Cat in a Topaz Tango Read online

  Molina tried the doorbell, but heard no faint interior bing or buzz inside. These old fifties’ bungalows needed constant updating. So she knocked. Hard. The door cracked open on inner shadow. Slacker youngest son, the only one still at home, looked her over.

  “If it ain’t the lady lieutenant, all got up to go boogying.”

  She’d forgotten she wore her Carmen Miranda disguise. “I’ll go boogying down to the city jail with you someday, you don’t straighten up. Roberto, isn’t it?”

  He leaned against the door jamb in his low-slung baggies and gang bandana. Almost twenty-one and had never held a job. “What can I do for you?” His smirk answered his question.

  “I’m looking for Mariah.”

  “The kid? She’s gettin’ kinda cute, lootenant. Still a little porky, though.”

  Could an adult woman punch out a lippy twenty-year-old manboy? In her case, yes, but should she?

  “You look like you’ve been hanging at home all day.” She sniffed. “Doing weed. You see anyone drive up to my place? Hear anyone, a car or van?”

  “Nah. Your place is like a funeral home, usta be you had no traffic nohow. Lately been some dude coming and going at all hours, as they say on TV. Maybe the chickie baby made tracks because your new b-friends were going after her.”

  He was hard against the doorjamb, her fist twisted in the sleazy fabric of his T-shirt and her knee cocked to ram him in the crotch. The searing pull on her healing cut only made her madder.

  “Don’t mess with me, punk. I can have you up on all sorts of charges, but most of all I can have a lot more satisfaction leaving a lot of you on this door frame. Did you see or hear any vehicles coming and going at my address today, or not?”

  “Not.”

  She started to relax her grip.

  “Bitch.”

  Before she could ram and slam further, someone pulled her back.

  “‘Buzz-E’ bad boy Vargas,” Dirty Larry said. “The lieutenant doesn’t know the half of what you could be put away for, including dustups in Aryan Brotherhood and Crips and Bloods land, but I do. Be a good niño and go suck on cannabis until you’re in a coma.”

  “I ain’t queer!”

  Larry’s chuckle was sinister, an older, wiser man’s threat. “You don’t wanna be, stay out of federal prison and shut up if you don’t have any news to offer.”

  He pushed the punk back into the dark house and slammed the door shut on him.

  Molina was fuming. “What are you doing here? I was handling it.”

  Dirty Larry was chuckling again, this time admiringly. “A bit too much. You can practice your more aggressive moves on me sometime, if you want.”

  He was called Dirty Larry because he worked undercover. He’d shoved his way into her life on his street cred and a certain sexy interest she didn’t trust and wasn’t even sure she was interested in.

  “Why are you here?” she demanded.

  “I was concerned about the LVMPD Iron Maiden being out sick and then sick on the job for so long. You don’t look ill, though. You look hot tonight. Now wonder you got scumbag sass.”

  Walking back to her driveway, where Morrie’s hybrid Honda Civic sat uneasily next to Larry’s restored gas guzzler, a seventies Chevy Impala, he reached out to snap one of her big gold hoop earrings with his thumb and forefinger.

  “You look like a Gypsy queen about to read tarot cards. Been on a date, Carmen?”

  “Godammit, Larry! My daughter is missing. I don’t give a shit about your issues or inferences.”

  His mocking attitude dropped like a john’s pants in north Las Vegas.

  “Mariah gone? That’s bad stuff. Sorry. What can I do?”

  She looked around, thinking. By then they were at her front door.

  “Morrie’s going over her room for any clues. Go and hassle my neighbors. You seem to be good at it. Mariah was supposed to be picked up at four for a group study pizza dinner, but the mother-chauffeur says the pick up was called off.”

  “By Mariah?”

  “By her daughter, who said Mariah was going to another girl’s house instead. I called there. They had no idea on that end about anything, mother or daughter.”

  “Hate to say it. Kid pulled a fastie.”

  “I don’t care what she did, I want her found and back.”

  “Hey.” His arm braced her shoulders. “It’s probably a stupid prank. I’ll pull fingernails all over the block to see if anybody saw anything.”

  “They’re neighbors. Good people. With the occasional delinquent kid. Just ask.”

  “Yeah. You go help Alch. He’s a thorough guy. I’ll cover the waterfront.”

  She smiled weakly. “Thanks.”

  “Working undercover, I see a lot of runaways. Your kid is not one of them. Trust me.”

  She nodded.

  No, she didn’t trust him. Couldn’t. Mariah was gone, and anybody fresh to their lives, Mariah’s or her own, was suspect. After all, a stalker had been loose in their house, several times. She’d been so sure who that was . . . .

  Suddenly, what she thought or didn’t think about Max Kinsella and his disappearing act was irrelevant, immaterial, and a damned, delusive waste of time.

  Lost in Cyberspace

  Seeing Morris Alch’s iron-gray head bent over a laptop computer on a kiddie-size desk while his hands two-fingered their way across the keyboard was an oddly reassuring sight.

  He looked up as Molina entered the bedroom, his face craggy in the unflattering light of a small desk lamp.

  “Nothing in the room, though your daughter has the drugstore makeup concession knocked.”

  “I only allow her some lip gloss.”

  “Yeah, well, that’s not hip with the tween set these days. Who knows where those allowances are going, huh? Anything missing from the room besides Mariah?”

  “Who could tell in this mess? There’s her school backpack, but she wouldn’t take that. Cell phone! It’d be on the bed table . . . no. Otherwise, on the desk.”

  “Pretty soon folks will have their cell phones implanted. Nope. Not here. Her absence is voluntary, then. You know how to navigate this Web world? Good thing we all have to use computers on the job these days. Keeps our kids from shutting us out as much as they’d like.”

  “What’ve you found?”

  “Sometimes it’s a good thing the Internet is as intrusive as it is. Kids think they know it all but they’re no match for Internet crooks and don’t know beans about how to erase an Ethernet trail. I’m in the history segment on recent URLs, and your daughter has visited some veeery interesssting sites.”

  She stared at him.

  “Sorry. I’m old enough to have seen that Laugh-In catchphrase on TV as a kid. I think if Mariah’s gone, it’s on her own recognizance, Carmen. That’s good. Not great, but good.”

  “What do you mean?” She dropped on her knees beside his chair, eyeballing the computer screen.

  “Britney. Miley. She’s bookmarked every pop tart teen singer site there is. And American Idol, and the site for the Teen Queen reality TV show she competed on. They have mini-movies you can play. Shows her along with all the other contestants. The finals. Her singing that Broadway song. She’s good. Better than the winner. She’s a mini-star on this thing.”

  Molina grabbed the keyboard. “I monitor this devil’s workshop. I have the V-chip, for God’s sake.”

  “You’ve been sick, remember?” Morrie said. “Give yourself a break. The sites she went to are just pop culture, entertainment news. The kid’s a wanna-be, a groupie. She’s probably skipped out to attend some idol’s concert.”

  Molina frowned at the screen. “It’s his fault.”

  “Whose?

  “My ex’s. Rafi Nadir. He encouraged me in a singing career, but I was an adult. She’s just a kid.”

  “Wait. You had a singing career?”

  She shook her head. Her usually subdued hair whipped her cheeks. Annoying.

  “Amateur night only. I, ah, still sit i
n at a local club from time to time. Nobody knows my day job. It’s a hobby. And it wasn’t meant to be a role model thing for my ditsy teen daughter.”

  Morrie frowned at her. At her hoop earrings and dark forties lipstick, borrowed from her torch singer persona, Carmen. “Is that what the way you look tonight is about?

  She echoed his words, “the way you look tonight” in a velvet croon. “Yeah. I moonlight as a chanteuse, but not looking exactly like this. This is a disguise I used to meet with a . . . source.”

  “A snitch?”

  Calling Matt Devine a snitch was hilarious.

  “No, Morrie, something more, uh, personal. My life is way more complicated than you think.”

  “I always thought you were complicated.”

  “That bad?”

  “Bad in a good way. So you think this Nadir guy was going behind your back, encouraging Mariah in her American Idol fantasy?”

  “He was ‘coincidentally’ on site at the Teen Queen reality TV show. Yeah, he ran into her. Call it karma. He saw me there with Dirty Larry. That would warn off any guy.”

  Morrie made a face. “I saw you there with Dirty Larry too. What’s that all about?”

  “Can’t a woman have a social life?”

  “Dirty Larry isn’t a social life; he’s a lowlife. You don’t need someone like him.”

  “Maybe not. Maybe he’s a suspect too.”

  Morrie looked at her hard.

  “He initiated the contact,” she said, “and I needed someone to do some undercover, off-the-meter work for me.”

  “Chasing poor Miss Temple Barr’s magician boyfriend?”

  “Kinsella was a prime suspect for the Goliath Hotel murder a couple of years ago.”

  “Not for the department.”

  She shrugged. “Larry’s canvassing the neighbors, so he might be back any minute.”

  “Right.” Morrie turned back to the screen. “Mariah’s got herself posted online too.”

  “MySpace?”

  “Naw, nothing notable. Just this one site you and I never heard of, teenqueendreamscream.com.”

  It came up, featuring primped and posed young girls, made up like movie stars.

  “That’s Mariah?”

  Molina stared at the image of a baby-faced young girl in glitter eye shadow and lip gloss.

  “The kids post their photos and bios themselves. The site owner is a local DJ. Visitors vote on who’s most likely to make it big time.”

  “Oh, my God. You see what that bastard Nadir encouraged my kid to do.”

  “His kid too.”

  “My kid all along. He was there at the Teen Queen show as security. He didn’t know who the hell she was, but he seduced her anyway with the idea of using her voice, like a talent was something the world would welcome. It doesn’t. And the path there is ugly. You know that, Morrie.”

  “I don’t think whatever way they connected at the Teen Queen house was enough to send Mariah over the fence. I really don’t. Carmen, you don’t need villains here. You need to understand that Mariah sees a world where kids her age can live a dream. She has a dream. And talent.”

  “I know that, Morrie. I fear that. I just hope her dream isn’t a nightmare.’

  Morrie looked around to see if Dirty Larry had come back yet.

  “One more thing, Carmen. Here’s the most popular outtake on that Teen Queen Reality TV show site. Six hundred and sixty thousand-some visitors. It’s not your daughter who’s the pop tart hit of the site. It’s this little number.”

  He’d brought up a small podcast screen and hit the play button.

  An animated figure with punk blond hair and a wild outfit was dancing and rapping in the TV show’s final competition. She hadn’t even placed in the finals, but Molina could place that particular piece of tiny trouble in a Las Vegas minute.

  It was Zoe Chloe Ozone, the phony teen persona Temple Barr had created when a certain homicide lieutenant had pressured her to go undercover to protect her contestant daughter, Mariah, from a possible stalker.

  The thirty-year-old PR woman, current Matt Devine fiancée, and ex–Max Kinsella squeeze was an Internet pop tart sensation and didn’t even know it.

  Duty Call

  Thanks to modern conveniences, a ringing cell phone had interrupted opera audiences, churchgoers, classrooms, and bedroom intimacies.

  “Damn, I should have turned that thing off,” Temple complained. At least she had never programmed some dopey ringtone, like the “William Tell Overture,” theme song of the Lone Ranger.

  “It’s the turnoff,” Matt pointed out as he watched his half-dressed fiancée scramble barefoot across her wooden parquet bedroom floor to the dresser. Coming home to Temple after being in the noisy restaurant with Molina was a nice contrast. He’d promised to keep Molina’s problem quiet, even though the restored condition of Max’s house was troubling.

  Still, Matt could lie back virtuously, knowing he’d thought to turn off his cell phone. Of course, almost nobody called him. Temple’s PR job required her being eternally reachable, like a doctor, in case things went wrong. Matt checked his watch: 10:30 P.M. He had to leave for work in an hour, tops.

  “Yes?” Temple was saying, looking puzzled. “Gone? Surely you can’t think Crawford—Doing? Uh—” She rolled her eyes at Matt. “Nothing. Now. Yeah. Right away. I hope it turns out to be a false alarm.”

  She snapped the tiny slave driver shut. “Molina’s kid is missing.”

  Matt sat up, collecting clothes. “Mariah? No! How long?”

  “This evening sometime. Wasn’t at the other kid’s house where she was supposed to be.”

  “What have you got to do with this? You and Molina get along like cobra and mongoose.”

  “Molina wants to talk to Crawford Buchanan ASAP and needs someone who can find the vermin.”

  “Awful Crawford, the DJ-publicist guy?”

  “Yeah, your so-not-serious competition for Las Vegas listeners.” Temple was pulling on her knit jogging outfit. “I need to check his show times, and maybe check in with his much-abused insignificant other. Molina said something about the Internet and Mariah and the Crawf’s juvenile delinquent stepdaughter, Quincey, being online together. She didn’t make a lot of sense for Molina, so I’m guessing the kid is in trouble. I sorta bonded with Mariah at the Teen Queen reality TV house. I’d hop to it for Mariah before I’d toss her mother a stale fortune cookie.”

  “I know that, next to Molina, he’s one of your least favorite people, so what does Crawford Buchanan have to do with Mariah?”

  “He was pretending to cover that Teen Queen reality TV show she was competing on.”

  “Molina roped you into going undercover on that to protect Mariah and you did a great job. Why does she need you so urgently now? That show is old news.”

  “Maybe not,” Temple said. “She said Zoe Chloe Ozone had damn well get her ass in gear and over to her place. You know where it is, Oh Swami of the Desert Nighttime Airwaves? I’ve never seen her house and she didn’t give me a clue.”

  “Yeah. It’s near Our Lady of Guadalupe Church. You’ve been at the church, at least. To mass. With me.” He flashed her a remembering grin. “Whoever thought then we’d be thinking of getting married someday?” Actually, he had. “May I add OLG to the possible site list?”

  Temple paused in jamming her bare feet into a pair of low platform slides. He could tell she really wanted to stay and finish what they’d started.

  “Yeah. Good idea. I guess we should thank Molina for that one.” She took a breath. “I know how I’d feel if Louie was missing, so I imagine a kid must be triple that. “

  “At least. There are so many predators nowadays.”

  “Why the Crawf?” she fussed. “Oh, well, mine not to question why. Mine to round up the miserable skunk and bring him to—” She snatched the address Matt had just written on a note pad on one bedside table. “Chez Molina, of all places.”

  “Molina’s opening her home to creeps like Buchanan
now? I hope it’s not serious,” he said, sounding exactly that.

  “Molina’s not usually the panicky type.”

  “Molina hasn’t been too usual lately,” Matt noted.

  “Aha! You get that feeling too? I can see I’ll have to interrogate you further after we do our respective jobs tonight. Wanna bet I’ll be ringing your doorbell upstairs around 3:00 A.M. demanding answers?”

  “I’ll be breathlessly awaiting any and all of your demands,” Matt promised with a warm glance.

  “Darn right,” she said. “Lock my door when you leave.”

  Temple tuned in the Crawf’s local twenty-four-hour talk radio station as soon as she whipped her red Miata out of the Circle Ritz parking lot. Las Vegas was just getting cooking at 10:30 at night, rather like her and Matt.

  Somewhere far down on her cell phone call list she had the number of Buchanan’s long-suffering girlfriend, Merle. First she’d try the station. Luckily, this was Las Vegas and someone would cover the switchboard 24/7.

  “Hi,” she said as the phone was answered. “This is Temple Barr. I need to reach Crawford Buchanan—”

  “This is not the public call-in line.”

  Temple could hear the blur of the radio show broadcasting in the background.

  “I know that. First off, I’m not the public,” she said. “I’m Temple Barr, local PR rep for the Crystal Phoenix, now acting for Lieutenant Molina of the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department, aka the LVMPD. She urgently needs to contact Crawford Buchanan. Since I know the media in this city—”

  There was a pause. Then the receptionist’s voice blathered excitedly.

  “Oh,” Temple finally got in. “You read about my aunt’s wedding at the Crystal Phoenix. Yes, it was ‘some posh do’ . . . yes, the Fontana brothers are the most eligible bachelors in town . . . ah, yes, the remaining eight are still ‘available.’ I’m sure something could be arranged if I can get Buchanan’s contact number ASAP. Okay. I’ll hang tight.”

  Temple set the shut phone on the car’s central console, shrugging.

  It appeared the Fontana brothers were a far more potent force in Las Vegas than a homicide lieutenant. Luckily, Temple was related to them by marriage now. Surely she could con one to help out a good cause by escorting a local lady for an evening. Maybe Ralph, who was girlfriendless at the moment, for rather sad reasons involving the chicken ranch murder case they’d all been roped into recently. If a child’s ingratitude was sharper than a serpent’s tooth a girlfriend gone bad ranked right up there too.