Кэрол Дуглас - Cat In A Sapphire Slipper

“This is going to be fun,” Kit whispered, donning her Leona Helmsley bitch-goddess manner in the next, loud sentence. “Who said that? You, the mouse-brownette with the cheek mole shaped like a turtle? Beauty marks went out with Little Orphan Annie’s freckles, sweet jowls. Get it lasered off. I’m here to extract your names, addresses, and occupations, so just spell it out for me.”

The now-abashed girlfriend produced, “Meredith Bell. I’m a lifestyle coach.”

Temple noted that down, along with the physical characteristics Kit had nailed.

The rest of the wedding party-to-be if no one was arrested were: Wanda, honey-blond and a massage therapist; raven-haired Judith, a runway model; white-blond Jill, a pharmacist; the mahogany redhead, Alexia, a horse trainer; Tracee, a dark brunette Pilates instructor; Evita, an auburn-haired ventriloquist; and Asiah, an exotic black beauty with blond hair, who was, surprise, a showgirl.

Temple didn’t even want to know which woman went with which Fontana brother, but she did ask and note down the pairings. She couldn’t help thinking that Kit and she would be overwhelmed by these long-stemmed beauties in the wedding party, although Alexia and Jill were more petite.

Several of the women needed strength in their professions: the massage therapist, horse trainer, Pilates instructor, and showgirl. Yes, the showgirl. Those huge, glamorous headdresses weighed about forty pounds each. It wasn’t just Third World women who could balance heavy weights on their heads to earn their daily bread. . . .

“Okay,” Temple told them. “I think you know that a woman is dead upstairs. Apparently she’s not one of you.”

“No,” came a chorus of answers. “We’ve been together all night, except Asiah, who was driving the limo. She had to come along with the men, see them in, and guard the front door until we had them under control.”

Temple eyed the woman, who still wore the barely rear-covering blazer of a chauffeur over modest black palazzo pants now.

“You were the only one who came along to the Sapphire Slipper later, with the abducted men,” Temple said. “How’d you get driving duty?”

She answered offhandedly, “I like to drive. Dark and desert don’t bother me. I got to eavesdrop on a lot of hunky guys letting their hair down. And I got to tote the Really Big Gun at the end, making sure none of the arrivals scampered off when they realized the setup was definitely not what they’d ordered.”

“Where did the firearms come from?” Temple asked the tables at large.

“Prop shop fakes,” Tracee, the Pilates expert, said. “Pretty convincing. You can rent anything in Vegas.”

“Why did you do it?” Kit asked. “Just to ruin my wedding, or what?”

“Nothing personal,” Jill said quickly. As a pharmacist, she was used to soothing customers. As a pharmacist, she could have administered a narcotic to the victim that made her easy to strangle.

It occurred to Temple that the bridesmaids had used a formidable amount of planning and cooperation to pull off this faux abduction. Maybe it was more than a declaration of dependence on perennial boyfriends. Maybe it had been devised to disguise a murder.

Mass Matrimony

“Who are you, anyway, to ask us all these questions?”

Electra, the bridesmaids’ “housemother,” had taken over for Kit, who now babysat the house courtesans. “Now, dear . . . it is Evita the ventriloquist, isn’t it? How would you like it if you were onstage and your dummy did all the talking?”

“We are not dummies,” huffed Judith, the runway model. “Would dummies have hijacked every Fontana male in town?”

“Of course not. I’m just saying that being grilled by my friend here, Temple Barr, is a lot better than answering to teams of police detectives in small, clammy, air-conditioned rooms that smell of cigarettes and vomit.”

“Euuw,” exclaimed several of the women, Temple among them.

“You do recognize,” Electra went on, “that a young woman is tragically dead, someone your age, murdered upstairs? That the police would be hauling everybody off in paddy wagons for rude and uncomfortable grillings if you didn’t have the finest little private eye in Vegas here to get to the bottom of things.”

Electra had been doing great until unreeling that last phrase.

Temple didn’t bother denying that she was fine and little, or a PI. Whatever gave her a modicum of control over these herds of suspects.

“The idea is,” she told them, “we figure out who the victim is, and who killed her before the police and forensic teams come clomping in to put you and your boyfriends in custody. The idea is to keep Aldo’s and Kit’s wedding on schedule for next Saturday, and all you lovely bridesmaids free to waltz down the aisle with your handsome tuxedoed escorts, free of suspicion and free to be roped into matrimony by all of you.

“Wedding fever strikes a family like the Fontanas only once in a blue moon.”

“We know that!” Jill, the ethereally pale pharmacist, was almost in tears. “We thought this joke would put them on the spot. That they’d be impressed by what guys like the Fontanas admire.”

“Which is?”

“Nerve and organization.”

“Great! You proved that. So keep it up and help me solve the murder of that girl upstairs. She’s not one of you, obviously.”

“No.” Tracee, the Pilates instructor, counted noses around the table. “We’re all here, after Asiah came inside from parking the limo and guarding the front door.”

“Oh, and when was that, Asiah?” Temple asked.

“I don’t know,” the lanky black woman said. “We weren’t on a timetable, other than picking up the guys at eight sharp.”

“How’d you manage taking over that limo?”

“Hundred-dollar bill and a tongue kiss to Manny G., who’s fifty and prefers sitting in front of a twenty-one horseshoe to sitting behind the wheel of a behemoth on a trek to the desert.”

“He’d let a strange woman take over his ride?”

Asiah dug her talons into a tiny quilted purse she kept on a long chain, rather like a Chihuahua. “I have my chauffeur’s license. I made some dough that way while working on the modeling career. Leggy chauffeurs get premium pay in Vegas. I’ve driven Donald Trump.”

“Hopefully, off a cliff,” Electra muttered to Temple.

“And thanks, Tracee,” Asiah added with a toss of her blind-ingly blond long tresses, “for pointing out that I was the last one in. Real sisterhood, bitch. I hope the Down Dog breaks your back someday.”

“Hey!” Wanda, the massage therapist, was obviously the peacemaker of the group. “Let’s not panic and snipe at one another. At least none of us is dead. Are you sure someone killed the girl upstairs now, while we all were here, Miss Barr?”

“Just Temple, thanks. Save the formality for the cops, because they will have to be called. I can’t say, Wanda, when she died. Right now, I need to find out who she was.”

“Not one of us.” Alexia, the horse trainer, noted with a shimmy of her roan mane.

“How do you know?” Temple said. “Maybe she used to date one of your boyfriends.”

“That’s just it.” Judith, the model, toyed with a sealed pack of Virginia Slims cigarettes she was obviously dying to open. “We’re all veterans. We’ve dated our guys long enough to get tired of being long-term girlfriends.”

“How long?” Temple asked, and got bombarded with a blitz of years. “Nine.” “Five here!” “Seven!” “Six.” “Four.” “Five.” “Eight.” “Two,” Asiah finished. As all the others looked at her with disbelief, she added, “That’s a looong time for me.”

“So what’s with the mass rush to matrimony?” Temple wondered.