Cat In A Sapphire Slipper

“You guys just want to talk about something I’m not supposed to hear.” Mariah ruffled her blond-highlighted hair into a suitably unkempt appearance for Our Lady of Guadalupe Catholic school. Her uniform jumper was a rigid navy-and-green plaid over a crisp white blouse, but her hair was now as punk as the school rules would allow.

She still looked like a pretty decent kid.

“Thirteen,” Morrie commented after Mariah had eased out of the sickroom, then slam-banged through the house and out. “Around seventeen you can expect some relief.”

“I can’t believe she’s buying the Asian flu excuse.”

“She’s probably relieved to see you helpless for a while. Not going to question her luck.”

“Or yours?” The first spoonful was so hot she had to dump it back into the bowl.

He chuckled. “Even Superwoman has to run into a little kryptonite now and then. It was too bad you had to miss the Crystal Carousel shindig, it was quite a party.”

“I didn’t plan on getting knifed.”

“While breaking and entering Max Kinsella’s empty house.”

“What a wasted effort,” she said. “The bastard was gone and now I have to figure out who hated him enough to trash his house and clothing, even with him not in it.”

“Besides you.”

“I don’t hate him, Morrie. I despise his lawless, laughing attitude. But it’s moot. This time I believe he’s really gone. For good. End of story. I can’t get him on the old Goliath Hotel murder, but he doesn’t get to slink around Vegas in secret screwing his girlfriend and laughing at law enforcement.”

“No screwing anymore. Except the law. Temple Barr is pretty cozied up with Matt Devine now. I would have expected their engagement to be announced before one for her visiting aunt, Kit Carlson, and Aldo Fontana.”

Molina frowned. “I’m not sure that’s the best combo around.”

“Carlson and Fontana?”

“Well, any one of the playboy Fontanas, but I meant Temple and Matt. He doesn’t seem her type. Too nice.”

Morrie shrugged. Molina’s judgment on the Circle Ritz residents had always been skewed. “So. You think you can come back to work Monday?”

“I do,” she said. “You ever been cut?”

He shook his shaggy Scottish terrier head, gray at the ears.

“It’s quite a trip, Morrie. Every move you make tears everything. I’m seeing the doctor again Thursday.”

“Good thing she knows your job title. Civilians always expect us cops to engage in regular fracases. From the TV shows.”

“This is pretty obviously a knife slash. And I am pretty obviously not in a domestic violence situation. But I still had to get the damn third degree about it.”

Morrie pulled the dining-room chair doing bedroom duty by the window closer to the bed. “Better eat your noodles while they’re still hot.”

“Yes, Nurse Alch.”

“Speaking of domestic violence, just what is between this Rafi Nadir guy and you?”

She nodded toward the empty main rooms. “Only Mariah. And that wasn’t by my choice.”

“Regrets?”

“Lots. But not Mariah.”

“The guy raped you?”

“God, no! I was a street cop then. They sicced me on all the black brothers in Watts. Women got the shit details; we were supposed to fail. Rafi and I . . . we lived together. Don’t look so shocked. I was a half-Hispanic woman; he was an Arab-American man. We were both predestined to flunk Street 101.”

“So Mariah—?”

“Not a planned pregnancy. I found a pinprick in my diaphragm. Not my doing. Yeah, laugh. I was more Catholic then. Couldn’t quite go against the Pope and use the pill.”

“So why’d Nadir want you pregnant?”

“I was moving up faster than he was. He’s Christian, but from a culture that ranks women with pack donkeys and pariah dogs. I assumed it was a ploy to build his ego two ways. He probably thought it would make me quit the force.”

“You mean you assumed he thought that.”

“You are a wicked interrogator, Alch. Act so easy, but go right for any narrow window of opportunity. You’re right. Motivation rests on assumptions, but they need to be proven. Yes, I’m no longer so sure that he sabotaged my birth control. It’s just that I was so careful about using it.”

“Could have been a manufacturing flaw, or some drugstore smart-ass product-tampering.”

“I’ve been considering that. Thinking about the infamous ‘lot of things.’”

“Thinking is always good.”

She gobbled the rest of the cheesy noodles—an apt description two ways—set the bowl and tray aside, then pushed herself higher against the pillows.

There were two things wrong with that. It made her grimace with pain, and she was wearing a long T-shirt with no bra. She had not been seen by a man with no bra in a long time, except when she was performing occasional gigs as Carmen, the torch singer at a local club. She wore vintage thirties and forties evening gowns for that and they didn’t allow for much underwear.

Still, she could talk better from a sitting position and she had to start rebuilding her stomach muscles for Monday morning.

“Morrie, I owe you for helping me out with this. With the captain, the doctor, and Mariah. I also owe you some explanations.”

“No, you don’t. But I am curious enough to take them.”