Cat In A Leopard Spot

Chapter 51

Cops in Khaki

Matt’s penance had been one of the most strenuous ever assigned.

First he’d used Molina’s cell phone on the run to call the convent and call off dinner. Something urgent (it was) but not serious (not for him, anyway) had come up, he’d said truthfully, and he’d explain later.

Then he’d been a door-clutching passenger in some junker stick-shift heap that Molina manhandled to within a block from the police parking ramp. A cell phone had hugged her ear all the way, though Matt had thought that there were laws against driving while doing that sort of thing.

He had trailed her, running, into the ramp, where she had claimed a Crown Victoria and gunned it down the exit spiral. Now she was interacting intensely with the onboard computer screen and mobile police radio.

If the police drove like this, he didn’t want to know what they arrested ordinary citizens for driving like.

By the time they turned off the highway onto the darkening desert road, three police cars all boasting blinking headache bands up top and an unmarked car with a portable blinking cherry stylishly off-center on its roof joined the procession.

Matt’s head was beginning to throb from the jolting and the constant squawk of radio traffic and the piercing sound effects.

They converged on…oh, Lord! Temple’s car. The little aqua Storm, marooned in the desert.

A woman with a monstrous face sat on the passenger side, hysterical. When swarmed by Molina and company, she pointed ahead.

A uniformed officer stayed behind while the others forged forward on foot. Molina looked over her shoulder at him. “Come on!”

Matt did, feeling like a spaniel trotting behind bloodhounds.

Temple? his mind protested. Why would she be here? On what was obviously a major crime scene.

Then, again, why wouldn’t she be here?

Matt trotted into a clearing crowded with police personnel.

He could barely pick Temple out of the milling mess, much less Molina. For once he had forgotten Kitty O’Connor. No way could she be here, or could she have followed this circuitous trail. In an unexpected way, he was momentarily free.

It felt wonderful, despite the chaos, and despite seeing a man in a khaki bike-police-type outfit being led away with a raw, scratched face.

More men in khaki were coaxing a handsome black panther into a cage.

Matt glanced around, anxious. Where was Temple?

There, being loomed over by Lieutenant Molina.

That was a fate he wouldn’t wish on anyone, particularly Temple, who was sensitive about her lack of height.

He hurried over, just in time to catch Molina’s “Who is this guy again?”

Temple was shaking her little red head like the little red hen.

“I just can’t believe it. The last person in the world you’d suspect. Maybe it’s a mistake. But why else would he be trying to kill the panther. You’re going to need to talk to animal trainers on this one.”

“I am an animal trainer,” Molina retorted in a harassed tone. “This is a zoo. Okay, we’ve got the guy in custody. Now you give us a reason why. Shooting at a panther on a canned-hunt ranch isn’t reason enough.”

Matt joined the pair and Molina frowned at him. “This is an official interview, Devine. Butt out.”

“I haven’t said a word.”

“Keep it that way.” She let him stay and focused again on Temple. “Just tell me the facts.”

Ma’am.

“His name is Kirby Granger. He runs the Animal Oasis for confiscated, lost, and abused animals of all kinds, domestic or exotic. That’s why I can’t believe—”

“The hunt breakers have already said they saw him aiming at the panther.”

“But that’s…heresy for someone like him. He wasn’t even working with performing animals anymore, like he used to just a couple of years ago when…”

“When?” Molina asked.

Temple glanced at Matt.

“No side consultations,” Molina said. “You distract the witness again, Devine, and you’re walking home.”

“Oh.” Temple was very interested. “Matt came with you?”

Molina’s blue eyes flashed with wicked humor. “I take the Fifth on that, Miss Barr. Now. Answer my questions. You can ask your own later. Why would an animal-rights advocate shoot at a virtually helpless animal?”

“I don’t know,” Temple admitted. “I can see why he might kill Cyrus Van Burkleo—”

“I am so glad that you can. Because I can’t. And if I can’t, I can’t arrest him, much as whoever wrapped him in Armani and left him here to dry might wish. You know anybody with a size thirty-two Armani waist, hmmm? Can’t be a bleeding-heart animal lover. It was a leather belt.”

“You’ll just have to ask the suspect, Lieutenant.”

“He isn’t a suspect on your say-so. I’ll have to let him go.”

“Don’t.”

They turned at the interjection of a fresh voice. A husky, shaky voice.

Leonora Van Burkleo stood on wobbly heels by herself, having hiked in from Temple’s car.

“I…I found them.”

“Found?” Molina asked.

“Them?” Temple asked.

Molina gave Temple a quelling glance. “Found where?” Molina asked more gently, sensing Leonora’s fragile state.

Leonora shrugged, looked to the side as if envisioning a scene from a movie. “In Cyrus’s office. That man had…pushed Cyrus. The…horn was sticking out of his chest. A big dark point like a thorn. Giant thorn. It looked like the oryx had done it. So odd. After seeing all those horns on the wall, seeing one…going through Cyrus like a rifle barrel.” She shivered, though the day was at its hottest.

“She’s not a well woman,” Temple said. Cautioned.

Molina gave her a look that could kill. She made cases on not-well women and men. Murder revolved around not-well men and women.

Temple glanced at Matt, who grimaced his sympathy. The law on the trail of a vulnerable witness was not a pretty sight.

“So,” Molina said with satisfaction. “The leopard was set dressing. I thought so.”

“I thought of it,” Leonora said, lifting her mishapen face, tossing her leonine mane.

“You?” Molina hesitated, no doubt thinking of Miranda warnings. “You could be an accessory to murder,” she said, spewing the ritual faster than a TV huckster.

Leonora, having abandoned fear, was unstoppable. “I don’t care. I let him into the animal area, punched in the security code. He did the rest. Brought the leopard along, brought it inside. Didn’t need anything but his voice. And then he left. That’s a crime? Letting a man release a leopard?”

Molina looked at Leonora for a long moment.

“There are extenuating circumstances,” Temple blurted.

Molina did not look at her. “Call a lawyer,” she advised Leonora softly. “Meanwhile, I’m taking you all in.”

“All?” Temple asked.

Molina still did not look at her. “I assume you can drive Mr. Devine home, Miss Barr.”

When Matt made a move in protest, Molina answered it, edging near so Temple couldn’t hear. “I’ll give you a police-car escort. That ought to keep the bogeywoman away. Now.” Her voice escalated to public level for Temple’s benefit. “Off with you. I want to do my job.”

Temple gave Leonora a thumbs-up as she edged over to Matt.

He put an arm around her. Her bare arm was cold and goose-pimpled.

It was getting dark. No self-respecting stalker, he was willing to bet, was hanging around this headache-bar-lit crime scene.

“Are you okay?” he asked.

“No. And I don’t understand any of it, except poor Leonora.”

“What happened to her?”

“What didn’t? If Molina—”

“I think she gets the message. She’ll treat her with kid gloves.”

“Since when has she treated anyone with kid gloves?”

“How about her own kid?”

“You think so?” Temple glared at him, an aftershock of the evening, then her expression softened. “Matt, what on earth were you doing with Mother Macabre anyway?”

“I had a confession to make.”

“Oh! Joke your way out of it! All right, I give up. Take me home.”

“I’ll have to stop to pick up the Vampire at Our Lady of Guadalupe.”

“You weren’t kidding about the confession,” Temple said.

“I never kid.”

She paused in stomping off the overlit scene to smile at him. “I wish you did. Sometimes.”

Two officers in summer khaki examined their IDs before they were allowed to get in the Storm and drive away.