Cat In An Indigo Mood

Chapter 49

Three for the Railroaded

"Temple. I must see you. Right away."

"Max! Well, sure, but--"

"I'm sorry, l can': explain over the phone. It's a matter of life and death. Don't worry." he added bitterly. "It's all over. Both the life and the death. You've got to help me."

"Max, l will. Your place or--?"

"Yours. Getting myself there will distract me. Twenty minutes."

He hung up, and Temple stared at the receiver.

Something terrible had happened.

She glanced at her watch. Getting there might distract Max, but what could she do to make the minutes fly? She went over to the tape machine and rewound it. She'd started recording Matt's show, having missed the really important one, his debut. Nothing like recording the horse's hooves after it had tap-danced out of the barn.

But now was as good a time as any to see--nay, hear--what Mr. Midnight was all about.

Temple sat cross-legged on the floor by the machine, still in the living room where Matt had played the fateful first tape from Ambrosia only a week ago, and listened.

Listening to talk-radio counseling was like eavesdropping, she five minutes into the tape.

That illicit act was doubly enthralling for being able to hear Matt's counseling technique.

Knowing him, she didn't quite know him as radio shrink, but he sounded good, and his advice seemed sound, and, from the number of female callers he got, Ambrosia had been right that she had needed to provide something for the girls.

No life and death fireworks animated last night's tape. Temple's concentration broke. Life and death. Whose life and death were "all over," and why was Max so upset?

She clenched her hands and sneaked a peak at her watch, which she had resolved to ignore.

Ten minutes gone; ten more to endure. Just close her eyes and listen to Matt. . . . Max would Be here when he said he would. He knew the road time between her place and his the way a good magician knew his illusions down to the split second.

One knock. Imperative. On the dot. Twenty minutes.

Temple unwound herself--ouch; her left leg had gone to sleep... hobbled to the door.

Max sprang in when she opened it like a jack-in-the-box desperately seeking release.

"I could strangle Molina," he confessed, starting to pace in her hallway and continuing into the living room. "You've got to explain that dame to me. I thought I was playing a genteel game of chess with her, and now she's made me into a murderer."

"Max, for God's sake! Calm down. Sit down." Temple hustled to keep pace with seven-league strides back and forth in the living room.

"What's the matter with you?" He stared at her leg as if it were a prime-suspect. "Are you hurt? Is there something you're hiding from me? You weren't attacked too?"

"Only by pins and needles."

"And what have you got on the air?"

"A tape. Of Matt's show."

Max finally stopped still to stare at her, as if she were mad.

"Matt Devine."

"I know his last name."

"He's on the radio."

"Well, then turn him off. We need to talk."

Temple hastened to do exactly that. "About Molina?" she asked while on the run . . .or limp, rather.

Max was striding hack and forth again, running nervous fingers through his hair. His hair.

"Max, what on earth did you do to your hair?"

He stared at her as if "hair" were a foreign word, then his agitation collapsed into despair.

He sank onto the sofa, driving his face into the palms of his hands as if they were very welcome blinders.

Temple sat, gingerly, beside him. "Max." Her voice was barely a whisper. "What's happened?"

"My hair. A tale that hangs on a hair." He turned hollow eyes on Temple. She had never seen him so haunted, not even when he had discussed his Irish past. "I let Molina use me, thinking I was using her, and now somebody's dead."

"Who?"

"Did you hear or see the news this morning?"

"No, but I've got a morning Review-Journal I haven't looked at yet."

"It may have happened too late to make the newspaper. Probably well after midnight. I'd bet she was waylaid in the parking lot, like the other victims."

"Other? You're not talking about . . . Strawberry Lady and Church Parking Lot Lady!" Now Max gazed at Temple as if she were mad in her own turn.

"You know about those murders?"

She nodded, slowly. "Yes, but how do you?"

"Molina." He might have been saying the word hemlock, it came off his lips with such a bitter twist. "She recruited me to do a little discreet snooping. I figured if l did her a favor, I could get some favors from her in the future. She said he was a fringe suspect. Out of LA. An ex-cop gone had. I confirmed all that, and then l tracked him here to Las Vegas."

"So that's what you were doing when you were gone and said you couldn't tell me why!

Working for Molina?"

Max nodded glumly.

Temple studied his downcast head. His hair wasn't so had if you were willing to accept Max in that semi-punk look, which she wasn't. But after the bullet had restyled his ponytail, she could see why he'd had it cut.

"Did that Strip shooting have anything to do with this guy you were trailing for Molina?"

"Could have. Could be something else. Anything else. You know my fabled ability to make friends and influence people."

"Max." She curled her hand over his knee, shook it slightly.

"Don't be so hard on yourself. Just tell me how you ended up working for Molina, of all people!"

He flashed her a rueful glance, with some of the usual bite. "I didn't tell you because that was the terms of working for Molina, and . . . l didn't want to admit I'd gone over to the enemy, even just a little. I know how hard-nosed she's been with you, but she's a necessary evil, Temple, and she knows enough about some of the stuff going on in this town to be useful. I thought."

"So, What went wrong?"

"I'm glad you can stick to a rational exposition of the subject.

Okay. This guy seems to be everything Molina said: a low-profile trouble-maker, but not a major player. I tracked him to a strip club, where he worked as a bouncer."

She nodded, not wanting to disrupt his story. But she was thinking: Bouncer? Strip club?

Max?

Max was wringing his hands, wound up with tension, washing his hands like Pontius Pilate.

Oh, God, Temple thought. This is really serious.

Suddenly his wringing hands burst apart, like freed birds.

"I found a 'source' at the club. A young stripper. Not even a stripper. Some girl trying to drink enough to pretend to be a stripper.

"She was easy to ask about Nadir. So I did. And, then, I felt sorry for her. They can seem so brassy, but they don't have much self-esteem, strippers."

"I know."

"How do you know?"

"I did PR for a strippers' contest. While you were . . . gone. In some ways they're liberated ladies; in some ways they're perpetual schmucks. Really confusing."

He nodded. "Maybe that's why l got confused. Was l an undercover operative, or a social worker? I decided to get her out of there. Part of it was I wanted to interrogate her privately.

Part of it was, she was really drunk, and l thought if she needed to be that drunk to do this, maybe she could do something else."

"So--?"

"I didn't learn that much. But Nadir confronted me when I picked her up. I . . . blew her welcome there. She had to go to a new club. I never did learn anything much from her." Max stared at the magazines and mail on Temple's coffee table as if they held the Holy Writ of the Synth and needed decoding. "I planted some suggestions for a normal life. I left. She was going to have to work at another club the next night. When she did, she died. It said so on the morning news."

"Oh, Max."

"You're not . . . dubious about my consorting with a stripper?"

"No. I wanted to take a few home myself."

"Temple. You are incredible. I came over here half-ready to explain myself, and you already know."

"So why are you so mad at Molina?"

"Probably because I'm so mad at myself. But she didn't indicate this guy could be a serious candidate for the parking lot murders. She was so laid back: 'just find out what happened to him in L.A., where he's gone. . . .'

"He's gone, all right! Gone all the way to Las Vegas. And now I can't help thinking--him being the control freak that he is, and my snatching away one of his docile charges-he might have tried to get her back the only way he knew how to make sure of her. Dead."

" 'He's gone.' " Temple repeated. as if in a trance. "Not so different from 'she left.' "

"Yeah, she left. She left the club. With me. Now she's dead. She was just a kid, Temple, just a baby."

"Shhh." Temple was thinking. "The woman who was found dead in the Blue Dahlia parking lot--did you know that the words 'She left' were found on Molina's car door, beside the body?"

"Yeah, l heard that. But that's such a signature of the abusive male." Max lifted his head, inhaled air as if it were a drug. "Yes!

The same pattern. Damn bloody Molina! A third, and probably unnecessary, death."

"Maybe. Maybe not."

"Why do you say that?"

Temple took a deep breath. "I think we should bring Matt in on this discussion. Matt Devine."

"I know the bloody name! I don't know why we should bring him in."

"Because Molina hasn't just been calling you in on the case.

She's been using Matt, and me, too."

"Bloody hell!"

Temple nodded. "Maybe we've all been patsies. And maybe Molina is a patsy too. Let me try to call Matt. "

"Oh? It's so difficult to reach him, one floor above?"

"Jealousy does not become you. While you've been busy working for Molina, Matt's been busy becoming a media celeb. Oprah wants him."

Max frowned. "That Oprah?"

"The very one." Temple had picked up the phone on the coffee table and was dialing. "But maybe he can manage to make a little time for us." She winked.

Max just shook his head. But his eyes had focused beyond his own guilt and grief. Wild Irish Grief. Temple was glad she hadn't been there when his cousin had died . . . and then she was sorry that she hadn't.

Matt was in, reluctant to come down for a consultation with Max without knowing why, but finally game.

"So." Temple hung up the phone. "Tell me about the hair."

He shrugged. "I had it cut, badly, on purpose, for my role of sleaze-about-town at Secrets."

His expression softened. "Then I was talking to Cher, and it seemed she had once cherished ambitions of being a cosmetologist. So I let her clean it up. She really did a good job. You should have seen it before this."

"I'm glad I didn't." Temple carefully touched his hair. "You only tried to help her."

"And may have killed her."

"Maybe not. There's a bigger picture to all of this. Max, and know, because I've glimpsed it from several angles. Your story just added a new one."

"What bigger angle? These killings are visceral; the work of one madman."

Temple's shrug conceded nothing. "We all have different pieces of the puzzle; yours is just the newest. I discovered who victim number two was."

"Is that the woman you call Parking Lot Lady?"

"Umhmm. Found in a fringe church parking lot. A real Las Vegas type, Spandex leopard-skin leggings and plastic surgery scars." Max made a face. "Don't typecast her, you may have known her once."

"I might know another victim?"

"Her name was Gloria Fuentes." When he continued looking blank. Temple went on. "She used to be Gandolph's assistant, for years, when he was practicing magic."

"No, l didn't know her. But I've seen photographs. She'd be . . . fifty-something by now."

"Only her plastic surgeon knew for sure."

"How did you manage to identify her?"

This time Temple wrung her hands, with hesitation. "Well, you were out of town so much, and l was concerned about those weird messages on your computer, so I went to the UNLV to consult Professor Mangel. He has a history-of-Las-Vegas-magic exhibit over there. In the meantime, Molina had put a sketch of the unidentified victim in the newspaper, which I always read assiduously, and there she was, waiting on the wall for me to identify like a suspect in a vintage lineup."

"But, but if Gandolph's former assistant was a victim--?"

"Then the killings could tie into Gandolph somehow. If only we knew who the first woman killed was. But l did learn some' thing else very interesting from the professor: The same cast of creepy characters from the Halloween seance are all in town right now; there's a psychic conference going on at the Opium Den."

Max's face registered a rainbow of emotions ranging from surprise to suspicion to rejection.

Before it had run through the full spectrum of expressions, the doorbell rang through its mellow changes.

For once, Temple wanted to scream at it to shut up after the first note, but she jumped up and raced to the door instead.

'We've had some upsetting news," Temple greeted Matt, by way of warning him. She rolled her eyes toward the living room.

She watched the wariness in his eyes become extreme wariness.

"There's been a third woman killed," Temple explained, not wanting Max to have to go through a personal recital again. "She was found in a strip-joint parking lot, and this time her ID

was left on her. Max knows who she was. He ran into her while looking into something. And the second victim? I found out that she used to be Garry Randolph's assistant; you know, the stage magician Gandolph."

"The guy who was killed not long ago?" Matt sat down on the sofa without exchanging any territorial looks with Max; he was too taken aback to worry about it.

Temple nodded. "It looks like two of the three victims have a very remote connection to . . .

us." Matt didn't know that Gandolph had been Max's mentor in areas magical, and otherwise.

Nor that Max was living in the house that had belonged to Gandolph.

"Then"--Matt was still flabbergasted--"it's even worse. Molina told me she'd figured out the identity of the first woman from the Blue Dahlia . . . and she was a former nun."

"Did you know her?" Max asked.

"I don't think so, but I might have run into her. Molina's checking into her background. She was beginning to think the killer was stalking the ex-religious, but this magician's assistant wasn't in the convent ever, was she ?"

"Highly unlikely," Max stated. "But look at the range: an ex-nun to a stripper, and a showgirl in between. 'She left.' A nun had to leave the convent. A former magician's assistant left the profession. The stripper had just left working at one place, for another."

"Was she strangled?" Temple asked.

Max was still trying to piece together a pattern. "Who?"

"The stripper."

"I don't know. The newscast didn't say."

"It's even weirder," Temple added. "The words 'she left' appeared on the body of Gloria Fuentes after the autopsy. It looks like a magic trick."

"Or an afterthought," Matt said quickly. "But who would have known the details of the Blue Dahlia killing but the killer?"

Temple looked from one man to the other. "We need to find out how much the latest slaying imitates, and differs, from the previous two. The best source of that information is Molina. Who wants to ask her?"

"Me." Max spoke grimly. "That woman owes me answers."

"I don't know, Max. She is armed and dangerous, after all, and I might be inclined to look toward my own self-defense if ambushed by you in the state you're in now. Besides, l doubt if she'll respond to your kind of pressure. Matt--or even l--might baby it out of her more readily." Max stood. "This has gone past the point of babying anybody." He glanced from Temple to Matt, and back. "I'll tell her I'm representing a collective." He strode out of the room and a moment later the front door snapped open, then shut. Like this case sure wasn't.

Temple let out a long breath.

"He seems edgy," Matt noted.

"He's more than edgy. He had . . . interviewed the dead stripper just last night."

"Interviewed her? He was planning to hire one? Why?'

"He was making private inquiries for our dear Lieutenant Molina."

"That's ridiculous! She wouldn't trust him to investigate her trash bill."

"Yeah. I couldn't believe she'd do that either. And l wish she hadn't." Temple found her lower lip between her teeth and released it.

"Why?"

"Max feels the stripper's death is his fault."

"Is he right?"

"I hope not," Temple said. She started to sit down in Max's vacated sofa spot, then remembered it was the scene of an indiscretion and managed to sit on the arm instead. "So.

What's happening with you, besides fame and fortune ?"

He looked as if she'd just threatened to hold the soles of his feet to burning coals.