Cat in a Vegas Gold Vendetta Read online

  For all the warm-hearted, caring people who take in homeless cats and work tirelessly in animal rescue

  Contents

  Title Page

  Dedication

  Previously in Midnight Louie’s Lives and Times …

  Chapter 1: Temple Barr, PI

  Chapter 2: A Very Feral Fellow

  Chapter 3: Violets Are Blue

  Chapter 4: Dead Last

  Chapter 5: House Warming

  Chapter 6: Home, Sweat Home

  Chapter 7: Strangers in the Night

  Chapter 8: Dry-Gulched

  Chapter 9: What a Lousy Lot

  Chapter 10: Gathering Vultures

  Chapter 11: Crime’s Her Cup of Tea

  Chapter 12: Return Engagement

  Chapter 13: She Spat, He Spat

  Chapter 14: She Said, He Said

  Chapter 15: The Trojan Men

  Chapter 16: Social Catworking

  Chapter 17: Up for Grabs

  Chapter 18: Unlikely Bedfellows

  Chapter 19: Shock and Awesome

  Chapter 20: Set ’Em Up, Max

  Chapter 21: The Cactus Garden Cha-Cha

  Chapter 22: All Dolled Up

  Chapter 23: Break Dancing

  Chapter 24: Maxed to Death

  Chapter 25: Wait for The Midnight Hour

  Chapter 26: Yves of Destruction

  Chapter 27: Lies and Alibis

  Chapter 28: Home Invasion

  Chapter 29: Big Pussycats Have Sharp Ears

  Chapter 30: Boys’ Night Out

  Chapter 31: Every Silver Cloud …

  Chapter 32: The Key to Rebecca

  Chapter 33: In the Hot Sauce

  Chapter 34: Pooling Resources

  Chapter 35: Candle in the Wind

  Chapter 36: The French Resistance

  Chapter 37: Prime-Time Tail

  Chapter 38: Rafi, with Fries, to Go

  Chapter 39: Living Doll

  Chapter 40: Boxing Day

  Chapter 41: Convoy: Beware of Bears

  Chapter 42: Little Girl Lost

  Chapter 43: Goldilocks Boxed

  Chapter 44: Away All Cats!

  Chapter 45: Showdown at the Shrine

  Chapter 46: Burned Out

  Chapter 47: Four-Posters and Postmortems

  Chapter 48: A Black Mood

  Chapter 49: All’s Swell That Ends Swell

  Chapter 50: Done and Gone

  Chapter 51: Hanging Out

  Tailpiece: Midnight Louie Deplores the State of Things

  Tailpiece: Miss Carole Nelson Douglas Sighs Heavily

  By Carole Nelson Douglas from Tom Doherty Associates

  Copyright

  Previously in

  Midnight Louie’s Lives and Times …

  Las Vegas is my beat.

  And take it from me: now that the economy is down, the heat is up. I am not just talking about the Strip when the temperature hits the low hundreds.

  Even the biggest names in this rambling, gambling entertainment capital are no longer feeling the love as they used to. Still, visitors can get some great deals in Vegas nowadays, and not just at the casino tables.

  The lights, the security and tourist cameras, the action remain as bright and frenetic as always. The landmark hotel-casinos and allied institutions are still puttin’ on the glitz.

  Me, I have always kept a low profile for a Las Vegas institution.

  You do not hear about me on the nightly news. That is how I like it. That is the way any primo PI would like it. The name is Louie—Midnight Louie. I am a noir kind of guy, inside and out. I like my nightlife shaken, not stirred.

  Being short, dark, and handsome—really short—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.

  Miss Temple Barr and I make perfect roomies. She tolerates my wandering ways. I look after her without getting in her way. Call me Muscle in Midnight Black. We share a well-honed sense of justice and long, sharp fingernails and have cracked some cases too tough for the local fuzz. She is, after all, a freelance public-relations specialist, and Las Vegas is full of public and private relations of all stripes and legalities.

  I must admit that our last crime-busting outing took us a step beyond the beyond to a conspiracy of magicians and a collision with the mean streets of international terrorism and counterterrorism, which left us both breathless.

  Let me just say that everything it seemed you could bet on is now up for grabs, and my Miss Temple may be in the lose-lose situation of her life and times.

  So, on the current situation of where we are all at:

  None can deny that the Las Vegas crime scene is big-time, and I have been treading these mean neon streets for twenty-three books now. I am an “alphacat.” Since I debuted in Catnap and Pussyfoot, I commenced to a title sequence that is as sweet and simple as B to Z.

  My alphabet begins with the B in Cat on a Blue Monday. After that, the title’s most colorful word or phrase is in alphabetical order up to the—ahem—current volume, Cat in a Vegas Gold Vendetta.

  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 petite roommate and high-heels devotee, Miss Nancy Drew on killer spikes, freelance PR ace Miss Temple Barr, who had reunited once before—and now reconnected again—with her elusive love …

  … the once and future 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 joined the man who became his mentor, magician Gandolph the Great, in undercover counterterrorism work.

  Meanwhile, Mr. Max has been sought on suspicion of murder by another dame, Las Vegas homicide detective Lieutenant C. R. Molina, single mother of teenage Mariah.

  Mama Molina is also the good friend of Miss Temple’s freshly minted fiancé, Mr. Matt Devine, a radio talk-show shrink and former Roman Catholic priest who came to Vegas to track down his abusive stepfather and ended up becoming a syndicated radio celebrity.

  Speaking of unhappy pasts, Miss Lieutenant Carmen Regina Molina is not thrilled that her former flame, Mr. Rafi Nadir, now living and working in Las Vegas after blowing his career at the LAPD, and for years the unsuspecting father of Mariah, now knows what is what and who is whose.

  Meanwhile, Mr. Matt drew a stalker, the local lass that Max and his cousin Sean boyishly competed for in that long-ago Ireland,…

  … one Miss Kathleen O’Connor, deservedly christened Kitty the Cutter by Miss Temple. Finding Mr. Max as impossible to trace as Lieutenant Molina did, Kitty the C settled for harassing with tooth and claw the nearest innocent bystander, Mr. Matt Devine, and came to a spectacular end in a motorcycle crash.

  Now that Miss Kathleen O’Connor’s sad and later sadistic history indicates she might not be dead and buried like all rotten elements, things are shaking up again at the Circle Ritz. Mr. Max Kinsella is no longer MIA and feared dead, though I saw him hit the wall of the Neon Nightmare club with lethal impact while in the guise of a bungee-jumping magician, the Phantom Mage.

  That this miraculous resurrection coincided with my ever-lovin’ roommate having gone over to the Light Side (our handsome, blond upstairs neighbor, Mr. Matt Devine) in her romantic life only adds to the angst and confusion.

  However, things are seldom what they seem, and almost never that in Las Vegas. A magician can have as many lives as a cat, in my humble estimation, and events now bear me out. Meanwhile, Miss Lieutenant C. R. Mol
ina’s domestic issues past and present are on a collision course as she deals with two circling mystery men of her own—Mr. Rafi Nadir and Mr. Dirty Larry Podesta, an undercover narc who has wormed his way into her personal and professional crusades.

  Such surprising developments do not surprise me. Everything is always 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 Investigations, Inc.…

  … and needing to unearth more about the Synth, a cabal of magicians that may be responsible for a lot of murderous cold cases in town, now the object of growing international interest, but as MIA as Mr. Max had been lately.

  So, there you have it, the usual human stew—folks good, bad, and hardly indifferent—totally mixed up and at odds with one another and within themselves. Obviously, it is up to me to solve all their mysteries and nail some 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

  Temple Barr, PI

  Temple’s fingers were doing the flamenco across her laptop keyboard, writing an e-mail press release, with Midnight Louie, her twenty-pound black cat, playing his usual role of paperweight beside her, when her phone rang.

  She jumped.

  Midnight Louie growled in alarm and rose up on his forelegs.

  Temple wasn’t the skittish type. You had to have nerves of steel to deal with the emergencies and sudden zigs and zags that a freelance public-relations person had to control, particularly in Vegas, and particularly in these Internet character-assassination days.

  She had a right to be jumpy after that international phone call twelve hours ago from the late great Max Kinsella, missing magician and ex–significant other, back from the presumed dead. He was even now flying back to Vegas on her say-so, after he’d encountered danger, death, and memory-melting head trauma in Northern Ireland. She was picking him up at the airport later today

  So this phone call could be full of woe.

  Or, since her new and true love and official fiancé, radio counselor Matt Devine, was on a business trip to Chicago and had family there, he could be calling to report snags, feuds, or winning the Power Ball lottery.

  Either way, she was now a nervous Nellie about the simple act of answering the phone.

  No caller name popped up on the phone screen. Normally, a blank screen meant new business, but just right now Temple was a little shaky on dealing with voices from the Blank Nowhere.

  She picked up the phone and said, “Hello.” Cautiously.

  “Temple Barr?”

  Relief. A woman was calling. The ghost from her recent past wasn’t calling back. Yet.

  “Right,” Temple said.

  “Do you mean this is the right Temple Barr?”

  “Yes.”

  “The Temple Barr?”

  “I like to think so.”

  By now Louie’s softly growled warnings were a musical accompaniment. He knew when she was tense or worried.

  “I didn’t reach that eatery out on Temple Bar at Lake Mead somehow?” the voice persisted. “It sounds like a kid is whining in the background.”

  “No, you’ve reached me, the Temple Barr with two rs.”

  The voice, both breathy and chesty, was beginning to sound awfully familiar. “Awful” in the deeply serious sense of the word.

  “May I ask who’s calling, please?” Temple said. Her normal voice had a slightly hoarse edge. Now it was getting raspy with impatience and … dawning horror.

  “This is Savannah Ashleigh.” Pause for effect. “The screen star.”

  The second sentence was highly debatable. The first was … all too true.

  Temple had crossed paths and spike heels with the ditsy, glitzy C-movie queen several times. The worst was the occasion when Midnight Louie had been cast in cat food commercials with Ashleigh’s Persian beauty, Yvette. When Yvette proved to be with kittens, Savannah had accused Louie of illegal littering and had actually tried to do him bodily harm.

  Fortunately, twenty pounds of ex–alley cat Louie can handle any scheming human from murderer to media minx. He came out of the incident proved innocent, in tact, and on top, as usual.

  Temple, however, was terminally disgusted with Savannah Ashleigh and all her works.

  “What can I do for you, Miss Ashleigh?” Temple asked in a businesslike monotone, polite and oh-so-wishing the connection would break. Cell phone reception was extremely iffy in Las Vegas, especially near the Strip. Connections could be hard to hold. This one wasn’t. Alas.

  Temple sat and listened and nodded, not inclined to take the woman seriously. Finally, she got a sentence in.

  “Murders happen every day in Las Vegas and surrounding suburbs, Miss Ashleigh.… No, not in your neighborhood, I’m sure.… Oh. Never, you say?”

  Temple couldn’t quite believe that any Vegas neighborhood hadn’t hosted murder, old or new.

  “Um, you want to hire me to investigate a murder? And where do I see clients?” she echoed her caller.

  Temple thought hard. She was now too curious to indulge her dislike. Although she had a knack for solving murders, no one had ever wanted to hire her to do it. And the “case” would take her mind off … impending men.

  She did not want the memory of Savannah Ashleigh polluting her living quarters. Not that the woman was bad—besides at acting; she was just a Ditz Queen who usually traveled with a purse pet of some kind. Midnight Louie would never get over his turf being so invaded after what Savannah had done.

  She glanced again at Louie, getting an idea. He’d once favored hanging out near a canna-lily stand and koi pond, like Sam Spade keeping office hours behind the …

  “Of course,” she told Savannah Ashleigh. “We could meet at the Crystal Phoenix Hotel.”

  “Yes,” she repeated her caller’s reaction, “it is ‘always gracious to do business over a good belt.’ I’ll meet you at the Crystal Court Bar. One P.M.”

  Temple shut off the connection.

  Louie was regarding her, enormous green eyes reducing his pupils to their most condemnatory slits. Temple made excuses, fast.

  “It is Savannah Ashleigh, as you heard. Maybe she meant ‘belt’ in the sense of … a solid Austrian crystal Judith Leiber designer belt—yum—or conchos or shells or even a black belt.”

  Louie gave his opinion of this meeting by swiping the last printed-out pages off her desk. Now that was a “good belt.”

  “You can come along and visit Midnight Louise,” she coaxed him. “Wouldn’t that be nice?”

  Midnight Louise was a black stray who’d taken Louie’s position of house cat at the Phoenix after he’d moved in with Temple at the Circle Ritz condominium and apartment building.

  Nice? Louie had no comment but chewing the hairs between his toes.

  “Besides,” Temple mused. “I’m wondering why Savannah Ashleigh wants to see me about a murder. Aren’t you even curious?”

  That comment propelled him off the desk to the floor.

  Temple checked her watch. Eleven A.M. It must be five o’clock somewhere, and she could use a “belt” or two as well. Matt wasn’t coming home from a career-changing personal appearance on The Amanda Show in Chicago for three days, but what was left of Max was flying in from Northern Ireland late this afternoon.

  Temple guessed she could use a time-wasting rendezvous with a has-been movie actress to keep her mind off the forthcoming personal apocalypse.

  Chapter 2

  A Very Feral Fellow

  I am not accustomed to rolling up to the Crystal Phoenix’s elegant front entrance in style. Usually, I must slink in the sid
e or back of the fabled Las Vegas hotel-casino like a common stray.

  Frankly, I prefer it that way. No PI in the business wants to announce his or her particular sources and haunts.

  However, I feel obligated to escort my esteemed roommate on this difficult day. I am doing all I can to distract her from the impending reunion with her former roommate, Mr. Max Kinsella. If I must throw a few papers around, or a tantrum, I will.