“So I know where you’re coming from, Carmen. Strict Hispanic Catholic family. Or Polish Catholic family. High standards. Impossible standards. Still, if you don’t go for the top, you’ll settle for the bottom. That’s the problem with religious absolutism: there’s either bad or good. Perfect or imperfect. You either sin or you don’t. No middle ground. No gray. That’s not what Jesus preached in the New Testament. His bottom line was compassion, which abolishes the black and white and leaves only the gray and the benefit of the doubt. That’s why they killed him.”
“Abolish black and white from the law enforcement profession and anarchy would reign.”
“Maybe so. Maybe not. I’m just saying we can both be thankful that nobody killed Vassar, not even us. It was a stupid accident. I left her standing by the railing overlooking the atrium. Deborah heard her cry out and then the cell phone clattered and buzzed, but it didn’t shut off.”
“Someone still could have come up behind her and pushed her.”
“Maybe. But I don’t think so. Deborah says she was exhilarated, hyper. She more likely … turned around to lean against the railing, lost her balance on those high-rise heels.”
“You realize what you’re telling me? That a call girl was deliriously happy because you didn’t sleep with her. Not much of a personal advertisement.”
“Do I care? I’m deliriously happy I didn’t have to act against my conscience myself. Can’t you accept the gift of a free conscience? That doesn’t come along every day.”
“No.” Molina turned to the mirror to wipe off Carmen’s camellia mouth with a tissue. She turned back to lift her glass toward him. They tapped rims and sipped.
“I have to play Devil’s advocate so I don’t buy every fairy tale I might want to believe. I’ll have that atrium scoured for the cell phone. Of course someone could have spotted and taken it by now. Still, if this Walker woman’s testimony holds up then we’re both in the clear. My career and your freedom. We were gambling for pretty high stakes.”
Matt nodded and sipped again, feeling relief tingle all the way to his fingertips.
“Only two things bother me,” she added.“Two things?”
“Rafi Nadir and Max Kinsella.”
“Kinsella and Nadir? Who’s Nadir?”
“Ah—” Molina waved a dismissive hand. “A pickpocket around town. Different case. Anyway, I personally checked the Goliath videotapes. They show you checking in. And they show Kinsella hanging around the registration area about the same time.”
Matt knew his face showed utter, unfeigned shock. What was Max doing there? Right then?
He was so shocked that he only vaguely understood that Molina the cop always had to have the last suspicious word.
He was very glad that he had not mentioned Kinsella’s presence on the even more recent death scene of Kathleen O’Connor, which had not yet entered Molina’s official radar.
But it could, if anyone had seen both Kinsella and O’Connor at Neon Nightmare.
Chapter 49
Melting
Temple was curled up on her couch with Midnight Louie, watching a really bad Boris Karloff movie. Karloff, of course, was never bad, but some of his later films were.
She couldn’t sleep.
Hi-ho the witch is dead, the wicked witch is dead.
She had actually broken out the Midnight Louie shoes, which really didn’t go well with her Garfield T-shirtcum-nightgown.
Glittering white crystal high heels with the image of a black cat on the heels were not the done thing to wear with cotton knit, although almost anything went in Las Vegas.
She gazed down at her bare insteps surrounded by the elegant dazzle of Stuart Weitzman custom pavé shoes. Elegant, gorgeous, even improbable shoes invariably made her feel better.
High heels were a little girl’s stepping stones to adulthood. Maybe adulthood was something as simple as losing a shoe and gaining a prince, or accidentally killing a witchand gaining a magical pair of red sequin pumps. Then killing one on purpose later.
Temple had to admit that she had a prince, or two, in her life, and a witch or two, as well. She also had to admit to herself that she hadn’t wanted Kitty dead, not really, although maybe the woman was dead because two men were determined that Temple wouldn’t be hurt by her. In olden days, women were thrilled to have men fighting for their honor and their lives. Temple wasn’t thrilled with the uneasy guilt she felt now. She was particularly queasy about Matt’s unspoken willingness to sacrifice his most personal well-being for her. Oh, he was concerned about a host of other women in his life, but they were all incidental, weren’t they? And she wasn’t. Had Max guessed that? Of course. He wasn’t a jealous man, but he had always been worried about Matt since he had returned to find a new neighbor in Temple’s building and life. She couldn’t complain about either man’s sincerity in thinking of her safety, but she wished she weren’t so darned guilty about, and impressed by, both of them.
Nowhere in the book of fairy tales did it mention two Prince Charmings. Come to think of it, both Max and Matt had been involved in the retrieval of the glass slipper, aka the Midnight Louie shoes. Modern life, not dreams, was what fractured fairy tales are made of, Mr. Ariel.
So now, fairy tale-wise, one witch was dead. An evil witch who had looked as glamorous as Glinda the Good Witch of the North in the Judy Garland movie, all Southern-belle skirts and glitter and magic wand.
The evil witch was a bony hag in a pointed hat with grossly striped stockings and granny lace-ups in villainous black. Why, then, had she wanted the ruby red slippers? For the power they conferred, of course, but maybe somewhere in her evil black cinder of a heart she had simply coveted something beautiful for its own sake.
Temple had to wonder if Kathleen O’Connor had coveted innocence that way, Max’s teenage chastity, Matt’s post-priesthood delayed-adolescent possession of the same. Kathleen had wanted to destroy both boys. Men. And maybe she yearned for the very innocence she sought to destroy. Maybe it was her own.
Two women dead only a couple of days apart. The mysterious call girl (to Temple anyone who followed that line of work would always be mysterious) and the mysterious stalker-girl.
And here she was, trying to avoid either extreme, trying to be a real girl the way Pinocchio ached to be a real boy.
Three clicks of her heels and maybe she could be back home in Minnesota, where call girls were few and under wraps and wicked witches froze their long noses and toes and peaked hat tips off.
But, no, she couldn’t leave the Emerald City of Las Vegas yet. There was still too much to solve about herself and everyone around her.
She was too melancholy to move on. She glanced at the sparkling shoes on her feet. Her high-heel addiction had always been the bravado of a short girl, a small woman. I am walking on hot spikes, hear me roar. Except I’d rather whimper sometimes.
But didn’t everybody?
Even Vassar. Even Kitty the Cutter.
That’s what got to Temple. Between them, these women so different from her had forced two men she cared about to the bitter edge, making them commit to unwanted sex in one instance, and unwanted death in another. You couldn’t ask for any more dire consequences.
Was her gender really so destructive? Or so frustrated?
And then there was Molina, gloating over it all like a legal vulture bent on picking away at everybody’s bones and insecurities.
Temple watched Karloff’s cadaverous features in his black-and-white world. Films were better before color. So was newspaper photography. Color cluttered up the scenery, distracted the eye, made everything a moral morass, shades of the rainbow.
Midnight Louie stirred against her hip, uttered a cross between a meow and a purr.
“You’re right, boy. I’m in a very bad mood tonight. I guess cats don’t have moods. Just territorial disputes.”