agree, but she does not. This time she has a guilty conscience."

"Guilty? Temple?" He sounded more alarmed by the latest murder than by Max's return, Molina noted.

"The victim had asked to speak to her alone the night before the murder. She knew him--slightly, she says--from the stripper competition a few months ago."

"I didn't know much about that," Devine muttered, distracted.

Molina suddenly realized why he was so disoriented. "That's why you were talking to Saltzer! You knew nothing about the latest murder, you were inquiring about the Effinger death. Oh, great, another amateur detective on the loose."

"Not an amateur anything." He flushed again, a victim of the ex-priest's innocence of ordinary social give-and-take beyond the charmed circle of a clerical collar. "I'm a concerned party in that case. Effinger was my stepfather. Or was the dead man really Effinger?"

Molina reared back, ambushed by an astute question. "What do you mean?"

"What do you mean, Lieutenant?" he added more softly. "You misled me. Why? I finally ... realized that there was no need for me to trek to the morgue and view the remains. Effinger had a police record.

His fingerprints would be available here, and in Chicago. Why did you put me through that identification mummery? For fun? Is that what you learned in Catholic schools, Carmen?"

Molina discovered that she had inherited the Catholic flush of guilt, too, especially when an ex-priest had caught her being officially devious and then used her hated baptismal name to bring the venial sin home.

"I needed your input," she said stiffly.

"Input?" His tone made the word an epithet. "Is that what you call it? I didn't have much input.

Standing in that vacant place, with those vacant corpses in various stages of dissection, with that . . .

smell like bitter orange blossoms strewn atop a cesspool, waiting for the beige curtain to be drawn so I can look down on some still, beige body under a white sheet. Death warmed over posing as cold oatmeal. Why, when you already knew-- knew --who he was?"

"But I didn't," she confessed in a low voice. "I still don't, since even you couldn't be certain."

"But the fingerprints--!"

"Don't match," Molina admitted, hearing the bitterness in her own voice. The failure.

"Don't match?"

He stared into her face, a handsome man her own height, who couldn't, wouldn't dream of intimidating her except with the moral indignation he had rightfully leveled at her. Using him without telling him why was part of her job. Most parts of her job were not nice.

Matt Devine settled into his own uneasy speculations, his emotions finally as readable as face-up playing cards. He was starting to learn the game of self-defense. She frowned. Using someone as undefendedly honest as Devine was more than mean; it was rotten. She suspected that his family history was tortured, now she could see the proof of that.

"It's a good thing I didn't call my mother--" He thought aloud, making her kick herself again for good measure.

Yet the reflex of official suspicion would not be denied. If the Devine/Effinger family history was so tormented, Matt Devine could have killed the man who called himself Cliff Effinger, not knowing any better than she who he really was.

"Thanks for finally telling the truth," he said, looking up.

She wished she could be sure enough to say the same.