Cat In An Alien X-Ray

Molina had leaned forward during his recital, resting her elbows on her desk and her chin on her fists. Matt doubted she’d fall into such an informal pose with anyone else, but it gave him a chance to suffer the concentrated effect of her truly electric blue eyes. Like his Jaguar, they were gorgeous. No wonder she was a mesmerizing cabaret singer on the side. He blinked and she drew back, either satisfied or, like him, surprised.

“Miss Barr mentioned that,” she said. “You tell me more. Midnight Louie’s fate was in question?” She’d resumed sardonic cop mode. “Should I send flowers?”

“Only catnip. The nappers, Benny ‘the Viper’ Bennedetto and Waldo ‘the Weasel’ Walker, were caught.”

“You’re describing a movie script, right? So what’s with the cat?”

“He escaped the warehouse where they were holding him. The hoods apparently had a falling out and beat each other senseless. The only sign that Louie had been there was the empty leopard-print carrier Temple had bought him.”

“So we have Midnight Louie now at large in Chicago and living large? Is that hoping too much?”

“He, uh, made his way back to my mother’s apartment.”

“Chicago is a big city.”

“Louie’s a big cat.” Matt shifted in the chair. Visitors weren’t expected to stay long anywhere here, and the Spartan seating assured that. “Look, Lieutenant. The thugs were mobsters on their last legs and pretty lame, but what they did to my mother was extreme. They followed her to her workplace and left threatening notes among her papers. They broke into her apartment and left notes on her pillow. She rooms with my college-age cousin, Krys, and was scared stiff her niece was in danger too.

“But the notes insisted she’d regret going to the police.”

Now Molina had leaned far back in her chair, her eyes narrowed, a pen she’d picked up beating hushed time on her desktop. “What did they want?”

“A lockbox my late stepfather, Cliff Effinger, had left behind in Mom’s old Chicago-style two-flat place.”

“And somebody had killed Effinger here in a particularly torturous and grisly way. He must have mentioned the lockbox was with his ex-wife before he died.”

“You’d think they could have let him live.”

“You might. Not me. I’d think they’d consider him a loose end that they would see tied tight and sunk publicly enough to scare off anyone else interested in the contents of Effinger’s lockbox.”

“And my mother wasn’t his ex-wife. They’d never divorced.”

Molina put a finger to her lip. “Keep those personal facts to yourself. My first thought is that maybe you’d want to off Effinger to free your mother from a rotten marriage.”

“Effinger had moved on to Vegas years before I came here. Besides, it took more than one person to do him in that way.”

“True. Not that you don’t have loyal groupies here in Vegas now. What was in the lockbox the Chicago hoods didn’t get?”

“That’s just it. Nothing much. Tax returns, probably doctored. An old high school yearbook, some school stuff a mother would have saved.”

“Speaking of mothers, why did yours get mixed up with a rotter like Cliff Effinger?”

“He came from the same neighborhood. I was heading off to preschool and you couldn’t have single mothers in my Polish Catholic neighborhood then unless they were widows.”

“Oh.” Molina sat back. She was a single mother too.

“That wasn’t a problem, with you?” Matt asked. “You and Mariah, I mean? You grew up in L.A.”

“Yeah. Latino Catholic community.” When Matt tilted his head, wanting more, she delivered. “My mother was like your mother. Unwed. I always fantasized my father was Paul Newman.”

“The blue eyes.”

“He sure wasn’t Latino. When she married, she made sure my stepdaddy was.”

Matt pulled out his cell phone and held up a photo. “Mom just got married again. Here in Vegas last weekend.”

Molina took the phone. “That’s a very familiar-looking wedding party … you, Temple Barr, Electra Lark as justice of the peace. Even Midnight Louie present and accounted for. The groom looks like a nice guy, but if the blond woman in the middle is your mom, she looks like your slightly older sister.”

Matt took the phone back to survey the shot. “Louie was ring-bearer. Mom was very young when she had me. ‘And naïve’ is the expression.”

“Not my problem,” Molina said. “I was old enough to know better and protect myself, but it didn’t work.” She sat back again. “Easy for me, I just got the hell out of Dodge and changed jobs and locations. Lots of cops get divorced.”

“Being a single mother can’t ever be easy.”

“Easy in that I was too old to be shamed with the ‘unwed mother’ label, and I was pretty distant from my family by then anyway.”

“Yeah. Mom and me were the odd ones out too.”

“Thing is, I was just old enough that I got to babysit all six of my younger stepsisters and brothers from the time I was practically a toddler myself.”

“I would have loved to be ‘lost’ among a family of other children.”