Cat In A Sapphire Slipper

Come Into My Parlor

The siren screams of police and emergency vehicles racing to the Sapphire Slipper continued into early afternoon.

A number of Vegas cabs and private SUVs that were driving up hastily turned around. Inside the Sapphire Slipper, the resident courtesans had a new client to lavish exclusive attention on.

“That was the bravest thing I ever saw,” Babette said, stroking Midnight Louie’s fevered brow.

At least his tongue was very warm anyway.

“He’s so cute!” purred Kiki, Lili, and Niki, tickling his tummy.

“Look at these nails!” Angela and Heather intoned together. “Shredded. And his pads are bleeding.”

They looked with accusing fury at Lieutenant C. R. Molina, Detective Alch, and Coroner Grizzly Bahr.

“I will tend him immediately, my dears.” Coroner Bahr hovered over Louie’s lush nurses. “Some styptics and gauze bandages should set the little guy right. And then I’ll see to you ladies.”

“What about the D.B.?” Molina asked.

“In a minute. This, uh, Good Samaritan needs tending.”

Temple shook her head at Louie’s moment in the spotlight. She was sitting on a blue sofa with Matt down on one knee, attending her kicked ankle.

“It’s swelling already, and bruised,” he decided. “You’ll need to elevate that.”

“Oh, for God’s sake,” Molina said. “You’ve already proposed, from what I hear. You may pick up the bride-to-be and put her down on the long sofa in the bar area. There’s an interrogation going on there that you may be useful for. Coroner, I really think you have more pressing matters upstairs. I sent the crime scene crew up first. Leave the alley cat for the vet.”

Soon all have dispersed but the Sapphire Slipper nursing unit. Louie deserted his cooing chorus of ladies, squirming until they were forced to let him down to limp after the exodus to the bar.

Matt had been focused on Temple from the moment the limo stopped. He’d taken her out of the front seat, spotted her scraped ankle at once, and picked her up, so this was her second stint of bridal carting.

No one noticed them much, though, Temple saw. The barroom was jammed.

Fontana brothers were lined up on and between the barstools. Their girlfriends were scattered at the round tables. Molina had joined two serious, suited men at a table with four semiautomatic pistols on it.

“I take it,” she was saying, “that these are the firearms that shot out the tires.”

One man nodded. “You’ll want to confirm that, for the record.”

The other man looked up and Matt turned to confront him, shocked. “Frank.” He turned back to Temple. “You knew.”

She nodded as the man walked over. He was tall and lean with scissor-sharp features and a receding hairline.

“Matt. I do find you in the most interesting places these days.”

Temple smothered a smile. Frank Bucek was also an ex-priest. He’d been Matt’s teacher in the seminary, but was now an FBI agent. The other agent was getting the girlfriends’ names and addresses, so they made a confidential trio conferring on the sidelines.

“Okay,” Matt said softly, still obviously shocked. “So you were the one Temple called from my cell phone address list. How’d you get here so fast?”

“I was in L.A. And your . . . fiancée, is it, from the good lieutenant’s comments in the foyer? . . . had a bout of curiosity that set a huge fuss in motion.” Bucek grinned. “Congratulations, kids. Am I invited to the wedding?”

“When we decide on a place and a time,” Matt said. “But—”

“I’ll buy you both a celebratory drink in town later, and give you some big explanations in private. Right now, we have a last piece of the puzzle I need to pry out of these women before we leave the crime scene to the able lieutenant.”

Temple was about to scream if she heard Bucek put one more praising adjective in front of Molina’s title, but then she was a bit wrought up from seeing the limo driver’s eyes nearly scratched out by a posse of infuriated domestic cats, led on by the awesome cries and growls of her own cuddly bed partner.

“My midnight radio show—” Matt began, his brow furrowing.

Bucek leaned close. “Carmen is not in a good mood, for many reasons I can guess and some I can’t, but I did get her to promise you’d flee the mass interrogation in time to make your live radio commitment.” He glanced at Temple with some amusement. “You she has plans for. But it’s a small price to pay for Matt getting sprung from a brothel ASAP.”

Temple just shrugged. “How can I help you, Agent Bucek?”

“Tell me which one of these lovely ladies was mad enough at a Fontana boyfriend to help set up a mob hit.”

Temple caught her breath. Putting Madonnah’s murder in those terms took the whole last eighteen-hours’ chaos from the comedy of errors it felt like to the tragedy it was.

Sitting on a leather sofa with her legs up and her foot on Matt’s thigh like a shoeless Cinderella, now that he’d sat down again, made her look about as effective as a poetic Victorian invalid on a fainting couch. Elizabeth Barrett Browning, say. Temple had to twist her neck to eye the eight women she’d come to recognize and know.

She’d suspected one of them had been involved with more than engineering a surprise prank. The FBI man was relying on her crime-solving instincts to tell him who.

Wow. This was the Big Finale and she already looked like a limping fool who’d walked into a trap and become a hostage.

Actually, Louie had done the walking and she had followed, but he was being coddled by courtesans and she was merely being ankle-massaged by Matt . . . which was enough to turn her knees to hot melted butter. As well as her brain.

“Agent Bucek, I haven’t a clue to who the guy who abducted me really is, except that he was a hit man hiree who replaced the real driver, and it suited him, in turn, to be replaced by a Fontana girlfriend. He probably rode out here concealed in the Rolls’s trunk never expecting to be found out in a million years.”

“That’s okay. We know him. We just don’t know which girl aided and abetted, and whether she really knew what she was doing. Whether she was a victim, or a villain. Can you help us?”

Lord, she wanted to! Every Fontana except Macho Mario had believed in her smarts. She eyed the old guy, having a big cigar lit by Miss Kitty while the other agent gave him the sixth degree, at least.

But if she wrongly dissed a loyal Fontana girlfriend, sold her out to the Feds. If she was wrong, and got an innocent woman in trouble. . . .

“If the girl won’t confess, we’ll never get this right,” Bucek said.

Temple eyed them all. Neurotic Jill, so insecure. Buoyant Meredith, the life counselor who might have failed in her own choices. Headstrong Alexia had been mentioned as possibly bolting the fold.

But only one was a likely suspect.

Temple beckoned Bucek to bend down to her.

She whispered, “It’s kinda obvious. Asiah, the substitute driver. She wore fishnet hose with just high heels and a skimpy blazer.”

Bucek glanced at Matt. “You do travel in style these days.”

“Later, she’d changed to palazzo pants. I’m betting she had them in the trunk and changed stockings for pants right then. Did she spot the fake driver then and go along with whatever story he was handing out . . . he was part of the prank, say? I’m betting he was inspired to grab her stockings as a murder weapon after she left the vehicle. It would keep her quiet afterward about what would look like complicity in the murder, wouldn’t it?”

“That it would.” Bucek eyed the girlfriends.

“The African-American woman with platinum-blond hair.”

He nodded. “We’ll be discreet about cutting her out from the herd when we do our interrogation at the LVMPD. Who’s the unlucky boyfriend?”

“Ralph, the second youngest. Another thing. Asiah told me she was totally uninterested in marrying her Fontana boyfriend, that she was along for the ride for the thrill of it.”

Bucek nodded.

“She’s a showgirl. She has a curtain time tonight too.”

He glanced at Matt. “She doesn’t have friends in high places. She’ll miss her high kicks tonight, and for a lotta nights. Thanks. Listen to Matt on that ankle. Maybe you’ll stay out of trouble for a while.”

“Amen,” Matt said.