Cat in a Topaz Tango

Shotgun Reunion

Carmen Molina was definitely starting to believe in karma.

The “intense” voice Alch had heard on the kitchen phone was indeed known to her.

“What’s this about Mariah?” it asked.

Rafi’s voice was loud and clear so it would carry over the clink, clang, and conversation of a hotel casino.

“How’d you hear about it at the Oasis?” Molina asked.

“Private cops monitor police radio bands. I heard ‘kid.’ Alch radioing he was on the way. I heard ‘missing.’ And I got a chill up my spine.”

There was no point in dodging this very unpleasant bullet.

“Your spine is right. Mariah’s gone off on some stupid kid quest for ‘stardom.’ All her own idea from the evidence, but we don’t want her preyed upon.”

“Preyed upon? She’s already missing! Jesus, Carmen, how’d you screw up this badly? I thought at least you were a good mother, that you of all people would know the score when it came to responsibly supervising a teenager.”

That “at least” stung more than she should have let it, but she was still hurting from the long slash wound, not to mention her own internal accusing voice.

“What do you mean, a quest for stardom?” he went on.

“You’d better come to my house. It’s easier to see than talk about.

We’ve got an informal task force assembled. It’s a fine line right now between putting out a wide-enough net for her, and one not so huge it’ll spook her to run farther, faster.”

“Where is your house?”

“What? You didn’t check that out the moment you realized I lived and worked in Vegas?”

“I’m not a stalker, just a damn surprised father despite myself.”

She didn’t comment, only gave him the street address and directions from his apartment as efficiently as some receptionist.

She shut her eyes momentarily after hanging up the phone.

Morrie Alch was leaning on her breakfast bar, watching her like a loyal Scottish terrier. “That Daddy Dearest?”

“Yup. Private cop at the Oasis. Heard some buzz on the police radio and thought of us.”

“He’s coming here? That’ll be interesting.”

“Yeah. Let me put a final scare into this Buchanan creep and get his every contact method before I kick him out.”

He eyed Dirty Larry slouched on the living-room sofa. “Mr. Undercover Guy fetched a snitch list from his car and is now calling informants who hang out at the bus station. Good idea.”

“His idea. He didn’t get any info from the neighbors?” she asked.

“Nada. He know about Nadir?”

She shook her head.

“You want me to clue him in?”

“Thanks, but it’s my responsibility.”

“You must be beat by now,” Alch said.

“Beat up, more like it. By myself. How could I have missed that Mariah was being way too sweet and helpful to her down-for-the-count mama, all the while scheming to make her break for fame and fortune? I should never have let her compete in that goofy reality TV show. Still, she’d showed some initiative in picking a goal and going for it. I thought that would be the end of it. Where do they get these ideas?”

“It’s in the air nowadays. Next thing my married daughter will be racing off to that runway supermodel hunt show, although she doesn’t make the age, height, and weight requirement.”

Molina managed a weak smile. “I can handle Rafi. He’s actually showing paternal inclinations. More than I’d like, especially now.”

“You gave him a raw deal.” Alch’s dark, dog-loyal eyes had gone paternally stern. “Not telling the guy, just running off. Kinda like Mariah here.”

“Shut up, Morrie. I’ m not in the mood.”

“I’m just saying, Lieutenant.” He ambled off to give her room and time to stew in her own juices.

She hustled Buchanan to the door, where she pumped all his phone numbers into her cell before shoving him out, while Larry ambled down the hall for another check of Mariah’s room.

He returned to join Alch sitting on the couch. The place looked cramped with three adults around, and empty beyond belief with Mariah not about to race down the hall screaming for a missing hair scrunchie or a fresh uniform blouse.

Carmen found her deadliest enemy, emotion on the job, almost strangling her.

She was a cop. A homicide lieutenant, for God’s sake! She had to tackle this like any other case or she’d be no good to anyone, most of all Mariah.

She checked her watch: 11:30 P.M. Three hours since she’d discovered Mariah was gone, three hours until Matt Devine was off work and probably on the phone with his fiancée. She’d bet Temple Barr would tell him what she was doing.

Great! Another person to add to the jury of her peers so ready to condemn her.

She checked her watch again. Under the pain of stitches pulled by her tensed stomach muscles and severe stomach acid, she was dreading Rafi coming here, into her life with both feet and a right to be angry.

The knock on her front door made her start. One knock. The minimum.

“I’ll get it.” Alch was nearest the door and opened it while Rafi still had his back turned to the house, checking out the neighborhood, the parked cars.

He spun around like a wary prizefighter to take in Alch, Larry Podesta, even the two cats weaving around all the alien legs, sniffing. With his swarthy Lebanese-American looks and wearing the plain dark suit of a hotel security supervisor he looked like a sinister FBI man. He spotted her last.

“Carmen.” Said with a curt nod. Everyone’s eyes snapped to him. Most had never heard anyone call her Carmen.

Now came the ugliest moment. All hers. She turned to the two men in the room.

“This is Mariah’s father, Rafi Nadir. He works security at the Oasis Hotel. Alch, take him to Mariah’s room and cover the bases.”

Dirty Larry had stood, a junkyard dog uneasy about the unexpected stray on his watch.

Rafi sensed the possessiveness immediately. “I know him”—he nodded at Alch—“from the reality TV house.” Then he eyed Dirty Larry. “And this is?”

Molina would not have believed she’d ever see two guys getting territorial over her, or, rather, over her house and daughter. She segued into the needed introductions.

“Dirty Larry’s usually undercover. That’s the name he goes by.”

“Wait. You were at the reality TV show finals too,” Nadir said. “With Molina” was left unspoken.

Larry nodded. “I saw you there too. You weren’t a guest or family member. What for?”

“Freelance security.”

“You been a cop?”

“Yeah. L.A.”

Larry’s head snapped back, impressed. L.A. cops took no guff, though they had a rep for cutting too many corners.

“Cool,” he said. “No wonder Mariah’s got gumption, however misplaced. Cop kid, one hundred percent.” He turned cool gray eyes on Molina and squinted like Clint Eastwood.

Alch and Nadir headed for the bedroom, leaving the two of them alone with the cats.

“You kept this guy tightly under wraps, Carmen,” Larry said softly.

“I keep everyone tightly under wraps.”

“Including yourself.” He grinned. “Don’t worry. You got a good team going here. We’ll find Mariah. And then you get to decide how long you want to ground her.”

“I’d just be happy to have a kid to keep home, Larry.”

“I see runaways all the time when I’m undercover. They’re nothing like Mariah. She’s a runaway to, not from. Her goal may sound dopey to adults but it all makes sense to her. I bet it’s sinking in now, what’s she’s done. How silly and scary it is. She may even come running back home, or call home.

“I don’t think so.” Molina shook her head. “She’s as stubborn as her mother, and that’s a very big, bad overdose.”

“You won’t be comforted, will you?”

“Not until we have her back.”

Dirty Larry produced a crumpled pack of cigarettes and lifted his eyebrows. She nodded. The others were in Mariah’s bedroom.

“I didn’t know you smoked,” she commented.

“Only undercover. It hides any nervousness.”

“You’re nervous here and now?”

“Yeah. This isn’t my scene. Usually the pressure is only on me, all on me. Here, I can’t do much but ask questions and wait.”

“Me too,” Molina snapped impatiently.

Footsteps, two sets, sped down the hallway, sounding like elephants in her small house.

Rafi first, looking sick, Alch second, looking sicker.

Rafi held out something glittery and stiff. It reminded Molina of the reality TV show that sought supermodels, Runway, which Alch had just joked about to ease her tension.

“I found this under all the clutter, on the floor near the computer table and the window,” Rafi said, hoarse and angry. “Didn’t the ‘unofficial task force’ do a halfway decent search, for Christ’s sake?”

She beat Larry to a closer inspection of the stiff, fourteen-inch-long item Rafi clutched like a weapon. She noticed he wore a pair of Alch’s latex gloves. Damn, she couldn’t fault him on anything.

What he held was . . . a Barbie doll, all done up in an evening dress and . . . all undone, the long plastic hair snarled, red nail polish slashed across the plastic mouth and eyes and throat, an arm and leg dislocated.

“The Barbie Doll Stalker,” Larry said like a curse under his breath. “That girl who auditioned for the reality TV show at the local mall, killed and left in the parking lot. You’ve never solved that case.”

“We never found the creep,” Molina said in a dead calm voice. “The case is still open. We thought the mutilated dolls looked like a sick, unrelated joke. When did this get here, goddammit! Yes, we searched the room as soon as we knew Mariah was missing, Morrie and I. We wouldn’t have missed this.”

The silence on Rafi’s part implied they obviously had.

“No,” Alch said, “it’s worse than the notion we missed something.”

He eyed her hard, unblinking, so she’d take every word seriously.

“I went over everything near the window, first thing, Lieutenant. That doll wasn’t there a few hours ago, but it sure is now. Somebody’s shadowing our moves. Unless there’s an accomplice, at least it means that Mariah isn’t being stalked yet.”

“Naw.” Larry was talking now. “It means that somebody knows the kid’s gone, and is daring us to follow and find her. The creep is probably as much in the dark as we are. I don’t get why he’d want to tip us off with a voodoo doll.”

Molina took such a deep breath that her hand went to her side as if to hold her stitches shut. To everyone but Alch, it just looked like a frustrated gesture.

“I know why,” she said. “I’ve had a stalker. There’ve been other tokens left in this house while we were gone, and the last invasion centered on Mariah’s room. I thought it all looked intended to shake me up, but maybe it was directed at Mariah more than I realized.”

She eyed the three men in the living room.

“Anybody here want to ’fess up?” She was only one-quarter kidding.

“You suspected me of such a stupid, pathetic M.O.?” Rafi asked.

She said nothing.

Larry pulled out another cigarette and rolled it through his fingers. Nervous? But saying nothing.

“You’re still the prime target,” Alch said decisively. “Mariah being gone and now threatened is just another way to get at you.”

Temple had lingered in her parked car for a few minutes after leaving Molina’s house, feeling a bit confused and excited and amazed. “Visiting relatives” wasn’t an excuse Matt would swallow, with no relatives in town. She’d have to tell him the truth. Molina was on a mad mama roll to find her errant daughter, and Temple was a critical player.

It both revved and scared Temple that she might be key in finding Molina’s missing daughter. The idea of Mariah out on the road, being preyed on by smooth dudes, was deeply upsetting.

She was just a kid! An ambitious kid, but hadn’t Temple been writing movie companies with suggestions of books she could star in since the age of eight? True, she’d gotten over that by thirteen, which Mariah was, but in Temple’s day there weren’t the serious performance opportunities youngsters of today had.

And, face it, Temple had an instant “in” to this online world of would-be young performers.

Zoe Chloe Ozone, her off-the-cuff creation, was an Internet hottie! Was Temple a woman behind her time, or what? She pictured a cable TV show, an interview show—take that, Oprah and Ellen! A sudden guest star career. She envisioned herself as . . . Mariah, swinging out there on a scheme and a prayer.

Grow up, Barr, she told herself.

First she had to help Molina find and recover her daughter.

Then she had to calculate her own star power. Apparently Zoe Chloe Ozone was a wholly Temple-owned entertainment entity that would not die. Oh, mama!