Cat In A Sapphire Slipper

Not So Safe

“Sorry, Red. I don’t open my safe until the police get here.”

Miss Kitty folded her ample arms over her truly commanding chest.

She filled the golden oak desk chair now, and Temple and Matt sat on the maple side chairs drawn up to it.

“We need to present the police with a fait accompli solution,” Temple said. “There are folks who have places to be tonight and I imagine you have rooms booked too.”

Miss Kitty stirred on her executive throne. “True. But I don’t break a confidence. My business reputation depends on it.”

“Even when the other party is dead?” Matt asked.

The madam heaved out a frustrated breath.

“We know you recognized Madonnah when you first saw the dead woman,” Temple said. “It would have simplified everything if you’d just said so. I wasted hours trying to find out who she was.”

“I don’t break a confidence. In life, or in death. Even I didn’t recognize her at first, and I knew the girls’ hadn’t seen her latest ‘look,’ so they wouldn’t say anything. She really was a woman of a thousand faces. Had to be, poor thing.”

“Look,” Matt said. “I’m the prime suspect here, just because I tried to breathe some life back into Madonnah. It’s obvious she had something to hide.” Matt glanced at Temple. “She knows what it is, but she hasn’t told even me yet. And we’re engaged to be married. Whatever this information in your safe is, it could help find Madonnah’s killer.”

Miss Kitty’s barely there eyebrows lifted. “Engaged to be married? Would you hold your bachelor party here too?” Apparently the group take was hefty.

Matt glanced at Temple again. “Uh . . . not really.”

Temple shrugged and appealed to Miss Kitty. “He cannot tell a lie. That’s why the police would make garlic mashed potatoes of him.”

“Where did you find such a rare specimen of the gender?” Miss Kitty asked.

“Formerly in the priesthood.”

“Oh. Really?” Miss Kitty gave Matt an accessing glance that only a madam could. “What a waste.”

“Not now,” Temple said. “But we can’t let the poor lamb be led to the slaughter for doing a good deed.”

“I suppose not.” Miss Kitty’s sigh again inflated her decol-letage. Then she went to the closet door and fiddled inside until there was a metallic clank. The standing safe door yawned open while she retrieved a small metal box.

She brought it to the desktop, then reached to pull a key to its lock from between her bosoms.

“This is Madonnah’s life. It’s all in here. I was her keeper, I guess you could say.”

“Why?” Temple asked.

“Everybody has to trust somebody,” Miss Kitty said gruffly.

“The police won’t want us handling the contents,” Matt said. “Why don’t you just tell us what it is. Temple already suspects.”

“Knows,” Temple told Miss Kitty gently. “I called the phone number Matt found in her room.”

Miss Kitty’s plump hand rested on the unlocked but unopened box. “It’s not much. Her real driver’s license and Social Security number. Birth and high school graduation certificates. A license tag for her dog, Clancy.” Miss Kitty’s lips curled with bitterness. “He died protecting her, little pound mutt. He was the only person who cared about her.”

Silence held. Matt segued into his radio voice: soft, even, inviting confidences. “It was that bad?”

“Worse.” Another deep sigh. “A lot of these girls are just party animals. A lot of them were introduced to sex, drugs, and rock ‘n’ roll too soon, or too roughly. But victims? Not the way they tell it. They’re having fun being sex queens, making two hundred bucks an hour, traveling around, building up nest eggs until they retire at forty.

“A couple are ‘ordinary’ wives and mothers who take an annual ‘vacation.’ Me, I don’t judge. I took my own path to here and now. I know the girls here are clean and doing what they do from free will, as much as any of us have it. Right, Father?”

Matt look disconcerted. “I’m not clergy anymore.”

“This is so not your scene, though, right?”

“Right. I don’t judge either.”

“Did you, when you found her, did you—?”

“She was still warm. I tired to revive her. Then, yes, I said the prayers for the dying.”

Miss Kitty’s lavender-blue-white head nodded. “My job is simple: keep order, keep the money, pay the girls, make it fun for the client. With Nonah, I let it get personal. I tried to keep her safe. That’s not in my job description. That’s not my business. But I tried.”

Temple leaned forward on the hard chair. She wondered why the office furniture was so ungiving, when everything else in the place, except the Victorian sofa, was overupholstered, cushy.

“That’s why she got to preview the night’s clientele by the surveillance system,” Temple said. “Why she made a shtick out of using the name Madonnah and changing her hair and makeup and looks so often. Why she locked up the remnants of her real life in your safe.”

Miss Kitty nodded. “Somebody had to know. Somebody had to keep her secret, otherwise, the loneliness would have destroyed her.”

Matt was growing more puzzled by the minute. “Now that the secret’s out and she’s dead, let me in on it. I don’t get it. I get that she led a tragic life, and that you were her only friend,” he told Miss Kitty. “But I still don’t see how that got her killed.”

This time Temple sighed. “She was in the Witness Protection Program, Matt. She had to ditch her real identity and life. Choosing to be a traveling prostitute was clever. She could tart herself up until unrecognizable, change her location frequently, do anything but have friends, be truly intimate with anyone. Why’d she pick this life?”

Miss Kitty was answering all questions now. “She didn’t want any connections with anyone. No long-term coworkers, no hope of friendship or romance that would have to be broken off anyway. She’d had a rough time as a kid and ended up as the mistress of a drug dealer. She witnessed a triple murder, and testitled. There’s a chain of dealers all over this country, and it would enhance their reps if she was caught and punished. She said she liked it here. She was in control. The men were grateful. Pets aren’t allowed. Abuse isn’t allowed.”

“Someone found her,” Matt said.

Miss Kitty nodded. “Someone found her and managed to get in and kill her. You bachelor party guys, and gals, were just innocent bystanders.”

“Or cover,” Temple said, catching Matt’s eye.

“Funny,” he said. “I don’t feel very innocent, or very much like a bystander anymore, or like I’d settle now for being ‘cover’ for anybody.”