Кэрол Дуглас - Cat In A Sapphire Slipper

Jill drove her stubby fingers into those silken strands of platinum hair. Her complexion was almost as pale.

“Yes, I did it! Yes, it started as a joke. No, it’s not any fun now. I could lose my license—!”

“What did you use?”

“Foxglove, the herbal source of digitalis.”

“Digitalis?”

Jill nodded.

“And that wouldn’t kill somebody?”

“No! Not in a small dose in food. The idea was just to produce vomiting and diarrhea.”

“Then you didn’t realize—”

“I didn’t think anyone would realize I did that. If the murder hadn’t happened out here, no one would have even suspected.”

“Suspected?” Temple was confused into echoing her perp.

“Who would have cared how it was done, or by who when , if it all was just a big fat prenuptial joke?”

“You mean that you drugged the regular driver, not the murder victim.”

“Yes!” Jill looked up, big blues bug-eyed in horror. “You didn’t think—you’d never think that I would’ve helped murder that woman?”

Temple felt that question didn’t merit an answer. Of course that’s what she’d thought, had even hoped in her haste to solve this crime so none of her friends—and her fiancé especially—would be implicated.

“How did you get the regular driver to take something?”

“I visited Gangsters that late afternoon, swore him to silence on the fact that we girlfriends were making a surprise appearance at the end of the bachelor party, and even gave him a taste of the cake we were all going to pop out of, devil’s food. There was enough foxglove in that so that all he could manage to do was call in sick six hours later. We figured the new driver didn’t know what was what yet and would be easier to con. Asiah gave him the same story, this was a surprise prank, and got him off the lot in time to slip into the driver’s seat before the bachelor party arrived.”

“For a pharmacist to play a prank like that . . . it could cost you your license. Why’d you do it, Jill? It was a pretty stupid idea.”

She picked at the clear polish on her fingernails. “I’d never fit in with the other girls. They lived such glamorous lives, did such glamorous things. I just wanted to prove to them I could be a good sport. I didn’t care if Giuseppe proposed. He’s probably going to dump me anyway.” She shrugged dispiritedly.

“What part of ‘crazy about you’ don’t you understand? Don’t you get it? Giuseppe probably liked that you were different from the usual arm candy. I can’t say that the Fontana brothers are sobersides, but they aren’t just tall, dark, dumb hunks either.”

“Oh. I thought he was just joshing me. About something long-term. I thought if I was part of this fun game the other girlfriends were playing, I could hang on a little longer.”

“You and he need to have a long talk after this is over.”

“I doubt we’ll be still talking then.”

Temple sighed. “There’s no reason that exactly how the bridesmaid crew got the original driver out of the way has to come up—”

Jill was all eyes, saucers brimming with bright blue hope.

“If,” Temple added, “I can hand a murder suspect over to the police when they get here. And they will.”

Temple looked at her watch. “Too damn soon.”

A Real Pickle

I wind up in the kitchen with my kisser in Satin’s empty food bowl.

The bored bridesmaids are chowing down chips, no doubt trying to outgrow their gowns before the ceremony at week’s end, just out of spite.

That seems to be their inbred reaction to crisis: flight or spite.

I am getting pretty spiteful myself . . . the more my stomach registers “empty.”

That the only remaining traces in Miss Satin’s bowl sniff of Midnight Louise and Ma Barker, not to mention Free-to-Be-Feline, does nothing to slake my bad mood.

I hang over the bowl, hoping the gesture will inspire She Who Feeds to action. But though the room is packed with shes, none seem the least bit maternal.

Then I hear the soft suck of the rubber seal on the refrigerator door.

I immediately gaze at this Moby Dick-size behemoth with interest.

I spot the old demi-dame who does odd jobs at this place pulling out a package that reeks of roast beef. Rare, just the way I love it.

I amble over, trying to turn the frog in my throat from the dry desert air into a respectable purr. I am prepared to massage the calves in those black slacks, even though I am not sure of their owner’s gender. I am not biased. I am an equal-opportunity mooch.

I am just about to abase myself with a total stranger (sorta symptomatic of business as usual here anyway), when I watch Ms. or Mr. Shoofly slip out the back door, a hunk of sliced odifer-ous beef in one hand, and a longneck beer in the other.

The bridesmaids are the usual self-absorbed and notice nothing.

I am fast enough on my feet to slip through the door under the cover of moving black pant legs.

Alone at last: me, the meat, and the night. And whatever.

The alluring odor is slipping away into the dark beyond the glow of the lamp-lit windows. Yet the cover of darkness is my native element. I slip-slide along behind the butch butcher of the Sapphire Slipper. I do not see why the odd odd-jobber here takes a snack break alone in the dark, but I would not trust those bridesmaids to refrain from stripping away every last, small solitary pleasure a guy might want either.

I do not appreciate the sand that is getting in between my toes. Not everyone here is shod in cowhide.

A flashlight finally flares into action now that we are out of sight and hearing of the cathouse. I can spot where we are heading, the roast beef and I. It is a low outbuilding, probably where the brothel’s vehicles are housed. I suspect most customers drive themselves, or are driven here by cabbies who get a cut of the deal. I overhear that a regular session can run four hundred clams. Or oysters.

But Miss Kitty and Ms. Shoofly must require vehicles to do the shopping and other homely chores a bordello requires. I am betting the laundry is done on-site. Umm , warm sheets fresh from the dryer and more than a dozen beds to make up every day. Miss Satin must be in catnap heaven when it comes to soft, warm places to snooze here.

Meanwhile, I am grinding the sheen off my nails and the skin off my pads trekking over raw desert cacti and choke weed.

At last Shoofly yanks open a barn-type door and vanishes beyond it.

I follow, secure in being behind the flashlight beam.

Well, this is a fine kettle of fishiness.

“Here,” Shoofly’s raspy voice whispers. “Some grub.”

“Beef? Just beef? No bread?”

“Beer is better than bread.”

“It is warm.”

“I did not want to grab a cool one from the fridge and get all those girls thirsty all of a sudden. Will you quit your griping? You were supposed to have been long gone. At this rate, you’ll be picnicking here for the police to find.”

Another flashlight points into the darkness. I spot the silhouettes of a Jeep Tracker, a van, and Gangsters’ own sterling-silver Rolls-Royce.

“Who ever parked the Rolls and disabled the engine did the same to the company cars.”

“Your leggy black showgirl pal did the parking. I am guessing a Fonanta brother slipped out to disable the vehicles once they’d taken over the house party. Did you not hear anything?”

“I was lying low in the Roll’s trunk, the way I got here. I just popped the emergency release and was free as a bird. I knew once the inside scene got going, nobody would remember the limo.”

“Too bad. Someone did. They take something from the ignition?”

“Not the usual cop movie mischief. Something’s got all these motors dead. I might get the Jeep going.”