Cat in a Red Hot Rage Read online

  I begin to worry that Solange is too sensitive a soul to do undercover work.

  Then a scooter wheels past and she lofts up to the seat like a Hell’s Angel mascot born.

  “Oooh!” cries a passing Red Hat lady, gawking at Solange in her flowery and feathery chapeau. “What an adorable cat! And that hat! Where did you get her?”

  The rider shrugs purple shoulders. “She just jumped aboard.”

  “What a darling! I’ll walk along with you a little so I can pet her.”

  “Be my guest.”

  “Did you hear what happened off the lobby yesterday?”

  “No, I just got in.”

  “Someone got killed!”

  “No! Not one of us?”

  “Yes! And they’re saying another of us did it.”

  Off goes the Gossipmobile, Solange installed like a beauty queen on a parade float. A PI never had a sweeter eavesdropping machine!

  Chapter 12

  Old Acquaintances

  If anything, more Red Hat ladies crowded the Crystal Phoenix lobby when Temple returned from the Circle Ritz.

  If anything on earth was purple, or red, or purple and red, it was gathered in this lobby. Rolling luggage bags boasted these royal colors, as did clothing, tote bags, purses, scarves, shoes, hose, nail polish (red or purple), and eye shadow (only in purple, thank God).

  The gaudiest women, dripping red and purple feather boas and scarlet lace, plume, and rhinestone-swagged Victorian-size hats, posed on a huge photo poster announcing “Candy Crenshaw and the Red Hat Candies,” Candy being the lead singer and “clown princess.”

  Pink-hatted ladies, like herself, stood out, but there still were a fair number. It occurred to Temple that a mad serial killer of pink-hatted ladies might be at work here. If so, she had now firmly put herself among the potential victims.

  This was not a new feeling for her, but she had a new significant other now. Matt might not be as easy about that as Max had been, because he was tied to a job and couldn’t watch over her the way Max had.

  The feeling of total responsibility for herself was heady. She’d sometimes resented Max’s omniscient ways in regard to her life and how she lived it. And risked it.

  Yet she worried that Matt would be a lot less liberal than Max about the times her PR work turned into PI work. Still, he’d recognized her sleuthing tendency almost as soon as they’d met.

  So if she was so liberated, why was she standing there dithering about what Matt or Max would think? She needed to know what she thought about the problem at hand.

  There were many reasons someone might have killed Oleta Lark, none having anything to do with the Red Hat Sisterhood or Oleta’s skimpy relationship to Electra.

  Temple strolled into the ballroom housing all the Red Hat shops. Oleta’s body was gone now, but the murder scene might not have been “released” yet.

  As always in Las Vegas, any major Strip crime scene was quickly concealed. A uniformed Crystal Phoenix security guard in a tasteful black-and-tan uniform kept the public from wandering behind the freestanding screens. A pair of Fontana brothers cruised the area, easily drawing away the eyes of arriving Red Hat Sisters.

  A third Fontana brother buttonholed Temple, recognizing her despite her new pink hat.

  She didn’t think of Nicky Fontana as one of Fontana Inc. He was the youngest, cutest Fontana brother, but cast in the same winning mold of olive skin, black curly hair, deep brown eyes, and supernaturally white teeth that probably had inspired the rush to whiteners in the rest of the population.

  He was also married and fixed in position as owner of the Crystal Phoenix, while his brothers still rambled the Strip and painted the town red hot nightly.

  “You sure got literally undercover on the scene quick,” Nicky said. “Nice disguise. What was also nice was finally getting to meet your aunt. I can see where you get some of your spunk. But a little birdie rumor has it that that this relative of yours might be breaking up that old, brotherly gang of mine. Any truth to that rumor?”

  For a moment, Temple didn’t get it. Then she nodded, forgetting that would set her wide hat brim atremor.

  Nicky ducked getting nicked in the chin by the coiled organdy.

  “Sorry,” she said. “I should renounce head gestures while wearing this getup. You must be referring to my aunt, Kit Carlson, and your eldest brother, Aldo. I might have introduced them. Sort of.”

  “My uncle, Macho Mario, is hearing wedding bells. We haven’t had a wedding in the family since I married Van. I don’t know what got into Aldo, except seeing that red hair that you usually sport on your aunt. I hardly see him anymore.”

  “Well, that’ll change, because Kit’s joining me here to infiltrate the Red Hat Sisterhood. It’s likelier that some out-of-towner killed the Pink Lady, don’t you think?”

  “Maybe. It would suit us all better if that were the case. Your landlady doesn’t look like a crazed killer.”

  “Neither do any of these attendees. That’s why I think someone used the cover of this convention to mask the criminal and the crime.”

  “Great. Van will love that angle. Good for the hotel. We frown on homegrown homicidal maniacs. But a tourist . . . not our fault.”

  Temple smiled. Nicky and Van made a great couple and better bosses, which was what Temple cared about. Nicky would always give her a long leash when needed. Van would always make her expectations precise.

  “Let’s go see the bossy lady,” Nicky suggested, “and discuss this stuff in private.”

  Temple had always liked the easy, affectionate way Nicky deferred to his wife on the job. It was Nicky’s vision but Van’s execution that had made the Crystal Phoenix Las Vegas’s classiest hotel, what would be called a boutique hotel anywhere else, but was just “classy” in Vegas.

  But it did make Temple wonder about their sex life: fire and ice sounded good on paper, but in real life . . . Maybe she was dwelling on their sex life because hers had taken such a sudden, earth-shaking turn.

  Back to business, Barr. Matt doesn’t get off of work until 2:00 A.M. . . . Tomorrow is another day. Oh, yeah.

  She and Nicky whisked straight up to the fourteenth floor where Van had her ultra-modern office. She was on the phone when they arrived so they arrayed themselves on the Italian leather chairs in front of Van’s desk and waited for her to get free.

  Only Van von Rhine would dare to have a glass desktop. Not a paper or a paper clip was out of place. Her pale straight blond hair was smoothed into a tiny French twist at her neck, but everything else about her was Italian. Furniture, clothes, shoes, purses.

  Husband.

  Temple didn’t know if Van had developed the design addiction after she’d met Nicky or just had always had good, expensive taste.

  She waved a manicured hand at Temple, gave Nicky a cool, inciting glance, and wound up her call in twenty seconds flat.

  “Temple, that hat is a bit much, but you’ve always been able to carry off a lot for such a petite woman. Are you going to nail our Pink Lady killer while fending off the press?”

  That was Van, multitasking with a vengeance.

  “I thought I’d start,” Temple said, “by finding out what the police told you.”

  “Nicky, I think the male detective enjoyed interviewing you man to man. I suspect he has too many women on his tail already.”

  Temple collapsed into laughter, freeing her impish self. “You must mean Detective Alch. A sweet guy and a good detective, but he does have a hell of a lady lieutenant to answer to.”

  “God, she’s good, Nicky,” Van said, eyeing her husband. “That’s the guy. Tell us what we girls weren’t up to knowing.”

  “Can I help it if I inspire police confidence?” Nicky said with a shrug, spreading his hands like Marlon Brando in The Godfather. “The victim was Oleta Lark from Reno.”

  “A Nevadan?”

  “According to her IDs. Forty-eight. Strangled with an official Red Hat Sisterhood scarf.”

  “Wait,�
� Temple said. “The Pink Lady was strangled with a Red Hat scarf? So the killer is fifty or older?”

  “That’s the assumption. But anybody can buy those scarves online or at all sorts of shops. That’s my observation, from watching Van’s shopping habits at the Strip malls and on eBay.”

  “I do not shop on eBay, Nicky!”

  “Just kidding, Duchess. Our credit cards alibi you on that one.”

  “What are you going to do to keep the publicity on the upside?” Van asked Temple with a frown.

  “Accent the positive. Female empowerment. This is a significant woman’s movement from a generation that was expected to shrivel up and go quietly on a diet of Maalox and calcium tablets. Instead, they are out there, having fun and making great role models for all of the younger women coming up who aren’t going to lose it because they turn thirty or forty or fifty or sixty or seventy or eighty or ninety or a hundred and twenty. There was a time when turning thirty was a day of mourning for women. Now they want to turn a hundred.”

  “Most inspiring,” Nicky said, fanning himself at that fiery speech. “Whew. Put keeping us guys around on that to-do list, please.”

  “Always,” Temple said. “Las Vegas wouldn’t be Vegas without the Fontana brothers, each and every one.”

  “Agreed,” Van said, stroking Nicky’s ankle with the toe of her Jimmy Choo stiletto.

  With a glass desk, you can see everything, Temple thought with a smile. That was Van von Rhine. Nothing to hide.

  She was an unofficial Red Hat lady already.

  Chapter 13

  The League of

  Extraordinary

  Gentlewomen

  Temple arrived back on the main floor ready to rumba and roll.

  An unknown woman in a purple micro-fiber knit pants suit and a red pillbox hat covered with matching feathers headed toward her.

  “Pink Hat with the pink marabou band?”

  “Yes.”

  “All right.” She turned and nodded to the massing red-and-purple feathered mob. Several separated from the flock, tossing their red or purple, or red-and-purple, feather boas over their shoulders.

  Temple felt like a wimpy, skinny, young pink person surrounded by a queenly moat of P and Rs, as she decided to call the Red Hat Sisterhood colors for short.

  “This is super-secret,” said the first woman, a chubby and bespectacled brunet. “I’m Mary Lou. This is Alice, Starla, Judy, and Phyllis, Phyll for short. We’re the Red-Hatted League.”

  Temple expected them to burst into the “Lollipop Guild” number from The Wizard of Oz. She was a very puzzled newcomer to this colorful kingdom of exotically attired women: Dorothy, of course. And Louie was the right size and color, if not species and temperament, for Toto. All the scene needed was a witch or two, good and bad. Temple had a feeling they were already milling among the colorful crowd.

  “The Red-Hatted League,” Temple repeated. “Electra said that was the name of her Red Hat Sisterhood chapter. Um . . . wasn’t that a Sherlock Holmes story or something?”

  Alice, a tall, angular blonde, tipped her red-and-purple hound’s-tooth-pattern deerstalker hat. “No. That story was ‘The Red-Headed League.’ We’re told that phrase has some special significance for you,” she added.

  “Yes.” Temple looked around for eavesdroppers. Only Red Hat Sisterhood members filled the lobby, embracing, comparing clothes and insignia, cooing. Looking harmless.

  Don’t believe it! Temple told herself. The whole point of this organization was that midlife and beyond women weren’t inactive, weren’t invisible, and weren’t the harmless biddies some people liked to think and say they were.

  “Yes,” Temple repeated. “I used to be a natural redhead, and soon hope to be one again. At least my current blond hair doesn’t clash with the convention reds. How did Electra get the word out to you all so fast?”

  Starla, who resembled an aging chorus girl (in other words, she would look sexy at any age), hoisted a—what else?—purple cell phone.

  “We’re all wired, inspired, and ready to kick criminal butt. I used to be a bounty hunter in my younger days.”

  Phyllis did not look hot, but she did look like the world’s most efficient librarian with her brown hair in a bun under her scarlet marabou-edged bridesmaid hat. She pulled a P and R folder from her P and R tote bag.

  “And I was a dispatcher for the police department while getting my library degree. I copied the registrants and guest list from the computer at convention central and copied it for everyone. Here also are copies of the various official badges, in case you spot any phonies wandering around. I have everyone’s cell phone number but yours, Miss Barr, including my old pal Morrie Alch’s. If you’ll give us yours now—”

  Temple watched five red ballpoint pens topped with long purple ostrich plumes drawn from Red Hat Sisterhood tote bags in unison like Musketeer dueling swords.

  She stuttered her phone number and it was duly copied down on the various sheets. Phyllis handed her a set, with her own cell number added.

  “Judy and I have already fanned out and gathered info about the vic and her chapter.”

  Temple eyed Phyll and Judy, a feminine version of Mutt and Jeff: Judy was a tall, thin woman in drapey red ankle-length gown and vest. Some might call her homely and others dignified; Phyll was gray-haired and brisk. On the other hand, Mary Lou was a rhinestone cowgirl: short, curvy, and all fake fingernails (R and P, of course), tight purple jeans, and red jeans jacket, slathered with appropriately colored rhinestones.

  “We’d better talk in private,” Temple decided, hustling them to the first-floor conference room Nicky had assigned to her during the conference.

  A Fontana brother, probably . . . Emilio, stood guard, a single gold ear stud the only visible metal on his person, although the concealed Beretta elsewhere was what would alert a metal detector. There weren’t any of those here . . . yet.

  “Ladies,” he said with an appreciative bow, opening the door to usher them all inside.

  And didn’t they love that! As a matter of fact, Temple did too. There was no resisting a Fontana brother with his hot young GQ looks and his elaborate Old World ways.

  “Love the hair,” he whispered under Temple’s hat. “And the lid.”

  She was last in the room and the women were still cooing over Emilio.

  “Do you know him?” Starla asked.

  “He’s a brother of the hotel owner. They sometimes work security here.”

  “A boyfriend?” buxom Mary Lou asked coyly, all her rhinestones twinkling like a flutter of winks.

  “Not mine.” Max flashed through her mind. Not a boyfriend anymore. An ex. Don’t waffle. Move on.

  “I’m . . . I’m engaged.”

  She heard her own words with an inner gasp. She was engaged. To a man who would marry her at the drop of a red hat at any Vegas chapel. The thought took her breath away.

  Her announcement brought a half-dozen murmurs of congratulations and as many surreptitious glances at her left hand.

  “I’m not wearing my ring here. I don’t want to attract any attention.”

  “That big a ring, huh?” Starla’s purple-shaded eyelids lifted.

  “Not that,” she said, although it was that. Partly. “Nobody knows yet, not even Electra. I wanted to surprise her, now—”

  “Now,” said Phyll, sitting at the conference table and whipping out a notebook, “we need to make sure our founder isn’t facing a murder one rap.”

  “Electra is your founder?”

  “Right,” Judy said, sitting and still looking as tall as a stork. “Electra brought us together for our love of mysteries, but the fact was, we were all retired or semiretired and lacking things to do. Many of us don’t have husbands or adult children in the area. The Red Hat Sisterhood is our support group. Now Electra needs our support and she’s going to get it.”

  “Amen,” said Phyll. “You’re the shamus here. Electra’s told us all about your cases, every one. Just tell us what to
do.”

  In no time, Temple was gazing at a conference table ringed by very silly hats with very serious women under them.

  Talk about undercover operatives!

  “All right,” she said. “First, I want to know about the, er, vic.” These dames were more up on crime TV slang than she was.

  Judy flipped back about twenty notebook pages. The Red-Hatted League had been busy.

  “Oleta Lark. Member of the Reno Scarlet Women chapter for six years. Ex-wife of Elmore, ‘the rotten dickhead.’ ”

  Temple almost choked on the news. Oleta was an ex herself? This put things on a whole new level. Judy was so tall and ethereal-looking to be laying down such blunt terms. “Um, ladies, ah, Judy. Who said that?”

  “All her chapter members reported she said that, all the time.”

  “Is he living?”

  “If you could call a rented room by the week at the Araby Motel living.”

  “The Araby Motel? In town here? How’d you find that out?”

  “Oleta’s hateful remarks about Elmore got us curious,” Phyll said. “Never get a librarian on your tail. We easily got an address in Reno, but I decided to check every hotel/motel along the Strip, starting at the bottom. Saved me a lot of checking. He’s been in town for a week.”

  “So he’s essentially a recent Las Vegas resident?” Darla asked.

  “He’s also Electra’s ex-husband,” Temple announced.

  “No!” Alice started scribbling furiously in her notebook. “One of us had better check out the Araby Motel and Mr. Double X in person.”

  “Two of you,” Temple cautioned. “And take a Fontana brother with you. Pick one you like the looks of and go.”

  This caused a ripple of anticipation among the feathered hat brims.

  “There are more Fontana brothers?” Starla batted metallic purple false eyelashes.

  “Several,” Temple admitted. “Just ask Emilio outside for a name. Tell him where you’re going, and why, and that I said you need an escort. Alice and Mary Lou, you’d better do that.”

  There were pouts all around the table, but not on Alice and Mary Lou.