As soon as we are within sight of the landmark, she sprints to its foot, there throwing herself down and writhing in anguish.
"Now, now. You do not want to get sand in your best coat.
And beware gnashing your teeth on any fallen oleander leaves; they are poisonous."
Eventually the voice of reason quiets her grief. She sits up, sighs shakily, then begins smoothing her frazzled hair. "He must have been murdered, my poor innocent Wilfrid."
I do not contradict her sad conclusion. Her heavenly blue-gold eyes narrow hellishly.
"| want you to take on another assignment, Mr. Midnight. I want you to find the degenerate animal who did this. The filthy human!"
"Would that he had been filthy, dear lady. He would have left more of a trail. But do not fret. My associates are examining the house even now. I had earlier detected a scent that might lead to Wilfrid's missing mistress. I also noted another scent, far more subtle, so I called in an expert."
"Oh, thank you, Mr. Midnight. I knew the moment I saw you that you were not an ordinary investigator."
"I do have my connections around this town," I say modestly.
"No smell will be left unsniffed that bears any resemblance to the trail the killer left within."
"What is this odor?"
Here I wrinkle my brow. "It reminds me of a human food that comes in a small box. I have seen my roommate mix up some when she is feeling particularly punk."
"It is a medicinal preparation?"
"Quite the contrary. She treats it as something that is bad for her and therefore particularly welcome when she is in a down-cast mood."
"I know! My mistress is equally addicted to this substance, and I know it is poison to the canine breed. Chocolate!"
I frown again. I do not mean to repeat an expression, but this is one puzzling scent.
"That is the problem. This scent is not chocolate. It is not of an edible substance, although it reminds me of this boxed stuff my Miss Temple gorges on, on occasion, which is served warm or cold, but I noticed the scent when it was served warm."
"Oh, these humans! With their disgusting, unnatural habits of heating and icing food. And they think themselves so superior to us for these very eccentricities."
"I know. They are a hard lot to figure. But they are not all bad."
"No. My mistress means well. I try to understand what she wants, but she yammers on so in that unintelligible manner of hers. . . . I am sure your mistress does senseless, stupid things as well."
"Sometimes," I admit, but l will go no farther to libel Miss Temple. Sometimes her senseless, stupid human acts have saved my life.
Miss Fanny Furbelow creeps nearer to me. Tears are trembling on her eyelashes and there is a little catch in her voice.
"You have been so good to me, Mr. Midnight. I will never forget your--" Whatever of mine she will never forget is lost to recorded history. Her baby blue-golds widen to celestial pools as she gazes beyond me. "What is that?"
I turn to look. "Merely the best nose man on the West Coast. If anyone can trace the puzzling, human, not-food smell that lingered at the scene of the crime, it is Mr. Nose E. Byrd."
"That is a bird?" Miss Fanny Furbelow's eyelids flutter and she falls against my masculine chest in a dead faint.
Nose E. trots over to inquire in his best baritone bark. "What is wrong with the dame?" His little, round. black, button nose twitches like a psychopaths eyelid. "I am afraid she has been hitting the nip this afternoon."
"Yeah, she has her reasons."
"Do not we all?" Nose E. muses philosophically. "A bad business, this. From what you say.
both suspicious scents you report lie close to home. Very close to home. I suggest we investigate Miss Temple Barr first."
"A waste of time," I growl. My Miss Temple is beyond suspicion in my book.
"She is always up to her neck in solving crime." Miss Midnight Louise notes, glancing contemptuously at the prone Fanny Furbelow. She has never thought much of my taste in female companionship. "Perhaps this time she is up to her neck in committing one."
Chapter 24
Dead of Night
When the phone rang, Molina's bedroom was in that inky state of darkness that owns the hours of three to six A.M. The Twitching Hours was how she thought of it.
She had been tossing and turning since two-something, second-guessing her gutsy decision to let Max Kinsella play blood-hound for her. She risked his learning more about her past than she liked, but she couldn't risk not knowing where Nadir was. Not with "she left" spray-painted on the side of her personal vehicle.
So she let the phone ring twice before lifting the receiver, not to wake up, but to quiet the jitterbug a sudden ring would have on her already antsy system.
"Molina." Spoken like a wee-hours bureaucrat.
"We got another one, Lieutenant."
"That you, Su?"
"Yeah. Alch was against calling you, but l said you'd want to see the crime scene in flagrante delicto."
"Female victim!"
"Check."
"Strangled?"
"Right."
"Stab wound!"
"Yup."
"Graffiti?"
"No . . . that's why Alch thought it could wait."
Molina sighed.
"It's close, though, Lieutenant. Too close for comfort. That's why Reisdorf and Munez, who were up for the case, gave us a call."
Molina scrawled the address on the bedside notepad that lit up when you lifted the pen from its support. Notes in -the dark were a routine of police work.
"Keep the corpse on site, then?" Su asked.
"Twenty-five minutes," Molina said, already jamming her feet into moccasins.
Her finger was poised to hit the programmed number for Delores as soon as Su hung up.
Ten minutes later she was rushing through the kitchen door into the garage. Delores's husband worked the graveyard shift at a package delivery service, so she stayed up until he went to work. She didn't mind coming over nights to sit the house and Mariah and she really didn't mind making the extra money. Her own kids were old enough to be left at home alone.
Knowing what she did about crime in this town, Molina couldn't imagine Mariah ever getting old enough to be left alone at night.
The night air balanced on the cutting edge of forty degrees, chilly but not icy. The crime scene was far from the Blue Dahlia, probably one reason Alch didn't think she should be alerted.
He'd worked for her longer, knew her better, but Su was keen and new and had an unconventional instinct for the odd detail.
"She who delegates is lost," Molina told her softly glowing dashboard.
Maybe she hadn't been in a supervisory position long enough to give her investigators their head as much as she should. If those words hadn't been sprayed on her car--her car--she'd be home in bed right now, sleeping, and Max Kinsella would have heard nary a word about Raf Nadir.
This scene was the parking lot of a church, one of those cheap cinder-block churches with a chintzy wooden steeple giving the feeble finger to heaven. The name of the church would not reflect a Major Congregation.
Alch was chewing on his mustache, hands digging deep into his trench coat pocket, a sure sign of malcontent.
Su paced, her tiny figure jerky and doll-like in the artificial twilight of a single streetlight.
Why did petite people have so much energy, like those wired three-pound toy dogs? Maybe they had to make more of themselves to get attention.
Now that the watershed age of forty was loitering with intent to ring her doorbell, Molina was beginning to envy energy.
Asphyxiation was one of murder's more brutal forms, leaving the victim's face twisted with an expression of struggle at the least, or horror at the worst, depending on how much you wanted to read into the still-life that death made of a human body.
This victim looked no younger but more polished than the Strawberry Lady. Grooming details glossed her face and hands.