"So why's it so strong on the victim's clothes?"
Molina considered this very good question. "They also use it in gas stations' ladies' rooms."
"No kidding! Honest, I didn't know that."
"What do they use in gas stations' men's rooms, then?"
Alch thought. "Uh, nothing. Lieutenant."
Molina restrained herself from comment. "So she was in a gas station ladies' room recently?
Makes no sense, but--"
"Check the gas stations in the neighborhood for strawberry air freshener. And their trash bins too."
"Got it." Molina took a deep breath. "Now let's get out of here."
Back in the lobby, they paused by some mutual unspoken consent.
"Maybe that strawberry stuff," Alch suggested, "would help . . .in there."
"No way. If the orange stuff doesn't do it; nothing will. Besides, that strawberry stuff is worse than death warmed over."
"Maybe," Alch said, but he didn't sound convinced.
********************
Molina got home a little before seven to an empty house.
Mariah was attending an after-school basketball game followed by a pizza-dinner out and would be dropped off by the organizing parent.
Sometimes she envied parents their minivans full of screaming kids and the smell of pizza and spilled soft drinks.
She took a shower, using almond-scented gel and shampoo. Better to smell like poison than putrefaction. Despite it, an odor of orange blossoms lingered, bringing thoughts not of weddings, but of very ripe and hidden death.
She ran her fingernails into a bar of wet Ivory soap, digging out half-moons of scrapings that reminded her of the skin cells so often left behind under the victims nails.
The house was old, and the shower was a coffin, dark as the deep maroon ceramic rile that lined it.
Anybody could he in the house, sneaking up on her like in Psycho, and she wouldn't know it, see it, hear it.
She pulled the big bath towel down from the dimpled, frosted glass door, and stepped out into the bathroom, which felt cold.
"Boo!" said Mariah from the adjacent bedroom.
"Back already?"
"You been at the morgue, haven't you?"
"What makes you think so?"
"You never shower this early, unless you've been at the morgue."
"You're a good detective," Molina said in a tone not too different from what she'd use with an employee.
The big navy towel swathed her torso to the ankles. She wrapped a hand towel around her wet head.
"You look like a swami," Mariah teased.
"Then l will go into the kitchen and foretell what you will not have for dinner, mem sahib."
Navy, Molina thought as she shooed her daughter out the bedroom door and shed the damp towel to don her usual jogging suit.
Dream; color for a dreary set of clothes. Nothing about the victim was suitable for a TV
movie-of-the-week. Just some poor woman who had attracted the violent hand of some formerly abused child who had grown up into a Controlling, homicidal man.
Still the same old story.
She toweled her Chin-length hair dry, rubbed hard, as if to shake off any lingering taint of Grizzly's dead body emporium.
In the other room, the TV blared. The night for Sabrina, the Teenage Witch and her annoying black cat.
"Soon enough," Molina breathed to herself, bracing herself-for stages yet to come in her growing daughter. "Soon enough. But not yet."
She went out to round up the kittens and find out how Mariah's day had been and who had won the basketball game, which was important, because Our Lady of Guadalupe had all the cutest boys on its team.
Molina frowned. Didn't girls play basketball too these days?
Chapter 13
Louie's Grim Discovery
Of course, I only appear to be napping.
That is what I tell Miss Midnight Louise when she returns from her tour of duty around the exterior of Miss Fanny FurbeIow's beloved's house.
"There is a hole in the back screen door I could enlarge into an entryway, but the inner door is solid wood and locked," she reports, eyeing me with disfavor. (But when did she eye me with anything else?)
"What about windows?"
"There are a few," she admits. "All closed tighter than a pit bull's jaw."
"And the front door?"
"Also solid wood: also locked." She cocks an eye at the adjacent house. "No wonder the Window Widow is so upset. If the resident human does not return, I do not see any way Wilfrid could get out, were he still inside."
We glance toward the neighbor's house, to see Miss Fanny Furbelow's mouth gape wide in a distress cry we cannot hear through the window glass.
Miss Louise sits down beside me, the tip of her tail thrashing to show that she is peeved with both the situation and my calm in the lace of frustration.
I stand, stretch, and scratch my neck just to get a rise out of her ruff.
"We are not here to watch what passes for a workout with you nowadays," she says.
"I will inspect the site. See what I can come up with."
She rolls her eyes most disrespectfully.
I admit to myself that I have no hot ideas for cracking into this joint. It is a small, old house of the modest sort, but they are built far better than the trendy shacks sprouting up like postmodern mushrooms in Henderson down the highway.
However, I would much like to enhance my status in the eyes of Midnight Louise, not to mention in those two-tone models of the lovely White Widow. As soon as I am out of sight of both females, I sit down, and scratch my head this time. Maybe I will startle some brain cells into working overtime.
I decide to work this case and this scene from the human angle, rather than the animal, for once.
If Miss Furbelow is correct, and Wilt the Sylph's "pet" went off without any prior planning, something bad may have happened to her. I decide to examine the doors and windows for signs of attempted human break-in.
Midnight Louise does know her Las Vegas architecture. These classic old ranch houses may be unimaginative in style and construction, but they were built to repel sunlight and heat loss, which means that windows are few and far between and all means of entrance or egress are on the small side.
Air-conditioners are hoisted up on the root in this state, and do not hunker down on the ground alongside the house to act as convenient stepping stones. Also, the ground here is desert-dry, which means footprints rarely leave much of an impression.
Midnight Louise has let no trace, l notice as I pussyfoot around the place. The stucco exterior needs work and the painted wooden frames of the windows are peeling. The hole in the back screen door was made by a cat stretching up to sharpen his shivs.
I doubt that I will have any more luck than the missing Wilfrid in getting the back door to open, especially now that there is likely no one inside. I sit to consider matters. Although my foremost problem is assisting my client in finding out where her missing swain is, I have another dilemma.
Midnight Louise is already crowing about her superior agility in mounting the prow of Cleopatra's Barge to examined the dead guy affixed thereon not long before. I do not like to strike out twice in the pipsqueak's eyes. It is bad form for the masculine gender to let these new-model femi-felines get too uppity.
So I badly need to crack into this house, if not crack the case right this minute. I admonish my whiskers with a wet mitt, a gesture that often assists my thinking processes. I fear that there is nothing for it; I will have to use subterfuge and human help, rather than my solo skills as a street operative.
This is a bit of a comedown from my usual modus operandi, but I suppose l can share some trade secrets with the kit. She might come in handy as a gofer now and again, and there is nothing like letting a female think that she is going to get to do more than she is for ensuring cooperation.