Cat In A Topaz Tango

She needed to know more before she alerted anybody. The house sounded ominously empty, the only noise the uneasy shift of ice in the refrigerator and any motions Carmen made herself. The cats had curled up to sleep in opposite corners of the living-room sofa, like bookends.

Carmen pushed maternal panic out of her mind and hit one last fast-dial number.

“Morrie? It’s Molina. No, the stitches are fine. It’s something else. Something worse, maybe. Yeah. Under wraps for the moment. Can you bear to come over here one more time and maybe save the day? Great. I, ah, didn’t ask what you were doing. Oh. This.” She tried to find a smile, but couldn’t. “Thanks.”

“Jesus, Carmen!”

She wouldn’t have called Morrie if she’d known he’d go postal.

He was pacing the small living room in the opposite direction she was. He was a Columbo sort of cop, middle-aged, rumpled, nice enough to underestimate. “You can’t keep a thing like this under wraps. You think this is the secret service or something?”

“You know no one official will act until tomorrow unless there’s evidence of a kidnapping or a runaway kid. And you know I’ve been down and out lately, with Mariah on her own more than usual.”

“So you last saw her—?”

“This morning before I went to work.”

“You’ve been coming home for lunch for a change. We know you were readjusting your Ace bandage. Doesn’t she come home from school for lunch?”

“Not as much anymore. We’re close to the school, but she has groups of girlfriends now. They’re always working on some project in their spare time.” She paused to look him in the eye. “And I skipped lunch because I had an appointment elsewhere earlier today. About Mariah.”

“She getting in trouble in school?”

“No. I saw her father.”

“Rafi Nadir?”

“There’s any other candidate?”

“About what?”

“About his wanting a role in Mariah’s life.”

“Oh, Lord, you laid down the law according to Molina and he went apeshit and took her anyway.”

“I’d love to put an APB out on my ex-boyfriend, Morrie, but I didn’t close him down. I told him we’d work something out, as soon as I got a little time.”

“And he took it how?”

“Like a lamb. We talked about old assumptions and discovered we’d had a terminal ‘failure to communicate,’ as the shrinks say.” She smiled. “I saw and talked to Matt Devine this evening too, about Kinsella. He’d bought Temple Barr’s party line that the magician was innocent of anything but protecting the innocent. After what happened in Kinsella’s house five weeks ago, the stalker, I’m beginning to wonder if the people after him aren’t worse than he is.”

Morrie grinned. “Including you? Sounds like you’ve been dining on crow, lately.”

“Yup. And what’s my reward? My kid goes AWOL. Anything about her strike you, Morrie? I’ve been pretty out of it these last five weeks or so.”

“She was a good kid. Did what I asked, right away. Ready to be tearing off back to school, of course.”

“‘Tearing off back to school?’ Morrie, that’s very abnormal behavior.”

“I thought kids that age had energy.”

“Not for going back to school. Her room’s the usual tsunami victim. It doesn’t look messed with by more than the resident’s usual habits. Yet I don’t want to go through things in there in case we need”—her voice got a bit wobbly—“evidence taken, but I think I should check the computer. I haven’t since I got ‘sick,’ and the Internet is the root of all evil these days when it comes to kids getting into trouble.”

Molina fetched two sets of latex crime scene gloves from the going-out-the-door supplies in a kitchen drawer.

“You can’t think—” Morrie began.

“Anything’s possible. One of the mothers I called tonight should have been able to pinpoint Mariah’s whereabouts. The kid wrote her destination on the fridge, as we agreed. It’s door-to-door pick up and drop off. Even if Mariah fudged things, someone should have a clue.”

By then they were stepping over books, and papers, and articles of clothing in Mariah’s bedroom.

“I’ve walked into a nightmare like this before,” Morrie said.

“Blair Witch Project?”

“My own teen daughter’s bedroom, years ago.”

The usual cop-shop black humor was rearing its macabre head. They’d both reverted to what gave them the distance that made efficiency possible instead of panic.

“Kids this age do tend to go a little AWOL,” he commented. “Testing the limits. They get crazy ideas.”

“And I haven’t been paying proper attention lately.” Molina brushed her thick hair back from her face, but it flopped forward again, thanks to its recent “disguise” as an actual hairdo. “You know teen girls better than I do, Morrie. Keep searching here and I’ll check with the next-door neighbors. Maybe they saw something.”

When she got outside, the sun was thinking about dropping completely behind the mountains. The streetlights were only faintly lit, also looking like they might change their minds any minute, looking like fancy entry hall lights in better neighborhoods.

The Vargas house on the right wasn’t lit inside for the evening yet. She was a nurse’s aide and he drove long haul.