Кэрол Дуглас - Cat In A Sapphire Slipper

Meanwhile, seven gals in concealing black and thirteen in revealing blue trip up the stairs, the same stairs I herded Mr. Matt up an hour ago.

Their combined boot heels and stiletto heels sound like a herd of rhinos on the rampage as they clatter up. I know Mr. Nicky must be a past master at hiding out, but what about Mr. Matt? He is such a direct and honest sort. Surely even an expriest will figure out some surefire place to hide from invading hordes of women being girly.

“This is outrageous,” Macho Mario complains to the madam, who has remained behind. “We would be the laughingstock of Vegas if this got out. A bunch of chorus girls tying up Fontana Inc. Boys, I am putting this on your heads. If you could control your women we wouldn’t be here.”

“Yeah,” Ralph says with a goofy grin.

Upstairs, a lot of stomping and giggling commences.

“It sounds like a sorority house up there,” Aldo grumbles.

Miss Kitty smiles. “Just girls having fun, playing dress up. My staff usually doesn’t get to cut loose on a work night.” She eyes her parlor full of handsome but reluctant clients. “I should not wonder if my team would join in on the room parties. There are plenty to go around.”

A serious silence ensues. Fontana eyes consult Fontana eyes. These dudes have never needed to hire female company, that is for sure. The idea of their girlfriends being coached, even abetted, by pros is both . . . insulting . . . and inciting.

“Males!” Miss Satin hisses beside me.

“What can it hurt?” Emilio asks. “They are not serious kidnappers. It will all be over by this time tomorrow night. Aldo’s virtue is safe, and his chick is bunking at Miss Temple’s place. It should make for some very mellow bridesmaids in the wedding party. Girls just want to have fun.”

“Idiot!” Satin spits beside me. “They are dead serious. They want their own ownership rings.”

“Uh, that is wedlock rings. I mean, wedding.”

“Our kind does not go in for ceremony, other than the usual mating dance, and we have no choice whatever about that. ‘Wedlock’ is right. Human females never joke about craving marital yokes.”

Satin is right. Humans have to tie everything up with red tape and paperwork. No wonder the Fontana boys are enjoying relinquishing the reins to their girlfriends for a boys’ night out.

Myself, I never give the female of the species, any species, an inch.

They have too many good reasons to take revenge on the male.

I listen to the latest stutter of high heels above, and shrieks of laughter.

I think of Mr. Matt, hidden and penned like a hunted tiger, in that room-to-room rampage for just the right lustful setting.

And shudder.

Peep Show at the

Chicken Ranch

Matt had heard the women toasting with champagne and planning to invade the upstairs. He’d figured out from the loud phrases that had drifted up the staircase that they must be intimate enemies, if not rival mobsters. That didn’t mean they weren’t formidable.

Problem was, they sounded ready to raid every bedroom.

Problem was, he needed to find a hiding place for a good half hour, at least. And then they’d be coming up again, with their captives.

Matt could get stuck in some closet, party to who-knows-what intimate fun and games all night long.

He knew he didn’t like bachelor parties, without ever attending one, and now he really didn’t like them.

He started cruising the bedrooms, trying to remember one that had offered a likely place of concealment. One where he was effectively blind and deaf too. Someplace as dark as an old-fashioned confessional.

He had to find one now ! Before he was found out and subjected to who-knows-what hanky-panky. He shut the door quietly, when he ached to slam it, on a Victorian boudoir with only a stand-alone wardrobe for a closet. Even if he was willing to hunch for hours in a crouching position, the wardrobe was crowded with lacy, feathered apparel doused in cloying scents. He was sure to sneeze, like a cuckolded husband in a French farce.

Under the bed? Embarrassing, but at least he’d be able to stretch out.

But searching under the brass four-poster in the next room, he fished out such intriguing treasure as peacock feathers, a small riding crop, something long and rubbery that plugged in . . . no, under the bed was no sanctuary.

Another room had a rococo, painted standing screen. Diving behind there, he found pegs with numerous changes of lingerie. Not here.

By now the women’s giggling sounded like the baying of bloodhounds.

Matt opened the door on another room. This had to be it. He had to go to ground.

It was one of those sterile modernistic rooms full of metal and leather and odd accoutrements. The laughter came closer.

But, wait! That far mirrored wall didn’t match up panels evenly.

He rushed toward his own foggy reflection like a man in a nightmare, fingered the beveled seams. One gave way to his desperation. He was in a small black-painted room. With a chair. He could sit all night if he had to.

The mirrored wall clicked shut on him.

He’d been wishing for a small, dark, old-fashioned confessional.

Oh.

On this side, the mirror was a window. This room was a peephole for the perverted. It could see the entire outer room as through amber glass.

A woman with a champagne glass was pausing in the doorway.

“Oh, this looks kinky,” she said. “This’ll really give my guy the creeps, and a huge thrill, I bet. This one!”

“Too austere,” another girl said. “The next room has a Jacuzzi.”

Matt brushed his hand over the walls, looking for a latch that would release the door. His palm found a plastic rocker panel, like for a light. Light he didn’t need. It would expose his hiding place.

He pressed it anyway.

The mirror went black.

He was in absolute isolation in the dark.

He couldn’t see a thing.

Thank God.

He sat down in the chair, feeling like he’d taken a seat in an X-rated theater, with a certain “ick” factor, and went into meditation mode.

Temple would never believe what this outing had turned into, and he’d never tell her what he did the night of Aldo’s bachelor party. So help him God. Amen.

Dirty Laundry

Lieutenant C. R. Molina was not used to huddling in her darkened bedroom nursing a knife wound under the guise of it really being a rugged case of flu.

A really rugged case of flu had never gotten her down and kept her from work before.

She had holed up in her bedroom to hide the discomfort a long slash across her abdomen caused with every move she made. At thirteen, Mariah was more than old enough to be suspicious of unusual behavior in a parent.

Damn that sneaking, anonymous mortal enemy of Max Kin-sella who’d dared to break into his house the same night she had taken the law into her own hands and done likewise!

Now, she was no wiser to what had happened to Max Kinsella than she was to who hated him enough to slash his wardrobe into pieces in his absence. Absence, in his case, did not make the heart grow fonder. Even Temple Barr had finally given up on the man and made Matt Devine the happiest man in the world.

Carmen tried to cushion her shoulder on the piled bed pillows. A rip of fire along the eighty-some stitches in her side erupted like Vesuvius. She yelled.

She could because she was home alone. Mariah was in school and Mama Molina was watching the inane fare that passed for daytime television programming. Right now she was tuned to a rerun of one of the half hour Hollywood gossip shows that usually sullied the pre-evening news slot.

Excess Hollywood or something, it was called.