Matt rushed to pull the girl away from the departing tires. Her ankles and wrists were circled in duct tape.
She mewed behind the silver gag.
“It’s all right. It’ll take a while to get this tape off without hurting you.” He looked around the deserted lot, then pushed his arms under her knees and back, picked her up, and headed toward the Blue Dahlia.
Main Course
“It’s a good thing they trust me to lock up,” Molina said, pouring lighter fluid onto a cleaning rag she had found behind the hall door, the one that didn’t lead to her dressing room but to a maintenance closet.
“If they couldn’t trust you to lock up, who could they trust?”
She gave Matt a look — a long, hard Molina look — then soaked the tape over the girl’s chin. “There you go. I know you want to sing out right now like Britney Spears, but ripping this tape off would give you a rug burn for a week. In the movies, they just tear away duct tape, but that’s make-believe. There. It’s coming. Just a bit more, and don’t lick your lips unless you like the taste of kerosene.”
While Molina calmed the captive and eased the gag off, Matt dowsed the girl’s wrists with fluid.
The reek was stomach-turning. He watched her pale face turn delicately green.
“Off!” Molina announced the obvious.
She squatted beside the girl they had propped on a restaurant chair, looking like a den mother in her jeans and vaguely Native American suede jacket with odd bits of beads and fringe.
“What’s your name?”
No “dear,” no “honey,” Matt noticed. Nothing infantalizing. She wanted this victim to feel like an adult. In charge again. Able to answer. Able to point fingers.
Matt started untwining gummy duct tape that had adhered to him as it released her.
The girl noticed the phenomenon. Her lips trembled into a small smile. “Guess I got Mr. Midnight into a bit of a jam.”
“You were in a bit of a jam,” Molina said, sympathetic but not enabling. “Your name? It’s okay. You’ve lucked into an off-duty cop.”
“You?”
“Yeah, me. Lieutenant Molina. Now…you.”
“Vicki. Vicki Jansen.” She glanced at Matt, almost apologetically. “I never expected to see you again so soon.”
“Same here,” he said.
“Who was that witch?”
Molina eyed Matt, curious to see what he’d tell an innocent bystander.
“A…rabid fan, I guess.”
“Kinda like me.”
“You weren’t rabid.”
“A little.” She flushed. Redheads had that tendency. “It made her mad. That I kissed you.”
Molina’s frowning eyebrows told Matt what she thought of that.
“You were just impulsive,” he said. She shouldn’t blame herself.
To him guilt was an untallied cardinal sin. He didn’t want to lay it on anybody else. But he wished Vicki hadn’t confessed her indiscretion outside the radio station. Still, Molina had to know. A gushing nineteen-year-old throws herself at him at 1:00 A.M. one night. The next night she’s a captive audience for Kitty the Cutter’s elaborate revenge.
“Are you all right, other than sticky?” Molina was asking, working on the ankle tape. “Anybody you need to call? You’ll have go to the police station to make a statement. Don’t worry. I’ll take you. It’ll be very discreet.”
“I just have a couple roommates at UNLV. I dropped my purse in the dorm parking lot there when she…held that gun on me.”
“What’s the address?” Molina picked up her cell phone. “I’ll have a patrolman drive by, try to get the purse. What time did this happen?”
“Gosh, eight P.M. or so. What time is it now?”
Matt jumped up. “It’s after eleven. I’ve —”
“I know.” Vicki smiled up at him despite the reddened skin the gesture aggravated. “You’ve got to get to the station. Thanks so much. It was really wonderful the way you distracted her and made her let me out of the car.”
He could tell Molina was itching to hear his version of the encounter and shuddered to think what Vicki might tell her while he was off doing his job.
“Sorry.” He pulled out his key ring, immediately spotting the ugly reminder of Kitty’s ring. “I guess I’m making everybody have a late night.”
“That’s your job.” Vicki smiled again, this time with tremulous, fannish adoration. “Keeping us all up late.”
“She’ll be fine.” Molina sounded brisk and possibly annoyed. “I guess we all just love being kept up late.” Definitely annoyed.
Matt rushed out to the parking lot, mounting the Vampire and donning his gloves and helmet, looking for lurkers and finding none. He peeled out of the lot. He had a lot of anonymous listeners to think about. And one no-longer-anonymous tormenter.
The Laddy and the Vamp
In no time flat, or round, or oblong, we are up on the third floor.
Only if this upper chamber is an attic, then my refound mama is Mae West in drag.
This is a ballroom.
Or was.
It is a wide room, but six times longer than it is wide. Arched windows with a mosaic of glass set into wooden struts fracture the night into a faceted jet-black mirror that will reflect even our dark presence if we do not watch ourselves.
It is easy for me to whisk under a settee by the wall. Mr. Max does not whisk, but he can melt, and he ducks into a pool of shadow thrown by a pedestal surmounted by a fern as big as a weeping willow tree.
Everything up here is big, like a movie set that predates the Edsel.
Speaking of big, so is the other cat dude that unknowingly shares this space: a leopard. While I was taking the scenic route, Leopard Boy was imported here by the actual residents.
There are two humans in the room, but they are less interesting, at least to my sniffer. I see that they have the Mystifying Max’s undivided, though covert, attention, however.
Osiris, for it is he, the only leopard I have a nodding personal acquaintance with, lets his huge nostrils fan like bat wings. He knows Mr. Max’s scent and my own, but since we were both involved in his recent rescue, I trust he has the smarts to keep his animal edge to himself and let the scent-blind humans with him do business as usual. Which is to say, remain in the dark.
I have, of course, seen the Cloaked Conjuror before, from a distance. He is garbed like a hero or a villain in one of these science fiction/martial arts/Arnold/Jean-Claude films. Big, but enhanced even more by built-up boots and body building and impressively padded armor, wearing a leopardlike face mask that disguises his voice as well as his features.
Him I have seen and heard before, and he does not scare me. I happen to know that some of the magicians in this town, and beyond, have taken issue with his best-selling act: debunking the tricks that magicians have used to hoodwink audiences for decades. The brotherhood of the cape and the cane do not take kindly to being outed. Whew. The brotherhood of the cape and the cane sounds like they are tap-dancing vampires, but that is too amusing a characterization to convey the menace that a cadre of lethally annoyed magicians could evoke.
So let us look at the lady present.
I have seen her up close once before, and when I realize who, and what, she is, it is all I can do to swallow a betraying hiss.
This witch took my Miss Temple’s fancy new opal ring Mr. Max had given her, took it right from her finger onstage at the Opium Den and then saw to it that Miss Temple, and I, who was rushing to the rescue, and the ring, all disappeared from that stage, perhaps never to be seen or heard of again.
Happily, we resurfaced, thanks to a little help from our friends and a couple of enemies. All except Miss Temple’s ring.
I must admit I am not surprised to see Miss Shangri-La in attendance on the Cloaked Conjuror. He had admitted to Mr. Max in a private conversation earlier, which I made certain to overhear, that he was hooking up with this female magician-thief. Seems he thought his act could use some sex appeal.