Molina waved him in and him out again. She drank from her glass before resuming the conversation.
“This Walker woman was on the phone with Vassar after you left her at the Goliath?”
“She was on the phone with her just before Vassar fell.”
“Then where’s the frigging phone?”
Matt outstared her sudden fury. “That’s your job, to find it. My job is to tell you the truth you don’t want to hear. You didn’t do me any favors with your advice. But it worked out in a strange way, after all. I’d give right now what I was so desperately trying to keep Kathleen O’Connor from getting to get Vassar back, but I can’t be sorry I met her. I can’t be sorry I…failed to be a good customer. I’m glad I was a better friend.”
Molina pushed a hand through her unmussable hair. “You and Vassar, making fools of us all. Kathleen O’Connor and me. You’re right. I was fighting O’Connor through you and Vassar. I had convinced myself that this would heal everybody’s ills, you and the call girl. I was acting like a goddamn social worker instead of a cop. Here’s the hardened call girl. I send her an ethical man. Here’s the beset ex-priest who actually cares. I send him to a woman who regards sex as richly rewarded therapy. A marriage made in Heaven, right? Except I no longer believe any marriage is made in Heaven.”
“That’s where you went wrong.”
Carmen/Molina glared at him, saying and singing nothing.
“You were right. Vassar and I were very good for each other. That’s what Deborah’s testimony tells me. We were both better off for meeting each other.”
“Deborah.” Molina pulled the fake blue Dahlia from her hair, tossed it onto the dressing table. “That’s the name of a judge in the Old Testament, isn’t it?”
Matt nodded.
“And she’s your witness to Vassar’s last words?”
Matt nodded again.
Molina sighed, rested her head on her hand, which was braced on the dressing table pillar. “Don’t you see why I interfered? Kathleen O’Connor was every sexual predator I never caught. You were my…Mariah. My innocent daughter who’s growing into the real world that hides scum like that, whatever the gender. I wanted to see you safely through adolescence, Matt. Maybe the means were cynical, but the intent was…honest.”
“I know.”
“You know?”
“Sure. You and me, we’re dinosaurs. True. Our work, our vocations, require us to live up to public images, rigorously honest, severe, sexless, perfect as our Heavenly Father is perfect. Recognize the dogma? Except we’re human. We want to preserve what’s innocent in us, but we can’t afford to live by it in the real, ugly world.
“So I know where you’re coming from, Carmen. Strict Hispanic Catholic family. Or Polish Catholic family. High standards. Impossible standards. Still, if you don’t go for the top, you’ll settle for the bottom. That’s the problem with religious absolutism: there’s either bad or good. Perfect or imperfect. You either sin or you don’t. No middle ground. No gray. That’s not what Jesus preached in the New Testament. His bottom line was compassion, which abolishes the black and white and leaves only the gray and the benefit of the doubt. That’s why they killed him.”
“Abolish black and white from the law enforcement profession and anarchy would reign.”
“Maybe so. Maybe not. I’m just saying we can both be thankful that nobody killed Vassar, not even us. It was a stupid accident. I left her standing by the railing overlooking the atrium. Deborah heard her cry out and then the cell phone clattered and buzzed, but it didn’t shut off.”
“Someone still could have come up behind her and pushed her.”
“Maybe. But I don’t think so. Deborah says she was exhilarated, hyper. She more likely…turned around to lean against the railing, lost her balance on those high-rise heels.”
“You realize what you’re telling me? That a call girl was deliriously happy because you didn’t sleep with her. Not much of a personal advertisement.”
“Do I care? I’m deliriously happy I didn’t have to act against my conscience myself. Can’t you accept the gift of a free conscience? That doesn’t come along every day.”
“No.” Molina turned to the mirror to wipe off Carmen’s camellia mouth with a tissue. She turned back to lift her glass toward him. They tapped rims and sipped.
“I have to play Devil’s advocate so I don’t buy every fairy tale I might want to believe. I’ll have that atrium scoured for the cell phone. Of course someone could have spotted and taken it by now. Still, if this Walker woman’s testimony holds up then we’re both in the clear. My career and your freedom. We were gambling for pretty high stakes.”
Matt nodded and sipped again, feeling relief tingle all the way to his fingertips.
“Only two things bother me,” she added.
“Two things?”
“Rafi Nadir and Max Kinsella.”
“Kinsella and Nadir? Who’s Nadir?”
“Ah—” Molina waved a dismissive hand. “A pickpocket around town. Different case. Anyway, I personally checked the Goliath videotapes. They show you checking in. And they show Kinsella hanging around the registration area about the same time.”
Matt knew his face showed utter, unfeigned shock. What was Max doing there? Right then?
He was so shocked that he only vaguely understood that Molina the cop always had to have the last suspicious word.
He was very glad that he had not mentioned Kinsella’s presence on the even more recent death scene of Kathleen O’Connor, which had not yet entered Molina’s official radar.
But it could, if anyone had seen both Kinsella and O’Connor at Neon Nightmare.
Chapter 49
Melting
Temple was curled up on her couch with Midnight Louie, watching a really bad Boris Karloff movie. Karloff, of course, was never bad, but some of his later films were.
She couldn’t sleep.
Hi-ho the witch is dead, the wicked witch is dead.
She had actually broken out the Midnight Louie shoes, which really didn’t go well with her Garfield T-shirt-cum-nightgown.
Glittering white crystal high heels with the image of a black cat on the heels were not the done thing to wear with cotton knit, although almost anything went in Las Vegas.
She gazed down at her bare insteps surrounded by the elegant dazzle of Stuart Weitzman custom pavé shoes. Elegant, gorgeous, even improbable shoes invariably made her feel better.
High heels were a little girl’s stepping stones to adulthood. Maybe adulthood was something as simple as losing a shoe and gaining a prince, or accidentally killing a witch and gaining a magical pair of red sequin pumps. Then killing one on purpose later.
Temple had to admit that she had a prince, or two, in her life, and a witch or two, as well. She also had to admit to herself that she hadn’t wanted Kitty dead, not really, although maybe the woman was dead because two men were determined that Temple wouldn’t be hurt by her. In olden days, women were thrilled to have men fighting for their honor and their lives. Temple wasn’t thrilled with the uneasy guilt she felt now. She was particularly queasy about Matt’s unspoken willingness to sacrifice his most personal well-being for her. Oh, he was concerned about a host of other women in his life, but they were all incidental, weren’t they? And she wasn’t. Had Max guessed that? Of course. He wasn’t a jealous man, but he had always been worried about Matt since he had returned to find a new neighbor in Temple’s building and life. She couldn’t complain about either man’s sincerity in thinking of her safety, but she wished she weren’t so darned guilty about, and impressed by, both of them.
Nowhere in the book of fairy tales did it mention two Prince Charmings. Come to think of it, both Max and Matt had been involved in the retrieval of the glass slipper, aka the Midnight Louie shoes. Modern life, not dreams, was what fractured fairy tales are made of, Mr. Ariel.
So now, fairy tale-wise, one witch was dead. An evil witch who had looked as glamorous as Glinda the Good Witch
of the North in the Judy Garland movie, all Southern-belle skirts and glitter and magic wand.
The evil witch was a bony hag in a pointed hat with grossly striped stockings and granny lace-ups in villainous black. Why, then, had she wanted the ruby red slippers? For the power they conferred, of course, but maybe somewhere in her evil black cinder of a heart she had simply coveted something beautiful for its own sake.
Temple had to wonder if Kathleen O’Connor had coveted innocence that way, Max’s teenage chastity, Matt’s post-priesthood delayed-adolescent possession of the same. Kathleen had wanted to destroy both boys. Men. And maybe she yearned for the very innocence she sought to destroy. Maybe it was her own.
Two women dead only a couple of days apart. The mysterious call girl (to Temple anyone who followed that line of work would always be mysterious) and the mysterious stalker-girl.
And here she was, trying to avoid either extreme, trying to be a real girl the way Pinocchio ached to be a real boy.
Three clicks of her heels and maybe she could be back home in Minnesota, where call girls were few and under wraps and wicked witches froze their long noses and toes and peaked hat tips off.
But, no, she couldn’t leave the Emerald City of Las Vegas yet. There was still too much to solve about herself and everyone around her.
She was too melancholy to move on. She glanced at the sparkling shoes on her feet. Her high-heel addiction had always been the bravado of a short girl, a small woman. I am walking on hot spikes, hear me roar. Except I’d rather whimper sometimes.
But didn’t everybody?
Even Vassar. Even Kitty the Cutter.
That’s what got to Temple. Between them, these women so different from her had forced two men she cared about to the bitter edge, making them commit to unwanted sex in one instance, and unwanted death in another. You couldn’t ask for any more dire consequences.
Was her gender really so destructive? Or so frustrated?
And then there was Molina, gloating over it all like a legal vulture bent on picking away at everybody’s bones and insecurities.
Temple watched Karloff’s cadaverous features in his black-and-white world. Films were better before color. So was newspaper photography. Color cluttered up the scenery, distracted the eye, made everything a moral morass, shades of the rainbow.
Midnight Louie stirred against her hip, uttered a cross between a meow and a purr.
“You’re right, boy. I’m in a very bad mood tonight. I guess cats don’t have moods. Just territorial disputes.”
He seemed to nod as he licked away at one forepaw, head bobbing up and down.
It was pretty bad when she was discussing her emotional state with a cat. A large, intelligent, amazingly handsome cat, but a cat nonetheless.
A knock came on Temple’s door. Her eyes streaked to the clock on the portable stereo. Eleven-fifteen. Who on earth…Max had already been by.
She rose and clicked over to the door, peering through the tiny peephole.
The hall was dark and the sidelight only distorted the view.
She opened the door but kept her chain lock fastened.
“Matt!”
The mechanism resisted her fingers for a moment, but then her door was wide and he was hesitating on her threshold like a Fuller Brush salesman, if there still were Fuller Brush salesmen.
“What is it?”
“I’ve got to get to work,” he said, “but do you have a minute?”
“Sure. Come in. What’s going on?”
“I had to tell you some good news.”
He was checking out her apartment, spotting Louie still on the sofa—looking most annoyed at losing his lap pillow—hunting for signs of Max, she supposed.
“Are you alone?” he asked.
“No. Louie and you are here. That’s all.”
He paced a little in the entry hall. “I just wanted to let you know, so you wouldn’t worry.”
“What, me worry?”
“You’ve been doing it. I can tell. I’ve just seen Molina.”
“This should stop me worrying?”
“At the Blue Dahlia.”
“Worse and worse.”
“And I told her that I heard from a counselor of Vassar’s, who was on the phone with her and probably heard her fall. After I left. It was an accident, Temple. Molina knows that now.”
“An accident. How…great. I mean, not great that she fell, but…for you.”
“Yeah. For me. For Molina.”
He stopped, ran a hand through his blond hair, turning into a punk bedhead. Looked at her.
“Vassar…died…planning to reinvent her life. Oh, God.”
“A happy death,” Temple said, remembering the phrase from somewhere.
“A happy death,” he repeated. “I’ve got to get to work. I can’t be late…what am I now, some kind of White Rabbit? Oh, Temple.”
“Aren’t you glad? If I understand all this, no one’s to blame for Vassar’s death and even she was upbeat at the time. That’s the way I’d like to go, that everyone would, fast and happy.”
“Fast and happy. Better than slow and sad, that’s right. Temple.”
“Thanks for telling me, Matt. I won’t worry now. Not much.” She didn’t lie well.
He glanced down, and frowned. “Why are you wearing those shoes now? It’s almost midnight.”
“Maybe I was expecting Prince Charming.” She didn’t know why she’d said that, except that she was mistress of the flip quip and she was feeling a very confusing need to be inappropriately flip at the moment, her and her tiny feet and big mouth…
Matt put a palm to his forehead as if he was trying to play mind-reader, or hold his thoughts in. But it didn’t work, because his next words came out of left field, the left field of his inner anxieties.
“I didn’t sleep with her.”
“You don’t have to tell me this. I mean, it’s none of my business. Except…maybe it’s relevant to the case.”
“What case?”
“Well, all of them. The unsolved cases. The things that are none of our business. Except Molina’s. So…who?” Temple wanted to be very precise on this fact.
“Who what?” Matt was looking more confused now than she was.
“Who didn’t you sleep with? Besides anybody in the past seventeen years.”
“Seventeen? How do you get seventeen?”
“Well, from since you went from high school to the seminary.”
“You’ve been keeping track of my non-sleeping-with timeline?”
“Well, I just have a mind for these details. So you were going to tell me. Who.”
Matt shook his head, sufficiently distracted that the information no longer felt so horribly personal. It was about a “case,” after all.
“Vassar. It didn’t work. Molina’s plan. Not for me. Not for Vassar.”
“Oh. But she didn’t kill herself.”
“No. Not that. Not because of me. Someone still could have…but it’s not likely. It was all an accident. An accident, Temple. All of it.”
She nodded, continually. “I understand. You’d better go now. The show.”
“The show.” He joined her in nodding and stepped into the hall.
“Drive carefully,” Temple caroled after him like her irritating Aunt Marge, whose cautionary tones she had not heard in twelve years, thank God.
“I can’t believe I said that,” she muttered to Louie, who had risen and was now rubbing his black satin legs against the rough Austrian crystal sides of her shoes.
Temple had never wanted to know, and not know, something so much in her life. Now that she knew, she didn’t know what to make of it, what to make of Matt thinking it was important to tell her what had happened, and not happened between him and Vassar. As a friend, she was glad he hadn’t been forced to go against his conscience. As a neighbor, she was glad he felt free to confide in her, although he had seemed somewhat constrained to talk just now.
As…whatever, she was relieved. And
scared.
She leaned over and gazed hard into the Emerald-city-gleam of Midnight Louie’s eyes.
“And have you anything momentous to confess concerning your sex life, or lack of it, and any recent involvement in violent death you might have had?”
The cat gazed solemnly back, and kept the usual mum.
Tailpiece Midnight Louie Picks a Bone
I am flabbergasted.
Appalled.
Outraged.
Imagine my very own collaborator springing such a surprise on me.
I refer, of course, to the untimely death of Kathleen O’Connor.
I grant you that Miss Carole let me be first on the death scene, but I am not that crazy about inspecting the corpus delicti, especially if it is nothing I can eat.
Ultimately, not even a coyote was willing to pick Miss Kitty’s bones, which I suppose is something of an epitaph. Too bad nobody will write it on her tombstone, though I doubt she will have one.
A mystery woman to the end. And that is another good epitaph gone to waste.
I am really coming up with them.
At least I do not have to compose any final words for my partner, Miss Midnight Louise. It would really shrivel her whiskers to know I had the last word.
I must say that the kit has benefitted from her association with an older, wiser mentor, as no doubt Mr. Max will from the return of Gandolph the Great. She is a little distraught about causing a human death, though who is to say that a minor cat scratch really tipped the balance. I have had to explain to her that we are predators by nature, despite living on the handouts of human cuisine, in these, our latter decadent, domesticated days.
Still, she shows an oddly unspecieslike regret about her role in Kitty the Cutter’s demise. Perhaps she has caught something from Mr. Matt, with whom she briefly resided when she first showed up on the scene.
My one regret is my longtime resolution never to speak to humans. It kills me to know how Vassar died and not to be able to set assorted consciences at rest. But it is too late for me to lower myself at this late date. And, in fact, I do not know if I could talk to them anyway. I have never tried and have always found other means of communicating my druthers.
Cat in a Neon Nightmare Page 31