After they sat down at their little plastic table for four, Molina hefted the sub-style bun before taking a bite. “Isn’t Chicago becoming Matt Devine’s second home these days?”
“It was his first home,” Temple said. “And not a happy one.”
“Our first homes often aren’t. That’s why so many people end up in a pseudo-city like Las Vegas.”
“That’s only the Strip and all its works. Beyond that it’s a pretty normal community.”
“If you say so.”
“And even crazy Vegas has its plus side. Matt’s mother and her new beau just whisked in and out of town to be married here.”
“Were you flower girl?”
“Maid of honor. Louie was ring bearer, though.”
Molina rolled her eyes as she chewed. “Sometimes I think that cat has dog genes. What self-respecting feline would sit still for a bit part in a wedding ceremony?”
“Midnight Louie, as you know, has the self-respect and chutzpah to use this whole town for a litter box.”
“His free-wheeling ways wouldn’t go over in Chicago.”
“Au contraire.” Temple sipped the tangy Dr Pepper before adding, “He was kidnapped by the mob and got two made men arrested.”
“Kidnapped by the mob? Grant you, the only places the mob still parties hard now are in the Northeast and Chicago. But people are too ready to attribute purpose to what pets do, and turn coincidence into beyond-natural motives and acts.”
“What about your domestic pets, Lieutenant?”
“You’ve seen them. Two tabby cats of perfectly ordinary intelligence and instinct. They sleep a lot and always hear the can opener. So?”
“You’ve seen Louie inexplicably present on a few crime scenes.”
“He follows you around like a dog. I don’t suppose that’s beyond the capacity of cats, though it’s unusual. It may be some scent you wear.”
“Like tuna toilet water?”
“Not an appetizing image right now, Miss Barr.”
“We’re sounding like we’re at a tea party,” Temple complained. “That’s not necessary with cheese dribbling down our chins.”
“I agree. I can call you Red.”
“As in ‘better dead than’?”
“You can call me—”
Temple waited breathlessly.
Molina shook her head ruefully. “Wait. You don’t need to call me anything.”
“I was waiting for Blue. You do sing them.”
“The blues? Not so much lately. Now. What do you know about the body on the construction site?”
“It’s more a matter of what I want to know.”
“Me first. Just who is this Silas T. Farnum guy?”
“An out-of-state investor. Company name, Deja View Associates. I checked it out on the Internet and it looks legit.”
“Ah, the Internet. That’ll soon replace police departments and newspapers as ‘impeccable’ sources.”
“I don’t take everything at face value,” Temple said, adding a tinge of indignity to her tone.
“Only Irishmen,” Molina commented.
“I think I could come up with something to call you now, but it’s not suitable for public consumption.”
Molina laughed. “That was catty of me. I wasn’t even catty in grade school. You’re a bad influence.”
“I hope so, because Chico’s is just down the Sun Court.”
Molina sipped iced tea with a grimace. “Everybody wants to remake me.”
“Really. How ‘everybody’?” To Temple’s amazement, Molina answered.
“Teen singing phenom Mariah.”
“Daughters always do that.”
“You just brushed that off. Why?”
“Because I went through that creepy kid stage. The day you notice that Moth-er is Dow-dy. So embarrassing. Someone might notice you’re Not Cool Too.”
“You’ve got that stage down,” Molina agreed. “Why do we always end up discussing trivial things?”
“Because you don’t have any girlfriends?”
“Why would I want any?”
“I rest my case.”
“Who have you got?”
“Well, Mariah, for one.” When Molina winced, Temple went on. “I’m getting to be gal pals with Matt’s mother. Not so much his lovesick younger cousin. Electra is a girlfriend. And a couple media women in town. And, oh, I mustn’t forget my aunt Kit, who’s hardly like a relative at all. And now that she’s married Aldo Fontana, I’m some kinda crazy in-laws to the ten brothers.”
“Aldo Fontana is married? To your aunt? You’re right. That is vaguely … incestuous. And you’re asking me about mobsters?”
“You know the Fontanas are … vestigial mobsters. Mock mobsters.”
“And that truly is all that’s left of the mob in Vegas. The Metro Police and the FBI cleaned up the town in the ’80s. Our big problem now is ethnic gangs.”
“Couldn’t there be a few vestigial made men hanging around town? That body dump on Paradise is very Jimmy Hoffa.”
“What makes Hoffa a mystery is that his body was never found. This Paradise guy was old, though.”
“Like the Glory Hole Gang? Those eighty-something rascals who heisted silver dollars in their youth and run a restaurant at Gangsters?”
“About that age. We don’t see too many elderly murder victims.”
“I suppose age takes people to a point where the usual motives—lust, envy, and vengeance—don’t matter much anymore. Except for greed. That seems ageless.”
“True. The Glory Hole Gang were holdup artists, not mob.”
“Whoever killed Cliff Effinger was probably mob,” Temple said. “Effinger was in on something. He knew something that got him killed. When Matt and I visited Chicago, someone was shaking down his mother for some old personal items Effinger had left behind.”
“Really? What kind of items?”
Temple was not going to reveal the strange history of the constellation Ophiuchus and secret magicians’ circle called the Synth. If Molina found the names of the outlet mall’s various areas “New Age,” she’d find all the Synth mumbo-jumbo, with bodies arranged in a constellation shape, too outré for the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department.
“We don’t know,” Temple said, guilty about lying. “Just that there was a fireproof locked file box full of memorabilia, and somebody wanted it enough to threaten and stalk Matt’s mother—”
“Another stalking situation?” Molina’s squinting eyes reduced her electric blue irises to high-intensity narrow beams. “That’s … a coincidence too many.”
“Her apartment was broken into and Midnight Louie taken to force her to surrender the box and its contents. The Chicago police went to the warehouse Louie had escaped from and found two ‘minor crime figures’ with Italian surnames in somewhat shaky condition.”
“That’s ethnic profiling, Red.” Molina was sensitive about her half-Hispanic origins.
“Go to the mob museum if you want to see ethnic profiling spelled M-a-f-i-a.”
Molina leaned back in the plastic chair, her meal and beverage dispensed with. And probably her patience. “I’ll look into the Farnum character’s company, but as far as we yet know, that dumped body was a murder in search of an unrelated site to be found in. The only prints around the location indicate the presence of rats. And cats,” she added with a forbidding frown.
Temple knew when to pull back. “You can’t have one without the other or else you get bubonic plague,” she pointed out.
“The victim hasn’t been identified, but I’d doubt he’d have mob connections. His hands were callused from heavy labor. I’d suspect the building trades.”
“Shovels. Pickaxes. Maybe he knew where other bodies were buried.”
“Will you get off this Jimmy Hoffa theme?” Molina was annoyed enough to make a speech. “With all the undreamed-of construction on the Strip in the past twenty years, any hidden bodies would have come to light. This is not a Big Crime case. It could be someone who welched on a bet at an illegal street gambling site. It could be someone who was bribed to use substandard building materials and was going to ‘squeal’ in the language of the gangster movies you favor.” Molina rose, ready to go.