“Yvette! You’re covered with common turkey feathers! And Solange! I thought you were missing. Mummy was so distraught.”
The overdone actress squealed with a strange combination of delight and distaste when two put-upon officers lifted an overexcited Yvette and Solange into each of her beseeching arms. Then all four clawed feet windmilled, slashing their mistress’s clothes. Savannah began shrieking again. For real.
Louie was no longer making like a wreath around Temple’s ankles; he probably had other things to attend to, as did she, and had vanished into the crowd of onlookers.
Temple sleepwalked to the hotel entrance, numbed by the unexpected death and the spectacular public failure of her attempt to set a hatbox trap for a murderer. Elmore Lark looked like a vain jerk for falling for her stupid stunt, but if just being in the ballroom after hours made someone Natalie’s murderer, then Temple herself was a prime suspect.
She was so puzzled and upset she wondered if she was up to driving her Miata home.
Outside the hotel the air was hot and still, like warm soup, despite the late hour. The parking valets were inside gawking at Elmore Lark’s debut as a Red Hat Sister in drag.
Then a low black car purred under the porte cochere and paused. The passenger door opened. A pale-clad arm and an inviting baritone suggested she needed a ride home.
Temple fell into the leather seat.
She sat speechless, thinking, watching the lights of the Strip speed by like long, electric strands of neon taffy.
Chapter 58
Dude with Hattitude
A gentleman always escorts his ladies home for the night.
I am pleased that my Miss Temple recognizes that my first allegiance is to my species, especially to the vixen-clawed hellcats who took down the individual who fell into her hatbox trap.
Imagine. A fully grown human male tripped up by a hatbox and a pair of Persian Mixmasters. Do I know how to pick my associates, or what?
Unfortunately, Miss Savannah Ashleigh comes to her senses as she enters the elevators and notices my presence.
“Out, you foul alley cat!” she screams. “My poor darlings have blood all over their enameled nails, thanks to you, some of it mine! Out, out, damn inkspot!”
I have never been dismissed in such Shakespearean terms before, so I pause to preen while the elevator doors close and sever me for the nonce from my little razor-nailed fluff puffs. Well, for the night, at least.
But, never fear, sharp-edged femme fatales are never far from Midnight Louie’s front, rear, or side view.
“Some excitement at the Crystal Phoenix!” Midnight Louise notes from behind me. “While I am absent following up on your roommate’s affairs, you manage to turn a whole division of the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department loose in my hotel.”
I turn, quickly smoothing my ruffled bib. “I was only discovering another murder victim and unmasking a transgender impostor. All should be hunky dory and the usual peaceful by morning.”
Louise sits, shaking her head. “How unfortunate that restraining orders do not apply to rogue male cats.”
Hmm. I rather like that “rogue male” soubriquet. Reminds me of an elephant. Something big and imposing and good at crushing impediments.
“Do not get your whiskers in a self-congratulating twist. You can tell me what you think went down here later. I have news from the front.”
I swallow. Above all, I am my Miss Temple’s sworn defender. I know that she remains perplexed by the absence of her former beloved. She does not like to leave any mysteries unsolved, particularly her own.
“Yes, Louise?”
“That house might be a police department training course. When I returned for another exploration, I found that since the dustup with Miss Lieutenant C. R. Molina there, another person has been on the premises. In fact, two.”
“This is interesting.”
“One is an apparent insurance investigator. He was rather like you: middle-aged, short, somewhat overweight, otherwise nondescript.”
“I say, Louise—”
“The other was like me: smooth, silent, slick, and, lamentably, unlike me. Also a human male.”
“This is all you have to report?”
“The first man came by day. The second by night. The first I do not know from Asphodel. The second I have seen with Miss Lieutenant C. R. Molina.”
“Detective Alch?”
“No.”
I am forced to wrack my brain, which is pretty wrecked by now. “I cannot guess. Like yourself, Miss Lieutenant Molina does not have a lot of friends of the male persuasion.”
Louise taps a foreclaw on the marble tile of the floor. It makes a sharp, impatient sound.
“Anyway,” I say. “I have no time to sit around luxury hotels and speculate. Ma Barker’s gang is back at the Circle Ritz, wondering where their headwaiter is. I need to get home to feed the homeless. Chef Song here at the hotel wouldn’t have any tidbits suitable for starving relatives?”
She hisses at me. “You know that Chef Song does not do takeout. I will return with you to the Circle Ritz and help you distribute nuggets of your unwanted Free-to-Be-Feline to your poor relations.”
That is not exactly how I would describe my charitable endeavors, but at least I will have company back to the Circle Ritz, where my Miss Temple is no doubt breathlessly awaiting my company and insights. Or maybe I mean Mr. Matt’s company.
Chapter 59
Curb Service
Ralph, the youngest Fontana brother next to Nicky, was just as dreamy-looking as the rest, but somehow his all-American name didn’t convey the same mystique.
However, he was every bit as eager to oblige, which is an excellent thing in a man.
After dropping her off at the Circle Ritz, he promised to return shortly.
Temple had barely trundled upstairs, changed into a bell-bottomed jumpsuit, ditched the red headgear, and settled down again with Oleta’s manuscript, when her doorbell rang.
Ralph awaited without, bearing equipment. She could run the DVD disc on her computer, but wanted to see the video on the bigger living-room TV screen. In no time he’d replaced her outdated VCR (that only Max had heretofore managed to program with a bit of magic). Then he ran her through the new DVD player’s workings, particularly the pause, fast forward, and reverse. Finally, he opened the hideously expensive bottle of wine he’d brought, poured the first glass, and put the bottle on a coaster on the coffee table.
Oh, and made a bag of popcorn in the microwave.
A Fontana Brothers Production was nothing if not thorough.
Assured that Temple wanted for nothing (besides a murderer with a cast-iron motive), he bowed and left.
To read or just sit back and watch? That was the modern Hamlet’s dilemma.
She and Matt were a new couple. There was no tacit plan to spend their nights together either here or there. Temple, on her own for more than two years, preferred suspense to habit by now. Max had trained her well for his unexplained absences.
Except this one. Was Molina right? Had he been the Phantom Mage? He hadn’t missed a beat when dealing with the White Russian exhibition acrobatics. He seemed in peak form. Something may have gone wrong, but Temple couldn’t saddle her new relationship with worries about an ex-boyfriend.
She sipped the wine, turned down the lights, and ran Natalie’s secret recording, a notebook on the sofa arm, roller-ball pen in hand. The manuscript would be next.
Chapter 60
A Fool and His Honey
Temple woke up with daylight oozing through the sheer curtains on the French doors to the balcony.
A set of those doors were ajar and a trail of Free-to-Be-Feline nuggets—like large, army-green ants—were marching from there to the kitchen. Or vice versa.
“Louie?”
The protesting meow came from the other side of the couch. Louie was coiled there like a furry snake, his one open green eye looking very annoyed.
“I guess you had a big nigh
t last night too,” she admitted, patting his head.
He barely restrained a hiss.
On the other hand, his access to the Ashleigh girls had been suddenly cut off.
“I didn’t get any last night, either,” she consoled him.
Oddly, this didn’t seem to console Midnight Louie. He yawned to show his fangs and tongue, then licked his whiskers.
“More food? You’ve been going through that Free-to-Be-Feline like there’s no tomorrow lately.”
He jumped down to the floor, then stalked to the kitchen, where he turned and glared accusingly at her.
Temple pushed herself up from the corner she’d been curled into and went to open another ten-pound bag. What was going on here? Louie would soon be the size of Nero Wolfe.
While she was up, Temple poured and drank a glass of milk, then dribbled the dregs over the Free-to-Be-Feline.
Louie remained bowed over the bowl, but only making the occasional crunching sound. No wonder he was full! He’d been through three bags of it in the last week.
With him taken care of, Temple went to shower, sharpen her brain, and gather her evidence for a fast trip to the LVMPD Crimes Against Persons unit.
Did she have a crime scenario for them! All thanks to Oleta’s manuscript, Natalie’s film, and Fontana brother wine.
Luckily, nice Detective Alch was in when she phoned, although he was sure it was unnecessary to see her.
“I have physical evidence as well as theories,” she said.
“You’ve been holding something back from the police?” Nice Detective Alch was sounding sharp.
He’d been looking frazzled lately, come to think of it. Molina must be riding the rag. Okay, that was sexist. Shame on Temple! But she felt no rules of politically correct behavior applied when it came to her, and Max’s, archenemy.
“Have you still got Elmore Lark in custody?” she asked.
“No. We don’t have any crime scene evidence connected to the murder of Natalie Newman, aka Markowitz, and we don’t have any on Oleta Lark.”
“But Elmore nearly killed himself trying to make Electra look guilty.”
“We don’t have enough evidence on her either. And Elmore Lark is an obvious loon, dressing up in that crazy drag outfit to pursue your obvious trap of the hatbox. This whole case is laughable.”
“But any other possible suspects are leaving town with the convention.”
“We’re not closing the case. We just don’t have one on anybody yet.”
Temple decided arguing with the police was a lost cause. She made her good-byes and hung up. She had a feeling something was distracting Alch these days. Maybe a personal problem.
At least Electra wasn’t in danger of imminent arrest, but she wasn’t completely cleared either.
Maybe it was time for the Red-Hatted League to take matters into their own hats and swing into action.
Six hours later, Temple and Electra and the core Red-Hatted League members were hunkered down in a minivan way too new for the Araby Motel parking lot. They’d had a lot of fun wetting down the dust in a vacant lot and throwing handfuls at the vehicle until it acquired a disreputable patina.
They were all wearing scruffy clothes anyway, jeans and faded velour jogging suits saved as car-washing rags. Temple even had white tennis shoes on.
The older women were the utter opposite of their gaudy, glitzy Red Hat selves.
Except for Starla. Her lips and nails were a fresh, gleaming crimson color. She was out of her Red Hat Sisterhood red and purple, but poured into denim glitz: low-rise rhinestone-decorated jeans and matching jacket, low-cut white T-shirt featuring a sequined image of a sexy cowgirl on a bucking bronco horse.
Her frankly bleached blond hair was sprayed into a hussy hive of bedhead waves and her painted red toenails peeked out from strappy hooker-high heels.
She was “strappy” someplace else: in the recording wire taped to her torso. The ex-bounty hunter had all the right equipment for going undercover, if not under the covers, with Elmore Lark.
“It’s wonderful you know how to get wired,” Electra commented.
“When you’re a bounty hunter,” Darla explained, “sometimes you gotta surprise ’em, or ambush ’em. And sometimes you gotta trick ’em.” She heaved her breasts higher in the tight T-shirt, giving the cowgirl a potent buck. “And sometimes you gotta seduce ’em.”
“In Elmore’s case,” Electra said fervently, “I’m glad you gotta do that, not me. But I can hear every word in the van, right?”
“You all can. Ole Elmore is not only gonna be recorded, he’s gonna be broadcast live. You think that anonymous bottle of Johnnie Walker we sent over four hours ago has done the trick?” she asked Electra.
“He and Johnny must be bosom buddies by now. He was never a drinker, but he never had this much pressure.”
“I just hope he hasn’t passed out,” Temple said.
“If he has, these’ll wake him up. When high-tech equipment lets you down, the low-tech equipment never fails.” Boosting her boobs again, Starla tested the spandex in her jeans by leaving the van, then minced across the hot parking lot to one of the ground-floor doors.
Temple slid the van door closed as soon as Starla’s last spike heel was out of the way. That quick glance around showed an abandoned lot, except for two bejeaned guys with scruffy dark jaws working a junker sixties Impala blistered with Las Vegas sun psoriasis.
Starla’s knuckles were hitting a faded, painted door. “Y’all in there, honey? I’m that friend of Johnny’s.”
Starla turned to wink at the van a moment before the door opened and she vanished inside.
“What do you hope Starla will get out of Elmore?” Electra asked as she and Judy and Phyll and Mary Lou hunkered down beside Temple by the radio receiver. An attached recorder was taping away.
“Bragging. Unguarded answers. I prepped her on where to lead the conversation. Shh! We’re rolling.”
“Sit down, honey,” came Elmore’s smarmy voice. “Bed’s fine. This dump hasn’t got a chair you could put more’n a wastebasket on without breaking, and you’ve got a bod born to break beds, if you don’t mind my sayin’ so. So you sent me this nice full bottle of whiskey! What was the ‘Congratulations’ note for? When did you join my fan club, which is purty low on applicants lately?”
“I just thought you got a raw deal. I don’t like dames who kiss and tell. That Oleta deserved having her neck wrung.”
There was a clink of glass on glass. “I’m glad,” came Elmore’s slurred voice, “I’da hoped the person who sent me this would show up. I left a little Johnny for you to have some. I ain’t got anything personal against Oleta. Or didn’t, that is. And I wasn’t the one wrung her neck, that’s for sure. She just was causing me a bucket of problems with that ‘memoir’ thing and all those e-mails calling me every kind of whipsnake there ever was on earth.”
“Hurts a man’s pride,” Starla prodded.
“Pride, heck! Coulda flattened my pocketbook.”
“Couldn’t have hurt that much, judging by this place.”
“Hell, this is jest a hideout. Doesn’t mean I ain’t got a wad or a lot of ’em up north in Reno. Or maybe something big comin’ in. Doesn’t mean I can’t take a hot little number like you out for a real big night on the town. What’s yer name again, honey?”
“Starla.”
“Now ain’t that purty? Almost as purty as Mr. Walker here, he is some flash dude, huh? I kin be a flash dude, too, when I wanta be. What can you be?”
“A lot of fun, honey.”
“Waal, my little sweet potato, you sure are cinched in tight to all those sparkly clothes. Maybe I can help ease up the bindings under your saddle blanket.”
“That old lech,” Electra fumed. “He wasn’t any hot stuff when he was thirty years younger.”
“Viagra,” Judy said, rolling her eyes. “Makes a man into a blowhard.”
“First,” Starla said over the wire, “I gotta make sure you won’t throttle m
e accidentally in your sleep.”
“Nah. I never throttled anything lately but this bottle. I was mad at Oleta, but I never woulda killed her.”
The women in the van exchanged glances. This wasn’t the damning confession they needed.
Temple leaned forward. “Go, Starla! Push it.”
“You were hanging around the convention with the Black Hat Brotherhood,” Starla prodded. “You must have wanted something from her, or you’d have stayed away.”
“I asked her to can the memoir crap. Nicely.”
“And she said?”
“Never.”
“You sure you didn’t kill her to stop her?”
“I didn’t have to, honey. Someone else did it for me.”
“Your non-ex-wife, Electra.”
“Don’t you call her that! Everybody’s claimin’ to be my ex or my current or my soon-to-be. A guy gets tired of that. His past trailin’ after him blightin’ his future. I wished they’d all jest go away.”
“If Electra had been charged with Oleta’s death, that would have happened.”
“Yup. But that didn’t happen.”
“Elmore sounds real regretful about that,” Electra commented sarcastically.
“Stop that, you naughty thing!” Starla said, giggling. “I’ll have a tad more scotch.”
“Me too,” Elmore said.
Glasses clinked again.
“This is soooo sleazy,” Phyll commented enthusiastically. “It’s like on TV.”
“Soap opera or cop show?” Judy asked.
“Maybe both.”
“Shhh!” Temple said. “Sleazy” wouldn’t help solve the murders.
“What about that woman who was taping the events?” Starla probed between giggles. “She was dead in that chair in the stores area when you were making like a female impersonator. What on earth made you even try that?”
“Oleta’s stupid ‘Hat Heaven’ booth. See, she’d always fancied herself a writer. Liked to play with words. When that ‘lost’ hatbox showed up and went out for all to see, I spotted that it was the only hatbox she’d ever had with a mounded top. That was all wrong. See, women stack those things. Oleta had one closet all with stacked hatboxes inside. You don’t make the tops mounded.”
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