They had been here a couple of times before, and knew there was nothing glamorous about a police headquarters, except its lack of glamour. That's what gave it flavor, the sense of overworked people coping as best they could, with littered desktops and crowded offices and squad rooms, with busy bathrooms and eternally plugged in coffeepots.
Matt and Temple followed their uniformed guide into the elevators in silence, and were finally shown into a long, narrow office cramped for space but crammed with file cabinets and folders.
Molina sat at the room's far end, behind a desk covered with neat paperwork piles.
"This feels like going in to see the principal," Temple gritted through her teeth to Matt.
"Wouldn't know," he gritted back.
"Goody Two-shoes," she gibed.
Molina put her fingertips to both sides of her eyes, as if acknowledging a headache, or the sight of two such approaching.
"Sit."
The chairs she indicated were plain and wooden, a lot less comfortable than the Vampire's hard leather seat.
"From your call, apparently you both failed to tell me relevant information about the Darren Cooke death. It's not really my case, but when your"--she nodded at Matt--"hot-line card was found in the deceased's possession, someone had to check it out and I had the overriding interest."
Her vivid blue eyes floated in pale maroon circles of fatigue. Her abstract tone of weary disappointment was even more marked.
"I won't do it again, Mother!" Temple was tempted to shout. She glanced at Matt. He was giving Molina his rapt, polite attention, like a perfect student.
"I'm surprised you would hold back relevant information," she told him. He winced ever so slightly.
"Matt felt he couldn't violate the confidentiality of a client," Temple said.
"Unfortunate, but understandable. And what is your excuse for keeping my daughter at the sitter's long past suppertime?"
Now Temple winced. "I thought you--the police--would find it. I didn't realize until recently that you hadn't."
"And what didn't we find?"
"For one thing, my card, which Darren Cooke had possession of at the time of his death, apparently." Temple was falling right into the police patois. Had possession of indeed.
"You think this card is a witness, or what? And how did you learn that he did have it?"
"From his wife. She found the card, and incorrectly assumed that I ... was an inamorata of his."
"Again, please. In English."
"Oh, you know what inamorata means, all right! A musical person like you, Lieutenant. You just want me to squirm. I was attending his regular Sunday brunch, at his personal invitation."
"Why should he invite you?"
"We were working on the same set at Gangster's. Theater people make quick acquaintances and slow friends."
"And this happy crossing of paths made you bosom buddies with the late Mr. Cooke."
"No, but he had heard Savanna h Ashleigh, who once was very bosom buddy with Mr. Cooke, refer to me as 'Nancy Drew.' So --"
Molina pushed back her seat and almost laid her cheek on the desk. She laughed. Finally, her head lifted and she examined the objects hung on her wall as if inviting them to participate in her merriment. She even glanced at Matt with tear-filled eyes, expecting him to join her hyena act.
But of course he didn't. He was too anxious about his own confession to enjoy another's discomfort.
"Nancy Drew!" Molina was still laughing. "Perfect, and here I thought Savannah Ashleigh's brains were all in her purebred cat."
"They are," Temple snapped. "And she had a very hot fling with Darren Cooke a couple years back, if you're interested."
Molina the Poker-faced could sober up instantly once she had fallen victim to humor. She composed her expression to the usual deadpan. "Yes, Nancy?"
"I'm not gonna call you Bess. But I will tell you what I should have told you three days ago.
His wife thought I was ... the other woman. A other woman," she corrected. "An other woman?"
"And why would anyone think Darren Cooke would proposition you?"
"Because he did! But, don't worry, I left in a huff of injured virtue."
"Is that why his wife thought you and he had--?"
"The fact that I was there, that I went into his bedroom for a few minutes ... it was perfectly innocent, but I knew people would smirk and rush to the wrong conclusion, which was why I kept quiet about the other thing. It's enough to have a widow ringing you up because she thinks you were her dead husband's last lay and she wants to know his state of mind--"
Molina was her old, stoic self again. "Why was she so sure?"
"He always kept a trophy of his... inamoratas, on which he wrote the date of their one-night stand, as a kind of keepsake, or scorecard. For some reason, he'd written Sunday's date on my business card, so naturally his wife assumed--"
"Where did he hide that card? We searched that suite from whirlpool to coffeemaker."
"You'll have to ask Michelle."
"Michelle?"
"Yes, we became quite good friends once she realized that I wasn't his last stand, so to speak. She's French, you know. Michelle Bonard, a world-famous French model, but she's a wonderful mother and she even advised me on my love life."
Oh! She had been rattling on and then... Temple didn't dare look at Matt. Or Molina. She studied the framed document on the wall over Molina's shoulder. Some kind of degree, or award, with thick, tortured calligraphy.
"She's at the Crystal Phoenix," she finished.
Molina leaned forward to prop her elbows on what free space remained on the glass-topped desk. "Miss Barr's love life. Now that I'd like to hear. Wouldn't you, Mr. Devine?"
"No, I don't care for idle speculation."
"Then you're not cut out to be an investigator."
"I know I'm not. I was trained to hold other people's confidences as sacred, no matter what."
"And this is where your part of the confession comes in."
"No, not yet." Temple drew the harsh spotlight of Molina's attention back to herself. "You see, Darren Cooke really did need a Nancy Drew. That's what he told me in the bedroom. He showed me a manila envelope, an ordinary nine-by-twelve-inch envelope, but inside was an extraordinary collection of letters dating back, oh, a couple of years."
"Love letters?"
Temple shook her head.
"Blackmail letters."
"No, hate letters, pure and simple. From a young woman who claimed she was his daughter.
She was bitterly angry, blamed him for everything that had gone wrong in her mother's life and her own. I was sure the police would find something as big as a manila envelope. But Michelle told me that you hadn't, as far as she knew, and that even she hadn't known about the letters.
Michelle said that you didn't even find my card because her late husband was exceptionally clever at hiding things. That was his whole life: hiding things, especially from himself."
"And yet he told you, a virtual stranger, all about the letters."
"He was feeling the pressure. That's why I think he was calling Matt. He really wanted to change, but his obsession with seduction was too strong. His wife knew about it, and thinks he was no longer able to attract the foxy young things he'd been used to. He was really anguished about those letters. And sorry that this 'daughter's' mother had kept her existence hidden from him. A couple of years ago, he and Michelle had a first child, a baby daughter he adored; maybe he would have adored this adult daughter if he'd had a chance. He wasn't as afraid of her as I thought he should be. I told him he had to contact the police--"
"Thank you for that." Molina inclined her head as slowly as Queen Victoria. Tall, dark-haired women with morning-glory eyes can get away with those sorts of gestures, Temple had found.
She couldn't.
"I told him that if he wouldn't contact the police, he should try some pricey, discreet Beverly Hills private-investigation agency."
"Astute, if not forthcoming."