Cat in a Sapphire Slipper Read online

  “So,” Eduardo says slowly to his personal lap attachment. “What is the point? You wanted us off all to yourselves?”

  “Right,” she says back. “In front of an altar like your gutsy older brother here.”

  “Exactly,” another one tells her hog-tied man. “We are tired of always being bridesmaids and never brides.”

  “Hey,” says Rico or maybe Ernesto. “We asked you to the wedding.”

  He gets a (luckily) playful slap on the jaw.

  “Yeah, you get to wear these color-coordinated fancy gauzy dresses. You girls like that,” Ralph says.

  “We would like gauzy white dresses even better.”

  “It is not like you, um, qualify.”

  Another slap.

  “You guys do not qualify for wearing tails like an English butler, either, but you will do so for Aldo’s wedding. Why not for your own?”

  “Aldo is older. He . . . flipped over some visiting foreign female.”

  “We know all about it. She is a mature woman. This Kit Carlson has never been married. We do not want to live to be old enough to be our own mothers and say we have never been married. If Aldo can do it, so can his younger, dumber brothers.”

  Brother! This is a fine kettle of koi! My sleek Italian posse is being hustled into servitude most unfeline. It is okay if Aldo wishes to give up his life as a street dude. He is about to get gray around the whiskers anyway. But the whole litter should not be forced into domesticity.

  I stare hard at Macho Mario Fontana, who has been as macho on this scene tonight as a limp eel. He is the paterfamilias. Time to dredge up some pater and slap these slaphappy, upstart girls down the way they have been disciplining his nephews.

  This whole scene is on the edge of turning from a prank into something prosecutable.

  Satin rubs against me. “We have got to do something, Louie. Those bridesmaids are getting bitter. At least they are not in jeopardy of being left with a litter to support.”

  I cringe a bit at the reminder. You can never tell when a dame is rubbing it in or really on the warpath. I sympathize with the Fontana boys.

  Miss Kitty, the madam, chooses that moment to appear from the kitchens behind the bar with the biggest bottle of champagne I have ever seen.

  Behind her comes a blue lady bearing a silver tray with a gadzillion champagne glasses. It all looks very festive, even, er, bridal.

  Satin chirps with satisfaction beside me. “Our housemother always knows when to calm a crowd. Usually it is the men she has to sedate, but in this case the women are getting a bit rowdy.”

  “I hate to tell you, but I have seen a lot in Vegas, and women in general are as capable of getting as rowdy as anyone, properly motivated by spite, jealousy, and hurt feelings.”

  “They are silly! It is as clear as the fangs in your face that your compadres are enjoying the idea of a night in a bordello with their girlfriends. Except for Mr. Macho and the one called Aldo who is spoken for.”

  Before I can correct her several erroneous assumptions, Miss Kitty steps up to the girls in black. “I need a pair of male hands free to liberate our champagne. And you might tell me your names while we are at it. I won’t remember them all, but it will be a bit more civil for drinking partners.”

  “Champagne! All right!” says a redhead who’s about a foot taller than my Miss Temple.

  The women’s variously colored heads confer. In a clot they much resemble a litter of calicos. Almost all are showgirl tall, I notice. No wonder the Fontana brothers treat my Miss Temple like a litter of adolescent Dobermans escorting a Yorkshire terrier.

  The women quit buzzing and straighten up. “Aldo. He is the man among you. He is getting married.”

  Aldo offers his wrists to be freed from the gaudy bracelets with an air of relief.

  As he rises to address the champagne bottle the way a golf pro would contemplate the lie of a ball, I notice he skims a look at the parlor table bearing all the Fontanas’ looted hardware.

  I can see what he is thinking. Shake the bottle a little while working on uncorking it, then spray the female felons in charge and reclaim the upper hand, bearing a Beretta.

  “Come on, girls.” Miss Kitty gestures to her crew in blue. “We will all relax with a glass of champagne, and then we can take the ladies upstairs to select the room of their choice for their later entertainment. After all, they paid for it.”

  “When do we get a glass of champagne?” Ernesto asks.

  The invaders like the madam’s idea. Several grin. “If you are good, you will get yours upstairs. After we pick out just the right . . . setup for you.”

  That sounds like a threat and a promise. The Fontanas are still hot to play along, as this is definitely an amorous dude’s bonus.

  Aldo has concluded the same thing, because he uncorks the bottle with the signature pop known the world over. Only a tiny bit foams over the bottle lip. I am thinking Aldo wants Charlie’s Angels and their sisters-under-the-silicone tipsy and off guard.

  And from the way his eyes flit around the parlor and adjoining bar, he has not forgotten for a minute that his youngest brother, Nicky, and Mr. Matt Devine are not present, cuffed, or anticipating horizontal romps.

  “I am sorry,” says the pouting brunette bearing the turquoise fur handcuffs. “You did a great job with the champagne cork, but we really cannot leave you alone down here unsecured.”

  Aldo sighs, extends his arms, and shoots his impeccable suit coat sleeves and shirt cuffs. And then he is. Cuffed. Again. Sure does ruin the line of his tailoring, especially across the shoulders.

  Meanwhile, seven gals in concealing black and thirteen in revealing blue trip up the stairs, the same stairs I herded Mr. Matt up an hour ago.

  Their combined boot heels and stiletto heels sound like a herd of rhinos on the rampage as they clatter up. I know Mr. Nicky must be a past master at hiding out, but what about Mr. Matt? He is such a direct and honest sort. Surely even an expriest will figure out some surefire place to hide from invading hordes of women being girly.

  “This is outrageous,” Macho Mario complains to the madam, who has remained behind. “We would be the laughingstock of Vegas if this got out. A bunch of chorus girls tying up Fontana Inc. Boys, I am putting this on your heads. If you could control your women we wouldn’t be here.”

  “Yeah,” Ralph says with a goofy grin.

  Upstairs, a lot of stomping and giggling commences.

  “It sounds like a sorority house up there,” Aldo grumbles.

  Miss Kitty smiles. “Just girls having fun, playing dress up. My staff usually doesn’t get to cut loose on a work night.” She eyes her parlor full of handsome but reluctant clients. “I should not wonder if my team would join in on the room parties. There are plenty to go around.”

  A serious silence ensues. Fontana eyes consult Fontana eyes. These dudes have never needed to hire female company, that is for sure. The idea of their girlfriends being coached, even abetted, by pros is both . . . insulting . . . and inciting.

  “Males!” Miss Satin hisses beside me.

  “What can it hurt?” Emilio asks. “They are not serious kidnappers. It will all be over by this time tomorrow night. Aldo’s virtue is safe, and his chick is bunking at Miss Temple’s place. It should make for some very mellow bridesmaids in the wedding party. Girls just want to have fun.”

  “Idiot!” Satin spits beside me. “They are dead serious. They want their own ownership rings.”

  “Uh, that is wedlock rings. I mean, wedding.”

  “Our kind does not go in for ceremony, other than the usual mating dance, and we have no choice whatever about that. ‘Wedlock’ is right. Human females never joke about craving marital yokes.”

  Satin is right. Humans have to tie everything up with red tape and paperwork. No wonder the Fontana boys are enjoying relinquishing the reins to their girlfriends for a boys’ night out.

  Myself, I never give the female of the species, any species, an inch.

  They
have too many good reasons to take revenge on the male.

  I listen to the latest stutter of high heels above, and shrieks of laughter.

  I think of Mr. Matt, hidden and penned like a hunted tiger, in that room-to-room rampage for just the right lustful setting.

  And shudder.

  Peep Show at the

  Chicken Ranch

  Matt had heard the women toasting with champagne and planning to invade the upstairs. He’d figured out from the loud phrases that had drifted up the staircase that they must be intimate enemies, if not rival mobsters. That didn’t mean they weren’t formidable.

  Problem was, they sounded ready to raid every bedroom.

  Problem was, he needed to find a hiding place for a good half hour, at least. And then they’d be coming up again, with their captives.

  Matt could get stuck in some closet, party to who-knows-what intimate fun and games all night long.

  He knew he didn’t like bachelor parties, without ever attending one, and now he really didn’t like them.

  He started cruising the bedrooms, trying to remember one that had offered a likely place of concealment. One where he was effectively blind and deaf too. Someplace as dark as an old-fashioned confessional.

  He had to find one now! Before he was found out and subjected to who-knows-what hanky-panky. He shut the door quietly, when he ached to slam it, on a Victorian boudoir with only a stand-alone wardrobe for a closet. Even if he was willing to hunch for hours in a crouching position, the wardrobe was crowded with lacy, feathered apparel doused in cloying scents. He was sure to sneeze, like a cuckolded husband in a French farce.

  Under the bed? Embarrassing, but at least he’d be able to stretch out.

  But searching under the brass four-poster in the next room, he fished out such intriguing treasure as peacock feathers, a small riding crop, something long and rubbery that plugged in . . . no, under the bed was no sanctuary.

  Another room had a rococo, painted standing screen. Diving behind there, he found pegs with numerous changes of lingerie. Not here.

  By now the women’s giggling sounded like the baying of bloodhounds.

  Matt opened the door on another room. This had to be it. He had to go to ground.

  It was one of those sterile modernistic rooms full of metal and leather and odd accoutrements. The laughter came closer.

  But, wait! That far mirrored wall didn’t match up panels evenly.

  He rushed toward his own foggy reflection like a man in a nightmare, fingered the beveled seams. One gave way to his desperation. He was in a small black-painted room. With a chair. He could sit all night if he had to.

  The mirrored wall clicked shut on him.

  He’d been wishing for a small, dark, old-fashioned confessional.

  Oh.

  On this side, the mirror was a window. This room was a peephole for the perverted. It could see the entire outer room as through amber glass.

  A woman with a champagne glass was pausing in the doorway.

  “Oh, this looks kinky,” she said. “This’ll really give my guy the creeps, and a huge thrill, I bet. This one!”

  “Too austere,” another girl said. “The next room has a Jacuzzi.”

  Matt brushed his hand over the walls, looking for a latch that would release the door. His palm found a plastic rocker panel, like for a light. Light he didn’t need. It would expose his hiding place.

  He pressed it anyway.

  The mirror went black.

  He was in absolute isolation in the dark.

  He couldn’t see a thing.

  Thank God.

  He sat down in the chair, feeling like he’d taken a seat in an X-rated theater, with a certain “ick” factor, and went into meditation mode.

  Temple would never believe what this outing had turned into, and he’d never tell her what he did the night of Aldo’s bachelor party. So help him God. Amen.

  Dirty Laundry

  Lieutenant C. R. Molina was not used to huddling in her darkened bedroom nursing a knife wound under the guise of it really being a rugged case of flu.

  A really rugged case of flu had never gotten her down and kept her from work before.

  She had holed up in her bedroom to hide the discomfort a long slash across her abdomen caused with every move she made. At thirteen, Mariah was more than old enough to be suspicious of unusual behavior in a parent.

  Damn that sneaking, anonymous mortal enemy of Max Kin-sella who’d dared to break into his house the same night she had taken the law into her own hands and done likewise!

  Now, she was no wiser to what had happened to Max Kinsella than she was to who hated him enough to slash his wardrobe into pieces in his absence. Absence, in his case, did not make the heart grow fonder. Even Temple Barr had finally given up on the man and made Matt Devine the happiest man in the world.

  Carmen tried to cushion her shoulder on the piled bed pillows. A rip of fire along the eighty-some stitches in her side erupted like Vesuvius. She yelled.

  She could because she was home alone. Mariah was in school and Mama Molina was watching the inane fare that passed for daytime television programming. Right now she was tuned to a rerun of one of the half hour Hollywood gossip shows that usually sullied the pre-evening news slot.

  Excess Hollywood or something, it was called.

  The helmet-haired hostess actually breathed a word that caught a cop’s interest.

  “Former Hollywood madam Heidi Fleiss has opened a Laundromat in Pahrump, Nevada,” the woman announced as if hailing the Second Coming. “It’s called Dirty Laundry and is a prelude to her breaking ground for the first chicken ranch for women, also in Pahrump.”

  “Just what I need!” Carmen moaned. Would women really run with the wolves and flock to a joint with men for sale? Not in her jurisdiction anyway, but this was yet another sad sign of the coming Apocalypse in Vegas and environs.

  On the breathless news went: “This gender-breaking establishment was originally titled the Rooster Ranch, but will now be called the Stud Farm.”

  Carmen patted the rumpled covers, desperately seeking the remote control. If she never heard about another Nevada chicken ranch it would be far too soon.

  Once the TV was off, she could hear her distant doorbell ring. Great. She had no hope of getting there before the ringer had left, and risked irritating her stitches into a fevered snit.

  She lay back, huffing with effort more than sighing. Sighing hurt. No way could she pretend to normal movement at work for a few more days. Luckily, Morrie Alch was so straight-arrow that the brass would believe him if he swore the Pope was Mormon. If he said she had the flu bad, it stuck.

  The doorbell was silent now. Who had to bother hapless housewives at midday anyway?

  She was trying to shift to a more comfortable position when her bedroom door opened. Someone was in the house! Someone unauthorized. The front door had been locked.

  She patted the covers for her ankle piece, the small Colt semiautomatic. A cop on her back who’s been attacked by an unknown person does not tumble into a sickbed with just a TV remote.

  Her heart was beating hard enough to tear out her stitches as she aimed at the tall shadow against the hall light. “Morrie?” she said hopefully.

  “I figured he was in on it,” the shadow answered.

  “Larry?” She wasn’t exactly relieved.

  “Yeah.”

  “Who said you could break and enter at my place?”

  “No breaking. I have a key, remember?”

  She didn’t, but she couldn’t remember a lot on Vicodin. Her mind tended to wander. One minute she’s hearing about Dirty Laundry, and then Dirty Larry shows up at her door. That was the undercover cop’s nickname. He’d bullied his way into the edges of her professional and private life in the past few weeks, but now that he knew she’d mangled the law, she found him less amusing and more alarming.

  His turning up at Kinsella’s house just after she’d been knifed by an intruder in the dark h
ad turned on her suspicions. The intruder could be anyone, including Dirty Larry. Why? She had no idea, but she was finding it harder to believe that he’d pursued her lately just because she was so darn cute.

  “You’re not telling anyone about this.” Her words were an order.

  “Of course not, but I wanted to make sure you were okay.”

  “I hurt like hell, I’m on enough painkillers to get busted if I didn’t have a doctor’s prescription, and I don’t feel like talking.”

  “Whoa! Got it. Didn’t mean to scare you.” His shrewd eyes glanced at the Colt, still in her hand.

  “I wasn’t scared,” she said. “Just cautious. And you know better than to walk in on a cornered cop.”

  “Right. Now you know what it feels like to have something to hide, just like an undercover operative. Can’t ever tell anyone the truth. Can’t ever stop watching your back. Can’t ever trust anyone.”

  “Larry—” His litany of undercover problems had sounded more like a subtle threat than an expression of sympathy. But she could very well be paranoid about everyone now.

  “I’ll lock the door on the way out,” he promised, “so your kid won’t even know I was here.”

  The bedroom door shut. Carmen risked a small sigh that ended with a hiss of pain.

  Larry had a hard-bitten manner; that’s why the bad guys so readily took him for one of them. Now she had to wonder if he was one of them and if he’d tried to sucker her, maybe even stabbed her, in the dark. If he was more stalker than suitor.

  One thing was certain: she was still in the dark.

  Hen Party

  So there I am in the hall, trying to avoid the stomp of boots and high heels from twenty champagne-sipping human females milling around.

  Do they glance down at the carpet to see if there is any stray resident around? No. Speaking of stray residents, I have seen no trace of Mr. Matt, which is a big relief. Nor do I see Mr. Nicky Fontana lounging about either. Although I think Mr. Nicky would be better at hiding out in a bordello than Mr. Matt.