Cat In A Sapphire Slipper

Happy Hooker?

Temple adjourned to the bar off the parlor with a sense of relief, probably false. She felt on common ground here, however bizarre the situation.

A sober group of men surrounded several of the round tables, sitting on leather club chairs.

The liquor labels fronting the mirrored back of the bar were all high-end. Heavy crystal ashtrays suitable for cigars centered every polished tiger-maple tabletop.

Temple would have to say that if she were a resident sizing up the night’s customers, she’d be one happy hooker. Matt’s Polish-blond hair stood out among the dark Italian ones like a headlight, but not one guy here was shabby, including Uncle Mario, whose teeth were as snow-white as his silk tie against a black shirt. The man’s old-style gangster look made portly into muscle and balding into moneyed.

The younger Fontanas were hipper in every respect, but still radiated a slightly Old World air of elaborate courtesy that won over women everywhere.

Van von Rhine was the other blonde in the room, and Temple had missed seeing her at first. She was perched on a navy leather barstool and had faded into the faceted glitter of the mirrored bottles behind her.

After Temple had surveyed the scene, Van waved her over. “How’s it going?”

“I’m learning a lot about hordes of strangers.” Temple joined Van at the bar, deciding that an elevated seat would command more attention from this armada of men.

She skillfully hopped up via the crossbar, which anyone who is five feet tall masters early. She felt like a judge at a bench, which was just the inner buttressing she needed to play the authority card here.

“You seem one short.”

They frowned, straightening their ties and their postures.

“Not short in height, in number.”

Emilio dashed around the archway. “Sorry, I just heard from, er, Fifi, that it was the guys’ turn for grilling.”

“Who’s guarding the murder room door?” Nicky asked as their uncle nodded with grave disapproval.

“Um, three of the girls. That way they watch one another. I’ll get back up there as soon as Miss Temple lets me go.”

And she bet that he was a lot more eager to pass the time with three courtesans than here.

Smiling at the tables, she said, “I’ll need to use you guys as a sounding board. First, I’d like your impression of how the abduction was managed, and what you all did, and where, when you arrived here.”

There was the expected universal, awkward silence.

“Did any of you suspect something was wrong before you arrived here?”

Dark heads shook.

“The right limo was gassed up and idling for us. We hopped in,” Aldo said.

“Like lambs to the slaughter,” Macho Mario growled dolefully.

Imagining him as a lamb was quite the funny-bone tickler. Temple bit her lip and caught Matt’s eye, who gave his answer. “I didn’t know what normal was for these events, so it all seemed uneventful to me.”

“There was one surprise,” Aldo noted.

“What was that?” half-a-dozen basso voices wondered.

“Your cat,” he told Temple, “hitched a ride in my groomsmen-mobile. I didn’t recall anyone inviting Midnight Louie to be a ring bearer.”

“Have you seen him since you all were ushered inside?” She hadn’t yet encountered him in the living fur, which was odd.

“No, ma’am,” Emilio said smartly. “He must have run off and hid at all the strangers and commotion.”

That didn’t sound like Louie, who had a habit of running toward strangers and commotion. Where was the big lug now?

“I saw him upstairs,” Matt put in. “In fact, he led me upstairs.”

Several of the boys laughed lustily. “Hey, there, Matt, maybe he wanted to rush up to where the action was,” Ralph jibed.

“The action was dead,” Matt said.

A pall fell like a winding sheet over the naturally boisterous Fontana spirits.

“Sorry, man,” Ralph said. “We only heard about the body on the bed. We didn’t have to find it.”

The other brothers nodded somberly, but Temple was sure they’d expected to find lots of bodies upstairs at a brothel, live ones. And, frankly, she doubted that dead ones would much upset seasoned wise guys. But she’d never tell Matt that. He’d be shocked.

You could play along with the Fontana boys’ pussycat facades, but you should never forget their Berettas weren’t just a high-tech fashion accessory.

Temple pulled out Nicky’s cell phone and asked him to take the images of the dead woman around to all the tables. There was much tsking and glum murmuring among them, but no Fontana claimed to recognize the girl.

Wonderful! Total strikeout. The victim was utterly unknown by anyone now in the Sapphire Slipper. Not likely. How was Temple going to find a murderer among this cast of dozens? And by tomorrow afternoon, yet?

Start at the point you know, she told herself.

“Okay. This question is for all you younger generation Fontanas. How’s your relationship with your current girlfriend and how long have you been associated?”

There was a stunning silence. Most guys don’t talk relationships even when plied with vodka and needle nose pliers to their private parts. Why were they going to breathe a word in this communal setting?”

“Please, guys. You were the ones deemed worthy of nicking, which set this whole insanity in motion. I don’t have time to take you aside one by one for a private tête-à-tête. The police may be more private about interviewing you, but they’ll be a lot less understanding.”

Macho Mario snorted. “The police aren’t understanding at all. Okay, girlie, you didn’t ask, but I’ll come clean. I’ve been a widower for twelve years. I ain’t never been to the Sapphire Slipper. I can still get my own girlfriends at any bar in Vegas.”

“Have you ever dumped a girlfriend since you were an eligible bachelor again?”

“For one thing, I have never been eligible. I have lawyers who see to that. For another, I know that a guy my age and weight can’t be choosy. I also know my rep attracts the little dolls. I have never been known to say no to a little doll, hence they do not leave me unless a wedding ring comes along from some new beau. Then it’s no hard feelings, aloha.”

Macho Mario’s unabashed confession got the brothers rushing to spill their guts.

“It was Aldo,” Armando said. “Flipping over your aunt. That got our girlfriends all stirred up. Then they try on the bridesmaid gowns and say they hate them, and only a bridal gown will do. Vera Wang, yet.”

Rico shook his head at their oldest brother. “When Nicky tied the knot, we all thought he was just young and didn’t know better. No offense, Van. And, although he was the youngest, he’d always wanted to settle down early, go straight, have a hotel of his own, and kids. Or kid, in your case. How is little Cinnamon, anyway?”

“Safe at home now, and in preschool otherwise,” Van said, “which is more than can be said about any of you, then or now.”

The brothers managed to look both sheepish and suave, en masse.

Van nudged Temple in the side. “Fontanas do ‘guilty but innocent’ so well. I’d like to see your stone-cold police lieutenant, Molina, handling this gang in an interrogation room.”

“No, you wouldn’t,” Temple answered. She addressed the Fontanas again. “All your girlfriends hate their bridesmaid gowns?”

“Oh, yeah.”

“Mamma mia, does she!”

“Already offered it as a car rag for the Viper.”

“But Kit and Van put a lot of thought into them,” Temple objected. “The colors are sophisticated, the lines elegant, and there’s no bow on the butt. What more could they want?”

There was a long, sullen silence.

“Bridal gowns,” Temple answered herself.

“This wedding stuff has made them snap,” Eduardo said. “Simple as that.”

“How long have you been going together?” Temple asked absently, still mourning the fact that Van’s and Kit’s brilliant choice of bridesmaid gowns was not only a washout, it had incited a rebellion.

Their answers echoed the women’s. “Six years.” “Three.” “Four.” “Three.” “Five.”

“Uh, guys. That’s a pretty stable amount of time. Didn’t it ever occur to you that they might be expecting some more permanent commitment?”

“They have jobs,” they chorused again.

“Jobs, hell. Careers.”

“Nobody was clamoring for bambinos, and that is sure not gonna happen for Aldo and Kit.”

“They liked a good time, and we had ‘em. Why ruin it?”

As the Fontana boys listed their grievances against their suddenly martially minded significant others, Temple mulled recent polls she’d seen that women were slow to tie the knot nowadays. That they no longer needed men to support them financially, or even to give them babies. They were totally independent. Then why did these eight go over the edge?

This whole scheme was beginning to look like a prank that had gone very wrong when someone used it as cover to kill a young woman nobody here knew. They all said they didn’t, anyway.

Temple turned brisk. She wanted some one-on-one time with Matt. He was the most at risk.

“Okay, guys. Were any of you not in full view of the others at any time after you left the limo out front?”

Another long silence. Fontana boys did not squeal.

Van stepped in. “Only Nicky and Matt. They were able to split off from the main group because they weren’t the objects of the kidnappers’ affections and objections. And the staff here didn’t know a Fontana from a Fontana from a tall, blond stranger. Nobody missed them.”

That meant that she and Temple were the only ones whose significant other was in the murder suspect runoff.

Oh, goodie.