Cat in a Hot Pink Pursuit

by Carole Nelson Douglas

  “Not a problem.” He grinned. “I’m still losing my street persona. I’ll get cuddlier.”

  “Give it up. You are not my type.”

  “Oh, you think you have a ‘type.’ That’s progress. Let me guess: tall, lean, and mean. Early Clint Eastwood, right?”

  Molina felt herself flush for real. “You’re pursuing this, not me.”

  “That’s the way it’s supposed to be, have you forgotten?”

  “Maybe. And I like it that way.” She opened her car door, paused, considered, and said “Good-night.”

  He backed away to let her drive out of the parking slot, hands in the pockets of his nylon shell jacket, watching her with head lowered, a bit boyishly.

  She headed into the maze of access roads that circled the mall.

  Not her type.

  But better than Rafi Nadir.

  Although, who wasn’t?

  At home, sweet home Dolores napped on the couch while early-morning TV blared. Molina hated to awaken her, but she knew Dolores would want to be home with her own kids and husband. So she saw her out and watched her cross the street to her own door and safely enter.

  In the distance, low-riders grumbled like very disgruntled thunder. That was a negative of living in a Latino neighborhood, but in Anglo neighborhoods it would be costly car stereo systems cranked up loud enough to keep the canals on Mars awake. One way or another, the young bucks in the neighborhood have to make their presence known.

  Mariah was sleeping hard in her room, face buried in a tangle of covers.

  Molina went to her bedroom and deposited her weapons in the closet gun safe. She could never open the large metal cabinet without brushing against Carmen’s array of vintage velvet gowns. Velvet and steel. It sounded like the title of a supermarket romance novel.

  Carmen hadn’t come out to sing and play at the Blue Dahlia lately. Maybe the on-premises body a few months back had accomplished that. Maybe Molina had just been too busy.

  She started taking off her clothes … shoes kicked off first. She slipped out of her jacket and blouse, slacks, then sat on the bed to pull off the dark socks she wore with her working “uniform.”

  Something slid into her back as her weight created a sinkhole for whatever was on the bed.

  What was on the bed? Shouldn’t be anything. She kept a military-neat room, unlike her darling daughter, the mistress of mess … .

  A box lay there on her grandmother’s patchwork quilt. A gaudy gilt-paper box. Had Mariah performed one of her random acts of preteen sweetness?

  Molina opened it, not surprised by the array of fancy chocolates but by the unfamiliar handwriting on the tiny envelope inside.

  She pulled the flap loose to withdraw the stiff note card. The same handwriting that had written “For you” on the envelope had written “Sweets to the sour” on the card inside.

  She stood there staring at the black-ink block lettering in the dim light of the overhead ceiling fixture.

  Was this some clumsy attempt at humor, or a threat?

  Mariah, veering wildly in the bipolar state that was ‘tweendom, might be apologizing and complaining at one and the same time. Or …

  This might be from someone else. Like Dirty Larry. Was he a colleague, a would-be boyfriend … or a stalker? He was the only new man in her life … or was this a calling card from a former man in her life?

  Rafi Nadir. Now that they’d finally run into each other, he knew that she lived and worked here in Las Vegas. He had a lot of reasons to resent her. Sweets to the sour. The line reeked of bitter anger; was it for leaving him without notice? Like you’d mention to a strike-poised rattlesnake that you’d decided to back off.

  Had he found her address after she’d visited him the other night without warning to give him a warning? Turnabout foul play?

  Molina spun on her bare heels and padded through the hall and living room into the kitchen. There she ransacked drawers looking for something she ought to remember right where it was.

  Damn! Whoever had left that candy was no friend and maybe a lot worse. She marched back to her compromised bedroom, plastic sandwich baggies in hand. The note went in one baggie via the offices of the new tweezer from her adjoining bathroom. The box went into the quart-size bag, for analysis by forensics. She’d think of some reason in the morning.

  For now … she went through the house from garage to seldom-used front door, checking closets and locks.

  All secure, doors dead bolted, sashes nailed shut yet easy to open in case of fire. The place was a freaking monument to advocated domestic security measures, courtesy of your local police department.

  So. Someone had gotten in, and gone. And left the poison. Maybe not literal poison but mental poison. Who’s been creeping into my bed with Ethel M candies?

  She didn’t even want to finish undressing to don her Land’s End sleep-size T-shirt.

  But she did.

  Then she unlocked the gun safe, set the semiautomatic on her nightstand, and shot the bolt on her bedroom door so Mariah couldn’t wander in.

  The illuminated nightstand clock said four-twenty A.M.

  Molina was thinking now that she might actually welcome having Mariah out of the house and under the constant surveillance of reality TV show cameras for the next couple weeks.

  What’s a mother to do?

  If she’s a homicide lieutenant, maybe a lot more than some cowardly stalker might imagine.

  Chapter 13

  Macho Nachos

  “Dinner? At your place?”

  Matt knew he had sounded unflatteringly shocked, but it was too late to backpedal. That was another disadvantage to years spent in the priesthood: an inability to shift rapidly into glib social lies.

  “Just casual,” Molina said quickly. “I’ve got some issues I want to bounce off you.”

  These must be some issues to merit a social occasion at Casa Molina, Matt thought.

  “Yeah, fine. I’m always available for dinner.”

  “Usually, I’m not. But, what say, six thirty tomorrow?”

  Very pressing issues. “Sure. That’s perfect. Saturday night supper. I’m leaving town for a few days early next week.”

  “Glad I caught you before you left. We’ll have something, oh … something. See you then.”

  Matt stared at the phone receiver for a moment before replacing it. Molina was always busy when she was at work, and she was almost always at work.

  He immediately dialed Temple’s number, but after five rings her slightly raspy voice informed him she’d had to leave town on a family matter and would be back in two weeks or so.

  This time he stared at the receiver as if it were an alien artifact.

  Curiouser and curiouser. Guess he’d have to go take two hours’ worth of lonely hearts phone calls at WCOOAM, which is what paid his bills, and find out what was going on with the hearts and minds he thought he knew later.

  The morning paper had a splashy front-page story about the young woman found dead outside the shopping mall.

  Matt skimmed the report, which was all too similar to other senseless killings in every city and town across the country: savage attack, senseless slaughter, and another family torn apart by another demented killer.

  So … surely Molina would cancel their casual dinner. She must be on this case 24/7.

  The cancellation call never came. Matt changed his knit golf shirt to a long-sleeved shirt that matched his khakis, rolled up the sleeves to the elbow, and headed over to Our Lady of Guadalupe convent at about five thirty.

  He found the nuns preparing dinner. They let him kibbutz while they bustled around the communal kitchen. Convent life had been characterized as “communistic” in the big, bad fifties when a Red was seen under every bed, but Matt would call it “democratic.”

  Each nun had her duty and went about washing salad greens or stirring soup as if that were the most important task on earth. Next week the duty roster would change and today’s washer would become that week’s stirr
er. Just as today’s mother superior would defer to another leader when the time came.

  Peter and Paul, the stray cats that had unofficially joined the community when they’d wandered into the convent yard as kittens, had arranged themselves in supervisory positions. Peter, a chubby yellow striped cat, was tolerated on one chair seat, while the darker striped Paul was lying on the wide windowsill above the sink, absently patting at the intermittent faucet drips.

  There was a placid joy in the way the nuns moved, with long familiarity and an efficient grace that brought to mind the floor-length, flowing habits they’d once all worn, still welcoming a visitor to their modest domestic ritual as if he were a king, or a wandering saint.

  “How’s that darling redheaded girl?” Sister Seraphina, Matt’s former grade school teacher at St. Stanislaus in Chicago, asked right up front. That was “Sister Superfine,” dynamic and blunt. “I never see her at mass with you anymore.”

  “She’s Unitarian,” Matt explained, or didn’t really.

  But the nun just nodded and invited him to dinner. He was tempted, but … .

  “Not this time. I’ve got a dinner appointment in the parish, though.”

  “A date?” Elderly Sister St. Rose of Lima beamed the way nuns who like to play matchmaker do.

  It touched Matt that his past in the priesthood was taken as a given here. He’d been officially laicized, leaving with permission, unlike most ex-priests. But like all newly ex-priests, he was still sensitive about his new non celibate status. He found it endearing how these elderly “sisters”—the last, almost, of their uniquely devoted kind—gave him a free pass on their own turf.

  “Not a ‘date.’” I’m heading over to Lieutenant Molina’s.”

  Eyebrows raised.

  “Those aren’t exclusive subjects,” outspoken Sister Seraphina said. “Carmen Molina has achieved commendable responsibility in her job but she’s not a lieutenant all the time.”

  “I couldn’t swear by that. I think she wants to find out something that relates to her job.”

  “How do you know that?”

  “Molina? Entertain for dinner?”

  Sister Seraphina stopped bustling and folded her arms. “Too much work and no play is bad for everybody. Carmen too. Maybe you can get her to forget about her job for a few hours.”

  “That would be an act of charity,” Sister Mary Monica said slyly.

  Matt laughed and headed for the door. “Gossip is a sin, sisters. Don’t get any ideas.”

  Their chorus of good-byes drifted out the screen door behind him like a breeze.

  Trying to second-guess Molina was futile.

  Matt pulled his new silver Crossfire to the curb in front of her house, got out, and heard a low wolf whistle.

  She was standing on the threshold of her seldom-used front door.

  “Not you. The car,” she said. “When did you develop ambitions to race in the Grand Prix?”

  “It just looks fast. And I finally didn’t need an undercover car,” he added, referring to his former stalker, as he came up the walk.

  “Better stay at the speed limit. That’s a real ticket-magnet. At least it isn’t red.”

  This was a Molina he’d never seen. She was wearing a gauzy white puffed-sleeve blouse and paprika-and-turquoise-pattern gauze skirt. Mexican casual. And she was barefoot. She looked fifteen years younger and about twenty-five years more relaxed.

  Still no jewelry, though, and no makeup except for a faint color on her lips.

  Matt thought he’d never seen her looking better.

  “Maybe we can go for a spin in the Crossfire after dinner,” he suggested.

  She laughed, and looked beyond him to the fancy car a bit ruefully. Maybe Sister Seraphina was right

  “This is a no-diet zone tonight,” she warned as she led him into the modest one-story house.

  “You diet?” He was surprised. She was a strong five-ten, at least. Neither heavy nor thin. Sculptural, like a pillar, especially in those long, lean vintage velvet gowns from the forties she wore when singing at the Blue Dahlia.

  Few knew that Carmen the occasional chanteuse was C. R. Molina, the 24/7 Vegas homicide cop. Those who did found the contrast perplexing.

  “I thought you’d call this off,” he commented as they entered the homey living room, complete with two cats. What was it about cats and the Our Lady of Guadalupe neighborhood?

  She turned to fix him with a Lieutenant Molina interrogatory stare. Her vivid blue eyes were her best feature, and against this Ole Mexico getup they made her electrically exotic.

  “Why?” she asked. “Oh. The murder. There are always murders in Las Vegas, my friend.”

  “I just thought you’d need to be on the job.”

  “What makes you think I’m not?” she asked with some irritation.

  “I don’t see myself as part of your job.”

  “No. No, you’re not. Sorry. Sit down, get some cat hair on those khakis. I’m glad you could come.”

  She clattered and rustled in the kitchen until the microwave tinged and then she brought out several small vivid pottery dishes of various salsas and a big platter of nacho chips wearing a mantle of cheese and sliced fresh jalapeños.

  Matt grabbed a big blue linen napkin and dug in. “This is better than Friday’s,” he said.

  “Yeah. A lotta Velveeta, a little Rotel, some fresh peppers to tart the whole thing up. Sorta like tonight.”

  Matt stopped scarfing and got wary. “Oh?”

  “I got you out here on false pretenses,” she admitted.

  “Fast food?”

  “Fast talking. I need your advice.”

  “Oh. Well, that comes with the territory. ‘Will advise for food.’”

  “I’m not good at plying my … acquaintances for free advice.”

  “Well, then break out the Dos Equis. That’ll get me talking. You do have some?”

  “Oh, my God! I forgot the beer.”

  Matt smiled as her bare feet slapped kitchen tile and the refrigerator door shot a sliver of light into the dim living room.

  The cats yawned and stretched, as if used to slapdash improvisation in feeding at Casa Molina.

  Matt hated to admit it, but the nachos with bottled salsa sauce were superb: hot, greasy, and crispy.

  A condensation-dewed long neck of Dos Equis landed on a cork coaster on the coffee table in front of him. By now the jalapenos had hit pay dirt on his tongue and he downed several swallows.

  “Milk would be better,” she observed.

  “Not manly,” Matt said, still choking a little. “Okay. What’s it all about, Alfie?” he looked around, suddenly aware. “Is Mariah off with her friends?”

  “Yes, and no. And, yes, we are alone here. I arranged it that way.”

  “Really? Is this entrapment? This is very low-alcohol-content beer.”

  “Only entrapment for your professional opinion.”

  “You didn’t have to ply me with dinner for that.”

  She sat back on her tailbone in her chair, balancing her beer bottle on her stomach. This was no Molina he’d ever imagined.

  “Mariah is away from home for a couple of weeks.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “It means that my naive, gutsy daughter got herself accepted by some stupid, exploitative reality TV show, and Mama couldn’t say no without being cursed for life. So …”

  “Wait a minute! Is that the Teen Queen thing?”

  “And ‘Tween Queen,” she corrected with loathing. “Mariah thinks she wants to be a singing star and win a date with the latest Boy Toy nonsinger around. What’s a mother to do? I could take any casino boss in town in for questioning, but I can’t put a leash on my only daughter.”

  Matt chewed some nachos while he thought about it. “No, you’re right. You can’t. She got accepted? On her own?”

  “Yeah. Every kid has access to a video recorder nowadays.”

  “Mariah? She’s just a baby.”

  “Are
you out of it! This is not what I want your advice on. Here. Watch her homemade video. The one that got her on the show.”

  Molina got up, skirts swaying, to pop in the offending video.

  Matt began to understand her mixture of panic and pride. Mariah had shot up. Those chubby baby features and limbs were starting to look coltish and graceful. Her eyes were as dark as her mother’s were light, making Matt wonder about the father again. Likely Hispanic. Molina was half and half, although what the other half was he couldn’t guess.

  Mariah’s voice was a contralto that blared like a boom box on occasion. She was a belter, unlike her crooner mother, and suited the pop music mode of her own day. But she had a voice. Too.

  Molina got up to eject the tape and dropped it atop the TV.

  Matt decided it was time to gently probe at the maternal wounds. “So the problem is … Mariah is unrealistic about a performing career?”

  “Who isn’t unrealistic about a performing career? Everybody dreams. Maybe a tenth of one percent lives the dream. No, the kid can try it. She might break the odds. I think this freaking show is foolishness, but that’s not the problem. It’s possible that a killer is stalking the contestants.”

  “My God.”

  “I’ve got people on the stalker thing. That’s not the big problem.”

  “What on earth could be, then?”

  Molina leaned back, drained a bottle of Dos Equis, eyed the pathetic level in his own bottle, and got up.

  “We’re out of beer, and the chili on the stove is about to desiccate. Come, sit down and eat.”

  Chapter 14

  Bad Daddy

  The chili was red, full of beans and beef, and hot enough to fry the soles off a pair of Dr. Scholl’s sandals.

  Matt tucked in.

  He and Molina sat at a small round table in a tiny bay window off the kitchen. He sensed this nook was hardly ever used for dining. Instead, quick bites were taken at the elbow-height eating bar between the kitchen and the living room.

  Molina had poured their beers into thick glass mugs chilled in the refrigerator. Correction: Carmen had done that.

  “So the problem—” Matt began when the first edge of his hunger had been soothed.