“Melody Crowell.”
‘I’ve never heard you mention her before.”
“Because she’s new at school.”
“Her family moved into the neighborhood?” The core of the community was Our Lady of Guadalupe Church and school and the residents were mainly Hispanic-American.
“She was transferred,” Mariah said, looking down. “From Robison Middle.”
Robison. Molina saw numbers. The highest in the middle school system. Almost forty arrests, knife incidents, two gun incidents. Assaults on students and even a couple teachers. Controlled substances. The worst public middle school. Juvenile Delinquent Central. Not quite fair. Lots of kids got through there just fine. And lots didn’t and so parents tried to straighten them up by sending them to “stricter” Catholic schools. Ai-yi-yi-yi, as Ricky Ricardo used to say about his own live-in juvenile delinquent, his wife, Lucy. Back in the Stone Age before digital everything.
“So what’re you two doing?”
“Our nails, all right?” Mariah fanned out her stubby fingers, the nails alternating metallic purple and teal polish. Both chipped. Being a girly girl involved a lot of maintenance.
“Looks like you need it.”
Mariah relaxed a bit. “Melody’s cool. She’s got this, like, white-white hair. Straight to her shoulders.”
“Natural?”
“Mo-ther.”
Eight-year-olds were into painted finger and toenails nowadays and carrying purses and cell phones. Ten-year-olds were spray-painting their hair. Eleven-year-old chicas were going blond and chicos were bleaching their buzz cuts platinum.
Who was she to stop the preening of America?
“You in too much of a hurry to wait a minute?”
“What for?” Said suspiciously.
“Want some coffee?”
Mariah’s big brown eyes got bigger. “Coffee?”
“Yeah. I made plenty.” Carmen pulled out the other stool and patted the olive vinyl seat.
“Well … yeah.”
Carmen got up to fill another mug, doctoring it with a long shot of hazelnut-flavored creamer. When she came back to the countertop Mariah was perched on the stool, her precious little girly purse with the sequined Palm Beach tootsie emblem set primly in front of her.
Carmen pushed the steaming mug over to her daughter andwatched her sip, fight off making a face, then put the mug back down as carefully as she had deployed her purse.
Carmen had given her only daughter a pretty name, one with Latina roots but skewed Anglo, all the better to bow to her heritage and still blend into a melting-pot world. A hell of a song associated with Clint Eastwood (and mama Molina had an unconfessable weakness for Clint Eastwood) went with it. What more could a girl want?
To be called “Mari.” Not pronounced “Mary,” but Mah-ree. Carmen hoped it was a stage and wondered if her daughter realized that was a French pronunciation. Probably not. Mariah sipped again, her eyes not watering as much this time. They sat quietly for a few moments.
“Is anything bothering you?” Carmen asked.
Mariah sighed. Obviously, too many things to count. “I wish …
-
“What?”
“I wish … I didn’t have to go to stupid Catholic school. Otherwise, I’d be in junior high already and not be treated like a baby.”
Carmen nodded. “That’s true. Not treated like a baby in what way?”
“Duh! Dorky uniforms!”
“They are pretty dorky.”
Mariah eyed her with the usual suspicion mixed with a dash of surprise. “I thought you loved dorky. All mothers do.”
“No. You’re right. I wear a uniform too. I need to not attract attention to myself in my job. Doesn’t mean I like that.”
“And those clunky shoes you wear to work. No heels.”
“I’m not trying to be Cher, hon. Just a working cop.”
“You’re a lieutenant.”
Carmen smiled at her daughter’s rare tone of pride. She couldn’t explain she had to be an officer and a lady. And to her mind that meant dull. “So what’s really bothering you?”
“Nothing.”
Carmen waited. Mariah sipped bitter coffee, a bigger sip, less of a face.
“I guess they try at OLG.” She rolled her eyes. “Next fall they’re having a Father-Daughter dance. Oh, goodie.” “Urn. Well, at least you get to dress up, right?”
“Yeah! But they already put out a list of what we can’t wear: no bare midriffs, no miniskirts, no hip-huggers, no bustiers.
What a drag!”
Carmen had to swallow her laughter with a big gulp of coffee to imagine Mariah finding a bustier in 29A-tween size.
Then she sobered. She suspected that finding a “father” for an escort was the real problem. Who? Morrie Alch was a sweetheart, and had a grown daughter of his own. He’d understand this stage.
Carmen eyed her daughter, reading the unsaid plea behind the disparaging words. Every teeny bopper, as they’d said in her day-which was irrevocably a “day,” she realized-wanted to play Cinderella.
“Maybe,” Carmen said with a strange reluctance, “Matt Devine would be available.”
“Matt? Really? Oh, Mom, he’s so hot!”
Carmen blinked at the reaction. No mo-ther, she noticed.
Mariah jumped off the stool, antsy with excitement. “That would be so rad! All the girls would be so jealous! I mean, he’s almost young! And such a babe!”
Where, oh, where has my shy, retiring daughter gone?
Morrie would have known how to handle this hot preteen potato. Would Matt? Sure. He’d been dealing with grade school crushes since seminary. Not to worry.
“You want me to ask him?”
“No.”
Carmen blinked again. She’d thought she had a sure sell there.
“I want to ask him. I need practice calling up guys, anyway. Do you have his phone number?”
On my one-touch dial system, daughter mine. Only I don’t have your nerve.
Carmen nodded, then frowned maternally. “No bare-midriff dresses, though. Not until … high school.”
She couldn’t believe what she was saying. Maybe that fashion fixation would be toast by high school, along with pierced navels. Maybe not.
“Oh, moth-er!”
“Maybe I should drive you over to Melody’s,” she said, rising from the stool.
Her cell phone rang, answering that suggestion.
“Gotta go:’ Mariah said, already using the call to fade halfway out the door.
Carmen stood there, semipleased and half-distracted out of her mind.
The voice on the other end filled her-in, fast and emotionlessly.
Her maternal frown gave way to a professional one.
“What do you mean ‘celebrity involvement?’ Amelia Wong? And who else? Danny Dove? Celebrity suspects? If Alch and Su are up for this case, by all means, let them have at it. No, Captain, I don’t think Su will have any problem handling America’s most successful AsianAmerican entrepreneur. I don’t. Yes. I should. I’ll get on it.”
Lieutenant C. R. Molina, Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department Crimes Against Persons Division, a.k.a. CAPERS,
a.k.a. Homicide, pressed the cell phone off and slammed it down on the kitchen countertop.
She headed for the bedroom, unzipping her jeans and walking out of her flip-flops for the cats to have at, the key to the gun safe, which she always wore on an unseen chain around her neck, in her fingers.
Sunday afternoon, and all’s normal in Las Vegas. Hell to pay for Saturday night.
Chapter 25
Cat Crouch
I am back home in my favorite thinking position, supine on the couch, when I watch my Miss Temple enter our rooms at the Circle Ritz, red eyed and shaky.
She walks out of her spunky high-rise clogs as soon as the door is locked behind her, letting her bare feet luxuriate in the faux longhaired goat rug under her coffee table before she collapses onto the sofa, a.k.a. (all too often, in my opinion) the love seat.
I, of course, am entrenched there in one of my Playgirl poses, but she ignores my manly chest hair. I see in an instant that what she needs is a cocktail table, but I am no barkeep.