Cat In A Leopard Spot

“How do you know about these other women who were strangled? The PI didn’t mention that. You got an in with the cops?”

“Yeah. I cheat.”

“I believe you do.”

“You have any letters of Mandy’s? Any information on her friends, where she came from?”

“They never come from here, do they? Me neither. And I didn’t come from Reno, that’s for sure. No. The PI went through her things. You can too.”

Max stood. “Did she take anything?”

“Only notes. I see you don’t.”

“I’m looking for things that aren’t worth noting.”

Reno stood, sighed. “Well, that was Mandy, alive or dead.”

“Not true,” Max said.

“I guess we tried, huh?”

He didn’t say anything more.

“Not enough.” Reno turned and led him down the cramped hall.

Chapter 26

Polishing Off the Past

Matt pulled off his gloves and stuffed them into the pockets of his down jacket. He felt like he had alighted from a time machine instead of a taxicab. The scene before him proved his problems were half a continent away. He savored the view: a snow-whited sepulcher of night in a city that counted wind chill factors instead of chips. Chicago. Safe at home. Kathleen O’Connor left behind in a lukewarm land of neon nightmares.

He dodged dirty mounds of slush, giant steps taking him from the cab to the restaurant’s huge wooden double doors. His bare palm grasped icy wrought iron and pulled one door open. Outside, the weather was cold enough that the hot, rushed atmosphere inside Polandski’s felt as welcome as a warming house on a January ice rink.

And it was already March in Chicago.

He watched waiters dressed in embroidered vests over white shirts careen to and fro, overloaded serving trays hoisted above their heads like little islands of pottery perched on the crack of a tectonic plate.

The constant balancing act was unnerving as the waitstaff sailed between tables crowded together, and crowded with customers. The noise level was a roar. To his chilled nostrils, the mingling scents of discreet sweat, hot sausage, and cold beer was narcotic.

“Sir?”

“I’m meeting someone.” Matt’s eyes panned the overpopulated room once more. It was embarrassing not to spot your own mother. “Mira—” What last name was she using now? He didn’t have the vaguest idea, even more embarrassing. He’d have to ask sometime.

“Oh, you’re Mira’s son!” The woman hostess was as rosy cheeked as a grade-schooler in December, despite being in her sixties. “Right this way.”

Her broad, embroidery-vested form tunneled a path through the chaos to a rear table for four.

His mother sat there fiddling with her silverware and keeping an eagle eye on the service transpiring at adjoining tables.

“Matt!” She leaped up when she belatedly saw him, smiling.

“Mom.”

They hugged over an intervening wooden captain’s chair.

“You look great,” Matt told her, pulling a heavy chair over the rough-tiled floor to sit at right angles to her. She had posted herself to see the door, but the intervening traffic had made him invisible.

“It’s these fancy clothes.” She modestly touched her fingertips to the shoulders of the aqua blue blouse he had bought her for Christmas.

But it wasn’t just the blouse, or the blue topaz earrings, also a gift from Matt. Her hair had been cut and fluffed into a cloud of blond intermixed with gray, a totally natural effect that somehow seemed expensively colored. God was still the best hair stylist around.

She looked at least ten years younger than her fifty-three years. Matt noticed that adjoining diners were still eyeing them speculatively after overhearing their greeting. He didn’t look over thirty himself, so mental math was being frantically done at all the surrounding tables, much to Matt’s amusement. If they only knew his history, and hers.

“You look,” he said, sincerely amazed, “like a new woman. Is it the new job?”

“Partly.” Her expression as she glanced around mixed caution and pride. Her voice lowered. “Serving as hostess at a famous place like this requires a little more maintenance than I needed at Thaddeus’s Café in the old neighborhood. The Polandsky is a big tourist attraction. We even get movie stars in. Kevin Costner.”

“Well, you look fit to escort a movie star, Mom.”

She settled back to study him as only mothers can while a waiter brought menus and filled their heavy, stemmed water glasses.

“You look a little tired, Matt. Is it those late hours at that radio job of yours?”

“No, Mom, it’s traveling for these speaking engagements. The luncheon address I did today was over at two P.M. but I was there until four answering questions and meeting underwriters.”

“What group was it again?”

“The supporters of Wendy’s Way, a group of national shelters for runaway girls.”

She shook her head, which only improved her hair-do. “Poor girls. They don’t have family support like in the old days. Now it has to be all out in the open.”