Cat in a Leopard Spot Read online

  Death threats. First motive for Kinsella’s disappearance she’d heard. And what was this “Synth”? Magical nonsense, she’d bet. A catchword that meant nothing, like “presto.”

  But she was familiar with the man quoted. At least she’d seen the Cloaked Conjuror up close at TitaniCon. Speaking of creepy guys who weren’t out on the street…that animalistic mask, the mechanically altered voice…at least the Mystifying Max had performed bare-faced, which she supposed suited a congenital liar like him.

  What did the Cloaked Conjuror know about Max Kinsella? She’d just have to find out someday.

  Whatever this Synth was, she could well understand why it would issue death threats to the irritatingly mysterious Max Kinsella.

  The clock hadn’t even touched 8:00 A.M., but Temple’s doorbell rang as if suffering a knockout punch. The mellow ’50s melody continued through its changes as if it had ODed on caffeine. She swam her way through morning grogginess to the door.

  “Electra!” Temple was shocked to find that her friendly neighborhood sixty-something landlady owned the right jab behind the doorbell abuse. “What’s happened?”

  Electra’s floor-length cotton chintz muumuu, apparently a nightgown, rustled as she hurried in. “Now I know why that black-haired rascal hasn’t been sleeping here nights.”

  “Louie likes to go out on the town, but he’s home now.” Temple nodded to her living room loveseat, on which the midnight black cat in question lounged like a sphinx who had been tarred, if not feathered, his forelegs stretched out magisterially.

  “Midnight Louie nothing,” Electra said, sitting beside the large cat with a nod of greeting. “No offense, Your Highness.” She eyed Temple fiercely. “You know I meant Max.”

  Temple crossed her arms over her chest, a gesture meant to lend stern authority to her five-foot frame, which looked particularly lacking with stuffed bunny-head slippers on her feet. “No, I don’t know any such thing. And why are you keeping track of where Max sleeps?”

  “You two used to share the unit, remember?” But Electra’s good-humored face was looking sheepish. She patted the confetti-colored ringlets that matched the flora fluorescing against the muumuu’s black background. “Anyway, now I understand why he didn’t move back in when he came back from, from wherever he disappeared to. Death threats! Why didn’t you tell me?”

  “Maybe it was none of your business.”

  Electra’s ovine expression grew owlish.

  “And maybe I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Temple added, “so I can’t tell you.”

  The landlady flourished the rolled-up news section in her hand as if jousting with a fly.

  Beside her, Louie’s ears came to attention as his green eyes began searching the room’s upper air.

  “Well, all Las Vegas knows about it now,” Electra said.

  Temple went to take the paper and unroll it, turning to avoid Louie’s big black paw batting it as if begging for a look-see.

  She studied the inside feature-section page. The text in question was some show biz interview continued from the section front. Words like “audience” and “popular” leaped up at her. And then, “Max” and “Kinsella,” preceded by the oft-repeated phrase “death threats.”

  Temple sat on the sofa arm, eyes still glued to the Roman type, her rear almost mashing the end of Louie’s now twitching tail.

  Before she could make much sense of the context, a knock sounded on her door.

  “You must have jammed the bell pounding it,” Temple accused her landlady as she went to answer the summons.

  If she hadn’t been concentrating so hard on the article, she would have figured out who it was. The blond man who stood in the private hallway, reading his folded copy of the morning paper by the faint glow of Temple’s entry wall lamp, always knocked, not rang.

  “Did you know about—?” He stopped as he saw past her to Paula Revere on the couch.

  “I do now,” Temple said. “Come in and join the pajama party.”

  That seemed to be his first clue that Temple was indeed attired in something skimpy and cotton knit.

  “I should have called,” Matt said, hesitating on the threshold.

  “Why? Electra didn’t. I can’t believe you two got to the morning paper ahead of me. I’m an absolute news junkie. Oh, wait! Don’t tell me it was on the early TV news.”

  “Well—” Matt looked sheepish, just as Electra had only minutes earlier.

  Temple closed the door after him, wondering why Matt seemed a little punch-drunk this morning, and why a professional night owl was up so early anyway. Wondering also what full frontal news coverage would do to Max’s cover.

  While Electra leaped up to greet her favorite tenant, Temple took a side trip into her tiny black-and-white kitchen to see what she could offer her surprise guests.

  “Coffee, tea, or cranapple juice?” she asked, sticking her head around the barrier wall.

  “Coffee,” they caroled obligingly. If Temple could cook anything, it was coffee. She filled the coffeemaker higher than she had since Max had inadvertently moved out a year ago by vanishing from the Goliath Hotel, and pulled a trio of mugs down from the cupboard.

  “Does it say anything else?” she yelled into the other room. Cooks were always kept busy in the kitchen and had to miss all the good conversation, another thing she had against the culinary art.

  “Just that,” Electra yodeled back in the fruity register of late middle age.

  “Isn’t that enough?” Matt put in.

  “You’ve got it.” Temple shuffled out on her cozy but Disneyesque bunny slides. Her mother had sent them one Christmas, and they were too small to pass along to anybody else along the bunny trail on the gift chain. Temple wondered what Freud would make of the mother of a thirty-year-old daughter who still shopped in children’s and junior departments for her daughter. Probably that the daughter was a shrimp.

  “You two rip that article to shreds while I go change,” Temple suggested. “And if the coffeemaker makes strange choking noises, go to its aid.”

  They nodded, the blond and multicolored heads lowered over Max’s first ink in over a year.

  Louie nosed his way between them as if to join the confab.

  In five minutes Temple’s cherry-amber waves of chin-length hair resembled a style and she was dressed in a two-piece knit outfit. The bunny slippers had been replaced by svelte Onyx platform sandals with clear plastic uppers embellished by silver studs.

  Donning the right shoes was as magical for her as Dorothy’s red sequin numbers. She returned to the main room, her mood upbeat, to find the coffeemaker docile and her guests still rapt over the story.

  In two more minutes the ritual mugs were steaming on the coffee table and Temple had retrieved her own copy of the morning paper from the hall to study the story for herself.

  A silence broken only by sipping noises finally cried for a major interruption.

  Matt went first. “Do you think Max Kinsella knows about this?”

  The phone rang.

  “He does now.”

  Chapter 3

  News Flush

  There is nothing more boring than old news. Unless it is a group of people going gaga over old news as if it were new news.

  Now I am subjected to the old “three’s a crowd” situation in my own living room.

  Not only am I crowded on my sofa by Miss Electra Lark’s encroaching muumuu, but they nose me out of my morning peek at the paper too.

  Much ado about nada. Nothing. Like they did not know (or could not guess in Miss Electra Lark’s instance) that the Mystifying Max had probably gone AWOL all those months ago because of death threats.

  My Miss Temple surely knows that, as certainly as her name is Temple Barr and she is the most devoted roommate a guy of my propensities could have, except for a troubling tendency for getting involved with dudes of her own species when she should be concentrating on dudes of my species, specifically me.

  It is true that
, like fickle people everywhere, this threesome soon bustles off on their daily duties: Miss Electra Lark to tend to affairs at the Circle Ritz condominium and apartments, Mr. Matt Devine to do the sensible thing and go back to bed, as his evening shift did not end until early in the morning; Miss Temple to race over to the Crystal Phoenix Hotel and Casino to ready every last detail for the grand opening of its newest attractions. One of its less advertised attractions is likely to be the Mystifying Max, whom I suspect she will meet en route in hopes no one will be any the wiser. Except me, of course, who is the original Wise Guy.

  So there I am left alone in the wink of an eyeball, with the newspaper to myself, not to mention three mugs with congealing coffee rings in their bottoms, and not a drop of cream, or even skim milk, in sight.

  I do not even have to stretch too far to pull the disheveled pages toward me. I do so hate to be the last to get to the morning paper and find it shopworn.

  I use my built-in clippers to scratch out the desired article, the column in which the fateful mention of death threats was made.

  Are any of my erstwhile companions aware that I have been drugged, caged, and transported against my will time and again? That I have so many death threats hanging over my head they would weigh as much as a showgirl’s headdress at the Rio?

  No, no one worries about Midnight Louie except Midnight Louie.

  So. The Cloaked Conjuror is working with a new cat. That is the part of the article that perked my ear, naturally, since it had to do with matters closer to home. Could the sinister Hyacinth be moving her act to another magician? That Siamese siren has a habit of showing up on the scene of the crime, including the murder at TitaniCon only a few days ago.

  Time for me to find out. And this time I am not going to beard this lioness in her den alone. This time I am going to bring some muscle. To catch a thief, use a thief. To trap a tricky dame, use a tricky dame.

  Now, let me see…where would a wise-guy PI like me find one of those?

  Chapter 4

  A Wolf in Sheep’s Clothing

  Molina felt like the wolf at the three little pigs’s door.

  She was still huffing and puffing, at least, from hoofing it up three flights of stairs. Needed more time at the gym than behind a desk.

  The faded stucco apartment building had no elevator, and the cheapest units were at the top. A scuffed plastic trike sat abandoned by the door. Who would let a three-year-old ride a trike on this narrow concrete balcony that ended in a corkscrew of stairs downward?

  The dusty windows along the wall of the unit were covered with miniblinds, the thin metal slats crushed askew, as if the inhabitants were always peeking out.

  Her outfit was more a costume than clothes, so she took quick inventory before she knocked: scuffed moccasins missing beadwork, worn jeans, a cotton-polyester shirt, and a fringed suede jacket the color of diarrhea, all courtesy of the Goodwill.

  The cheap watch she had found there too read 10:00 A.M., a bit early to be rousting ladies of the night, but she wanted to find them home. Finding them sleepy and hungover as well would be a bonus.

  Her fist hesitated above the door’s scratched surface. She hadn’t gone undercover in years; she felt like an ingenue about to make her first entrance on stage.

  And she wasn’t undercover at all, officially.

  She ran a hand through her hair, mussing it. This wasn’t a situation where pounding and badge flashing was going to get her anything.

  She knocked.

  Waited. Waited some more.

  Knocked again.

  No shouts of “Police! Open up!”

  Just knock and wait, like the pizza delivery guy.

  And hope you don’t get mugged while doing it.

  No one was stirring yet in the complex, though. And vehicles born to be towed away littered the parking lot three stories below like a kid’s battered and scattered toys.

  Through the door, she heard a child fussing, the whining, accelerating cry that sounds eerily like a siren.

  The door shook and opened the length of a scratched safety chain.

  “Yeah?” The face could have sold cold cream, so bleary, morning-after it looked.

  Molina tried for a tone as jaded, and fell short. “Name’s Gina Diaz. I’m looking into what happened to Mandy.”

  She had been summed up while she spoke. “Why?”

  “I’ve been hired to do it.” True, in a way.

  “You some female PI?”

  “You could say that. Look. I just want to know some personal details, so I have a prayer of helping these folks out.”

  “Her parents?”

  Molina shrugged. “Sometimes they like to know what happened to dead daughters.”

  A crinkle of curiosity crossed the swollen features. Behind her, the kid’s whine rose to a screech.

  “Oh, God. Okay, come on in, lady. We don’t know anything, though.”

  Once in, the door was locked behind her. “Good idea,” Molina noted. Cripes, had to forget being Cop Lady for a day.

  “Sometimes good ideas aren’t enough, though. Sit down. Name’s Reno.”

  Sure, Molina thought. Name was anything but Reno. As for sitting down…well, on what junk pile?

  She chose a sofa end that was stacked with washed department-store-quality kiddie clothes, clean but wrinkled.

  A moment later a sprite of two with tear-slicked cheeks was lifted atop the kitchen counter. Molina heard a toaster thump and soon the child was gnawing on a Pop-Tart.

  Mom was a spare, attractive brunette somewhere in her late twenties, wearing lime green capri pants and a white-lint-strewn black sports bra.

  Molina guessed they were the easiest clothes to grab when she had come knocking.

  “You live alone here with the little girl?”

  “No, but Ginger slept right through your pounding on the door. God, Trifari, don’t gobble! You’re getting raspberry on your new Gap top.”

  Reno swiped the kid’s chin and set her on the carpet cluttered with plastic toys and dolls.

  She noticed Molina folding the clean clothes and suddenly grinned. “Thanks. Just stack ’em on the end table. On top of the magazines. So you’re really a detective?”

  “Really.”

  “Say, do you want some coffee?”

  “Why not? You look like you could use some anyway.”

  Reno returned to the kitchen to fuss with a coffeemaker. “You probably figured out I work the clubs too, like Mandy did. Her real name was Cher.” She poked her face through the pass-through over the snack counter. “How long you been a detective?”

  “About twelve years. How long have you been a stripper?”

  “Forever.” Reno came back into the living room and plopped down on the floor beside the little girl. “I bet they don’t mess with you much, not at your size.”

  “It helps. But they mess with me if they think they can get away with it. And they always do. You?”

  “Let’s just say I hope Trifari grows up a little bigger than her mother. But I manage.” She smoothed the blond hair off the child’s brow. Raspberry jam smeared her lips like gloss, for a painful instant reminding Molina of photos she’d seen of Jon-Benet Ramsey. “She will, too,” Reno said softly, more to the kid than to Molina. “I’m gonna see she gets a much better deal than I did.”

  “What kind of deal did Mandy/Cher get?” Molina had pulled out a stenographer’s notebook from which she’d torn half the pages before coming.

  “You’ve seen the parents?”

  “Well, the mother.”

  Reno’s mouth soured. “Yeah. It’s interesting she’s coming around now. I mean, that stepfather…the usual scum.”

  Molina nodded. “Maybe she learned too late that the kids have to come first. It’s a long shot, finding someone who killed a stripper.”

  “Don’t we know that. Just paint a target on us. The cops could care less.”

  “Not care less.”

  “Huh?”

  “Sorry. My,
ah, aunt was a grammarian. It’s ‘could not’ care less.”

  “What-ev-er. You make much money at this?”

  “No. It’s just how the movies show the old-time PIs. You know, the borderline guys with the junker cars living alone and suddenly they get this one case that all the bigwigs care about and they save the day. It’s like that, except for the big case and saving the day.”

  “I probably make more dough than you do.”

  Molina nodded. It was likely even true in terms of her real job. “Probably. Did Cher?”

  “Cher?” Reno laughed, a bit pensively. “Not Cher. She was new, but she was worse off than that. She was…raw, you know? Didn’t have a clue how to take care of herself. She hated stripping, but pretended she didn’t. Drank like a fish. Drank like a whale. Just a mess.”

  “An easy victim, then?”

  “Listen. We’re all easy victims. That’s why we’re there, pretending we’re somebody, that we’re pulling the strings. But we’re not. We get paid good, though.” She glanced at the child, content with her dreadful breakfast and her upscale toys. “I’ll be able to send her to college. If I manage to hang on to my money. Sometimes it’s hard.”

  “Boyfriends? Drugs?”

  “I stay off the stuff.” Her face deadened. “My boyfriend, though…” She sighed. Looked at the child. Sighed again.

  Reno laughed uneasily and jumped up, as fluid as a teenager. Stripping kept a girl in tip top condition, oh, yes. Molina was surprised no enterprising media queen had put out an exercise video based on stripping moves.

  “Coffee’s ready,” Reno called from the kitchen. “Man, I could use a hit of caffeine.”

  She brought two steaming, if water-spotted, mugs into the living room. Molina eyed the magazine-covered end table wondering where she would balance the hot mug.

  “Just put it on the magazines. We don’t worry about coffee rings around here.” Reno settled cross-legged on the floor, while Molina felt a twinge of envy. She felt a lot older than Reno. Why had a woman this street savvy been caught with a pregnancy? Maybe she’d just wanted a kid.