Cat in a Leopard Spot

by Carole Nelson Douglas

  “Oooh, Lieutenant, you do know how to appeal to the artistic soul. What do you suspect this unidentifiable guy of? I assume the suspect is a guy.”

  “Oh, yes. Well, anything from loitering to public intoxication to murder.”

  “You wouldn’t need a portrait of a suspected loiterer. Or a drunk.”

  “No. Are you willing to do it? ‘Rick’ works Monday through Saturday.”

  “Even the bartender works under a nom de guerre? I can’t resist. Sleaze factor wins every time. Besides, I’m sure we’ll always have Paris. The regular rate?”

  “A thirty percent sleaze bonus.”

  “All right.”

  Molina eyed the detectives’ reports again as she hung up. Although they had thoroughly grilled Secrets habitués and tracked Cher Smith’s ragged family background, her death still had unsolved written all over it. The cold facts: 78 percent of strippers are stalked by customers; 61 percent are assaulted by them. Add the usual late-night muggings in bad neighborhoods, and the odds grew longer than a lying Pinocchio’s nose in favor of whoever had killed Cher getting away clean as a wolf whistle.

  This Vince character was the only missing piece in the puzzle. She hoped Janice—wry, solid, talented Janice—would piece enough of Vince together to give her detectives a face to find. A face that wasn’t Rafi Nadir’s. Ironic, how much she needed him to be not guilty this time.

  Matt was surprised when his phone rang again so soon after he’d hung up. He jumped as if guilty of something, but the only possible offense was still feeling guilty about the call he’d made on that phone only half an hour ago. Guilt only goes around to come back and give the owners a good hard kick.

  “Matt?” Her voice came breathless, unusual for Janice, and not at all like it had sounded a half hour ago when he had called. Before he could acknowledge that she had indeed reached him, she rushed on. “Listen, I don’t blame you for canceling our dinner tonight. That was pushing it. Inviting you here for dinner, I mean. Kiddies off. Home alone. Actually, you didn’t cancel it, you just didn’t accept it. I don’t blame you.”

  “Janice, that isn’t it at all.”

  “No? What else could it be? I feel like the Venus fly trap that failed.”

  While Matt pondered an answer to that, she rushed on. Her anxiety to smooth over an apparent snag in their tentative relationship both aggravated his guilt and intrigued him. He was glad his late-life entry into the dating game was rattling someone else besides him.

  “Just listen,” she was saying. “Right after you called, an identification job came up. Just now. I could do it tonight. But. The neighborhood’s not the best. Want to come along? I could use a bodyguard.”

  “You don’t know how much. But it’s not me—”

  “It could be fun. Well, okay. Interesting. Secrets. It’s a strip joint. I’ve got an uncooperative bartender to deal with. I feel like a gun-fighter strutting into a new saloon. Draw, partner, draw!”

  Matt laughed. “Janice, where on earth did you get this assignment?”

  “From your friend the homicide dick.”

  “Molina sent you into that kind of a situation?”

  “Why not? She’d go into it. Why shouldn’t a sensitive artist type like me soak up the scintillating ambiance too? Besides, she’s paying extra and I could use the money.”

  “It’s not an environment I’d visit in a million years.”

  A long pause. “I know. I’m asking too much. It might freak you out.”

  He was feeling too guilty about saying no to dinner, at home alone, to let her go unescorted into a seedy situation like a strip club. He was already figuring a strategy to make sure that Kitty O’Connor knew nothing about it, or about Janice.

  “Janice. Why’d you say yes?”

  “I need the money. I could use something weird in my life. I’m trying my damnedest not to drive you away.”

  Matt shook his head at the phone, where the gesture didn’t do any good. As Janice had caved in to Molina, he was about to cave in to her. Maybe life’s everyday plotline was constructed by a daisy chain of cowards. He couldn’t let her face a strip club alone. For the moment, Secrets sounded a lot more hazardous than Miss Kitty.

  “I said yes to the job,” Janice admitted, “before I really thought about what it would mean.” Another pause. “And…you wouldn’t be trapped with me. Plenty of other female competition to think about.” She was still coaxing. “A dozen topless dancers will be our chaperons, honest.”

  “I don’t feel trapped. At least not by you. I can see I’m going to have to explain myself, and I’d better do it in person. All right. I’m off work tonight. When do you want to do the dirty deed?”

  They settled on what seemed a reasonable time, if there ever was a reasonable time for going to a strip joint. Matt hung up finally, pondering how to completely rearrange his life in a few short hours.

  Living alone meant that the apartment was utterly silent when he was. He wasn’t used to solitary living. Rectory life bristled with people always coming and going, both residents and visitors.

  He sat on the red sofa savoring the silence. And then he wondered if the place was bugged. He couldn’t underestimate Kitty O’Connor. Her uncanny way of knowing where he was, and when, was probably based on years of undercover experience.

  His skin crawled at how easily the most innocuous life could be compromised. One determined monomaniac could weasel her way into every crevice of his routine.

  Matt stood.

  He left and locked the apartment, for whatever good it might do, and took the elevator to the building’s main floor.

  The Circle Ritz lived up to its name both in its rotund construction and its aura of faded 1950s glory, when it had been architecturally reasonable to slather black marble on floors and exterior walls as if it were Russian caviar on Melba toast.

  He passed through the modest lobby, his reflection on the black marble floor making him feel like he was walking on water, on very dark, deep water. At least the hall leading to the chapel was paved in step-softening walnut parquet.

  A wedding was in progress.

  Matt slipped into a white-painted pew as discreetly as he could. From much past experience of weddings and funerals, it was very discreetly indeed. He only glanced at his seatmate once his settling rustles had quieted.

  Oh. Of course. Elvis.

  Elvis sat as still as a corpse. Matt couldn’t see beyond the dark, silver-framed aviator shades to anything resembling eyes. Electric candelabra stationed at the pew ends threw dancing lights on the colored stones studding Elvis’s wedding-white jumpsuit. His pompadour and sideburns were angel-hair white too.

  Platinum Elvis took up a lot of space. Matt squeezed against the pew end. Wouldn’t want to crowd the King. He put his respectful attention on the ceremony. He had, after all, crashed this wedding.

  Electra, looking like a late-life girl graduate in her black JP’s robe, officiated. In a few minutes she released the fortyish couple to a slow walk back down the aisle between a smattering of friends and the host of soft-sculpture figures with which Electra populated the pews so every couple would have a full house.

  Taped music—Hawaiian Wedding Song—played until everyone involved had hula-ed down the aisle and out, except Electra and himself.

  Matt stood as she noticed him. “Got a few minutes?”

  “Got scads of minutes,” she said. “Las Vegas weddings are much less impromptu now. Everything’s scheduled. Like real life. Kinda boring.”

  “I see the organ is a stage prop these days.”

  “Oh, yes.” She shrugged out of the robe. “It’s easier not arranging for Euphonia to come to play it. Besides, couples want a high-tech ceremony today: their favorite songs; videotapes-to-go; balloons released; all the wedding bells and whistles.”

  Matt moved to the silent organ, his fingertips pausing on the pale keys. “Kind of a shame.”

  “You’re welcome to come and play any time the chapel’s dead.”

>   “Dead?”

  “Not hosting a wedding.”

  “Speaking of dead—” He looked questioningly toward Elvis.

  “My newest.” Electra fondly regarded the figure. “He just didn’t want to be left out. And, you know, I met this neat Today Elvis guy at the big Kingdome Hotel opening with all the impersonators present, and have never seen hide nor snow-white hair of him since. I thought we had something special. So this is a memorial to Izzy.”

  “Izzy?”

  “Too complicated to explain, Matt. Aren’t there some things in your life too complicated to explain?”

  “How about everything?”

  “Such ambition,” Electra joshed. “You’re too young to be that mysterious.”

  “Not mysterious, just mystified. Anyway, I want to offer you a deal you can’t refuse. I’m hoping that Elvis in the pew is on my side.”

  “Really?” Electra’s thinning gray eyebrows lifted as high as they were capable of.

  “I want to make a trade.”

  “Trade?”

  “My Millennium Volkswagen Beetle for your Ford Probe.”

  “Your silver Elvismobile for my old faded pink Probe?”

  “Right.”

  “But…I’ve loved Elvis since 1955, and he gave that car to you.”

  “Exactly.”

  “To you, not to me.”

  “I don’t believe in Elvis. I’m sorry, Electra, but I just don’t. I believe in the Holy Ghost, but I don’t believe in Elvis. Maybe he just isn’t holy enough. So I can’t accept a car from someone I don’t believe in. It’s fitting that you have the Beetle. It means something to you. And…I could use a less high-profile car.”

  “But your new VW is worth six times more than my old Probe.”

  “That’s why I’d like you to throw in the Hesketh Vampire. You can keep occasional riding privileges, though. I’d hate to see you hang up your Speed Queen helmet for good.”

  “I thought you loathed that motorcycle.”

  “Did it show that much?”

  “And how! This deal is saccharine sweet for me. But I hate taking advantage of you.”

  “You’d be doing me a favor, but I’d probably get the Probe repainted.”

  “Color it purple; see if I care.”

  “I was thinking…white.”

  “Oh.”

  “Practical in this hot climate.”

  “At my age, I don’t want practical and white unless it’s a private nurse. But suit yourself, dear boy. No doubt it’ll be a tropical-weight white linen one.”

  “White may be practical in cars, but it’s murder on suits. Besides, I got used to black.”

  Electra winked. “If you get too lonesome for black, you can slip on my justice of the peace robe and stand in for me.”

  “I’m not qualified to perform civil ceremonies. Besides, I always hated doing weddings.”

  “For goodness’ sake, why?”

  “So many of them end in shreddings and sheddings. A lot of them start from a position of insanity and go on from there.”

  “I guess I know that from experience.” Electra, obviously recalling one or all of her vaunted five husbands, stared at the soft-sculpture audience as if searching for answers.

  “And,” Matt said quickly, before she was permanently lost on Moonlight Bay, “I need the Probe tonight, if that’s all right. We can take care of the title changes any day this week after that.”

  “Borrow my car? Sure. I’ll bring the keys down to you this afternoon about four.”

  “Great,” Matt said, relieved.

  The first part of his self-defense plan was going so well he was beginning to feel optimistic.

  Chapter 9

  Heads or Tails?

  As soon as the denizens of the Circle Ritz have finished their chitchat in the chapel and departed, I remove myself from where I am curled up next to the Lady in Black and decamp to the side of my old friend Elvis.

  He is looking a little pasty-faced today and quite unlike himself in the bleached hair with which Miss Electra Lark has saddled him. It makes me wonder in what state I will be represented after my demise. Bald or bleached is definitely not my style.

  I curl up by the King and thoughtfully knead my front shivs into his overstuffed knee, occasionally scratching my chin on one of the prong-set stones bedewing his stretch polyester. Of course, the real Elvis’s jumpsuits were fashioned from the finest Italian wool, but one cannot expect Miss Electra Lark to underwrite that level of authenticity.

  I am quite pleased with myself, and for once that is for a reason. I sicced…er, sent Miss Midnight Louise to tail Mr. Max Kinsella and find out what he is up to while on the trail of the missing leopard. No doubt Mr. Max is sympathetic to the Cloaked Conjuror’s loss, as he himself worked with a black panther named Kahlúa during our Halloween caper. Actually, panther is a Miss Nomer. The beast in question is really a black leopard, so Kahlúa is a sister under the skin to Osiris.

  Obviously, that is one big wild cat chase, as no one even knows where Mr. Max resides, except perhaps my Miss Temple, and she has been exceedingly canny about keeping even me in the dark as to his usual whereabouts.

  Meanwhile, I have stuck to my base at the Circle Ritz, and have come up with a destination and a means of transportation without hardly batting a drowsing eye.

  Of course, Mr. Matt is not on the trail of the cat, but he is up to something unsavory. I can tell by a certain air he wears when he feels guilty, which is frequently. I wish that they would bottle guilt and sell it as a unisex cologne. I can smell it from a hundred paces and following its trail never leads me astray.

  So after lavishing my manicured attention on poor old Elvis for a while, I regretfully leave my cushy situation and hie out to the Circle Ritz parking lot to wait by Miss Electra Lark’s pink Probe. I am hoping that Mr. Matt’s appointment is after dark, so I can slip into the back seat as he enters the front without being detected.

  Then we shall see where he goes and what happens there. I hope it is somewhere more exciting than an ex-priests’ meeting at Maternity of Mary in Henderson.

  I am not the churchy type, and especially not the maternal one.

  Chapter 10

  Animal Instincts

  “What was that masked thing?” Temple asked as the Maxima jolted over the dusty road taking her and Max away from the Animal Oasis.

  “This?”

  Max pulled a small object from his pocket that looked like a tiny camera, but wasn’t.

  “It scans lines of type. Here. It’s on. Scroll down with the arrow until you come to an address on Redrock Mountain Road.”

  “Wow. I’d never need a pen and notebook again. What’s at this address?”

  “Someplace you’d never want Midnight Louie to go.”

  “Really! What is it? The animal pound?”

  “Worse. It’s Rancho Exotica, owned by one of the area’s biggest big game hunters. He’s rumored to run an ‘animal ranch’ for breeding and sale. I’ve heard of his operation. Very hush-hush.”

  “What’s so hush-hush about another Animal Oasis?”

  “Word is he provides canned hunts and trophy heads for high rollers.”

  “Max! This is where you’re going to send me? I like being independent, but that doesn’t include suicide.”

  “Last time I looked, you were still two-legged. Relax. Cyrus Van Burkleo is untouchable in this town. He bankrolls all the right fundraisers. Very smooth operator. Rumors can’t hurt him. If I went in there, he’d smell investigation. You…you’re just an eager-beaver PR gal doing some background research. I took the liberty of setting up an appointment for you.”

  “Now, while I was wobbling around Animal Oasis with the gallant Mr. Granger? How?”

  “I phoned.” Max produced his cell phone from his other jacket pocket.

  “But how did you get an appointment on such short notice?”

  “I said I was Van von Rhine’s personal assistant calling from the Crystal Phoenix. We wer
e running up against deadline on opening our animal attraction and could Mr. Van Burkleo spare a few minutes with their ace project coordinator, who could use some expert tips for the Phoenix exotic petting zoo? Van Burkleo doesn’t turn major hotel-casinos down, especially one with a manager whose name so neatly mirrors his own.”

  “The Phoenix isn’t so major compared to some of the T rexes in this town now that MGM Grand has bought out Steve Wynn.”

  Max smiled tightly, never taking his eyes from the rutted road. “But Macho Mario Fontana is major muscle; this guy’d never irritate a Fontana operation.”

  “The Phoenix has nothing to do with Nicky’s uncle Mario. I know that for a fact.”

  Max’s terse smile widened into a grin. “But Cyrus Van Burkleo doesn’t know that. And don’t you tell him.”

  “So what is my mission at Rancho Van Burkleo?”

  “Be on your toes”—Max glanced to the floorboard and at her platform wedge sandals—“which I don’t have to tell you to do. Ask anything, see everything, and make mental notes on it all. If you happen to notice a leopard that isn’t as happy a camper as the big cats you just saw at Animal Oasis…don’t let on. Naive, nubile, and perky should do it.”

  “Max, that’s sexist.”

  “So is Van Burkleo. I wouldn’t send you in there if I didn’t know he had a blind spot that’s just your size. Think you can handle it?”

  If Molina had asked her that question, she would have snarled “Sure” on a knee-jerk impulse. With Max, she was tempted to hedge. And that told her she was getting all too dependent on him.

  Time to go face King Kong on her own, hopefully without her hands tied behind her back.

  Rancho Van Burkleo was tucked even farther back from the highway than Animal Oasis.

  It sported no workshop-lettered sign. Only a desert track that suddenly turned into asphalt running toward the end of the world.

  “There’s nothing out here, Max.”

  “That’s the idea you’re supposed to have. Slow down and drop me off here. I want to scout the perimeter.”

  “Dressed in black?”