Cat In A Topaz Tango

Road Scholars

Temple dashed out of the Circle Ritz into the parking lot, hoping not to be spotted by any residents. Leaving in the wee morning hours when it was still dark felt like eloping.

She also felt like Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Sarah Michelle Gellar, in a scene from a summer teen slasher movie. She couldn’t believe the sinister, big black SUV, a Tahoe, throbbing in idle near the back door security light was waiting for her. Nor could she believe who sat in the driver’s seat.

Rafi Nadir.

What a wild scenario. She felt like the rebellious little Goth girl being picked up by disapproving Mommy and Daddy. At least Molina had phoned to warn her they had a third wheel, a very volatile “third wheel”!

A pregnant Molina had run out on Nadir fourteen years ago, never telling him about Mariah, but he had ended up here finding out anyway. Temple didn’t know why they were so bitter toward each other but she suspected Matt might. If Molina confided in anyone, it was Temple’s ex-priest sweetie.

Short form, they’d been rookie cops/romantic roommates in L.A. Now Molina was a woman homicide lieutenant in a major city and Nadir was making a comeback as assistant security chief at a midtier Vegas hotel-casino. Rafi had met Temple briefly before, but he’d totally bought into her as Zoe Chloe Ozone at the Teen Queen reality TV show house, where she’d been babysitting contestant Mariah for her worried mom. He’d—ironically—taken them both under his wing, realizing something dangerous was up. So Temple didn’t feel the hate Molina did for her ex. More important, neither did Mariah.

Big Daddy got out of the driver’s side to inspect the huge suitcase and three duffle bags Matt had helped Temple wrestle downstairs.

“You need all this stuff?” Rafi asked, easily slinging the luggage into the cavernous storage space. He was wearing black denim jeans and a muscle T-shirt, looking like the laid-back manager of a Goth girl, who would also be counterculture.

“No, but Zoe Chloe Ozone does. You’re driving?”

“My vehicle. Yeah, it’s amazing she’d let me take the wheel. Must be because of whatever she’s got.”

“Flu.”

“If you all say so.”

“What else would it be?”

“I don’t know. You ride in the backseat, kiddo. Don’t I wish I could.”

He escorted Temple around the SUV and opened the side door. She made a major effort to haul her five-foot frame onto the high step up. Rafi turned it into a giant leap for womankind by boosting her inside with a hand under the elbow.

“They don’t make these monsters for shrimps,” Temple complained. “Getting in this is like climbing an Alp for me.”

“At least you don’t have Molina riding shotgun.” His quiet tone was glum.

Temple placed herself in the center of the middle bench seat, thinking she was going to be in the middle figuratively for this whole road trip. At least here she could see both of her traveling companions. She’d noticed a couple of backpacks and duffle bags in the rear storage area. Molina and Rafi had a lot less to get together and pack. They weren’t the star of this expedition. But they had a lot more “baggage,” nevertheless.

She smiled to remember Matt’s wee-hour amazement at this rapid turn of events when she knocked on his door at 3:00 A.M., as predicted. Why had not been predicted.

“You’re going off to L.A. with Molina and her hated ex-cop boyfriend to audition for a teen talent show? With them posing as your . . . parents?”

“Hey, I can look positively adolescent at times. But, no, nobody got that carried away.”

“How can you create a pop tart entity from scratch?”

Temple grinned. “I’m hoping tomorrow you’ll talk your agent, Tony Fortunato, into playing along and ‘repping’ my appearance at the contest finals with those folks. Molina’s minions will set up the security end of it. Crawford Buchanan will dutifully pimp the Zoe Chloe mystique on his radio spots. It’s not hard to become a fullblown media phenom these Internet days. I’ll be working with pros, remember.”

“Molina and her ex?” Matt snorted. “I hope you’re a good marriage counselor, caught between those two.”

“I’ve been listening religiously to a really fine radio counselor all my lonely midnights.”

“Yeah? I’d kiss you goodbye but you look so teenage and tasty I don’t dare mess with underage fiancées. Take care, Temple. The company you’re in puts you in a volatile situation. Think of Molina and Nadir as furious grizzly bears whose cub is threatened. You don’t want to get caught in the middle of that clawfest.”

“They seem strangely subdued. And they need me to be ‘point’ girl. A stupid kid with attitude can ask questions they can’t. And get other kids to confide in her.”

“You can do that with more than kids. From what you tell me, you’re the bait on this fishing expedition. Call me early and often and let me know what’s happening, even if I’m on the air. I can duck away for a minute or two. You have my direct line. If they endanger you—”

“They’re more likely to tangle with each other.”

“Keep to the speed limit,” Molina said as soon as Rafi got behind the wheel and restarted the engine.

“You wanta drive, Lieutenant? We’re not even out of town yet, Carmen. Give me a break.”

She stirred uneasily in the passenger captain’s seat. “I want to, but it would blow our cover, daddy dearest.”

Jeez, Temple thought. They already reminded her of Midnight Louie having a spat with his namesake at the Crystal Phoenix, Midnight Louise. Catfights all the way to L.A. would not be fun.

“Cool it, you two,” she said in Zoe Chloe’s bored but sassy voice. “I’m the star here, and I gotta plan my audition. Get into character.”

“You already are a character,” Molina grumbled, grabbing her seat belt.

She seemed fidgety, and kept adjusting the plastic strap over her long torso as if it irritated her. Molina was almost six feet tall. Temple would have thought any seat belt would fit her like a dream. They always cut across her own throat like a garrote because she was so short. Even Mariah was taller than she now, which only helped Temple’s teen masquerade. Being petite is why her sixty-year-old Aunt Kit looked just right beside her new late-forties’ husband, Aldo Fontana.

Gee. Temple got momentarily misty-eyed. Kit and Aldo were on a honeymoon to Lake Como and Florence, Italy. She and Matt would be honeymooners someday soon, but maybe not to Italy. Maybe to . . . Cabo or Monaco. Matt liked to swim. Temple liked to look at him in swim trunks.

Meanwhile, for now, she was off on one of those National Lampoon family vacation nightmare movies with a possible teen slasher movie ending ahead of them all.

As the SUV accelerated onto the freeway ramp, Molina cleared her throat.

“As subtle as always,” Rafi said, settling himself in the driver’s seat. “I won’t speed enough to draw any state troopers. Count on it.”

Molina lifted a tall Styrofoam cup of McDonald’s latte coffee from the central console. “So just what kind of ‘interaction’ did you and Mariah have at the Teen Queen house?”

“The same kind as me and the little broad in the backseat had. I figured out they were both up to something and kept an eye on them. What with the weird happenings and the place’s history as a death house, I figured looking after the competing girls was my beat.”

“Some of those ‘girls’ were of age, in their late teens.”

“Yup. And they weren’t ‘girls,’ Carmen. They were manipulative little sexpots.”

“Not Mariah.”

“No. Not yet. She’s gone to Catholic school. That puts off the inevitable some. I know how much you like to put off the inevitable.”

“Like you?”

“Like anybody who gets close to you.”

“As if you ever did.”

“As if you wouldn’t have run away if I hadn’t.”

“Time-out,” Temple trilled from the backseat. Zoe Chloe could be an annoying little twit. “Rafi, you’re doing more than seven miles over the speed limit. Lieutenant Molina, you’re grilling our driver into excess mileage per hour.”

“Oh, shut up,” they snapped in unison.

Temple beamed.

“Togetherness. That’ll get us shinin’ through, folks. Just remember that Zoe Chloe Ozone—that’s Ozone without an a-pos-tro-phee, Lee—is hanging loose although buckled in. I want to hear you two singing detecting duets, not long-lost lover laments.”

Silence held as the SUV hurtled into the dotted-line darkness of the night’s open road.

“Zoe Chloe is a brat,” Molina said. “Don’t overdo it.”

“She’s a star.” Rafi chuckled. “I saw that Web site. Brats rule, dweebs drool, right, Zoe?”

“Oh, you so get us crazy mixed-up Internet kids.”

“Yeah, I do.” He was looking at Molina. “I ‘got’ our kid in a few minutes a lot better than you did in thirteen years, Carmen. She’s starstruck. She has some good pipes. It was predictable that reality TV thing would fire her up to try for more. You had the hots for performing once. Why weren’t you watching better?”

Temple saw Molina literally squirm in her seat, pulling the seat belt away from her body as if it cut her. “Easy for you to say,” she hissed, almost with pain.

Something was wrong. Molina was way too subdued. Way too defenseless.

“Kids are tricky these days,” Temple found herself saying in Molina’s defense. “With cell phones, text messaging, and Internet access their secrets get bigger and go farther. Faster.”

“Speaking of secrets”—Rafi put on his blinker to pass a lumbering RV—“what’s with the whacked-up Barbie dolls?”

Cop talk Molina could do.

“That showed up just before the Teen Queen reality TV show got going. A girl who was going to a shopping mall audition was strangled in the parking lot. A copier image of a mutilated Barbie doll was found near her. We never tied it into anything, though: the audition, the house, the later murder there. There have been similar incidents nationally since.”

“And now a Barbie doll is planted in Mariah’s bedroom. I don’t like it.”

“Neither do I!” Molina sounded furious.

“I meant I don’t ‘like it’ in the sense of it being plausible. It smells. It’s too obvious a tie-in, and showing up late too obviously lays a false trail. It reeks of an inside job.”

“The incisive instincts of a hotel cop,” Molina jeered.

Rafi kept very quiet, while Temple held her breath in the backseat. He was not going to let that pass, was he?

Where Molina was all bark at the moment, though, he kept quiet, like a really big dog that doesn’t need to growl.

“So what do you know about this Larry guy you’ve been nuzzling badges with since before the Teen Queen reality show, Carmen?”

“You’re not suspicious of Alch.”

“Solid, steady investigator. Your type. This Dirty Larry is not.”

Temple tensed in the backseat. Rafi wasn’t as volatile as Molina, but he still packed a hard punch.

Molina leaned her elbow on the inside door handle and cradled her cheekbone in her hand as if she had a headache. It was full dark and they were barreling straight into an oncoming stream of headlight meteors in the oncoming lanes.

Molina’s tone was brusque, businesslike. “He’s the typical uncover type. Loner, a chameleon, craves adrenaline highs, maybe a bit fanatic, or egotistical, but has to be to seriously risk his life for months at a time. He’s been rotated to traffic accidents to cool down for a while.”

“So how’d he show up in your private life?”

Temple listened with both ears straining. The road sounds made it hard to hear in the empty SUV cabin. She peered over the seat back to see Molina’s frowning face.

“Before the Teen Queen show,” she said finally.

“Who came on to who?”

“Whom!”

He didn’t take the bait, but waited, watching the road, his eyes flicking to the side and rearview mirrors, not on her.

“Nobody came on to anybody. He showed up,” she conceded. “I can’t remember why.”

“Undercover guys are good at that.”

“You saying he was working me?”

“I’m asking. That Barbie doll in the bedroom makes everyone around Mariah a suspect. And you and Undercover Boy were a couple at the Teen Queen finals. Something new for you.”

“I thought you said you didn’t check me out when you came to town.”

“I didn’t look up your home address like some stalker, no. I did check out Our Lady of Guadalupe, chatted up the nuns, got a line on Mariah.”

“How the hell did you manage that?”

Rafi finally slid his gaze to her. “I can pass as Latino if I want to.”

“I don’t believe this.” Molina buried her face in her left hand.

“Don’t worry. You got all As. Wonderful mother and member of the parish, supportive, on the PTA. Such a delightful daughter, no sleazy men around your house. Guess they didn’t consider me sleazy.”

“Who did you tell them you were?” Her voice was all steel again.

“Cousin from L.A. Thinking of moving to Vegas. Needed a school for my young son.”

Silence and the dark and the meteors of light hurling at them all like lightning bolts of truth. Temple held her breath.

“Little pitcher has big ears,” Molina finally said, nodding behind her.

Rafi glanced over his shoulder at Temple, right eyebrow raised, looking remarkably like Mr. Spock if he’d been played by Enrique Iglesias.

“Good thing they are. Miss Barr is a real asset on this assignment.”

Molina finally managed to keep her mouth shut

Rafi winked at Temple over his shoulder.