Cat In A Sapphire Slipper

Dirty Laundry

Lieutenant C. R. Molina was not used to huddling in her darkened bedroom nursing a knife wound under the guise of it really being a rugged case of flu.

A really rugged case of flu had never gotten her down and kept her from work before.

She had holed up in her bedroom to hide the discomfort a long slash across her abdomen caused with every move she made. At thirteen, Mariah was more than old enough to be suspicious of unusual behavior in a parent.

Damn that sneaking, anonymous mortal enemy of Max Kin-sella who’d dared to break into his house the same night she had taken the law into her own hands and done likewise!

Now, she was no wiser to what had happened to Max Kinsella than she was to who hated him enough to slash his wardrobe into pieces in his absence. Absence, in his case, did not make the heart grow fonder. Even Temple Barr had finally given up on the man and made Matt Devine the happiest man in the world.

Carmen tried to cushion her shoulder on the piled bed pillows. A rip of fire along the eighty-some stitches in her side erupted like Vesuvius. She yelled.

She could because she was home alone. Mariah was in school and Mama Molina was watching the inane fare that passed for daytime television programming. Right now she was tuned to a rerun of one of the half hour Hollywood gossip shows that usually sullied the pre-evening news slot.

Excess Hollywood or something, it was called.

The helmet-haired hostess actually breathed a word that caught a cop’s interest.

“Former Hollywood madam Heidi Fleiss has opened a Laundromat in Pahrump, Nevada,” the woman announced as if hailing the Second Coming. “It’s called Dirty Laundry and is a prelude to her breaking ground for the first chicken ranch for women, also in Pahrump.”

“Just what I need!” Carmen moaned. Would women really run with the wolves and flock to a joint with men for sale? Not in her jurisdiction anyway, but this was yet another sad sign of the coming Apocalypse in Vegas and environs.

On the breathless news went: “This gender-breaking establishment was originally titled the Rooster Ranch, but will now be called the Stud Farm.”

Carmen patted the rumpled covers, desperately seeking the remote control. If she never heard about another Nevada chicken ranch it would be far too soon.

Once the TV was off, she could hear her distant doorbell ring. Great. She had no hope of getting there before the ringer had left, and risked irritating her stitches into a fevered snit.

She lay back, huffing with effort more than sighing. Sighing hurt. No way could she pretend to normal movement at work for a few more days. Luckily, Morrie Alch was so straight-arrow that the brass would believe him if he swore the Pope was Mormon. If he said she had the flu bad, it stuck.

The doorbell was silent now. Who had to bother hapless housewives at midday anyway?

She was trying to shift to a more comfortable position when her bedroom door opened. Someone was in the house! Someone unauthorized. The front door had been locked.

She patted the covers for her ankle piece, the small Colt semiautomatic. A cop on her back who’s been attacked by an unknown person does not tumble into a sickbed with just a TV remote.

Her heart was beating hard enough to tear out her stitches as she aimed at the tall shadow against the hall light. “Morrie?” she said hopefully.

“I figured he was in on it,” the shadow answered.

“Larry?” She wasn’t exactly relieved.

“Yeah.”

“Who said you could break and enter at my place?”

“No breaking. I have a key, remember?”

She didn’t, but she couldn’t remember a lot on Vicodin. Her mind tended to wander. One minute she’s hearing about Dirty Laundry, and then Dirty Larry shows up at her door. That was the undercover cop’s nickname. He’d bullied his way into the edges of her professional and private life in the past few weeks, but now that he knew she’d mangled the law, she found him less amusing and more alarming.

His turning up at Kinsella’s house just after she’d been knifed by an intruder in the dark had turned on her suspicions. The intruder could be anyone, including Dirty Larry. Why? She had no idea, but she was finding it harder to believe that he’d pursued her lately just because she was so darn cute.

“You’re not telling anyone about this.” Her words were an order.

“Of course not, but I wanted to make sure you were okay.”

“I hurt like hell, I’m on enough painkillers to get busted if I didn’t have a doctor’s prescription, and I don’t feel like talking.”

“Whoa! Got it. Didn’t mean to scare you.” His shrewd eyes glanced at the Colt, still in her hand.

“I wasn’t scared,” she said. “Just cautious. And you know better than to walk in on a cornered cop.”

“Right. Now you know what it feels like to have something to hide, just like an undercover operative. Can’t ever tell anyone the truth. Can’t ever stop watching your back. Can’t ever trust anyone.”

“Larry—” His litany of undercover problems had sounded more like a subtle threat than an expression of sympathy. But she could very well be paranoid about everyone now.

“I’ll lock the door on the way out,” he promised, “so your kid won’t even know I was here.”

The bedroom door shut. Carmen risked a small sigh that ended with a hiss of pain.

Larry had a hard-bitten manner; that’s why the bad guys so readily took him for one of them. Now she had to wonder if he was one of them and if he’d tried to sucker her, maybe even stabbed her, in the dark. If he was more stalker than suitor.

One thing was certain: she was still in the dark.