“Max?”
“You sound surprised enough to be hearing a voice from the grave,” he told Temple over the phone. “Didn’t I used to call you all the time?”
“Not lately. That’s why I’m surprised.” Temple blinked at her computer screen. “I’m just lost in a multimedia world. Let me save some stuff.”
In truth, Temple had been more than surprised. She’d been almost shocked off her ergonomic office-chair seat. Until this call, Max had stayed away from her, solo, as if operating on another planet since his return.
“What stuff?” he asked.
“Podcasts, Tweets. Web site updates. The public-relations world is getting to be less paper and more screen every second.”
“I’m impressed—and depressed—to hear that, if that makes sense.”
“I get that reaction,” Temple said. “I’m updating constantly.”
“Kind of like me.”
“Yes.” She kept quiet, waiting to hear what Max wanted. He must have called for a reason.
Her silence did the trick.
“Look, Temple, I’ve resolved to stay off your radar, out of your hair, whatever. But I gather your career path has made you good at ferreting out information, and I need some fast.”
“About the shootout in Belfast?”
“Nothing about me or any of my works. I can manage that on my own. Listen, in my quest to er, look up my own past around town, I’ve encountered some earthshaking possibilities involving the Barbie Doll Killer.”
“I see. Why call me? Molina’s really mellowed toward you now that you’ve got your own one-man soap-opera plot going. You should be talking to her.”
“Maybe so. But I need to have a credible case by then. It’s something I’ve stumbled over. I don’t want to accuse an innocent man.”
“Really? You think you have a lead on the killer?”
“Yes, really. What I’m asking isn’t dangerous, Temple. I need information about a nursing-home patient who may have been victim one. Teresa Paddock. The anniversary of her attack is coming up, so the media would likely do an update.”
“Depressingly, probably not, Max. Media has to be so ‘now’ now.”
“And if you could arrange a visit with a nurse-receptionist named Barbara, you’d have it made.”
“I’m supposed to fake an interview with a woman, a girl, the Barbie Doll Killer may have put in a nursing home?”
“No interview needed. She’s in a coma.”
“Max!”
“I know it’s a tough thing to see. I’ve already been there, but I figure you can find out more on the case way faster than I could.”
“Why not use Molina? She has access to police files, not just news trails. Or even Alch? I might be able to persuade him.”
“No. Nothing official. Yet. I can’t tell you why. I was thinking of the time you spent playing girlfriend with Molina’s daughter. Mariah could be in danger. She fits the victim profile. You know that’s been a constant worry.”
Temple tapped a fingernail on the glass-covered desktop. Louie liked to lounge by her computer when she was working, and his nails were death on wood grain. She was tempted to tell Max the new suspicions about who had planted the Barbie doll at the Molina house. She couldn’t. She had no idea what angle he was working, or how much it might conflict with Molina’s concerns.
“Temple?”
Max sounding uncertain was just not right.
“If this girl’s condition made the news,” she conceded, “I can find the basic facts pretty fast. No need for me to visit the nursing home.”
“I want your opinion on the setup there.”
“You’ve seen it, you’ve said.”
“Not from a girly point of view.”
“No wonder you can’t go to Molina.”
“You had a Barbie doll once yourself, didn’t you?”
Temple hesitated. “Yes and no. One. Once. One day.”
“What do you mean?”
“My older brothers commandeered her the day after Christmas for target practice.”
“You have older brothers?”
“Four.”
“No other siblings?”
“Nope.”
“It’s a wonder you’re not following a career in the World Wrestling Entertainment franchise.”
“Or maybe obvious why I didn’t.” Temple brightened. This was her second serious investigative assignment in a few days, this time from an all-pro. “I’ll get back to you as soon as I have all the info.”
She clicked Max off after he gave her the nursing-home address.
By then Louie had appeared from somewhere and leaped atop her desk with enough “English” to spin some of her papers askew.
“Nothing you can supervise, big fellah,” she told him. “Just boring research and a sad visit to a bedridden girl. Must be my week to comfort the sick.”
His huge forepaw batted at her hand, perhaps to offer consolation, but more likely inviting play.
Temple sniffed, now that he had her attention.
“Oooh, boy. You smell like you’ve been laid up in mothballs or something. I hope you haven’t been getting into trouble with that feral colony at the police substation.”
He was not about to answer her, so Temple cleared her screen and started her search engines.
* * *
She subscribed to the Las Vegas daily papers, so she easily accessed the online archives. The actual search was frustrating and time-consuming. Newspapers had such vast archives, going back to off-line years. She kept calling up long lists of loser leads. And local crime reporting was not the front-page star it once had been.
Temple decided she had time to accede to Max’s strong request that she see the victim, and might as well make it a cheery evening by stopping in at Violet’s, with all the litter and cat kibble the Miata could hold.
She laced up her working tennies and toted a couple grocery store visits’ worth of ten-pound Free-to-Be-Feline bags down to the parking lot.
Midnight Louie seemed to sense she was on a mercy mission to his kind, because he seemed very excited to see the Free-to-Be-Feline bags going out and started supervising the operation. He watched her load up three tote bags at a time, used his private entrance via the guest bathroom window and leaning palm tree to beat her down to the lot, where he sat and watched her unload the totes and load the Miata, with an air of superior satisfaction. Or an overseer.
By the time she got up to the condo for a new load, he was already present there to play major domo.
“These are your people, Louie,” she told him through gritted teeth. “Surely you could do more than show up, show off, and lift a majestic white whisker or two.”
In the end, Temple decided to shower and change before starting her rounds of mercy.
Louie had disappeared by the third time she got down to the Miata, so she pictured him lolling by his personal Free-to-Be-Feline bowl in the air-conditioned condo while she relied on convertible wind power to keep her cool en route in the waning rush-hour traffic.
It was again a gorgeous Las Vegas twilight, caught between sunset and moonrise behind the valley’s western mountains, with the blossoming neon and Vegas Gold lights bursting into being like hot-lava fountains. This was when Nevada nature and Strip showmen collaborated to prove why they belonged together.
Temple sighed as she drove the Strip, letting the wind style her freshly washed curls, thinking about a really relaxing dinner out with Matt after her investigative errands were done.
Best of all, the first errand was a hands-off Max operation, so she didn’t need to feel guilty about doing him this secret little favor. After all, he’d wanted her to do this, not Molina. Hah! Take that, copper!
Temple’s peep-toe pumps with modest platforms and a skinny skirt and silk-blend cardigan set looked business-casual for Vegas, so she’d pass as a reporter. She soon pulled into a tight space near the nursing-home portico. Tight for some, not for Temple’s small car.
She’d brought a separate envelope purse that would hold a reporter’s narrow notebook and papers, and with it tucked under her arm, she entered the fluorescent-lit atrium surrounded by leafy plants.
The late middle-aged woman at the reception desk was indeed the Florence Nightingale of St. Rose’s Nursing Home, Barbara by name tag.
“I called earlier,” Temple said, introducing herself. “I’m with the Review-Journal.” Which was perfectly true; she had a folded copy in her handbag.
The woman shook her slightly silvered head. “I suppose it’s good that someone remembers the anniversary of the attack that as good as ended this girl’s life.”
“Her parents don’t visit?” Temple got out her old notebook and pencil, jotting down details.
Barbara ran through the short, sad details.
“Her mother ran off when she was eight. Her father remarried, but the family was hardscrabble, poor and uneducated. Lived in motels, worked the temporary jobs at the low-end of the Strip, handing out flyers for ‘private dancers.’ Let the kids fend for themselves.”
“Kids?”
“The father had a son from a previous marriage. He went into the military later, was quite a bit older than Teresa. Lord knows what chances this girl ever had in life. She’s a ward of the state now. No wonder she was living in an area where such a brutal fate overtook her. I suppose there’s a kind of peace in her current state. You’ll want to see her, I suppose.”
She started to lead Temple down the hall, then paused to stare hard at her. “Have you ever seen anyone in a coma?”
“No, but someone I know was in one recently for a few weeks.”
“And recovered and became functional?”
Temple nodded, carefully. “Memory loss about almost everything before the accident, though.”
“Not uncommon, but the rest … a miracle. Cheer up. Those memory issues can be temporary.”
Somehow Temple was not cheered. Things were complicated enough as it was.
They’d paused beside one of those superwide hospital doors needed to accommodate gurneys, a big blond-wood slab with brushed steel hardware.
“You never saw your friend during the coma?” Barbara asked in a hushed voice.
“No. It happened out of the country.”
Barbara frowned. “Your friend doesn’t happen to be tall, dark, and gauntly handsome?”
“No. No way. No such luck.” Darn that Max! He could make a lasting impression on a Tempur-Pedic mattress.
“His story is oddly familiar to a recent visitor’s case. Well, dear. Sometimes long-term coma patients can look pitiful, but this one’s a regular Sleeping Beauty, a little Kewpie doll, sixteen forever. Pale and peaceful. Is that a comfort or a greater tragedy? I don’t know.”
On that ambiguously encouraging note, Temple stepped into the room.
And stopped.
That damn Max could have warned her. But he wanted her immediate, unvarnished reaction.
“Teresa does look peaceful,” Temple softly told the nurse-receptionist. “Very cared for.” She approached the bed, silencing her heels by tiptoeing. She felt like she was attending a wake. Max could have ended up looking like this, forever.
“She only has one regular visitor, the stepbrother,” Barbara said. “I don’t know if he left the doll for her, or if her parents did before they disappeared. She’s always had it, it seems like. No one has the heart to remove it. We undress and bathe it now and again, just as we do her, daily. They’re a team.”
Temple nodded, hoping her pounding heart wasn’t audible or visible.
“Victim one,” Max had said.
Teresa looked younger than her sixteen years. Had she somehow set off a serial killer? Or had she just happened into someone’s path when he’d gone psycho for some reason?
“Very sad,” the nurse said, the cliché really the only comment possible. “I imagine a reporter must see a lot, that is.”
Temple nodded and backed away, noticing the vase of fresh flowers on the bedside table. She smelled the small tea roses nestled among bigger scentless blossoms, daisies, and carnations.
She didn’t take an easy breath until she was back outside and under the well-lit portico, trying to recall which slot in the dark parking lot beyond held the Miata.
Parking lot. Parking lots, plural.
They were the favored killing ground of the Barbie Doll Killer. The news reports said Teresa had been attacked in a shopping-mall lot, and that was five years ago, before the current fad of auditions for reality TV were everywhere.
Temple skittered fast to the spot where the Miata was barely visible between two oversize pickup trucks. It would be murder backing out past those behemoths without getting her taillights dusted by some passing speed demon.
Parking lots were unsafe in so many ways.
Temple was glad she always put up the car’s top when she parked. She was happy to be back in her small automotive cave, safe, awake, too old to attract the Barbie Doll Killer. Of course, everybody took her for younger. At least her hair wasn’t the blond it had been dyed during the teen reality-TV show, speak of the devil.
She backed the Miata out of its slot, cautiously, slowly.
And a good thing.
A big ole car from the gas-guzzling decades rumbled past with its self-advertising engine. She didn’t know if guys who drove giant trucks or road-hogging rust buckets irritated her more.
She braked to watch the arriving car cruise by in her rearview mirror. The portico lights made the driver’s profile into a sharp silhouette, a familiar one. There was nothing wrong with her memory. What was he doing here? Following her? Creepy.
And then Temple knew. It was the anniversary of Teresa’s attack and the faithful stepbrother would be visiting, for sure.
Dirty Larry Podesta had a very close connection to the disabled girl.
That was why Max couldn’t use Molina or Alch to research her background and the case. He needed to know more before he brought the police in on it. So he had used ever-eager-to-crime-solve Temple Barr.
Dirty Max!