“Gone?” he said, hearing himself sound honestly astounded forty minutes later.
His heart didn’t know whether to soar or sink.
So the able Dr. Schneider had gotten Max out of here. For what? Debriefing? Rescue mission? Laugh at that one. For . . . sex? Max had been attracted, as any man who wasn’t brain-dead would have been.
Was she a lure? Probably. He’d have to seriously investigate her past. Meanwhile, Max was free of the fatal injection, on the run in his plaster casts, with a woman whose motives could be anything from humanitarian to homicidal.
The old Max would have found out which in a heartbeat.
The new, disoriented Max . . . ? Aiyyyee!
Garry wished he had Max back in Las Vegas, where they only wished him dead.
Here, in Europe, they had ways of making Max wish he was dead.
Gossip Girls
It is only natural that sour should follow sweet.
Barely has Miss Satin’s fluffy tail vanished around the corner then Miss Midnight Louise’s nose peeks around the same corner.
“Having a secret tryst?” she inquires. “This is a cathouse, but—”
“Knock it off, sister. If you have as much solid information to report as Miss Satin, you will be doing very well.”
“An information exchange, eh?” Louise sits to wrap her tail around her paired front feet.
This demure pose does not fool me for a minute. She too has something hot to report, or she would not be so laid-back about Satin’s presence.
“The bridesmaids are not all sweet and sincere as well as demented,” she says.
“How so?”
“Once Miss Temple had finished questioning them, they broke into smaller gossip groups. Some of them have not just been tapping their toes waiting for the Fontana brothers to propose. A couple have been seeing other dudes.”
Well, knock me over with a peacock feather and fan me! Could Vegas’s most desirable bachelors be losing their magic touch? I hate to see a good footloose and fancy-free guy like me go down. Especially eight of them.
“Who has been two-timing our favorite suave swingers?”
“Speak for yourself,” Midnight Louise says. “Every Lothario must have his day of reckoning, including you. They were whispering about it, but no names were mentioned. Since Judith, Tracee, Evita, and Meredith were the ones whispering, I suppose that Jill, Alexia, Wanda, and Asiah are all suspects.”
I frown, knowing it gives me a mature, commanding appearance. “But a truly clever turncoat would be among the gos-sipers, pointing the finger at some innocent party.”
“So we are back to square one,” Louise says.
“Not necessarily. At least we know at least one is not on the up-and-up. You had better eavesdrop on them from now on.”
After Miss Midnight Louise leaves, none too happily, I sit and mull the puzzle pieces that are coming together. Madonnah had something to hide. So does a bridesmaid who is not really as upset about being unproposed-to as the other girls may think. Maybe such a disgruntled ex would want the brothers Fontana caught with their Berettas in a brothel.
Maybe there were two crimes in the offing tonight: Madon-nah’s death and the Fontanas being framed for it. It was only bad luck that the most innocent party, Mr. Matt Devine, should be cast in the role of prime suspect.
It is quiet up here, so I can think plenty, and my mind goes around and around the maypole without coming up daisies. Or whatever.
Then I hear a violent sneeze down the hall, and two seconds later a lean black form bolts around the corner and pastes itself against the wall.
Ma Barker’s ears are as flattened to her head as her whole form is to the floor. One might take her for a big grease spot. Her street skills are awesome.
I hear a nose being blown down the hall.
“Big lummox,” Ma says, sitting up and letting her scraggly hackles lie back down. “I figured he would never leave, so I had to goose him out of my way.”
“How did you manage that?”
“I scratched a snowstorm out of my hide and wafted it upward with my tail. Humans’ eyes close when they sneeze, you know. Only for a second, but that is all I needed to dash out and disappear.”
I am impressed by the Sneeze Diversion, but it would not work for me. My skin is not dry and flaky from years of street life in the desert heat. I can recommend a good anti-dandruff shampoo, but then Ma Barker would lose her edge, and the treatment smells bad.
“So what did you learn communing with the corpse?”
“Is that what you call it? The corpse was as mum as day-old bread. Starting to get a bit fragrant, though. Only to an expert nose. I am sure some of the forensic geeks on CSI: Las Vegas could tell us just which insect larvae was going wild in there.”
“Please, Ma. No gruesome speculations. I want hard evidence.”
“Not much to see in there, and too much to smell. I did detect the presence of lilac cologne. And I found the second fishnet stocking.”
“No! Where was it?”
“In the adjoining peep room.”
“No! That is even worse for Mr. Matt!”
“That is no skin off my nose, which has been skun by better than you. But I knew you would be distraught, so I dragged the item out and rolled it into a ball and put it under the bed.”
“That is evidence tampering.”
“I thought your Job One was to get this Devine guy off.”
“With evidence, not shenanigans.”
“There are no fingerprints to be found on fishnet anyway.”
“What about claw marks?”
She flashes her shivs and then retracts them nail-by-nail, smooth as a magician doing a baton roll through his fingers. “They call me the Hooded Claw in the ‘hood.”
Oh, great! That makes me Son of the Hooded Claw. Sounds like some cheesy old serial movie.
Fortunately, I have established a reputation for fine sleuthing as well as slicing fisticuffs in this town.
If the other fishnet stocking was in the murder room, they must have been worn by the dead woman, not an imported garrote, but a tool of opportunity. That looks like someone who came to the Sapphire Slipper tonight, unexpectedly ran into the victim, then did her in with her own intimate accessory.
Unfortunately, that theory makes the Fontana party and their scheming girlfriends and innocent ride-alongs all still the prime suspects.
Just Kidnapping
When Temple told Aldo she’d like to interview him alone in the Victorian boudoir, Kit raised an eyebrow.
Heck, the eyebrow almost jousted with her hairline.
“I’m looking for some context here,” Temple told the room, including a scowling Macho Mario and a thoughtful Matt. “Only the eldest will do. Of the brothers, that is,” she said quickly to shut Uncle Mario’s already open and about to object mouth.
Aldo rose, shot his jacket sleeves over his pristine white cuffs, paused to whisper in Kit’s ear at the parlor archway, then glanced into the kitchen.
“I may need a bodyguard to pass through that gauntlet of pissed-off girlfriends.”
The joke lessened the tension behind . . . and the dawning tension ahead as the girlfriends’ chatter became dead silence. They all broadcast an air of heightened interest as a Fontana brother crossed their sight line.
In the foyer, Aldo took a deep breath. “Everybody is twitchier than a Valentine’s Day Massacre trigger finger. Uncle Mario does all the talking for the family when things get tight.”
“It’s just me,” Temple said.
“Right now, ‘just you’ is our designated savior. Don’t fool yourself. The cops will be furious we kept quiet about the crime scene so you could play detective. We’re all in deep scaloppini.”
“But what a way to go,” Temple said as he followed her upstairs, kissing her fingers to the air like a chef. “Pasta, olive oil, and lots of sauce.”
“We may find all those ingredients in the Victorian Room upstairs.” While Temple tried n
ot to blush—racking her brains for any uses of pasta in kinky sex—although the olive oil and sauce she got, Aldo went on. “Why the Victorian Room?”
“I figured it wouldn’t be wired. None of them are supposed to be, but you never know. Recording would ruin the illusion. But I’m counting on you to check it out first.”
“Right. Wait here.”
Aldo slipping into the room’s saccharine pale blue décor resembled a white-clad black panther invading a froufrou shop. It took more than ten minutes, but he examined everything from four-poster canopy to carpet to furniture to walls and ceiling.
He stepped out into the hall to report.
“All is as ersatz, authentic Victorian as could be desired. No wires, no peepholes. So.” He folded his arms and eyed her with an arched eyebrow. “What did you really have in mind here?”
Temple grabbed his arm, ducked inside, and shut the door on them.
Aldo did not look worried. Nor did he look hopeful.
He didn’t have to. She would never even flirt with her aunt Kit’s guy.
“You’re right,” she said. “The police will tear this charade to pieces, making all of us look guilty and no doubt dragging every one of our names through the media. After my first round of interviews it’s becoming evident that, while there are a ton of suspects on the premises, there’s also plenty of room for outside skullduggery.”
“Outside as how? Sapphire Slipper employees?”
“First and foremost, yes. The place had to be reserved; that was a forewarning. The girlfriends think they were clever and that their designated caller sounded like an executive secretary making arrangements for a bunch of businessmen on a company-paid rampage, but it might well have sounded suspicious to the staff here. Then there’s the question of how these babes in the woods managed to subvert your regular Gangsters’ driver and take over.”
“That is odd.” Aldo pulled out his cell phone. Although it was as loath to connect up here as anybody’s, he could still examine his call lists and other information. “Ah. A new hiree was on last night. Marlon Gherken.”
“Could he have been planted?”
“Sure. The Gangsters’ manager runs the daily operation, not us. She’ll be the first person I talk to when we get back to Vegas.”
“She’ll?”
“Gangsters is an equal-opportunity employer,” Aldo said piously.
“Could she be a pal of one of these girlfriends?”
“All my brothers’ girls live and work in Vegas, some in the entertainment industry. That means they know a lot of the workforce here, casually or closely. Yeah. She could be related somehow. But why such an elaborate setup for one murder? I’d have to say that it was something on this end, the bordello, that made this murder happen here and now.”
Temple heaved a sigh and sat on the edge of the frilly feather bed. She fell backward into the linens like Alice in Wonderland into a flower soufflé. After Aldo hauled her upright again, she spit out an errant down feather.
“That’s what this scenario is,” she said, “feathers in the wind. We’re drowning in a miasma of details, and a pile of personalities, half of them strangers, and I can’t pin any one of them down.”
“Sit on this toy rocking horse here, you won’t sink into that.”
Temple followed Aldo’s advice, after removing a small black leather riding crop from the saddle. “Ick! I can’t stand cruelty to rocking horses. Aldo, I was crazy to think I could come out here to get Matt and Nicky off the hook. This case is going to rest on forensic evidence, and we just have to hope that killer left some.”
“Besides Matt and Nicky doing such a good job of that? CPR in a whorehouse. Way to go.”
“Aldo! The murder weapon was an article of clothing as common as cinnamon buns in a bakery to this scene. A fishnet stocking. Please!”
“That’s a little too pat,” he said. “You know it screams kinky sex crime.”
“You don’t think this was a sex crime, half-naked woman and all?”
“They’re all half-naked here. The guy clients too. Nah. I don’t like it. Why, I can’t say. That’s your job, Toots.”
“ ‘Toot, Toot, Tootsie, Good-bye,’ “ Temple quoted the title of the ragtime song. “Go back to the guys’ barroom and ask your brothers about the hiring of this Marlon Gherken. Who, when, and why. And have Electra send up the girlfriend who cops to setting up this event with the Sapphire Slipper and Gangsters. All I can do is follow the trail of the arrangements that made this Murder in Shades of Blue possible.”
He stood, shooting his sleeves again. No wonder the Fontana brothers’ clothing always looked smooth and sharp. They shook their coats like Big Cats shrugging off a nap. Temple admired the effect, but thought that being married to such an unselfconsciously self-conscious man would be tiring. Matt looked better ruffled, especially if she did it.
She sat back on the hard settee, curious to discover which insecure little witch would appear.
It was the endlessly upbeat Meredith Bell, lifestyle coach.
“Aren’t these rooms a hoot?” she asked on entering. “I mean, talk about cheesy fantasies.”
“Is that why you booked the place?”
“No. I booked the place because most of the legalized brothels are farther north, upstate. Lots of freelance ladies work Vegas, which has zillions of available hotel rooms for hanky-panky right on the Strip. Nobody needs to drive to a double-wide in the boonies to get his pathetic rocks off.”
“Apparently you thought the Fontana brothers did.”
“Did not! That was the fun part, taking the Romeos of Las Vegas Boulevard someplace tacky. It might remind them of what they were treating us like: modern conveniences, but not worth committing to. Guys today! With the sexual revolution, they have it all: women who love them and let them walk all over them.”
“Girls today seem to want their freedom too.”
“ ‘Seem to.’ Most women don’t do casual sex well, no matter what face they put on it. Who wants a come-and-go alley cat that can pick up all sorts of diseases, not to mention never show up again some day, when you can have a responsible resident house cat.”
Temple wasn’t going to delve into that one, with this woman or with Midnight Louie. “So why were you elected to call the brothel?”
“I deal with all sorts of people in my job. I’m good on phones, or in person. I’m . . . just convincing, I guess.”
Horrifyingly so, Temple thought. Why is it that people who guided other people were always so infuriatingly self-certain? Except for Matt, which was what made him the brilliant counselor he was. His own uncertainties showed through.
“How did the scam go?” Temple asked, settling into her uncomfortable corner of the settee.
Meredith, a woman who looked like she did daily yoga routines, didn’t even notice the harsh seating.
“Perfectly,” she said. “None of us know more about brothels than we could find on the Web, but I knew this place encouraged large parties and accepted exclusive reservations.”
“When did you make the reservation?”
“Ten days ago. I had to be sure to get the whole place to ourselves. Luckily a lot of their business is impromptu and Monday is a dead day and night. I just put on my executive assistant voice, gave ‘em the credit card number, and we were set. The Sapphire Slipper, and the Fontana brothers, were all ours for twenty-four delicious hours.”
“Whose credit card?”
Meredith straightened her spine and shook her silky blond ponytail. “Alexia had Eduardo’s. We thought the punishment should not only fit the crime, but underwrite it.”
“And what had Eduardo done to incur a three-thousand-dollar tab?”
“Let her see his credit card number when buying her some low-end sop to her self-respect.”
“Hmm,” said Temple, wanting to kick the smug Miss Bell in the supple shins. This juvenile scheme had put Matt in harm’s way. “What was this ‘low-end sop’?”
“A gold charm brace
let with all their little sweet nothings on it. A piano for the piano bar where they met, a fox for being ‘such a foxy lady,’ an Eiffel Tower for their first dinner together at the Paris, a gondola for the Venice, a peacock for the Crystal Phoenix rendezvous . . . I mean, a peacock, for God’s sake! Couldn’t he at least have found a real phoenix?”
Since the phoenix was a mythical beast, Temple thought a peacock made a good substitute. She also thought this particular peahen was a piss-poor substitute for a real girl.
“Actually,” Temple said, “most men I’ve seen wouldn’t spend that much time or thought or money on memorializing sweet nothings.”
“Aldo managed to come up with the real deal: a high-carat engagement ring. And for some strange woman out of left field.”
“That is my maternal aunt you’re talking about, and although she is a woman she is not strange, nor out of left field.”
“You know what I mean.”
Temple sighed. “Yes, I do. All you girls got poison-green jealous and decided to use the innocent excuse of Aldo’s engagement and forthcoming marriage to pursue your own grievances. Aldo’s significant other died. He was not only a free man, he was an unhappy one. Now he’s happy . . . or was, until you and your crew had to turn a genuinely joyous outing into a petty revenge weekend. And I guess you’re happy now that you messed up my fiance’s life and reputation. What’s an innocent bystander sacrificed here and there?”
“You can afford to get on your high horse. You’re engaged.”
“Fair and square,” Temple said. “No coercion, no kidnapping, no nuttiness involved. No setting anyone up for a murder rap.”
“We didn’t know what would happen! We had no idea someone would die. We were going to give the boys the naughty night of their lives. We were just kidding. Obviously.”
“Obviously, someone found your juvenile idea of ‘kidding’ via kidnapping the perfect backdrop for murder.”
Meredith’s relentlessly upbeat expression collapsed like a tissue-thin tent.
“You have to understand,” she said, upset. “In Nevada, brothels are these sort of slightly sleazy near-neighbors. All the girls were dying to see inside one without having to actually put out. Heidi Fleiss is even starting a Stud Farm for women up near Pahrump. Regular women are finally getting to do all the edgy stuff guys have done all the time. Going to a chicken ranch is supposed to be a harmless, fun thing. That’s what we thought we were getting into.”
Cat in a Sapphire Slipper Page 21
