Cat in a Sapphire Slipper

by Carole Nelson Douglas

  Oh. My. God.

  The fact that Midnight Louie, Temple’s cat, was here for some bizarre reason and rubbing back and forth on his pant leg was minuscule comfort.

  If the big tomcat was sympathizing with his plight, he was in deep trouble.

  His alibi was so hard to explain. Trapped in a brothel bedroom, he’d retreated to a built-in watching and listening post . . . and promptly disabled any watching and listening, so he knew nothing of the murder that had transpired afterward.

  Either he was a totally naive ass, or not a red-blooded human male.

  Or both.

  Matt couldn’t decide which role was worse: innocent or prude.

  If only he had decided to take advantage of the admittedly embarrassing situation to live and learn.

  He might have stopped the murder. Caught the killer.

  That fact that he hadn’t felt worse than being a Peeping Tom.

  A little scandalous curiosity could have saved a life.

  Instead, a murderer had made him an unwilling accessory, by default.

  A murderer had made him very angry. Righteously angry.

  They were stuck here.

  They were supposed to let Temple and her crew solve this mess.

  Matt would be happy about that, but he’d be even happier if he took a hand in the investigation and found the killer himself. The killer who’d made him an impotent nonwitness.

  Whoever had done it had malice aforethought toward the victim, and maybe malice toward every man and woman in this house of prostitution, whether unwillingly hijacked, or not. A disgruntled client? A sex pervert? Or something tragic, like a family member unable to accept a relative’s working in the sex industry. He’d heard it all on his radio advice show.

  It had been planned, beyond the bridesmaids’ wildest schemes. Perhaps that very reservation had given the killer the idea for hiding a murder in the tangled webs of a silly prenup-tial prank.

  And it mattered that this was a bachelor party.

  That had something to do with the motive and the means.

  Matt may be an amateur at bachelor parties and bridal parties and brothels, but he knew a thing or two about murder from Temple.

  He’d do everything he could to help her, as she would to help him.

  But that might not be enough.

  The murderer might be way out of their league.

  They both might be too innocent for this situation, this conspiracy.

  He’d have to get savvy fast.

  Wildest Schemes

  “Okay,” Temple said as the Range Rover cooled its engine in front of the brothel’s well-lit porte cochere, “we need a plan. We need to divide and conquer, given that we’re dealing with multiple suspects here. And we need to find out about any support personnel for the brothel. There must be a madam, for one. And a cook and bottle-washer.

  “Van, you get the brothers Fontana and Uncle Mario. You and Nicky should be able to corral them, and they look like the least likely suspects, having been handcuffed from arrival until after the body was found. Barring a Houdini among them, they’re in a fairly good position.

  “Electra, you’re the JP. You’ve had to deal with a lot of nervous brides, so you bird-dog this gaggle of eight bridesmaids for eight brothers, who have demonstrated a lot of nerve, including confiscating serious weapons. One of them could have used this wacky scheme to cover a murder.

  “Kit, you’re the veteran actress and jaded New Yorker. I hereby bequeath to you the madam and the house hookers. I’m sure you’ve seen it all, or at least acted it. If one of them recognized an opportunity for murder, and took it, I’m sure you can sniff out the guilty party.”

  “And you?” Van asked.

  “I need to consult with Nicky and Matt about the scene of the crime, and on their own nebulous movements while hiding out of sight, out of mind, although it is hard to imagine either of those gentlemen being out of mind with all those loose women around. Though I may be prejudiced on this subject.”

  “Not at all,” Van said. “Hiding those two good-lookers in a whorehouse would be a real trick.”

  “‘Loose’ women?” Electra asked. “Isn’t that a prejudicial description for a legal profession in Nevada?”

  “I was thinking of the screw-loose bridesmaids,” Temple said. “They’ve made a royal mess out of trying to have some serious fun with the groomsmen. Somehow their crazy-brained daisy-chain scheme allowed a murderer a free hand to commit the perfect crime. No matter how bizarre the setting and the scheme that got everyone here, the murder sounds like the usual sordid and awful business.

  “Everybody ready for her assignment? We’ll have to consult periodically. We’ll also need to confine each group so no one can confer without one of us overhearing. It’s going to be a long night’s journey into noon tomorrow, to paraphrase an O’Neill play title. And if we don’t find a likely suspect, the police will charge us all with failure to report a crime. If Lieutenant C. R. Molina has anything to do with it, she just may do that anyway.

  “Are we ready? Let’s rock and roll.”

  Terrorizing Trio

  Now that my crime-solving bed partner has arrived, all thought or notice of me has been shoved farther back than a no-name tie-up oxford in Miss Temple’s shoe closet.

  I cannot blame her for wanting to find and interrogate her latest significant other, Mr. Matt Devine, since he is up to his late-night golden tonsils in suspicion. I believe the least serious charge would be “interfering with a corpse,” which has very gruesome and twisted connotations.

  But Miss Temple has not even registered my presence, so I sulk downstairs after hearing all the good stuff. I spot Miss Satin sitting in the foyer and am heading for some ego-rebuilding strokes from a female of my kind, when I stop halfway down the stairs with a swallowed hiss of surprise.

  The waiting Miss Satin has turned her head to reveal the old-gold eyes of my feline partner in crime solving, Miss Midnight Louise.

  I cannot count on having my wounded pride massaged by her, so I stop three steps farther on at the ghastly sight of another pair of black shoulder blades, these as sharp as a Swiss Army knife, cruising into sight and stopping beside Miss M. Louise.

  Eek! That rangy, lived-in, scrawny form can only be that of my newfound materfamilias, the Mother McCree of the street cat world, my own dam, as they say in the horse world, Ma Barker. Damn!

  I cringe against the wrought-iron banister and take deep calming breaths, intoning my mantra, Kaaaaar-maaa. Kaaaaar-maaaa. What can the so-called fruit of my loins be doing associating with the fruited loins of my maternal creator? And I do not mean Bast Herself!

  Midnight Louise and Ma Barker in cahoots? This is not good! It is as bad as a Fontana brother bridesmaid and a brothel inhabitant canoodling.

  While I sit transfixed between one story and another (and my own story for explaining my presence and keeping these opposing female forces from sinking tooth and claw into my unblemished hide), I witness something even more horrifying.

  Along comes the latest lady of my acquaintance, totally unrelated to me by blood, at least . . . the cathouse cat, Satin.

  Oh, great. I am not dead, but I am like a dead body about to be revealed to one and all: a helpless object of morbid speculation, soon to be dissected in every sordid detail of my life by a trio of vaguely related snoops.

  I stare down on the three generations of females in my life, my once and future queens, watching as they begin the edgy get-acquainted dance of their kind and gender.

  There is only one thing to be done, and I do it.

  Turn tail and run.

  Emilio definitely could use some expert assistance watching that dead body.

  Posthomicidal Nerves

  Temple had never been inside a brothel before. She hadn’t even been to a Chippendale’s male strip show. She had no idea what to expect.

  They walked into what seemed like the set for a play, a stuffy, period play like Life with Father, some fussy turn-of-the-twent
ieth-century Victorian parlor tricked out all in shades of blue.

  One really crowded Victorian parlor!

  Temple felt like singing part of the famous Christmas carol: twelve shady ladies, ten studly brothers, eight ditsy bridesmaids, four addled sleuths, three senior citizens, two roaming lads, and a cat in a sable-fur ruff. . . .

  A cat? Black yet? Louie, wherefore art thou, Louie?

  Not here at the moment, thank God and Bast. This was a fluffy bordello cat with green-gold eyes.

  Temple recognized Uncle Mario, perching his bulk uneasily on a velvet-tufted chair next to a heavyset woman dressed up like Mae West in corseted glitter. And a second late-middle-aged person wearing a starched collared man’s shirt with a garter on one upper arm and black trousers. Part woman, part man? Part bartender, piano player, dealer, or what?

  For the overall atmosphere was Old West saloon. And the “girls” arrayed along one wall were a curled and feathered bevy all in blue, every shade of blue imaginable, from the faint saccharine hues to midnight velvet. And each woman along the spectrum ran the gamut from young and fresh to older and wiser and ready for every implication of midnight blue the law allowed.

  It was all legal, and Temple thought it should be outlawed.

  Back when she was a TV reporter, she’d run into the tawdry statistics about the sex trade. The “goods” were all spoiled. Strippers. Hookers. Many models. Childhood physical, verbal, and sexual abuse were the guaranteed ingredients that led girls and boys to the sleazy and often self-destructive side of the street. They may proclaim they worked this profession from free will, but their wills and self-esteem had been shaped by trauma most people never had to confront.

  Selling oneself still was tragic, and Temple would bet that the reason for the dead woman upstairs would prove to be the result of some perverse, pathetic past, for both victim and murderer.

  That concluded, she dismissed her gut reaction.

  She had to keep an open mind to dig deep into this culture to find the twisted reason behind the crime.

  So. Where were the prime suspects?

  Nicky and Matt.

  Highly Suggestive

  “We’re not making progress with your memory,” Dr. Schneider announced at her next visit.

  A genuine assessment or a clever interrogator sensing his suspicions?

  “Come, Mr. Randolph, stop glaring at me! I know you’re impatient. Those casts must be as itchy as hell, and you’re obviously not a man used to being pent up.”

  Reading and reflecting his emotional mood. Intuitive? Or manipulative?

  “Bottled up, maybe?” She smiled shrewdly. “Is that the proper expression? You don’t like your emotions to be obvious or to be read. Am I in your bad graces for noticing?”

  “I didn’t know I had any bad graces.”

  Her smile deepened. “Very few, but you’ve always known that. I’m glad that you remember enough to be suave.”

  “Thank you.”

  “I have decided to try a mnemonic device. Just a little game. It might . . . crack . . . some unconscious memories loose.”

  “Isn’t that a bad thing to go poking around in, the unconscious?”

  “I don’t know. Is it in your case?”

  “I’m not a ‘case.’ ”

  She shifted in her chair uneasily. “You’re quite right. I apologize.”

  She folded her hands in her lap. She wore the shortest skirts of any doctor he’d seen, even on Grey’s Anatomy commercial clips. He wouldn’t dream of watching that show, not even now that he was a hospital habitué. Lord, he was starting to think in French words! The woman was a venereal disease, easily transferable.

  He decided to put her on notice. “I apologize. I didn’t mean to imply I expected more than the usual medical abracadabra from you, shrink or not.”

  “‘Shrink’?”

  “Like your skirt. Very skimpy. Miniaturized. Reduced from the normal size. It comes from the cannibal habit of shrinking the heads of their dead enemies. An American expression.”

  “You like my skirt?”

  “I shouldn’t? Why else do you wear it? Not for me, of course, but for men. All these poor, mentally confused men. You are quite the tease, Doctor.”

  “Most of my patients are too devastated to notice what I wear. Besides, are you so sure I’m not wearing what I do just for you?”

  He snorted. “Those are three-thousand-dollar suits. You have them altered to your preferences. You were in bed with those suits long before you came to my bedside.”

  “Why not a special wardrobe for you? You are an obviously wealthy man. An adventurer. Charismatic. Oh, yes, you are, and you know it. My parents were civil servants. Why shouldn’t I set my chapeau for you? Your mind is muddled. Any women you knew or loved are forgotten. Certainly none has appeared here to succor you in your illness. As far as I’m concerned, you may be the world’s most eligible bachelor, and therefore, worth flashing.”

  He laughed. “You earned an advanced degree. You get paid plenty for your expertise and time. You know your way around the male ego, and inside a subconscious, not to mention a conscience. You don’t need anyone, least of all me, ogling your knees. You like being an attractive woman, period. The reasons for that would be something I might like to explore, had I the time. Perhaps it was the low expectations of those civil servant parents.”

  “And your parents?”

  “The American equivalent of civil servants.”

  He knew that was true, but not why it came out and sounded so right. And why he felt a sharp pang of failure and shame at mentioning his parents. And how he could have disguised that emotional weakness fast enough for her, which he hadn’t.

  “You are, you know,” she said softly.

  “Are what?” His pulse was pounding. What was he? What had he done to feel this wave of self-disgust and guilt? He was glad his face was scabbed, it might hide the inner turmoil better.

  “Charismatic,” she said. “Perhaps I should excuse myself from your . . . service,” she added, avoiding the word case. “I am here to help, not irritate. Not to tease, and I have been, a little.”

  “What would be ‘a lot’ for you?”

  Her laughter was free, loose, and apparently genuine. “I can only think of teasing answers to that.” He found her knowing hazel eyes irresistible, and scary.

  “How about,” she went on, “I ask you these long-established psychologically analytical questions, and you can have some fun at my expense? You will enjoy exercising your brain and your suspicions.”

  “What is this?”

  “Free association.”

  “No associations are free,” he said, dead serious.

  “Ah. I agree. The purpose of this exercise is to startle your mind into remembering. Perhaps you don’t wish that process to be shared. I could leave you the list, and you could . . . play with it mentally.”

  And take those lovely legs away? Not to mention the lovely acrobatics she was putting his mind through?

  “I’m cool with it.”

  “ ‘Cool.’ Americans are always ‘cool’ with everything. All right. I start now. Freedom.”

  “No such thing. A common illusion.”

  “Responsibility.”

  “A snare and a delusion, and a major necessity for a human conscience.”

  “Everest.”

  “High and mighty.”

  “Women.”

  “Warm.”

  “Horses.”

  “Big, beautiful, and stupid.”

  “Money.”

  “Useful.”

  “Father.”

  “Priest.”

  Her eyebrows raised. So did his. “Where did that come from?”

  “Mountains.”

  “Molehills.”

  “Love.”

  “Loss.” Another telling answer. He saw her tuck that away.

  “Trust.”

  “Virtue.”

  “Mirror.”

  “Deception.”


  “Woman.”

  “Dangerous.” Her eyes were gleaming with psychiatrist’s fool’s gold: glints of supposed insight.

  “Man.”

  “Original sin.”

  She looked up. “Not woman? It was Eve who ate the apple.”

  “A secure man isn’t led into anything against his conscience by anyone. Adam was the weaker one.”

  “War.”

  “Senseless. But we all know that. Which makes it even more senseless.”

  “Champagne.”

  “Could use some about now.”

  She laughed and uncrossed her knees, putting her clipboard on the foot of the bed.

  “So could I, Mr. Randolph. You have given me some very contradictory answers.”

  “You can’t smuggle any champagne in wearing that skirt.”

  “I will come next time in an inexpensive peasant dirndl skirt to my ankles, with champagne. Would that do?”

  He shook his head. “One would ruin the other.”

  “You don’t compromise well.”

  “Do you?”

  She eyed him hard. “No.”

  Then she stood. “I’ll leave to contemplate your answers. I think you should do so as well. They are most interesting. But, then, I expected no less, and I know you wish to anticipate and meet my expectations in every way.”

  She was saying she knew he wouldn’t tell her anything substantive? That he suspected her validity?

  Or was she just flirting again? Damn, that was fun. He must have been celibate for a while before his accident. A flash of guilt again. Yes, he had been. And the guilt? That hadn’t been fair to someone. A woman. Woman. Warm. Was that the woman who evoked that word?

  Woman. Dangerous. He’d been thinking of Revienne, flirting back a bit, but he felt another twinge of warning. He’d known a very dangerous woman. Maybe more than one, if he was the undercover agent Garry Randolph hinted he’d been. Garry Randolph!