Cat in an Orange Twist Read online

Temple sank into the cushions, reliving those—ha! Bring on the film noir flacks—“forbidden moments.” She could sure see why they were forbidden. Way too addictive.

  So. Did Matt really mean it? Feel it? Of course. But did he want to? Maybe not. Did she? Maybe not . . . oh, yeah. But she was spoken for. And very nicely too, when Max was around to speak for her.

  But he hadn’t been, not lately.

  And he hadn’t told her why. A poster is a poor excuse for a man, even a charismatic one.

  Temple squinched down in the cushions and picked up her cell phone from the coffee table. She would try calling Max one more time today.

  Her phone bleeped at her and shot a little message graphic into her heart.

  Message. From Max? All her internal mutterings faded. At last.

  She pressed the right buttons and then a couple wrong ones, and groused aloud and tried again, putting the phone to her ear.

  “Hey, Little Red.” Max’s baritone vibrated through the earpiece. If you could sell that on the Web via spam . . . “Sorry we’ve been playing phone tag. That is definitely not what I’d like to play with you. Too much has come up for phones. I’ll be in touch when I can. Ciao.”

  Something soft and sensuous stroked her forearm. Temple looked down. Midnight Louie had silently lofted up next to her. His long black tail was just barely swiping her skin.

  Temple gritted her teeth.

  Electra had been right. Midnight Louie was the most constant and attentive male in her Circle Ritz life these days.

  Did relationships have an expiration date too? And how far past that date did you dare nibble on the past without getting poisoned?

  Tooth and Nail,

  Feng and Claw

  “Well, Louie, what do you think? Am I feng enough to satisfy the Queen of Shui-ba?”

  Huh? Since when did my daring and darling roommate, Miss Temple Barr, consult me on fashion matters?

  I am a gentleman of the old school, from my polished nails to my formal black tie and tails that are a blend of Fred Astaire and gangsta record mogul.

  One can never go wrong wearing black. Perhaps Miss Temple’s crisis of confidence in the mirror is because she is wearing silver.

  I do love those burnished sea shades, though. The memory of glints of gold and silver—the shiny-scaled koi that swim in them—reminds me of my dear old dad, Three O’Clock Louie. He retired to Vegas a while back from a Pacific Northwest salmon-fishing boat.

  There is nothing golden—or fishy—about my Miss Temple, however. She has red-hot cinnamon fur, yum-yum, and baby-big steel blue eyes. She also is heir to the sad human fate of wearing a union suit that is all skin and virtually no hair, like the unfortunate Sphinx breed of my own cat kind.

  Today Miss Temple is wearing a short skirt and skimpy sweater set in gray-silver. This is a knockout with her fur color but the outfit does make her look about twelve years old, always a worry for a petite public relations woman who has to elbow her own way to the fore of a competitive profession.

  Miss Temple tries to pull her skirt an inch or two below her kneecap, which I agree is an ugly human attribute and hairless to boot.

  The ploy does not work, though I have to admit the legs below the kneecap are pretty elegant despite their unfurred condition.

  “This damn Wong woman,” she tells herself, the mirror, and me, “is supposed to be hell on Jimmy Choos.”

  I normally do not deign to answer the meaningless growlings of discontented humans, even my own.

  Sherlock Holmes had the newspaper agony column. I have the remote and daytime TV. Thus I instantly recognize the Asian-American celebrities that Miss Temple refers to: Amelia Wong, the decor design queen of this feng shui mania, and the red-carpet footman to the stars, a spikemeister named Jimmy Choo. Except it turns out that the force behind Jimmy Choo is really an enterprising female named Tamara Mellon, who built the business under a male business name, like Laura Holt on TV’s Remington Steele, which brought us Pierce Brosnan. (I have been told by female admirers that we have similar hair and sex appeal.)

  Anyway, I must ponder what celebrity females adore more: the aforesaid Jimmy’s costly and kicky footwear . . . or simply referring to their “Choo shoes,” which sounds like something that used to chug into train stations.

  My Miss Temple is no slug herself when it comes to sling-backs. She has a world-class high heel collection, including one covered with diamond-bright Austrian crystals. These updated Cinderella slippers bear my likeness in coal black crystal on the heels, so you could say they come with a Prince Charming attached. You could say it. I cannot, without sounding conceited. I guess the true Prince Charming in this case is Mr. Stuart Weitzman, who designed the fabled footwear.

  But, hark, my Miss Temple addresses the mirror one last time.

  “Well, I cannot dally.” She spins from the mirror to snatch up a burgundy patent-leather tote bag that matches her burgundy patent-leather Nine West clogs. (Now that Miss Temple has discovered platform clogs increase her height by two to three inches without the need for stiletto heels, she reserves her high-rise shoes for dress-up.)

  Also, she can outrun crooks better in clogs, crooks being a little hobby of hers ever since I have known her.

  The fact is that I am the pro PI in our ménage à deux here at the Circle Ritz. Still, Miss Temple is racking up quite a crime-busting résumé of her own . . . for a two-footed amateur sleuth.

  Mind you, she is cute (which some benighted souls have erroneously said of me, to their regret) and smart. But I never like my mysteries dominated by little doll amateurs, even if those little dolls are my own personal property.

  I hear Miss Temple scrape the car keys off the coffee table in the living room. A moment later the door plays patty cake with an open-and-shut case. I am alone in our digs at last.

  I jump down from the zebra-pattern coverlet that is such an excellent backdrop for my midnight good looks and pad into the living room.

  The Las Vegas papers, both morning and evening, are splayed open on the coffee table. Both feature ballyhoo about the imminent advent of the “dowager empress of enterprising interior designs, Amelia Wong.” The accompanying photo pictures a domestic domi-natrix of sleek but severe expression. I would not want to meet her in a dark disco.

  Hmmm. I wonder briefly if I should tail my little doll to her meeting with this media Medusa. But, no. She is thirty now. It is time I let her face the big, bad world on her own occasionally. Since she is an ace PR freelancer with enough charm to sell Cheerios to Eskimos, I am sure she will handle the upcoming challenge with almost the same skill I would.

  I settle into my favorite snoozing spot on the couch . . . dead center, stretched full out, so no one can sit there until I vacate the premises, and especially not if I garf up a hairball . . . and soon tiptoe through the catnip-dusted tulips of dreamland.

  Live at High Noon

  Temple parked her so-new-it-squeaked red Miata convertible behind Gangsters Casino, a three-story building designed to evoke a Prohibition speakeasy.

  She didn’t have to put up the car’s top because it had never been down. Wouldn’t want to ruffle her hair-sprayed headful of natural curls before she met the great goddess Wong.

  It wasn’t as if Temple was part of the Wong entourage and needed to meet and greet the incoming party. She was strictly a local liaison. But the first Wong media appearance was at a TV station where Temple, as a local public relations freelancer, was definitely persona grata. So she was here to grease everyone else’s wheels, and this rendezvous had been prearranged. She would ride alone in the limo to the airport. There she’d meet Wong and entourage in the private jet area. Then they all would wheel away to a full day’s program of promotional appearances.

  Temple was uneasy with the arrangement. First, she liked to drive more than she liked to be driven, even in a block-long limo. And in Vegas, where the blocks were as long as the latest luxury hotel-casino grounds, stretch limos looked like they’d got their lube jobs on
a medieval rack.

  If you absolutely had to use a limo, though, Gangsters was the place to put up with. The stand-alone casino, having no attached hotel rooms to provide a gambling base, made its mark with a clever gimmick. It ferried customers to and from the major Strip hotels in an array of custom “gangland” limos.

  The fanciful stretch limos and their gangster-suited chauffeurs had proven so popular that a separate limo biz evolved: Gangsters Legendary Limos.

  Temple walked in the warm morning sun to the small rental office, passing an awesomely long lineup of limos.

  The Elvis model was a hot pink 1957 stretch Cadillac burnished with a hunka-hunka burning chrome. The Bugsy? That was a humpbacked black ’40s number emblazoned with real bullet holes. The Marilyn was a metallic platinum blond ’60s Chevy. And the Sinatra was a sleek ’70s felt-fedora gray Buick Park Avenue. Every limo was all-American vintage. No foreign models went on the rack at Gangsters.

  More celebrity limos filled out the fleet, including the white-tiger-striped Siegfried and Roy, but today only these few sat idle on the lot, and the S&R model had been retired with honors after Roy Horn’s tragic onstage injuries a few months ago.

  The limo Temple was to ride in had been selected for its feng shui political correctness: the Newman. It was the color of money, a green Lincoln.

  This wasn’t an Irish green, or an olive green but a muted midtone green that Temple hoped would find favor with the feng shui maven. From her recent reading, green and blue both signified hope. Lord knew that Amelia Wong insisted on all the favorable signs for her expeditions.

  Inside the air-conditioned building, Temple blew a soggy lock off her forehead. She approached the Edward G. Robinson clone manning the desk in a pinstriped dark wool suit despite the tropical-weight weather outside.

  “I’m supposed to accompany the Wong party limo to the airport. My name is Temple Barr.”

  “There are no wrong party limos here at Gangsters,” he cracked wise out the side of his mouth. “And Temple Bar is on Lake Mead.”

  “I am not the geographic Temple Bar,” she said. “I am the PR Temple Barr. Two r’s.”

  He winked at her and checked a log book. “The Newman has been preempted by Warren Buffet, the financial whiz. You’re now in the Chan. Solid black. Around back.”

  Hmmm, in the feng shui color system black signified power and authority (good), but also gloom and death (not good). Temple had read of a school called Black Sect Feng Shui, however, and hoped, greenly, that Amelia Wong liked it. Anyway, done was done.

  Temple nodded and turned away. Then turned back. “Is that limo named for Charlie or Jackie?”

  His shrug didn’t dislodge his Klingon-broad shoulder pads. “Black is for black belt. Who’s Charlie?”

  “Never mind.” Temple hustled out into the heat again, carrying on a crabby interior monologue.

  Who’s Charlie? Didn’t anyone watch vintage films anymore? Charlie Chan and his pithy Oriental wisdom and number-one son weren’t totally passé. Hadn’t this skunk-striped bozo heard that Lucy Liu was going to star as Charlie Chan’s granddaughter in a new flick? Of course there’d be some Jackie Chan-style martial arts on display.

  By now she was nearing the limo. The driver catapulted out of the front seat to hotfoot half a mile back to the rear door.

  Somebody at Gangsters had tumbled to the Asian connection, but this driver looked Japanese. Uh-oh.

  Temple ducked into the dim, cushy interior behind the India-ink window tint.

  She was instantly tush-deep in kid-glove leather. Since she was so lightweight she couldn’t sink into beach sand with barbells on her ankles, this was some cushy cowhide!

  The limo’s layout was fit for a rock band or a prom party. That meant seating in the squared round, like a ’60s conversation pit. Above Temple’s head was a limo-wide row of control buttons and LED readouts it would take a fighter pilot to master. Burlwood doors were sunk here and there into the limo upholstery. She was sure they concealed a TV, full bar, and plenty of snacks.

  Despite all the tempting buttons waiting to be pushed, Temple felt like Alice in a high-tech Wonderland. No way was she going to touch anything here. Who knows? She might suddenly shrink or swell. Although any swelling inside this conspicuous consumption-mobile was likely to be of the ego variety, she thought, if one got used to rodding around in such elongated glory.

  Speaking of which, the limo pulled smoothly out of the lot. The driver was remote behind a glass barrier Temple had no idea how to lower. The limo glided into an endless turn onto the side street.

  Temple didn’t really look forward to meeting Amelia Wong, the feng shui darling of Wall Street. She kept running the proper pronunciation of the phrase in her head. Not Amelia Wong. That was child’s play. Feng Shui, though, was pronounced “fung shway.” Strange language, this mystical interior design dialect.

  While the frantic suburban development around Las Vegas made it one of the fastest-expanding cities in the nation, the Las Vegas Strip and environs were still as simple as pie: the Strip was one long, busy eight-lane street called Las Vegas Boulevard. It was lined with enough Fantasylands to make the late Walt Disney so jealous he was liable to go into premature cryogenic meltdown. And right next to the hotels, McCarran Airport. To thirty-some million annual visitors, that’s all Vegas was: the palm-greased skid from driver to bellman to dealer, from airport to hotel-casino to airport.

  Temple never tired of gawking at the high-rise hotels and their various iconic towers along the Strip. The Paris’s Eiffel Tower. New York, New York’s Gotham skyline and Statue of Liberty. The MGM lion. The Luxor’s Sphinx . . .

  She eyed one of the limo’s burlwood chests. Yo-ho-ho and a bottle of rum. She could use a bottled water, but didn’t dare go hunting for it like one to the limousine born.

  In minutes, anyway, the limo slowed to a stop in the executive terminal area of the airport.

  Temple, who always aimed to be fast out of the starting gate, had to tap her clogs while the driver dismounted and walked the long, long way around his black steel steed to release her from the buggy section in back. Barging unaided out of a chauffeured limo seemed the height of low-brow anxiety.

  Temple was aware that everyone stared as she emerged.

  “Everyone” was only a couple of jeans-wearing mechanics, but it was more than enough to make her glad she had kept her sunglasses on, like the ersatz starlet they took her for.

  A sleek white baby jet was just taxiing toward them.

  Temple boosted her tote bag onto her shoulder and turned with everyone else to watch its arrival. A welcoming party of three: one in Nine West, two in axle grease.

  Here on the tarmac you could hear the engines whine down to a dying wheeze. You could feel the sand in your contact lenses and the vibration under your feet. (Even, in Temple’s case, through two inches of foam-enhanced platform shoe.) It felt like the days of early aviation.

  Too bad, Temple thought, that Amelia Earhart wasn’t about to deplane.

  The door behind the cockpit cracked open and fell toward the tarmac, its interior stairs resembling a stopped escalator.

  People began pouring out: first men, then women.

  Temple had memorized the names, rank, and suspected gender of the Wong party, but as they swarmed out like ants, all presumptions vanished from her mind.

  The first woman helped out by the first two men to deplane caught herself up face-to-face with Temple.

  Temple introduced herself, then added. “I’m doing local PR for the Maylords opening.”

  “Baylee Harris.” The woman extended an unenthusiastic hand. “Ms. Wong’s personal assistant.”

  Baylee. A girl. Okay. Tall, blond, and ultra-WASP.

  Next.

  “Tiffany Yung.” Another assistant, this one a personal beautician. Definitely female. Also short, bespectacled, brunette, and Asian.

  “Carl Osgaard.” Male. Tall, blond, and Scandinavian. What was he doing here? “Ms. Wong’s dietician an
d personal trainer.”

  Oh.

  So far they were all in their late twenties to early thirties. Temple was relieved that she fell on the cusp of that. At least there would be no age gap.

  “Pritchard Merriweather, Ms. Wong’s media liaison.” Tall, dark, handsome. A black woman with mucho presence. “I really don’t require a local media rep.” But not male, no way. In fact she was an ar-chetypically female, first-person-possessive female! A bit like a tall, dark, and authoritative female homicide lieutenant Temple knew. And sometimes loathed.

  “I actually represent Maylords,” Temple said. Mildly. “Kenny May-lord, the CEO of Maylords, will meet us at the TV studio for his joint appearance with Ms. Wong on Las Vegas Now!”

  Feeling surrounded by two tall women, she lowered her voice and asked the only burning question on her mind. “What’s with the guys in Men’s Wearhouse suits and Matrix Reloaded sunglasses?”

  Only Baylee deigned to answer her. “Death threats.”

  Death threats? Temple eyed the sinister duo again. They made the ersatz mobster behind the Gangsters desk look as quaint as an antique pump organ.

  How could advice on dressing your house for success earn death threats? From aggravated contractors forced to install fountains at the front door? That would run up the water bills in an arid climate like Las Vegas, sure, but feng shui had swept all the chichi world. Get over it.

  “If you’d rather not ride with us—” Pritchard suggested hopefully.

  “No problem.” Temple was dying to see how the burlwood trapdoors worked. “Death threats are old hat here in Las Vegas. The cat’s fedora.”

  Nobody got her last quip because they’d all swiveled to salute the queen bee. B as in bitch, it was reported.

  At last she arrived, the brand name underwriting the flunkies: Amelia Wong, the woman who had made fashion, food, and home furnishings into a spiritual discipline, who had whipped simple domestic arts into a form of metaphysical and merchandising martial arts.

  She was tiny. Tinier than Temple and Tiffany Yung. Bird boned, if that bird were a stainless-steel blue jay. Older than she looked, which was about forty. All spine, like a Victorian spinster. Gorgeous in that deceptively serene Asian way. Charming. Like a cobra swaying before it strikes.