Cat In A Leopard Spot

Talk about turning-point moments. How far did she go to protect Nadir from official inquiry while she ran her own half-assed unofficial inquiry? If he was more than suspect, even a real live perp, at what point did her personal interest add up to endangering the public while protecting her daughter and herself? Now? Sic ’em on Rafi? Alch and Su to the manhunt? Kinsella hadn’t panned out, that was for sure. Molina cleared her throat, swallowed duty one more time. She simply didn’t believe Nadir had done it, not for personal reasons, but in her professional judgment. Now Alch wanted to know what had given her pause, something plausible, besides conscience.

“Just your execrable penmanship,” she told him affectionately. “You need to have these things translated, Morey.”

“I can read ’em better than I can type. You should see my typing, you want hieroglyphs.”

“It could cause trouble in court,” she said. “You can have the captain’s secretary type them up.”

“Captain wouldn’t like that.”

“You mean you can’t sweet-talk Arietta into doing you a favor? Just show her these pathetic notes. Her sense of order will put her at your disposal.”

“You overestimate his charms, Lieutenant,” Su told her. “Morey’s bashful act doesn’t go over with uptown women like Arletta.”

“Then you type ’em up for him, Su. You are partners,” Molina told her with a frigid smile that meant business. “You’re supposed to compensate for each other’s weaknesses. But do it after this case is over. We have a lot of folks already involved at Rancho Exotica. And we haven’t even looked into the upscale clientele.”

“You mean the sick weekend hunters,” Su said.

“You think the animal-rights people have a cause?”

“Darn right they do. Saw a feature on one of those TV news magazines. Had some kind of wild ram pinned against a fence. Shot so many arrows into his body he looked like a pincushion. Poor thing was panting and heaving, just lying there, waiting for the macho incompetent to kill him inch by inch in order to spare the head and chest for mounting. I’m a homicide cop and it made my stomach turn. I was ready to off the hunter myself.”

No one wanted to break the silence. Then Alch shifted to look at the scowling Su. “That cute little fuzzy jacket you wear when the temp dips below sixty, what’s that made of?”

“The magenta one? I guess, well, maybe, fur. Something they raise on farms. It’s not the same thing.”

“They don’t waste time with arrows, I bet, but I also bet that Peter Cottontail didn’t want to die for your fashion sense, either.”

Molina raised her hands to head off a serious spat in the detective team. Morey was right, a lot of things were easy to swallow if you didn’t know, or think, or see too much about them.

“That part of the case is not our jurisdiction,” she reminded them both. “We’re here to get people-killers. We don’t even have proof that Van Burkleo’s place was a hunting ranch, and we’re not about to waste man, or woman, power on that. It’s only relevant as a motivation for the animal-rights protesters, and I have a hard time buying a group kill. That only happens in Agatha Christie mysteries.”

“Maybe not a group kill,” Alch said. “Maybe one did it and the others are protecting him, or her. Or just don’t know. Somebody let that leopard into the house.”

“How about Van Burkleo himself?” Su asked, engaged again. “Maybe he liked to live dangerously. According to his wife, he was alone in the house that night because she stayed over in town.”

“Accidental death?”

Su shrugged. “We’ve seen some pretty incriminating death scenes that turned out to be accidents. Remember the alcoholic woman who went into a fit and tore up her living room? The place looked like an interrupted break-in, with attempted rape and successful murder.”

Molina nodded. Anything was possible. The medical examiner had reported head and body blows and bruises, but those could have happened while V. B. was running from the leopard.

“And then, for another theory—” said Su. And stopped.

“Yes?”

“There was the usual black cat on the premises.”

“What ’usual black cat’?”

“The usual black house cat we keep running into on crime scenes lately.”

“If it’s showing up at crime scenes, it can’t be a house cat,” Molina said.

“Big, shorthaired male?” Alch asked Su with interest, ignoring the boss.

Molina kept a dangerous silence.

Su made a point of consulting her notebook, just for show. “Not so big. Not so shorthaired. Maybe not so male. The description sounds female.”

“Oh,” said Alch. “The other one, then.”

“Sorry.” Molina slapped her palms on the desktop for attention. “I refuse to believe that Las Vegas domestic cats could get out into the desert like that. Must be a stray attracted by the big-cat food.”

Su shrugged. “Some of the attendants spotted it, earlier the same day that Van Burkleo was killed. Said it was hanging around the leopard’s cage. A little too coincidental, Lieutenant?”