Cat In A Topaz Tango

Great! Another person to add to the jury of her peers so ready to condemn her.

She checked her watch again. Under the pain of stitches pulled by her tensed stomach muscles and severe stomach acid, she was dreading Rafi coming here, into her life with both feet and a right to be angry.

The knock on her front door made her start. One knock. The minimum.

“I’ll get it.” Alch was nearest the door and opened it while Rafi still had his back turned to the house, checking out the neighborhood, the parked cars.

He spun around like a wary prizefighter to take in Alch, Larry Podesta, even the two cats weaving around all the alien legs, sniffing. With his swarthy Lebanese-American looks and wearing the plain dark suit of a hotel security supervisor he looked like a sinister FBI man. He spotted her last.

“Carmen.” Said with a curt nod. Everyone’s eyes snapped to him. Most had never heard anyone call her Carmen.

Now came the ugliest moment. All hers. She turned to the two men in the room.

“This is Mariah’s father, Rafi Nadir. He works security at the Oasis Hotel. Alch, take him to Mariah’s room and cover the bases.”

Dirty Larry had stood, a junkyard dog uneasy about the unexpected stray on his watch.

Rafi sensed the possessiveness immediately. “I know him”—he nodded at Alch—“from the reality TV house.” Then he eyed Dirty Larry. “And this is?”

Molina would not have believed she’d ever see two guys getting territorial over her, or, rather, over her house and daughter. She segued into the needed introductions.

“Dirty Larry’s usually undercover. That’s the name he goes by.”

“Wait. You were at the reality TV show finals too,” Nadir said. “With Molina” was left unspoken.

Larry nodded. “I saw you there too. You weren’t a guest or family member. What for?”

“Freelance security.”

“You been a cop?”

“Yeah. L.A.”

Larry’s head snapped back, impressed. L.A. cops took no guff, though they had a rep for cutting too many corners.

“Cool,” he said. “No wonder Mariah’s got gumption, however misplaced. Cop kid, one hundred percent.” He turned cool gray eyes on Molina and squinted like Clint Eastwood.

Alch and Nadir headed for the bedroom, leaving the two of them alone with the cats.

“You kept this guy tightly under wraps, Carmen,” Larry said softly.

“I keep everyone tightly under wraps.”

“Including yourself.” He grinned. “Don’t worry. You got a good team going here. We’ll find Mariah. And then you get to decide how long you want to ground her.”

“I’d just be happy to have a kid to keep home, Larry.”

“I see runaways all the time when I’m undercover. They’re nothing like Mariah. She’s a runaway to, not from. Her goal may sound dopey to adults but it all makes sense to her. I bet it’s sinking in now, what’s she’s done. How silly and scary it is. She may even come running back home, or call home.

“I don’t think so.” Molina shook her head. “She’s as stubborn as her mother, and that’s a very big, bad overdose.”

“You won’t be comforted, will you?”

“Not until we have her back.”

Dirty Larry produced a crumpled pack of cigarettes and lifted his eyebrows. She nodded. The others were in Mariah’s bedroom.

“I didn’t know you smoked,” she commented.

“Only undercover. It hides any nervousness.”

“You’re nervous here and now?”

“Yeah. This isn’t my scene. Usually the pressure is only on me, all on me. Here, I can’t do much but ask questions and wait.”

“Me too,” Molina snapped impatiently.

Footsteps, two sets, sped down the hallway, sounding like elephants in her small house.

Rafi first, looking sick, Alch second, looking sicker.

Rafi held out something glittery and stiff. It reminded Molina of the reality TV show that sought supermodels, Runway, which Alch had just joked about to ease her tension.

“I found this under all the clutter, on the floor near the computer table and the window,” Rafi said, hoarse and angry. “Didn’t the ‘unofficial task force’ do a halfway decent search, for Christ’s sake?”

She beat Larry to a closer inspection of the stiff, fourteen-inch-long item Rafi clutched like a weapon. She noticed he wore a pair of Alch’s latex gloves. Damn, she couldn’t fault him on anything.

What he held was . . . a Barbie doll, all done up in an evening dress and . . . all undone, the long plastic hair snarled, red nail polish slashed across the plastic mouth and eyes and throat, an arm and leg dislocated.

“The Barbie Doll Stalker,” Larry said like a curse under his breath. “That girl who auditioned for the reality TV show at the local mall, killed and left in the parking lot. You’ve never solved that case.”

“We never found the creep,” Molina said in a dead calm voice. “The case is still open. We thought the mutilated dolls looked like a sick, unrelated joke. When did this get here, goddammit! Yes, we searched the room as soon as we knew Mariah was missing, Morrie and I. We wouldn’t have missed this.”

The silence on Rafi’s part implied they obviously had.

“No,” Alch said, “it’s worse than the notion we missed something.”

He eyed her hard, unblinking, so she’d take every word seriously.