They weren’t cheap, but they all came from conservative career clothing for women catalogs, where she could find styles long enough for her five-foot-eleven-inch frame.
At the other end of the closet hung the limp folds of a few choice silk-velvet evening gowns culled from vintage stores in Los Angeles and Las Vegas over the past fifteen years.
She looked from one end of the closet to the other.
“Lieutenant Jekyll and Ms. Hyde,” she muttered. She moved down to flip through the vintage gowns representing her years as Carmen the chanteuse. The rich velvets seemed to echo the tones of her bluesy contralto voice: dark mossy forest green; shimmering black, ruby-burgundy, deep magenta, blue velvet.
Her hand paused in pulling out that last gown. Couldn’t even remember buying it. Usually she knew the where and when of every costume … even, or especially, those found during her L.A./Rafi Nadir period. Her mind danced away from summoning those dread days beyond recall but her hand clung to the blue velvet. Was she losing it? She let the fabric fall away. No, just too much on her mind that was much more important nowadays, including Her Hormonal Highness, the periadolescent Mariah. Oh, for the pigtails and skinned knees and kiddish enthusiasms of yesterday!
But this inventory of her closet had nothing to do with Mariah. It had to do with one uppity narc. A date! Was he nuts? Was she nuts? Because here she was: single mother cop with teenage child, looking down the barrel of forty thinking she could go on a date. Just like that. When she didn’t have a thing to wear. Neither Jekyll nor Hyde was cut out for a dinner date. What the heck had she been thinking?
For some reason the image of Matt’s friend, Janice Flanders, popped into her mind’s eye. Okay. Also a single mother and no kid herself. Tallish. One dignified lady. A wardrobe role model? No … those New Ageish artsydrapey clothes with cryptic images weren’t her, whoever “her” was.
She slid the closet doors shut and went to the living room. Caterina and Tabitha, the tiger-striped cats, were curled into yin-yang formation on the sofa, dreaming of electric mice. Mariah was off at another one of her extracurricular activities … band or chorus or just something way too girly for her tender thirteen years … at her new friend Melody’s house.
Carmen heard the grinding gears of the mailman’s mini-Jeep outside and moved into the hot morning sunshine, hoping for a catalog with some outfit labeled “middle-aged single mother dating ensemble.”
She got three catalogs, with cover images that made some hitherto untapped fashionista in her soul go “yuck.” And a letter. Addressed to Mariah.
Carmen frowned, staring at the unthinkable type in the sunlight. What? Now they were trying to push credit cards on middle-schoolers? Were there no limits? No. It must be a magazine solicitation, going by the fancy type in the return address, which looked vaguely familiar. Mariah had suddenly become a huge consumer of Seventeen magazine and a whole new slew of its ilk.
Shaking her head, Carmen went in, blinking in the dimness of her living room, automatically snatching the letter opener and slitting through the taped flyers for new air conditioning units et cetera, even through the flap on the envelope addressed to Mariah.
The pitch letter was two-color: pink and black. Carmen shook her head. What would her so very “now” daughter think if she knew that color combo was even older than her mother. “It Came From the Fifties” … Carmen chuckled.
And then she read the letter. And sat down. And read the letter again. She looked at the return address. The headlining “sell” graphics.
She took a very deep breath. She wondered who she could call.
No one.
She wondered what she would do.
Whatever it was, it would be disastrous.
Lose-lose.
Oh, hell.
Chapter 6
Undercover Chick
Temple was hammering out a new proposal on her computer, trying to forget about Awful Crawford and reality TV shows and all their satanic ilk, when her doorbell did its vintage doo-wap on her ears.
Matt? Something more to say before he left? Hmmm. Max wouldn’t ring, and Matt usually knocked, so maybe Electra, the landlady… .
Optimistic, as usual, she swung the door wide open, and found a figure as high, wide, and unwelcome as she could remember filling the doorway.
“Lieutenant.”
“Miss Barr. May I come in?”
“You have a warrant?”
“You have nothing to fear. This is a personal consultation.”
Temple stepped aside to admit a woman who was almost a foot taller than she into her humble domain.
Thank goodness Temple had resident “muscle” on the premises.
Molina stopped cold in the archway to the living room. “Him.”
“Louie lives here,” Temple said. “No doubt he’s thinking ‘her’ at this very moment.”
“Actually, I like cats.” Molina crossed the invisible barrier between entry and living area to loom over Louie. “What a handsome fellow.”
Louie was buying none of it. He fanned his long, curved nails and licked dismissively between his spread toes.
“What can I do for you?” Temple asked, making small talk.
Molina’s laser-blue eyes fixed on her insincere face. “A great deal. Can we talk where you have seating units not claimed by alley cats?”
“My office?”
“Better than mine.”
So Temple led her into the spare bedroom-cumoffice, wondering madly what this was about. She heard Louie thump assertively down to the floor as he followed them.
Temple indicated the casual wicker chair opposite her computer desk and sank into the comfortable sling mesh of her teal Aereon size A chair.
Louie leaped up on the computer desk and sat there like a silent partner, switching his long black tail over the side. “I didn’t expect a familiar,” Molina said.
“Think of Louie as Paul Drake, and of me as Perry Mason.”
“Not possible.” Molina’s lips suddenly quirked. “What?”
“I could buy Nora Charles and Asta.”
“Oh. I could do The Thin Man! I do so love vintage clothes and vintage quips.”
Louie growled.
“Louie, however,” Temple added airily, “does not do dogs.”
Molina spread her hands, dismissing the parallels. “Perhaps Bucky Beaver, then. I need to hire your services.”
“A PR person could do a lot for your department.”
“For me.”
“For you?”
“And not PR.”
“What for then?”
“You’ve shown some … zany aptitude for undercover work.”
“Me?”
“Tess the Thong Girl ring a bell?”
“Well, that was just—”
“I know. You were just Little Red Riding Hood with a basketful of thongs trying to save the Big Bad Wolf from the Evil Huntsman.”
“Max isn’t a Big Bad Wolf! Although you’re an excellent candidate for the Evil Huntsman. You probably went after Snow White for the Evil Queen too.”
“Let’s set personal issues aside, Miss Barr.”
Temple saw those laser eyes shift, eyeing the room and conceding to Temple’s domain for the first time. “You really do want to hire me?”
“Yes.”
“For what?”
“I want you to enter the Teen Queen reality TV show competition.”
“What!” Temple leaped up from her chair. “I’m too old!”
“That leap says not. The upper age limit is nineteen. You can pass.”
“But—”
“You can pass. You think I don’t know who can go undercover and how well? You’re a shoo-in.““Get Su! She’s small for her age.”
“I would, but she’s a homicide detective. She’s not used to undercover. I’ve decided, abhorrent as the conclusion is, that only you … will do … for this job.”
“Abhorrent to you or to me?”
“To us both. Equally. It’s a Mexican standoff, Miss Barr. That should make it easier for you. You win, I lose. I lose, you win.”