Кэрол Дуглас - Cat In A Sapphire Slipper

I must admit that Miss Electra is a pistol at the wheel. She wrangles that well-mannered Brit Rover through the Vegas traffic like a broncobuster. We run over a few curbs and dust a few fenders, but what the hell. We move too fast to hear the curses in our wake.

While the big vehicle purrs on idle in the Circle Ritz parking lot and the ladies race inside to round up items suitable for an impromptu kidnapping-murder party, I hop out of the door behind Miss Kit Carlson and dive into the attractive shrubbery. The oleander bushes, though poisonous to us, make great cover for our kind.

“Paging Ma Barker,” I yowl.

She is in my face faster than a fistful of switchblades. Which she happens to be carrying.

“Who goes there?”

“Your putative granddaughter.”

The word putative stops her colder than granddaughter . I pick this vocabulary up from lawyers around the Crystal Phoenix.

“You are who?”

“We have met. Midnight Louise. Full partner in Midnight Inc. Investigations. I need backup on a freshly cold case with a hot corpse in the desert. It might involve making a certain Midnight Louie look like a pretty lame duck.”

“This would also involve—?”

“A wild ride in yonder Britmobile, maybe some discreet claw work, crime-solving, and saving Mr. Midnight Louie’s assets.”

Ma Barker snorts. “And he has any?”

“A few.”

“Yeah. I have a certain lingering maternal memory of the little imp before he was a big wheel around town. I am game. Let us hop to it. Oh. This Britmobile is a far bound upward for an old dame.”

“Hey! The Brits are ruled by an old dame. Come on, old girl, up and at ’em.”

I give her a friendly spur-prick on the hindquarters and we clear the running board together and hunker down on the dark carpet of the third row of seats.

“Where are we headed?” she inquires while laving her stinging pads.

“The Sapphire Slipper. The finest little whorehouse in the state of Nevada, which supports quite a few.”

“Sapphire Slipper? Shoes,” Ma Barker sniffs between paw licks, “are highly overrated.”

Once we are under way, I loft up onto a third-row seat back. Miss Van von Rhine is now at the wheel, Miss Temple Barr is in the front passenger seat, cursing and trying to operate the built-in map screen, Miss Kit Carlson is leaning over the front passenger seat, backseat driving, and Miss Electra Lark is loading lead into a nasty big black revolver behind the driver’s seat.

“So we are going out to this remote murder scene to do what?” Miss Electra asks.

I admire a dame who can mix bullets and leading questions.

Miss Van von Rhine heaves a sigh large enough for a sumo wrestler.

“Nicky said the kidnapping situation was under control, but that they needed Temple there to solve a murder.”

“Whose murder?”

“One of the ‘girls.’ The connection was riddled with static. I do not know whether he meant one of the girls who work at the chicken ranch, or one of the girls who kidnapped the bachelor party.”

“Chicken?” Ma Barker hisses from behind and down. “I could use a little snack.”

Now I sigh, but a lot quieter than Miss Van von Rhine. Ma Barker may be a tough old bird, full of street smarts, but she has no Strip sophistication. Hang out at a high-end Vegas hotel and casino for a few nights, and you know that sex in all flavors is for sale all over town, and you hear about the legal brothels called “chicken ranches” that dot the outskirts.

“These chicks are not edible,” I hiss back, “unless you like lime-flavored leg-shaving cream and nail enamel with a dash of glitter.”

“That is a funny way to dress a chicken.”

“These are the human variety. Chicks. Pretty women. Ladies of the night.”

“Oh.”

Ma Barker hunkers back down to lick her own toenails. I have been a street cat. There is not much time to master the finer points of human misbehavior when one is scrambling for a mote of food and a drop of water or avoiding imminent death under radial tires.

Meanwhile, in the front seat a debate has erupted over our direction and speed. Of course it is as black as the old man’s nose hairs out here off the main freeways. I risk lifting up to brace my front mitts on the roll of, yum, black leather upholstery under a side window. Full leather interior. My, my.

The night is as dark as always, with those pinpricks of light humans delight in. Starlight is good for nothing. At least the moon can illuminate an outside faucet dripping a little water on the grass. Finding water in a desert city is no picnic for the homeless of any species.

I have never been so far out into the empty desert. It is scary to look back and see Las Vegas as a star-small twinkling oasis in our wake. I am not frightened of much, but immensity. How will we find one small chicken ranch in this Big Uneasy Empty?

Taking Back

the Night

“We two guys may know what’s going on around here,” Nicky said in the hall, where he and Matt stood breathing deeply. “But that is still a hostage situation downstairs. My brothers and Uncle Mario are not going to like being taken for a ride by nobody. And when they find out that someone was killed while they were hog-tied, they’ll be seeing blood-red. We gotta change it before reinforcements arrive.”

“That why you told your wife things here were under control? They aren’t.”

“They will be by the time she gets here.”

“And I doubt Temple can solve a murder among strangers in a few hours.”

“At least she, and we, can sort out the suspects. It’d be good to have someone else to point a finger at. I’d have to testify that I found you in a very compromising position with the dead woman. It’s your hide that’s in real jeopardy. I know that Temple would drive to Mars and back to make sure no damaging whispers get out about your involvement in this. You’re the perfect fall guy. You were truly ‘just along for the ride.’ ”

Matt took another deep breath, and nodded.

Nick went on. “Those daffy bridesmaids are not going to give up on their empowering little kidnap scheme unless we make them. The only bloody ‘murder’ they wanted to hear about tonight was my brothers crying for mercy and marriage.”

“How are two guys who don’t want to hurt anybody going to stop this crew of up-in-arms women?” Matt asked.

“Excellent point. We have to take out the ringleaders.”

“How? Punch them? They didn’t teach that in seminary.”

Nicky winced. “At least I got through to Van. She’s bringing Kit and Temple and Electra. That ought to diffuse the situation.”

“Kit too? Here as well as Temple? Are you crazy? They are these women’s worst enemies, engaged women.”

“True, but Van’s coming. She’s no one to fool with. Well, yes, she is, in my case, but sheer executive steel outside the family circle. We’ve got to get control of the weapons, period. These women think they’re kidding, but they don’t know how dangerous that firepower is, or that someone has used their prank as a shield to commit murder. Can you imagine how wrong the police could go with a mob scene like this? And having it in for my family? We don’t want a SWAT team outside.”

“Agreed.” Matt felt that certainty deep in his soul. Besides the terrible danger of a misunderstanding escalating a wacky prank into a deadly standoff with the law, even an orderly intervention would be a disaster for Temple’s aunt Kit. And Temple.

So he talked himself into this gun-grabbing scheme of Nicky’s. The Fontana brothers’ arms were usually show-and-tell. Mostly. He hoped. But they were surely loaded and needed to be somewhere safer than piled on a Victorian table.