Cat in a Topaz Tango

by Carole Nelson Douglas

  “Dios,” she said. “Learning undercover makeup tricks from my teen kid; who’d have thought I’d need that at my age? How are you, Father Matt, the about-to-be-married man?”

  “Don’t call me that!” he said, though no one could hear. “You need my help, you cut out the harassment.”

  She made a face. “Just kidding.”

  Which he knew. He was still sensitive about his ex-profession because it had been a vocation, a sincere one he’d honored to the day he left, and beyond. It was hard to explain to civilians. Maybe police work was too.

  “So what’s this all about?” he asked.

  “Patience. First we order. I highly recommend the enchiladas fiesta. And a pitcher of beer.”

  The waitress made it to their table in three minutes, the beer in another five, and the food in ten. They’d passed the time with what passed for chitchat with Molina. Was Electra going to come out with any loot from her ex-husband? He looked a bit tired, was being a fiancé all that stressful? No, he told her, rehearsing for a charity dance contest at the Oasis was. Radio guys were always doing bizarre gigs, she said. Did Temple plan to keep taking on big conventions and meddling in murders after they were married? What kind of hombre was he, who couldn’t keep the little woman at home having niños and niñas?

  He finally broke in. “I get that you think we can’t talk about anything relevant until we’ve got our food and drink and have ditched the waitress, but you don’t have to be ridiculous. So, Carmen Miranda, where did you leave your Banana Republic headdress?”

  Carmen was C. R. Molina’s first name, and she saw to it that damn few people knew it. The only Latina Carmen the public knew was the long-ago goofy movie singer with the fruit basket headdress. Not a positive image. Carmen Electra was more up-to-date, but another stereotyped hot Latin honey.

  “It’s confession time, Padre,” she said, drinking from a frosty mug into which she poured Dos Equis beer. “I want no witnesses, no sound recordings, and no snickering on your part.”

  Matt was hammered with a bolt of curiosity. Carmen Molina was the most self-controlled person he knew. Now that his profession was radio shrink, he’d put her at the head of his most-intriguing-person-to-psychoanalyze list.

  He was getting his chance in the most frantic, frenetic, screeching, and screaming environment on the planet. God surely had a sadistic sense of humor, but then He’d earned it for creating and dealing with Homo sapiens.

  Matt was glad he’d ordered enchiladas, which were soft and easy to eat while asking leading questions.

  “What hot topic of the month is this about?” he asked.

  “The eternal enigma.”

  “Max.”

  “Kinsella.” She didn’t even grant the man the familiarity of a first name.

  Was she about to confess what Max had confessed to Matt not too long ago? That she’d caught up with him once in a strip club parking lot and they’d decided whether he’d go with her as an arrestee with a private martial arts session? That the fight had gotten physical and heated in more ways than one? Molina had accused Max of getting sexual with her and had told Temple as well as Matt. Temple hadn’t believed it, but Max had told Matt he had . . . a little, as a diversion during the fight. Anything to get an opponent off guard. That was Maxus operandi.

  A deliberately single career woman like Carmen would resent that bitterly. And, face it, Matt told himself, strong emotions could turn on a dime. The other side of antagonism between women and men could be attraction denied on one side or the other, or both. Being a celibate observer of the mating game for seventeen years gave him a certain insight.

  He found it fascinating that when Molina needed a foolproof disguise, she dolled herself up like an ordinary woman out on a date, but acted like she was going undercover as a hooker.

  “He’s vanished again, like before.” Matt said, getting back to Topic One and Only. “Temple’s afraid he’s dead.”

  “Could be.” Molina pushed her demolished plate aside and his too, hunkering down with the beer mug. “I don’t have the manpower to prove it. I’m not concerned with where Kinsella is, or if he is, but what he was.”

  Matt didn’t argue. “You finally changing your opinion on that?”

  “I still like him for killing that guy at the Goliath Hotel two years ago, when he first disappeared. Still, I’m willing to consider your argument that he was acting as a counterterrorist. That doesn’t carry any weight with the police. Killing is killing. It might mean shadowy Homeland Security figures would want to bail his butt out. That’s speculation, of course, now.”

  “Now? What’s happened now?”

  “I found his secret Las Vegas lair. God! That sounds like a line from a hokey old movie serial. I found where he’s been living in Las Vegas while eluding me and balling your new fiancée.”

  “You don’t have to be vulgar to get my attention, Carmen. Apparently, he was pretty good at it. Fine by me. Temple’s happiness is my greatest pleasure.”

  He knew his security would eat like acid into her new insecurity.

  Molina’s beer-pinked cheeks flushed scarlet with anger, and maybe some shame at being called on her harshness. Matt narrowed his eyes. Keeping his cool and rattling hers was working.

  Of course Max and Temple had been intimate. Matt was an ex-priest, not an idiot. Yeah, it had driven him crazy when he’d been on the sidelines yearning for her. Now that Temple seemed more than happy with him, his insecurities had mostly evaporated. Clutching onto those suckers was suicide. Letting them go meant Molina couldn’t use the usual weapons against him, meant he could control this interview.

  “So what’s the latest on your eternal pursuit of Max the Elusive?” he followed up.

  She sighed as if releasing some very old air. “I screwed up. Blew it. When I learned where he lived I went there. The place looked deserted, so I checked it out.”

  “When was that?”

  “Early Sunday morning, like 1:00 am.”

  After Temple had gone to the address the previous Tuesday to find Max and all his magic paraphernalia and possessions gone and some chorus girl in residence.

  “Checked it out, as in broke in,” Matt prodded.

  “Frigging yes,” she whispered, leaning intently over the beer mugs between them. “The place had overkill security, but it was in . . . disarray. I got in.”

  “And?”

  “Before I got much of a look at the layout I realized someone else was in there with me.”

  “Max?”

  She frowned. “Why should he be creeping around like a footpad in his own house?”

  Maybe because he’d made it look like he and his things had abandoned it completely, Matt thought. He found, with irritation, that the idea of Max Kinsella still being secretly in town stirred the insecurities in his basement after all.

  Molina hadn’t noticed she’d finally rattled him. “But then I wasn’t surprised that someone outside the law would want to look into him too. Maybe one of those ghostly terrorists you say he was tracking.”

  “Not so far-fetched. The 9/11 terrorist crew and associates met in Vegas.”

  “Yeah. Alcohol and hoochie-koochie girls for the last nights of the heaven-bound suicide set. You’d think seventy-two virgins would be enough for them. What were they supposed to do for eternity after using up that bizarre quota?”

  Matt shrugged and sipped. Taking his eyes off of her did the trick. She went on.

  “Whoever was sneaking around in there had a hate on for Kinsella that makes mine look like a schoolgirl crush. I heard this sound, like a cat in your utility room. Later we found all the clothes in his closet slashed to less than ribbons. Sweaters, blazers, slacks. All cotton, silk, and lightweight wool.”

  Matt sat stunned. All Max’s clothes had been gone when Temple had visited the place with Aldo Fontana. She’d said so, sobbing on his shoulder.

  “Anything else disturbed?’

  “A knife had been taken from the kitchen block. The biggest
one. I spotted that subconsciously, coming in, but never realized . . .”

  Her thought drifted off into a swallow of beer.

  “Nothing else was taken, his magic cabinets?”

  “No. All the furnishings were fine, even that huge, kinky opium bed he had. Your fiancée tell you about that?”

  Opium bed? Matt shook his head. He’d want to know about that. Even more, he’d want to know why all the furniture that had been missing when Temple came to check on Max was back in place within four days.

  Molina would think mention of the opium bed had him momentarily on the ropes, when it was the clothing and other furniture. Obviously, Temple had been led to believe that Max was utterly gone. Which was a darn good sign that he wasn’t. Or wasn’t dead, at least. Or were his spy associates just cleaning up after him? Holy moley.

  Matt picked up the broken conversation. “So someone else was trespassing on Max’s house. Someone who hated him.”

  “Certainly the clothes slashing was highly personal.”

  “It wasn’t you?” he asked in jest.

  “Not a good joke.” Molina swallowed another deep draught of beer. “Whoever it was detected my presence. I decided to confront the intruder in the dark hall. I’d taken cover in a closet with those vented folding doors, so had to wrestle them coming out. I was heard. And knifed.”

  “Knifed?” Matt knew the feeling well. “Bad?”

  “A hell of a lot worse than you were.”

  “God, Carmen. How much worse?”

  “I’m not sure I want to describe my battle scars to you.”

  “Did this someone mean to kill you?”

  “Could have, if I hadn’t lifted my arm to block the blow I expected. The wound was shallow but long. You’ll understand that I couldn’t make it public. I’ve been off work with a ‘virus,’ ‘bird flu,’ whatever Detective Alch could think of. I’d get busted if anyone knew I’d done a B and E without a warrant.”

  “Breaking and entering. And no one knows besides Alch but me? That’s okay. You have the seal of the confessional with me, even if I’m an ex-priest.”

  “Unfortunately, the other guy who knows ain’t no saint.”

  Matt mulled this over. He’d noticed her say “we” had found the slashed clothes. “Not Alch. He’s beatified at least for putting up with you.”

  She wasn’t talking.

  He drank some beer.

  “I can handle this other guy,” she finally said. “He’s my problem. What I’m having trouble with is how close this incident was to the attack on you several months ago. Both cuttings. You a razor, me a butcher knife. A possible, even probable connection to Max Kinsella, alive or dead. I’m wondering if the attacker is the same party.”

  “My slasher’s dead.”

  “You sure?”

  “Sure. It was this former IRA agent from Max’s early years. I mean his teen years.”

  “He was an antiterrorist as a teenager? Antichrist, maybe, I’d believe. Come on!”

  Matt nodded, several times. “True. His first cousin was blown up in a pub bombing in Londonderry. The boys had been given a high school graduation trip to their family’s native Ireland. Road trip. The damn fools drove up to northern Ireland to eyeball the Troubles.”

  Molina sat silent.

  He figured she was stunned.

  “The cousin died?” she asked.

  “Presumably, based on the pieces.”

  “And Kinsella?”

  “He was already an amateur magician. Having an Irish temper, teen-boy fury, and survivor’s guilt didn’t help. He found the bombers and . . . I don’t know, ratted on them? Ireland was too hot to hold him; anywhere was. The IRA put a price on his head. That’s when he was recruited by this unofficial counterterrorism group, as I understand. They did it to save his life, and I suppose they admired his nerve. As do we all.”

  “Speak for yourself, Matt,” she said with irony, no longer silent with shock. “So the Interpol record was a decoy, full of disinformation for stupid domestic cops like me.”

  “It meant his life if he was tied to his real past. I’m wondering what this did to the family.”

  “His cousin’s?”

  “And his. One lost a son, one didn’t. That doesn’t go down well even in close families. Maybe especially not in close families.”

  “That’s why he’s so fanatical about protecting Temple.”

  “Probably.”

  Her palm slammed the rough tabletop. “So Max Kinsella is a misjudged hero and I’m the villainous pursuer of an innocent lamb.”

  “I’d never call Max ‘innocent,’ ” Matt said dryly.

  Molina let herself relax back into her seat, her features wincing. Matt knew that wince. Knife wounds became inflamed and, he imagined, even healing stitches pulled.

  “Kitty the Cutter gave me a four-inch slash, but I saw a shady doctor who managed to tape it shut,” he mentioned. “And you?’

  “Eighty-six stitches.”

  “Whew. The number sounds oddly appropriate.”

  To be “eighty-sixed” meant you’d been sunk.

  She glared at him, thought about laughing, and then winced instead. “Don’t humanize me, Devine. I can’t take that right now.”

  “So what’s the deal?”

  “Are you right? Kinsella is basically a good guy with a bad boy façade? I’ve been overreacting and wasting my time?”

  He considered it. He was used to weighing right and wrong, good and bad, and giving people a lot of leeway on those black-and-white extremes.

  “Yeah. Temple’s no victim or dupe. I won’t say Kinsella didn’t have a big load of guilt to bear, and like all loners he has an arrogant way of thinking he knows what’s right for other people.”

  “Like you and Temple?”

  Matt grinned. “Maybe. Still, the fact is he can’t offer any woman a stable domestic life, not that he didn’t have hopes.”

  “Funny.” She turned her beer mug around to study the condensation droplets. “I never gave him credit for being human enough to have hopes. Maybe I was judging him by my own yardstick.”

  “It’s a rigorously straight one.”

  “How the tightly wound have fallen. Okay, Mr. Midnight. Mr. Radio advice man. What do I do now? I may have blown my career chasing a devil who could be a saint in disguise. Three people too many know about my misadventure at the House of Max.”

  “You including me in that?”

  “Yeah. You’re young, you’re lovely, you’re engaged. You’ll tell your squeeze. No secrets, right, for love’s young dream?”

  “No. I won’t tell her. I think you should. Someday not too far off”

  Molina opened her mouth. Shut it. “You do extract a mighty stiff penance, Padre.”

  “All in proper measure to the sinner and the sin.”

  “Pride is the worst of the Seven Deadly, right?”

  “Yeah, but the easiest to fix.”

  She stood up. Threw a couple of twenties on the table. “Dinner’s on me. I’ll meet you at the rambling wreck in the parking lot. I’m going to the ladies’ room to eat crow for dessert.”

  This time she really needed it. Matt watched her leave, her gait a slightly halting swing, not due to the little beer they’d had, but the hidden stitches.

  Would she tell Temple the truth? Give away that Max’s place was not really in other hands?

  Naw, he thought as he wove through the beery crowds to wait for her by the door. Now that Max was out of the picture, Molina had no reason to hassle Temple about him anymore.

  Matt had to wonder on the drive home from Molina’s house how he’d been forcibly cast into the role of Hamlet: to tell or not to tell Temple.

  Torn between two women, and feeling like a fool. That was a line from an old hit song Ambrosia often played on her radio show. He knew he was on the horns of an ethical dilemma, and they were usually demonic.

  Molina had confided in him, and he should honor that. But she wasn’t his beloved. Temple wa
s, and she deserved to know that Max was very likely alive, even though missing. Matt couldn’t help thinking she—and he—would be better off without the possibility of another Max resurrection out there somewhere.

  Not that he wished Max Kinsella any ill. The guy’d led a tough but honorable and likely lonely life. Doing years of penance as a counterterrorism agent to atone for stupid teenage shenanigans turned lethal seemed pretty good payback. Way more than Max owed his cousin Sean. They’d both decided to look in on the Irish troubles in Londonderry. They’d both competed for the favors of Kathleen O’Connor. It wasn’t Max’s fault that he got the girl and Sean got an IRA pub bombing. The “life narrative,” as the politicians called it added up to Max as a hero, though, and Matt was just a midnight talk jockey with a priestly past. He could use a break from rivaling some James Bond with Irish charisma.

  To be or not to be: a good friend and an insecure lover, or an honest lover and a Judas friend? He would wait to worry about it until the dang dance competition was over, in a week.

  Right now he had to face his nightly radio show, then another daylong dance rehearsal in preparation for the purgatory of a solid week of daily rehearsals and the nightly live telecast of whatever ballroom dance he pulled out of a top hat. Temple had done something like this a couple of months ago to safeguard Molina Jr., Mariah, the would-be media teen queen. If Temple could stomach portraying a Goth teenager, Matt supposed he could cut a rug or two.

  Corny. Humiliating. Just like all of national network TV these days. He’d rather go on Survivor and eat maggots.

  Torn between two left feet, and looking like a fool . . . .

  Max would handle it in a cakewalk, Matt thought.

  Alpine Do-si-do

  “Tall, blonde?”

  He nodded anxiously. His name was James McKlosky for the moment, according to the stolen credit card in his back jeans’ pocket.