So instead of hobnobbing with the chic chapeaux set, I have taken on the thankless job of sitting outside Mr. Max’s residence waiting for something to happen.
Stakeout detail is ungrateful work. You have to sit still until your tail goes numb, both of them in my case. You have to hang out in the shrubbery where the ants crawl in and the ants crawl out and the ants play pinochle on your snout. And these are fire ants!
You have to ignore taunting lizards at your feet and birds chirping and pooping in the bushes above your head. Through heat of day and dark of night, nothing can distract you from your eternal duty.
And, on top of it all, nothing is happening at Chez Max.
I am beginning to think my possibly paternal partner is right. Nothing of interest will happen here and I am wasting my time as another endless day draws to a close and the crickets come out to chatter.
Last night, however, things got interesting for a few hours.
A crew of ninjas pulled up in a train of dark vans about 3:00 A.M., which is when humans are most deeply asleep. Also when my breed is more alert and active, as humans who decide to keep us as indoor domestic pets soon discover.
When I say “ninjas,” I mean ninjas. I have glimpsed those Asian action films. These men were all in black spandex, including hoods and masks. Imagine Spider-Man in mourning. They were nimble, they were strong, and they were fast as a firefly.
Each van was emptied on the lawn, filled with furniture abstracted from the house, and then driven away with suspiciously quiet care. Then the furniture from the lawn was borne silently inside. I watched this surreptitious exchange program go on until the sun was starting to curl its claws into the horizon and pull itself up over the edge of the world.
Not my favorite time.
Twelve vanloads must have been carted out, and in.
Then all was quiet as the sun started getting bold and hot and the lizards stirred and the birds chirped and pooped and nothing happened all day.
No doubt the senior partner would have been off eating and snoozing in his cushy haunts.
I stayed by my post, dining on the occasional grasshopper, until the sun tired of broiling all living things on the surface and slunk behind the Western Mountains to infest the other side of the world.
Except for a few drops sucked off the early morning sprinklers in the neighborhood, my throat was as parched as the sandy dirt surrounding the house, but my curiosity was stronger than my thirst. What would the next night bring? I intend to find out.
So here I am, waiting unseen, when it seems that everybody in the Western world has decided to break into the Kinsella domicile at once. I hunker down, ready to watch and wonder, and draw conclusions. And report back to my partner. If I feel that he deserves to be in the loop.
Chapter 42
Lost in Space
Molina understood that she was no longer the invader.
She was now the resident, and she had been interrupted by one nasty unlawful entrant.
At least that made her home invasion look justifiable.
And made her wonder where the hell Max Kinsella was.
He wouldn’t be slinking through his own quarters.
He wouldn’t tolerate anyone getting this familiar with his territory, or her breaking in. He wouldn’t have left it this easy to get in. Maybe the bastard was dead, as Matt feared.
Matt feared! That man had no normal negative emotions, like jealousy, or wishing a rival dead. Kinsella was no loss. He was her stalker. And now, in a case of poetic justice, he apparently had his own stalker.
Or could he be, God forbid, innocent? Could her stalker and his be the same person? Could she and Max Kinsella both be victims?
Molina rejected that term as violently as she knew Kinsella would. He hadn’t been an innocent since his teens, if Matt’s revelation about the counterterrorist past was true.
So maybe Kinsella was really gone. At least from this house. And maybe someone else had the same hankering as Molina to violate and solve its secrets. Except . . . Molina was a pro. She was textbook careful, as silent as possible.
The other intruder was breathing hard now, obviously. Angered by something found, or not found, possibly Kinsella himself.
He had left. For real, this time. Molina was suddenly sure about that. The magician had left the building.
Live or dead.
The idea reminded her of the old “she left” case. The killer of the murdered woman found lying with that phrase painted on Molina’s own car at the Blue Dahlia parking lot had been tracked down, tried, and convicted.
But the case of the murdered woman found in the church parking lot about the same time, on whose body the phrase “she left” had appeared at the morgue, that was still open.
Unsolved.
What was the victim’s name? Gloria. Gloria something. Retired showgirl. Or something.
Molina shook her head free of old cold cases. No time to stroll down a murderous memory lane. She had to contend with whoever wanted into the house as badly as she did, and that gave her pause. Okay. She was a trifle obsessed. She was risking her whole career by being here. Right now she couldn’t think of one good reason why if she had to answer to a higher authority.
That man was why! That “demmed illusive Pimpernel,” as the old swashbuckler novel put it. Kinsella drove everybody around him crazy. Temple Barr had apparently shaken loose of that old black magic, but now she, Carmen Regina Molina, had been caught in his abandoned web like a fruit fly on honey.
She pushed the louvered door open. Slowly, cautiously. Bent to touch her ankle. The Beretta rasped as she drew it from the holster. That was the same snakelike, slithering sound the other person in the house had made.
So small.
But all other sound stopped, even the impatient breathing.
Molina stepped out into the hall. And saw a descending glint of steel. Where was the shrill music from the infamous shower knife scene in Psycho? She was suddenly Janet Leigh, wasn’t she?
Except she was armed and dangerous, and forearmed too.
Molina’s forearm cracked into the descending arm attacking her. Arm bones were the human body’s strongest.
She blocked the blow, which came in lower than she’d thought, but the knife blade burned along her right side, a thin, shallow slice.
It didn’t hurt now, but it would bleed.
Molina’s long leg lashed out, tangling with someone’s ankle. An explosive breath huffed into the dark as a body stumbled and fell. Then stuttering steps pounded in the hall, running by the time they hit the slate floor of the kitchen with muffled thumps.
Sneakers.
Hot blood ran down to her hip as Molina bounded in pursuit.
She passed the vague reflective doorway of the stainless-steel refrigerator as she heard the back door bang open and shut.
Lights from the left blinded her.
She blinked wildly in that direction, finding the source in an adjoining room, maybe the den. Two table lamps, probably on timers, but controlled by yet a third person in the house.
And she glimpsed the operator.
A man standing by a chair. Wearing pants anyway.
A silhouette.
She aimed the Beretta, but didn’t dare shoot a “what if.” What if he was a civilian? A security firm guard? Even a resident, even Max Kinsella? So she’d made herself into a deer in the headlights.
A bleeding deer in the headlights.
Damn, damn, damn.
The man laughed softly.
Chapter 43
Love and Hate: He Said, She Said
“I hate him and he won’t get out of my life!”
“I love her and she won’t let me into her life.”
The phone lines for the “Midnight Hour,” which ran for two hours now, it was so popular, were dishing up double doses of he-she angst tonight.
Matt was riding on the edge of his nerves. The whole male-female apache dance was getting to him.
He couldn’t help
personalizing tonight: I hate Max Kinsella because he won’t get out of my life. I love Temple and she didn’t let me into her life (check that: bed) for so long.
But those declarations weren’t true in his case. He’d never hated Max; he’d even sympathized with him. He’d always understood why Temple hadn’t seen his fresh young sapling of first love for the significant redwood forest that was Mighty Max. Matt had been reared to see two sides, even to his own life and loves.
Sometimes lately that felt downright wussy.
He watched the clock. The program’s two hours usually flew by as he probed the callers’ hearts and minds. Now he was impatient, as if something important was going on out there in the night he ought to know about, be in on.
Maybe it was the call that afternoon from his mentor in seminary-turned-FBI agent, Frank Bucek. He was in town to speak at some law enforcement seminar. Wanted to check in with Matt.
“I work really late.”
“You think I’m too old to stay up past midnight? I’ll catch your radio show, then we can hit one of the high-end hotels. Must be bars that serve cocktail menus all night long in this town.”
“Yeah, sure. I guess we can meet at the Venetian,” Matt had said like an old Vegas hand.
The idea of his former religious counselor hearing him on the radio advising the lovelorn and co-dependent unnerved him. Also, uh, his current ecstatic state of living in sin.
Father Frank had been his confessor all through seminary. He’d left the priesthood too, but at a much older age. Matt pictured him as staidly courting an ex-nun and marrying immediately, before any test runs, and having kids right away. Lots of kids that only stopped because the wife was menopausal pretty quick. No birth control, for sure.
Forgive me, Father, for I have sinned. On all counts.
Matt had never regarded his radio gig as a performance, but tonight he did. Afterward, just past 2:00 A.M., he drove the Crossfire to the Venetian, rehearsing what he’d say. If asked.
Frank was at the bar, wearing a good gray suit that the Fontana brothers could probably nail as to designer and price level. Receding hair sharpened his features, and an intelligent, energetic air never failed him, in Roman collar or out of it. Matt realized as he approached that this was the father he’d always wished he’d had. Now that he had an image of his actual father, he still preferred Bucek. The man was brilliant. Why had he left the church after so long? And for the FBI?
Frank stood, holding out a hand with a crippling grip that Matt finally knew how to resist and return.
“Matt! Good work! You always were a remarkable diagnostician of the human soul. No wonder even Elvis called in to your show.”
“That was some pathological impersonator.”
“Not according to Quantico’s top sound analysis people. You could probably exploit those audio recordings.”
“Not my job.”
“No.” Bucek’s quick smile was pleased. “All restless souls deserve privacy, at the end. I ordered you a scotch.”
“Fine. How was the conference?”
“Both boring and exhilarating. The world runs on these things. Half the time I hate them, but half the time I love them.”
“You’re good in front of people.”
“And you’re not?”
“I fake it well.”
“Hmm. You fake the least of anybody I’ve ever known. That’s your problem. So what’s up with you?”
Matt sipped the straight-up scotch. It was almost as good as Max Kinsella’s Millennium brand that he’d shared first with Matt, in a private, bitter wake for Kathleen O’Connor. Almost. Nobody beat Kinsella for taste, especially in women.
“I’m engaged to be married,” Matt said.
“Well! A toast then, to the blushing bride. Who is she?”
“Temple, of course.”
“Not ‘of course.’ Nothing in your life has been ‘of course.’ Hard sometimes, but ultimately rewarding.”
Bucek clinked glass rims. “I must confess that I have mixed feelings about that young woman.”
“How so?” Matt asked cautiously.
“She’s bright, honest, gutsy. I’d be proud to be her father.”
So far, so good. Father “Frankenfurter’s” favorable opinion was always hard-won in seminary.
“And I couldn’t help noticing that she is one sweet and delicious girly little number.”
“Am I blushing?” Matt asked.
“Nope. You’re too far gone already.”
“You’re probably right.”
Matt welcomed the combo plate of appetizers Frank had ordered coming down between them, hot and fried and distracting.
“So when’s the wedding?” Frank asked after they’d each dipped into the cheese and crab and chicken wings.
“We don’t know. We haven’t met each other’s families yet.”
“You’re from Chicago, right?”
“Right. Temple’s family is in Minneapolis.”
“One quick trip, then, should do it.”
“You don’t know my family, especially since I found my birth father.”
“That’s wonderful, Matt.” Frank clapped him on the arm.
“Not for my mother.”
“Ah.”
“Anyway, you don’t need to hear all that. Did you get married soon after you left St. Vincent’s?”
“Lord, no! I shopped around some first.”
Matt nearly choked on a chicken wing. “Dated, you mean.”
“Sure.” He eyed Matt. “You’ve been hooked on Miss Barr from the git-go, haven’t you?”
“Yeah. Knocked over, but she was taken. I tried to see other women. They were nice, attractive, but—”
“But no fireworks. So you outwaited the competition.”
“We’ve always been friends. I’ve always suspected she sensed we could be more.”
Bucek nodded. “You’d have been an idiot not to have been interested in her. Single gals of her quality aren’t out there at your age, and at mine. So, what is she?”
Matt understood the question instantly. “UU, but she’s not practicing.”
The older man’s sharp guffaw made all heads within twenty feet turn their way.
“Sorry, Matt.” Frank was trying to smother his laughter with the linen napkin. “She is independent. Well, UUs are very easy with ecumenical anything. The ceremony shouldn’t be a problem.”
“No.”
“Spit it out.”
Matt glanced at his small plate of wing bones and crumpled batter.
Frank smiled. “I’m not asking about what you’re eating, I’m asking about what’s eating you.”
“That transparent?”
“You’re as edgy as a seminarian with a question about wet dreams.”
Matt looked around, but everyone was chatting and drinking and ignoring them again. He lowered his voice. “I’m living in sin.”
“Do you like it?”
Matt felt Father Frankenfurter had let him down with the blunt, almost jovial question. “Obviously, yes. And no.”
“What’s not to like?”
“I can’t receive communion at mass.”
“So don’t. Everyone will just think you didn’t fast, if they think anything.”
“But we may not get married for months.”
“Didn’t we priests always advise young couples to wait?”
“Frank, you’re supposed to be the voice of authority and wisdom here.”
“Nope. Not my deal anymore. Come on, Matt! You were a parish priest for years. How many beautiful nuptial masses did you officiate at where the lovely young couple moved into separate apartments after months, even years together, just before they showed up in your office to discuss wedding plans?”
“A lot, I suppose. Some wanted advanced degrees before marrying. Many had been ‘dating’ for several years.”
“Sounds sensible to me. Why can’t you do likewise for a few months?”
“I was a priest. I’m supposed to
follow the rules more than anyone.”
“You were supposed to be compassionate too. How about having a little compassion for yourself. Look. You are in love with a great young woman. You know she’s had another lover—”
“It wasn’t just that. They’d planned on marrying eventually, except his . . . job got in the way.”
Frank waved a dissenting hand. “I’m not slamming anyone. I’m saying that people who love each other should express it the best way they know how. There are way too many people in this world expressing hate. They’re in the headlines every day. Jesus associated with the common people who felt love, not the control-freak hypocrites who ran the temple. Oops, your girlfriend has a name made for double entendres in our game. Are you hurting anyone? Then chill.”
“But—”
Frank raised that commanding hand again. “You came here to Las Vegas hunting a man, right?”
“Looking for.”
“Hunting. I know a bit about that. Your abusive ex-stepfather. What drove that?”
“I stood up to him when I was in high school, but it wasn’t enough. I wanted to see what had become of him, I wanted to . . . scare the crap out of him, take out on him what he’d taken out on my mother. Not me, my mother.”
“So you had an agenda of hate.”
“Anger, more.”
“And did you catch up with him?”
Matt nodded, taking a slug of scotch.
“What did you do?”
“Slammed him against a wall. Told him what I thought of him. Tried to beat him up back, but he was such a loser, so truly small after I saw him again. He wasn’t worth my rage.”
“You’re a lucky man.”
Matt gave him a questioning look.
“You had every natural right to hate and harm that guy. And that would have been a mortal sin. You would have been taking on his evil, perpetuating the chain of hurt and retaliation. You stopped. So, forget it. I’m not the one who’s going to call love a sin for you. Yeah, I know the church has confused love with sex, for centuries, but I’m out of it now, and you are too. My advice: Don’t overthink it, kid. Love needs to be embraced with open arms and eyes and no damn guilt, just as we all do, God bless us everyone. So enjoy.”
Cat in a Red Hot Rage Page 22
