Cat In A Topaz Tango

“Time-out,” Temple trilled from the backseat. Zoe Chloe could be an annoying little twit. “Rafi, you’re doing more than seven miles over the speed limit. Lieutenant Molina, you’re grilling our driver into excess mileage per hour.”

“Oh, shut up,” they snapped in unison.

Temple beamed.

“Togetherness. That’ll get us shinin’ through, folks. Just remember that Zoe Chloe Ozone—that’s Ozone without an a-pos-tro-phee, Lee—is hanging loose although buckled in. I want to hear you two singing detecting duets, not long-lost lover laments.”

Silence held as the SUV hurtled into the dotted-line darkness of the night’s open road.

“Zoe Chloe is a brat,” Molina said. “Don’t overdo it.”

“She’s a star.” Rafi chuckled. “I saw that Web site. Brats rule, dweebs drool, right, Zoe?”

“Oh, you so get us crazy mixed-up Internet kids.”

“Yeah, I do.” He was looking at Molina. “I ‘got’ our kid in a few minutes a lot better than you did in thirteen years, Carmen. She’s starstruck. She has some good pipes. It was predictable that reality TV thing would fire her up to try for more. You had the hots for performing once. Why weren’t you watching better?”

Temple saw Molina literally squirm in her seat, pulling the seat belt away from her body as if it cut her. “Easy for you to say,” she hissed, almost with pain.

Something was wrong. Molina was way too subdued. Way too defenseless.

“Kids are tricky these days,” Temple found herself saying in Molina’s defense. “With cell phones, text messaging, and Internet access their secrets get bigger and go farther. Faster.”

“Speaking of secrets”—Rafi put on his blinker to pass a lumbering RV—“what’s with the whacked-up Barbie dolls?”

Cop talk Molina could do.

“That showed up just before the Teen Queen reality TV show got going. A girl who was going to a shopping mall audition was strangled in the parking lot. A copier image of a mutilated Barbie doll was found near her. We never tied it into anything, though: the audition, the house, the later murder there. There have been similar incidents nationally since.”

“And now a Barbie doll is planted in Mariah’s bedroom. I don’t like it.”

“Neither do I!” Molina sounded furious.

“I meant I don’t ‘like it’ in the sense of it being plausible. It smells. It’s too obvious a tie-in, and showing up late too obviously lays a false trail. It reeks of an inside job.”

“The incisive instincts of a hotel cop,” Molina jeered.

Rafi kept very quiet, while Temple held her breath in the backseat. He was not going to let that pass, was he?

Where Molina was all bark at the moment, though, he kept quiet, like a really big dog that doesn’t need to growl.

“So what do you know about this Larry guy you’ve been nuzzling badges with since before the Teen Queen reality show, Carmen?”

“You’re not suspicious of Alch.”

“Solid, steady investigator. Your type. This Dirty Larry is not.”

Temple tensed in the backseat. Rafi wasn’t as volatile as Molina, but he still packed a hard punch.

Molina leaned her elbow on the inside door handle and cradled her cheekbone in her hand as if she had a headache. It was full dark and they were barreling straight into an oncoming stream of headlight meteors in the oncoming lanes.

Molina’s tone was brusque, businesslike. “He’s the typical uncover type. Loner, a chameleon, craves adrenaline highs, maybe a bit fanatic, or egotistical, but has to be to seriously risk his life for months at a time. He’s been rotated to traffic accidents to cool down for a while.”

“So how’d he show up in your private life?”

Temple listened with both ears straining. The road sounds made it hard to hear in the empty SUV cabin. She peered over the seat back to see Molina’s frowning face.

“Before the Teen Queen show,” she said finally.

“Who came on to who?”

“Whom!”

He didn’t take the bait, but waited, watching the road, his eyes flicking to the side and rearview mirrors, not on her.

“Nobody came on to anybody. He showed up,” she conceded. “I can’t remember why.”

“Undercover guys are good at that.”

“You saying he was working me?”

“I’m asking. That Barbie doll in the bedroom makes everyone around Mariah a suspect. And you and Undercover Boy were a couple at the Teen Queen finals. Something new for you.”

“I thought you said you didn’t check me out when you came to town.”

“I didn’t look up your home address like some stalker, no. I did check out Our Lady of Guadalupe, chatted up the nuns, got a line on Mariah.”

“How the hell did you manage that?”

Rafi finally slid his gaze to her. “I can pass as Latino if I want to.”

“I don’t believe this.” Molina buried her face in her left hand.

“Don’t worry. You got all As. Wonderful mother and member of the parish, supportive, on the PTA. Such a delightful daughter, no sleazy men around your house. Guess they didn’t consider me sleazy.”

“Who did you tell them you were?” Her voice was all steel again.

“Cousin from L.A. Thinking of moving to Vegas. Needed a school for my young son.”