Cat In An Ultramarine Scheme

Poor Mariah, having a homicide cop for a mom! Mothers of teenagers had reason to be paranoid to begin with, and the Molina household had been violated by a stalker. At least Mama no longer thought that had been Max. As if he would have to force himself on women and Temple would be going with a guy who did! Molina was right. She was a horrid judge of men.

“Sensible shoes,” a deep voice said behind her, breaking into her mental tirade.

Temple looked over her shoulder to see Rafi standing at the Miata’s other front fender.

“Thanks,” she said, eyeing her broad-based but insanely strappy red wedge sandals. “For me, they are.”

She was about to hop down when Rafi came around and took her hand, quite the gentleman. He was about six feet, swarthy, around forty, wearing the usual black jeans and boots, not cowboy, and a black T. Just a regular guy. He was also carrying a cooler and incarcerated Temple’s insulated bag of sandwiches in it as soon as she was on level ground.

“How’d you get here?” she asked.

“Parked across the road and walked in.”

Meanwhile they were pacing along the hard-packed red clay hiking path toward the concrete picnic tables. Quacking ducks swam near the small artificial lake at the park’s center, when not beak-diving for snacks or waddling after bread-carrying tourists on the grass.

Temple was used to taking long steps to keep pace with Max’s six-foot-four stride. Nor was Matt an ambler. She may have worn high heels for business since college, but she’d never been a tiny-step totterer.

In three minutes she and Rafi were settled at a picnic bench under the concrete sun shelter. He’d brought bags of oven-roasted vegetable chips and Amstel Light beer and spring water to go with Temple’s roast-beef sandwiches on rye. Tasty spread. Temple accepted a beer, and Rafi took the water.

“Molina would have a bird if she could see us now,” Temple remarked after the first few bites of sandwich, “but not a duck.”

“No, she’d have an ostrich,” Rafi agreed, upping the ante. “Whole.”

“Never a flamingo,” Temple added, recalling the Las Vegas visit of concept artist Domingo with his thousands of pink plastic yard-birds.

Enough preliminaries, she thought.

“What’s this secret meeting about?” she asked Rafi. “I thought you and Molina had at least blunted the hatchet. You were a great go-to guy at the Oasis celebrity dance contest. Matt and I sure appreciated that; even ol’ C. R. seemed to.”

“Yeah.” Rafi rotated the plastic water bottle between his palms.

Temple was surprised. He seemed a tad nervous. Maybe he wasn’t used to talking about his feelings. Duh! An Arab-American grad of the L.A. police force from back in the days when ethnic borders were even edgier and bloodier on the streets than today. Guess not.

She prided herself on being able to cross most social barriers since her Minneapolis TV-reporter days. That was a huge asset in her freelance PR business. She decided to let Rafi take his time, and soon he’d be spilling like the Exxon Valdez.

“So,” he said suddenly, “how do I get the new, Dairy Queen–soft Molina to let me into my daughter’s life?”

“Ask?” Temple suggested.

He shook his head. “Too easy for her to give one of her knee-jerk responses. You know how wired she’s been lately. Apparently your ex did that to her?”

Temple was startled by another mention of Max, no doubt.

“Your ex-boyfriend,” Rafi said more specifically, “that magician guy. He may be gone, but, believe me, he’s not forgotten as far as Carmen Molina is concerned.”

“Max wasn’t … forgettable. I thought you ran into him on some of those freelance security jobs.”

Rafi shrugged. “Maybe. I ran into a lot of guys on those details. I’d have liked to shake his hand. He did a great number on Carmen and distracting her from her job, which she hates more than anything. Well, you oughta know. You two are always tenser than alley cats on the subject.”

“We were not fighting over Max. You’ve got that wrong, just as Molina got Max wrong. She was being a pig-headed cop, sure someone was guilty before she had any more evidence than her instincts.”

“Which are pretty sharp,” Rafi said.

“You actually admire her? After the way she’s treated you?”

“I give her credit, just as I give you credit.”

“Well, you don’t give me credit for keeping my men. You’ve implied both Max and Matt might have a love-hate thing going with Lieutenant C. R., she of the untamed eyebrows.”

“Untamed? Eyebrows?” Rafi laughed. “Women fight dirty, for sure. At least she doesn’t have the untamed love life you’ve had.”

“Me? Untamed? I am so boring and below the radar.”

“Yeah, sure, Zoe Chloe.” Rafi laughed again. “Look, that’s why I’m courting your good opinion.”

The word courting made Temple seriously leery. “Yeah?”

“You know Molina way better than I do.”

“I do?”

“Right. As a woman. I want to take Mariah to that father-daughter dance when she starts junior high in the fall. How can I ace out your handsome, morally superior fiancé for the job?”

“You’ve got a lot of nerve.”