Cat in a Sapphire Slipper

by Carole Nelson Douglas

  He and Mr. Nicky remain, looking down at the dead girl.

  “Some bachelor party,” Aldo says grimly.

  I nod at Satin to follow Mr. Matt and the madam. Say, that phrase has a real ring to it, kind of like a novel title. I bet Miss Temple would really want to read that book!

  Meanwhile, I eavesdrop while the guys talk turkey.

  “Matt found the body,” Nicky says. “I found him bending over the victim just afterward.”

  “Yeah, how did you two end up uncorralled up here?”

  “We were the last two in. The phony driver ordered us into the parlor, but didn’t stick around to make sure we went. Matt slipped up the stairs. The bridesmaids were so intent on tying up their special someones that I was able to do the same a bit later.”

  “So you two were hiding out up here, even when the ladies both pro and pro-amateur trouped up the stairs to eye the premises?”

  “Right. Only Matt had the bad luck to hide out in the peephole closet in the murder room.”

  “Holy homicide! Where’s the hidey-hole?”

  Aldo approaches the mirror, checking where the frame does not quite meet the wall. In a moment, he has clicked the mirror door ajar.

  “Matt saw the murder, then,” Aldo crows. “We have a witness, one whose word is twenty-four-karat gold.”

  Mr. Nicky makes a face. “He is an ex-priest. He shut off the one-way mirror window. He did not see or hear a thing. I came to find him and found him all right, leaning over the body, gawking like a tourist and giving CPR.”

  “Shoot. That makes him a number one suspect. And you number two, little brother, because either one of you could be covering for the other. At least that is the way the cops will see it.”

  “I know that! I finally got through the poor reception and reached Van.”

  “Yeah?”

  “She was living it up with Temple and her lovely and lively aunt and landlady in our penthouse. They are all coming.”

  “And . . . why?”

  “I figure Temple is our best bet. We need to produce a likely suspect, or the murderer, who is not one of our party. You know the cops would love to nail a Fontana, any Fontana, with a current crime.”

  “The women are coming. Our women? To a brothel? Are you crazy?”

  “They know we were hijacked. And . . . who better knows who might off a woman than another woman? Unless you want to believe ex-Father Matt did it.”

  “Naw, not credible.”

  “You know how the police think in a case like this. Strangled. In a kinky room set up in a brothel. Maybe the ex-priest went berserk and killed an evil woman. Maybe he had molested her years ago in a distant parish and encountered her here and she was going to tell—”

  I cannot restrain a growl of disbelief at these twisted interpretations.

  Both Fontana brothers look at me for the first time.

  “I agree with the cat,” Aldo says. “That theorizing stinks. It is far-fetched in the extreme.”

  “But it is possible. The police look for past motives in a murder like this. For starters, I’ll have Emilio guard the murder room, so nobody gets in there to mess with the evidence. We gotta protect ourselves from the murderer and the police. Even if the cops decide Temple’s fiance is not a suspect, I am. I am a Fontana and I was wandering around up here alone. Maybe I was a past client of the girl, they could think, and she could have threatened to expose me to my wife, say—”

  “Hey, the murderer could be a past client! This is a rambling joint, but a guy like that would know the layout, and sure could come and go in the confusion. Maybe it even was a girl past client! Some of the dudes import their girlfriends for threesomes. Or more. Maybe some girlfriend got a lot more jealous than ours.”

  “And how do you know that about threesomes, big brother?”

  Aldo shrugged. “Us older guys exist to do all the down and dirty research first and clue you punks in. As for you being blackmail material, heck, you never patronized any pros, Nicky. None of us needed to. We always had girlfriends, until you got married, and now I am going to.”

  “Our other brothers’ girlfriends have gotten us all into a sordid mess,” he said.

  “I love little Miss Temple like she was our baby sister,” Aldo says, “but you really think she can scope out a murderer overnight?”

  “You have not seen her in action. She has this instinctive nose for vermin. When she gets here and finds out her fiancé is in a very compromising position, through no fault of his own but our brothers’ girlfriends, you can bet she will move feather boa and fishnet stocking to find who really deserves to do the time for the crime.”

  Well. I am pleased to see my Miss Temple get full credit for her sleuthing ways. However, I never get a break. Mr. Nicky Fontana is completely unaware of how I have time and again assisted in Miss Temple’s investigations.

  Perhaps, in this pent-up environment, my true genius for crime and punishment will be more visible, and I will get the credit due me.

  This will be my finest hour, particularly with my former light of love here to watch me play the hero. Miss Satin is bound to be impressed. Miss Temple and I will be a crime-fighting duo like Batman and Robin. Only it will be Catwoman and, and, uh, Robbin’ Hood. Okay, that is lame.

  Anyway, it will be something to see.

  Mental Clime

  Max.

  Short, simple. Not sweet.

  So was the name Mike. And it had a faint, familiar ring too. Could a man have two names? Maybe first and middle. Max. Michael . . . whatever.

  He wondered how much he could trust Garry Randolph, pleasant as the man was.

  He knew he couldn’t trust Revienne Schneider. She came into his room the next day wearing a cleverly cut pink wool suit with a long, belted jacket over the short skirt, still as leggy as a runway model.

  He’d done thirty chin-ups on the shower rod that morning. His joints were aching, but the glow the pink suit gave her complexion was a nice liniment. What wounded man didn’t enjoy a delicious nurse? One whose faltering memory was hers for the plundering, if he didn’t watch it.

  “You look remarkably well this morning, Mr. Randolph,” she commented.

  “And you.”

  “I haven’t fallen off a mountain, merely come up one to stay a while.”

  “You’re living at the facility now?”

  “I could hardly meet with you daily if I wasn’t.”

  “Daily. Somebody with deep pockets likes me.”

  “Deep pockets?”

  He rubbed his fingers together. They ached, but were more flexible than yesterday. “Gelt.”

  She nodded. “Mr. Randolph . . . senior . . . spares no expense on your account.”

  He eyed her mouth. “He’s a discerning old gentleman.”

  “You Americans! You’re such serious flirters.”

  “Flirts,” he corrected. Her response to colloquialisms was totally European.

  “Flirts. You have a seriously bruised spine; two pins in your fractured legs underneath those casts; a concussion at the back of your skull; a skinned cheek. And a memory as solid as a, a . . .”

  “Sieve,” he suggested.

  “A seine, I was about to say. A fishing net.”

  “A sieve is for flour. It’s finer.”

  “You can be quite the pessimist.”

  “Realist.”

  “Really, Mr. Randolph. You need to get serious and help me to help you. Has anything about the accident come to mind?”

  He checked the internal data bank. “Nothing. Except—”

  “Except.”

  “I hit a cliff. A high, solid cliff.”

  It was true. He’d just had a flash of that dark looming wall. Yet a mountain cliff ought to be white. And the object of his mental impact was black. And reflective. Black ice.

  “That’s good.” She was leaning forward, watching him intently. “Something has come back.”

  The tremor of excitement in her voice echoed in his chest. If only
he could trust her. He needed a coach, a passionate partner in his recovery. No. Not trustworthy. No one here was, except for Garry. Garry. Gary, Indiana, Gary, Indiana . . . it was some silly song. Garry. The name was all right, but he remembered the man by something else. A nickname? Ga . . . Gan . . . Ga! The memory search was painful.

  She was removing his hand from his forehead, her face very close. European women wore perfume like mink wore pheromones, as an alluring personal miasma, touched at all the pulse points. His senses were spinning between pain and pleasure.

  “Don’t think too hard. Your brain can’t take it yet. Let the memories flow. Don’t even say them aloud yet.”

  Not self-serving advice for an undercover interrogator, if she indeed was one.

  But a ring of pressure around his brow was pounding. Thinking had become a painful process. Jerky. Unreliable. He sensed that he had once moved like coiled steel, had thought as hot and fast as sheet lightning. Not now. Not . . . yet.

  She’d put his suddenly trembling hand on her knee, covered in silky, opaque hose, her other hand atop it.

  Was she seducing him, or saving him? And did he care which?

  He loved the game of wondering, he understood almost at once. A worthy opponent. He loved the edge of fighting his own mind and body for supremacy. Or dueling a sexy, dangerous woman.

  Maybe he was inventing a sinister history for her. Or himself. She was too obviously attractive to trust. Apparently, he distrusted fair surfaces most of all. Why?

  “You can’t expect to climb the wall of your mind in one day,” she was saying.

  It was an apt metaphor. He had a long climb back ahead of him.

  His fingers flexed in the sandwiched warmth of her knee and hand.

  “You hurt,” she said. “All over. Everything. It’s to be expected from an accident so severe. Better?’

  He flexed his fingers again. He could feel her thigh muscles tense under them. Smooth, strong. As he would be again.

  Ministering angel, detached professional, enemy in his weakest moments?

  “Not . . . yet.”

  Her lips made a small moue, that subtly French expression. A French twist of the lips.

  He felt a sudden pang. Mental not physical. He knew it was a warning from deep in his unremembered past.

  Was it . . . worry? Danger? Or . . . guilt?

  Slippery Slope

  If Temple’s fingernails were bitable, she would have nibbled them off on the long, bouncing drive into the dark of desert. But they were disgustingly strong and her current coat of nail polish always wore out before they did.

  Trying to read the map screen on Van’s dashboard, while jolting over obscure roads was like translating Sanskrit when you didn’t even know Latin.

  “I’m really not sure why we’re all rushing to a murder scene at a bordello,” Temple said.

  “It could be fun?” Electra suggested. “I kinda got into crime-solving at that Red Hat Sisterhood convention. We really should have called my Red-Hatted League chapter members in on this. We were a great team.”

  “No.” Van wrestled the wheel around a tight curve and slowed down. “The fewer people who know about this the better. There it is.”

  Kit and Electra craned their necks over the front seat backs to stare through the middle of the windshield.

  A cluster of gleaming yellow and blue lights glittered like an electric oasis in the dark.

  “They must have their own generator and well out here,” Van murmured. “They’d have to be totally independent operationally. And the cell phone limitations wouldn’t bother them.”

  “Why not?” asked Kit, the New Yorker who was always plugged into something. “Oh! Right. They wouldn’t want customers getting rung during interesting moments.”

  “They must have some reliable way of communicating,” Electra said. “They have to make appointments and such.”

  “Awesome,” Kit said. “Imagine men driving all the way out to this wilderness to get a little nookie. This is the real West!”

  “It’s an adventure,” Van said. “Some customers don’t feel satisfied with entertainment that’s too easy to come by. The Strip has everything at hand. Coming out here feels special. It’s a marketing ploy. What’s hard to get is better.”

  “How can sex for sale in Las Vegas be hard to get?” Electra wondered.

  “Harder,” Van explained with a smile in her voice. “Selling sizzle is always a mystical process.”

  “I suppose,” Kit said, “that what Minnesota-born and bred girls like Temple and me will have to keep in mind, when we see our intendeds in the ambiance of a brothel, is that such establishments are perfectly legal here.”

  “What you and Temple have to keep in mind,” Van said grimly, “is that our nearest and dearest were kidnapped to this slightly seedy environment . . . and immediately phoned home to us for help.”

  “Yeah,” Electra said, “but that was only aftera dead body turned up.”

  “So says the cynic,” Temple put in, “the five-times-married woman. I can promise you that Matt would have never gone willingly along with this prank.”

  “Nor Nicky,” Van said.

  There was a silence.

  “I’m not sure about Aldo,” Kit said, “which is what makes him so interesting. I can hardly wait to confront the dirty dog and extract suitable promises of ‘making it up to me.’”

  Temple sighed. They could joke about it, but this jaunt to a bachelor party had turned into a very sticky wicket. How was she going to clear everybody’s favorite guy in less than twenty-four hours when they were dealing with a totally unknown cast of possible victims and predators?

  Van nudged her knee. “We are going in there like gang-busters. We control the vertical and horizontal. They will all do as we say while we sort things out. Girls who are bridesmaids or bedmates, boys who are the innocent ours. We either run the investigation or we call in the police, right?”

  Temple winced at the idea of calling in the police, which to her always meant surrendering to Lieutenant Molina.

  But Electra pounded Van’s headrest with a woman-power fist. “We are Charlie’s Angels on the case!”

  “Without a Charlie to dictate to us,” Temple said. “We are the dictators. Way better.”

  “Way!” all three women shouted.

  Van squealed the Rover around the last driveway curve its bright headlights illuminated, and they pulled up under the huge neon image of a sapphire-blue high-heeled slipper.

  Feline Fatales

  Girrrrl power is fine, but I prefer Grrrrrowl power.

  I hop out on the heels of the Misses Electra and Kit, undetected, of course.

  There was a time when I lamented my midnight coat color, which left me liable to be overlooked, and my long, trailing train subject to being tread upon.

  I contemplated aligning myself with the early flag of this country, featuring a rattlesnake and a DON’T TREAD ON ME motto.

  But over time, despite the many slings and arrows to my overlooked extremities, I have come to appreciate the art of being easily assimilated into the dark of asphalt, the shadows, the epitome of night.

  The old man has been exploiting this inborn advantage since he was an aspiring stud farm his own self.

  I admit that now he is socially and sexually responsible, but he had a lot of bad years to make up for, including siring such by-blows as myself. By-blows is an old-fashioned phrase to designate unlawful heirs. Those of us of no account. Unwanted offspring.

  I admit to an inborn intolerance of the double standard, by which the arranged mating of show cats produces prestigious lines, and by which we alley cat “accidents” are deemed worthy of quick quietus. That is a fancy word from Shakespeare for “put down.” I too can sling around literary hash with the Old Bard.

  So I consider this, my first solo case with my female human posse, a testing ground. I am free of male supervision for once. For once, I am Midnight Inc. Investigations, riding to the rescue of my old man, an
d I intend to prove my prowess.

  It is no accident that I have invited Ma Barker, my partner’s supposed mother, to aid me on the case. We girls are up for the challenge. If Ma Barker and her gang are established at the outskirts of the Circle Ritz, I believe Midnight Inc. Investigations will benefit from a large network of legwork operatives.

  I do not expect the senior member of the firm to cede a chin hair on any reorganization of our assets. But I expect to win. If I solve this Sapphire Slipper murder on my own, with the semi-able assistance of Ma Barker, I will have a fine bargaining position.

  So I tell Ma Barker to follow my lead and keep a low profile, and we trot after the Ladies’ Number Three Lucky Detective Agency at our forefront. The humans can take the lead. We will untwine the tail of the case.

  Compromising Positions

  Matt had observed the change of power in the Sapphire Slipper’s parlor with a certain regret.

  True, he’d held a Fontana brother’s Beretta in his hand and had prevailed, but what use was taking over this scene when every woman in the place, and he especially, was a suspect for a particularly awful killing?

  He’d watched a few of the TV forensics shows he could stomach.

  Women were usually the victims; men were usually the killers.

  He knew enough of the secular world now to know the earmarks of a sex killing: a sex industry woman stalked, controlled, brutally murdered. The setup was perfect. All these young bachelors out on the town for a night. The predictable implication of an orgy here in Nevada, the only place in the nation where illicit sex was legal.

  A notorious local “family” up to their silk pocket scarves in murder most premarital.

  A girl dead in salacious TV show-style: semiclothed, an elaborately erotic setting, costume and makeup by the Marquis de Sade.

  Matt shuddered at the implied inhumanity of it all. Camera-ready.

  And him a prime suspect, all because he’d opted not to be a Peeping Tom.

  If only he had looked! Seen the crime and the criminal.

  But no. He’d dutifully turned off the window on mayhem. Made himself into a suspect. And now Nicky was jubilant that his wife, Van, and her friends Kit and Electra and Temple, were coming here to the Sapphire Slipper brothel, to sort things out.