"And how will 'we' do that?"
I sit down to consider. "There is one sure clue."
"I myself find the weeping widow highly suspect."
I sniff away that notion. "She is just window dressing, pardon the expression. No. I am disturbed by a slight odor I detected on the premises."
"The open can of tuna fish in the refrigerator."
"I was talking about 'slight odor.' Something fruity, but with substantial body."
"You mean the open bottle of wine in the refrigerator."
"I am not talking about an obvious foodstuff at all. I am afraid we will have to consult an expert in the field."
"An expert on refrigerator odor?"
"Forget the refrigerator! You would think you never ate before, and here you are scarfing up freebies fresh from the cutting edge of Chef Song's cleaver, night and day. No, I am talking about something I once faintly whiffed in Miss Temple's dwelling. But this scent is too subtle for our feline senses. I will have to employ the services of a specialist."
"There is one in Las Vegas?"
"There are several; fortunately, l know the best and the brightest of them all. But first, you are right. We cannot allow animal control to take control of the deceased. We must bury the body."
"What, a sentimental streak?"
"Sentimentality is always best leavened by practicality."
"Huh?"
"If we bury the body, it will not be hauled away and cremated by animal control."
Louise squinches her eyes to old-gold horizontal slits while she pictures the late lamented's corpse. "He was not a small dude.
How are you and I going to dig a hole big enough?"
"Once again, the smart operator acts alone only when necessary. Remember, many paws make light work."
"You are going to ask the so-called widow to help? Besides the fact that she is a bit of indoor fluff who has never dug deeper than one inch, and only in Pretty Paws litter where she cannot get anything under her nails but a little dust--no slugs, no worms, no mice skulls. Aside from all that, do you think she will be able to stop sniveling long enough to lend assistance, such as it would be?"
"No, I do not. I was not thinking of Miss Fanny Furbelow. In fact, you and I will have to begin our investigative odyssey by moving the body to a place of concealment in the yard."
"And how will we do that?"
"We must use our brains. We can drag the rag rug, with poor Wilfrid on it, through the door and into the yard, who will miss one rag rug in this joint?"
Miss Louise examines the rag-rug-cluttered floor, then nods.
"This will be hard on the choppers, but I do hate to see one of my kind disposed of by animal control. Okay. Yo-ho heave ho."
To the tune of the Volga Boat Song, we set to our gruesome but noble task.
Chapter 19
Hot Tamale Jalapeno Deathburger
Molina picked up the ringing phone, one eye on her watch and one eye on the report in front of her. Split attention span was ever the busy executive's best personal assistant.
"You wanted me?" The male voice was deep, assured, and sardonic.
She didn't have to ask who was calling.
"Not here. You heard of Charley's Burgers?"
"Not in Las Vegas."
"Maybe not in 'your' Las Vegas." She gave him the intersection, wishing she could watch the address's effect on his expression.
Charley hung his sign in a light-industrial area chug-by-shriek next to a railroad track. Not exactly Max Kinsella territory, but then she didn't know the full range of his wanderings. Yet.
"One-thirty," she added.
"You like a late lunch, Lieutenant."
"I like a quiet restaurant."
She smiled as she hung up. She would get there first, and watch him arrive.
****************
But she didn't, damn it.
You had to be earlier than she had thought to beat Max Kinsella at undercover games. So . . .
next time she would reset her watch to dawn patrol, if that's what it took. Next time. She wasn't sure whether that unconscious assumption worried her, or pleased her.
He was leaning, black-clad, arms folded, feet crossed, against a white Firebird convertible, resembling an exclamation point on an empty page. Perhaps a question mark would be more apropos.
Whatever symbolic piece of punctuation she compared him to, it was grievously misplaced in front of Charley's Old-Fashion Burgers. Molina relished the illiterate, hand-lettered sign. She loved the small weathered shack hunkering clown all by its lonesome on an off-the-beaten-path road. So did about six thousand other aficionados of the best burgers to be had in Clark County .
. . if you didn't mind messy fingers and a skyrocketing cholesterol rate.
Charley's Old-Fashion Burgers was truly a "joint" in the time- honored, sense of the word.
And today was a photo-opportunity late-winter afternoon in Las Vegas: pale blue sky and clear desert air, all deliciously perfumed by the greasy, smoky aroma of sizzling ground beef.
Kinsella followed her to the order window. Charley's was mostly a take-out place, especially if the took-to place was an over-the-road truck seat. A tacked-on addition featured a ten-stool lunch bar and a half dozen aluminum and faux-onyx Formica tables and chairs dating from so far back that they'd probably send a vintage-freak like Temple Ban into paroxysms of covetousness.
Except that decades of taking cigarette bums and banging around had made the stuff too beaten-up to cherish.
Kind of like an abused spouse.
"Charming." Kinsella kept any discernible tone from his voice.
Even on matters of public taste he had to be a mystery. She enjoyed eying him against the rough background of Charley's Burgers. It was almost as good as a line-up wall with the heights marked in paint-peeling wood slats rather than impersonally neat notches.
With his patent-leather hair sleeked back from his angular face into a discreet ponytail and the black turtleneck sweater, he resembled an escapee from an Esquire magazine ad, and somehow looked more Italian than Irish. But maybe it was the sweater that was Italian. It was expensive, that was for sure.
Molina ordered the usuaclass="underline" a jalapeno "deathburger," a side of coleslaw, and black coffee.
Kinsella's eyebrows went up at mention of the "deathburger" and stayed up while he ordered a custom bleu-cheese-mushroom-tomato combo with fries. It figured.
"Too bad Charley doesn't have sun-dried tomatoes," she opined rather snidely.
"I'll live." He looked around the junky neighborhood. Any visible outbuildings made Charley's look new. Cans and bottles gleamed alongside the naked railroad tracks. "What do we do?
Sit inside and wait?"
"We eat in the car, we wait in the car."
"Mine or yours?"
She glanced from the sculpted white dazzle of the Firebird to the faded, boxy silhouette of her Toyota wagon.
"Mine. What's the gimmick? You drive a black car by night and a white car by day?" He shrugged, hands in pockets. The man always seemed posed as artfully as a model, but then a magician's act was all pose, wasn't it?
"Isn't that snow-white charger a bit attention-attracting for a low-profile guy like you?" she pressed.
"You need to take a moment and visualize the Las Vegas Strip in rush hour without a cop's eye, Lieutenant."
She didn't have to do that, she had only to mentally rewind back to her last couple drives on the Strip. White cars bounced back the desert heat, so the rental agencies ran scads of them, and the tourists like to spin around town in a convertible. He was right: in Viva! Las Vegas, high-profile was low-profile.
She escorted him around to the passenger side of her car.
"Wait a minute," she ordered.