“What about the kitchen?” she asked Alch.
He nodded, consulting his notebook. “Bottles of the stuff, raw peanuts. ‘Natural’ peanut butter floating in oil. Anyone could have accessed it.”
“Wasn’t the kitchen normally off-limits?”
“Yes, but the show reveled in rebels.” Alch looked up at Molina. Pause. “One Mariah Molina made an unauthorized midnight raid on the kitchen Tuesday night. And Xoe Chloe caught her with a hand in the Chips Ahoy.”
A silence held in the small, narrow office.
“I suppose no one is exempt from suspicion,” Molina said finally. “I am at a loss for a motive.”
“According to witnesses, Klein was particularly hard on your daughter,” Su said. “She was on the most stringent diet.”
“Nobody else got bad news from the nutritionist?”
“Everybody had to consume more soy protein, low-fat dairy, and milk.”
“None of that is a motive for murder,” Molina objected.
“Agreed.” Alch sat forward on the damned uncomfortable plastic shell chair. “We need to dig deeper into the victim’s personal life.”
“Hah!” Su crossed her arms over her size zero Donna Karan jacket. “Nutritionists don’t have personal lives. Klein was a divorcée for twenty years, an academic drudge, a nobody outside a very narrow arena of expertise.”
“She was somebody enough to get drafted for the Teen Queen Castle show.” Molina sat back. “Find out more. Find out more relevant facts. Find me a motive.” Alch and Su stood. “Right,” he said.
“Wrong,” Su murmured as they shouldered out the narrow door together.
Molina leaned back in her chair’s cheesy tilt setting. She couldn’t agree with Su more. This murder was all wrong. The vic was all wrong. They were all wrong, or they would see the connections that were now invisible. But, like a magician’s hidden mechanisms, those threads had to be there.
Magicians. At least Max Kinsella had nothing to do with this case, thank God and Harry Houdini.
Chapter 38
North into Nowhere
The Circle Ritz was a kitschy piece of fifties architecture clinging to the fringe of the exploding ultramodern Fantasia that the Las Vegas Strip had become.
It was round, faced with black marble, and sported triangular balconies at the “corner” units.
Max drove his latest dispensable vehicle, a black Toyota Rav4, into the familiar lot. He knew every dimple in the asphalt and every pothole the heat had burned into the surface.
Temple’s new red Miata, caramel-colored canvas top up, sat under the shade of the venerable palm tree that overarched the lot.
He usually entered the unit he and Temple had shared—until his enforced disappearance eighteen months ago—like a second-story man: by the French doors on the balcony.
Part of that was self-preservation; there were those thatwanted him dead. Another part of it was the magician’s need to surprise. Temple had always been a ready audience for the paper rose bouquet, the sudden flash of fire to light a candle, and especially the unannounced midnight assignation.
This time, though, Temple was gone and he’d have to enter by a more conventional route, the side door from the parking lot.
The Lovers Knot Wedding Chapel that landlady Electra Lark operated was in the building’s street-facing front. Back here was only a long hallway, then the buzzer security system for the units.
Max had his own key but he buzzed his destination anyway. This mid-afternoon visit would be a surprise, and he wanted to ensure his quarry was in.
The answer was yes, so he pushed the button for the single elevator and waited for its slow descent. He felt like a visitor here at last, not just an errant resident who’d been AWOL too long. Not a good feeling. No wonder Temple was getting restive about their relationship. Ouch. That was the first time he’d thought of it that way.
The old elevator took him up at its usual charming cranky rate. When the door finally opened, his destination was just three strides away.
The forbidden penthouse.
Another button to push. Rewarded by the nostalgic chime of an old-fashioned doorbell.
“Max!” Electra Lark cast the door wide, her tropical-colored muumuu filling it like a flower-shop display. Beyond her came the chill and hum of airconditioning. “Don’t be a stranger. Come in.”
“Are you sure? I’ve never been inside before. Most residents haven’t.”
“Tut-tut. You mean you never managed a clandestine exploration, like Temple’s cat, Louie, that bad boy?”
“Magician’s honor.”
“Well, you’re not really a resident anymore. Are you?”
“Not officially.”
“Neither is Louie, but he’s coming and going around here all the time.”
Electra turned and Max followed her through an octagonal entry hall lined in vertical mirrored blinds that reflected his image in disconcerting slivered bits. He felt exactly that fragmented these days.
The rooms beyond were cool, almost cold, and dimly lit. The whole place smacked of an inner sanctum, quite different from Electra’s bright, beachy appearance and personality.
“Have a seat,” she suggested.
He wasn’t sure which hunkering forties sofa or chair would accommodate his six-foot-four frame; they were all bulky, but the seating areas were oddly cramped. He settled gingerly on the maroon mohair sofa.
“May I offer you some sun tea?”
“No”
Electra sat on a rattan chair by the blond television set that must be fifty years old. “Well, you’re an easy guest.” She herself was eternally sixty-something. Her white hair, normally a canvas for a variety of spray-on colors, like indigo or purple or magenta, was a tumble of golden blonde, giving her the look of an aging Shirley Temple doll on Hawaiian holiday.
“I just stopped by to ask after Temple.”
“What about her?”
“She mentioned she was leaving town.”
“Oh, yes. She asked me to watch her place, and Louie, for a week or so. I have seen about as much of Louie since then as I’ve seen of you in the past several months.”
“That bad?”
“Oh, you bachelor boys have your rounds to make, no doubt, deserting us faithful girls at home.”
Max let that go. “I wondered if you’d heard how Temple’s father was.”
“Father?”
“That’s why she went home. Isn’t it?”
“Goodness, Max! I don’t know. She didn’t mention why she was leaving and I’m not one to pry, not right out anyway. She was in a tearing hurry to leave. I hope it isn’t anything too serious, although at his age … and mine, it could be.”
“She said it was a minor heart problem. A stent.”
“Listen, at our age, heart problems are not minor. Poor little thing. She must have been worried to distraction to forget to mention it to me. Or she didn’t want me to worry. Oh … Max! Wait! Don’t move.”
Of course he froze at Electra’s sudden command. Her eyes had widened like windows and she was staring directly behind him.
Max’s muscles tensed to jump any which way necessary.
“What is it?”
“This is unheard of. She’s … come out and is perching on the sofa back. Just behind your left shoulder.”
“She. You’re not referring to a poisonous serpent or a scorpion, I assume.”
“Lord, no. Shhh! If you move very slowly you might see her.”
Max could move as slowly as a living statue in the Venice hotel’s central courtyard, in other words, almost beyond camera detection. In a minute, he had turned enough to stare into the most celestial sky blue eyes he’d ever seen.
He was facing a cat whose longish silky cream hair was accented with brown and white.
“Karma,” Electra pronounced.
“You mean it was karma that she’s shown herself to me.”
“Maybe so, but that’s also her name. Karma. She’s a supersensitive cat, a Birman. They were sacred to the dalai lamas.”