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Cat in a Red Hot Rage
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Cat in a
Red Hot
Rage
By Carole Nelson Douglas from Tom Doherty Associates
MYSTERY
MIDNIGHT LOUIE MYSTERIES
Catnap
Cat in a Kiwi Con
Pussyfoot
Cat in a Leopard Spot
Cat on a Blue Monday
Cat in a Midnight Choir
Cat in a Crimson Haze
Cat in a Neon Nightmare
Cat in a Diamond Dazzle
Cat in an Orange Twist
Cat with an Emerald Eye
Cat in a Hot Pink Pursuit
Cat in a Flamingo Fedora
Cat in a Quicksilver Caper
Cat in a Golden Garland
Cat in a Red Hot Rage
Cat on a Hyacinth Hunt
Midnight Louie’s Pet Detectives
Cat in an Indigo Mood
(anthology)
Cat in a Jeweled Jumpsuit
IRENE ADLER ADVENTURES
Good Night, Mr. Holmes
The Adventuress* (Good Morning, Irene)
A Soul of Steel* (Irene at Large)
Another Scandal in Bohemia* (Irene’s Last Waltz)
Chapel Noir
Castle Rouge
Femme Fatale
Spider Dance
Marilyn: Shades of Blonde (anthology)
HISTORICAL
ROMANCE
Amberleigh†
Lady Rogue†
Fair Wind, Fiery Star
SCIENCE
FICTION
Probe†
Counterprobe†
FANTASY
TALISWOMAN
Cup of Clay
Seed upon the Wind
SWORD AND CIRCLET
Six of Swords
Exiles of the Rynth
Keepers of Edanvant
Heir of Rengarth
Seven of Swords
* These are the reissued editions.
† Also mystery
Cat in a
Red Hot
Rage
A MIDNIGHT LOUIE MYSTERY
Carole Nelson Douglas
A Tom Doherty Associates Book
New York
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This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.
This novel has not been authorized or endorsed by the Red Hat Society.
CAT IN A RED HOT RAGE: A MIDNIGHT LOUIE MYSTERY
Copyright © 2007 by Carole Nelson Douglas
All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book, or portions thereof, in any form.
This book is printed on acid-free paper.
A Forge Book
Published by Tom Doherty Associates, LLC
175 Fifth Avenue
New York, NY 10010
www.tor.com
Forge® is a registered trademark of Tom Doherty Associates, LLC.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Douglas, Carole Nelson.
Cat in a red hot rage : a Midnight Louie mystery / Carole Nelson Douglas.
p. cm.
“A Tom Doherty Associates Book.”
ISBN-13: 978-0-765-31401-7
ISBN-10: 0-765-31401-0
1. Midnight Louie (Fictitious character)—Fiction. 2. Barr, Temple (Fictitious character)—Fiction. 3. Public relations consultants—Fiction. 4. Women cat owners—Fiction. 5. Cats—Fiction. Las Vegas (Nev.)—Fiction. I. Title.
PS3554.O8237 C27695 2007
813'.54—dc22
2006102854
First Edition: May 2007
Printed in the United States of America
0 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
For all the women whose zest for life and spirit of
survival and sisterhood never fades at any age,
whether they wear pink ribbons or red hats
or their hearts on their sleeves
Contents
Previously in Midnight Louie’s
Lives and Times . . .
Chapter 1: Last Seen Dead
Chapter 2: Limp Biscuit
Chapter 3: Riders of the Purple Rage
Chapter 4: Mr. Know-It-All
Chapter 5: Twist and Shout
Chapter 6: Louie Among the Sisterhood
Chapter 7: Fatal Flair
Chapter 8: Honorary Older Women
Chapter 9: No Kitting
Chapter 10: Mad Hattery
Chapter 11: Old Flame-Points
Chapter 12: Old Acquaintances
Chapter 13: The League of Extraordinary Gentlewomen
Chapter 14: Film Noir
Chapter 15: No Longer in Service
Chapter 16: Electra’s Larks
Chapter 17: Sob Sister, Soul Brother
Chapter 18: Vanishing Powder
Chapter 19: Ding-Dong Daddy
Chapter 20: Truth Has Consequences
Chapter 21: The Third Degree
Chapter 22: Midnight Madness
Chapter 23: Diamond Razzle Dazzle
Chapter 24: Bad Boy, Bad Boy, Whatcha Gonna Do?
Chapter 25: Hot Water and Cool Tequila
Chapter 26: Mr. Midnight Sings the Blues
Chapter 27: The Scene of the Climb
Chapter 28: Debate to the Death
Chapter 29: Lark to Lark?
Chapter 30: Mad as a Hatter
Chapter 31: E-mailed to Death
Chapter 32: Ms. Sherlock Strikes a Holmes Run
Chapter 33: Big Wheels
Chapter 34: Molina Mia!
Chapter 35: Hints and Intimations
Chapter 36: Loving Dangerously
Chapter 37: Electra Lite
Chapter 38: A Kick in the Karma
Chapter 39: Dangerous Curves
Chapter 40: Dead of Night
Chapter 41: Transportation
Chapter 42: Lost in Space
Chapter 43: Love and Hate: He Said, She Said
Chapter 44: Red Hot Mama
Chapter 45: Toodle Who?
Chapter 46: Sewed Up
Chapter 47: Mop-up Operation
Chapter 48: Knife Act
Chapter 49: Getaway
Chapter 50: A Paler Shade of Pink
Chapter 51: The Flirting Fontanas
Chapter 52: Ms. Apprehension
Chapter 53: Drop-Dead Red
Chapter 54: The Red Hat Rage Brigade
Chapter 55: Red Tide
Chapter 56: Crack Cocaine for Cats
Chapter 57: The Naked Truth
Chapter 58: Dude with Hattitude
Chapter 59: Curb Service
Chapter 60: A Fool and His Honey
Chapter 61: Footnotes
Chapter 62: A Dazzling Engagement
Chapter 63: Future Perfect
Chapter 64: You’ll Take Me Home Again, Kathleen
Tailpiece: Midnight Louie’s Deep Purple Mood
Tailpiece: Carole Nelson Douglas Foresees a Rosy Future
Cat in a
Red Hot
Rage
Previously in
&nb
sp; Midnight Louie’s
Lives and Times . . .
Crime, chicanery, and chicks are my beat.
I am a noir kind of guy, inside and out.
I admit it. I am a shameless admirer of the female of the species. Any species. Of course, not all females are dames. Some are little dolls, like my petite roommate, Miss Temple Barr.
The difference between dames and little dolls? Dames can take care of themselves, period. Little dolls can take care of themselves also but they are not averse to letting the male of the species think that they have an occasional role in the Master Plan too.
That is why my Miss Temple and I are perfect roomies. She tolerates my wandering ways. I make myself useful looking after her without letting her know about it. Call me Muscle in Midnight Black. In our time we have cracked a few cases too tough for the local fuzz of the human persuasion, law enforcement division. That does not always win either of us popularity contests, but we would rather be right there than on the sidelines when something crooked is going down. We share a well-honed sense of justice and long, sharp fingernails.
So when I hear that any major new attraction is coming to Las Vegas, I figure that one way or another my lively little roommate, the petite and toothsome, will be spike heel-high in the planning and execution. She is, after all, a freelance public relations specialist, and Las Vegas is full of public relations of all stripes and legalities. In this case, though, I did not figure just how personally she would be involved in murder with hattitude.
I should introduce myself: Midnight Louie, PI. I am not your usual gumshoe, in that my feet do not wear shoes of any stripe, but shivs. I have certain attributes, such as being short, dark, and handsome . . . really short. That gets me overlooked and underestimated, which is what the savvy operative wants anyway. I am your perfect undercover guy. I also like to hunker down under the covers with my little doll. My adventures would fill a book, and in fact I have several out. My life is one ongoing TV series in which I as hero extract my hapless human friends from fixes of their own making and literally nail crooks.
After the recent dramatic turn of events, most of my human associates are pretty shell-shocked. Not even an ace feline PI may be able to solve their various predicaments in the areas of crime and punishment . . . and PR, as in Personal Relationships.
As a serial killer finder in a multivolume mystery series (not to mention a primo mouthpiece), it behooves me to update my readers old and new on past crimes and present tensions.
None can deny that the Las Vegas crime scene is a pretty busy place, and I have been treading these mean neon streets for nineteen books now. When I call myself an “alphacat,” some think I am merely asserting my natural male and feline dominance, but no. I merely reference the fact that since I debuted in Catnap and Pussyfoot, I then commenced to a title sequence that is as sweet and simple as B to Z.
That is where I began my alphabet, with the B in Cat on a Blue Monday. From then on, the color word in the title is in alphabetical order up to the current volume, Cat in a Red Hot Rage.
Since I associate with a multifarious and nefarious crew of human beings, and since Las Vegas is littered with guidebooks as well as bodies, I wish to provide a rundown of the local landmarks on my particular map of the world. A cast of characters, so to speak:
To wit, my lovely roommate and high-heel devotee, Miss Nancy Drew on killer spikes, freelance PR ace MISS TEMPLE BARR, who had reunited with her elusive love . . .
. . . the once missing-in-action magician MR. MAX KINSELLA, who has good reason for invisibility. After his cousin SEAN died in a bomb attack during a post-high school jaunt to Ireland, he went into undercover counterterrorism work with his mentor, GANDOLPH THE GREAT, whose unsolved murder while unmasking phony psychics at a Halloween séance is still on the books . . . .
Meanwhile, Mr. Max is sought by another dame, Las Vegas homicide detective LIEUTENANT C. R. MOLINA, mother of teenage MARIAH . . .
. . . and the good friend of Miss Temple’s recent good friend, MR. MATT DEVINE, a radio talk-show shrink and former Roman Catholic priest who came to Las Vegas to track down his abusive stepfather, now dead and buried. By whose hand no one is quite sure.
Speaking of unhappy pasts, Miss Lieutenant Carmen Regina Molina is not thrilled that her former flame, MR. RAFI NADIR, the unsuspecting father of Mariah, is in Las Vegas taking on shady muscle jobs after blowing his career at the LAPD . . .
. . . or that Mr. Max Kinsella is aware of Rafi and his past relationship to hers truly.
In the meantime, Mr. Matt drew a stalker, the local lass that young Max and his cousin Sean boyishly competed for in that long-ago Ireland . . .
. . . one MISS KATHLEEN O’CONNOR, deservedly christened by Miss Temple as Kitty the Cutter. Finding Mr. Max impossible to trace, she settled for harassing with tooth and claw the nearest innocent bystander, Mr. Matt Devine . . .
. . . who is still trying to recover from the crush he developed on Miss Temple, his neighbor at the Circle Ritz condominiums, while Mr. Max was missing in action. He did that by not very boldly seeking new women, all of whom were in danger from said Kitty the Cutter.
In fact, on the advice of counsel, i.e., AMBROSIA, Mr. Matt’s talk-show producer, and none other than the aforesaid Lieutenant Molina, he had attempted to disarm Miss Kitty’s pathological interest in his sexual state by supposedly losing his virginity with a call girl least likely to be the object of K. the Cutter’s retaliation. Did he or didn’t he? One thing is certain: hours after their iffy assignation at the Goliath Hotel, said call girl turned up deader than an ice-cold deck of Bicycle playing cards. But there are almost forty million potential victims in this old town, if you include the constant come and go of tourists, and everything is up for grabs in Las Vegas 24/7: guilt, innocence, money, power, love, loss, death, and significant others.
All this human sex and violence makes me glad that I have a simpler social life, such as just trying to get along with my unacknowledged daughter . . .
. . . MISS MIDNIGHT LOUISE, who insinuated herself into my cases until I was forced to set up shop with her as Midnight Inc. Investigations, and who has also nosed herself into my long-running duel with . . .
. . . the evil Siamese assassin HYACINTH, first met as the onstage assistant to the mysterious lady magician . . .
. . . SHANGRI-LA, who made off with Miss Temple’s semi-engagement ring from Mr. Max during an onstage trick and has been seen since only in sinister glimpses . . .
. . . just like THE SYNTH, an ancient cabal of magicians that may deserve contemporary credit for the ambiguous death of Mr. Max’s mentor in magic, Gandolph the Great, not to mention Gandolph’s former onstage assistant as well as a professor of magic at the University of Nevada at Las Vegas.
Well, there you have it, the usual human stew, all mixed up and at odds with one another and within themselves. Obviously, it is up to me to solve all their mysteries and nail a few crooks along the way. Like Las Vegas, the City That Never Sleeps, Midnight Louie, private eye, also has a sobriquet: the Kitty That Never Sleeps.
With this crew, who could?
Chapter 1
Last Seen Dead
It is enough to break a guy’s heart . . .
. . . if a macho dude like me could ever admit to having one.
I sit, apparently calm and dignified, on the off-white sofa in the living room of what you could call my digs, my crib, my flat . . . okay, “our” condominium unit at Las Vegas’s only round five-story 1950s landmark, the Circle Ritz.
The round part you probably get. The Ritz part is a word that was chichi way-back-when in the mid-twentieth century and sounds more like a cracker nowadays. Although that cracker is indeed round.
But crackers can be easily crushed, and that is exactly what my esteemed roommate, Miss Temple Barr, would be if she knew what I knew: that her longtime squeeze, Mr. Max Kinsella, is pretty thoroughly crushed himself these days. In fact, I and my partner in crime solving saw him plunge five storie
s into a solid black wall thirty-six hours ago at the nightclub called Neon Nightmare. Talk about an apt name.
Miss Midnight Louise is my partner (and a would-be descendant in her own mind if only I would admit to being a deadbeat dad). She suspects that someone sinister had arranged Mr. Max’s unscheduled landing, from which he was taken away by ambulance.
Granted that performing bungee-cord acrobatics and illusions over a nightclub floor is a pretty dangerous pastime, but Mr. Max Kinsella had formerly been a top Vegas magic act under the name of The Mystifying Max.
What is so mystifying is why he was performing masked under the moniker of the Phantom Mage at Neon Nightmare. Not even his girlfriend—and mine—Miss Temple Barr, knew about it.
The lady in question ambles into the living room even as I muse about her. She is talking on one of those obnoxious cell phones that I wish had been drowned at invention in an acid bath. As if the world needed more distracted people wandering around forcing everyone to overhear the details of their professional and personal lives.
Overhearing all that stuff is my job!
However, it is sometimes handy to eavesdrop on one’s nearest and dearest, though in this instance it is more than somewhat heartbreaking.
“Max!” my Miss Temple admonishes the tiny instrument pressed to her ear. “Answer! Pick up the phone. You have got to be home sometime during one of my hundred and one calls. I’ve got to talk to you. Soon!”
She folds the already mouse-size phone in half and tosses it onto the sofa seat in disgust. Then she spots me and does her Cary Grant imitation: “Lou-ie, Lou-ie, Lou-ie.”
I do not know what ancient film that is from, but I never object to being associated with a leading man like Mr. Cary Grant, the twentieth-century equivalent of Mr. George Clooney in the suave department.
Miss Temple picks up the phone and sits beside me, glum as the holiday-hijacking Grinch.
“Louie, what am I to do with a man who won’t ever answer the phone, even when I’m going to dump him?”