Her eyes panicked and she took a quick swallow of coffee to hide her sudden terror.
"l know one thing. You can't make any of the changes l mentioned--and I think you could do all of them--until you deal with what's really scaring and scarring you."
"l can't afford a shrink!"
"There are counseling programs--"
"They stick their noses into everything. I don't trust them. I don't like talking about me. They always want to know your real name.
"And that's what you're running away from." Max nodded. He knew that game. "Think about it. Where are you going to dance tonight?"
"Oh, there's a club on the other side of town. l know some girls who work there. I can come in as . . . Delilah. That's hokey, you know?"
"I didn't have much time to think up a name. Listen, you really should talk to someone." Max felt a fiendish inspiration coming on. "Why don't you call one of those radio talk-show shrinks?
That's as anonymous as you can get."
"Dr. Laura would tear me to shreds."
"There's a local guy on WCOO. Mr. Midnight. That's when he's on."
"Midnight? l heard one of the girls saying something about that. Maybe. If I was near a phone where nobody could hear. Sometime. Oh--wasn't he the guy who . . . that girl in the motel? She was nuts, poor thing. l heard about that."
"See? He kept her from hurting someone else besides herself.
That could have been you."
"l'm not nuts."
"No, but a few more years of this life and you will be." She said nothing, her silence admitting the truth he'd spoken.
"Uh." She dug into the plastered-on jeans, finally tugging something from one front pocket.
Max thought that this unconscious act was the most erotic move he'd seen her make yet. She held up the wad of ten dollar bills. "Sixty bucks. And you didn't get a dance, except with a bouncer. Here."
"No. You can keep it, if you don't spend it on booze. Maybe it's a nest egg for something else."
"I don't take money for nothing."
"l don't give money for nothing. I appreciate the information."
"l'm not a snitch either."
"How about it's a birthday present, for Delilah."
"Delilah! Well, I guess I'd give you a better haircut, if I could." Max laughed. "Then do it."
"Really. Here? Now?"
"Maybe I'm launching a cosmetician."
"I do all the girls' hair." Something glimmereci in her eyes. Hazel eyes that could focus perfectly well. "Maybe. I'll have to wash that goop out."
"Just so long as you don't shave me bald."
"You'd really trust me to cut your hair?"
"Sure." Hair, unlike self-esteem, always grew back better than ever.
"That's all you want me to do? Cut your hair?"
"Well, you could call Mr. Midnight. Tell him . . . tell him Mr. Magic sent you." Chapter 46
Hair Yesterday Gone Today
Su and Alch stood before Molina's desk, the not-quite-original Odd Couple. Both wore the strangely serene expressions of detectives who have done their duty and come back with something concrete, or at least interesting.
"Tell me about it," Molina said.
"She was everything we thought she would he . . . would have been," Su said. "Modest bungalow--"
"Quiet neighborhood," Alch put in
"Kept a cat."
"There's something odd about that--"
"Nosy neighbor."
"Love those nosy neighbors."
"This one had a key to the place."
"We had no trouble getting in--"
"And, we may have found the actual murder scene."
"Or abduction scene."
Molina clapped her hands to end the recital. "I love it when you two are in perfect harmony, but why do I get the feeling that some unanswered questions remain?"
"Because they always do, Lieutenant," Alch admitted happily.
"So what's wrong with this picture ?"
"The neighbor lady, for one," Su put in sourly. "Noticed Miss Orth was gone, knew she hadn't mentioned anything about going out of town or looking after her cat or taking in the newspaper, but still didn't do anything about it."
"Not until the cats started acting up," Alch added.
"Miss Orth's cat and what other cat?"
"Well . . ."--Su consulted her notes--"this neighbor, Rosemary Jonas has this cat named Fanny, which was quite a pal of Miss Orth's tiger cat, Wilfrid. Fanny began acting funny when Wilfrid wasn't coming out to play with her--"
"When?" Molina wanted to know.
Alch nodded. "The day after Miss Orth's body was found."
"So," Su said, "Miss Jonas just figured Miss Orth had taken off and left the cat at the vet's . . .
until these two strange black cats--"
"Wait a minute." Molina planted her hands on the desktop. "Strange in behavior, or strangers to the neighborhood?" She knew her voice had gone taut.
"Both," Su said triumphantly.
Molina glanced at Alch, who shrugged. He no doubt remembered her remarks about the presence of black cats from the death-on-the-Nile scene at the Oasis not long before.
"So what did they do, these two black cats?" Molina asked in resignation.
"Now this is very interesting, Lieutenant. They both went over to Miss Orth's house and kicked up a ruckus."
"How? Did they throw cherry bombs at the front porch? Slide down the chimney disguised as soot?"
"Well, first Fanny howled to go out, so Miss Jonas let her. Then, half an hour later, these two black cats she'd never seen before were yowling and jumping at the window that Fanny liked to sit in to watch for Wilfrid."
"Wouldn't stop," Alch put in.
"So Miss Jonas gets it in her head that the cats are trying to tell her something."
Alch leaped back in. "Every time she comes to the window to give them hell, they quit howling and run over toward Miss Orth's house, then stop halfway there and look back at her house."
Su: "She figures that Fanny has somehow gotten trapped in or near Miss Orth's house. So she gets the key--"
Alch: "And trots over after the cats."
Su: "Once she gets in--"
"And the door was unlocked, so the cats have eeled in with her, " Alch says. "You know how cats will wrap themselves around your ankles and slip right into where you don't want them?"
"Yes, l know." Molina sounded even more resigned.
Su shot Alch an aggrieved look: This was her shaggy cat story. "The house smells musty and closed-up. A little ripe, too, like tomatoes left out on a countertop. Anyway, the cats are scampering through the rooms like they own the place, and lead her right into the bedroom."
Here Molina felt her spine stiffening. Scene of the crime coming up, stage-managed by her favorite feline suspects, Louie and Louise. Had to be them. Didn't know how, but it had to be them. Rats!
"That's when Miss Jonas starts to worry, and that's when she spots the dead body."
"Another dead body?"'
Su nods, grimly satisfied. "Middle-age male, hazel eyes, average weight, about twelve pounds." After a second's pause, she giggles.
"Alch, get your partner something to sober her up. So the dead body is feline. Fanny?"
"I forgot to mention that Fanny was a"--notes consulted again, and then quoted--" 'such a gorgeous girl, all white with one blue eye and one gold.' "
"Wilfrid," Molina diagnosed. "And getting a trifle tank?
Then he'd been dead since the victim was last at the house. Was he . . . a case for the LVMPD, Su?"
"Maybe a victim of death by misadventure. Maybe not. Because Miss Jonas ran home to call animal control to pick up the body. And when the pound people got there the next day--you know pound people-- "
"The cat was gone." Alch stole the punch line.
Su sighed mightily and frowned at him.
"Dead cat walking?" Molina wanted to know. "And what became of those two black tattle-tails?"
Su shut her notebook with a dramatic slap of cardboard on paper. "Vanished, Lieutenant.
Like they'd never been there. Like the dead cat. Except that the absent Wilfrid left a distinct odor of Old Mice."
"Your theory?" Molina eyed each detective in turn.
"Either the neighbor lady was a tad hysterical and mistook a rag rug for a dead cat," Alch said.