Cat in a Sapphire Slipper Read online

“Apparently for a few hours tonight they have been disarmed, bound, and held utterly helpless.”

  Miss Temple gives a disbelieving cry.

  I agree. No wonder murder was afoot if the Fontana brothers were tied hand and foot. Who would be so stupid as to take the only decent muscle in Las Vegas out of action?

  “I do not care what you say,” Miss Electra says. “We can stop at the Circle Ritz on the way for a couple useful switchblades I got from my motorcycle club guys. Forearmed is forewarned.”

  Now we are rockin’! My switchblades are built-in, and I do not go anywhere without them. They are my American Excess card.

  I follow the rescue party down in the elevator and into the blare and glare of the hotel’s busy gaming and public spaces . . . unnoticed.

  Naturally no one would think to take me along, but I cannot allow the senior partner of Midnight Inc. Investigations to stew in his own aging juices. Besides, I can hardly wait to see the old buzzard held captive in a brothel. He will never live that down. Not while I am around.

  I must admit that Miss Electra is a pistol at the wheel. She wrangles that well-mannered Brit Rover through the Vegas traffic like a broncobuster. We run over a few curbs and dust a few fenders, but what the hell. We move too fast to hear the curses in our wake.

  While the big vehicle purrs on idle in the Circle Ritz parking lot and the ladies race inside to round up items suitable for an impromptu kidnapping-murder party, I hop out of the door behind Miss Kit Carlson and dive into the attractive shrubbery. The oleander bushes, though poisonous to us, make great cover for our kind.

  “Paging Ma Barker,” I yowl.

  She is in my face faster than a fistful of switchblades. Which she happens to be carrying.

  “Who goes there?”

  “Your putative granddaughter.”

  The word putative stops her colder than granddaughter. I pick this vocabulary up from lawyers around the Crystal Phoenix.

  “You are who?”

  “We have met. Midnight Louise. Full partner in Midnight Inc. Investigations. I need backup on a freshly cold case with a hot corpse in the desert. It might involve making a certain Midnight Louie look like a pretty lame duck.”

  “This would also involve—?”

  “A wild ride in yonder Britmobile, maybe some discreet claw work, crime-solving, and saving Mr. Midnight Louie’s assets.”

  Ma Barker snorts. “And he has any?”

  “A few.”

  “Yeah. I have a certain lingering maternal memory of the little imp before he was a big wheel around town. I am game. Let us hop to it. Oh. This Britmobile is a far bound upward for an old dame.”

  “Hey! The Brits are ruled by an old dame. Come on, old girl, up and at ’em.”

  I give her a friendly spur-prick on the hindquarters and we clear the running board together and hunker down on the dark carpet of the third row of seats.

  “Where are we headed?” she inquires while laving her stinging pads.

  “The Sapphire Slipper. The finest little whorehouse in the state of Nevada, which supports quite a few.”

  “Sapphire Slipper? Shoes,” Ma Barker sniffs between paw licks, “are highly overrated.”

  Once we are under way, I loft up onto a third-row seat back. Miss Van von Rhine is now at the wheel, Miss Temple Barr is in the front passenger seat, cursing and trying to operate the built-in map screen, Miss Kit Carlson is leaning over the front passenger seat, backseat driving, and Miss Electra Lark is loading lead into a nasty big black revolver behind the driver’s seat.

  “So we are going out to this remote murder scene to do what?” Miss Electra asks.

  I admire a dame who can mix bullets and leading questions.

  Miss Van von Rhine heaves a sigh large enough for a sumo wrestler.

  “Nicky said the kidnapping situation was under control, but that they needed Temple there to solve a murder.”

  “Whose murder?”

  “One of the ‘girls.’ The connection was riddled with static. I do not know whether he meant one of the girls who work at the chicken ranch, or one of the girls who kidnapped the bachelor party.”

  “Chicken?” Ma Barker hisses from behind and down. “I could use a little snack.”

  Now I sigh, but a lot quieter than Miss Van von Rhine. Ma Barker may be a tough old bird, full of street smarts, but she has no Strip sophistication. Hang out at a high-end Vegas hotel and casino for a few nights, and you know that sex in all flavors is for sale all over town, and you hear about the legal brothels called “chicken ranches” that dot the outskirts.

  “These chicks are not edible,” I hiss back, “unless you like lime-flavored leg-shaving cream and nail enamel with a dash of glitter.”

  “That is a funny way to dress a chicken.”

  “These are the human variety. Chicks. Pretty women. Ladies of the night.”

  “Oh.”

  Ma Barker hunkers back down to lick her own toenails. I have been a street cat. There is not much time to master the finer points of human misbehavior when one is scrambling for a mote of food and a drop of water or avoiding imminent death under radial tires.

  Meanwhile, in the front seat a debate has erupted over our direction and speed. Of course it is as black as the old man’s nose hairs out here off the main freeways. I risk lifting up to brace my front mitts on the roll of, yum, black leather upholstery under a side window. Full leather interior. My, my.

  The night is as dark as always, with those pinpricks of light humans delight in. Starlight is good for nothing. At least the moon can illuminate an outside faucet dripping a little water on the grass. Finding water in a desert city is no picnic for the homeless of any species.

  I have never been so far out into the empty desert. It is scary to look back and see Las Vegas as a star-small twinkling oasis in our wake. I am not frightened of much, but immensity. How will we find one small chicken ranch in this Big Uneasy Empty?

  Taking Back

  the Night

  “We two guys may know what’s going on around here,” Nicky said in the hall, where he and Matt stood breathing deeply. “But that is still a hostage situation downstairs. My brothers and Uncle Mario are not going to like being taken for a ride by nobody. And when they find out that someone was killed while they were hog-tied, they’ll be seeing blood-red. We gotta change it before reinforcements arrive.”

  “That why you told your wife things here were under control? They aren’t.”

  “They will be by the time she gets here.”

  “And I doubt Temple can solve a murder among strangers in a few hours.”

  “At least she, and we, can sort out the suspects. It’d be good to have someone else to point a finger at. I’d have to testify that I found you in a very compromising position with the dead woman. It’s your hide that’s in real jeopardy. I know that Temple would drive to Mars and back to make sure no damaging whispers get out about your involvement in this. You’re the perfect fall guy. You were truly ‘just along for the ride.’ ”

  Matt took another deep breath, and nodded.

  Nick went on. “Those daffy bridesmaids are not going to give up on their empowering little kidnap scheme unless we make them. The only bloody ‘murder’ they wanted to hear about tonight was my brothers crying for mercy and marriage.”

  “How are two guys who don’t want to hurt anybody going to stop this crew of up-in-arms women?” Matt asked.

  “Excellent point. We have to take out the ringleaders.”

  “How? Punch them? They didn’t teach that in seminary.”

  Nicky winced. “At least I got through to Van. She’s bringing Kit and Temple and Electra. That ought to diffuse the situation.”

  “Kit too? Here as well as Temple? Are you crazy? They are these women’s worst enemies, engaged women.”

  “True, but Van’s coming. She’s no one to fool with. Well, yes, she is, in my case, but sheer executive steel outside the family circle. We’ve got to get control of the weapons, period.
These women think they’re kidding, but they don’t know how dangerous that firepower is, or that someone has used their prank as a shield to commit murder. Can you imagine how wrong the police could go with a mob scene like this? And having it in for my family? We don’t want a SWAT team outside.”

  “Agreed.” Matt felt that certainty deep in his soul. Besides the terrible danger of a misunderstanding escalating a wacky prank into a deadly standoff with the law, even an orderly intervention would be a disaster for Temple’s aunt Kit. And Temple.

  So he talked himself into this gun-grabbing scheme of Nicky’s. The Fontana brothers’ arms were usually show-and-tell. Mostly. He hoped. But they were surely loaded and needed to be somewhere safer than piled on a Victorian table.

  He still pictured the pale, dead body of the woman upstairs. She looked so unhappily like any woman in any brothel, anonymous, half-dressed, laid out . . . He couldn’t think more about it, he got too angry.

  “So,” Nicky said. “I stroll into the parlor, upsetting the game. The missing Fontana brother who nobody noticed.”

  “Sounds like a diversion. And I—?”

  “You slip in near the table, commandeer the weapons, and hold everybody hostage until I can uncuff my brothers and we take our own back.”

  “Uh, this scheme relies on me totally turning the tables in about two seconds flat.”

  Nicky pounded him on the shoulder. “You got it. All eyes will be on me, and you get all the glory.”

  That’s when Matt realized that “all the glory” was a relative term.

  He wasn’t going to scoop up eight or nine Berettas in one armful.

  “Your gun is in the pile too?”

  “I don’t carry,” Nicky said.

  Matt resisted commenting. Apparently, there were Fontana brothers, and then there were Fontana brothers.

  “Fine,” Matt said. “Everybody’s overlooked us because you’re married and I’m as-good-as, besides not fitting the family profile. You appear in the archway between the bar and the parlor. I’ll sneak in through the entry hall and take control of the weapons table . . . if you trust a midnight angst disc jockey with all that firepower.”

  “Absolutely.” Nicky punched Matt on the shoulder to show his confidence. “Just don’t freeze. Grab the nearest gun and look like you mean business and aim.”

  “At whom?”

  Nicky shrugged. “Try me. I’ll be the center of attention.”

  Eight Berettas

  for Eight Brothers

  Of course they have not figured me into their plans.

  I am the lowly foot soldier.

  The guy at one-foot height. Literally. And literally.

  I have been all over this crime scene like a cheap suit. I have been downstairs, upstairs, and in my ladies’ chambers. I have scoped out the place from parlor to pissoir. (That is a fancy French term for what you can figure out all by yourself.)

  I have sniffed the trails of several interesting parties from kitchen to boudoir to powder room to weapons dump. I have seen the swains of my two headwomen—Miss Van von Rhine of the Crystal Phoenix, where I used to be house detective, and Miss Temple Barr of the Circle Ritz, where I am chief security officer—play hide-and-seek amid a harem of bedrooms and come up the sole possessors of a dead body.

  Where to deploy my awesome abilities where most needed? Hmm.

  Obviously, Mr. Matt Devine needs a sidekick.

  Mr. Nicky Fontana’s plan is okay for the first two seconds of shock, but that is a lot of hardware on the Victorian table and Mr. Matt is a smart guy, but not your average gun dealer.

  I figure if twenty pounds of snarling alley fighter jumps to the tabletop at the right psychological moment, threatening to snag the hose and snarl the hairdo of any rogue bridesmaid thinking about reclaiming a firearm, that will take the plan from lame to game . . . set . . . match. Checkmate. Although the mating game is what has got all us guys into this murderous mess.

  I tail Mr. Matt down the creaking stairs.

  Luckily, there is a lot of palaver going in the parlor. No one knows, of course, that a woman lies dead upstairs. No one but the murderer, that is. I will watch the assembled company closely for someone whose surprise seems manufactured.

  But first I have to shadow Mr. Matt down the stairs in the dark.

  He is so concentrated on his pivotal role in the forthcoming change of power that he does not notice my pussyfooting accompaniment. Which is as it should be. When I choose to be low profile, I am a Black Velvet Fog on large cat feet. The Shadow who knows all the good stuff. The Furred Pimpernel. Oops, that last example is a little tacky in this venue.

  Anyway, Mr. Matt pauses in the hall outside the parlor.

  We hardly breathe until we hear the scritch of a cigarette lighter and Mr. Nicky’s bold footsteps move from the back bar into the parlor.

  I scent the acrid sweetness of a Havana. Not a Havana brown cat spoor, but an illegal cigar imported from Cuba. I am guessing the bar area holds humidors full of them. Cigar bars are ultra chic these days.

  I can sense Mr. Matt’s tension as we hear a flurry of movement and startled little mews in the parlor.

  “Ladies and gentlemen,” Nicky Fontana’s voice announces, “this farce is about to end.”

  Mr. Matt whips around the corner and grabs the first semiautomatic he can lay hands on. “Don’t move. Anybody,” he orders.

  I am not about to start obeying human orders now.

  I leap up atop the table and take a battle stance, back humped, tail fluffed, hackles raised, teeth showing, claws out, my battle hiss a major media event.

  Female oohs and aahs greet my entrance.

  Meanwhile, Mr. Matt tosses a Beretta over my back to Mr. Nicky, who orders Miss Kitty to begin uncuffing his brothers.

  I hear a lot of moaning and complaining on the bridesmaids’ part, but Mr. Nicky raises his voice over the chorus.

  “There is a murder victim upstairs. Unless we all want to be guests of the Nye County jail in no time flat, I suggest the fun and games are over for now and we all get our alibis ready. Mi hermosos, I am happy to say, are totally innocent in this case, as they were bound from the moment they entered the premises, thanks to you ladies. But you revenge-happy bridesmaids are all prime suspects, as are the occupants of the house. So bros, grab your Berettas and keep an eye on everyone but one another. We are not leaving here until we know who died, and why, and who might have done it.”

  By now the courtesans are exchanging anxious glances and counting heads. The bridesmaids gather into a large black-clad circle, and one by one sink like Southern belles onto the vacated parlor sofas, looking shaken, not stirred. But Miss Kitty, her girls massed behind her, is launching a verbal assault at Mr. Nicky.

  “What do you mean, a murder? We have all been here and accounted for.”

  Mr. Nicky eyes the bridesmaids. “The women were all upstairs and loose for a good half hour and are major suspects. Lucky they cuffed my brothers. Cuffed their trouser legs too, apparently.

  “Guys?” he asks his brothers.

  They are all bending over as soon as Miss Kitty undoes their funky handcuffs, unwinding black corset strings from their ankles, faces scarlet with effort and anger.

  “We were bound and out of action, all right,” Julio is the first to say. “We had to play along with our so-called captors, but this was a damn-fool, stupid stunt and dangerous as hell. I hesitate to admit I know the lady of my acquaintance among them.”

  Nicky nods grimly. “I still need to know who each of you is, um, seeing.”

  One by one, the freed men reluctantly take a place behind the blond, brunette, or redhead girlfriend-cum-bridesmaid who went “nuptial” tonight.

  Aldo joins Mr. Matt while Mr. Nicky finally answers the madam. “Miss Kitty, are you sure all you employees are accounted for? Between residents and invaders this is quite a gaggle of girls.”

  In fact, I notice now that some of the bridesmaids are draped in the occasional feather boa. Th
e civilians and the professionals are not as easy to tell apart after the upstairs stroll. It strikes me that the dead woman could be either a bridesmaid or a, uh, hired escort. I do not think it is fair to demean these ladies with the usual descriptive expressions. My kind does not label willing females with any nasty words. In fact, a breeding cat is called a queen. We guys are just glad they go into heat now and then.

  Miss Kitty does an actual nose count. “All my girls are here.” She hesitates, then turns away from her cluster of employees to add in a low voice, “I guess I better go up and see the body anyway.”

  “Aldo,” Mr. Nicky says, “escort Miss Kitty upstairs with us.” He nods at the rest of his brothers, who are shifting uneasily on their notorious Bruno Magli loafers, not sure if they are escorts or jailers. “You guys keep all these women corralled while we’re gone. We don’t want anyone wandering off into trouble with a murderer on the loose.”

  I admire Mr. Nicky’s tact. He does not say anything to point out more than is obvious: that one of these beautiful girls could very well be that loose murderer.

  I am not invited upstairs to survey the damage but I trail the party upward, uncommented upon. At the top, I am joined by Miss Satin.

  We brush vibrissae.

  “How terrible it is, Louie,” she whispers under her breath. “This is a house of merriment, not murder.”

  “My people are on it,” I say. “I just have to make sure their suspicions are pointed in the right direction. Quick! I want to see what Miss Kitty makes of the body.”

  We sweep into the room just as Miss Kitty and her three escorts stand inside the door and gaze at the woman on the bed. From this distance, you could swear she was still alive.

  “What a tragedy,” Miss Kitty says. Her voice is wavery. “I thought at first you boys were spouting that murder stuff to give these crazy bridesmaids a good scare. Oh, poor kid. So young and pretty.”

  Mr. Matt has discreetly stepped nearer to take Miss Kitty’s elbow. “Let me escort you down the back stairs to the kitchen. You can sit down, have a cup of coffee.”

  “With a couple jiggers of brandy in it,” Aldo advises.