Cat in a Red Hot Rage

by Carole Nelson Douglas

  Ouch.

  Would that stop Viking stock? No!

  Temple lifted her glass of Crystal Light and envisioned the recent computer graphic of Viking warriors chug-a-lugging from a dead enemy’s skull.

  “Skoal!”

  Chapter 54

  The Red Hat Rage Brigade

  My partner is still off on her own private crusade working the missing Mr. Max Kinsella case when it becomes clear from eavesdropping on the recent hullabaloo that my Miss Temple has plans to put her life in danger.

  I see her set the bait this morning and soon the word gets all around the convention. People come to gawk and spread even more word around. By the time all the conventioneers exit to attend the two simultaneous banquets tonight, Miss Temple’s bait will be left for someone bad to come sniffing around it.

  I expect her to be lying in wait, and I intend to be lying in wait with her, unbeknownst to her, of course. I am your unbeknownst go-to guy.

  What good will it do if Miss Midnight Louise finds Mr. Max alive and in the meantime Miss Temple has been offed? That is what you would call an ironic situation, although it is more of a moronic situation, in my opinion.

  I know it is up to me. As per usual. Because, of course, the Fontana litter are off seeing to Aldo and Miss Kit Carlson. Even the police are no longer hanging around here as much. The Red Hat ladies will be tuckered and tucked away for the night while visions of purple plums dance in their heads after the evening’s banquet.

  This being Las Vegas, plenty of patrons and hotel personnel are stirring on the Crystal Phoenix’s main floor, but the Red Hat Sisterhood’s public spaces are shut down.

  I realize I will need reinforcements before this case is over, but have nowhere to turn. The police are not expecting more mayhem on-site. The hotel security forces are top-notch, but they are only human.

  What is needed here is the superhuman sight and hearing of my kind. I am ready to gnaw my nails in frustration, except that I will need them later, when a bright idea occurs to me.

  It is not only fresh and exciting, but it will improve my status among the desirable ladies of my species.

  I dash through a moving parade of feet to the elevators. How convenient that I was hanging about the lobby when the first convention-goers arrived, for I then burned a particular suite number into my inboard memory device.

  The first carload only takes me a few floors up before emptying. I prance with impatience waiting for another elevator to stop where I have been marooned. Several stop, because I have leaped repeatedly at the call button until it depresses. I hang out of sight behind a cigarette butt stand while riders grouse about thoughtless people who call the elevator, then decide to walk and leave the doors opening on nothing.

  Oh contraire, grousers! It is actually a very thoughtful feline who has summoned you to this floor. I wait until a car opens that is crammed with people yet to disembark, for I seek the hotel’s top floor. Too bad the particular guest I seek is not top-drawer to match!

  Of course, I must time my leap aboard to the second. While they are all craning their necks looking left and right down the hall, I slip among their pant legs, trying not to brush my softly furred sides against any sensitive bare female gams. (Not for personal reasons, of course. Normally, I am only too happy to massage female gams. Here, however, I am trying to remain undercover as well as underfoot.)

  It is my good luck that only one highly intoxicated (a redundancy, I fear) gentleman remains aboard when we arrive at the top floor containing the suites.

  I follow his lurching path out of the car onto purple plush carpet.

  I was blending into the bellman’s dark pant legs four days ago when I heard him instructed to take Miss Savannah Ashleigh’s gaudy luggage cart to the Baccarat Suite.

  Knowing the Crystal Phoenix layout from my days as house detective here, I leave the amiable sot playing with his room key card outside his quarters and speed to the address in question. And they say we cannot be trained!

  Something also in question is whether Miss Savannah is in residence at the moment or not. Although the time is late, past my namesake hour, it would best serve my emergency plan for her to be making merry elsewhere right now.

  I scratch softly low on the door.

  In an instant I am answered by the snare-drum scritch of delicate pads on paint.Pads, plural. Both Ashleigh sisters are awake and ready to rock!

  It is true that I and the Supine Yvette, formerly known as the Divine Yvette, are on the outs, but Solange is still in my little black book. Okay, my large black book.

  I can stomach the snobby Supine Yvette if the Benign Solange is in the picture.

  I hiss under the door that they need to unlock it.

  They plead the deadlock and the safety chain.

  I ask if they have a pipe access door in the bathroom.

  After a few minutes, Solange reports that they do, but that Yvette’s tail has become caught in the opening.

  Manx! If I had been installed in a penthouse suite, my first piece of business would have been checking the air-conditioning and plumbing systems for egress. A dude always needs a back door.

  But what can you expect from Persians? They are not exactly designed for street smarts. On the other mitt, they are sublimely designed for other purposes.

  Speaking of the Sublime Solange, she is hissing at me under the door that there is another interior door at two-jumps level in the bathroom.

  I sit down and think. I always think better sitting down, without pressure on my footpads.

  Of course, all Las Vegas knows the Crystal Phoenix as a very classy hotel. It was classy before the many new mega hotels made a conscious effort to spend millions on high-end art collections. In fact, the powers that be along the Strip (and there are a lot of them) are eager to disavow the place’s gangster history.

  But you can’t keep a good hood down. Or a good ’hood.

  Rumor has it that one obscure room dating back to the Bugsy Siegel era can still be found at the Flamingo Hilton. Bugsy, of course, built the first Flamingo and began the dot on an empty map’s evolution into Billionaire’s Row.

  And here at the Crystal Phoenix, room 711 is still decorated with the forties flair popular in the day of its founder, Jersey Joe Jackson. They say when he lost his fortune he lived on in that small suite. They say he still lives on there in the dust motes that take human shape from time to time.

  Me, I like to use the place for siestas. The hotel never rents it. And I may have seen a ghost there while in the twilight state between dreaming and waking up.

  Right now I’m daydreaming about how this hotel used to be the Joshua Tree when Jersey Joe founded it. How it sat deserted and ruined until Nicky Fontana came along with mondo millions of clean dough from his grandma’s pasta empire and remade the place with the help of an imported little hotel marketing doll named Van von Rhine.

  Of course, since then the Phoenix has been redone inside and out, and added onto up, down, and sideways. But its functional core is the old Joshua Tree, with its then-fancy “futuristic” features.

  One comes to mind just when I need it. I seem to recall that it has a central vacuum system for cleaning.

  No. I am not contemplating sending the Ashleigh sisters down a central vacuum system. That would be cruel, although speedy. And it would really wreak havoc with their hairdos.

  However, I also recall from my early prowls of the premises when I was house detective, the old Joshua Tree had a system of linen handling that involved that old-fashioned, low-tech approach of . . . laundry shoots.

  Two jumps up. I guess that even the pampered Ashleigh sisters could manage that if motivated. One waiting to bat the hinged door open while the other leaps through; one to perch on the sink surround and open the door manually (mittually?) and leap through after the first has gone.

  It will take acrobatics not usual to short-legged Persians. It will take cooperation between sisters of a different color. It will take massive persuasion from Midni
ght Louie, perhaps with a soupçon of disinformation.

  But my dear associate’s life is at stake, and species loyalty is worth two tins of sardines and a catnip spray can, under the circumstances.

  I need reinforcements below, pronto! (To quote the Fontana brothers.) Fire in the hatch! Even if it’s a pair of furious felines!

  I instruct Solange on how to get her and Yvette launched. I tell them that they will land on Cloud Nine.

  And then I race back to the elevators, leap to hit the down button, and hope for the best.

  Chapter 55

  Red Tide

  Temple’s connections at the Crystal Phoenix got her easy and secret access to a passkey that allowed her to sneak back into the locked ballroom housing the Red Hat stores.

  Nicky Fontana had not been crazy about her doing that, but she explained that she wanted to search the premises without anyone, including Van, knowing.

  She told him a small but reasonable lie about smuggling via the shops might explain Oleta’s death, if not the attempt on Elmore’s life. She didn’t want, she said, to embarrass the hotel and the Red Hat Sisterhood if her suspicions were wrong.

  Nicky recognized that as a noble and necessary motive.

  So she’d tucked her blond hair under a big red hat resting atop a red-knit turban and had donned huge gold circle earrings. This was not a Temple Barr look. It was more a mini-Carmen Miranda look.

  That 1940s Latina entertainer had worn towers of fake fruit on her head. Temple had settled for red chiffon roses and ostrich feathers nestled in veiling. She also resorted to red running shoes in another effort at disguise. It had worked: the mirror told her she resembled a walking crimson mushroom with a very lavish cap.

  Nobody glanced at her twice as she left the bathroom off the lobby and headed toward the ballroom areas. Red Hat ladies had been sweeping past en masse en route to the big dinner events at both the Phoenix and the neighboring Goliath. She was just a late-goer. While half the Red Hat Sisterhood attended a program and banquet in the Phoenix’s Crystal Court ballroom, the other half made merry at the Goliath Hotel across the Strip.

  The Hatorium Emporium ballroom had doors on three sides, one set far down a dark hall abutting the hotel’s cavernous service and kitchen areas. Temple unlocked the padlock and chains with no witnesses. Any Marley’s Ghost clanking sounds she made were masked by the loud muffled sounds of stage announcements and laughter coming from the hotel’s huge central ballroom.

  She knew better than to shut the slightly open door behind her. These things could make terrific thumps, as convention-goers who try to sneak out of boring presentations find out. She often wondered if that was meant to keep people inside.

  Once she slipped inside the ballroom, she paused to orient herself.

  This place was not on anyone’s most-wanted list for the evening. The demonstration stages circling the room stood empty and still. The ballroom was silent, as it should be. Yet the air-conditioning gave it the look of a deserted dressing room. All the dozens and dozens of racks of hats and clothes trembled in the interior breeze, especially with so much of it feathered.

  So the room seemed occupied, anyway, by a mute congregation of twitchy wearing apparel. Temple felt a bit twitchy too.

  She’d promised everyone from Matt to Kit to Nicky to Detective Alch to avoid risks. But the Red Hat Sisterhood would be flowing out of Las Vegas in a giant Red Tide starting tomorrow. And with them might go a murderer.

  That would leave Electra to take the blame for the death of Oleta and the attempted murder of Elmore Lark. Temple didn’t know if a prosecutor could get a conviction, but she didn’t want the matter to come to trial so they all could find out. Despite the offer of Macho Mario’s personal defense attorney, Temple did not trust in law and order to resolve these crimes.

  So she’d do what none of the people closest to her would understand or approve. But Max would.

  If you want to catch a crook, you don’t need a crook. You just need some high-profile bait. And it wasn’t her, for a change. She was just here to hide and watch.

  Because there it was. Her bait. By the light of the ballroom’s red exit signs (a rather chilling sight) and the low-level security lights still on in the ceiling high above, Temple glimpsed the giant-size piece of cheese she’d placed in the ballroom this morning. Surely a human-size rat couldn’t resist trying to take it tonight.

  It was Oleta’s lost hatbox that had been stored in the conference room. Its top was mounded high again with computer paper, redecorated and glued. Under that carpet of lavender net roses, lay . . . blank sheets.

  That morning Temple, in red hat and heels, had noisily donated it to the booth to raise money for a memorial for Oleta. Everyone could buy chances to win it, and Temple had announced she’d filled the hatbox with ten-dollar bills. She bought fifteen five-dollar chances to start the hatbox rolling.

  Of course, all the folks at the stages surrounding the booths had paused in their glamour photos, hairpiece displays, and makeup hawking to announce the “Oleta Lark Memorial Hatbox” prize over their mikes.

  At noon luncheons at both the Phoenix and Goliath, Temple was introduced by Her Royal Hatness herself as a “generous donor” of a “magnificently decorated personal hatbox” belonging to “our late beloved sister so brutally taken from us.”

  Nothing like murder and lavender net roses to stir up a crowd.

  Now, Temple was willing to bet, someone would be slinking into the closed ballroom to “win” the prize before anyone else could. Someone who suspected it might contain what Temple had found: Oleta’s complete manuscript, not worthy of publishing, not full of clues to her murder, but perhaps inadvertently able to draw out an insecure murderer.

  Temple eyed the situation. She decided high ground would help her spot a sneak thief in the semidark. Tiptoeing on her rubber-soled and well-named sneakers, she climbed the four steps to a demonstration area that would permit her to watch the hatbox booth from a height.

  A nearby mannequin dressed in full feather was perfect to hide behind. She got into place, then eyed the area she’d chosen. Lots of clothes and hats hung on racks up here too. A table, empty now, sat in front of a folding screen.

  Temple couldn’t decide what this booth hawked, besides the clothing. Didn’t matter. At least it provided a dummy to hide behind. Even better were the curtains behind it. She retreated farther, sticking her head out of the part in the curtains.

  No sooner had she settled down to wait than she heard something move. Clothing brushing, feet shuffling. The sound wasn’t coming from the distant, locked ballroom doors. It was coming amid the rows of booths.

  Oh. An intruder wouldn’t be able to beg or borrow a security passkey from the hotel owner. An intruder would have to hide, like Temple, and wait until the room was empty.

  Had the intruder heard Temple arrive? Get into place? She’d been quiet about it. The stealthy sounds continued, micelike rustles anybody else would dismiss. The stealth made Temple think the person hadn’t heard or spotted her presence.

  Temple didn’t want to lose her vantage point, but she hunkered down farther behind the standing female mannequin. Those things were always six feet tall with linebacker shoulders, anyway. They could conceal three Temples, four on a day when she wasn’t wearing high heels. Like today. Tonight.

  Her retreating back heel hit something narrow but hard. She craned her neck backward. Just a glint of light off the metal legs of a light plastic chair. Another mannequin was sitting there, all dressed up with no place to go. Too bad. Temple could have sat on that chair and watched in comfort.

  Ooh. A shadowy figure was moving behind the boas in Oleta’s booth.

  Temple crouched lower, this time brushing the mannequin’s shod foot. The sole slid out of place a bit, making that telltale sandy drag that you hear in a soft-shoe routine.

  In this big empty ballroom, it sounded like a spurt of sound from a chain saw.

  Temple gritted her teeth and held perfectly
still.

  Then she glanced back at the betraying shoe, finally realizing where she’d chosen to hide.

  This was a Red Hat Sisterhood onstage demonstration vignette. The Red Hat Sisterhood colors were red and purple, with a tad of lavender and pink, shades that were discernible in the twilight of the distant security lights.

  This shoe was . . . green.

  A six-inch-high green platform espadrille.

  Temple’s hand reached to check out the mannequin’s ankle and calf. Nothing personal.

  It was, as expected, cold and hard and stiff.

  She lit her micro-flashlight to briefly illuminate the model’s face before snapping it off.

  That face had been cold and hard and stiff.

  As in life, actually. Only it was dead now.

  Temple felt the same deadly chill in her bones.

  Damn! Her prime suspect for the murder sat there murdered herself. In fact, her dead body was perfectly placed to keep watch with Temple while the real murderer went for Temple’s bait a hundred feet across the room.

  Temple couldn’t think of anything to do but flash her pinpoint light over the moving figure. And scream bloody murder.

  Maybe announcing hers. Because who, besides Nicky, had she notified of her scheme that was anywhere around to hear? No one.

  She’d always known this was a hat-brained idea that everyone would ridicule, and now it might prove fatal.

  On the other hand, this room was one big overstocked clothes closet, and the perfect place to play hide-and-seek until help came. If it did.

  Chapter 56

  Crack Cocaine for Cats

  My sharp ears have been awaiting the signal.

  Yvette and Solange are still panting with suspense behind me.

  The suspense that has them panting was landing in the giant hotel linen cart at the bottom of the fourteenth-floor laundry shoot. Neither had been on a theme park ride before. Neither understood that such a speedy exit down two stories to a central gathering station was the ride of a lifetime. That people paid for such thrills and repeated them regularly, even religiously.