“Zoos?” Su was steaming now. “Zoos would sell their animals to outfits like Van Burkleo’s?”
“Why do you think the protesters were out there in the desert?” Alch pointed out. “They had something legit to protest.”
“I’m told,” Molina put in, “that in some parts of the country some zoo board members actually own canned-hunt ranches. Cozy, huh?”
“That does it.” Su was surefooted now. “The killer could even be a zoo employee who learned that an animal he, or she, tended had ended up there. That leopard is a beautiful animal. Did you see it before they took it away?” She looked at Alch. “Shooting it would have been a sin.”
Molina was surprised. “I hadn’t thought about the condition of the leopard. Su, since you’re a bee-shown freeze-ay expert, call the guy over at Animal Oasis, what’s his name?”
“Kirby Granger.”
“Granger. Right. Call him and get a statement on the leopard’s age, state of health, probable source, that kind of thing. Maybe Van Burkleo planned to keep it as a personal trophy, if it was that fine a specimen.”
“Specimen! “Su huffed.
“I had no idea you were a cat lover,” Alch put in slyly, “from your attitude to certain black members of that species.”
“I’m not. I’m a dog lover. But a beautiful animal is a beautiful animal, especially if it’s an endangered species.”
“Passions would run high,” Molina agreed. “Alch, you seem to have an affinity for the widow. See if you can get the leopard’s provenance out of her.”
Molina felt pleased with herself. Su was a good choice to handle the gruff Animal Oasis founder, and Alch had a way with women that wasn’t obvious, but was effective. Precisely because it wasn’t obvious.
He was even now twinkling at her, aware of how she was dividing and conquering the sources.
“I expect you to make some real headway with Leonora Leopard-Lady, Morey.”
Alch promptly pulled out a narrow notebook and flipped through with the satisfaction of a thorough man.
“Okay. The wife. The widow now. I’m sure you’ve been wondering about—”
“I heard. The wife-turned-widow.” The obvious always made Su impatient, and nothing was more obvious than Leonora Van Burkleo. “You don’t need to go far to run her down. What a freak!”
“Oh, I don’t know.” Alch did a patented old duffer act of riffling his notebook pages and looking out from under his shaggy eyebrows. “I’d say that gals who pluck their eyebrows to resemble a pair of broken chopsticks are, uh, a hair on the freakish side themselves.”
Su’s exotically shaped brows lifted, lowered, and took flight, simultaneously. “Lieutenant, we have sexual and ethnic harassment here, all at once.”
“Go after the perps, not each other,” Molina advised. “You know Alch wouldn’t say a word about your eyebrows if he didn’t love you like a paternalistic sexist pig.”
“Oink,” Alch contributed.
Su laughed. “It’s a fashion thing, Morey. How can a mere man get it?”
Molina had to admit that Su’s eyebrows were the most elaborate and striking she had ever seen…with the odd exception of the brows drawn on the forehead of that vanishing lady magician, Shangri-La. Who had nicked an opal-and-diamond ring Max Kinsella had given to Temple Barr, in Manhattan, no less. Which very same ring Molina had found a couple weeks later at the church parking-lot death scene of a former magician’s assistant…another unsolved case. Not to mention the dead professor at UNLV and a third man falling dead at the New Millennium Hotel to match the earlier ceiling deaths at the Goliath and the Crystal Phoenix Hotels, one almost a year ago.
“Did I say something, wrong, Lieutenant?” Su’s face sobered.
“No. I’m just thinking about our case load. So, Morey. You were about the enlighten us about the widow Van Burkleo.”
“Like I said, inquiring minds want to know, is it nature or is it human error? Since Leonora Van Burkleo’s appearance is so noteworthy, I tried to find out if she had it done to her. On purpose.” He waited, trying not to look at Su’s on-purpose eyebrows. “The answer is a resounding, if puzzling, yes.”
“Plastic surgery.” Molina nodded. “How’d you find out?”
“Used the phone records. A lot to a local doctor. Some were out of the area code. The L.A. and Manhattan ones were fancy-shmancy plastic surgeons. These guys do movie stars. Their minions weren’t about to say much to a homicide detective, except to confirm that the way she looks is the way she wanted to look.”
“How long have the surgeries been going on?”
“Three years.”
“Interesting. She was married to Van Burkleo for six.”
“So,” said Su. “The lady aimed to please. Maybe she was being coerced into this freaky remodeling job and decided to kill him. Involving the leopard was a way to make a statement at the same time: he made her into a cat-faced woman, a cat would bring him down.”
“Perhaps.” Molina sipped her coffee and made her usual face on first tasting it. “I don’t see this woman as the type to alter herself to anyone’s specifications, though. If anything, she’s the control freak.”
“Affirmative,” said Su. “I like my Leopard Lady theory, but it’s pretty out there. The plastic surgery is probably just an extreme expression of that tendency to control nature. The word I got nosing around the ranch was that she was the one who really ran things, and with an iron fist. Van Burkleo was the client back-slapper.”
“He got his back more than slapped by that antelope horn,” Alch observed.
“The scenario we’re being asked to buy,” Molina said, “is that the leopard got loose in the house, scared Van Burkleo, and he ran himself through trying to get away from it.” Molina leaned back in her chair. “The introduction of the leopard brings our attention out of the house and onto the grounds. At the least it implies an outside accomplice to handle the leopard and let it indoors.”
“The place is crawling with keepers,” Su said, “and private security types.”
“Any of them recent hires?” Alch asked.
Su consulted her own narrow notebook. “Three. Two animal guys and one security guy.”
“I’m sure you ran all the names through records.” Molina looked at Alch.
He nodded. “Nothing major. One had a hobby of collecting traffic tickets. One had a couple altercations at a club, but he was a bouncer, you’d expect that. Cost of doing business. The other was as clean as a dinosaur’s tooth.”
“Dinosaur’s tooth,” Su jeered in retaliation for the eyebrow crack. “Your age is showing, Morey.”
“Let’s see the list.” Molina held out a palm.
“My notes are kinda scrawled.”
“I know your notes. If anything happened to you we’d need an Egyptologist to translate them….”
“See something, Lieutenant?” Alch asked hopefully.
Molina didn’t answer right away.
Because even in Morey’s scrambled handwriting she could translate the recognizable letters, Rfff Ndr. The letters “alt” followed the name. Short for altercations. This was the strip club bouncer.
Talk about turning-point moments. How far did she go to protect Nadir from official inquiry while she ran her own half-assed unofficial inquiry? If he was more than suspect, even a real live perp, at what point did her personal interest add up to endangering the public while protecting her daughter and herself? Now? Sic ’em on Rafi? Alch and Su to the manhunt? Kinsella hadn’t panned out, that was for sure. Molina cleared her throat, swallowed duty one more time. She simply didn’t believe Nadir had done it, not for personal reasons, but in her professional judgment. Now Alch wanted to know what had given her pause, something plausible, besides conscience.
“Just your execrable penmanship,” she told him affectionately. “You need to have these things translated, Morey.”