“Possibly still in an interrogation room, I believe. Shoddy places, even in the magnificent new building. I only presume. I have not yet been honored to be a guest there.”
“Interrogated? By whom? For what?”
“By our friendly neighborhood chanteuse and cop, Lieutenant Molina.”
“She’s a homicide cop.”
“This seems to be a case of homicide.”
“And Electra is a suspect?”
“Many are called in these cases, but few are nailed.”
“The victim isn’t—?”
“An ex-husband of our dear landlady? I fear he is an ‘ex’ in the most, er, permanent fashion.”
“Not…Jay Edgar Dyson?”
“Not anymore.”
Temple’s jaw and shoulders slumped with shock. Her tote bag handles started slipping through her nerveless fingers, but Ernesto caught the bag and ushered Temple into the limo’s cavernous white leather interior.
He leaned in after her, a living example of Scent Surround. “You also are on the interrogation list, dear lady.”
“Me?”
“Not to worry. Gangsters is providing complementary limo service for all involved. And a getaway car, if needed.”
Matt had overheard the news and invited Ernesto to join them in the horseshoe of luxuriously padded seats.
“Normally I ride shotgun.” Ernesto patted the subtly padded shoulder of his Emanogildo Zegna suit coat. The firearm in the hidden holster was a Beretta, of course. The Fontanas patronized all things Italian. Ernesto ducked to take a seat opposite them and turned to the glittering façade of the bar.
“Better not,” Matt said. “We’re going straight to police headquarters and I don’t want high-end booze on our breaths. When did this happen?”
“Yesterday. Miss Electra was invited to headquarters for an interrogation today. I happened to be dropping by the Circle Ritz to give her a saltimbocca recipe and was able to offer her the same, calming white-glove Gangsters transportation service you experience now.”
“Couldn’t someone have called us in Minnesota?” Temple asked.
“Miss Electra wouldn’t hear of interrupting your family reunion, Miss Temple. We promised to drive you direct from the airport to the interrogation room.” Ernesto made a sour face. “The lady lieutenant was most unbecomingly fierce about that. Not even Julio could dissuade her to wait until you’d settled back home at the Circle Ritz.”
“What awful news,” Matt said. “It’s crazy that Electra Lark would need to be anywhere near a police headquarters, but what can Temple know about this? Molina has a lot of nerve issuing a command appearance. We’ve been traveling all day. Temple is tired. Are they interviewing all Circle Ritz residents? If so, I can do it today and give Temple a break.”
“You are not on the list,” Ernesto said.
“That’s even crazier. What could Temple know about some crime that happened while we were out of town?” Matt looked at her, with a firm nod. And then frowned.
Temple knew she looked guilty.
“Wait a minute.” Matt eyed Ernesto. “Temple asked if the victim was—then broke the sentence off…and you mentioned this Jay Edgar guy.” He turned to Temple. “You can’t have known him, an ex-husband of Electra?”
“Not known him, no.” Temple made an apologetic shrug. “But I could have met him.”
“Where? Not at the Circle Ritz, surely?”
“No. Not there.”
“Then where?”
“At the Araby Motel.”
“The—” Matt was speechless.
“I think,” Ernesto said, leaning forward to look them each in the eye, “that the gentleman, since he’s not called upon to answer questions, should have a nice stiff Scotch. And the lady should sit back in silence and compose her thoughts for the forthcoming chat with the police. At least she is known to them as a solid citizen.”
“So is Electra,” Temple complained. “All of this is just plain bogus. And since when does Gangsters chauffeur people to police headquarters instead of to the nearest underground nightclub?”
Ernesto could only shrug his impeccably Emanogildo Zegna-tailored shoulders. Some mysteries even Fontana brothers forebear to question. Temple wondered if Julio’s recent attentions to Molina had made things better, or worse.
Matt had insisted on accompanying Temple into the Crimes Against Persons offices, although Ernesto also insisted he alone was needed as escort.
Temple was further unnerved when she learned that Electra had been interrogated and released, and likely she would be too. She was relieved Electra hadn’t been arrested after seeing the police, but wondered if her account, coming after Electra’s, could inadvertently make things worse, not better.
Even with Matt and Ernesto as escorts, Temple would have felt a lot calmer with Midnight Louie by her side.
21
Vegas Blues
When Matt and Temple heard Lieutenant Molina paged, she appeared so fast that both Matt and Temple started…guiltily, some might say. Especially Temple.
“Wait here,” the tall police officer told Matt, indicating a spare modern chair among a long row of mostly empty ones. “With that.”
He took custody of Temple’s tote bag, as instructed, and sat.
“Excuse me, Lieutenant,” Ernesto said with a rueful smile, “before you rush off, you should know that Miss Barr has legal representation.”
Temple was shocked, but Molina coolly cocked a strongly dubious eyebrow.
“The Fontana family law firm is getting a workout recently.” Molina sighed and stepped away to confer with a colleague.
“I have a lawyer?” Temple leaned up to whisper Ernesto. “I don’t have, like, a lawyer that I know of.”
“No problem.” Ernesto patted the top of her forearm. “We always keep several at hand.” He turned to a person sitting farther down the line of chairs, whom Temple had taken for a bookie about town, like Nostradamus, the rhyming odds maker.
At Ernesto’s nod, a roly-poly balding man with tortoiseshell-framed glasses and a lot of white shirt frontage showing beneath a snugly rumpled suit coat hastened their way.
Temple was even more shocked. How could the fashionably slick Fontana males employ a lawyer who looked like a dropout from mail-order law degree school? And his equally shoddy and bulging briefcase was festooned with untidy paper corners sticking out every which way.
“Lester Savoy,” Ernesto introduced him to Temple. “Our longtime legal eagle.”
He looked more like an adult ugly duckling. He didn’t quack like a duck, though, and rolled out a short introduction-instruction spiel.
“Miss Barr, I’ve also been honored to represent Mrs. Lark and am acquainted with the facts of this situation. Just relax in the interrogation room, but convey the least information possible to answer any questions. I’ll be the Invisible Man unless you are asked a question it would be in our better interests to let go unanswered.”
Invisible? No one was going to miss that Hawaiian-themed tie, which barely reached the fourth button on his wrinkled shirt. An aroma of cigar—not a pleasant vanilla-scented one, but the burned alfalfa-fertilizer kind—screamed “shyster”.
Matt was looking appalled, but Ernesto quickly shepherded this new odd couple of Barr and Savoy into Molina’s custody. “All bright and shining and ready for you, Lieutenant.”
Molina’s eyelids shuddered shut for half a second.
Waving a hand holding a slim file, she gestured Temple and Savoy to precede her farther into the bowels of the building, Actually, everything here was too new and modern to qualify as the usual seedy bowels of a police station. Temple knew that from having witnessed an interrogation here during the recent Black & White rock band murder case.
Now, out of the blue rather than the black-and-white, Temple was going to be facing the other side of the one-way mirror. The wrong side. As the interviewee.