Cat In An Indigo Mood

Chapter 60

Footwork

She felt like a schoolteacher who had just found a shiny red apple on the middle of her desk.

There were Su and Alch in their places with bright, shining faces: standing before her desk, with an in-depth report on the man the little dog from Reprise Record Shop had cocked a clever head at.

"Any idea what tipped the dog off?"

Alch and Su exchanged a disappointed glance. They wanted to start their recital with triumph, not dog tricks.

"Never mind. It wouldn't hold up in court anyway. So. What's his story?"

"Incredibly apt," Su said.

"She means he's tied into this killing like twine around a stack of newspapers," Alch translated.

"They don't use twine to bundle newspapers anymore." Su radiated the disdain of the under-thirty for the over-fifty. "It's plastic."

"Well, they did when I was a paperboy."

"Either way," Molina intervened, "neither substance was the murder weapon. The lab has confirmed that it could be a string of pearl-onion-size wooden beads."

Alch nodded. "The religious angle. We got a lot of tie-ins, whatever the substance. First, Reno."

"They both lived in Reno until recently."

"They both had used a dating service. Get this: Blue Heaven."

Molina leaned forward. "Weird name. What was its clientele?"

"Middle-aged people with Christian backgrounds." Alch said promptly.

"Christian? That encompasses every denomination, but usually fundamentalists claim the term. You're sure it wasn't Catholic backgrounds?"

Su shook her head. "No. Christian. But Catholics were ineluded, obviously."

"Okay. Enough suspense. Any evidence that they did date?"

"Plenty." Alch was happy. "Not only do the Blue Heaven records indicate the usual meeting in the neutral public place, but shortly after that both quit the service."

"Naturally," Su added, "the service checked up with both of them, because there's nothing a dating service likes better than a satisfied customer, unless it's two."

"And-- ?" Molina prompted. A provable relationship between the two would be, well, heaven-sent.

"Everything okay," Alch said, flipping through his notebook.

"Except . . . the former neighbors of Monica Orth said about a month after that, she became very withdrawn and agitated, and a month after that, she was out of her apartment and down here in Las Vegas with a new job and a new place."

Molina sat back. "So she left."

Alch and Su nodded.

"Not only the church, but Reno, and the relationship, whatever it was, with this guy."

"You could say she got outa town fast, Lieutenant."

Molina nodded and sighed at the same time. "Woman on the run. But not far enough.

Anything else interesting?"

Su's blackberry eyes sparkled like a brandy spritzer. "A couple even more interesting things.

About him."

Molina leaned forward over her desk.

Alch and Su leaned over her desk.

If the figurative apple Molina visualized atop her desk were actually there, and were a microphone, it would have picked some A-plus tidbits from these prize pupils.