Cat in a Hot Pink Pursuit (40 page)

But what about Mariah? Temple was supposed to be protecting her. Instead the poor kid had already had the rare life experience of finding a dead body. Now she was
in danger of finding out her father wasn't a dead-hero cop
but the disgraced private cop currently on the reality
show premises. Molina's hands started trembling with
fury. Alch was watching her curiously. He knew. Too many people knew. Just not Mariah yet, thank God. She spun the photo back to Su as if returning a tennis serve.

“We'll put him on the possibles list.”

Molina put her mind as well as her emotions in cold storage. Nadir had been interred in the box of her past,
which was locked up, like a gun in a cabinet. Safe behind
steel doors.

Now . . . his orbit and her daughter Mariah's had inter
sected in this insanely trivial place, a reality TV show.
His daughter Mariah, who he'd ensured had entered theworld by foul means, not fair, but who's existence he had never suspected.

Not even the sleaziest producer could have scripted
such an ironic, maddening moment. And Molina had to
keep the peace, keep the secret, no matter what. What
was Temple Barr trying to do? Destroy her before she destroyed Max Kinsella? They had a deal.

Everyone but Alch was watching her under the mistaken assumption that she was brilliantly analyzing the case at hand. She needed to distract them from watching her chewing on the conundrum of her personal and professional life and onto something else. . . .

“What about the cat?" she asked.

“Louie?" Alch smiled at a closeup shot of the feline in
question. "The usual suspect. Big, black, and known to
the police."

“Cut the humor, Alch."

“You're the one who sent the kitty pillow."

“My daughter shares the room."

“Oh, I see. The pillow was a two-fer: Trojan horse for
the roommate and motherly gesture for the kid.”

“
Trojan kitty," Su said, snickering.

“
The reality show may be a joke. What's going on there
isn't. Who else on the grounds is suspect, just because?”

Su frowned, which drew her creatively plucked eyebrows into the kind of fretwork you'd find on an Asian table. Molina had never dared inquire into the inspiration for those brush-stroke eyebrows plucked into lines beginning thick and ending as fine as a mouse-hair brush. She didn't know if the motive was cultural or simply creative. But they made Su memorable. She'd never seen the like, and nobody else had dared to inquire either, not even sticklers for uniformity at high rank. It would be one mystery this homicide lieutenant would never solve.

“
Everybody who's on the premises was 'picked,' in
one way or another, except the producers."

“But they're all supposedly strangers," Alch added. "Back at the time of the murder, everybody was related, one way or another."

“Could the fallout from that violent episode be haunting this show? The suspected perp is at large."

“Disappeared," Alch objected. "There's a difference. Everybody's given up looking for him."

“
Not me," Molina said grimly. She tapped the crack
ling white oversize sheets of paper with their blurred fine lines of newsprint. "Check out what happened to all these people."

“You think one of them might have come back somehow?" Su sounded unconvinced.

“
I think something's going on that has nothing to do
with Teen Queens or TV.”

Chapter 45

Past Tense

The man who looked too much like Matt, or vice versa,
shifted his weight from foot to foot. He glanced back over his shoulder, down the corridor leading to the law offices.

But Brandon, Oakes, and McCall were too far away to call on for help.

He cleared his throat. "They said . . . someone had attempted to find out information on me. It was some sort of a scam.”

Matt just stared into the man's face. "Someone. Some sort of con man maybe?”

The man's expression hardened. "Exactly. 'Extortion'
was the word. I guess you know I have lawyers.”

“
I guess you don't know you have a son."

“That's impossible."

“
Why? The virgin birth isn't, to a good Catholic.”

“How'd you know I was Catholic?"

“
Guessed."

“
Listen, this building has security cameras, and
guards. Whatever you want—"

“
Isn't what you'd think, or what they'd have you
think.”

The gray eyes flicked over Matt's casual clothes,
avoiding his face. Matt had dressed like the nobody Brandon, Oakes, and McCall said he was.

“They stiffed me yesterday," Matt said. Explained. "So I came back undercover."

“
You—what are you? You can't be a policeman.”

“
Actually, I could be. As it happens, I'm not. I'm a professional advisor."

“Oh, I see. And you want me to pay for your advice. I take the 'advice' of my attorneys first and foremost, and I don't need any outside opinion.”

Matt took a deep breath. "Thirty-four years ago. You were, what—? All of twenty maybe?"

“None of your business."

“It is my business. I'm about my father's business." The first frown of doubt. "Why do you keep quoting religious stuff to me?" He backed away.

Matt could read the man's mind: religious nut. He almost laughed, except that this was not a proper occasion for mirth.

“
I'm surprised. Back then, you'd light a candle to a
saint, down in the Polish district, where they still had stat
ues of saints on the side aisles of those old churches,
where belief smelled like incense and hot beeswax candles."

“You
are
some kind of religious nut." He was backing away, toward the corridor and the safety of his lawyers' offices.

Matt laughed gently. "I guess you could call priests
that."

“You're a priest?" That stopped him. Still a practicing Catholic then."Ex.”

That had him ready to bolt again: demented ex-priest, out for . . . what? Blood? Yes, blood, Matt thought.

“
I have a regular advice stint on
The Amanda Show,
that's why I'm in town."

“You're a TV personality?"

“So they tell me."

“I don't get this. Stop being mysterious and cut to the chase."

“I wanted to spare you the shock."

“Shock? What shock?"

“You're not supposed to be alive. You're supposed to
have died 'over there,' thirty-four years ago. At least
that's what my mother was told."

“Your mother?"

“You might remember her. Pretty young Polish girl. Must have looked great in the candlelight from a bank of
vigil lights before the white plaster statue of St. Stanis
laus. It's still there and so is she, sort of. Mira."

“Mira.”

The man actually staggered. Away from Matt. He
glanced wildly down the hall, suddenly realizing that whatever was down there was too far and too late for retreating to.

Matt put out a hand. "I tried to warn you.”

The man settled for leaning against the wall opposite
the bank of elevators and staring up at the ceiling fix
tures.

Finally he spoke. "You look like me."

“
I thought you looked like me first." Matt allowed
some weary humor to touch his voice.

“
They said she'd disappeared. Girls her age did then.
All the time. I knew nothing about her. Nothing about
you. There was nothing left to pursue."

“Yes, there was." Matt heard his own voice like a stranger's, hard and unforgiving. "Only the lawyers han- dled it. They signed a two-flat over to her to keep us, silence being the price."

“She took it?"

“
Her family had disowned her. Your family was willing
to give her something to stay away. And . . . they told her
you were dead.”

He slumped against the wall that supported him. "I
can't believe my family would do that."

“
They're still telling you nothing. The moment I
walked in the lawyers' offices yesterday, I got weird
vibes from people, like I was a ghost. That's when I real
ized there must be . . . relatives around. I thought a
cousin, an uncle. I didn't want to be there. I wanted to
drop it."

“Then why'd you come?"

“My mother. She's never forgotten. She's had a rotten
life, as you can imagine. It was the one thing she asked of
me that I couldn't refuse. She would have made a great Godfather."

“
And Mira. Now I see it. You look like Mira."
Matt kept silent.

“
Not the Mira I knew."

“
Once," Matt bit out. One night. One-night stand.
"From what I understand," he added, watching carefully, "I was the product of a virgin birth, so to speak.”

The man shook his head. "What's your name?"

“Matt, short for Matthias, the apostle who replaced Judas the betrayer." He let that sink in. "My last name is Devine."

“She married?"

“
Yes, but to a loser. Who else would have her after
that? She named me something different. After her favorite Christmas hymn. Can you guess?"

“
Divine? Oh." He grew even paler, if that was possible.
"`O Holy Night'?”

—0 Holy Night, 0 Night Divine.' Bingo. I'm named
for a mortal sin.”

The man pushed off the wall. "It's not your fault. Lis
ten." He glanced down the hall again, then shook his
head. "We need to talk. Privately."

“Agreed."

“I have a club . .

“You would."

“Then you suggest—?"

“I have a hotel. The Drake.”

The man's pale eyebrows—almost dead white, though his hair was still steel blond—rose.

“
The Amanda Show
puts up its regular guests in style," Matt explained.

“We'll go there then."

“
Yes, a hotel's so impersonal. Like a church." Matt was
pleased to see him wince.

“You must be famous." The man came as close as he'd avoided doing before.

They stood shoulder to shoulder, awaiting the elevator
Matt's finger had summoned. Father and son. God's fin
ger to Adam.

Damn! They were almost the same height. No denying.
The man seemed to notice this. "How is . . . Mira?”

“She's pretty good. No longer a single parent with a kid at home. Has a job. Is widowed."

“
My name is Winslow. Jonathan Winslow. And . "
he reported this dutifully—"I'm married. I have a family. Three almost-adult kids.”

Matt noticed that he hadn't said "happily."

“I wish I'd had a son who'd do for me what you did for your mother."

“You have kids. No son?"

“Yeah. I have a son.”

No more comment. Matt read bitter estrangement.

“
I'm sorry."

“That's the family mantra here, I guess. Keep in touch.
Let me know when you're in Chicago. We should . . .
learn to know each other.”

Matt, surprised, hesitated. Then nodded. Maybe.
Maybe not.