Cat In A Topaz Tango

He looked up as Molina entered the bedroom, his face craggy in the unflattering light of a small desk lamp.

“Nothing in the room, though your daughter has the drugstore makeup concession knocked.”

“I only allow her some lip gloss.”

“Yeah, well, that’s not hip with the tween set these days. Who knows where those allowances are going, huh? Anything missing from the room besides Mariah?”

“Who could tell in this mess? There’s her school backpack, but she wouldn’t take that. Cell phone! It’d be on the bed table . . . no. Otherwise, on the desk.”

“Pretty soon folks will have their cell phones implanted. Nope. Not here. Her absence is voluntary, then. You know how to navigate this Web world? Good thing we all have to use computers on the job these days. Keeps our kids from shutting us out as much as they’d like.”

“What’ve you found?”

“Sometimes it’s a good thing the Internet is as intrusive as it is. Kids think they know it all but they’re no match for Internet crooks and don’t know beans about how to erase an Ethernet trail. I’m in the history segment on recent URLs, and your daughter has visited some veeery interesssting sites.”

She stared at him.

“Sorry. I’m old enough to have seen that Laugh-In catchphrase on TV as a kid. I think if Mariah’s gone, it’s on her own recognizance, Carmen. That’s good. Not great, but good.”

“What do you mean?” She dropped on her knees beside his chair, eyeballing the computer screen.

“Britney. Miley. She’s bookmarked every pop tart teen singer site there is. And American Idol, and the site for the Teen Queen reality TV show she competed on. They have mini-movies you can play. Shows her along with all the other contestants. The finals. Her singing that Broadway song. She’s good. Better than the winner. She’s a mini-star on this thing.”

Molina grabbed the keyboard. “I monitor this devil’s workshop. I have the V-chip, for God’s sake.”

“You’ve been sick, remember?” Morrie said. “Give yourself a break. The sites she went to are just pop culture, entertainment news. The kid’s a wanna-be, a groupie. She’s probably skipped out to attend some idol’s concert.”

Molina frowned at the screen. “It’s his fault.”

“Whose?

“My ex’s. Rafi Nadir. He encouraged me in a singing career, but I was an adult. She’s just a kid.”

“Wait. You had a singing career?”

She shook her head. Her usually subdued hair whipped her cheeks. Annoying.

“Amateur night only. I, ah, still sit in at a local club from time to time. Nobody knows my day job. It’s a hobby. And it wasn’t meant to be a role model thing for my ditsy teen daughter.”

Morrie frowned at her. At her hoop earrings and dark forties lipstick, borrowed from her torch singer persona, Carmen. “Is that what the way you look tonight is about?

She echoed his words, “the way you look tonight” in a velvet croon. “Yeah. I moonlight as a chanteuse, but not looking exactly like this. This is a disguise I used to meet with a . . . source.”

“A snitch?”

Calling Matt Devine a snitch was hilarious.

“No, Morrie, something more, uh, personal. My life is way more complicated than you think.”

“I always thought you were complicated.”

“That bad?”

“Bad in a good way. So you think this Nadir guy was going behind your back, encouraging Mariah in her American Idol fantasy?”

“He was ‘coincidentally’ on site at the Teen Queen reality TV show. Yeah, he ran into her. Call it karma. He saw me there with Dirty Larry. That would warn off any guy.”

Morrie made a face. “I saw you there with Dirty Larry too. What’s that all about?”

“Can’t a woman have a social life?”

“Dirty Larry isn’t a social life; he’s a lowlife. You don’t need someone like him.”

“Maybe not. Maybe he’s a suspect too.”

Morrie looked at her hard.

“He initiated the contact,” she said, “and I needed someone to do some undercover, off-the-meter work for me.”

“Chasing poor Miss Temple Barr’s magician boyfriend?”

“Kinsella was a prime suspect for the Goliath Hotel murder a couple of years ago.”

“Not for the department.”

She shrugged. “Larry’s canvassing the neighbors, so he might be back any minute.”

“Right.” Morrie turned back to the screen. “Mariah’s got herself posted online too.”

“MySpace?”

“Naw, nothing notable. Just this one site you and I never heard of, teenqueendreamscream.com.”

It came up, featuring primped and posed young girls, made up like movie stars.

“That’s Mariah?”

Molina stared at the image of a baby-faced young girl in glitter eye shadow and lip gloss.

“The kids post their photos and bios themselves. The site owner is a local DJ. Visitors vote on who’s most likely to make it big time.”

“Oh, my God. You see what that bastard Nadir encouraged my kid to do.”

“His kid too.”

“My kid all along. He was there at the Teen Queen show as security. He didn’t know who the hell she was, but he seduced her anyway with the idea of using her voice, like a talent was something the world would welcome. It doesn’t. And the path there is ugly. You know that, Morrie.”