Cat In An Aqua Storm

Molina leaned forward, her resonant voice lowering confidentially. “You are contacting that self-help group?”

“Yes! All right? I’ll go over next week.”

“Fine,” Molina said, backing off, drawing away. “You still sure that you don’t have so much as a wallet shot?” she added.

Temple stared at her. “You’d use it against Max.”

“Maybe, if we found him first, we’d save him from somebody else.”

Temple sat back in the plain, hard chair. Her head hurt, along with a lot of other things. The hard truths she’d been hearing lately about Max, about herself, hurt too. She wondered if she’d hate herself in the morning for saying this.

“I’ve got a poster,” Temple admitted. “There should have been dozens still around. People like to collect posters.”

“Great.” Molina stood as if a bargain had been struck and it was time to go, probably straight back to Hades. “I’ll stop by your place for it tonight. Say, seven?”

Temple nodded slowly. It hurt her head. She certainly wasn’t going out this evening. What better than to entertain the Iron Maiden of the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department?

“Lieutenant! Telephone,” bawled a man at an nearby desk.

With a farewell nod, Molina moved briskly away. Temple gathered up her tote bag, making sure everything was inside. She felt like a thousand-year-old lady today, not daring to trust either her body or her mind to go through even routine motions.

Unappetizing faces danced in the background of her mind. Why would she want to finger those hoods? She would only have to see them again in court.

A few desks away, Molina’s low voice escalated into an incredulous “What?”

Temple looked in that direction. Molina was bending over the desk, scribbling furiously.

“Right,” she was saying impatiently. “What time this morning? Right away.” She hung up the phone and barked something to a man at a farther desk. He jumped up, grabbing a khaki sport coat and some keys off a rack.

Molina was stuffing her kangaroo jacket pockets with the paper she’d written on, her pen and notebook. She glanced up at Temple watching her. “Did you drive here?”

“Yeah. I can do it—just.”

“You up to stopping by the Goliath?”

“I was planning on it. I’ve got business there.”

“So have I. Give me your car keys. I’ll have a uniform drive your vehicle over later. Let’s get going now.”

Temple complied and rose, teetering slightly on her heels. Maybe they were a bad idea today, but then again, they made a statement. “What’s happening, Lieutenant?” she asked.

Molina glanced over her shoulder at the other detective right behind her. “Another stripper’s been murdered. Now let’s go.”

The two officers didn’t wait for Temple to react, or wait for her, period.

She jammed her tote handles over her left shoulder and hurried after them, feeling like Dorothy tripping down the Yellow Brick Road in her flashy new shoes, on marching orders from a distinctly enigmatic Witch of the North. She didn’t relish encountering another Glinda at the Goliath.

Maybe Midnight Louie could play Toto.

Keeping up with the long-striding cops made Temple’s head ache anew. She was hardly aware of passing through the bowels of the downtown cop shop, which would have fascinated her on a less stressed occasion.

After huffing up three flights of stairs, the party ended up at a rooftop lot. The male detective, apparently junior to Molina, got the car, a white Ford Crown Victoria. Suited Molina’s autocratic style, Temple thought. Molina threw herself in the front passenger seat. Temple wrested the back door open and hopped—ow—in.

They were off.

“No siren?” Temple asked in the lengthening silence.

Molina twisted in the seat to regard her. “The victim is dead. Five minutes isn’t going to change anything. You have a thing for sirens, or what?”

Temple flushed and sat back in the seat. She resisted an urge to perch, imagining what unsavory passengers might have sat here before her—pimps, pushers, child molesters. But this was an unmarked car. Maybe only unmarked citizens rode in it.

“Temple Barr,” Molina explained to her partner. “Does freelance PR around town. Has a penchant for finding bodies.”’ She nodded over her shoulder at the driver. “Detective Sergeant Wayne Dindorf.”

That was it for introductions, and so far no explanation why Molina had invited—ordered?—Temple along.

“The body was found this morning at nine,” Molina droned from her notes for the sergeant’s benefit. “None of the performers had arrived yet—must be late risers—so no one’s identified it.” She checked her watch, and the car spurted forward as the driver registered her gesture.

Now, that was clout, Temple thought enviously. A mere flick of the wrist and some man puts the pedal to the metal.

Temple wondered how male coworkers got along with Molina, or how hard it had been for her to get her position and retain cordial authority over men who might have—or might have felt they ought to have—gotten the lieutenant’s job.