Кэрол Дуглас - Cat In A Sapphire Slipper

“Not always. These girlfriends were tired of just having fun.

That was the point. They wanted serious commitment.”

“Not me. I’ve got a great job, a great guy, a great life.”

“How did you all get together for this? Did you have occasional hen parties, or what?”

“Or what. Sometimes the boys double-and triple-date. If they have tickets for a major show or sports thing. If it’s a sports thing, some of the girls get bored and do their own thing nearby. So we get each other’s cell phone numbers and texting addresses.”

Temple found it depressing that they didn’t bother with e-mail or street addresses. It was a mobile world now, with people always wirelessly wired to other people. Some teens couldn’t seem to breathe without being in touch with someone all the time. It was a manically social way to be alone in a crowd.

Of course, cell phones didn’t always work everywhere at all times, as this place proved.

“So not all the girlfriends were peeved about not being engaged?” Temple asked.

“I’m the most independent one. Yeah, the others would have liked to have been asked, at least. Shown something eye-popping in a box besides a bracelet.”

“Who was the ringleader, then?”

Frowning, Asiah crossed and uncrossed her legs. “I really . . . can’t say. We seemed to come up with it all at once when we heard about Aldo’s marrying that New York woman. I mean, if Aldo fell . . . that was a big change for the Fontana brothers.”

“So there’d been no mutters of trouble among the women before then?”

Asiah shrugged those skinny linebacker shoulders. “I heard one or two were dating other men.”

“Who?”

“Wanda. She’s Rico’s girl. A guy’d be crazy to let a professional massage therapist get away from him. But she was taking it personally. Maybe she wanted to rub only one guy the right way.”

“When you say ‘therapist’—”

“I mean professional. She wasn’t in the sex industry, although any therapist gets a lot of male clients. They have bigger muscles and often need to show one and all how they use them. Leads to strain and pain.”

“Who was the other girlfriend dating outside the family?”

“That mahogany redhead sports gal, Alexia.”

“She’s a horse trainer, right?”

“Right. Some folks think that’s glamorous, being out in the hot sun all day, with sweating horsehide and circling horseflies and poop piles the size of beehives on the ground. Not my way to chill.”

“Whose girlfriend is she?”

“Ernesto’s. He loves the track, betting. Every guy’s gotta have a guy-type hobby. You’re getting married, you better keep that in mind.”

“Do you know anyone else who was dating out of the Fontana circle?”

Asiah put long forefinger to lip. Temple noticed her nails were short. She probably wore long false nails onstage. “State secret. They knew enough to keep it off the Internet.”

“They’re afraid of the Fontana brothers?”

“That mob history is just that, history. No, but they didn’t want to risk one good thing while trolling for another. It was all Aldo’s fault. His engagement was a shock.”

“To me, too,” Temple said.

“Yeah, your aunt has avoided the JP pretty long herself, a lot longer than Aldo, right?”

Temple saw the speculation flashing in those shrewd espresso-brown eyes.

“Family secret,” Temple said primly. “We Northern Europeans have our clannish ways too.”

“Yeah, Clan of the Cave Bear!” Asiah pretended to shiver in below-zero cold and laughed up a storm. “I was just the driver, along for the ride. I don’t know much.”

“Who was the ringleader?” Temple repeated.

“Gotta know that, huh? I’d say . . . Miss Jill.”

“She’s the—”

“Little. Natural white-blond. One of those Northern European stock people. Jill Johanssen. Was real hyper about being in on the caper. Don’t know her well. Giuseppe’s girl. Pepe is crazy about her. If anyone was going to crack and go nuptial, I’d have said it would have been him. She was everything opposite he was: small, pale, tightly wired in a cute, brisk way.”

“And her profession is?”

“Oh! Pretty boring stuff.”

“You other women are hard to beat.”

“True. She was a pharmacist. Don’t ask me how she met him.”

“Maybe in a drugstore line,” Temple said, smiling. “Thanks for the info.”

“You’re welcome, babe. I gotta be back on the Strip tonight for two shows at the Rio. Crack us out of here, girl! Or you’ll have a riot on your hands.”

Temple nodded as Asiah eeled out the door.

Jill. A pharmacist.

Access to all sorts of drugs.

Maybe the dead woman hadn’t been strangled. That took a bit of time and struggle. Maybe the foam-flecked lips and bloodshot eye whites Temple remembered with a shudder from the other strangled murder victim she’d seen recently could have been caused by ingesting a poisonous substance.

Maybe someone had knocked Madonnah out first with an injection. That made sense in the milling, populated upstairs where the killing had to have happened.

Or did it? Maybe the body had been trucked in, like the Fontana bachelor party, from Vegas. In the limo’s trunk.

Or the “boot,” as the Brits called it.

Meeting Mr. Wrong

Molina’s instincts had made her crave neutral ground, but she couldn’t think of any.

She’d called the Oasis Hotel, where he purportedly held a security job now.

Darned if she didn’t get a secretary. To avoid leaving the telltale physicality of a written message, she had to identify herself.

“Certainly, Lieutenant. I’ll page Mr. Nadir at once. He should call you back in a couple of minutes, if nothing urgent is under way.”

Molina snorted after the woman hung up. Nothing would be more urgent to Rafi Nadir than this call.

She paced in the homicide unit’s tiled women’s restroom, holding one hand to her touchy stomach. No one usually came in here between shifts. It was 7:00 A.M. Monday. She’d come in early to make this call. Her wound still squealed at any stretching movement. She was worn ragged from concealing her condition and lying to everyone about her absence for a week a month earlier.

Still, she needed to pace, cradling the cell phone against one shoulder, waiting for it to ring.

“Carmen?” His voice was low. He was holed up somewhere semiprivate too. Lord!

“We need to talk privately,” she told him.

“Not much of that in Las Vegas.”

“What about your place?” Better his than hers.

“I’m not where you visited before—”

“I know.”

“All police, all the time,” he said.

“You got it.”

“I’m on night shift.”

“Morning. Nine A.M.”

“Ten.”

“Done,” she said.

“Tomorrow. Tuesday,” he said.

Same old, she said, he said.

“You got it.”

“You want to hint what this is about, Carmen?”

“What has it always been about?”

“Fine. Tell me when you get there. You want directions?”

She’d let him tell her, a pulse in her neck throbbing. She really didn’t feel up to this. But if she waited to feel better about it, it would never happen.

Now it was Tuesday morning, and everything about the visit made Molina uneasy.

She’d debated between taking her personal Volvo or a cop car. She hated having her personal license plate on display outside Rafi Nadir’s house, but a police plate was worse. It was daylight. She’d have preferred the dark of night. But he worked then. Couldn’t be helped.

She’d driven the neighborhood first, looking for parked cars with people in them. Nada . Nobody under surveillance.