“I thought I’d lead Detective Alch to the person who’d killed Marjory Klein.”
“Oh, you led Alch to something, all right. Another murder. And what the hell is going on with my daughter? You were supposed to protect her. Instead, your pet sleazebag is running loose on the premises and a pretty prime suspect for any and all of this.”
“I didn’t know Rafi would be there. Savannah Ashleigh hired him as a bodyguard. And Mariah’s fine. Neither of them has a clue as to who is who. You really pulled the wool over Rafi’s eyes. If he found out he had a kid, he’d probably stroke out and your problems would be over. In fact, that might be a nice sneaky way to get rid of him forever.”
“I wouldn’t count on convenient acts of God to get you out of this mess. Some amateur sleuth you are. You just led Alch to Beth Marble. This woman turned out to be a victim, not a criminal.”
“Why does her killer have to be Mrs. Klein’s killer?”
“We have a serial situation here. There was a young girl killed in the parking lot outside the shopping mall where you and your … peers auditioned two weeks ago. We’ve found defaced posters of the show flyer all overthe place. Someone is targeting the competition and its entrants.”
Temple absorbed this, even the additional details, with no surprise. “Those were the arguments you used to blackmail me into becoming Mariah’s chaperon. You’ve always suspected an outside stalker.”
Molina, her face sober to the point of grimness, nodded.
“Look. I don’t for a minute believe that you’d stab anyone in the heart … unless they were going after your sainted Max Kinsella. You can bet I’d never turn my back on you in that regard. But you’ve put me in an impossible position. You were found where you were found. I had to abstract you.”
“‘Abstract?’ Like I’m a hologram you erase?”
“Abstract like ‘take out’ before you’re taken out. First, I’d like to know why you thought Beth Marble killed Marjory Klein. It’s quite a leap of logic.”
“Who do you think killed Beth Marble?”
“Haven’t a clue yet. She apparently was not only the mastermind behind this piece of reality TV tripe but her personality was all grins and roses. A cloying personality type, I grant you, but why target her as a killer?”
“Why should I tell someone who ridicules my deductions and jerks me around like a puppet?”
Molina leaned back in her skimpy executive chair, not even big enough to hide a dead body. She tapped a pen on her desktop.
“You build a good case, I’ll buy it.”
“And that’s worth something?”
“It’s worth our deal about Kinsella continuing.”
“Okay. My reasons aren’t entirely logical—”
“So I’ve been telling you about Kinsella. But go on.”
“I just … felt from the first that the house’s history had something to do with the sinister goings-on now.”
“‘Sinister goings-on.’ Very good. Very Agatha. Go on.” Molina was always a hard house to play. “I think, from the old photos in your fairly lousy news-clipping copies, that Beth Marble was really that blonde trophy wife of yore, Crystal Cummings.”
Molina neither moved nor spoke.
“After all, she didn’t die in the attack years ago. She just went off the radar after all the court trials and hoopla and her estranged husband’s disappearance. So did her seriously wounded teenage daughter. They became the forgotten victims.”
“Have you any idea how many cold case files there are? How many suspects and almost victims drift off into the great anonymity of modern life? It’s easier to lose people than to find them.”
“Exactly. But I figure that this poor kid, Crystal’s daughter, she would have had enormous emotional trauma. Maybe enough to create an eating disorder, which is a cry for control. Enter Marjory Klein, an inflexible, doctrinaire therapist. Believe me, I had to sit in her office swallowing her legume regimen, and poor Mariah—”
“What about ‘poor’ Mariah?”
“You know Mrs. Klein was hard on her weight issue.”
“Hispanic girls often have baby fat but they get it off later.”
“Right. A Weight Watcher would know, wouldn’t she?”
Molina’s face darkened but she didn’t say anything. Kids will blab. Temple felt her ground hardening under her.
“And you’re only her mother and Mariah was only in Mrs. Klein’s hands for a few days and I did tell her to ignore the woman … and already the veins are standing out on your forehead.”
“They are not.”
“They would be if you allowed them to. So figure it’s not just a few pounds and your daughter but Crystal Cummings’s teenage daughter with a serious case of traumaticanorexia or bulimia brought on by the attack in the Dickson house.
“So she eventually dies, the daughter. Cummings would be her last name. Or maybe she’d have the last name of her actual, forgotten father. But maybe Crystal just used her mother’s own last name. I hear that sort of thing happens all the time. Much cleaner, especially if the father has abandoned the child.” Molina’s face was getting grimmer by the second. “The point is, this young girl was only a stepdaughter to Dickson. That was the tragedy of her getting hit by one of the bullets. She was a truly innocent bystander.”
Molina started shuffling papers on her desk like a madwoman.
Finally, she pulled one out and leaned back in her chair. “Tiffany Cummings.”
“No, that wasn’t the daughter’s name. The articles said she was called Chastity.”
“Tiffany Cummings was the name of the seventeenyear-old who was accosted in the mall parking lot during the Teen Queen tryouts and stabbed to death with a screwdriver.”
“Ouch.” Temple was stunned into silence. She kept quiet to think. For once, she and Molina were in perfect sync.
The notion of two young girls with their lives ruined and cut short so violently was appalling. Had Chastity survived just long enough to bear a daughter? Maybe postpartum depression had pushed her into anorexia. And maybe Tiffany was Crystal Cummings’s granddaughter. A far fresher motive for a killing.
“We haven’t traced any relatives to the parking lot vic. If she wasn’t a runaway, she lived a gypsy life.”
Finally Temple spoke. “If Tiffany Cummings was the first victim, Marjory Klein was the second victim, and Crystal Cummings masquerading as Beth Marble was the third—?” She fell silent. “I’ve got a headache.”
“It’s probably an allergic reaction to bleach. That dye job of yours is unreal.”
“That was the idea, wasn’t it? Just like the reality show was supposed to be unreal. Only it had ended up being a shadow of the Dickson house murders twenty years ago. If Crystal, aka ‘Beth,’ killed Marjory, who killed her? And why?”
“That’s a very far-out theory of yours. We’ll have to do a lot of checking to prove the entwined threads in this tangled web. Meanwhile—” Molina stood, towering like the Palms hotel. “You can go back.”
“I’m disgraced. I was taken away by the police.”
“That should only burnish Xoe Chloe’s sorry reputation. Look. I don’t want Mariah alone in that mess, and you do seem to have some sort of whacked-out handle on things. Finish out the assignment and Max Kinsella is all yours, off my usual suspects list forever.”
“He already is all mine.”
“Maybe.” Molina’s electric blue glance met and held Temple’s a trifle too long.
“What do you mean?”
“I mean that nothing’s certain in this world but death and taxes. Taxes I leave to accountants. Death is my beat. Magicians are one step behind the Grim Reaper when it comes to surprise appearances. I wouldn’t count on them. Not a one of ‘em. Especially that one. Deceiving the public can become an addiction that leaks over into a private life. That’s all.”
“Cops can’t always be counted on either,” Temple said.
Whether Molina got the reference to her ex, Rafi Nadir, or not, Temple left the office feeling she’d gotten a little of her own back.