Cat on a Hyacinth Hunt

by Carole Nelson Douglas

  She nodded. "Still, he was connected enough to tip off. Who tipped him off that getting to Temple Barr would get to you, hmmm? That's what the message on the body was about: how to find Temple. Once Electra Lark told me somebody's evil step-father had assaulted her, I knew my take on the note was right. Too bad none of you three characters panned out as prime suspects."

  "Too bad? You want to nail us all to the wall now?"

  A smile paired her shrug. "You are my crown of thorns. Anyway, my detective interpreted the note smears as "deadhead" at "Circus Circus," but I immediately thought of "redhead" at the

  "Circle Ritz," knowing her propensity for trouble and connection to Effinger, through you."

  "These big-time crooks would help that weasel out on a personal matter?"

  "Your dragging him into headquarters wasn't personal to them, it was messing with their business. Big business. No, Effinger was useful enough to protect; that's why the lookalike was tossed to the authorities. As a distraction. And then Effinger became a liability."

  "Yet now, even dead, Effinger still plays a distraction."

  "Very good! Yes."

  "Can I take it that I'm free to dispose of his ashes as I please? You have no further use of him?"

  "Scatter the booger over Lake Mead. I care not, as long as the Environmental Protection Agency doesn't."

  "This has been an odd dinner," Matt commented.

  "Hint. It's time to go. What time is it?"

  "Two A.M."

  "Another hour and you can rendezvous with Our Lady of the Can Opener again."

  "No thanks."

  Matt watched as the waiter returned with a check. Molina signed it, that was all. She had a tab here, but he doubted that she came often. He couldn't see her kicking back like this on a regular basis.

  She stood, reached in her jacket pocket and pulled out the car keys.

  "I'll have you back at the Circle Ritz by two-thirty."

  They passed through the other dining rooms, now cleared and deserted. Matt was impressed. He and Molina were the last to leave, but the staff bowed and nodded, as if they were royalty.

  "Influence," Molina said proudly, her face showing the serene placidity of a Madonna's. A mellow Madonna's.

  "Ah," Matt said as their footsteps echoed on the parking lot asphalt.

  "Speak up."

  "I don't think you should drive me home."

  Molina stopped, thrust her hands in her pockets, frowned. "Why not?"

  Matt plucked the car keys from her left hand.

  "Because I don't think you should drive."

  "Agh! Don't be ridiculous. I can drive. It's just a few blocks."

  "I don't think so." He'd barely consumed one full margarita.

  She'd had three-something. She was a tall woman, but not that tall.

  "I can drive! It's an emotional letdown, not a chemical one. My blood alcohol level is barely .

  . . point oh-oh . . . nothing. Well below the legal limit. Trust me, I know these things."

  "I don't think you should drive. It doesn't matter what level you test at; it matters that if you should happen to be stopped, a cop would have to test you. I'll drive."

  She folded her arms and glared at him. "You are such a goody two-shoes."

  "Hey. You wanted to celebrate your cornering the Mystifying Max. You have. Maybe you should celebrate a little longer and leave the driving up to us."

  "Us?"

  "The two of me in your view."

  "Funny. My focus is perfect. I could hit a target at least in the torso, if not the heart."

  "Most encouraging. But I'm driving, or I'm not going anywhere. And if you try to leave alone, I'll call the police."

  She suddenly conceded and walked to the passenger side of the Toyota. "If you have to be in control of something tonight, I guess it can be me."

  The jibe hit home, but he just unlocked the car door and sprung the passenger lock. He knew better than to open the door for her. "I guess everything's chemical," Matt said as she got in.

  "Get over it."

  She took a cue from one of her suspects and refused to answer.

  "Past Our Lady of Guadalupe and then north?" Matt asked as they drove deeper into the Hispanic neighborhood. He guessed that she didn't have to live here on her salary, but that she was making a statement.

  "Now how will you get home?"

  "I'll call a cab."

  "Way out here? At night. Get real. This is 'hood, amigo. Anglo drivers don't come."

  He didn't answer, realizing she was probably right.

  "So I'm stuck with you. What a night! I have to let Max Kinsella go, and I'm stuck with you."

  Matt said nothing, but she spoke up at last and began directing him. Her voice was deeper, like when she sang, and he suspected she was much drunker than she would ever show.

  He recognized the driveway when he turned into it as instructed.

  Molina leaned forward to pull the garage door opener from the console box, and he eased the car into the dark, clutter-crowded garage as gently as if he were cruising the Vampire into a mechanic's bay.

  "Nice landing." She was sounding sleepy.

  By the time they had turned on a yellow brick road of lights from the garage into the small squarish kitchen, someone was stirring down the hall past the living room with its lumbering nighttime shapes.

  The same Latina woman Matt had seen at the house before came down the passage like an angry locomotive. "So late. You said only midnight."

  "Work, Yolanda. A daring chase into the desert. Desperados apprehended on the seething sands. A woman levitated from a coffin."

  Molina laughed softly when the front door closed behind her.

  "You'll have to stay here, I suppose. Don't worry about the evil eye from Yolanda. I've never had a man stay over."

  "A cab--"

  "Will not come. Not at this hour." Molina looked around with slightly swaying deliberation.

  "I guess the living room couch it is. There's a half-bath off the garage. Remember there's a preteen girl in the household and undress accordingly. We get up at seven A.M. Need anything?"

  "I guess . . . not."

  Matt stood and stared at the alien living room after Molina went down the hall on tiptoes.

  How had he gotten himself into this? By being a good Samaritan, he supposed, and accompanying Molina on her girl's night out. Her otherwise solitary girl's night out.

  Matt shook his head and sought out the half-bath. He couldn't be sorry.

  **************

  Matt decided that nothing indecent could be read into taking off his shoes, so he did just that. He piled the sofa pillows on one end and punched them into the semblance of one wide bedroom pillow. Steps down the hall made him freeze like a cat burglar Molina's woozy theatrics cut no ice with this woman. "Mariah, she been sleeping since ten.

  Like a good girl." Pointed. A glance at Matt. "I must go home now and leave you alone." Hint. "If you need me tomorrow, do not call until after noon." Bigger hint.

  Molina laughed softly when the front door closed behind her.

  "You'll have to stay here, I suppose. Don't worry about the evil eye from Yolanda. I've never had a man stay over."

  "A cab--"

  "Will not come. Not at this hour." Molina looked around with slightly swaying deliberation.

  "I guess the living room couch it is. There's a half-bath off the garage. Remember there's a preteen girl in the household and undress accordingly. We get up at seven A.M. Need anything?"

  "I guess . . . not."

  Matt stood and stared at the alien living room after Molina went down the hall on tiptoes.

  How had he gotten himself into this? By being a good Samaritan, he supposed, and accompanying Molina on her girl's night out. Her otherwise solitary girl's night out.

  Matt shook his head and sought out the half-bath. He couldn't be sorry.

  Matt decided that nothing indecent could be read into taking off his shoes, so he did just that. H
e piled the sofa pillows on one end and punched them into the semblance of one wide bedroom pillow. Steps down the hall made him freeze like a cat burglar.

  Molina was laboriously tiptoeing back down it, her arms piled with pillows and blankets.

  "Shhh." Her caution now was as elaborate as it had not been in the parking lot. "What was I thinking of? Bad hostess. Water's in the kitchen faucet. Good night."

  Matt arranged hi? impromptu bedlinens, smiling. A night in the convent this was not. And for all the wrong reasons.

  *****************

  At about six in the morning, Alvin and Theodore of singing Chipmunks fame came squirreling across the waffle-cotton blanket covering Matt's legs.

  "Ow!" he shouted before he could stop himself.

  He opened his eyes to the milky pool of dawn leaking around the edges of the drawn miniblinds and two striped squirrels barrel racing from one end of the living room to the other, using his epidermis as springboard.

  "Ow," he said more softly, sitting up to massage his abraded legs.

  He only saw the girl in the ankle-length Beauty and the Beast T-shirt when the careening cats returned from a second foray over his flesh and circled her ankles for recess.

  "You're the guy from the church," she said.

  For a moment his heart raced in panic. Even out of the mouths of babes...

  "You were with the red-haired lady."

  "Right. At the blessing of the animals."

  "You had the biggest black cat that I ever saw."

  "Midnight Louie. And ... you and your mother adopted these two guys."

  Matt attempted to smile benignly on the striped flying demons. They were having none of it and caromed off the top of the Naugahyde recliner all the better to spring at him.

  "Girls," Mariah corrected. At her prepubescent age, gender was becoming destiny.

  "Girls. Have . . . they been fixed yet? I mean, had their claws removed?"

  "They're too young."

  He nodded. Everything here was too young, except Molina.

  Mariah stepped closer. "You've been here before."

  "Once."

  "How come?"

  "I had something to discuss with your mother."

  "My mother's always working."

  "She has a tough job."

  "I guess." She stepped closer, tilted her head.

  Matt didn't see much Molina in her. Mariah's eyes were black-brown, her hair darker than her mother's and her features fuller, rounder. He wondered suddenly what kind of love this was, for a child who might or might not resemble you, or who resembled most her other parent, who might or might not be loved. Or hated. He suddenly recalled his handsome soldier father, his face a mystery in the flickering light of the saint's candles, his staid (now) mother swept away by one night's impulse.

  Crazy. It was all crazy, how these children came here, how they were treated when they did arrive. Mariah Molina was unshaped clay in an art department tray. She was, what, eleven, twelve? On the brink of awful girlhood when her ears would have to be pierced and her music would have to be turned up to maximum and when who she was would depend all too much on how other kids saw her, or how she could make them see her.

  Matt suddenly viewed the terrible obligations of being a parent and quailed to his soul.

  "It's okay." Mariah came closer. "The cats won't hurt you. They're kinda nuts. Like little kids, you know. Antsy."

  "I guess." He smiled at her serious, adult attempt at reassurance. And a little child shall lead them. "I'm not used to waking up in strange places, with strange cats."

  "Oh, they aren't strange." She sat down on an easy chair and stroked the young cats as they zoomed past. "Tabitha was a witch in a different life, and she runs away all the time because she's afraid someone will catch her and cut off her tail." She related this primal anxiety with the calmness of a school shrink. "Catarina is the sensitive one and wants to be a wire-walker, but she has to go to school first. Do you like them?"

  "I think they're wonderful," he said sincerely. Wonderful and terrible in the history she had invented for them.

  "They're just alley cats."

  "The best kind."

  She nodded. "I'd better put the coffee on for Mom."

  Matt blinked. Did "Mom" often come in late and a little tiddly?

  "She's a sleepyhead in the mornings," Mariah said importantly. "I have to get her going for her job. It's important."

  "Yes, I know."

  "And I have to go to school." Said with a true martyr's tone. "I get to drink hot cocoa in winter. Instant, though. We don't have much time around here."

  "I can see that. Especially with those cats."

  Mariah giggled. "Do you always sleep in your clothes?"

  "No. But I'm not staying very long. Where's the cocoa? I'll make it."

  "Men don't make anything."

  "Some can. A little."

  "Well, don't spill the hot water on the floor. The cats run through it and dump their food and we end up with such a mess."

  Matt was very, very careful with the hot water.

  *****************

  Molina drove him home after Mariah had left for school in her navy plaid uniform.

  She wore sunglasses and cleared her throat a lot.

  "I'm sorry I left you high and dry," she said after pulling up in front of the Circle Ritz.

  "It's fine."

  "Those cats are hellions."

  "They're kittens."

  "Mariah is a handful."

  "She's a kid."

  Molina pushed up her sunglasses into the headband position.

  Her eyes were clear, blue and rueful. "You swim." It was a statement not a question. She had seen him in the Circle Ritz pool.

  "Yeah."

  Molina looked through the windshield, down the street. "I... promised Mariah I'd take her to Wet and Wild this summer. In a couple months. It's closed until then."

  "Yeah?"

  "I don't swim."

  "You don't swim?"

  "I didn't exactly grow up in a neighborhood with swimming pools on every block. Not in East L.A."

  Matt saw that East L.A. must have been a lot like South Chicago. "I didn't either. But the high schools had swim teams, and the nearby Catholic college had a pool."

  "In Chicago they had pools. Guess you Anglos get everything."

  Matt shrugged.

  "So. Would you go with us? I can't take her on those crazy, zigzag tubes."

  "I guess I could."

  She sighed. "Then I'll let you know when this adjunct of hell opens for the summer. Got to run."

  He got the hint and exited poste haste.

  Electra Lark was waiting to greet him at the gate to the Circle Ritz.

  Chapter 50

  Summit Conference

  Temple felt like a neutral country hosting a summit conference.

  Poor little Switzerland. So many depending on so little for so much.

  Max sprawled on the love seat, his arms and knees spread, claiming every inch of it.

  Louie squatted on the coffee table, four paws tucked beneath him, chin pulled into his chest, eyes narrowed to fierce feline slits both horizontal and vertical.

  But the territorial dispute in question was not taking place here; Max and Louie were actually getting along for the moment.

  It was as if the cat had finally given the magician, if not the man, his due, and conceded Max's vital role in freeing Louie's royal hide from duress vile. Louie's sudden thaw toward Max was about two whiskers this side of severe suspicion.

  "You're running around like a snail-darter," Max said to Temple.

  "Don't worry about our fierce aspects. Louie and I won't bite."

  "I know. It's just that Matt's making a big concession. I'd promised him I wouldn't tell anyone."

  Temple turned to give Max, and Louie, the full impact of her gaze. Matt was coming down, into their hostile territory, at her behest. He and Max were to be on their best behavior.

  Max l
eaned forward on the sofa, bracing his elbows on his knees. "I appreciate his help. I really do."

  "Just make sure Matt knows that. This is . . . very private to him. I know he thinks I've betrayed him."

  "And what do you think?"

  "I think . . . it's time you two shared what you know, at least. I think it's dangerous to us all to keep secrets from each other."

  "Some secrets," Max iterated.

  "Some secrets," Temple agreed.

  But she wrung her hands while she was waiting, and then realized the gesture would remind Max (and Matt and herself) of her missing ring, and then of that dreadful magic show....

  Matt knocked, softly.

  Temple started and dashed for the door.

  "Hi."

  He was already looking beyond her, trying to measure the opposition. Why did it have to be like this?

  "Come in. Sit down. On the . . . side chair."

  He did so, as stiff as the white roll of paper he balanced between his fingertips.

  Temple stood before them, between them, like a ringmaster.

  You're probably all wondering why I've gathered you together. . . .

  "Matt. Max." Countrymen. "I thought it was time, given what happened ... to me ... at the magic show ... "--blatant appeal for sympathy . . . Lend me your ears.

  "Lieutenant Molina--" It was fascinating to read the very different expressions on the two men's faces as she invoked that name. "Lieutenant Molina was looking for someone in the theater that night that she never found, and it wasn't Max."

  Max smiled; Matt didn't.

  "We agree that no one here wants Molina to be the first to share our secrets. So ... I think it's important that Max see this woman who attacked Matt. Maybe he can shed some light--

  "Oh, God, Temple," Matt said, interrupting. "If it'll stop this agonizingly roundabout introduction to why and wherefore, I'll show him my high school photograph."

  Max laughed like a Marx brother. "Amen. Let me see that thing."