Кэрол Дуглас - Cat In A Sapphire Slipper

Temple moved into the foyer to take the front stairs and spotted the two missing men sitting together on the top step, neither looking distracted by courtesans. In fact, both looked equally grim and chagrined.

Matt took Temple’s hand to steady her as she sat on the steps below them. All this excitement on top of a few glasses of champagne was wearing.

“Nicky Fontana,” she said, “what makes you think I can find a murderer in this mess?”

“I need you to?” When Temple was silent, he added, “Matt needs you to?”

Temple glowered. “What’s all this about Matt being in danger of imminent arrest? Are you trying to panic me?”

“It’s true,” Matt put in. “I ended up hiding from the armed and dangerous bridesmaids in the one room that produced a dead body.”

“So you witnessed the murder?”

“No.”

“So you heard the murder?”

“No.”

“Yet you were there?”

He nodded miserably.

“What is this: see no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil? You admit you were in the room.”

“Not quite, Temple. I was in an adjacent . . . chamber.”

She glanced at Nicky. “Just how kinky was this room setup anyway? ‘Chamber’?”

“A voyeur’s room,” he answered. “Two-way mirrored wall.”

Temple drilled Matt with another disbelieving look. “Then you could at least see something even if the ‘viewing chamber’ was soundproof.”

“ ‘Viewing chamber’ sounds so funereal,” he objected. “No, I couldn’t see anything because I shut the interior blinds. I was as good as blind and deaf, and while I was waiting in the dark, someone brought that poor girl into the outer room and strangled her with a fishnet stocking.”

“Do you have any idea how long you were in there?”

Matt glanced at the inexpensive stainless-steel watch on his left wrist. “Doesn’t glow in the dark. Felt like the anteroom of eternity.”

Temple eyed Nick Fontana. His watch was a Rolex and had dials inside of dials on the watch face and a bunch of indiscreet diamonds scattered here and there.

“Mine glows in the dark as well as prepares sushi,” he admitted. “We both hid out for half an hour. We heard the patter of high-heeled feet coming and dove for the most concealing place possible. Matt happened to be near one of the kinkier setups when the bridesmaid and hooker posse arrived, that’s all.”

“And where were you?”

“In the hall linen closet. It was extremely commodious, as you can imagine, and soft. I also could hear gales of girlish laughter as the ‘good’ girls inspected the nightly haunts of the ‘bad’ girls.”

“You Fontana boys always land on your assets,” Temple grumbled. She turned to Matt. “If only you had one perverted bone in your body, you could have peeked.”

“I know! I blew it. I might have saved her life.”

Temple didn’t have an answer to that truly tragic possibility.

“Maybe not,” Nicky said.

They both stared at him while he explained.

“It was pretty populous up there for over a half an hour while the ‘bad’ girls were showing the ‘good’ girls around. It was like a sorority house giggle-in. I’m guessing that someone dragged the dead girl into a room everyone had already looked at, and strangled her. After everyone was through ‘inspecting,’ the killer dumped her on the bed so it would confuse the time of death and who had done it.”

“You’re assuming one of the other women did.”

“Maybe not. We two guys were roaming around up here undetected. Why not some other guy, someone who knew the place a lot better than we did?”

“The only guys present here now—and then—were the ones trucked in by Gangsters. And how was that managed anyway?”

“The drivers were switched,” Matt said. “No one would notice through the heavy tint glass on the exterior and interior limo windows. When we arrived here and went in, Nicky and I were the last to leave the limo. By the time we hit the foyer, we saw something was wrong inside the place. We tried to duck back outside to regroup, except the ‘chauffeur’ was waiting just outside the closed front door to discourage us with a big automatic weapon.” He glanced at Nicky. “What would you say it was?”

“I thought an Uzi at the time, but since the driver wore nothing but black fishnet stockings, black high heels, a black jacket, and visored cap, I wasn’t exactly registering the make and model of the weapon she was toting. Her legs, however, were extremely high caliber.”

Temple grimaced. “Good thing Van isn’t hearing this sexist—and worse, useless—evaluation. Did the driver rejoin the bridesmaids’ ranks?”

Nicky and Matt exchanged a look and shrugged as one.

“We weren’t downstairs after that to count noses,” Matt said.

“I’m presuming there are eight bridesmaids, but whether the driver was one, I don’t know,” Nicky added. “My brothers’ girlfriends come and go.”

“Probably why this set has contracted wedding fever now that Aldo has broken custom and popped the Big Question.”

“I’ve been married forever,” Nicky objected, “and that never motivated my brothers’ girlfriends to go nuptial.”

“It’s the fever of the fresh catch,” Temple said. “Aldo is also the oldest, thus the most confirmed bachelor. If he goes—”

“So could the whole tribe.” Matt nodded sagely. “It’s a form of mob hysteria.”

“Don’t mention ‘mob,’ ” Nicky said with a superstitious shudder. “There’s a hidden planet here. Those girls could have been egged on, unbeknownst to themselves, by one of Uncle Mario’s rivals. Fontana family public embarrassment would not only be satisfying, but would put us all under a microscope and severely hamper our lifestyles.”

Temple clapped a hand to her forehead. “So we not only have loony lady friends, but opportunistic rivals. It makes more sense that a rival crime family murdered an innocent bystander to put the Fontanas in hot water than a miffed girlfriend going overboard at a hokey-jokey bachelor party and strangling a strange woman. The first thing is to identify the victim. I suppose I’d better see her.”

Each room had its own indented entryway, so the various doors were not visible from staring down the long, half-lit hallway. When Matt and Nicky led Temple to the murder room, she gave a little jump to see a tall, pale figure on guard at the door.

“No ghost,” Nicky said. “Just Emilio. I thought having someone guard the body was a good idea. We shouldn’t cross the threshold because of compromising the evidence more than it already is. Can you see enough to be useful?”

Temple had leaned inside to crane her neck left and right, and down and up, avoiding the bed and its occupant.

“That huge mirror wall in the rococo frame is the one that’s see-through from the other side?”

“Yes,” Matt said. “It’s a small room, maybe eight-by-ten, with mini-blinds on the inside window. There’s a table with a low-level lamp. And a chair. I sat on it; but it felt creepy.”

“Kind of like taking a seat in a porno movie house,” Nicky suggested. “Not that I frequent such places,” he added quickly.

“Like any place illicit,” Matt said, “it had a nasty feel to it.”

“So you stood?” Temple asked.

“No. I moved to sit against one wall. I didn’t need or want to see anything through that secret window.”

“Was the floor carpeted, like the bedroom?”

Matt thought. “Yes, I guess. It wasn’t cold anyway.”

“It wouldn’t be,” Nicky said, “out here in the desert, but the steel-blue carpeting continued through the false baseboard on the section of wall that was a hidden door. How’d you find it?”