Cat In A Sapphire Slipper

Compromising Positions

Matt had observed the change of power in the Sapphire Slipper’s parlor with a certain regret.

True, he’d held a Fontana brother’s Beretta in his hand and had prevailed, but what use was taking over this scene when every woman in the place, and he especially, was a suspect for a particularly awful killing?

He’d watched a few of the TV forensics shows he could stomach.

Women were usually the victims; men were usually the killers.

He knew enough of the secular world now to know the earmarks of a sex killing: a sex industry woman stalked, controlled, brutally murdered. The setup was perfect. All these young bachelors out on the town for a night. The predictable implication of an orgy here in Nevada, the only place in the nation where illicit sex was legal.

A notorious local “family” up to their silk pocket scarves in murder most premarital.

A girl dead in salacious TV show-style: semiclothed, an elaborately erotic setting, costume and makeup by the Marquis de Sade.

Matt shuddered at the implied inhumanity of it all. Camera-ready.

And him a prime suspect, all because he’d opted not to be a Peeping Tom.

If only he had looked! Seen the crime and the criminal.

But no. He’d dutifully turned off the window on mayhem. Made himself into a suspect. And now Nicky was jubilant that his wife, Van, and her friends Kit and Electra and Temple, were coming here to the Sapphire Slipper brothel, to sort things out.

Oh. My. God.

The fact that Midnight Louie, Temple’s cat, was here for some bizarre reason and rubbing back and forth on his pant leg was minuscule comfort.

If the big tomcat was sympathizing with his plight, he was in deep trouble.

His alibi was so hard to explain. Trapped in a brothel bedroom, he’d retreated to a built-in watching and listening post . . . and promptly disabled any watching and listening, so he knew nothing of the murder that had transpired afterward.

Either he was a totally naive ass, or not a red-blooded human male.

Or both.

Matt couldn’t decide which role was worse: innocent or prude.

If only he had decided to take advantage of the admittedly embarrassing situation to live and learn.

He might have stopped the murder. Caught the killer.

That fact that he hadn’t felt worse than being a Peeping Tom.

A little scandalous curiosity could have saved a life.

Instead, a murderer had made him an unwilling accessory, by default.

A murderer had made him very angry. Righteously angry.

They were stuck here.

They were supposed to let Temple and her crew solve this mess.

Matt would be happy about that, but he’d be even happier if he took a hand in the investigation and found the killer himself. The killer who’d made him an impotent nonwitness.

Whoever had done it had malice aforethought toward the victim, and maybe malice toward every man and woman in this house of prostitution, whether unwillingly hijacked, or not. A disgruntled client? A sex pervert? Or something tragic, like a family member unable to accept a relative’s working in the sex industry. He’d heard it all on his radio advice show.

It had been planned, beyond the bridesmaids’ wildest schemes. Perhaps that very reservation had given the killer the idea for hiding a murder in the tangled webs of a silly prenup-tial prank.

And it mattered that this was a bachelor party.

That had something to do with the motive and the means.

Matt may be an amateur at bachelor parties and bridal parties and brothels, but he knew a thing or two about murder from Temple.

He’d do everything he could to help her, as she would to help him.

But that might not be enough.

The murderer might be way out of their league.

They both might be too innocent for this situation, this conspiracy.

He’d have to get savvy fast.