Or maybe, Temple thought, Louie just recognized a man he had marked earlier, perhaps when Matt had been attacked by Buck posing as Zorro.
But, wait, Louie had been sleeping hard in her bedroom when Matt managed to reach her cell phone, so that couldn’t be.
Just another mystery to go unsolved.
“Bastard,” Buck crooned gently as he recognized Matt, rocking back and forth on the sofa so many celebrities had sat on. “It would’ve felt so good to kill you.”
“Why?” Molina asked. “Why kill Matt Devine?”
“Bastard,” he muttered. “Umm, feels so good. Felt so good getting those stupid, pampered ‘celebs.’ They all get off too easy.”
Rafi stood behind Molina, a cell phone to his ear. “Alch says Buck did work the gangsta rap slaying case,” he whispered in her ear. “Just, ah, guarding the crime scene stuff. But he saw the main players, the dead boy, the glitzy car.”
“So you did the dirty tricks,” Molina pushed.
“Sure. Hey, it helped up the votes and donations. I was jes’ helpin’ those poor little bald cancer babies, right? Good guy. Better guy than some rich, spoiled assholes making fools of themselves on the stage. I am a good guy! Bitch got it all wrong. Needed some slappin’ around.”
He suddenly giggled, a truly chilling sound: childish, secret, mean.
“Took her out for a few dances around the floor. Mop it up with her. Had her trained to do housework on her face.”
Temple felt her stomach turn.
Molina turned to stare at Rafi.
He nodded soberly.
“Girlfriend or wife?” Molina asked.
“Wha’ does it matter?” His head was rolling on his neck, his eyes not connecting with anything. “Not there anymore. I don’t care now. She’s quiet. So quiet. Bastard. Thinks he’s God? Tellin’ women things. Interferin’ in my life. My wife. Leave? Leave? Tell her to leave? She’s left now, bastard. She’s gone. Who you gonna tell now? You gotta die. I’m gonna do it. Finish the job. It feels so good. I was so smart. Stupid, stupid cops. Turn on a brother. They do it too sometimes. Bastard. Get ’tween a man and his life. Uh, man and his wife. She’s gone.”
Rafi was whispering into the phone. “Check any domestic abuse trail, or gossip. Yeah? On it already? Jesus Christ!”
Molina turned, frowning at the loud expletive.
“Jesus Christ is comin’,” Hank Buck crooned, “comin’ on a snowy white cloud of smack for to carry me home. Why dint anyone tell me heaven was full of horse, huh?”
She nodded Matt and Temple into the hall, Rafi trailing her.
“Amateurs are out of here. You’ve got your answer,” she told Matt.
“His wife is someone who called my ‘Midnight Hour’ advice line, who I told to leave an abusive husband?”
“Before you try to say it’s your fault,” Molina went on, “this guy was going to blow anyway. Rafi, Alch tell you what I think he did?”
“Yeah. He was already checking Buck’s personnel files and in touch with any family he could find. The guy’s sister-in-law reported her sister missing two weeks ago. No trace so far.”
“So we’ve bagged a murderer?” Temple asked, appalled that a confirmed killer had been stalking the show and Matt.
“You’ve got all the info you’re going to get,” Molina told Temple. “Both of you get outa here and those so extreme costumes. I don’t want to see anything more tonight but uniforms and hear anything but the location of that poor missing woman’s body.”
She turned to go back into the greenroom.
Rafi clicked the cell phone shut.
“Well?” Molina barked at him. “You coming or not? He’s your boy too. We’re not done here.”
She moved on, leaving Temple, Matt, and Rafi staring after her, stupefied.
“Guess I’m on the team,” Rafi finally said as he shrugged and followed her.
Topaz Tango
The audience has finally emptied the house, the crew has left, and only the ghost light is on in the wings, along with the soft ambient lighting along the aisles.
I sit center stage. Alone.
Waiting.
At last a lone figure comes slinking slowly down one aisle from a seat on the very back wall of the theater.
Legs longer than yesterday. Doing the model walk, one lean smooth gam crossing in front of the other. Eyes glittering in the semidark, fixed on me, not on the ladder of steps she is descending. The jewels at her neck matching their color and fire.
I was made for nights like these.
I wait. Rock solid, holding my powerful limbs in check, no longer breathing hard from my earlier heroic exertions, breathing hard from expectation.
I wait and she comes to me, crossing the wooden dance floor surefooted, never faltering even on the slippery section.
She walks straight up to me until our blinkless gazes are only inches apart.
At the last second she veers left, brushing my side, coiling her long black train around my powerful shoulder.
I stand and look over my shoulder blade, her head is turned likewise toward mine.
She executes a sudden spin and then stalks close along my side again, brushing her face fast against mine before she is walking away.
I follow with one sharp step forward, catch her passing train and draw my mitt along it. She stops. Makes two dazzling shrugs with her sexy shoulders, then our feet are moving in the time-honored way of our kind, making impatient stuttering, kneading little steps, flicking around each other, between each other.
She lashes her train high, letting it quiver in time with her steps.
Our feet are silent, we are silent. The stage is silent for all the intense motion at its center.
She spins away again, and I follow fast. She turns. I turn.
She suddenly slides close along my side again and we turn and turn, our sides undulating together and apart, together and apart.
After another intense round of these steps, she suddenly executes a slow slide down my shoulder and rolls on her back, her golden eyes never leaving my face, her lithe body curled into calculated surrender.
I know this is the climax of the dance, that we will hold our triumphant pose for a few seconds and accept the silent applause of our kind that our routine has won for centuries.
But this is the twenty-first century. Midnight Louie may be a fearless crime-fighter, conquering hero, and primal tiger of the night but he is also a canny suitor.
I move to the side and pick up the small something I have been guarding ever since the stage finally cleared and I could find it. My many schemes to ID the perp for later plucking weren’t needed when he gave himself away but that is no reason to let a jewel languish underfoot, unclaimed by the jewel to whom it belongs.
I pick it up delicately in my fangs and turn to Topaz.
Those glorious eyes had narrowed at my seeming desertion at so critical a moment, but now they flare with understanding and renewed passion.
She lies still as I approach her supine beauty. I bend down and with the most skilled ministrations of my teeth and tongue, reattach the precious topaz pendant on her collar so the set is whole again.
Now the dance is truly over.
Let the games begin!
Ciao Ciao Ciao
Max awoke, alive and well.
What do you know?
He awoke with Revienne draped over him, asleep and looking like a Botticelli angel. Of perhaps a couple dozen positions he could recall at this point, he was only physically capable of one or two so far. Apparently they’d sufficed.
He felt . . . mahvelous. Rested. Relaxed. He’d managed to satisfy this gorgeous woman with two game legs and a memory that couldn’t access High School Seduction One, much less the Kama-sutra.