“I don’t know,” Temple admitted. “I can see why he might kill Cyrus Van Burkleo—”
“I am so glad that you can. Because I can’t. And if I can’t, I can’t arrest him, much as whoever wrapped him in Armani and left him here to dry might wish. You know anybody with a size thirty-two Armani waist, hmmm? Can’t be a bleeding-heart animal lover. It was a leather belt.”
“You’ll just have to ask the suspect, Lieutenant.”
“He isn’t a suspect on your say-so. I’ll have to let him go.”
“Don’t.”
They turned at the interjection of a fresh voice. A husky, shaky voice.
Leonora Van Burkleo stood on wobbly heels by herself, having hiked in from Temple’s car.
“I…I found them.”
“Found?” Molina asked.
“Them?” Temple asked.
Molina gave Temple a quelling glance. “Found where?” Molina asked more gently, sensing Leonora’s fragile state.
Leonora shrugged, looked to the side as if envisioning a scene from a movie. “In Cyrus’s office. That man had…pushed Cyrus. The…horn was sticking out of his chest. A big dark point like a thorn. Giant thorn. It looked like the oryx had done it. So odd. After seeing all those horns on the wall, seeing one…going through Cyrus like a rifle barrel.” She shivered, though the day was at its hottest.
“She’s not a well woman,” Temple said. Cautioned.
Molina gave her a look that could kill. She made cases on not-well women and men. Murder revolved around not-well men and women.
Temple glanced at Matt, who grimaced his sympathy. The law on the trail of a vulnerable witness was not a pretty sight.
“So,” Molina said with satisfaction. “The leopard was set dressing. I thought so.”
“I thought of it,” Leonora said, lifting her mishapen face, tossing her leonine mane.
“You?” Molina hesitated, no doubt thinking of Miranda warnings. “You could be an accessory to murder,” she said, spewing the ritual faster than a TV huckster.
Leonora, having abandoned fear, was unstoppable. “I don’t care. I let him into the animal area, punched in the security code. He did the rest. Brought the leopard along, brought it inside. Didn’t need anything but his voice. And then he left. That’s a crime? Letting a man release a leopard?”
Molina looked at Leonora for a long moment.
“There are extenuating circumstances,” Temple blurted.
Molina did not look at her. “Call a lawyer,” she advised Leonora softly. “Meanwhile, I’m taking you all in.”
“All?” Temple asked.
Molina still did not look at her. “I assume you can drive Mr. Devine home, Miss Barr.”
When Matt made a move in protest, Molina answered it, edging near so Temple couldn’t hear. “I’ll give you a police-car escort. That ought to keep the bogeywoman away. Now.” Her voice escalated to public level for Temple’s benefit. “Off with you. I want to do my job.”
Temple gave Leonora a thumbs-up as she edged over to Matt.
He put an arm around her. Her bare arm was cold and goose-pimpled.
It was getting dark. No self-respecting stalker, he was willing to bet, was hanging around this headache-bar-lit crime scene.
“Are you okay?” he asked.
“No. And I don’t understand any of it, except poor Leonora.”
“What happened to her?”
“What didn’t? If Molina—”
“I think she gets the message. She’ll treat her with kid gloves.”
“Since when has she treated anyone with kid gloves?”
“How about her own kid?”
“You think so?” Temple glared at him, an aftershock of the evening, then her expression softened. “Matt, what on earth were you doing with Mother Macabre anyway?”
“I had a confession to make.”
“Oh! Joke your way out of it! All right, I give up. Take me home.”
“I’ll have to stop to pick up the Vampire at Our Lady of Guadalupe.”
“You weren’t kidding about the confession,” Temple said.
“I never kid.”
She paused in stomping off the overlit scene to smile at him. “I wish you did. Sometimes.”
Two officers in summer khaki examined their IDs before they were allowed to get in the Storm and drive away.
Chapter 52
AnticliMax
“I hope it’s not too late,” Matt said.
“For you, never.”
Sister Seraphina swung the convent door wide, but Matt still checked his watch as the hall light fell on the dial. Ten-thirty. He’d been taught not to inconvenience the good sisters since he was six years old.
Old nuns had placid, plain faces, most of them, and Sister Seraphina’s was as honest and perceptive as ever.
“Want a snack?” was all she said though, leading him toward the building’s rear kitchen.
“I’m terribly sorry about standing you up for dinner. It was…well, a police emergency.”
She stopped and spun to face him, the small gold crucifix at her breastbone glinting spanglelike for a moment. “Police emergency?”
“Not mine,” he reassured her. “I just happened to be along for the ride. I don’t suppose I can explain too much.”
“Of course not. Police business. Besides, mystery becomes you. You always were too honest.”
She turned and led him on.
Too honest? Funny thing for a nun to say. Maybe she meant people who seemed to live in broad daylight all the time were less interesting than people with hints of shadow, as in Janice’s sketches. Janice always sketched shadows behind her portraits of perps. A shadow that put their faces in the spotlight and made them look more substantial, if sinister.
The deserted kitchen, brightly lit by an overhead oval of milk glass, felt as utterly functional as a school cafeteria. Maybe it was the blond Formica table-and-four-chairs units dotting the floor like bastard Swedish modern flotsam on a vinyl-tile sea.
Sister gestured him to an empty table and had whisked cotton place mats and sets of plain stainless steel silverware onto the bland Formica before he could sit down.
“Can’t I—?”
“No. We take turns at kitchen duty and today’s mine.” She grinned over her shoulder as she headed for the stove. “So you just sit there like Father and get waited on as usual.”
“Ouch.”
In half a minute she had set a bowl of stew in front of him and sat down with her own at the place opposite. “Just my little joke.”
“How did you happen to be up?”
“Happen nothing. I knew you’d come by.”
“Why?”
“Guilt. A Catholic grade school teacher, retired or not, has a nose for guilt that would make Pinocchio’s longest lying nose look like a toothpick.”
“I really regret the change in plans.”
“Yes, but that’s not what you’re guilty about.”
He was flabbergasted, and showed it.
“You’re guilty about whatever you were up to when you invited us to mass in the first place.” She waved a hand before his stupefied face. “But don’t worry about it. You don’t have to tell me a thing. Eat your stew.”
Matt picked up the soup spoon, then set it down. “There are some things I just can’t tell you. Shouldn’t tell you.”
“I should hope so.” She took several gusty swallows of the thick medley of vegetables and beef cubes.
Matt suddenly realized he was ravenous, and decided it was better to obey than to equivocate.
“Water?” she asked after a while. “Or the bishop’s brandy?”
“The bishop can keep his brandy,” he said, laughing. “Water’s fine. This is great stew.”
“You’re hungry.” She got up and bustled. “I bet you have three cartons of yogurt and some frozen dinners at your apartment.”
Matt didn’t bother disagreeing. She brought big plastic water glasses to the table. He discovered he was thirsty too. M
ust be a salty stew.
“So,” she said, seated again. “I never see that darling redheaded girl you brought to mass.”
“She’s thirty.”
“She’s still a darling girl.”
“Yeah.” No point in debating the truth. “I think so too.”
Molina drove home, the streetlights stroking across the Toyota’s hood and windshield like slow-motion strobes.
The light, motion, and rhythm were hypnotic, an environmental sleeping pill acting on her exhaustion. Even keeping the windows open didn’t help. Street noise came muted and rhythmic too. Everything conspired to lull her into numb complacency.
She drove deliberately, with extreme caution, trying not to think of the events behind her at work, or farther behind her at Rancho Exotica. She finally spotted the lit spire of Our Lady of Guadalupe, and let her tense muscles relax. Only a couple of blocks more to go. Here she was back where she had started—what? Only six hours ago.
The sound of the motor turning off after she’d pulled into the driveway was sweeter than hearing “Summertime” sung by Lady Day.
She sat in the car, hands still on the wheel, and envisioned the scene at headquarters.
Thanks to cell phones, more lawyers had descended on the place than cops and suspected killers.
The animal-rights people had called in the big-time lawyers to defend the Animal Oasis and Kirby Granger. An operation like his had its celebrity supporters, but this was ridiculous. The final straw had been when Johnnie Cochran had shown up, representing the Cloaked Conjuror.
Molina lowered her head until her forehead rested on the top of the steering wheel. What a comedy of counsels for the defense. All she needed was another secretive magician meddling with her cases.
Of course Leonora had her legions too, not only a high-priced attorney but some sister members of a domestic violence therapy group. Molina had not been surprised, thanks to Temple Barr tipping her off to the reason behind Leonora’s plastic surgery before they left the ranch: not vanity but violence.
The only suspect in the case who wasn’t up to his neck in defense attorneys was Osiris the leopard, who remained in custody at the Animal Oasis, and who was, like every other detainee, definitely not talking.
Molina had left the circus, the zoo, the human tragedy to her detectives. She could see the outcome now: Leonora Burkleo would get a suspended sentence; no prosecuting attorney would let a jury see that face and the reasons behind it and expect to get a conviction.
Granger was a goner. He had cared so much about his animal haven that he had ceased to care about himself. The Animal Oasis would go on, he had seen to that, but he would serve a long sentence in a compound for dangerous and displaced and often ill-served humans.
As for Rancho Exotica, from the buzz she was hearing among Leonora Burkleo, the animal-rights activists, and assorted attorneys, it would probably and ironically end up acquiring the canned-hunt property and animals.
She shook her head to jar out the ironies and went into the house.
Dolores was waiting at the door with an accusation. “You’re later than you thought.”
“No interrogations. I’ve had enough of that downtown.”
Molina marched for the kitchen, taking her paddle holster from the back of her belt and laying it on the counter while she opened cupboards scrounging something, some food, crackers, cookies, she didn’t know.
“Mariah went to bed at ten?”
Dolores shrugged. “She went into her room at ten.”
Molina’s hand patted the shelf and found the envelope of tens and fives she kept ready for Dolores. “A long evening. I’m sorry. What is it, eight and a half hours?”
Dolores nodded, skeptical and watching, as Molina counted out bills, then hissed in aggravation and counted them out again.
“You work too hard,” Dolores said.
“Yes. But tomorrow I can sleep in until noon. And I will.”
“Tomorrow is Sunday. Last mass is at eleven.”
“I didn’t forget,” Molina said, though she did add, “I went to mass already this evening.”
Disappointed at failing to catch Molina skipping church, Dolores took her money and sniffed, “Drunkard’s mass.”
“Not in my case. Unless you count”—she waved the open packet of cookies her questing hand had found in the cupboard—“an Oreo cookie addiction.”
Dolores shrugged again. “We always go to nine o’clock mass.”
“Then you’d better head home and get some rest yourself,” Molina suggested, seeing her out.
Dolores was a traditional Latina mother, herding her household to church and to distraction. Still, the method had worked for a long time, and most of Our Lady of Guadalupe’s parishioners were honest, hardworking people. The neighborhood gangs fought their wars away from home.
When she shut the door on Dolores, the house’s silence settled on her like a pall of dust.
She sat on the comfortably lived-on sofa and carefully peeled the chocolate cookie top off an Oreo.
A meow in the dining area drew her attention to Catarina, or was it Tabitha, stalking on gangly adolescent legs to the sofa to inspect the kill?
The young cat leaped up to sniff long and hard at the uncapped Oreo. With a patented feline look of disinterest, it moved down the sofa and began grooming its face and feet.
Carmen began licking off the cream filling in catlike bites.
The usually forbidden pure sugar fix was as potent as brandy.
The Rancho Exotica case would sort itself out over the next few days, but Osiris was off the hook. The leopard sleeps tonight.
Soon the lieutenant sleeps tonight. No night-crawling on the trail of the stripper killer. Not tonight at least. Not until she had figured out what to do about Rafi Nadir. And Max Kinsella.
The victim at the Kitty City parking lot had been too shaken to identify her attacker, who had come up behind her. She thought he was a dark-haired man.
He could have been Nadir. He could have been Kinsella.
Carmen opened another Oreo and began on another circle of icing, pale as a communion host but not tasting of paste.
Not a bad theory: Kinsella attacks her, she gets off a scream, he runs. Nadir, leaving the club, hears the scream as he’s about to drive away, runs to investigate (he is a professional security man, after all), and a watching Kinsella decides to come out of cover and pretend to discover the problem after Nadir.
Who did the guy think he was, anyway, acting like a cop? He had always been a suspect in her book, and he was still one. For the fact was, every time and every place that Rafi Nadir had been on the scene and easily capable of doing the crime, Max Kinsella had been there too, whether he was got up as “Vince” or as some self-appointed vigilante.
No, the suspect list for the death of Cher Smith wasn’t narrowing down. It was getting longer.
Carmen eyed her icing-free cookie and tossed it toward the wastebasket at the end of the kitchen/living room divider.
She made a basket.
“Max! I expected you to call hours ago.”
“I had some thinking to do.”
“Kirby, you mean.”
“I worked with him, Temple. He was my Birdman of the Mojave when I was doing my act. I had to figure out why he did it.”
“Killed Van Burkleo?”
“Hell, no! That’s understandable. It’s even more understandable when you realize that the Animal Oasis and Rancho Exotica touch borders. I haven’t finished looking into it, but I’ve uncovered a money trail. Cyrus had bought into a consortium that held the mortgage on the Oasis land and wanted to add it to the hunt ranch. I’ve discovered that Granger couldn’t stop a foreclosure. He owed a lot of money, especially since he stopped working with trained animals. High principles often mean no profit. Apparently, he had trouble with it philosophically. Even with my innocent cockatoo illusion. You know, animals that are trainable thrive on challenge, but more recently Kirb saw it all as exploitation. That’
s what I’ve been able to figure out so far.”
“So…he killed Van Burkleo to stop the brutal acquisition of his peaceable animal kingdom for a murderous purpose.”
“I don’t think he meant to kill Van Burkleo. He went over there in a rage when he discovered what was up. I think the death was accidental. Then he began figuring out how to cover it up.”
“To save his skin.”
“No. It was always the animals’ skins he wanted to save. That’s what got him off the rails in the first place.”
“Then what haven’t you figured out? You’ve unraveled how and why.”
“Shooting at the panther was so out of character. He’d killed to protect the animals. Why kill an animal?”
“So. You tell me.”
“The panther was trained, I told you that.”
“Like the leopard. Who, by the way, is cleared of all charges, right?”
“I don’t see Molina bringing even a second-degree murder charge against a leopard. Not even Molina.”
“Your favorite long arm of the law.”
“Yeah. And not often long enough away. My theory is that the panther was trained by Kirby, long ago. It was a witness when he took the leopard inside. He got the leopard back. The panther was out there. It must have preyed on Kirby’s mind. What if the panther was sent to his facility because the ranch was sold or shut down on Van Burkleo’s death? What if his relationship with the panther was observed by somebody who could put leopard and panther together? And then him as trainer of them both?”
“Somebody like you, Max. You coming around, with me. Asking questions. Looking at files.”
“Don’t say it! Don’t say that I precipitated it. I think what happened to Van Burkleo unhinged Kirby. He was so…antiviolence, and here he’d become an example for the other side. He never underestimated animals, how smart they were, what they knew and how they showed their emotions, their perceptions. He respected them enough to panic, talked himself into believing he had to kill the panther to protect the Animal Oasis. He killed, and he became what he most hated.”
“Max, everybody who murders kills the thing he or she hates the most. When I think about it, there’s usually a noble reason underneath it all. Every killer is a wronged person in his or her own mind. Every victim is wrong. Somehow.”
Cat in a Leopard Spot Page 36