Cat In An Indigo Mood

Chapter 39

But Not For Me

"Ho-ly shit!"

Molina said it once, with feeling.

She followed it with "Excuse me, Detective Su. I didn't mean to soil the air with any expletives. Not because I need to spare your delicate ears, but because I have a preteen daughter at home and l don't want to fall into any bad habits that could be an excuse. You're sure about Your facts?"

"Absolutely, Lieutenant. And I agree. Holy shit."

"So. Strawberry Lady, our first victim, was a former nun. A Catholic nun."

Su consulted the narrow notebook that matched Molina's pocket version. "It took some backtracking. They don't exactly advertise the past. But until four years ago Monica Orth was Sister Mary Margaret of the Order of Our Lady of the Cross."

"What was she doing in the Blue Dahlia parking lot?"

"Nothing l can figure out. She worked as a county librarian in Reno the past four years.

Moved here just three months ago. Led a notoriously quiet life. Didn't date. Nice middle-aged single lady, seemingly content to stay that way."

"No relationships with men?"

"We've interviewed her neighbors, here at least. She was like a lot of middle-aged women nowadays, whether divorced or never married: content with their jobs and their housecats.

Unless she had a racy secret life we haven': dug out, no; no relationships with men, except for the mailman and the carry-out boy at the local Lucky Food Center store."

"Still, it does give 'she left' a different ting, doesn't it?"

"You thinking some kind of religious fanatic here?"

"Possibly. All intense religions--and Catholicism is an intense religion---produce intense reactions. But what was Monica Orth, Sister Mary Margaret Orth, doing in the Blue Dahlia parking lot at two in the morning?"

"She must have been brought there."

"By her murderer. Who has a thing against women who 'left.'

Who left men? Or who left religious vocations? What have we got? The typical man scorned.

or the atypical religious fanatic?"

"Too soon to tell, Lieutenant. All I know is that Monica Orth's past fits her present: the pre-owned, plain clothing; the low-profile, solitary life. Apparently her cat died about the same time.

only when her neighbor called animal control to report it, the body was missing. Cat body, that is. It's possible the neighbor was hallucinating. She lived alone and kept a cat too."

"Living alone and keeping a cat is not a sign of incompetence. We are not on a witch hunt.

This is not the European Middle Ages, Detective. Women are not balmy merely because they are manless."

"No, sir. Ma'am."

"How old are you?"

"Twenty-eight."

"Wait a decade or two before you judge." Molina donned an abstract expression. "Tell me about Gloria Fuentes. Did she live alone and keep a cat?"

"As a matter of fact--"

"No shit?"

"No shinola." Su again flipped a page in her notebook. "She lived alone, but her neighbors at the Shady Palms apartments indicate she had gentleman callers. Her cat was a tortoiseshell called Pyewacket. Weird name! What is a tortoiseshell?"

"It's a color of cat. I don't know exactly what. Brown and something, I'd think. So, is this cat missing?"

"Not at all. A neighbor took it in when it began yowling outside fellow tenants' doors."

"It began yowling three days ago?"

"Exactly."

"When Gloria didn't come home to feed it. So what was Gloria doing outside a church?"

Su shook her glossy black head. "Hard to say. Her neighbors didn't peg her for the religious type. She relished looking like she had been in 'show business' once. Tight pants. High, backless heels. Teased, orange-colored hair. Flashy, but harmless."

"Not to somebody."

"No, ma'am."

"Apparently she also left someone. or something. Take Alch and dig some more around both residences and the job scene. He has a nice instinct for lonely ladies."

"Morey's a sweetheart."

"Yes, he is. You're lucky to have him for a partner."

Merry Su gave her an oblique look through those attractively slanted dark eyes of hers.

Razor-slash eyes. Su was wondering if Molina's assessment was personal.

"Youth and experience make a good investigative team," Molina added, thinking: no, not Alch. He's a sweetheart, all right, but not for me. Not yet.