Cat in an Alphabet Endgame: A Midnight Louie Mystery (The Midnight Louie Mysteries Book 28)

by Carole Nelson Douglas

  “A boat neckline.”

  “Ditto. And that’s matronly.”

  “Vee.”

  “Better with cleavage, as are all those ill-fitting strapless gowns I see in the newspaper announcements. With so many of these horizontal slashes in the wedding gown styles, I might as well use a serial killer as a seamstress.”

  “I assure you, Miss Barr. Temple.” Courtney was pleading. “We can find a gown to enhance all your lacks and conceal your awkwardness. We simply have to try some on.”

  She eyed Temple’s footwear, a sprightly multi-color Ferragamo seventies sandal.

  “What pretty feet and shoes. I see you’re wearing only three-inch heels. We’ll need to find some four-and-a-half-heel-inch sample shoes near your size. That will assist the verticality problem.”

  She gazed horrified at Temple’s size five sandal in her hand. “We only carry that size shoe for flower girls.”

  During this dialogue and the shoe-doffing incident, Kit had vanished, Temple realized.

  “But,” said the adaptable and oh-so-amenable Courtney, who was likely four or five years younger than Temple’s thirty-one and who sported a wedding-engagement ring combo on her left hand, “buying a wedding gown is not an off-the-rack proposition.”

  In the most understanding, gracious way, Temple was instructed that bridal gowns were special-ordered and could take weeks at the least and maybe months to arrive and then had to be fitted.

  Or, if the bride needed to marry in haste, they could be rented at the (sniff) wedding chapels.

  Temple shook her head, avoiding that unfortunate literary human movement known as “bridling”.

  “I’m afraid I need something sooner. A returned gown, perhaps, that could be refitted.”

  Temple had by now realized that Matt’s mother and Kit had been married in off-the-rack dresses that didn’t require fitting. She envisioned herself in an off-the-shoulder gown with a sash across the waist and another above the mermaid skirt, which was bordered with a wide satin hem. She would look like Queen Victoria or Mary Todd Lincoln at their most mushroomy.

  Kit appeared from nowhere.

  “Courtney, my dear,” she said. “I just visited the fitting room.”

  “Ah, you’re not supposed to go there. All those gowns are sold.”

  “Courtney, my dear.” Kit took her arm even though it looked like a child reaching up to a mother. “I noticed a gown on a dressmaker’s dummy that looks rather interesting.”

  Temple opened her mouth. A dressmaker’s dummy could be wearing a suitable candidate for her wedding dress, which she was now thinking of looking for online under “white nightgowns”?

  “I found the neckline rather intriguing.” Kit raised her eyebrows.

  No one could resist her Aunt Kit’s raised eyebrows, especially Aldo Fontana, the second of his ten brothers, except for the youngest and most impressionable, to leave the bachelor life to marry.

  “Well, if you saw something that might prove to be an inspiration.” Courtney followed along after Kit like a stage hypnotist’s victim plucked from the audience.

  Temple did likewise.

  She came face-to-face with a headless dressmaker’s dummy, a black jersey-clad torso on a wheeled base wearing a white gown.

  Temple moved around it, her eyes on the same level as the missing head. She circled left, then right in a silent flamenco dance.

  “About the right length, I think,” Kit said, definitely not “thinking” at all, but selling.

  “And the neckline is…unique,” Kit added.

  “Genius,” Temple agreed. “The only thing long about me is my neck.”

  “A swan’s neck,” Courtney added.

  “And the bodice is bare in one way, yet not. I love it,” Temple said.

  “With opera-length gloves,” Courtney suggested meekly, hopefully.

  “Yes.” Temple nodded. “So very My Fair Lady.”

  “Ah—” Courtney wisely remained silent after that.

  “Hair half up,” Kit said, “Princess Di’s knock-off lover’s knot coronet…”

  “Electra will recognize that design and love it!” Temple said.

  “…fingertip veil and lace-edged overskirt train, five feet long but flowing out.”

  Temple nodded.

  Kit turned to Courtney, all business, all icy command. “Whose is this and how can we get it?” She could have been a mobster ordering a hit.

  “It’s…abandoned.” Courtney again appeared on the verge of tears. “It’s rather legendary. It was ordered by a magician’s assistant on the Strip, several years ago. We use it as an example for flower girls, very feminine but…petite.”

  “A magician’s assistant?” Temple asked.

  Courtney was on firm ground here. She turned to Temple and looked down on her without appearing to tower. “Magician’s assistants must often be tiny and agile. You know, to be credibly sawn into two pieces in a box. I’m told this one said she was leaving the business to marry. And as for the magicians, they come and go in Vegas, even the iconic institution of Siegfried and Roy, tragically not performing anymore. I believe this magician had retired, and his assistant therefore also. We tried our best, having such a petite woman as a client and designed this especially for her. But. It’s Vegas. She disappeared.”

  “So we can buy it?” Kit asked.

  Courtney laid a large hand on the dummy’s small shoulder. “Can you buy a mystery? It’s strange. I’m a veteran employee, but I never thought of this gown for you, Miss Barr. It’s been a fixture. The staff had really liked the client, and then it was like someone in the family vanished. Not stood up at the altar, but never came in for the final fittings. We do weddings. This is a happy business, despite occasional silly spats over the details. I’ll talk to the owner, but if someone loves our Lost Lady’s gown, I’m sure she’ll be happy to give it a new home.”

  “May I try it on?” Temple suggested, already realizing the very front of the hem would be ankle-length on her, when wearing the Midnight Louie Austrian-crystal pavé Stuart Weitzman pumps.

  “Certainly. You and your mother can have a seat in our dressing room while I unpin it from the model.”

  Then they were alone, seated on slipper chairs in front of a narrow platform with three steps up, three steps down and a nine-foot train-flaunting “aisle” between them.

  Kit took Temple’s hand, leaned across the space between their chairs, and whispered, “Karen would have a fit if she knew I was playing Mama for a Day. I’m loving it. I’m way past my own children, and you’re my favorite niece.”

  “I’m your only niece.”

  Kit shrugged. Her hand tightened on Temple’s. “One thing. You don’t think the vanished magician’s assistant was from Max’s act when he folded up his show in Vegas and hared off? That might be a little too weird in the ‘something old’ department.”

  Temple laughed “Kit. Max worked alone. He was the whole show. I might have fantasized being one briefly, but he never had a female assistant, except for a flock of doves, fifty percent of whom might be female.”

  “Max worked alone.” Kit shook her head at herself. “I should have known.”

  “I’m really excited,” Temple said. “That neckline is so different. The gathers and lines are graceful and there’s the train, a slim yet sweeping train. Not a nuisance, not a pregnant peacock’s tail with a bow on the butt.”

  Courtney knocked, swept in when invited, a long limpid column of white silk lifted high and trailing fabric. Now Temple understood that Courtney’s height was a job requirement.

  She dangled the confection from another hang-’em-high hook. Temple thought of Western movies.

  “You’ll need the correct undergarment, of course. But for now, I think au natural will work.”

  Temple turned her back to the mirrors, unhooked her 32-A bra and let it drop to the floor as Courtney wafted the gown over her bare shoulders.

  Courtney plucked and twisted and hooked. Apparently these th
ings must be done, as according to the Wicked Witch of the West, del-i-cate-ly. Temple looked over her bared shoulders at Kit.

  Courtney turned to her too. “Mrs. Barr, I think you’ve called the size to an A-plus.” She turned Temple to face her.

  It was so strange to Temple, the tug of all that fabric on her twisting torso. She straightened her shoulders and lifted her chin.

  “Voila.” Courtney stepped back. “Wedding portrait pose already.”

  Kit had her smart phone stretched out and clicking away.

  “The fabric is so light and airy,” Temple said, taking a tentative step toward the runway.

  Courtney and Kit were conferring on the slipper chairs in quick, low tones about “drape, accessories, head piece and veil”.

  The gown followed Temple as naturally as a breath. She finally peeked at herself in the huge three-way mirror. Definitely not your Photoshopped bridal site sight. She put a tentative high heel on a step. A bridal shoe bearing the black Austrian-crystal image of Midnight Louie should not be tentative.

  She marched to the middle, turned around and swept offstage to face herself flushed and happy again in the intimidating three-way mirror. She knew she could never step wrong with Midnight Louie by her side and on her feet.

  13

  Mother Confessor

  Molina unfolded and rose to her impressive five-ten inches of height, bending to swoop up his coffee mug and her almost full lemonade glass.

  “I have a confession to make. Better get you a beer.” And then she left the room.

  Matt had little time to speculate, and decided to put on his counseling hat, a deerstalker in this case.

  “Hmm,” Matt intoned as Molina returned to put the open beer bottle down in front of him, “Dos Equis. ‘Dos’ is ‘two’ in Spanish. Two horses. You must be facing at least a two-pipe problem.”

  He smiled and answered her puzzled frown. “That’s what Sherlock Holmes told Watson when the great detective was handling a particularly troubling case. It was a three pipe problem. So I’m playing Watson here? At least I don’t smoke.”

  I regret to inform you,” she said with that utterly deadpan Molina the homicide lieutenant face, “that you’re facing a pretty nasty rejection.”

  “Rejection?”

  All Matt could think was, Oh, God, Molina had been keeping tabs on Kinsella and he was back in town…seeing Temple? No. Temple wouldn’t put up with his now-you-see-him, now-you-don’t act anymore.

  Still, his head was buzzing so wildly he almost didn’t take in her next sentence.

  “This is no mystery. You are no longer required as escort for the annual Fall Dad-Daughter Dance at the junior high.”

  “What? Mariah? She doesn’t want to go now?”

  “She doesn’t want to go with you. I’m sure it breaks your heart. She’s changed her mind, Matt. Mariah has decided to ask Rafi Nadir to escort her to the Dad-Daughter dance this fall.”

  “Whew,” Matt said, just happy not to have heard the word, “Max”, then taking a pull on the Dos Equis. “Would you be insulted if I said I’m relieved? That’s a really mature decision on Mariah’s part. Rafi Nadir has truly helped her fulfill her aspirations without betraying your confidence. He’s playing a Dad-type role he never had a chance at earlier. So what’s the problem?”

  “Rafi Nadir is an Arab-American name,” Molina said absently. “Think Ralph Nader, the long-time political activist, who has Lebanese roots. These days a Mideast ancestry can be as targeted as a Hispanic one.”

  Now she was twisting the condensation-dewed beer bottle in her hand.

  “Look, Carmen.” He nodded at her hands. “You never fidget. It’s against your professional and personal code. You’ve been fidgeting since I got here. What’s really going on?”

  “Mariah and Rafi are coming back from a rehearsal session at a studio. Seems everything musical today involves digital manipulation.” Her apologetic crooked smile and shrug were out of character too.

  “Carmen, do you regret Mariah favoring him over me? I’m not insulted, if that’s what you’re thinking.”

  “It’s not that.”

  “So he is her father and you guys can admit it now,” Matt said. “Mariah’s solved the problem herself. The Dad-Daughter Dance is the perfect coming-out party. It’ll be a smooth transition. She’s debuting in her first year in junior high and no one will know you kept it quiet when she was in grade school. Please don’t tell me his ethnicity wasn’t why you kept it secret. I know people are paranoid these days and your police connection—”

  Molina exploded. “Yes, his ethnicity played a part in it. So did mine. And the paranoia was mostly mine. But that was fifteen years ago in L.A. How do I bring you up to date on fifteen years of lies?”

  Matt stared at her troubled features. Time to back off. He spoke solemnly, but softly, confidentially, with a tone of wry humor. “You say, ‘Bless me, Father. It has been fifteen years since my last confession.’”

  He glanced at the LED clock visible on the kitchen’s microwave oven. “And make it snappy. A lot of elderly folks are waiting in line, leaning on their canes and walkers, to spend their half hour in the dark little booth enumerating a supermarket cart of venial sins when you’ve got a Dumpster of big league ones to unload.”

  The kicker made her laugh. “A pity you and the confessional booths didn’t stay in the priesthood. You would be a huge improvement over Father Hernandez’s brusque, businesslike manner with penitents. So would the anonymity of a dark booth.”

  “The booths are still used for oldsters at Our Lady of Guadalupe, and me.”

  “You?” Then she took a deep breath and told him.

  She’d been the “illegitimate” eldest bi-cultural daughter in the large traditional Hispanic family that followed when her Latina mother married a Latino man.

  “How many younger siblings?” Matt asked.

  “Now you sound like a sociologist. Six.”

  “So your magnificent blue eyes….”

  “Came from a Daddy unnamed, a best-forgotten Gringo, seducer of my seventeen-year-old mother.”

  “It’s hard to grow up in a minority community with such a visible badge of difference.”

  “You seem to like them.”

  “I do. So Mariah has her dad’s dark eyes, and your Hispanic heritage. Did not knowing your real father haunt you?”

  “No. I was too busy babysitting my half-sisters and brothers.”

  “More of a nanny than a daughter?”

  “I never thought of it that way.”

  “Now you see what I do on the radio advice show. So you were a never-ending Act of Contrition on your mother’s part,” he added.

  “That’s harsh.”

  “I think it was harsh.”

  “We have time for another beer.” Molina stood and disappeared into the kitchen.

  Matt frowned at his interlaced fingers and shook off the gesture he recognized was one of old Monsignor Janoski’s back during his own “illegitimate” Chicago childhood. Now he understood Molina’s iron self-control and utter professionalism, obviously needed working in a macho man’s field, but also to survive a family in which her very presence was a rebuke.

  He was even beginning to understand better why his mother had fought so hard to grab a veneer of respectability, even if it was marriage to a loser like Effinger. At least she was married and Matt grew up as a kid with an identifiable father, however lousy.

  No wonder Carmen Regina Molina was unraveling at having to confront her only daughter with her lies and evasions and self-shame. The daughter she had denied a father, as her own mother had done before her.

  Matt shivered to his soul. Families came with long-standing PR as the social core of stability and future promise and safety. Maintaining that illusion took such a toll. Growing up was maybe realizing nobody was perfect, including yourself.

  Molina slammed the beer bottles down on the low table.

  “Short form on my family life. I had to get out of
there. Worked my way through four years of college, then applied for the police force.”

  “Why the police?”

  “I don’t know. I’d been mocked for being a big girl, a tall girl in that culture of shorter people. I think my father may have been Swedish. Something really alien.”

  Matt smiled to himself. Coming from a Chicago full of blond Polish and Nordic people, he knew one person’s “alien” was another person’s relatives.

  “Anyway,” Molina said, “I thought I could make the physical. And— You’re right. I had some crazy idea that I might be able to track down my real father.”

  “What did you find on the police force?”

  “An administrative eagerness to employ women and minorities accompanied by deep distrust and dislike of both among all the ranks.”

  “You beat that. Look at you. A tower of authority. A commander of men. A damn good torch singer, and the only woman who can make my girlfriend secretly shake in her Stuart Weitzman heels.”

  “Really? Kinda like Dorothy in the Haunted Wood and I’m the Wicked Witch?”

  “Naw. You’re the Iron Maiden of the Metro Police.”

  “I know they call me that.”

  “That’s a grudging compliment, but you know that. It wasn’t always like that.”

  “God, no!” She glanced at him. “Sorry.”

  “God likes to be included in the conversation, especially when you’re being honest. I’m as far from the priesthood—if that means you’re thinking of me as a judge and excommunicator—as you are from the LAPD. What happened there?”

  “We made it into the force. Women and Hispanics, Afro-Americans and Asians and even Arab-Americans.”

  “Ah,” Matt said, sinking like Sherlock Holmes deep into the easy chair and the two metaphorical pipes and the unfolding mysteries of Molina. “Enter Rafi Nadir.”

  “He was even more alien than I was.”

  “You…bonded. How?”

  “What is it always? What we had in common, being minority officers. Then, when he found out that I sang in the police choir, he said I should be a soloist. He pushed me into working up an act. We trolled L.A. vintage stores for my retro blues singer nineteen-forties wardrobe. What they sold then for mere dollars.” Molina’s smile was nostalgic. “Temple Barr would have died and gone to heaven in blue silk velvet.”