Cat in a Topaz Tango

by Carole Nelson Douglas

  Temple’s cell phone rang seven minutes later. She whipped the steering wheel abruptly right into an empty strip center parking lot. She didn’t dare talk to Crawford Buchanan while driving. He made her resort to wild hand gestures at the drop of a consonant.

  “You rang, T. B.?” The smarmy radio baritone oozed into her left ear like cold cod liver oil.

  Temple again thanked her fates that he’d never learned her middle name was her aunt Kit’s given name, and even she never used it: Ursula. That would make Temple’s initials T. U. B. and Awful Crawford Buchanan would never let her hear the end of that!

  “Right here, CB,” she shot back.

  “And where is that this time of night, hmm?”

  The next thing he’d be asking was what she was wearing. Kevlar!

  “In front of a Dunkin’ Donuts store, en route to where you’ll be heading.”

  “We’re having a rendezvous?”

  “Not my idea. Lieutenant C. R. Molina wants to see you pronto, at her house.” She gave the address.

  “Euw. Not my party hearty part of town.”

  “Yeah, you’re so uptown. I wouldn’t dis the neighborhood or irritate Molina in any way. Her teen daughter is missing and she thinks you know something about it.”

  “Me?” The oily baritone had risen to a squeak. Inside every self-aggrandizing social barracuda is a field mouse.

  “You.”

  “Is this about that reality TV Teen Queen show?”

  “I don’t know. Mariah did compete in that.”

  “I remember her. The Ugly Betty chub who belted out that song from Wicked.”

  “You’ll get a belt from Molina if you refer to her kid like that. And you’re just jealous that your stepdaughter, Quincey, didn’t even get on that show. What’s Quincey doing now, anyway?”

  “She’s got a waitress job and is a ring girl at the local fights.”

  “What about college?”

  “Her mother goes on about that, but she might as well use her looks while she’s got ’em.”

  “She’s what, seventeen, and you think her ‘looks’ are fading?”

  “Face it. The race today is to the super young. There are great opportunities out there for smart kids with ambition. Even Molina, Jr. The younger the better.”

  “You sound like a pedophile.”

  “Me? I’m just a promoter.”

  “Same difference, sometimes, given the public crashes of all the pop tarts recently. See you at the lieutenant’s house.”

  Temple had to end the conversation to consult the directions to Molina’s house and get on the road again. Too freaking bad.

  She also had to weave through dark residential streets, vaguely recognizing the modest bungalows that surrounded Our Lady of Guadalupe Church.

  Squinting at curbside numbers in the dark, she finally slid the Miata to a stop in front of a house with three cars already parked there, two in the driveway and one in the street, none of them marked police cruisers.

  A boxy orange Hummer H3 pulled up behind her. Temple expected the Beach Boys or Leo DiCaprio and posse to pour out of it, but Crawford Buchanan did instead.

  “Our cars really clash,” he noted, smoothing back his gelled black-and-silver hair as he eyed her red Miata.

  “Thank goodness.”

  “Come on, be a pal.” He took her arm, which she jerked away, as they went up the front walk. “You don’t want to make me look bad in front of the fuzz, do you?”

  Temple was more concerned about her first visit to the Molina home than Crawford’s state of comfort.

  Matt had been here more than once, she knew. She’d wondered if Molina was as utterly uninterested in men—in Matt—as it appeared. A police lieutenant could afford something more suburban, Temple was sure. Maybe the location was all for Mariah’s nearby Catholic school.

  Catholics were consistent in their faith and Temple admired that, not that a fallen-away Unitarian would or could convert to a high-maintenance church, whatever the denomination. She mentally slapped herself for relating everything these days to her relationship with Matt.

  Better look and think sharp. This was a serious situation, even if she had arrived with the terminally unserious Crawford Buchanan. At least she had stood and delivered him as requested. Molina had to respect that.

  Well, no, she didn’t.

  Morrie Alch opened the door when she knocked. Ringing the bell might have startled the already stressed-out residents. His thick, steel-gray hair looked grayer and so did his face.

  “Come in,” he said. “This Buchanan?”

  The rat in question answered for itself. “Crawford Buchanan, bro, main man about town. You may have heard my On-the-Go radio spots. Everything hip that’s happenin’.”

  Morrie looked at Temple. “Molina wants to see you down the hall, kid’s room, right away. “You come talk to me, Mr. Hipster.”

  “Everybody calls me ‘Crawford.’ ”

  Alch made a face, then nodded Temple down the hall.

  “Now, Crawford, let’s say we have a little talk,” Alch said as he gestured the Crawf to a furniture barn sofa occupied by the bony, dirty blond-haired guy Temple had seen with Molina at the teen house. He looked sexy-tough in a military or reform-school way, she couldn’t decide which. Is this what Molina was seeing these days? Huh. He was no Matt or Max.

  Meanwhile, Alch was whispering sour nothings into her ear. “It’s too early to tell if Mariah just stayed late at the mall, but this is serious stuff we’ve found on her computer.”

  “Didn’t Molina monitor—?”

  “You bet, but she’s been real sick lately, and, uh, distracted.”

  Temple let her face show shock. They didn’t call Molina the Iron Maiden of the LVMPD because she took sick days.

  “No kidding.’ Alch stopped in the hall to address the gravity of the situation. “Real sick. This is coming at a rotten time. Bear that in mind and pretend you’re the little drummer girl, ready to march where needed.”

  “So that’s why she didn’t show up at the Crystal Phoenix dinner a few weeks ago, other than my crime-solving skills getting public applause.”

  “I think you won that one. Now, she needs you.”

  “Me. Again? Aw, shoot, Morrie, my life’s a lot more complicated now.”

  “You have a significant other missing in action?” He sounded vaguely parentally accusing.

  He meant, Mariah, of course. A child.

  Still, his words slid a hot knife of regret into her gut. Did she have a former significant other missing in action? Only recently an ex. Funny that the recent past could feel so raw. Max, even missing, could take care of himself, if he wasn’t dead. Not knowing why or where he had vanished would always haunt her but she would never regret having opened herself to Matt’s love.

  Temple nodded at Alch. Now was no time to ramp up the rancor between her and Molina. Mariah was a naïve kid, and her mother must be kicking herself for being sick just when it was most damaging.

  Or had Mariah taken advantage of her mother being sick? Kids today could be scary in their media-encouraged ambitions.

  Police Premises

  You do not call a roommate of Midnight Louie out in the dark of night without a bodyguard of the feline persuasion walking right in her high-heeled footsteps.

  Dirty Larry may take pride in invisibly fitting in with the lowlifes he spies upon, but I can slip invisibly into the dark backseat floors of almost any automotive model made in America and Europe and Asia these days.

  Still, I am glad not to be on the move for now.

  I am familiar with the environs of Our Lady of Guadalupe Church and School. There is a nearby convent occupied by several elderly nuns and a pair of stray cats named Peter and Paul. They were involved in a very early case of ours, my Miss Temple and me.

  I was even present when I saw the striped Molina house cats adopted at the church animal blessing ceremony. That rite must have worked because I have been a blessing to crime-solving ever
since.

  So I have insinuated myself into the assembly, first outside Miss Mariah Molina’s bedroom window, under which I scent enough smells to confuse a bloodhound. Secondly, I slink through the front door when Detective Alch had returned from getting something from his parked car. Nobody much bothers to look from faces to footwear, especially when all and sundry are under stress, so I am usually able to toe-dance inside unnoticed alongside trouser legs and Mr. Morrie is an aficionado of dark suits despite the climate. It helps that there are already cats in the house.

  You would think a big, handsome guy like myself would not be so easy to overlook, but everyone’s emotions are ratcheted tighter than a tourniquet and we poor domestic slaves are too low on the literal household totem pole to be much noticed at such times.

  That is how I am able to pin the tiger-stripe females, Tabitha and Catarina, behind the sofa and wring them out like furry sponges of all the info they have.

  It is a good thing I can speak to the animal kingdom. Homo sapiens habitually knows not much to speak of in these cases involving their headstrong young.

  With a few well-chosen chirps, hisses, and paw signs, the tiger girls fill me in. This, of course, takes sharp questions on my part to prod a picture of recent events out of them, but I will not bore you with every little chit and chat and physical pantomime.

  Here is their story, and I find it as fascinating as Mr. Scott finds a misbehaving Enterprise warp drive:

  Mama Molina has been laid out with a midnight scrap injury, but this is being kept secret for some reason. Mr. Morrie Alch, one of the visiting toms, has been tending her. The sole surviving kit, Miss Mariah Molina, has been acting strange lately. She has ignored her delightful feline companions to hole up in her hideaway and smear strange-smelling potions on her face. She is also hypnotized by the one-eyed monster screen in her bedroom and spends most of her time in front of the litter-making shiny silver wall on her bedroom closet door . . .

  It takes me a while to realize the tiger girls have never heard the word mirror and do not understand that their double reflection in same is not a glimpse of lost littermates living in the walls.

  These domestic slaves are kept frightfully ignorant of things the lowliest alley cat has figured out by the age of three months. You learn fast to avoid being startled by your own reflection and save the panic and paranoia for encountering a real threat.

  The resident Miss has also been cuddling up to her smooth shiny tiny kitten that she coos to and tickles endlessly on the tummy, instead of doing same to her loyal and loving resident felines.

  Okay. The tiger girls have never tumbled to the names of such modern inventions and curses as the iPod and cell phone. I enlighten them.

  Further, they say, there have been strange comings and goings in the house for several weeks when the occupants are away. They wonder if the lady of the house has hired a cleaning service and know to stay curled up, noses in tails, when these individuals come in.

  I do not like this one tiny bit, but what can I do when the resident cats are so naïve and keep their eyes and ears to themselves? There is something to be said for the School of Hard Knocks, of which I am a magna cum laude graduate.

  Osama bin Laden could hide out at Chez Molina and go unheralded and unmolested if it were up to these striped feline couch spuds.

  Twinkle, Twinkle,

  Little Star

  “Welcome to my little corner of MTV hell,” Molina said as Temple stepped into the bedroom. “Is it possible you’re still young enough to understand these teenagers nowadays?”

  “Not really. I just look like I am. It’s one of my greatest crosses to bear.”

  “‘Crosses to bear’? You get that talk from our favorite radio talk-show host?”

  “Guilty.”

  “Aren’t we all? I want you to sit down and look at this Web site I found bookmarked on Mariah’s computer.”

  Temple did as instructed, noting Molina’s waxen, taut features under the atypical makeup. That didn’t get there in one night of panic about her missing daughter. She had been sick, very sick. And then this. Temple was ambushed by a pang of sympathy.

  A click revealed Crawford’s smirking face. His dark hair with the silver froth at the neck had been pompadoured for the photo, giving him a shocking resemblance to Dick Clark, prestroke.

  “Euw,” Temple couldn’t help muttering.

  Molina literally hung over her, a hand on the back of her chair and another on the desktop. “My reaction exactly. Tell me he’s a harmless little worm.”

  “Mostly. He’s a hustler when it comes to drumming up buzz for his PR business, and an old-style sexist, of course.”

  “What do you mean by ‘old style’?”

  “Harmless but annoying. Treating women with a wink and a nod, thinking he’s so suave.”

  “His private life?”

  “The usual mousy girlfriend. His stepdaughter is a heller, just barely the right side of being a candidate for juvie hall through high school. She has a yen to be a star.”

  “Don’t they all nowadays. Damn American Idol!”

  “You sing. Wouldn’t you have taken a shot if it had been around when you were young?”

  “I was never young,” Molina said acidly.

  Temple believed her, but wondered why that was so.

  “What do you think of this ‘teen starlet’ site he has going?” Molina pushed.

  Temple clicked on the interior pages, then checked out the mini-movies and the visitor stats at the bottom of the homepage.

  “It’s cheesy,” she said, “but it’s hitting a nerve by tracking all the auditions and contestants for these national reality TV shows. The writers’ strike a couple years ago was a bonanza for reality TV shows new and old. Cheap to produce, with free ‘talent.’ This site is a Dream Machine for every wanna-be kid out there, with Buchanan pretending he can be the wish-granting genie. You think this is what lured Mariah away?”

  “If she’s been lured, which I hope not, given the alternatives. It’s a pedophile’s dream site, isn’t it?”

  “Maybe not. The girls and boys who posted photo bios here seem pretty sophisticated about selling themselves and their talents. Predators like greener pastures, as in naïve, don’t you think?”

  “What makes you an expert?”

  “You asked me here? Look. I have to keep up on pop culture trends in my business. I’ve got a brain. I used to report for the TV news. Kids, especially girls, are being pushed into premature speculations about their futures, their chances of being something special. I wonder where the kidhood has gone these days when JonBenét Ramsey looks more like a pioneer than a sad miniature imposter of a grown-up girl.”

  “She was killed more than a decade ago and her murderer was never found.”

  Temple bit her lip.

  “Here.” Molina reached past her to click the mouse a couple of times.

  Mariah’s face gazed up from a homemade glamour photo– style shot that was more laughable than alluring.

  Temple sat back. “Ah. Reminds me of the time my best friend Amy and I took our own secret ‘portfolio photos.’ Nothing digital then. We had to have them developed on the sly and hide the snapshots.”

  “All girls do this?”

  “You didn’t? You’re a performer, for heaven’s sake, and a hell of a good one.”

  A flush of color made the unheard-of cosmetic blusher on Molina’s olive-toned cheeks look downright feverish and her blue eyes absolutely electric. The woman should wear a little cream blush, at least after working hours. Or maybe she didn’t have any of those.

  “I didn’t perform at that young an age, except in the school choir.”

  “What I’m saying is that Mariah may look a little dopey, but this star thing is nothing any girl her age doesn’t dream of, or try nowadays.”

  “For the big bad world to see?”

  “That’s a danger. Kids being normal can be used and taken advantage of. Girls just want to have fun, but not ev
ery one is as sophisticated as Cyndi Lauper.” Temple eyed the site. “You think Mariah is out there chasing these auditions? There’s one in Arizona this weekend. Would she really run off and do this?”

  “I’d say no, but she wasn’t unaccounted for then. There’s something else I want to show you.”

  Molina grimly manipulated the mouse to another site, the Teen Queen house.

  “The show Mariah and I crashed,” Temple noted. “I didn’t know they still had a site up.”

  “And how.”

  A few clicks brought up the mini-screen of an online podcast.

  After a minute or so, Temple explored the site further, and gasped. A whole three Web pages on little her.

  She could watch herself as Zoe Chloe Ozone being interviewed by judges, acting out, rapping out her number, doing the Gidget-gone-Goth-girl act she’d used to go undercover on the reality TV show.

  Molina clicked farther down before Temple had time to enjoy her fifteen minutes of fake fame.

  The cursor blinked on the stat logo at the page’s bottom.

  “Six hundred and sixty-five thousand hits? Since a few weeks ago?”

  “You’re a star,” Molina said, deadpan. “And you’re going out into the unreal world again to meet your rabid fans while you look for my daughter in this nutsy subculture before some murderous freak finds her.”

  “You can’t make me.”

  “Oh, I probably can, but I think you’ll want to do it. This is serious. I’ll provide protection, you’ll get a hell of story out of it for whatever, your PR business, your ego, your eagerness to make the world right for fools and dreamers and thirteen-year-old kids who need a friend.”

  “Mariah’s absence is probably just a kiddish misadventure. You’ll find her safe and really sorry at some regional mall where she got brushed off.”