“She fancies herself some kind of prophet, but she does not know Bast would not dare call you over the river Nile onto her own turf for at least a dozen more lives.”
Ma gives a cat laugh, which sounds a bit like uncontrollable coughing to humans, who rush over and try to give us the Heimlich maneuver. So much for having a sense of humor.
“One thing I might consider,” Ma says, looking sideways at me with her yellow eyes.
“Yeah?”
“I might let those UFO abductors catch me some night, with a full dish of sardines.”
“Ma! Why?”
I know they are actually Trap, Neuter, Return do-gooders hoping to end the overpopulation and species cleansing afflicting our kind since forever, but I am not sure Ma cottons to the concept of “neuter”.
“Sardines are hard to come by, and I am hoping to get what you did from a similar kidnapping,” she confides out of the side of her mouth.
“What? A vasectomy?” I am horrified.
“Silly boy. Of course not, but I will have to get one of those unnecessary hysterectomy things humans go on about. I am hoping to get a tummy tuck thrown in, as you did. That improved your profile a lot.” She winks. Or her one eyelid is habitually a little haywire.
There is no way to explain to Ma that only human miscommunication saved my, uh, assets. So I was not neutered, not by a long shot. I see I am going to have to somehow maneuver Ma into the hands of B-movie actress Savannah Ashleigh’s equally dense plastic surgeon. That will be a very demanding operation in more ways than one.
To say the least.
So I do not say anything further. That is always an option and, with Ma, often the best one.
43
License to Lose
Temple sat back on her bare heels on Electra’s Chinese rug. She’d neatened the papers Electra had flung every which way in a desperate search for anything that might placate Karma’s catnappers.
Electra sat on her vintage cocoa-colored couch with the fringe border along the floor and Karma out of sight beneath it.
“Nothing resembling what the creeps wanted,” Temple said. “Have you considered that we might have to search every storage locker for it, and never find it? Why didn’t you tell me your cat was kidnapped?”
“I can’t understand how anyone knew about her. I don’t advertise I have her, really,” Electra said, pleating her voluminous muumuu skirt into folds. “She’s so shy. I provide her asylum.”
“From what? Crooks like those nappers?”
“From overstimulation. I think she’s a psychic magnet.”
Temple gave up. “Well, she is beautiful. It’s too bad the Lust ‘n’ Lace gang, when arrested, didn’t fess up like crooks on TV and blab about what Jay Edgar had that was worth killing for.” Temple moved another insurance document to its proper pile. “J. E. didn’t seem so bad, from what I saw of him.”
“He wasn’t.” Electra pursed her lips. “He just had a weakness other people liked to exploit. You know…” Her voice broke.
Temple got up to sit beside her. “What is it?”
“He didn’t tell them what they wanted. He…died. I can’t help but think, in some way, that paper he wanted to save, whatever it was, was meant for me, for my golden years. He’d already left me all the real estate he had, except the house for Diane, which was really sweet. Oh, Temple, I wish I hadn’t cussed him out before he died. Why can’t we know these things before we rant and rave?”
“We’re not all Karma,” Temple said, hugging Electra’s plump shoulders. “And even the police can’t always solve these cases. It’s really not procedure for Molina to want to meet us at the building. Are you up to going back?”
“What about you, Temple? You nearly toppled down the stairs racing to my rescue. You were so cute in your little slippers with your curls and tote bag bouncing, coming on like Bruce Lee if he were a girl.”
Temple shut her eyes. So much about that description was so wrong, but if Electra needed to think anything but crazy fear and rage had motivated her, fine.
“You know,” Electra said, “watching Matt ram my old Probe into the doors and up the stairs like he was General Patton was worth the angst. Those would-be cat-torturing rats went white as sheets. We really taught them not to mess with the Circle Ritz.”
“Right.” Temple stood up and grinned. “Let’s find out what Molina is doing to them dirty rats. She wouldn’t have asked to meet us on site unless she has some info to torture us with.”
In ten minutes they were standing inside the old building, gazing at the ruined lower stairs. The chandelier was gone after the police had photographed and fingerprinted it once again.
All five-foot-eleven of Molina came in through the open double doors, wearing one of her khaki pantsuits, loafers, with a badge on her belt, not around her neck, since this was not a “live” crime scene.
“Good morning, ladies. I hope, Mrs. Lark, revisiting this site is not too much of stressor for you.”
That was Molina, Temple thought, using words like “stressor”.
“I’m not a ‘Mrs.’ Lark. Lark is my maiden name. Luckily, I kept it all through my legal life.”
“What’s happening to the creeps who stressed her?” Temple asked.
Molina moved toward them in casual, sweeping strides that nearly matched her almost six-foot height. A smile kissed her lips and immediately left for the coast.
“Legally, we don’t have much evidence besides kidnapping, extortion, and animal abuse to charge them with. The real question is what they wanted so badly that it involved so many for so little apparent profit.”
Molina looked at the top of the stairs, to the absence of the shabby but spectacular chandelier. She regarded Electra with sympathy.
“Ms. Lark. I have to tell you that your ex-husband’s murder is an open case. There’s no doubt he was brought to Vegas by Nemo and his associates because they wanted to get something out of him.”
Electra looked up, and sighed at the emptiness.
“There’s no doubt,” Molina said, “that they bound him, and later you, over the drop from the chandelier to threaten you both into divulging what they wanted. But. We can’t prove it was murder in his case.”
She came closer to Electra. “The threat to you was nasty, but hardly homicidal. As for Jay Dyson, they were rougher with him. I don’t doubt the rope was around his neck. Poised over the staircase, he was a desperate man. He had not yet given them what they wanted.”
Molina sighed. “Dyson dead was of no use to extortionists. He could have accidentally swung off the edge, by his struggles. Maybe he managed to do it himself, to stop them from getting what they wanted. From getting what he wanted to go to you.”
“Oh, my Lord,” Electra said. “I’d rather believe it was an accident by all parties present, than that Jay would sacrifice his life to keep something for me.”
“That’s very possible,” Molina said. “Your ex-husband had lost his business. If he still had something of enormous value, perhaps the act of keeping it became an obsession and he couldn’t give it up to anyone else. That would explain why you don’t have any idea what it was and nothing significant is mentioned in the will. He was obsessively overprotective of it, and no one will ever find it.”
Electra nodded. “Jay was stubborn.”
“Well, darn it,” Temple said, stretching to her full five-foot-three height in her heels, which made Molina look down at Temple’s smartly shod feet and lift her eyebrows. “Then what are we meeting for?”
“That was just one speculative scenario.” Molina’s smile was broad. “Leave it to our fine Metro patrol officers. They recognized the call to this address and pointed us to their report about the same site a few days ago.”
“Report?” Temple, uneasy, switched her weight from one foot to the other. “Just the other day or so?”
“Just the other night,” Molina said. “Local residents complained of a large number of vehicles coming and going, using their on-str
eet parking places and even No Parking zones. And making a lot of noise. Not a crucial call. By the time the patrol car got here, the block party was over, but there were signs a pop-up casino had been plugged onto the lot.”
“A pop-up casino? Never heard of it.” Temple couldn’t help sounding dubious. Her job was to know Las Vegas venues pretty thoroughly.
Even Molina’s sensible loafers must have hurt to stand on. She took a stroll around the area in front of the stairs and changed the subject. “This is a huge place, Ms. Lark. What are you going to do with it?”
Electra followed her, nervously. “I…we have plans. Something in the retail and restaurant line.”
“Ambitious,” Molina said, nodding. She turned suddenly to Temple. “What do you think a pop-up casino you’ve never heard of is?”
“Portable, of course. Temporary,” Temple said. “Reminds me of the food truck movement. Would be like those parking-lot small circuses that churches sponsor for fund-raising. Would operate for a limited time. Would have to be nonprofit, though. Gaming is strictly regulated in Las Vegas.”
“A-minus,” Molina said, offering Temple a triple-folded website printout from her blazer pocket.
Temple scanned it. A company offered week-long insty-casinos where gamers were paid in prizes and any profits went to good causes. Portable booths and tents housed gaming equipment, so the experience “felt” like real casino gambling, but wasn’t.
“What was the minus for?” Temple asked Molina.
“You were warm but not hot when you analyzed what a pop-up casino would be.”
“Temple’s ideas are always hot,” Electra said, scanning the pages Temple handed her. “She was right on the money about this company.”
“Not quite. There’s another, much more serious kind of pop-up casino because of a quirk in Vegas gaming laws.” She challenged Temple with another question. “Have you ever heard of a nightclub called the Zoot Suit Choo-Choo Club?”
Temple and Electra exchanged guilty looks.
“Um, yeah,” Temple said. “Kinda.”
Molina’s foot stamped the floor. “Right here in this building, under us. That’s where it was until it became the other murder site in this place, only it happened decades ago. Another outre hanging, this one by a zoot suit cat chain.”
“The history of that time period,” Temple said, her eyes narrowed, “has been quashed and forgotten. Past racist issues are unflattering to what the Strip was before it integrated for its own commercial good.”
Molina looked contemplative. “The mob remembers.” She took another turn around the huge area and looked up to where the ceiling was empty.
Every one of them pictured the murderous chandelier.
“Someone in the mob remembers,” Molina said. “Remembers both the earlier murder by chandelier and the fact that the Zoot Suit Choo-Choo Club had a golden asset, a gambling license. A license that lasts forever, if every two years the site is used as a live gambling establishment.”
“Is that’s how the Moulin Rouge kept going for all the decades when it closed after eight months in nineteen fifty-five?” Temple asked.
Molina nodded. “So you are clued in. It changed hands, and the license with it. Nobody could make a go of the site because it was so far from the Strip. In order to keep its gaming license, the casino ‘opens’ once every two years with a temporary on-site trailer, like the one you’ve got parked outside.” She glanced at Electra.
“I may not own that RV,” Electra said.
“Nemo and company can reclaim it. They and others before them have kept that Zebra Zoot Suit Choo-Choo Club pop-up casino schedule going with the aid of ‘unnamed’ financial backers,” Molina said. “They have photographic proof. If you could find the actual paper license in the next two years, Ms. Lark, you would own a prize the Strip conglomerates would love to snap up.”
“And Nemo and company won’t do jail time?” Temple asked. She wondered if the “others before them” had killed Jumping Jack Robinson over the gaming license too.
“Not much, unless I get more evidence in Dyson’s death.” Molina turned and walked out the new sturdy double doors. “New security doors installed in the back too?”
Electra nodded.
“Good.” Molina grinned. “That ought to keep out ‘the vagrants and feral cats’ for a while. Ms. Barr sure knows how to spin a press release.”
Temple managed to smile as sweetly as a good hostess escorting a guest to the door.
“By the way,” Molina said before walking over to Detective Alch leaning against a white Crown Victoria in the parking lot. “You and Mr. Devine seem to have forged a more perfect partnership. You’ve even lured him into investigative action as well as an impressive martial arts display.”
Temple wasn’t sure what Molina meant, but there was some snark in there somewhere.
“Should I be looking for a wedding invitation?” the lieutenant inquired.
Temple snorted.
“Out-of-state trip to see the family, huh?” Molina said. “Speaking of which, it seems Mr. Kinsella has folded his tent and moved on.”
Temple shrugged. “I really don’t know where he is.”
“I do know,” Molina said, coming Great White Shark closer with her electric-blue eyes and white-toothed smile. “I know that the first time I interviewed you after you came to Vegas and Kinsella had gone missing at the same time a body turned up and fell down onto a craps table at the Goliath Hotel…I know you gave me that very same answer to the very same question.
“And look how that turned out.”
44
Instant Redial
That night Temple hesitated over answering her bedside cell phone. She was wide awake at nearly midnight and thinking of tuning in to the first part of Matt’s show. Maybe he’d give her a quick “good night” call before going on the air.
She glanced at the lit screen. No, not Matt calling. Not a familiar number. Foreign.
Her knuckles tightened on the nubbly crystal surface of the cell holder. “Yes?”
“I hope so.” Max’s voice.
Firm. Sardonic. More welcome than she wanted to admit.
“How did things go in Ireland? Are you all right? Is Sean really alive?”
“Yes.”
“Yes, you’re all right or yes, Sean’s alive?”
“Both. Sort of.”
“Oh, God, Max. I don’t like ‘sort ofs’.”
“He’s a bit the worse for wear, but the most contented man I’ve ever met. He survived the pub bombing with visible wounds, and the invisible one my generation of family is becoming known for.”
Temple was confused. Then Max said, “Bomb explosion. Impact. Head wound. His memory is faulty.”
“So, like you, Sean has been blessed with the multiple lives of a cat to have survived.”
“Yeah. The IRA’s call to clear the pub before the bomb blast went awry. An IRA sympathizer on site knew about the bomb, and was finally able to get him out of there, not quite soon enough. She was injured too, but he wouldn’t leave because he was waiting for me to come back.”
“Oh, Max!”
“A kick in the gut, yes. Sean was messed up on his left side, and was foggy about who he was and where he belonged for some time, so the IRA took him in as one of theirs until he healed. When Sean did remember his home and family, he learned I’d disappeared after getting the bombers IDed and arrested. He didn’t want to go limping home after the dumbass moves we made on our own in Ireland, and by then he had an Irish wife. So he ended up working for the IRA, the peace not the terrorism. He and his wife run a bed and breakfast in County Tyrone.”
“That’s amazing. Even more amazing is the fact that Kitty the Cutter delivered. She didn’t lie this time.”
“She also didn’t expect Sean and me to let bygones be bygones. She thought we’d spout recriminations and go for each other’s throats.”
“She found you once you went to Ireland?”
“Hell, Temple, I
flew her over there. I wasn’t trusting to luck with getting the likes of her out of all our lives in Vegas.”
“You were traveling with her? How did you sleep?” Temple felt a blush teasing the edges of her cheeks. She’d hadn’t meant “sleep”, but just sleep.
“Not often. I’m exhausted. Look, I’m bringing Sean back with me.”
“To Vegas?”
“Maybe, but principally to Racine, to reunite the family.”
“Oh, my God. That’ll be a three-act wrenching drama Eugene O’Neill couldn’t live up to writing even if he were still alive. I can’t imagine how shocked they’ll be, and then angry at the two of you for cutting and running into new lives without them.”
“You don’t have to imagine,” he said, “I’m hoping you’ll round up your immense people skills and come along as a referee.”
“What? No. I can’t leave Vegas now.”
“Last time I called from Ireland, you told me to come home.”
“And I am telling you to ‘go home’ to Racine now. Everything is different. Matt and I are seriously committed. I can’t leave my fiancé behind and go waltzing off to intercede between my ex and his cousin and their parents. I don’t know these people, and I’m sure they don’t want to know me.”
“It’s about what you know, not who you know.”
“What do you mean?”
Max sighed. “There are holes in my recent memories. Holes in Sean’s memory of the attack and why he decided to rebuild a life in Ireland, leaving everyone mourning when they didn’t need to be. Including me. We need an outside negotiator, and I, I need the help only you can give, Temple. I need an ombudsman. I chose to be absent too. There are a lot of robbed lives in Racine.”
“I can’t ask Matt to step aside for you showing up in our lives again.”
“Try. He’s a compassionate guy.”
Cat in a Zebra Zoot Suit Page 30
