Кэрол Дуглас - Cat In A Sapphire Slipper

“Perhaps,” he suggested to the night physician, “we should talk to his psychiatrist about this.”

“Gone?” he said, hearing himself sound honestly astounded forty minutes later.

His heart didn’t know whether to soar or sink.

So the able Dr. Schneider had gotten Max out of here. For what? Debriefing? Rescue mission? Laugh at that one. For . . . sex? Max had been attracted, as any man who wasn’t brain-dead would have been.

Was she a lure? Probably. He’d have to seriously investigate her past. Meanwhile, Max was free of the fatal injection, on the run in his plaster casts, with a woman whose motives could be anything from humanitarian to homicidal.

The old Max would have found out which in a heartbeat.

The new, disoriented Max . . . ? Aiyyyee!

Garry wished he had Max back in Las Vegas, where they only wished him dead.

Here, in Europe, they had ways of making Max wish he was dead.

Gossip Girls

It is only natural that sour should follow sweet.

Barely has Miss Satin’s fluffy tail vanished around the corner then Miss Midnight Louise’s nose peeks around the same corner.

“Having a secret tryst?” she inquires. “This is a cathouse, but—”

“Knock it off, sister. If you have as much solid information to report as Miss Satin, you will be doing very well.”

“An information exchange, eh?” Louise sits to wrap her tail around her paired front feet.

This demure pose does not fool me for a minute. She too has something hot to report, or she would not be so laid-back about Satin’s presence.

“The bridesmaids are not all sweet and sincere as well as demented,” she says.

“How so?”

“Once Miss Temple had finished questioning them, they broke into smaller gossip groups. Some of them have not just been tapping their toes waiting for the Fontana brothers to propose. A couple have been seeing other dudes.”

Well, knock me over with a peacock feather and fan me! Could Vegas’s most desirable bachelors be losing their magic touch? I hate to see a good footloose and fancy-free guy like me go down. Especially eight of them.

“Who has been two-timing our favorite suave swingers?”

“Speak for yourself,” Midnight Louise says. “Every Lothario must have his day of reckoning, including you. They were whispering about it, but no names were mentioned. Since Judith, Tracee, Evita, and Meredith were the ones whispering, I suppose that Jill, Alexia, Wanda, and Asiah are all suspects.”

I frown, knowing it gives me a mature, commanding appearance. “But a truly clever turncoat would be among the gos-sipers, pointing the finger at some innocent party.”

“So we are back to square one,” Louise says.

“Not necessarily. At least we know at least one is not on the up-and-up. You had better eavesdrop on them from now on.”

After Miss Midnight Louise leaves, none too happily, I sit and mull the puzzle pieces that are coming together. Madonnah had something to hide. So does a bridesmaid who is not really as upset about being unproposed-to as the other girls may think. Maybe such a disgruntled ex would want the brothers Fontana caught with their Berettas in a brothel.

Maybe there were two crimes in the offing tonight: Madon-nah’s death and the Fontanas being framed for it. It was only bad luck that the most innocent party, Mr. Matt Devine, should be cast in the role of prime suspect.

It is quiet up here, so I can think plenty, and my mind goes around and around the maypole without coming up daisies. Or whatever.

Then I hear a violent sneeze down the hall, and two seconds later a lean black form bolts around the corner and pastes itself against the wall.

Ma Barker’s ears are as flattened to her head as her whole form is to the floor. One might take her for a big grease spot. Her street skills are awesome.

I hear a nose being blown down the hall.

“Big lummox,” Ma says, sitting up and letting her scraggly hackles lie back down. “I figured he would never leave, so I had to goose him out of my way.”

“How did you manage that?”

“I scratched a snowstorm out of my hide and wafted it upward with my tail. Humans’ eyes close when they sneeze, you know. Only for a second, but that is all I needed to dash out and disappear.”

I am impressed by the Sneeze Diversion, but it would not work for me. My skin is not dry and flaky from years of street life in the desert heat. I can recommend a good anti-dandruff shampoo, but then Ma Barker would lose her edge, and the treatment smells bad.

“So what did you learn communing with the corpse?”

“Is that what you call it? The corpse was as mum as day-old bread. Starting to get a bit fragrant, though. Only to an expert nose. I am sure some of the forensic geeks on CSI: Las Vegas could tell us just which insect larvae was going wild in there.”

“Please, Ma. No gruesome speculations. I want hard evidence.”

“Not much to see in there, and too much to smell. I did detect the presence of lilac cologne. And I found the second fishnet stocking.”

“No! Where was it?”

“In the adjoining peep room.”

“No! That is even worse for Mr. Matt!”

“That is no skin off my nose, which has been skun by better than you. But I knew you would be distraught, so I dragged the item out and rolled it into a ball and put it under the bed.”

“That is evidence tampering.”

“I thought your Job One was to get this Devine guy off.”

“With evidence, not shenanigans.”

“There are no fingerprints to be found on fishnet anyway.”

“What about claw marks?”

She flashes her shivs and then retracts them nail-by-nail, smooth as a magician doing a baton roll through his fingers. “They call me the Hooded Claw in the ‘hood.”

Oh, great! That makes me Son of the Hooded Claw. Sounds like some cheesy old serial movie.

Fortunately, I have established a reputation for fine sleuthing as well as slicing fisticuffs in this town.

If the other fishnet stocking was in the murder room, they must have been worn by the dead woman, not an imported garrote, but a tool of opportunity. That looks like someone who came to the Sapphire Slipper tonight, unexpectedly ran into the victim, then did her in with her own intimate accessory.

Unfortunately, that theory makes the Fontana party and their scheming girlfriends and innocent ride-alongs all still the prime suspects.

Just Kidnapping

When Temple told Aldo she’d like to interview him alone in the Victorian boudoir, Kit raised an eyebrow.

Heck, the eyebrow almost jousted with her hairline.

“I’m looking for some context here,” Temple told the room, including a scowling Macho Mario and a thoughtful Matt. “Only the eldest will do. Of the brothers, that is,” she said quickly to shut Uncle Mario’s already open and about to object mouth.

Aldo rose, shot his jacket sleeves over his pristine white cuffs, paused to whisper in Kit’s ear at the parlor archway, then glanced into the kitchen.

“I may need a bodyguard to pass through that gauntlet of pissed-off girlfriends.”

The joke lessened the tension behind . . . and the dawning tension ahead as the girlfriends’ chatter became dead silence. They all broadcast an air of heightened interest as a Fontana brother crossed their sight line.

In the foyer, Aldo took a deep breath. “Everybody is twitchier than a Valentine’s Day Massacre trigger finger. Uncle Mario does all the talking for the family when things get tight.”

“It’s just me,” Temple said.

“Right now, ‘just you’ is our designated savior. Don’t fool yourself. The cops will be furious we kept quiet about the crime scene so you could play detective. We’re all in deep scaloppini.”