“She’d have to find and catch you first.”
“Yes, well, that may not be necessary. No matter how long I can avoid capture, all she really has to do to ruin me is come here and tell you what she thinks she’s got me on.”
“Not murder?”
“That too, but nothing she can prove.”
“What can she prove, then?”
“Can we take a high-end whiskey break? Still got some?”
“Of course. You don’t think I just pass your Millennium bottle out to strangers?”
“Or to neighbors?”
Temple felt her cheeks heat up, probably not visibly, though. “Or aunts,” she said, dodging the implication. Had she offered Matt some? Once? Maybe.
Either way, she was glad for an excuse to hustle into the kitchen and slam cupboard doors and fill glasses with a dark potent inch of the pricey Bushmill’s Millennium Irish whiskey with which Max had celebrated, and mourned, the passing of his worst enemy, Kathleen O’Connor, who’d taken with her the golden days of his youth and left behind eternally unresolvable guilt. No enemy could do worse.
Temple wondered what Max was mourning now.
She brought him the crystal glass and sipped from hers as she sat down again. “I can’t imagine what Molina’s done now that you need to fortify yourself against it.”
“The whiskey isn’t for me. It’s for you.”
“Me?”
“Molina couldn’t find any evidence on the two or three counts of murder she wanted to lay at my door, which she can’t find anyway.”
“Then what was the whole bit about gleaning a fingerprint off a CD from here about?”
“She apparently now does have evidence on a nasty lesser charge, enough to bring me in, if she can find me, and prosecute. Even if she can’t find me, she can just run tattling to you and damage me enough to give her immense satisfaction.”
“What is it?”
Max composed his features as if he were on stage. Calm, authoritative, unreadable. “Sexual stalking.”
“Of who? Me? She has flipped. We are totally consensual.”
Max laughed. “You are a past master of spin. No. Of her.”
“Of her?”
Tilt! Max was right: Temple needed a belt, even though she’d heard this first from Matt, especially since she didn’t want to admit to Max just how . . . in touch she and Matt had been lately. She assuaged her own guilt by unleashing her spleen on Molina. “That woman! What gall! What . . . conceit. You’d never—”
“Thank you.”
“What’s given her this idea? Stalking how?” Still playing dumb.
“Sneaking into her house and leaving items. A blue vintage velvet dress in her closet.”
“Hey! Wanta moonlight here? I could use a stalker like that!”
“Not so nice, a Gameboy in Mariah’s room once, before she evolved into such a game girl, thanks to you. But mostly stuff in Molina’s bedroom, including, the latest indignity, according to Devine, a racy teddy. I suspect he didn’t know what that was until Molina explained it to him. Imagine, she has two adolescents to rear. I suppose we should pity the woman.”
Temple waved away his attempt at humor, as disturbing as it was to picture Matt and Molina discussing racy teddies. “And she found a fingerprint matching the one on my CD to one found in her house?”
“One is the operative number. None of the objects had fingerprints but one, and that had only one print. It matches one of mine from the CD.”
Temple swilled Millennium whiskey way too thoughtlessly. “She planted it! Aren’t there ways?”
“Nice thought.” Max shook his head. “Molina is too proud to cheat. It was there, all right.”
“You’re too proud to make a mistake like that.”
“Thanks for your total trust in my hubris. Won’t mean much coming from a character witness on the stand, though.”
“How can she think you’d do such a thing?”
“She hates me? No, I suppose she figured I’d upped the cat-and-mouse game we’ve been playing all over Vegas long before this.” His expression grew bitter. “According to your new friendly neighborhood go-between, the last stalker invasion was particularly nasty. In that sense, I don’t blame her for going ballistic. A trail of rose petals all through the house, into Mariah’s bedroom as well as her own. I think the threat to Mariah sent her over the edge.”
“That’s proof of your innocence. You’d never include a kid in anything, not even a cat-and-mouse game.”
“Again, character witnesses aren’t going to save me, as sterling as you are and as sure as you are to be a knockout on the witness stand. The jury would fall for you like babies for saltwater taffy.”
His palm stroked her straight blond hair. Temple forgot how different she looked these days, how different she was beginning to feel.
“I’ve always wanted to be all fifties’ overdressed and stalk into a witness box on black spike heels,” she said. “And to attend a funeral wearing a big black hat with a veil. But I don’t have the height to carry any of it off.”
“Not my funeral, I hope.”
“She’ll never catch you. She can’t touch you.”
“Probably not. But she can touch you.”
“How?”
He sat back, sipped the whiskey. “That’s what Devine sent me to tell you. The one . . . minor reason Molina might not be completely unjustified in suspecting me of this slimy crime.”
“Matt sent you? Again? Since when do you take directions from him?”
“Since he’s right. Molina will tell you. I’d rather be first.”
“I can’t imagine anything serious enough involving me for you and Matt to collaborate on.”
“We have your best interests at heart.”
Temple’s heart almost stopped to hear that. Max and Matt conspiring to . . . what? Spare her? This must be major.
“Remember,” Max said, swirling the dark honey liquor in his Baccarat glass so it oiled the sides, “when you were doing that sopho-moronic ‘Tess the Thong Girl’ undercover routine in the strip clubs, trying to prove that I wasn’t the Stripper Killer? I could have throttled you myself for taking such a risk when I found out what you’d been doing.”
“Molina’s always been too ready to accuse you of sleazy crimes. It’s been a slap in the face to me too; that’s why I had to do something about it. But, hey, we got the creep.”
“We?”
“I never told anybody this, but although the pepper spray you gave me stopped the real Stripper Killer in that parking lot, it was Rafi Nadir coming along and decking him that put him out cold until the police came. Rafi didn’t want the credit for some reason, so he vanished, and I got the, ah, capture.”
“Nadir!” Max slapped his forehead. “What irony! Molina’s hated ex-squeeze saved you from the Stripper Killer and cut out, leaving you sole credit.” His chuckle escalated into a laugh as he pulled Temple against him. “I love it.”
“You hate Molina almost as much as she hates you, don’t you?”
“I’m getting there,” he said, grim again. He kept his arm around her, holding on tight. “That wasn’t my greatest hour, either, that night. She backed me into this corner I didn’t want to be in. She caught up with me in the other strip club parking lot, the wrong one, where the Stripper Killer wasn’t planning to strike again. That’s when I put it all together, where he’d really be, and that you were there, alone.”
“Heck, no, Max. I had Rafi Nadir, remember. And even Midnight Louie showed up with a yowling Greek chorus of feral cats, no less.”
“Where is Louie, by the way?”
“Out. Like my aunt Kit. She’s dating a Fontana, can you believe it?”
“Knowing your aunt Kit, yes. Knowing the Fontanas, no.”
Temple smiled, the tension between them dissipating with their separate visions of a Fontana brother-Aunt Kit tryst.
Max sighed and reached for his glass again, but he didn’t let go of her.