Cat In An Indigo Mood

Chapter 45

Hair Apparent

"You did the dishes."

Max looked up from wiping Rorschach pattems of spaghetti sauce from the microwave interior.

She stood in the archway between hall and kitchen, barefoot. Wearing worn jeans and a knit top (no bra, and the better for it). He hadn't heard the shower. but she had washed her face (no makeup, and the better for it). She looked like somebody's sister.

"I chipped out some more instant coffee. Want some ?"

"Oooh. I guess. If I can find something to go with it. Toast, maybe. Sorry the place is such a mess. with three of us coming and going. . ."

She edged onto one of the stools, content to let him forage.

Which he did. The bread was moldy, but he found a couple of frozen waffles and a crumb-crusted toaster.

"What's your working name?" he asked when he put the plate of waffles and a steaming mug of black coffee in front of her. The milk in the refrigerator was rancid.

She giggled. "I feel like l'm at a lunch counter. l use 'Mandy.' "

Mandy. From the upbeat seventies song by Barry Manilow? Mandy, who gave without taking? Elevator music now, wordlessly familiar, if you were old enough to remember.

"You were right last night, Mandy. You can't go back."

"No." She pushed her hair behind one ear. "I'm a bad girl.

Broke the rules and got caught leaving with a customer. They don't want us hooking.

"And you know why? Not on moral grounds. They just don't want you making money for yourself on the side.

"Listen. The girls are a great group. They've been so nice to me. Strippers aren'r hookers, honest."

"Usually not, but they're not winners, either."

"Hey, the money is better than hooking."

"Yeah, you can make some money, but pretty soon it's gone on booze, or some biker boyfriend with a habit, and then there's that baby that just happened, or the two kids left over from that marriage right out of high school, and the money goes and there's nothing to show for it but this." He lifted his own coffee mug to roast the jumbled apartment. "And then, if it isn't drugs, it's drink."

She hung her head, hid behind the tangled hair. "I was shy when I started."

"You're still shy. And You're still not a drunk, or you wouldn't get so blown on those watered-down drinks. You could get out."

"And do what? At least at Secrets I'm somebody. l'm a dancer, in the spotlight. We all have our fans. We do!"

"At Secrets, you're somebody else. Some body. Mandy, who six months from now may be...

Delilah at the place six blocks down the street. You want to wear high heels and look good and meet men? Get a job cruising the casinos with free drinks for players. It doesn't pay like stripping, but you wouldn't have to get bombed to do it. And you wouldn't be under the thumb of some ugly customer like Raf Nadir."

She had picked up one of the warmed waffles, but bit her lip instead. "Why are you interested in him!"

She eyed his chest and Max suddenly remembered what he looked like: gold chain nestling in the requisite macho chest hair, velour top, bad hair.

"I'm not. Someone l know is. You know if he worked Tuesday night?"

"He works every night. He likes what he does."

"What hours?"

"I come in at nine, and he's there. He's there when I leave, usually one or so." She nibbled some waffle, then frowned. "He wasn't there one night, though. Was it Wednesday! Are you an undercover cop or something?"

"No."

"I know! A P.l."

He Let her think what she wanted to.

"What'd Raf do?"

"Something bad, maybe. Who'd be able to swear he was gone Wednesday night?"

"Gosh, we all come and go. Larry the manager, I guess."

"What about Nadir? Was he gone that night?"

"No! That I remember. This NCO from Nellis got drunk and started pushing some girls around. Raf was in there like a tiger shark. How come you decked him?"

"I'm stronger than I look."

The phrase hit her in the morning-after mood. "I wish I could say that."

"You can. But it won't be easy, or pay well, or give you the false encouragement of sawbucks in your G-string. You'd have to quit the stripclub circuit--and the alcohol, find a straight job, think about going to junior college maybe, find out what you're good at besides taking off your clothes, and develop that."

"l'm not very good at taking off my clothes, not like some of the other girls. Some of them are real pros."

"I know. Dancers. Then why don't they get a job in a casino show? Chorus girls don't wear much more than strippers and they're stars."

"Maybe my friends weren't good enough."

"Good enough dancers, or good enough to themselves? Mandy, l knew a guy who made a living photographing performers, including strippers. He said he never met one who hadn't been abused as a child."

Her eyes panicked and she took a quick swallow of coffee to hide her sudden terror.

"l know one thing. You can't make any of the changes l mentioned--and I think you could do all of them--until you deal with what's really scaring and scarring you."

"l can't afford a shrink!"

"There are counseling programs--"

"They stick their noses into everything. I don't trust them. I don't like talking about me. They always want to know your real name.

"And that's what you're running away from." Max nodded. He knew that game. "Think about it. Where are you going to dance tonight?"

"Oh, there's a club on the other side of town. l know some girls who work there. I can come in as . . . Delilah. That's hokey, you know?"

"I didn't have much time to think up a name. Listen, you really should talk to someone." Max felt a fiendish inspiration coming on. "Why don't you call one of those radio talk-show shrinks?

That's as anonymous as you can get."

"Dr. Laura would tear me to shreds."

"There's a local guy on WCOO. Mr. Midnight. That's when he's on."

"Midnight? l heard one of the girls saying something about that. Maybe. If I was near a phone where nobody could hear. Sometime. Oh--wasn't he the guy who . . . that girl in the motel? She was nuts, poor thing. l heard about that."

"See? He kept her from hurting someone else besides herself.

That could have been you."

"l'm not nuts."

"No, but a few more years of this life and you will be." She said nothing, her silence admitting the truth he'd spoken.

"Uh." She dug into the plastered-on jeans, finally tugging something from one front pocket.

Max thought that this unconscious act was the most erotic move he'd seen her make yet. She held up the wad of ten dollar bills. "Sixty bucks. And you didn't get a dance, except with a bouncer. Here."

"No. You can keep it, if you don't spend it on booze. Maybe it's a nest egg for something else."

"I don't take money for nothing."

"l don't give money for nothing. I appreciate the information."

"l'm not a snitch either."

"How about it's a birthday present, for Delilah."

"Delilah! Well, I guess I'd give you a better haircut, if I could." Max laughed. "Then do it."

"Really. Here? Now?"

"Maybe I'm launching a cosmetician."

"I do all the girls' hair." Something glimmereci in her eyes. Hazel eyes that could focus perfectly well. "Maybe. I'll have to wash that goop out."

"Just so long as you don't shave me bald."

"You'd really trust me to cut your hair?"

"Sure." Hair, unlike self-esteem, always grew back better than ever.

"That's all you want me to do? Cut your hair?"

"Well, you could call Mr. Midnight. Tell him . . . tell him Mr. Magic sent you." Chapter 46

Hair Yesterday Gone Today

Su and Alch stood before Molina's desk, the not-quite-original Odd Couple. Both wore the strangely serene expressions of detectives who have done their duty and come back with something concrete, or at least interesting.

"Tell me about it," Molina said.

"She was everything we thought she would he . . . would have been," Su said. "Modest bungalow--"

"Quiet neighborhood," Alch put in

"Kept a cat."

"There's something odd about that--"

"Nosy neighbor."

"Love those nosy neighbors."

"This one had a key to the place."

"We had no trouble getting in--"

"And, we may have found the actual murder scene."

"Or abduction scene."

Molina clapped her hands to end the recital. "I love it when you two are in perfect harmony, but why do I get the feeling that some unanswered questions remain?"

"Because they always do, Lieutenant," Alch admitted happily.

"So what's wrong with this picture ?"

"The neighbor lady, for one," Su put in sourly. "Noticed Miss Orth was gone, knew she hadn't mentioned anything about going out of town or looking after her cat or taking in the newspaper, but still didn't do anything about it."

"Not until the cats started acting up," Alch added.

"Miss Orth's cat and what other cat?"

"Well . . ."--Su consulted her notes--"this neighbor, Rosemary Jonas has this cat named Fanny, which was quite a pal of Miss Orth's tiger cat, Wilfrid. Fanny began acting funny when Wilfrid wasn't coming out to play with her--"

"When?" Molina wanted to know.

Alch nodded. "The day after Miss Orth's body was found."

"So," Su said, "Miss Jonas just figured Miss Orth had taken off and left the cat at the vet's . . .

until these two strange black cats--"

"Wait a minute." Molina planted her hands on the desktop. "Strange in behavior, or strangers to the neighborhood?" She knew her voice had gone taut.

"Both," Su said triumphantly.

Molina glanced at Alch, who shrugged. He no doubt remembered her remarks about the presence of black cats from the death-on-the-Nile scene at the Oasis not long before.

"So what did they do, these two black cats?" Molina asked in resignation.

"Now this is very interesting, Lieutenant. They both went over to Miss Orth's house and kicked up a ruckus."

"How? Did they throw cherry bombs at the front porch? Slide down the chimney disguised as soot?"

"Well, first Fanny howled to go out, so Miss Jonas let her. Then, half an hour later, these two black cats she'd never seen before were yowling and jumping at the window that Fanny liked to sit in to watch for Wilfrid."

"Wouldn't stop," Alch put in.

"So Miss Jonas gets it in her head that the cats are trying to tell her something."

Alch leaped back in. "Every time she comes to the window to give them hell, they quit howling and run over toward Miss Orth's house, then stop halfway there and look back at her house."

Su: "She figures that Fanny has somehow gotten trapped in or near Miss Orth's house. So she gets the key--"

Alch: "And trots over after the cats."

Su: "Once she gets in--"

"And the door was unlocked, so the cats have eeled in with her, " Alch says. "You know how cats will wrap themselves around your ankles and slip right into where you don't want them?"

"Yes, l know." Molina sounded even more resigned.

Su shot Alch an aggrieved look: This was her shaggy cat story. "The house smells musty and closed-up. A little ripe, too, like tomatoes left out on a countertop. Anyway, the cats are scampering through the rooms like they own the place, and lead her right into the bedroom."

Here Molina felt her spine stiffening. Scene of the crime coming up, stage-managed by her favorite feline suspects, Louie and Louise. Had to be them. Didn't know how, but it had to be them. Rats!

"That's when Miss Jonas starts to worry, and that's when she spots the dead body."

"Another dead body?"'

Su nods, grimly satisfied. "Middle-age male, hazel eyes, average weight, about twelve pounds." After a second's pause, she giggles.

"Alch, get your partner something to sober her up. So the dead body is feline. Fanny?"

"I forgot to mention that Fanny was a"--notes consulted again, and then quoted--" 'such a gorgeous girl, all white with one blue eye and one gold.' "

"Wilfrid," Molina diagnosed. "And getting a trifle tank?

Then he'd been dead since the victim was last at the house. Was he . . . a case for the LVMPD, Su?"

"Maybe a victim of death by misadventure. Maybe not. Because Miss Jonas ran home to call animal control to pick up the body. And when the pound people got there the next day--you know pound people-- "

"The cat was gone." Alch stole the punch line.

Su sighed mightily and frowned at him.

"Dead cat walking?" Molina wanted to know. "And what became of those two black tattle-tails?"

Su shut her notebook with a dramatic slap of cardboard on paper. "Vanished, Lieutenant.

Like they'd never been there. Like the dead cat. Except that the absent Wilfrid left a distinct odor of Old Mice."

"Your theory?" Molina eyed each detective in turn.

"Either the neighbor lady was a tad hysterical and mistook a rag rug for a dead cat," Alch said.

"Or someone removed the dead cat's body," Su suggested. "maybe to disguise the time of death. Er, Miss Orth's, not the cat's"

"Or the cat wasn't dead and walked out on its own," Molina added. "Hair and Fibers ought to have a high old time on this one. I hope nobody on that detail is allergic to cats."

"Then you want us to treat the house like a crime scene? Even if the only victim, maybe, was a cat?"

"I want H & F to go over it like it was the last crime scene of Jack the Ripper. And tell them l don't want one hair--and especially one cat hair--over-looked. If we can do DNA on human hair, we can do it on feline hair."

"DNA!" Su was alarmed. "You wouldn't, Lieutenant. We'd be laughingstocks."

"I will if l have to, so l suggest you figure out what went on there, and to what species, from the physical evidence alone. Got it?!'

Su nodded and escaped into the hall.

Alch leaned his hands on Molina's desk and spoke confidentially. "What is it with you and cats? First the Oasis; now here."

Molina answered as confidentially, with a grim smile. "You ever think maybe I'm a witch, huh, Alch? I bet I've been called that around here before now. You know, upwardly mobile via broomstick?"

He backed off, and beat a hasty retreat with Su.

Molina took a deep breath. Stupid as it would seem, those cats had been up to something.

She had a feeling that if they, feeble humans, figured out what, they would be a little closer to when and where Monica Orth had been killed. Maybe even why.

Sure, the conviction was nuts, but a cop went on instinct, and these particular cats had given her plenty of reason to have instincts about their often-bizarre behavior.

So Su her.