"What was she doing in the Blue Dahlia parking lot?"
"Nothing l can figure out. She worked as a county librarian in Reno the past four years.
Moved here just three months ago. Led a notoriously quiet life. Didn't date. Nice middle-aged single lady, seemingly content to stay that way."
"No relationships with men?"
"We've interviewed her neighbors, here at least. She was like a lot of middle-aged women nowadays, whether divorced or never married: content with their jobs and their housecats.
Unless she had a racy secret life we haven': dug out, no; no relationships with men, except for the mailman and the carry-out boy at the local Lucky Food Center store."
"Still, it does give 'she left' a different ting, doesn't it?"
"You thinking some kind of religious fanatic here?"
"Possibly. All intense religions--and Catholicism is an intense religion---produce intense reactions. But what was Monica Orth, Sister Mary Margaret Orth, doing in the Blue Dahlia parking lot at two in the morning?"
"She must have been brought there."
"By her murderer. Who has a thing against women who 'left.'
Who left men? Or who left religious vocations? What have we got? The typical man scorned.
or the atypical religious fanatic?"
"Too soon to tell, Lieutenant. All I know is that Monica Orth's past fits her present: the pre-owned, plain clothing; the low-profile, solitary life. Apparently her cat died about the same time.
only when her neighbor called animal control to report it, the body was missing. Cat body, that is. It's possible the neighbor was hallucinating. She lived alone and kept a cat too."
"Living alone and keeping a cat is not a sign of incompetence. We are not on a witch hunt.
This is not the European Middle Ages, Detective. Women are not balmy merely because they are manless."
"No, sir. Ma'am."
"How old are you?"
"Twenty-eight."
"Wait a decade or two before you judge." Molina donned an abstract expression. "Tell me about Gloria Fuentes. Did she live alone and keep a cat?"
"As a matter of fact--"
"No shit?"
"No shinola." Su again flipped a page in her notebook. "She lived alone, but her neighbors at the Shady Palms apartments indicate she had gentleman callers. Her cat was a tortoiseshell called Pyewacket. Weird name! What is a tortoiseshell?"
"It's a color of cat. I don't know exactly what. Brown and something, I'd think. So, is this cat missing?"
"Not at all. A neighbor took it in when it began yowling outside fellow tenants' doors."
"It began yowling three days ago?"
"Exactly."
"When Gloria didn't come home to feed it. So what was Gloria doing outside a church?"
Su shook her glossy black head. "Hard to say. Her neighbors didn't peg her for the religious type. She relished looking like she had been in 'show business' once. Tight pants. High, backless heels. Teased, orange-colored hair. Flashy, but harmless."
"Not to somebody."
"No, ma'am."
"Apparently she also left someone. or something. Take Alch and dig some more around both residences and the job scene. He has a nice instinct for lonely ladies."
"Morey's a sweetheart."
"Yes, he is. You're lucky to have him for a partner."
Merry Su gave her an oblique look through those attractively slanted dark eyes of hers.
Razor-slash eyes. Su was wondering if Molina's assessment was personal.
"Youth and experience make a good investigative team," Molina added, thinking: no, not Alch. He's a sweetheart, all right, but not for me. Not yet.
Chapter 40
Call and Recall
The calls started jamming the switchboard during the last half hour of Ambrosia's seven-to-midnight shift.
Matt watched her fielding phone-ins and programming appropriate songs, every movement efficient, her Buddha-calm voice never indicating for an instant that she was keeping track of six things at once.
Thank heaven he didn't have to select and play the proper background music for every caller with every kind of problem.
He didn't know the past thirty or forty years of popular music anyway, although he was catching up fast after a few hours of listening to Ambrosia spin her spells and her platters.
Callers were eased off the air as fluidly as they were drawn into revealing their losses, failures, fears, and hopes. It was first names only and the comforting anonymity of public confession.
"Then Ambrosia clocked off, she motioned him to take over the hot seat.
"The whole world wants to talk to you, Mr. Midnight. Come on in and assume your headset."
"I'm not sure l want to talk to them."
"Why not?"
"After all the calls I've been fielding all day . . . talk shows and people who want to write true-crime books and so-called Hollywood producers. I don't know how they all got my home phone number."
"People like that want something bad enough. they get it. Are you listed in the phone book?"
"Maybe. By now. Depending on when a new edition came out. l haven't looked. When l moved here last year and got my phone, it never occurred to me that l should get an unpublished number."
"Such problems," she mocked. "The man is popular."
He checked the big schoolhouse-style clock on the wall with its boldly sweeping second hand. He trusted its massive, plain face more than the gilded hands on his wristwatch.
"My friend Temple is helping me get an agent. Then I can get an answering machine and tell everybody to call him. or her."
"An agent."
"You don't think it's a good idea?"
"For you, baby, sure! For us. . ."
"Oh. Well. it's not like I'm expecting a raise or anything, not so soon."
"Oh, but your agent will be." She chuckled. "Let's see what the people want besides you, Mr.
Midnight."
Her stately form glided out of the tiny studio like an ocean liner leaving the dock. Matt felt panic clutch his throat. What did they want, all these callers? Not him, really, but something they thought he could give them. He couldn't be getting more alien-baby calls, could he? Surely something like that happened once in a broadcast lifetime? And he was just an amateur at this.
The first voice came bubbling into his ears like effervescent empathy, female and heartfelt.
"Is this Mr. Midnight? I want to talk to Mr. Midnight, not some operator. Oh. It's you! That was the most sad and. and most scary thing I've ever heard. Thank you, thank you, for saving that girl."
"It was her baby that was in danger--"
"And if the baby had died, what would have happened to her?
What is happening to her?"
"I tried to get in touch with her today, but she's in the hands of the professionals.
Sociologists, doctors, psychologists. They're examining her. You're right; she doesn't have something unthinkable on her conscience. I have to believe she'll be all right."
"Well, you just keep trying to get through to her. The professionals! Where were they when she needed help?"
"They're there, but you have to ask them for that help."
"Well, at least we know where you are, Mr. Midnight. Keep up the good work."
The line didn't even go dead. Another voice was harping in his ears.
"Oh, it's a sad story. all right." Male and bitter. " 'Poor girl.' Where's the father. I gotta ask?
Did he have any voice in any of this? What about vows? What about promises? And miles to go, and promises to keep? Nobody keeps promises any more. Wedding rings, worthless. Throw them in the sewers, in the bushes. Web rings, that's what people want. Internet. Not interconnection. The world is crazy--"
"The world is crazy, but people are made that way by other people, sometimes. We can't blame the victims. . . ."
"Yes, we can! We can when everybody's a 'victim.' Isn't there any responsibility anymore?
Everybody weaseling out of everything. In the old days, people paid. People did what was right, no matter the cost. There were no easy outs."