Cat in an Orange Twist

by Carole Nelson Douglas

  Temple noted that not only were Amelia Wong’s bodyguards obviously on duty but Maylords had rousted its entire security force to ring the entire area.

  She marked Rafi Nadir among them, dark suited and as theatrically glowering as a Gangsters chauffeur.

  He saw her and winked.

  Man, first Alch, now Nadir. How come nobody remotely available winked at her? Max, where are you when you are sorely needed?

  Amelia Wong stepped to the front of the Maylords group, bracketed by the Sunglasses. Behind her, blond Baylee was lost behind a giant cardboard check.

  Before Ms. Wong could say a word, Temple dashed forward to intercept her with the most negative announcement of her generally positive PR life. The show’s over, folks. My client, Maylords, is a multiple murder site. Forget the festivities, the good deeds, and get the hell out of here before you die. And so will my career reputation.

  But before Temple could do the right thing and commit career suicide in front of Crawford Buchanan and everybody, another figure pushed through the fretting circle of official police observers, right between Alch and Su.

  It was tall, dark, clad in navy blue, and meant business.

  Oh, my great-aunt Thumbelina, it’s Lieutenant C. R. Molina. What on earth is she doing here? Maybe a double murder and assault-weapon attack would attract the literally lofty personal attention of a homicide lieutenant.

  Temple felt the slo-mo agony of watching an inevitable accident of epic proportions. She did a double take in four-four time. From Molina to Nadir, from Nadir back to Molina.

  When would one notice, and recognize, the other?

  Who would be first to see, and to move? And how?

  Temple only had eyes for Rafi Nadir. And Carmen Molina.

  Molina had noticed Temple. She frowned suspiciously and let her slick gaze slide past the hoopla to study the crowd, looking for what had attracted Temple.

  Great. Temple had gone from cooked PR whiz to human pointer and police snitch.

  Janice next received Molina’s steely passing gaze and instant ID, but never even noticed.

  Alch and Su watched their boss’s scrutiny with studied indifference.

  Molina panned past the TV videographers. Then Amelia and company. Her laserlike vivid blue gaze moved on, taking instant photos of everyone present. Inevitably, it found and lingered on the outer circle of hell at last.

  On the Maylords private security force, each and every one.

  On . . . finally, Rafi Nadir.

  Only Temple fully understood what this inevitable meeting of old allies turned intimate enemies might mean.

  Nadir sensed Molina’s intense observation, and looked back.

  Shock. Mutual paralysis. Sparks. Fury without sound.

  Molina had frozen into angry ice.

  Nadir looked like he would spontaneously combust.

  You! The unspoken challenge jumped like heat lightning from opposite sides of the circle of onlookers.

  The crowd buzzed on, unaware.

  Temple held her breath. This was one scene she wanted to savor in mental rerun for years. Except it was her job to avert public scenes. Drat and darn and damn Yankees! She’d better concoct a distracting tactic fast.

  Good Cop, Bad Cop

  Who’da cast a furniture store as the setting for a clash of titans?

  Temple wasn’t the only witness flash-frozen into horror when Nadir’s eyes met Molina’s. None of the other onlookers knew the history of these two contenders, though.

  “Listen, people,” Temple heard herself saying. “This check-passing ceremony would really film much better thirty feet back, in front of the central fountain. Let’s move, shall we?”

  The splashing water of the central fountain would also muffle any imminent fireworks up front.

  Temple shooed her tight knot of cardboard-check clutchers backward. Media cameras and mikes obligingly followed. It only took ninety seconds to get the group in motion en masse, but Temple’s ears were tuned to the action behind her.

  For such dedicated antagonists, their reactions were in total harmony.

  “You!” each spat like fighting alley cats. Temple backed up behind the videographers, nodding to encourage the check passer, then turned and sped back to the crime scene in progress.

  Interesting. Temple detected no fear on Nadir’s side, but plenty of high anxiety on Molina’s.

  Not that the Iron Maiden of the LVMPD broadcast anything but authoritarian steel. Still, Temple had spent . . . oh, hours . . . trying to figure the woman out. She noticed the classic Shakespearian giveaway in the lieutenant’s demeanor: mainly, way too much cold control. Me-thinks she doth repress too much.

  “What are you doing here?”

  The pair spoke in embarrassing concert again.

  “Security,” Nadir said in answer.

  Molina glanced over her shoulder at a puzzled Alch. “You have a file on this guy?”

  “I do, Lieutenant,” Alch said.

  Both Nadir and Molina jumped at the sound of her title.

  Nadir’s surprise instantly iced over with resentment. Molina froze like a cat on a hot tin roof who had just been fingered by animal control. If her situation weren’t precarious enough already, they had to make TV news of it.

  “Make sure you keep that file current,” she snapped, then turned to leave.

  “Wait!” Nadir moved to stop her, maybe just follow her. “I need to talk to you.”

  “Not my need at all,” she said. “Thank your unlucky stars for that. Stay out of my way. I don’t need to tell you to stay out of trouble either; that’s a waste of time. If you’re cleared on this, I do suggest you stay out of Las Vegas. Permanently.”

  This time when she turned her back on Nadir she was unstoppable, leaving in her wake only the whip crack of her bootheels smashing into travertine.

  Nadir instinctively started to follow, but Su, tiny flower of Asian womanhood, stepped forward to block his way.

  He assessed her, moved ahead.

  Su grabbed one hand and did some twisty thing with his thumb that had Nadir’s knees buckling.

  “The lieutenant doesn’t want to see you,” Su said. “Got it?”

  She released his thumb and stepped back in a martial arts stance, hands up and spread to indicate she was willing to let him off if he didn’t push it.

  Rafi shook his hand. “Tricks. You women are full of ’em.”

  It wasn’t what Temple would have said to diffuse the situation, but Su just grinned, complimented. Then she turned on her own low-heeled Mary Janes and exited, quiet as a crouching tiger.

  That left . . . Detective Alch. And Temple.

  He caught Temple’s eyes as she met his. They had seen each other on the fringes of several investigations under Molina’s supervision. Temple knew Alch was one of Molina’s top detectives. Alch knew Temple for a gifted amateur sleuth who was a perennial thorn in his boss’s hide. They both shrugged. An unspoken understanding had been reached.

  Alch ambled off after the macho women on his team.

  Temple ankled over to macho man Rafi Nadir. “What did she do to your thumb? Is it okay?”

  “Yeah. After the numbness wears off. Some tricky Chink stuff. They’re little people and they make up for it with all that marital arts hooey. Makes sense for them. I wasn’t ready for that, from her. Jesus. Carmen.”

  Temple wasn’t ready to hear those last two words in tandem.

  “What?” Nadir looked around, saw they were alone. At last. He figured out the source of Temple’s surprise, at least. “I’m Christian, for Christ’s sake. Lebanese-American, like Ralph Nader. I get to swear.”

  Temple put up her hands, realizing too late she was mimicking Su’s hand’s-off stance. But from her it was a peace sign.

  Nadir’s hand checked the back of his neck for tension. “What the hell was she doing here?” He eyed Temple. “You know her?”

  “Um, she knows me, and not in a necessarily friendly way. I imagine she wanted to view th
e Wong juggernaut in action. It must be tough investigating murder among the media icons.”

  “A lieutenant. Sure, why not? Women and blacks and Latinos are the gender and color scheme of the decade in public service jobs. What do you know about her?”

  “A little,” Temple said. “I bet you know a lot more. Maybe we should talk about it.”

  “I don’t get off for an hour.” He looked around. The fountain area was still ablaze with TV lights.

  “I can wait,” Temple said. She had a little exercise in crowd control to finish first.

  The check passing was over and recorded for six seconds on the nightly news. Videographers were on the floor in obeisance, packing their equipment in oblong black boxes that struck Temple as coffins for cameras.

  “How did it go?” Temple asked Kenny and Amelia Wong after she’d thanked the MADD representatives and sent them on their way with the media.

  “We did as you said,” Kenny reported like a dutiful fourth-grader. “Anytime they asked about the death on site, I said I hadn’t been briefed by the police yet and to check with their spokesperson.”

  “We kept some of the focus on MADD,” Amelia added, “as you suggested. It made them look crass to badger us about the death here with grieving mothers who had lost children looking on. Media are sheep.”

  “Not always,” Temple cautioned. “They can bite like packs of wolves sometimes. But they do have hearts and if you can find a way to stir their collective conscience, you are much better off than being the target of their relentless curiosity. If either of you are contacted for statements again, express your sincere sorrow at the death. That’s all. Over and over again, in different words if you have to. Let the police make the official statements.”

  Having settled down her power players, Temple headed back to Rafi Nadir. He was staring out the front windows at the parking lot, and was startled when she came up to him.

  “I thought you were hobnobbing with the big cheeses.”

  This was it: her chance to pump Rafi for every shred of insight into Early Molina. He was obviously shocked out of his shoes. Max would love this.

  Holding Rafi Nadir’s hand on the occasion of his unexpected meeting with Carmen Molina, Temple discovered, involved (sigh) a rendezvous at a strip club, the only place he would agree to go.

  At least she had talked him into patronizing Les Girls after his shift was over. Les Girls was the only strip club in Vegas owned and operated by (gasp) women. Women strippers, retired . . . or not.

  Temple was known there from a previous PR job, and, on the pretext of visiting the Maylords ladies’ room, an oddly inapt expression, called ahead on her cell phone. She reached the manager, Lindy Boggs. That assured a reserved table where Temple could hear what Nadir was saying over the cranked-up music.

  Did she have pull in this town or what?

  They went in separate cars. Nadir would never consent to playing passenger in her Miata. Ride shotgun in a pussy car? Hell, no: unshakable evidence of a wuss. And Temple wasn’t keen on sharing the shabby charms of the ’89 Grand Prix that turned out to be his.

  So out of the lot and over to Les Girls they drove in single file, Temple bringing up the rear and wondering how she could dig up all the dirt she was dying to know about Molina’s lurid past. Hey, if it involved Rafi Nadir, it had to be lurid!

  Ottoman Empire

  Since everyone is leaving Maylords as if fleeing the Titanic, I find it expedient to trail the human footwear leaving my cushy gilded cage, a.k.a. the scene of my recent retail triumphs.

  Despite having been hailed as the most chichi household accessory since the Teddy bear, my ears are twitching as if flea-bitten. I have heard more than I wanted to during my day undercover atop the upholstery, and do not yet know what to make of it.

  And then there is the bloody murder I have witnessed. No, I did not see the abrasive Beth Blanchard done in and hung as decoratively as a string of dried red peppers. But I did witness the epic reunion of Miss Lt. C. R. Molina with her long-absent former squeeze, Rafi Nadir. Was that an emotion-wringing spectacle! I love to watch humans spat.

  Meanwhile, I slip out with the Wong party and the media mob. The videographers carry long black boxes full of lighting equipment that I can trot under like a shadow. Anyone of my acquaintance might spot my tricks.

  Luckily, my Miss Temple is so fascinated by the Molina-Nadir scene that she would not notice a giant cockroach hitchhiking on her instep.

  I split off from the crew outdoors and scurry for the store’s foundation plantings. I have not reckoned on a surprise reunion of my own, however.

  Miss Midnight Louise leaps out of an oleander clump and claws me on the shoulder.

  “Not so fast, partner. When can I expect to see the holiday line? A skeletal you for Halloween would be truly chic.”

  “I imagine you noticed that I was quite a hit among the home furnishings set.”

  “I noticed that you were about as ‘undercover’ as an orange on St. Paddy’s Day. So. What did you learn? Who killed the latest corpse? What is going on? What does the lady lieutenant have against the Maylords security guy?”

  I burrow out of sight, not wanting to be seen being harangued by my own associate. “Let me catch my breath, Louise.”

  “Like you were not catching your breath, and about forty thousand winks, on the Maylords cushions all day?”

  “A lot has gone on.”

  “So I observed through the windows. But what does it mean?”

  “Unfortunately, I was not near the murder scene before my poor Miss Temple happened upon the dead woman.”

  “That was no doubt the time you played dead when the woman moved you to the other sofa to see how you would look against gray suede.”

  “How did I look against gray suede?”

  “Puffed up, lazy, and unobservant.”

  “Louise! I had to act like I did not have a bone in my torso. It was bad enough that she would have detected my body heat in a few seconds, had she not set me down.”

  “I am surprised that you did not go into the usual comatose state that you adopt on furniture. That reduces your metabolism to dust-bunny level. So you have nothing to report that I could not have seen from my outside watching posts?”

  “Actually, though I was on lunch break at the Dumpster out back at the probable time of the murder, I did happen upon it soon after. And I saw a lot of suspicious characters slinking in and out of the model rooms beforehand. There was the late Miss Beth Blanchard herself, who had a fetish for rearranging pictures. There was a squat, chubby man in a linen suit who seemed to be spying on everybody. There was Mr. Rafi Nadir, who also seemed to be watching everybody. I noticed a nondescript man with a beard who was keeping a close eye on the murder victim as well. That list does not include a rather scruffy, tall fellow wearing a great quantity of cow leather, who apparently had come in the back way. I saw him watching La Blanchard hang pictures, but then he just vanished. He was wearing boots and sunglasses.”

  “Hmmm!’ Miss Louise does not allow her comment to escalate into anything so pleasant as a purr. “It could have been the hit man . . . or I wonder if that could have been your roomie’s previous live-in, Mr. Max Kinsella? He has been strangely absent lately.”

  “That is fine with me. It is a lot less crowded on the king-size without him. Do you think he could be working undercover at Maylords?”

  “No more so than you,” she says acidly.

  I immediately get the implication. “I have made a lot of progress, Louise, it is just not obvious yet.”

  “And when will it be obvious? At the rate people are dying in Maylords, customers will have to schedule séances to consult the

  staff.”

  “Clients,” I correct her. “Only low-brow establishments have ‘customers.’”

  “I see.” She looks me over as if I were human belly-button lint. “So you are well rested, but you have learned nothing useful.”

  “What I have learned will be very har
d to convey to these insensitive humans. I will need to develop a long-range plan. Do not rush me, Louise. I must have time to lay my plans.”

  “You sound like a hen.”

  Before I can respond to this rank accusation, Miss Louise stares in the direction of the parking lot.

  “I see your roomie is going off with the sinister-looking Nadir guy that gave Lieutenant Molina the heebie-jebbies. Maybe you should follow her.”

  “No,” I say, surprising the vibrissae off of her. “Miss Temple can take care of herself, but there is something else only I, and you, can do, and it is not around here.”

  She presses me for details, but I only have a hunch, and am not about to blow it. Besides, I am eager to get outside and eavesdrop on what is going on inside Molina’s car.

  It’s My Party . . .

  In the Maylords parking lot, Molina had hurled herself into the passenger seat of the Crown Vic and sat there, arms crossed on her chest, staring through the windshield into the glare of the Las Vegas late-afternoon sun.

  Morrie Alch got in, and started the engine. The fan, set on high, washed them with lukewarm air.

  “Su do any prosecutable damage?” she asked.

  Alch chuckled. “You got eyes in the back of your head, don’t you? No. Just cooled him down some. I get a charge out of how she can ice those macho guys. She looks so dainty and acts so alpha.”

  “Yeah.” Molina sighed. “The psychology of surprise. I could never use that. I’m too big. For a woman.”

  “Not in my book.”

  She shot him a glance, half surprise, half warning. She didn’t encourage fraternizing.

  Alch figured this was no time to accommodate what Carmen Molina didn’t encourage.

  “This is bad,” he said.

  She didn’t answer.

  “Very bad. Want to tell me why?”

  “No.”

  “Need to tell me why?”

  She nailed him with a don’t-mess-with-me glance, then, seeing it wasn’t working, sighed again.

  “Off the record,” he said. “Out of the ball park. Like we weren’t cops, weren’t superior and inferior. Like we were . . . veterans of the same war, reminiscing years after.”