Cat In A Leopard Spot

The victim at the Kitty City parking lot had been too shaken to identify her attacker, who had come up behind her. She thought he was a dark-haired man.

He could have been Nadir. He could have been Kinsella.

Carmen opened another Oreo and began on another circle of icing, pale as a communion host but not tasting of paste.

Not a bad theory: Kinsella attacks her, she gets off a scream, he runs. Nadir, leaving the club, hears the scream as he’s about to drive away, runs to investigate (he is a professional security man, after all), and a watching Kinsella decides to come out of cover and pretend to discover the problem after Nadir.

Who did the guy think he was, anyway, acting like a cop? He had always been a suspect in her book, and he was still one. For the fact was, every time and every place that Rafi Nadir had been on the scene and easily capable of doing the crime, Max Kinsella had been there too, whether he was got up as “Vince” or as some self-appointed vigilante.

No, the suspect list for the death of Cher Smith wasn’t narrowing down. It was getting longer.

Carmen eyed her icing-free cookie and tossed it toward the wastebasket at the end of the kitchen/living room divider.

She made a basket.

“Max! I expected you to call hours ago.”

“I had some thinking to do.”

“Kirby, you mean.”

“I worked with him, Temple. He was my Birdman of the Mojave when I was doing my act. I had to figure out why he did it.”

“Killed Van Burkleo?”

“Hell, no! That’s understandable. It’s even more understandable when you realize that the Animal Oasis and Rancho Exotica touch borders. I haven’t finished looking into it, but I’ve uncovered a money trail. Cyrus had bought into a consortium that held the mortgage on the Oasis land and wanted to add it to the hunt ranch. I’ve discovered that Granger couldn’t stop a foreclosure. He owed a lot of money, especially since he stopped working with trained animals. High principles often mean no profit. Apparently, he had trouble with it philosophically. Even with my innocent cockatoo illusion. You know, animals that are trainable thrive on challenge, but more recently Kirb saw it all as exploitation. That’s what I’ve been able to figure out so far.”

“So…he killed Van Burkleo to stop the brutal acquisition of his peaceable animal kingdom for a murderous purpose.”

“I don’t think he meant to kill Van Burkleo. He went over there in a rage when he discovered what was up. I think the death was accidental. Then he began figuring out how to cover it up.”

“To save his skin.”

“No. It was always the animals’ skins he wanted to save. That’s what got him off the rails in the first place.”

“Then what haven’t you figured out? You’ve unraveled how and why.”

“Shooting at the panther was so out of character. He’d killed to protect the animals. Why kill an animal?”

“So. You tell me.”

“The panther was trained, I told you that.”

“Like the leopard. Who, by the way, is cleared of all charges, right?”

“I don’t see Molina bringing even a second-degree murder charge against a leopard. Not even Molina.”

“Your favorite long arm of the law.”

“Yeah. And not often long enough away. My theory is that the panther was trained by Kirby, long ago. It was a witness when he took the leopard inside. He got the leopard back. The panther was out there. It must have preyed on Kirby’s mind. What if the panther was sent to his facility because the ranch was sold or shut down on Van Burkleo’s death? What if his relationship with the panther was observed by somebody who could put leopard and panther together? And then him as trainer of them both?”

“Somebody like you, Max. You coming around, with me. Asking questions. Looking at files.”

“Don’t say it! Don’t say that I precipitated it. I think what happened to Van Burkleo unhinged Kirby. He was so…antiviolence, and here he’d become an example for the other side. He never underestimated animals, how smart they were, what they knew and how they showed their emotions, their perceptions. He respected them enough to panic, talked himself into believing he had to kill the panther to protect the Animal Oasis. He killed, and he became what he most hated.”

“Max, everybody who murders kills the thing he or she hates the most. When I think about it, there’s usually a noble reason underneath it all. Every killer is a wronged person in his or her own mind. Every victim is wrong. Somehow.”

“Somehow. Anyway, you say that Molina took Granger into custody. And Raf?”

“I told him to run, and he did. I don’t understand why you wanted him out of it.”

Max chuckled bitterly over the phone. “I don’t understand it either, Temple. Were you able to handle him all right?”

“Fine. He…it was funny, he had this weird pull to stay and be in charge of things, like he was responsible somehow. But he also had this instinct to run. Is he…someone to worry about?”

“Oh, yes. But not for you, I think. Not for you.”

“‘Not for you.’ Isn’t that a line from a song? ‘But not for you.’ I can’t quite place it.”