Cat In A Topaz Tango

“He’s not happily hostile yet. It’s hard to tell how much he’s had and how fast it worked,” she told them, as Danny slipped away to return to the love fest on stage.

“But I’m not too late?” Temple said. “I didn’t miss anything?”

“This show hasn’t started yet. But this is the guy.”

“Why would anyone hate Matt that much?” Temple asked.

“A teensy bit prejudiced, are we?” Molina asked in turn, as Rafi joined them. But she smiled.

“It’s a legitimate question,” Temple insisted. “This guy is a local. The only thing vaguely aggressive Matt did since coming to town was to track down his stepfather. So this Hank Buck was a friend of that scumball? Really? I can’t believe that. Cliff Effinger didn’t have any friends. Whoever tied him to the bow of the pirate ship at the Treasure Island so he drowned could not have been Matt. If that was anything, it was a hit.

“And another thing,” Temple added. “What about the Barbie Doll Killer? Could Hank Buck be it?”

“I doubt it,” Molina said. “I can’t deal with that issue here and now, but I have a nasty suspicion that I’m gonna get on ASAP. Right now why Buck wanted to kill Matt is a priority.

“My detectives are even now breaking down Buck’s bio like he was Lee Harvey Oswald,” Molina said. “They’re going to his neighbors, his car mechanic, anyone. If there’s a connection to Matt, they’ll find it. Two attempts at murder must have a powerful motive behind them.” She looked over her shoulder to Mariah’s father. “He was one of yours.”

Rafi shook his head. “He was one of yours first. That was on his application that my people pulled. He was hired here before I was, but before that he was on the force. We found no record of dishonorable discharge. Your detectives are trying to find out why he quit the force. He was seeing the department psychologist, but those records are protected.”

“Not for long. Either way,” Molina said, “he was one bad cop, public or private. Why’d he target this event and these people?”

“That’s sure what I wonder,” a new voice said.

They all turned, shocked to see that Matt had joined them, and doubly shocked by the sight of his current tough-guy tango image.

“I finally escaped my fans,” he said. “I want to know why this guy almost killed me and Temple. I don’t see a reason.”

“I don’t see it, either,” Rafi admitted. “It’d make more sense if one of the celebrity dancers who was a victim of dirty tricks was the murder target. I can see it being Motha Jonz. Buck could have been hired to off her by the gangsta rappers, say, whoever Motha Jonz was involved with at the time of the Vegas shoot-out. I could see using the dance show to do that.”

“Hey,” Temple said. “Buck didn’t have to be hired. Wasn’t a teenager shot and killed during the gunplay on the Strip? I need my laptop. I could look that and all the other celebrity ‘sins’ right up. There are hundreds of sites on stuff like that.”

Rafi had a cell phone to his ear. “Nadir here. Collect a hot pink laptop from the—?”

He handed Temple the phone and she described it and told the guard where in the central bedroom it was. Then Rafi took back the phone and said he wanted the laptop in the dancing show greenroom “yesterday.”

“‘Hot pink’?” Molina mocked. “Can you never stop being girly?”

Matt pulled Temple close to his leather-clad side. “I don’t ever want her to.”

“You see the benefits,” Temple purred, watching Molina look away and shake her head. Temple straightened up and got back to business.

“Maybe that messenger boy shot in the rap star shoot-out was a relative of Buck’s,” she said.

“But Buck didn’t try to kill Motha Jonz,” Matt said. “Rafi, your gangsta rap slaying idea is interesting. Exchanging live ammo for blanks was the most dangerous dirty trick, but Motha Jonz was the shooter. The Cloaked Conjuror and José were more in danger from her.”

Temple had sat on an empty guard’s chair and now looked up and nodded.

“She might have gotten a police charge out of the incident,” Temple said. “That would have hurt her career even more than it has been. And she might have been found guilty and convicted.”

“What about all those other dirty tricks?” Matt wondered. “What was the point?”

“Obvious.” Molina was brusque. “Diversions to mask that you were a target, the target. I don’t know if he intended the Cloaked Conjuror to be injured by Motha Jonz’s loaded gun, but the fact that he did get hurt got us police thinking the whole thing might be a follow-through on the continual death threats he gets.”

“There must have been more to it,” Matt insisted. “We’re missing something.”

“What about the shoe incidents?” Temple asked.