Cat in a Sapphire Slipper Read online

  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?

  A Surprising Scenario

  The after-dinner crowd was exiting the Crystal Phoenix Hotel and Casino’s revolving rooftop restaurant, the Crystal Carousel.

  Temple and Matt still stood at the head table, watching the last stragglers file up to Temple’s aunt Kit and Aldo Fontana farther down the table, congratulating them on their surprise engagement announcement. The nine bachelor Fontana brothers had been a Vegas institution until Temple’s novelist aunt from Manhattan, sixty and scintillating and devotedly single all her life, had hit town and hit the eldest Fontana brother, Aldo, “in the eye like a big pizza pie,” as the old song went. That’s amore.

  The dinner had celebrated Temple’s public relations triumph for her employers at the Phoenix: solving the murders at the Red Hat Sisterhood convention and saving the hotel from Bad Press Hell.

  “We still could have said something about us,” Matt whispered to her.

  That “something” would have been the surprise announcement that Miss Temple Barr, Vegas’s premier freelance PR woman and occasional crime-solver, was engaged to be married to Mr. Matt Devine, more widely known as “Mr. Midnight” on a syndicated late-night radio counseling show.

  This engagement had been more than a year in coming, since Matt, an ex-priest, had first come to Vegas searching for an abusive stepfather. He had subleased a condo in the same building Temple had lived in with her significant other, the missing magician, Max Kinsella, aka the Mystifying Max.

  A lot had happened in a year. Max had returned after almost a year away, but Temple had already sympathized with the handsome ex-priest trying to settle old family matters and exchange his longtime celibacy for an enduring new love.

  It had looked like Temple might be the one until Max—Temple’s earlier, tempestuous love—had turned up again. But Max was a man with a secret mission. A counterterrorism operative since his teens, a man with a price on his head was in no position to maintain a serious relationship, even with Temple trying her best to warm the embers of her old love.

  Now, Max was mysteriously missing. Again. Now, Matt and Temple had committed the sin of full emotional and physical commitment. She had the engagement ring. All that was left was to arrange the church ceremony, blessing and legalizing their love.

  Temple the woman could live with that. She would always love Max and wish him well, but a girl had to move on. Matt was a dream of a man, not only attractive, but decent and caring in the extreme. And she’d secretly wanted him, bad, for a long time. Ever since Max, for good secret agent reasons, had abandoned her so long for her own safety.

  Temple the crime-solver chafed at the idea that Max could vanish for good and all this time, and she’d never know why. Or where. Or whether he was alive or dead.

  Matt squeezed her hand. “A Sacajawea dollar for your thoughts.” He knew where her feminist sentiments lay. But he didn’t need to know her still-raw regrets about Max.

  She needed to tell Max her decision herself. She needed to say good-bye.

  “Hey.” A couple was coming up to address her and Matt, not the official lovebirds.

  Some couple. It was Lieutenant C. R. Molina’s two top homicide detectives, the seasoned Morrie Alch and the petite but persistent Merry Su.

  Su sparkled in her black sequin-trimmed riding jacket and thigh-high-slit slim black skirt. She looked like the Dragon Lady and had been acting that way toward Temple since Molina had asked the PR woman, and not Su, to go undercover as a teenager at a reality TV show shot in Las Vegas, on which Molina’s teen daughter was a contestant.

  Alch, always the diplomat, drew Matt into conversation and edged away as if glad to escape his partner’s company for a bit. Su was a tenacious detective, but she could be abrasive. Temple understood that. Short, petite women like her and Su had to compensate somehow. Temple did it with an extensive high-heel collection. Su did it with nerve.

  “I suppose,” Su said, “you miss your pal Lieutenant Molina being here.”

  “Hardly my pal,” Temple said. She and the tall, no-nonsense lieutenant had wrangled over Max and why he went missing and whether he’d committed an unsolved murder on the way out of town for more than a year.

  Still. She would have loved Molina being in the audience when her engagement to Matt was announced. The half-Latina detective might have harbored a hankering for the dishy Polish-American ex-priest. They were the same religion, after all, and Molina had never married and must be pushing forty. Temple was on the cusp of thirty-one, and Matt was thirty-four.

  Su smiled, always a bad sign. “The lieutenant hasn’t been in to work the last couple of days.”

  “Really,” Temple said, unwilling to admit she was interested.

  “The flu, they say.”

  Temple frowned.

  “The Iron Maiden of the LVMPD never is out sick,” Su continued.

  Temple wasn’t surprised. Molina had never let up in her vendetta against Max. They’d even duked it out mano-a-mana (if there was such a thing) in a Strip club parking lot. Molina had finally caught Max and he needed to get away fast because he knew Temple was in danger of becoming the next Stripper Killer victim.

  Su’s piquant face had a sly, triumphant look.

  Payback time for Temple, a rank amateur, copping a prime undercover assignment she had wanted. It didn’t matter that it had frosted Molina’s tortillas to ask such a favor of an antagonist. Temple had gotten the job, not Su, who was as capable of looking sixteen as Temple was, if that was an advantage when one was almost thirty-one and aching to be taken seriously in life and love.

  Su leaned close to whisper, at just the right level of Temple’s left ear.

  “The rumor is that the lady lieutenant flipped and eloped with that hunky magician you used to call yours. That’s why Max Kinsella is missing. She is too! They’re off together on a quickie marriage license and making whoopee in some cheap motel.”

  NO!

  Temple fought to look unruffled. No. Max would never—Molina would never—but look at Shakespeare’s The Taming of the Shrew. Men like a challenge, and nobody liked a challenge more than Max. Strong women like stronger men. And Molina was a strong woman.

  It made a kind of crazy sense.

  Temple’s pulse was pounding in her . . . temples. She moved away from Su, who slunk into the waning crowd like a snake relieved of its poison. Temple was aghast. Disbelieving. Stunned. Betrayed. Jealous.

  She looked for Matt, for a glimpse that would restore stability, remind her how much she loved and desired him.

  He wasn’t there. Nobody still lingered at the head table. Everybody had drifted away without her noticing.

  It wasn’t just Max anymore. It was everybody.

  She gazed around.

  The entire room was empty.

  She was alone at the banquet table with its abandoned dessert plates and crumpled peach linen napkins.

  This was a nightmare!

  She needed somebody to tell her so, and nobody was there for her.

  Not even the malicious Su anymore.

  Max and Molina. Max and Carmen.

  No!

  Temple swallowed. She wanted to shout the word, but she couldn’t.

  She couldn’t move. Couldn’t speak, shout.

  No.

  This was a nightmare.

  Her nightmare.

  She blinked her eyes open in the dark.

  A warm hand was on her arm.

  “Are you all right?” Matt’s voice came from the dark. “You were making almost strangling noises. Temple?”

  Was she all right?

  Obviously not, if she was still dreaming about Max.

  Mayb
e this dream was the real good-bye. Her unconscious had paired Max with her worst enemy, the woman of her nightmares, and bid him adieu. Said good riddance to them both.

  That was it. The dream was a sign any feelings for him were over. All gone. Gone with the Molina.

  So revolting! Ugh.

  She shuddered.

  “You’re cold,” Matt said, tightening his grasp. “Let me warm you up.”

  Shallow Wound,

  Deep End

  Morning, after another long, fitful night.

  Carmen Molina could hear her daughter and Morrie Alch talking in the other room, through a fog, darkly.

  Mariah’s light, girlish voice made a pleasant counterpoint to Morrie’s low, street-cop growl. Carmen smiled. Making detective had never softened that rumble-busting vocal grumble. Then she took her own inventory.

  She wasn’t used to being helpless. Ever. Yet she’d lain here for three days on antibiotics and Vicodin, like some zonked-out druggie. Matt Devine hadn’t swooned into bed like a Southern belle when he’d been stabbed.

  But his had only been a short superficial slice. Hers was superficial too, but long. Sitting up, even breathing and talking and eating, were darn unpleasant.

  A homicide lieutenant ought to be up for a stronger adjective than “darn,” but she habitually watched her language around Mariah. Besides, it unnerved the unit that she’d always been so eternally in control. A lot of females in male-dominated jobs tried to relax their male subordinates by matching them curse for curse, shout for shout. A couple of football coaches, notably Super Bowl winner, Tony Dungy, went the opposite route. That’s why they called her the Iron Maiden. Quiet but unflappable, invincible. Silent as cold steel.

  Not very iron lately.

  The voices were coming closer. Mariah bearing her morning slop: canned soup! But Morrie had done it: whipped her hormonal, edgy, unreliable teen daughter into a meek little nurse.

  Molina pushed herself up against the piled bed pillows, trying not to grimace as the eighty-six stitches in her stomach and side screamed bloody murder at the motion.

  A deep wound knocks you out. A shallow one tortures you to death.

  Morrie turned on her bedside table light, leaving the shutters closed. He didn’t want Mariah seeing or guessing any more than she should.

  “Something new from your friendly neighborhood grocery shelf,” he said. “Mac and cheese.”

  “Great.” She meant it. The thin soups were getting old. “Thanks, honey, but you better get to school.”

  “You guys just want to talk about something I’m not supposed to hear.” Mariah ruffled her blond-highlighted hair into a suitably unkempt appearance for Our Lady of Guadalupe Catholic school. Her uniform jumper was a rigid navy-and-green plaid over a crisp white blouse, but her hair was now as punk as the school rules would allow.

  She still looked like a pretty decent kid.

  “Thirteen,” Morrie commented after Mariah had eased out of the sickroom, then slam-banged through the house and out. “Around seventeen you can expect some relief.”

  “I can’t believe she’s buying the Asian flu excuse.”

  “She’s probably relieved to see you helpless for a while. Not going to question her luck.”

  “Or yours?” The first spoonful was so hot she had to dump it back into the bowl.

  He chuckled. “Even Superwoman has to run into a little kryptonite now and then. It was too bad you had to miss the Crystal Carousel shindig, it was quite a party.”

  “I didn’t plan on getting knifed.”

  “While breaking and entering Max Kinsella’s empty house.”

  “What a wasted effort,” she said. “The bastard was gone and now I have to figure out who hated him enough to trash his house and clothing, even with him not in it.”

  “Besides you.”

  “I don’t hate him, Morrie. I despise his lawless, laughing attitude. But it’s moot. This time I believe he’s really gone. For good. End of story. I can’t get him on the old Goliath Hotel murder, but he doesn’t get to slink around Vegas in secret screwing his girlfriend and laughing at law enforcement.”

  “No screwing anymore. Except the law. Temple Barr is pretty cozied up with Matt Devine now. I would have expected their engagement to be announced before one for her visiting aunt, Kit Carlson, and Aldo Fontana.”

  Molina frowned. “I’m not sure that’s the best combo around.”

  “Carlson and Fontana?”

  “Well, any one of the playboy Fontanas, but I meant Temple and Matt. He doesn’t seem her type. Too nice.”

  Morrie shrugged. Molina’s judgment on the Circle Ritz residents had always been skewed. “So. You think you can come back to work Monday?”

  “I do,” she said. “You ever been cut?”

  He shook his shaggy Scottish terrier head, gray at the ears.

  “It’s quite a trip, Morrie. Every move you make tears everything. I’m seeing the doctor again Thursday.”

  “Good thing she knows your job title. Civilians always expect us cops to engage in regular fracases. From the TV shows.”

  “This is pretty obviously a knife slash. And I am pretty obviously not in a domestic violence situation. But I still had to get the damn third degree about it.”

  Morrie pulled the dining-room chair doing bedroom duty by the window closer to the bed. “Better eat your noodles while they’re still hot.”

  “Yes, Nurse Alch.”

  “Speaking of domestic violence, just what is between this Rafi Nadir guy and you?”

  She nodded toward the empty main rooms. “Only Mariah. And that wasn’t by my choice.”

  “Regrets?”

  “Lots. But not Mariah.”

  “The guy raped you?”

  “God, no! I was a street cop then. They sicced me on all the black brothers in Watts. Women got the shit details; we were supposed to fail. Rafi and I . . . we lived together. Don’t look so shocked. I was a half-Hispanic woman; he was an Arab-American man. We were both predestined to flunk Street 101.”

  “So Mariah—?”

  “Not a planned pregnancy. I found a pinprick in my diaphragm. Not my doing. Yeah, laugh. I was more Catholic then. Couldn’t quite go against the Pope and use the pill.”

  “So why’d Nadir want you pregnant?”

  “I was moving up faster than he was. He’s Christian, but from a culture that ranks women with pack donkeys and pariah dogs. I assumed it was a ploy to build his ego two ways. He probably thought it would make me quit the force.”

  “You mean you assumed he thought that.”

  “You are a wicked interrogator, Alch. Act so easy, but go right for any narrow window of opportunity. You’re right. Motivation rests on assumptions, but they need to be proven. Yes, I’m no longer so sure that he sabotaged my birth control. It’s just that I was so careful about using it.”

  “Could have been a manufacturing flaw, or some drugstore smart-ass product-tampering.”

  “I’ve been considering that. Thinking about the infamous ‘lot of things.’”

  “Thinking is always good.”

  She gobbled the rest of the cheesy noodles—an apt description two ways—set the bowl and tray aside, then pushed herself higher against the pillows.

  There were two things wrong with that. It made her grimace with pain, and she was wearing a long T-shirt with no bra. She had not been seen by a man with no bra in a long time, except when she was performing occasional gigs as Carmen, the torch singer at a local club. She wore vintage thirties and forties evening gowns for that and they didn’t allow for much underwear.

  Still, she could talk better from a sitting position and she had to start rebuilding her stomach muscles for Monday morning.

  “Morrie, I owe you for helping me out with this. With the captain, the doctor, and Mariah. I also owe you some explanations.”

  “No, you don’t. But I am curious enough to take them.”

  “One, Rafi Nadir. When I realized I was pregnant, I was co
oked. My career was shot. I was too Catholic to get an abortion, but a patrol officer is at too much personal risk and I wasn’t going to subject a child to a dead mama. I was damned if I’d let a man put me in a corner like that. I secretly resigned the LAPD, grabbed what I could, and ran. I had a good record despite my brutal ‘initiation.’ I used my mother’s maiden name, got a patrol job in Bakersfield, and eventually worked my way to Las Vegas.”

  “And Nadir?”

  “He didn’t take to being low minority on the totem pole. I had ways of checking. He really blew it after I left, and got kicked off the force.”

  “It takes a lot to get kicked off the LAPD.”

  “Tell me about it. Along with New Orleans, Chicago, and Minneapolis, L.A. is considered one of the most minority-unfriendly forces in the country. Maybe it’s changed by now. I did make lieutenant in Vegas.”

  “This Nadir guy turning up here must be a nightmare.”

  “Worse. I’d never dreamed of such a thing. Now he’s found me, and therefore, Mariah. He’s not stupid. He knows he’s her father. He wants her to know it.”

  “I see your problem.”

  “That’s not the only one. I may have been wrong about Rafi. I may also have been wrong about your pal Temple Barr’s longtime sweetie, the Mystifying Max Kinsella.”

  “You did have a hard-on to nail him for that old Goliath murder.”

  “That’s how you saw it? I was too convinced he had done the murder? Look. He had just finished his magician act contract at the Goliath Hotel that very night. Then this dead man dropped from the ceiling above the gaming tables, where only a cousin of a garter snake could go. To top it off, Kinsella was not to be found or heard of after that for more than a year. Any judge would have issued a warrant on probable cause, but he skipped town right after that murder, which is obviously still unsolved.”

  “Obviously, he came back to haunt you. As did Nadir. Why?”

  “My rotten luck?”

  “You don’t believe in luck, Carmen. You believe in hard work.”

  She patted her stomach gingerly. “Whoever did this was running amok in the Mystifying Max’s well-concealed house. I finally traced Temple Barr to the place and went in on my own to check it out. I interrupted, or just preceded another Max Kinsella fan as disenchanted as I was. Maybe more. Someone was going through the rooms, slicing his clothes into shreds in the closets. And I thought I despised the guy.”