Simon rolled his eyes, but Danny grinned. “Aren’t they the Village People all over again? I adore retro. ‘Bye, darlin’.” He air kissed her cheek and headed out with Simon.
The lights were bright and the night looked bleak. Temple felt wrung out.
She eyed the two uniforms who were taking many notes from the Wong commune. Somewhere in the center of all those tall people was a little woman who was a major cultural force and who was worth millions. Martha Stewart for the transcendental set.
Death threats.
It was so obvious, it must be so even to the local authorities who had probably never heard of Amelia Wong before.
Chapter 12
Hot Saucy
Hours passed.
Finally, after almost everyone else had been released, including the Wong party, a female officer approached Temple on
booted, big-cat feet.
The fog still inhabited Temple’s head. She tried to gather her thoughts as she walked out of the now-deserted furnishings store, past the shattered display windows that lay in puzzle pieces on the ground outside and dusted the elegant furniture inside.
Morning was warming. What Temple could see of the horizon-some low rooftops and trees-was rosy, but the parking lot lamps still glimmered eerily against the pale sky. Temple wove a little on her reinstalled high heels as Officer Paris walked her to her car.
Hardly any vehicles hunkered in the lot now.
“It’s been a long night,” the woman said. “Sure you can make it home?”
A man was leaning against Temple’s new Miata, his silhouette melding with the base of the security lamp she had parked it under. Temple inhaled fast enough to be heard.
Officer Paris’s hand went to her hip.
“It’s okay,” Temple said, not entirely sure that it was. “I know him.”
“He was attending the opening?”
“Yeah. We didn’t know we’d both be here tonight. Neighbor.”
“I’ll drive you home.” Matt had stepped into the half-light and Officer Paris shifted to attention with something quite different
from wariness … interest.
“I can drive,” Temple said. Crossly. “And … what about your car?”
“You can drop me off to pick it up tomorrow.”
“Let him drive, honey.”
“Officer Paris, that’s kinda sexist. Also the pet name.”
“Sometimes sexist is just right.” She put a hand on Temple’s arm, not custodial, just friendly.
Temple sensed the latent tremor in herself the moment somebody touched her.
“Thanks, sir.” Officer Paris adjusted the umpteen pounds of weaponry on her utility belt. “Good, um, night. Or morning.”
“I’d never be a patrol officer,” Temple commented as they watched the woman walk away. “The uniform makes you look way too hippy.”
Temple turned to face Matt over the embarrassingly shrimpy profile of her new sporty car that she apparently was too shook up to drive.
“How’d you get out of here so early?” she asked.
“I pled the necessity of my live midnight radio show.”
“So they let you walk?”
“They interviewed Janice and myself right away. Some of the cops are actually among my ‘Midnight Hour’ listeners.”
“And that’s all it takes to get a Go Home Early card at a mass shooting scene?”
Matt looked uncomfortable. “I had the name of a personal reference too.”
“Personal reference?”
“Molina.““Molina? She’s the enemy!”
“Not when she’s a homicide lieutenant and you need a favor. Besides, it’s Kinsella she’s after.”
“As I recall, she had her sights on you as a suspect in the call girl death.”
“I pretty much cleared myself.”
“You did? How? When? How come I don’t know anything about it?”
“Maybe because it wasn’t your business.” Temple mulled that one in silence.
“Don’t look like a kicked kitten,” Matt told her. “Carmen didn’t want me to broadcast the facts, mainly because the case is still open, even if it’s no longer open season on me.”
“Or Max?”
“He’d been caught on surveillance tape at the Goliath Hotel front desk earlier that evening, but he claims he was just looking out for me. I seem to have had a lot of people on that detail lately,” he added pointedly. “But even Molina can’t connect him to anyplace else in the hotel that night. Besides, a ‘Midnight Hour’ listener is a counselor. She let me know that she got a call from the victim’s cell phone moments before the death.”
“Call girls have counselors? And Molina believes her?”
“Has to. Their conversation stopped suddenly and the cell phone was found when the police checked the counselor’s story.
Carmen’s hands are pretty much tied.”
” ‘Carmen,’ huh?” Temple was miffed enough about that to not spare Matt her next question. “You do lead a charmed life. So your close encounter with a call girl had her phoning for help the minute you were gone. I assume you left, covered in glory, if not success.”
“I shouldn’t have told you that,” Matt said, flushing slightly. Temple thought it was more from annoyance than embarrassment, which was a new mode for Matt.
“Great! Then I’d really be in the dark. If your friendly neighborhood stalker weren’t out of the picture, I’d almost make her for this Maylords attack.”
“Assault rifles? Come on! She was just one woman, no mat-ter how warped. And she is out of the picture. Permanently.” He flinched a bit, reminded of someone else. “I’m thankful I didn’t have to see that poor call girl dead. Listen, it’s true that someone could have come along and pushed the woman over the edge, but the social worker didn’t hear anything but the phone cutting out … no sounds of surprise or struggle. Nothing.”
“Why would she fall?”
“Deborah, the counselor, says Vassar was … agitated, hyper, probably pacing on those sky-high heels of hers. That rail is only four inches wide. Maybe she’d perched on it to talk. Just lost her balance. It’s a mystery!” he finally said, exasperated.
“You can’t solve them all.”
“It seems to suit everybody to lay one poor dead call girl quietly to rest. What I don’t understand-”
“What?” Matt asked, coming around the car.
She lurched a little with fatigue, but that was her body, not her mind. “I don’t get why Vassar felt like calling a therapist immediately after an assignation with you.”
Matt’s footsteps stopped cold. She immediately regretted being petty at a time like this, but she was so exhausted she felt surreal and annoyed at everyone who told things to other people behind her back.
Matt grabbed her upper arm to steady her. “Maybe you should try it sometime and find out.”
Whoa! What had they just been talking about? Maybe Matt the churchly celibate had made more time with the late call girl than he had let on to anyone.
Temple blinked, then found it hard to open her eyes again. “You’re dead on your feet.” It sounded like an apology. He turned her toward her car.
“Better than being dead off your feet, like Vassar.”
“Temple, just shut up. You don’t know what you’re saying right now.”
She sighed and nodded. “I’ll put the top down. My mind could use some fresh moving air.”
Then she realized something, almost with a sense of panic about something, someone, totally forgotten.
“What about Janice?” She looked back to the cool beige building, glowing faintly pink in the dawn.
“We left early, remember? I followed her home before I went to WCOO. She’s fine.”
“And you came back here? Why? It’s almost morning.”
“I wanted to make sure you got home to the Circle Ritz. Temple, we’re neighbors, like you said. How am I going to head home and wait to see when, or if, you make it? I don’t have to drive.” She needed control of something tonight.
“I just said that to get rid of the cop,” he explained. “Apparently everybody is ready to get rid of me tonight.” He came