Cat In A Sapphire Slipper

Posthomicidal Nerves

Temple had never been inside a brothel before. She hadn’t even been to a Chippendale’s male strip show. She had no idea what to expect.

They walked into what seemed like the set for a play, a stuffy, period play like Life with Father, some fussy turn-of-the-twentieth-century Victorian parlor tricked out all in shades of blue.

One really crowded Victorian parlor!

Temple felt like singing part of the famous Christmas carol: twelve shady ladies, ten studly brothers, eight ditsy bridesmaids, four addled sleuths, three senior citizens, two roaming lads, and a cat in a sable-fur ruff. . . .

A cat? Black yet? Louie, wherefore art thou, Louie?

Not here at the moment, thank God and Bast. This was a fluffy bordello cat with green-gold eyes.

Temple recognized Uncle Mario, perching his bulk uneasily on a velvet-tufted chair next to a heavyset woman dressed up like Mae West in corseted glitter. And a second late-middle-aged person wearing a starched collared man’s shirt with a garter on one upper arm and black trousers. Part woman, part man? Part bartender, piano player, dealer, or what?

For the overall atmosphere was Old West saloon. And the “girls” arrayed along one wall were a curled and feathered bevy all in blue, every shade of blue imaginable, from the faint saccharine hues to midnight velvet. And each woman along the spectrum ran the gamut from young and fresh to older and wiser and ready for every implication of midnight blue the law allowed.

It was all legal, and Temple thought it should be outlawed.

Back when she was a TV reporter, she’d run into the tawdry statistics about the sex trade. The “goods” were all spoiled. Strippers. Hookers. Many models. Childhood physical, verbal, and sexual abuse were the guaranteed ingredients that led girls and boys to the sleazy and often self-destructive side of the street. They may proclaim they worked this profession from free will, but their wills and self-esteem had been shaped by trauma most people never had to confront.

Selling oneself still was tragic, and Temple would bet that the reason for the dead woman upstairs would prove to be the result of some perverse, pathetic past, for both victim and murderer.

That concluded, she dismissed her gut reaction.

She had to keep an open mind to dig deep into this culture to find the twisted reason behind the crime.

So. Where were the prime suspects?

Nicky and Matt.