Cat In A Sapphire Slipper

Ex Marks the Spot

Time was flying and Temple was getting desperate.

She found it mildly suspicious that Ralph set up the bachelor party and it was his girlfriend who bribed the driver to turn the limo over to her. But Asiah had been pretty open about the bribe and also about her lack of interest in roping a Fontana brother into matrimony.

Temple meandered back into the kitchen, sensing the tension in the parlor and bar areas as she passed through. The police would have to be called soon. Then, at least, some of the suspects could be cleared enough to be sent home.

Matt had stood as she’d passed through the bar, his face tense. It was now almost noon on Tuesday. He had to be on the air, live, by midnight.

She needed a sign, something to put her on the trail of a disloyal or maybe just royally misguided girlfriend. They were listlessly hanging out around the large homey kitchen table and sitting on the quartet of stools at the eating bar. The radio was playing country and western plaints. The girls looked tired, bored, and rebellious.

One of them must have gone very wrong, but which one?

Life coach Meredith; Wanda, the honey-blond massage therapist; raven-haired Judith, the runway model; white-blond Jill, a pharmacist; the mahogany redhead who trained horses, but maybe hoped to control her Fontana brother, Alexia; Tracee, the superfit Pilates instructor; Evita, a ventriloquist who could certainly call in sick for a missing chauffeur, or Asiah, right Jill-on-the-spot to drive the huge silver boat and its unknowing cargo to a totally wrong location.

But Temple didn’t think it would take a ventriloquist to ensure that a driver call in sick. All the women had probably shown up at Gangsters to hook up with their guys a time or two. All would be familiar with the operation, even with the drivers.

The women eyed her with weary disinterest. Wanda yawned.

Eeny, meeny, miney . . .

All at once, Temple’s glance was drawn by a motion on the carpet. A fat black tail extended from under the kitchen table. Two feet away, so did a fluffy one. And another narrow one and a fluffy one. Her first glimpse of Louie, showed him in cat cahoots with Midnight Louise and cathouse mascot Baby Blue, but whose was the fourth tail?

The tips were twitching ever so slightly. In time. If the radio hadn’t been playing, Temple could have heard the tap, tap, tap of feline impatience.

Not impatience, signaling!

Because every tail pointed in one direction: to the breakfast stool on which one Fontana girlfriend in particular sat slumped and unhappy.

“Come with me,” Temple said. She knew better than to ignore a four-feline Ouija board reading. “You might be able to answer a few questions.”

Temple wasn’t sure what ethnic gene occasionally produced blinding white hair in children that lasts into adulthood. She’d seen a few only in Minnesota, so it was no wonder that Jill’s last name was—”

“Johanssen, right?” Temple asked, spelling it out.

“That’s right!” Jill sat up a bit straighter. “That’s amazing. No one gets the double s and the en ending.”

“That’s because I’m such an ace detective,” Temple said, dead serious.

Jill began fidgeting with her nails, which were filed short and square, not typical for a Fontana brother girlfriend. Nor was her petite frame. Or her profession of pharmacist. Jill was striking but not sensational.

“I hear Giuseppe is crazy about you.”

Jill laughed uneasily. “So they say.”

“Don’t you know?”

“What girl does? Especially with those guys? I mean, they have all these glamorous girlfriends.”

“Including you.”

“I’m not glamorous. The others, sure. I’m the odd woman out.” Jill glanced at Temple’s platform mules. “You know what I mean. You’re a shrimp too, and they’re all sailfish.”

Temple narrowed her eyes. “I know you did it.”

“I didn’t!”

“Didn’t what?”

“What you think.”

“Which is?”

“Whatever you think.”

This was getting nowhere. Temple’s interrogation skills were nil. Of course, she had no authority.

“Listen, Jill, the police are going to regard every man and woman in this bordello as a murder suspect. Lives and reputations will be wrecked, including yours. Maybe it started as a prank, but it’s a matter of life and death now.”

Temple leaned closer. “Come on, Jill, I know you did it. The police will figure it out a lot faster, given your profession.”

Jill drove her stubby fingers into those silken strands of platinum hair. Her complexion was almost as pale.

“Yes, I did it! Yes, it started as a joke. No, it’s not any fun now. I could lose my license—!”

“What did you use?”

“Foxglove, the herbal source of digitalis.”

“Digitalis?”

Jill nodded.

“And that wouldn’t kill somebody?”

“No! Not in a small dose in food. The idea was just to produce vomiting and diarrhea.”

“Then you didn’t realize—”

“I didn’t think anyone would realize I did that. If the murder hadn’t happened out here, no one would have even suspected.”

“Suspected?” Temple was confused into echoing her perp.

“Who would have cared how it was done, or by who when, if it all was just a big fat prenuptial joke?”

“You mean that you drugged the regular driver, not the murder victim.”

“Yes!” Jill looked up, big blues bug-eyed in horror. “You didn’t think—you’d never think that I would’ve helped murder that woman?”

Temple felt that question didn’t merit an answer. Of course that’s what she’d thought, had even hoped in her haste to solve this crime so none of her friends—and her fiancé especially—would be implicated.

“How did you get the regular driver to take something?”

“I visited Gangsters that late afternoon, swore him to silence on the fact that we girlfriends were making a surprise appearance at the end of the bachelor party, and even gave him a taste of the cake we were all going to pop out of, devil’s food. There was enough foxglove in that so that all he could manage to do was call in sick six hours later. We figured the new driver didn’t know what was what yet and would be easier to con. Asiah gave him the same story, this was a surprise prank, and got him off the lot in time to slip into the driver’s seat before the bachelor party arrived.”

“For a pharmacist to play a prank like that . . . it could cost you your license. Why’d you do it, Jill? It was a pretty stupid idea.”

She picked at the clear polish on her fingernails. “I’d never fit in with the other girls. They lived such glamorous lives, did such glamorous things. I just wanted to prove to them I could be a good sport. I didn’t care if Giuseppe proposed. He’s probably going to dump me anyway.” She shrugged dispiritedly.

“What part of ‘crazy about you’ don’t you understand? Don’t you get it? Giuseppe probably liked that you were different from the usual arm candy. I can’t say that the Fontana brothers are sobersides, but they aren’t just tall, dark, dumb hunks either.”

“Oh. I thought he was just joshing me. About something long-term. I thought if I was part of this fun game the other girlfriends were playing, I could hang on a little longer.”

“You and he need to have a long talk after this is over.”

“I doubt we’ll be still talking then.”

Temple sighed. “There’s no reason that exactly how the bridesmaid crew got the original driver out of the way has to come up—”

Jill was all eyes, saucers brimming with bright blue hope.

“If,” Temple added, “I can hand a murder suspect over to the police when they get here. And they will.”

Temple looked at her watch. “Too damn soon.”