“Can’t I—?”
“No. We take turns at kitchen duty and today’s mine.” She grinned over her shoulder as she headed for the stove. “So you just sit there like Father and get waited on as usual.”
“Ouch.”
In half a minute she had set a bowl of stew in front of him and sat down with her own at the place opposite. “Just my little joke.”
“How did you happen to be up?”
“Happen nothing. I knew you’d come by.”
“Why?”
“Guilt. A Catholic grade school teacher, retired or not, has a nose for guilt that would make Pinocchio’s longest lying nose look like a toothpick.”
“I really regret the change in plans.”
“Yes, but that’s not what you’re guilty about.”
He was flabbergasted, and showed it.
“You’re guilty about whatever you were up to when you invited us to mass in the first place.” She waved a hand before his stupefied face. “But don’t worry about it. You don’t have to tell me a thing. Eat your stew.”
Matt picked up the soup spoon, then set it down. “There are some things I just can’t tell you. Shouldn’t tell you.”
“I should hope so.” She took several gusty swallows of the thick medley of vegetables and beef cubes.
Matt suddenly realized he was ravenous, and decided it was better to obey than to equivocate.
“Water?” she asked after a while. “Or the bishop’s brandy?”
“The bishop can keep his brandy,” he said, laughing. “Water’s fine. This is great stew.”
“You’re hungry.” She got up and bustled. “I bet you have three cartons of yogurt and some frozen dinners at your apartment.”
Matt didn’t bother disagreeing. She brought big plastic water glasses to the table. He discovered he was thirsty too. Must be a salty stew.
“So,” she said, seated again. “I never see that darling redheaded girl you brought to mass.”
“She’s thirty.”
“She’s still a darling girl.”
“Yeah.” No point in debating the truth. “I think so too.”
Molina drove home, the streetlights stroking across the Toyota’s hood and windshield like slow-motion strobes.
The light, motion, and rhythm were hypnotic, an environmental sleeping pill acting on her exhaustion. Even keeping the windows open didn’t help. Street noise came muted and rhythmic too. Everything conspired to lull her into numb complacency.
She drove deliberately, with extreme caution, trying not to think of the events behind her at work, or farther behind her at Rancho Exotica. She finally spotted the lit spire of Our Lady of Guadalupe, and let her tense muscles relax. Only a couple of blocks more to go. Here she was back where she had started—what? Only six hours ago.
The sound of the motor turning off after she’d pulled into the driveway was sweeter than hearing “Summertime” sung by Lady Day.
She sat in the car, hands still on the wheel, and envisioned the scene at headquarters.
Thanks to cell phones, more lawyers had descended on the place than cops and suspected killers.
The animal-rights people had called in the big-time lawyers to defend the Animal Oasis and Kirby Granger. An operation like his had its celebrity supporters, but this was ridiculous. The final straw had been when Johnnie Cochran had shown up, representing the Cloaked Conjuror.
Molina lowered her head until her forehead rested on the top of the steering wheel. What a comedy of counsels for the defense. All she needed was another secretive magician meddling with her cases.
Of course Leonora had her legions too, not only a high-priced attorney but some sister members of a domestic violence therapy group. Molina had not been surprised, thanks to Temple Barr tipping her off to the reason behind Leonora’s plastic surgery before they left the ranch: not vanity but violence.
The only suspect in the case who wasn’t up to his neck in defense attorneys was Osiris the leopard, who remained in custody at the Animal Oasis, and who was, like every other detainee, definitely not talking.
Molina had left the circus, the zoo, the human tragedy to her detectives. She could see the outcome now: Leonora Burkleo would get a suspended sentence; no prosecuting attorney would let a jury see that face and the reasons behind it and expect to get a conviction.
Granger was a goner. He had cared so much about his animal haven that he had ceased to care about himself. The Animal Oasis would go on, he had seen to that, but he would serve a long sentence in a compound for dangerous and displaced and often ill-served humans.
As for Rancho Exotica, from the buzz she was hearing among Leonora Burkleo, the animal-rights activists, and assorted attorneys, it would probably and ironically end up acquiring the canned-hunt property and animals.
She shook her head to jar out the ironies and went into the house.
Dolores was waiting at the door with an accusation. “You’re later than you thought.”
“No interrogations. I’ve had enough of that downtown.”
Molina marched for the kitchen, taking her paddle holster from the back of her belt and laying it on the counter while she opened cupboards scrounging something, some food, crackers, cookies, she didn’t know.
“Mariah went to bed at ten?”
Dolores shrugged. “She went into her room at ten.”
Molina’s hand patted the shelf and found the envelope of tens and fives she kept ready for Dolores. “A long evening. I’m sorry. What is it, eight and a half hours?”
Dolores nodded, skeptical and watching, as Molina counted out bills, then hissed in aggravation and counted them out again.
“You work too hard,” Dolores said.
“Yes. But tomorrow I can sleep in until noon. And I will.”
“Tomorrow is Sunday. Last mass is at eleven.”
“I didn’t forget,” Molina said, though she did add, “I went to mass already this evening.”
Disappointed at failing to catch Molina skipping church, Dolores took her money and sniffed, “Drunkard’s mass.”
“Not in my case. Unless you count”—she waved the open packet of cookies her questing hand had found in the cupboard—“an Oreo cookie addiction.”
Dolores shrugged again. “We always go to nine o’clock mass.”
“Then you’d better head home and get some rest yourself,” Molina suggested, seeing her out.
Dolores was a traditional Latina mother, herding her household to church and to distraction. Still, the method had worked for a long time, and most of Our Lady of Guadalupe’s parishioners were honest, hardworking people. The neighborhood gangs fought their wars away from home.
When she shut the door on Dolores, the house’s silence settled on her like a pall of dust.
She sat on the comfortably lived-on sofa and carefully peeled the chocolate cookie top off an Oreo.
A meow in the dining area drew her attention to Catarina, or was it Tabitha, stalking on gangly adolescent legs to the sofa to inspect the kill?
The young cat leaped up to sniff long and hard at the uncapped Oreo. With a patented feline look of disinterest, it moved down the sofa and began grooming its face and feet.
Carmen began licking off the cream filling in catlike bites.
The usually forbidden pure sugar fix was as potent as brandy.
The Rancho Exotica case would sort itself out over the next few days, but Osiris was off the hook. The leopard sleeps tonight.
Soon the lieutenant sleeps tonight. No night-crawling on the trail of the stripper killer. Not tonight at least. Not until she had figured out what to do about Rafi Nadir. And Max Kinsella.
The victim at the Kitty City parking lot had been too shaken to identify her attacker, who had come up behind her. She thought he was a dark-haired man.
He could have been Nadir. He could have been Kinsella.
Carmen opened another Oreo and began on another circle of icing, pale as a communion host but not tasting of paste.
Not a bad theory: Kinsella attacks her, she gets off a scream, he runs. Nadir, leaving the club, hears the scream as he’s about to drive away, runs to investigate (he is a professional security man, after all), and a watching Kinsella decides to come out of cover and pretend to discover the problem after Nadir.