Cat In A Topaz Tango

Crime Seen

“Something about these incidents is bothering me,” Temple said.

Rafi regarded her raptly, but only because he wanted to shut Molina out at the moment. Molina was frowning at her hotel notepad, doodling.

“Matt’s getting to be the only one who hasn’t had a personal mishap,” Temple noted.

“Other than getting engaged to you,” Molina put in without even looking up.

“Yet,” Rafi said.

“He’s the only celebrity who doesn’t have a visual presence in the media,” Temple went on.

“You mean he’s the most obscure and least celebrated,” Molina suggested.

Temple went speechless. Molina was in a major down-on-men mood.

“And the best-looking,” Rafi put in, “as if you hadn’t noticed.” He turned back to Temple. “You’re right. We’ve had enough ‘incidents’ to look for similarities and differences.”

“Unfortunately,” Temple said, “the contestants were chosen for their variety. Entertainers, athletes, and quasi-glamorous careers like chef and radio show host.”

“Except they are all celebrities of one sort of another,” Rafi added. “They have fans, and fans can get obsessed.”

Molina turned in her chair to face them fully again. “That’s what I meant. You’re assuming that one mischief-maker is at the root of every troubling incident. What if more than one motive and one person were behind these ‘accidents’ that are coming too fast to be accidental?”

“It would have to be somebody involved in the show, near it every day,” Temple mused. “Or who could seem to be legitimately near it. You’re saying there are several freaked-out fans here all at once?”

Molina was unshaken. “This is a variety show as far as the competitors go. Why not a surfeit of suspects all working separately?”

“That’s an Agatha Christie novel,” Rafi said sourly. “Murder on the Orient Express. It narrows down nothing.”

“You read Christie?” Molina pounced.

“They make movies,” he retorted. “Look. The Oasis Hotel is one huge interior metropolis of support staff and the public milling around together. Temple is right. Looking for suspects starting from the outside in is futile. We’ve got to work from the victims out. There are five of them.”

“And only three who haven’t been victims,” Molina pointed out, “which may be more telling.”

“Let’s go through the possible attacks,” Temple suggested. “First would be Glory B.’s jungle gym fall.”

“Pure accident,” Molina said. “She’s a kid practicing new tricks.”

Temple disagreed. “Danny Dove tested that equipment and took it apart. He said it could have been rigged and if anyone in Vegas knows stage equipment and rigging, it’s Danny Dove.”

“The second was Olivia Phillips,” Molina said.

“Nothing suspicious there,” Rafi said. “How do you figure that?”

“You’re the assistant security chief here. Guess, or figure it out yourself.”

“He’s a guy,” Temple told Molina. “He’s handicapped.” She eyed Rafi, who was starting to look steamed. “Olivia Phillips’s wardrobe malfunction, when the heel of her pump collapsed. It could have been rigged too.”

“Was rigged,” Molina corrected.

“A guess?” Rafi jeered.

“I checked it after the show, and bagged the shoe for evidence. They were faint, but forensics found half-moon imprints in the red satin: a small hammerhead hitting the inside of the spike heel. The nails holding it on were weakened, and it snapped. Next?” she suggested, consulting Rafi.

“The most blatant case of tampering so far involves the chef, Salter,” he said. “Appropriate name for a cook, huh? Poisoning is the easiest method to pass off as an accident unless you can identify the toxic substance, and the toughest to bring home to any one suspect.”

“You do read Christie,” Molina pounced again.

He shrugged. “Had to do something on all those sit-down security jobs after I left the L.A. Police Department.”

She was smiling like the cat who’d nailed the Camembert.

“Okay,” said Temple. “Agatha Christie is not going to solve this thing for us, no matter who reads her, including me. It’s interesting that Salter is such a persnickety chef he didn’t eat from the buffet the hotel provided the cast. He would be easy to poison without hurting anyone else.”

“A suspect with a conscience?” Molina asked. “No collateral damage.”

“Or,” Rafi said, “a suspect who wanted to make dead sure he or she got the intended victim. Any diagnosis yet on the cause of Salter’s tummy upset?”

“The forensic staff is overworked, as usual here.”

“L. A. East?” Rafi suggested, almost sympathetically.

Molina sighed, and nodded.

Hmm, Temple thought. “Okay,” she said. “The first two cases are iffy as official ‘incidents,’ but Salter did collapse of food poisoning, Wandawoman did pass out from drugs, and someone substituted real ammo for the blanks in Motha Jonz’s garter gun.”

“‘Ammo’?” Rafi echoed her with amusement. “Sounding real cop shop there, kid.”

“Zoe Chloe gets around.”

“Can we keep on track?” Molina said. Ordered.

That was the real Molina, too. All work and no idle talk. No wonder she didn’t get along with anyone.

Temple shrugged. “All the dancers are responsible for keeping track of their costume pieces, but the costume and prop people are all over the dressing rooms. It would be easy to do the switch. I could have done it.”

“It was a revolver,” Molina said. “Only three of the bullets were live.”

“That conscience again,” Rafi noted.

“One could kill.” Molina was adamant.

“But Motha Jonz wasn’t aiming for a vital organ,” he said.

“Could have hit one so easily.”

“Didn’t,” he said.

“Doesn’t prove anything,” she said.

Temple inserted herself into the verbal Ping-Pong match. “This is an odd incident. Was it aimed against José or CC or Motha Jonz?” she asked.

Rafi leaned back, arms folded as if Temple had just gotten off a killing salvo for him.

“Temple’s really hit the bull’s-eye, Carmen. The loaded stage gun hurt both of them, the Cloaked Conjuror physically, but Jonz . . . I guess in reputation and morally, you’d say. This incident will bring up her sordid past, and she easily could have been made into a killer.”

“Nothing new for her,” Molina said, “she hung out with enough of them.”

“The only criminally involved celebrity dancer,” Rafi pointed out, “involved with the most potentially lethal ‘prank,’ if you want to call it that.”

“She’d gotten away from all that,” Temple objected.

“But had ‘all that’ gotten away from her?” Rafi shot back.

Molina sat up, her vivid blue eyes flashing with speculation. She caught her breath as if she had a sudden stitch in her side as well as an inspiration.

Rafi’s eyes narrowed. “What the hell is really wrong with you, Carmen?”

“Shut up. I’m thinking.” She glanced feverishly from him to Temple, and back again, her tone rising as she began speaking. “That may very well be it. I don’t keep up with tabloid papers or TV gossip shows or online rumor. Barr! Just what all was Glory B. put into jail and rehab for?”

“Uh, I don’t exactly—”

“Think!”

“I don’t have to,” Temple said, turning to flip open her laptop. “I can do a search for it.”

She keyed in some words and then clicked through various sites. “I know Glory B. was DWI in her new Porsche and rowdy when arrested. She hit another car . . . here it is! Last year. Just had her license for four months. Leaving a nightclub. God, she not only let down her hair but the whole top of her dress and it didn’t have much to begin with. Anyway, the text says the car she hit was occupied by a mother and nine-year-old daughter . . . mother’s face hit by the air bag, daughter on passenger side had intrusion from the collision. Ooh. Both legs broken. Lawsuit. Hush-hush settlement. Glory B. did ten days in jail and three months public service, volunteering at an animal shelter, and required time in AA.”

Temple looked up. “And Glory B. could have broken both legs or her back if that jungle gym failure had been more . . . effective.”

Molina looked both grim and triumphant. “That is a triple-A class motive.”

Rafi wasn’t so sure. “That ‘dirty trick,’ if it was that, was lame. Glory B. was fine.”

“It was the first attempt, Molina said. “Practice makes perfect.”

“There’s an escalating element to the incidents,” Temple said. “Glory B. just had a minor fall. Chef Salter got really sick, and the Cloaked Conjuror could have been killed. That could show a variety of amateurs, some good, and some bad. At being bad, I mean. Nobody is good.”

“Or one person learning?” Rafi asked.

“Damn, we are good!”

Temple and Rafi turned to Molina to see a glitter in her eyes and fever spots on her dusky cheeks. Stick an orchid behind one ear and she’d look like Carmen the lounge singer.

“I mean,” Molina said . . . modified, “there might be some good ideas floating around there. Number one is we raise security on the show tomorrow night ten notches. Done deal?” she asked Rafi.

“Signed, sealed, and delivered,” he agreed.

Temple was just glad he hadn’t made it “delivered with a kiss.”

That would have been just too icky even for a post-tween like her.