“You’re uninvolved?”
“Pretty much.”
“What does that make you, then?”
“In worse shape than you are. Oughta be some comfort.”
She smiled and scratched her neck. “Actually, it is.”
Matt insisted on helping with the cleanup, which mostly involved soaking the dishes in one side of the sink while Tabitha patted the bubbles.
“You remember seeing me wear a blue velvet dress at the Blue Dahlia,” Carmen asked out of the … well, blue.
“No. I remember a ruby-purple one. And black. But not blue.”
“I’ve got one in my closet and can’t ever remember wearing it, much less buying it.”
“You don’t wear them that often, do you? Especially lately.”
“That a hint that I oughta climb back onto that stool and sing?”
“It must be hard to keep your voice up if you don’t exercise it regularly.”
“True.”
The doorbell rang, catching them both with hands in soapy water.
Carmen tossed Matt a towel after she’d blotted her palms, and headed for the front door with raised eyebrows, obviously not expecting company.
Matt heard voices from the living room. The other one was male so he ambled out there, just in case, although Molina was a match for most men on the planet.
A guy about his size in a black jeans jacket was just inside the door, talking faster than a Fuller Brush man.
Seeing Matt stopped him dead. “You’ve got company, sorry. I thought you wanted these documents right away.”
“Tomorrow at work would have done,” Carmen was saying coolly, but her manner was edgy.
The guy was one of those dirty blonds whose face was all angles sharp enough to cut you. You could see him as the scrappy kind of kid who always got into playground fights. Tough in an oddly admirable way. He seemed too lean and hungry to be a beat cop: those guys tended to have sloppy beer bellies and neat mustaches, and the deceptively laidback attitudes of those who know they’re in authority.
In the ensuing silence, Carmen did introduction duties, clearly loathing every word.
“Larry Paddock, Matt Devine.” She emphatically avoided saying what either of them was.
Paddock nodded, Matt nodded back.
Matt was the guy with chili powder on his breath, so Paddock had to leave.
He ducked his head and backed out, looking none too pleased.
Carmen put the small manila envelope, unopened, on the TV cabinet. “This job never leaves you alone.” Larry Paddock’s drive-by visit had broken the off-hours mood.
Matt fished for the car keys in his pocket, making leaving noises himself.
“Don’t rush off:’ she said, “right after I’ve drafted you for manual labor.”
Did she think Paddock might be waiting for him to go?
So he settled on the living room sofa and accepted a tiny glass of Tia Maria liqueur and commented on the cats until her unexpected visitor was long gone enough so he could go too.
The night outside was as warm as a sauna. Larry, he thought later. New one. Matt got in the Crossfire, sitting for a moment to lower the window for some breeze—now they had a convertible version out—and to savor the newness of everything, the new-car leather scent, the dramatically night-lit dashboard, before starting the engine. New Car Whine.
Carmen came running out of the house, her bare feet slapping concrete, and reached him before he could shift into reverse.
“Matt! Can you come back in for a moment?”
“What for?” Trust an ex-priest, on seeing a woman run after him, to know it was for some reason quite impersonal.
“To find out if I’m going freaking crazy or not.”
Chapter 15
Sweet Tooth
Matt followed Carmen back into her house.
By the time he caught up with her, she was pacing back and forth in the tiny fifties foyer like a tiger in a rabbit cage.
“I can’t believe it. While we were here talking! It had to be.”
“What?”
“You have to see it. Come on.”
He followed her through the living room and down the long narrow hall. Most of Las Vegas’s older homes were one-story and built like rat mazes. What kept the sun out also kept the interiors dark and cramped. Matt had never been more appreciative of the Circle Ritz’s round construction style. There, every unit had an outside wall of windows.
Matt was in her bedroom before he had time to think what a leap in intimacy that involved. He’d never been in any woman’s bedroom before, except a guest room in a convent, which hardly counted. And Temple’s. But only in passing.
This room wasn’t such an exotic locale, after all. It was furnished with the usual suspects, in this case serviceable furniture store–style bed, dresser, and nightstand.
Molina was at her closet door, holding up a curtain of velvet for his inspection.
“First this.” She shook it like Exhibit A in a courtroom. He went over to see it better, recognizing one of the dark velvet vintage gowns she wore to sing at the Blue Dahlia. “These old evening gowns are beautiful. What’s wrong with it?”
“What’s wrong with it is that I don’t remember buying it. I have a deep forest-green one, a wine one, a scarlet one, and several black ones.” She pulled the skirts of the gowns in question out into the light to illustrate her point. “I’ve never had a blue one.”
“I don’t see why not. It complements your eyes.”
“You don’t get it. This isn’t a wardrobe crisis. I wasn’t sure at first, but I never bought this thing. It just … appeared in my closet.”
“You’re busy. Super busy. You must have forgotten.”
“That’s what I thought. Until this arrived.”
She threw the blue velvet gown across her bedspread and bent to pull a box from the lowest drawer in her nightstand.
Matt eyed the box. Not a simple square or rectangular box, but curvy. Candy-box shaped. He was beginning to get it. “How did it arrive?”
“Showed up on my bed. With a card.”
Matt frowned at the handwritten note through the plastic baggie that encased it, displayed like a fresh scalp in Carmen’s uplifted hand.
“‘Sweets to the sour,”’ she quoted the message inside. “The first really wrong note.”“‘Note’ indeed. Sour note. You baggied it.”
“Yes, of course.”
“Like you bagged Temple’s waylaid ring from Max,” he couldn’t resist adding. She winced at the comparison. “So someone’s been snooping in your closet.”
“And now this. The latest. Just now!” She handed him a small plastic device, now bagged. It took him a moment to recognize the late-model Game Boy. Except someone had stuck a Post-it note on it reading “Game Girl.”
“I found this in Mariah’s bedroom. Thank God she’s away from it for a while.”
“You’ve got a stalker,” Matt said quietly, remembering his recent and violent liberation from one. “Why, do you think?”
Carmen wrapped her hands around her elbows and began her Big Cat–pacing again. “I don’t know, but whoever it may be is circling closer and closer. Classic pattern. Cowardly psychotic creep—!”
“I know. They’re good at that. Sure can’t be mine transferring affections to you.”
“No. Nothing to do with you, except you were here when that piece of slime snuck this last little token into the house.”
“Mariah’s away, you said. How long ago could it have been left?”
“Six hours, maybe? I checked her room for anything she might have needed at the … at the place where she’s staying. That little bomb wasn’t there then.”
“Where was it?”
“On her pillow.”
“You’re right to be upset. Can’t you, of all people, arrange for surveillance?”
She stopped to hug her elbows to her rangy frame. “No. No, I of all people can’t do that. Not openly. Not officially. This … stuff could be from her father.”
Chapter 16
Monday Morning
Coming Down
Xoe, aka Temple, arrived at Hell House, aka the Teen Queen Castle, first.