“McDonald’s?” Molina frowned up through her sunglasses at the familiar golden arches over the outside eating area where they sat.
“At least,” she went on, between sips of the chain’s Starbucks-busting McCafé Latte, “Matt Devine would meet me someplace atmospheric, like the Blue Dahlia, when he’s asking me to give him special information. Temple Barr even shows up at headquarters politely asking for an audience.”
“The Blue Dahlia, huh?”
Max Kinsella’s secretive smile was meant to rattle her, and it did. Who the heck had been talking to him about that place?
“I picked someplace cheap because you’re paying.” Kinsella kept his own sunglasses cast down to his paper cup, his eyes, like hers, slipping sideways to check out the other customers.
“And what’s with the Hawaiian shirt?” she asked in a retaliatory attempt to annoy. “The midday sun forcing you to abandon your signature black?”
“‘Loud’ is always the best disguise. Besides, I lost my wardrobe in a hunting accident.”
“Most amusingly put.”
“I’m glad you and the home closet confirm black as my signature in my previous life. I’ve been instinctively avoiding it since I got my second lease on a memory.”
“So ‘Las Vegas clown,’ aka rainbow vomit, is your new look?”
“I’m making sure not to have a ‘look,’ especially now that Larry Podesta will require my constant attention.”
“Since when? What about watching Rafi?”
“I suggest you put him on Dirty Larry, too.”
“Oh, he’d like that.”
“That’s why he’d be good at the job.” Max made a face at his strong black coffee and set it aside.
“Since when are you directing my surveillance needs?” Molina asked.
“I’ve, ah, found out something pretty damning about our mutual object of suspicion. Until this, I’d thought it could be some misdirected mini-obsession with you personally.”
“I’m so flattered.”
“Well, you had me pegged for that role, and I don’t find myself so inclined now, so I must not have been then.”
“Not necessarily. Anyone with a police-work history would not confuse sexual stalking with romance, Kinsella. I always knew those home invasions were threats.”
“You weren’t too plain about the incidents. Better come clean now.”
“Why?”
“Then I’ll shock you to your menswear socks and tell you the truly horror-movie discovery I made about Dirty Larry. First the incidents.
“So,” he said, enjoying the topic, “you sing somewhere in vintage velvet. The singing detective. Not new.”
“I’m not doing that anymore.”
“But your first sign of home invasion was when an extra vintage velvet gown showed up in your bedroom closet.”
“Right.”
“Too bad my memory’s on the fritz. I have a feeling I’d know where to get more of those velvet gowns for you, wholesale. I don’t suppose you have any photos of you got up as Carmen. That would be worth a thousand words.”
“Sorry, no souvenir pics. Carmen was a live, private gig. I didn’t even allow them to use one of those cheesy chanteuse portraits behind glass outside the place.”
Max framed her face with his thumbs and forefingers like a director. “Taken at a noir angle, red lipstick, and a black Dahlia kissing your … left cheek, like an exotic jungle spider.”
“You don’t need a memory. Your imagination is off the chart to begin with. I sang, all right? The band was cool and the jazz was hot and I had an unused talent.”
“I bet you have many.”
She ignored the smoldering look. Kinsella had always challenged her dignity and need to be utterly professional at all times, only now he didn’t remember that. She did know he’d been relentlessly stubborn then and was now.
“Okay.” She was eager to finish this humiliating confession. “The next ‘invasion’ was a lot more personal. The bedside radio playing when I came home, a box on my bed containing lingerie, Victoria’s Secret or Frederick’s of Hollywood. Then—”
“Which lingerie hustler? There’s a big difference, even Mister Memoryless knows that.”
“What? Red and black and filmy has degrees?”
“Oh, yes, cher lieutenant. You’ve never worked prostitution?”
She held off a retort. They’d put her on hooker duty in L.A., stings to humiliate the rookie who towered over some of the johns, tall enough to be mistaken for a transsexual. Some of that fury at those sexist games rose to choke her for a moment. Her hands resisted strangling the crushable, smooth-coated paper coffee cup.
“Sorry,” Kinsella said. “I honestly don’t think enough. Provoking reactions gets my own brain going full speed again. That was tacky.”
“Agreed. Provocative was always your modus operandi.” She decided to proceed because she really, really needed his info on Podesta. “There was a note inside.”
“That read…?”
“‘You dress like a nun.’”
“Hmm. Why wouldn’t you? Smart, and you are that.”
He started a psychoanalytical riff on her right then. “You wear Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department street-cop khaki in the heat of the summer. I bet it’s navy and other dark neutrals in what passes for winter here. Pantsuits, like our shrewd secretary of state. Both khaki and navy are military colors, subtly authority-enforcing, desexualizing on the job. Also, you wear the men’s socks with your low-heeled boots that keep you from towering too unduly over inferior and superior male officers. Women’s knee-highs are hot and cut off circulation at the … er, knees. Guys always dress for comfort. You adapt to be as neutral as humanly possible. That’s why you needed to let Carmen out to play.”
“How did this become about me and my working wardrobe?”
“Because it is.” Kinsella leaned across the cheesy plastic table. “It was always about you. At least the home stalking incidents were, even the Barbie doll planting job. I wish I could assure you that your daughter’s okay, but it could escalate to involve her. We’ve got one, maybe two, very sick minds loose in Vegas.”
“Dirty Larry?”
“I’m not ruling him out. Give me Rafi. He’s a good man.”
“That I don’t need to hear from you, Kinsella! I’ll be damned. Memory or not, I’ve never trusted you. I’ve always believed you capable of anything.”
“Thanks. Then you know I’m the man for the job.”
“What freaking job?”
“Finding and stopping the Barbie Doll Killer, and saving your butt.”