Кэрол Дуглас - Cat In A Sapphire Slipper

“What’s scratching your ass today is more than your stitches,” Alch said.

She nodded, the phone already auto-dialing the coroner’s office. “I just saw the father of my child. Tried to set up a civil ‘arrangement.’”

“Good for you—”

She waved him silent. “Dr. Bahr. Got a case that might need your personal touch.” She listened as he spoke. “One corpse, female.” Another pause. “I know that’s nothing new in Vegas, but this one isn’t in Vegas. It’s out at the Sapphire Slipper. Yes, that place is still out there, and going great guns, apparently. Our involvement? The joint is crammed with Vegas persons of interest, including all of the male members of the Fontana family. Yes, mentioning ‘male members’ is ironic under the circumstances. Oh, you’ve been pining for some fieldwork, have you? Alch and I will drive over and your van can follow us out there.”

Alch was astounded. “Grizzly Bahr is leaving his den of death and disintegration?”

“A dozen or so live shady ladies will motivate and move even the most morgue-entrenched coroner.”

“Does he know you nicknamed him ‘Grizzly’?”

“I doubt it, Alch, and you aren’t going to tell him. I’ll inform the captain. He will just love this! And me deserting my newly neat desk I’ve maintained for more than a month after you cleaned it up during my week off. You get the CV from the garage. Matt Devine!” She snorted. “In a hooker hotel. This I gotta see with my own eyes.”

“And supervise?”

“That’ll be the best part.”

She was feeling a lot better.

Louie Puts Up

a Red Flag

Can you believe that I, Midnight Louie, must come up with a scheme to draw attention to myself?

Me, who is usually bigger than life and as hard to disguise as the MGM lion?

Having assistants at hand during this case has permitted me to hang back above the battle and remain out of sight while I deploy my operatives. It has permitted my three female operatives to assume at various times the identity of Satin, the house cat, and be taken for granted and totally ignored while collecting information like a trio of furry, black, mobile, eavesdropping “bugs.”

Now I need to step up to the plate my own self and lead the many befuddled humans in the house to the lurking perp at the perimeter. I return to the back screen door of the kitchen and proceed to sharpen my shivs on the mesh, making a nerve-wracking rending sound.

But the kitchen radio is playing and the assembled bridesmaids are doing their nails in the courtesans’ bizarre and glittery colors.

I yowl.

Finally, one yawns and shivers. “Listen to the coyotes.”

“It sounds like it is right on top of us,” another comments.

They never even glance toward the back door, not even Ms. Shoofly who is not only a guilty party, but presiding over a huge, noisy fry pan of sizzling bacon and scrambled eggs at the stovetop.

Not one of my ninja trio is in the kitchen at the moment.

I want to scream like a catamount. This case is next to closed, and I am shut out and ignored.

In desperation, I amble outside to prowl the bordello’s perimeter, finding a way up to the first-story roof via the courtesans’ bedroom annex. I am forced to blunt my shivs on stucco before I manage to scramble onto the roof’s asphalt shingles.

Panting, I approach the dormers for the guest bedrooms. All are draped, or shaded, or blacked out. I finally am able to claw a ripped screen open. The broken edges currycomb my sides as I eel through, cutting a pad on a loose nail.

By now I am panting, bleeding, and furious.

I must head-butt a heavy Roman shade aside until it slips its bottom moorings. I plummet to the wooden floor inside, not landing on my abused feet. I do not know which is worse: more foot trauma or knocking my teeth on some thick circle of leather embedded with spikes.

Eek! My own black facial leather has touched a recreational dog collar! Spitting out the awful taste, I box my way out of the room in the darkness into the hall.

Luckily, it is lined with night-lights even during the daytime, a touch I am sure the Sapphire Slipper clientele much appreciate both coming and going.

I find my way into another room, this one decorated more like a bedchamber than a doggy discipline school. I jump back when I glimpse a black cat in the mirror.

Oops . That is me, but my hair is a mess. I look almost as ragged as Ma Barker.

Now. I gaze around as my eyes adapt to the dim light.

I need a signal. Something like a white flag of surrender. Something that will draw every human eye to my form and will sufficiently intrigue someone in this mob of guys and gals and my usual associates to follow me to where the criminal is hiding out.

It certainly will not be a canine collar!

Something bright catches my eye. It is light, small, but memorable.

Just the thing!

Leading Questions

It was now high noon and Temple was getting butterflies in her stomach.

Van von Rhine called the LVMPD to report the situation, which meant Molina would soon know about her latest and most bizarre crime scene involvement yet. Aldo and Nicky comforted her by saying that Nye County would have had to call in the Vegas CSI unit anyway. Temple’s investigative calls on Madonnah’s hidden number must have stirred some powerful forces into action. The idea of helicopters, plural, had really upset her.

Van worked under her maiden name, so at least the volatile surnames of Fontana and Barr need not come up right off the bat. And it would look better for all concerned if they called the authorities before the distant Big Guys showed up.

Matt was standing close behind Van to back up her story, and intervene if Lieutenant Molina got involved and went ballistic. The homicide detective had always liked him .

All of it made perfect sense, but Temple couldn’t bear staying with the barroom crowd and listening to Van’s end of the conversation. They now knew the “why” but not the “who,” which made this a pretty half-baked effort on her part.

She’d been imported to the Sapphire Slipper to solve the murder, and without a murderer identified, everyone, including her nearest and dearest, was still a prime suspect. Plus, the first scheduled clients were driving out of Vegas even now to add to the Sapphire Slipper’s already overcrowded population.

Temple was a proven failure.

She ambled through the parlor and the dozing courtesans into the deserted foyer to brood. No one noticed or missed her. Even with the hectic events of the past few hours and all the new faces she’d met, nagging worries about Max danced in and out of her mind.

You can’t worry about the whole world , she told herself.

She was so exhausted she’d start hallucinating soon.

And then something came floating down the stairs from the deserted second floor. The supposedly deserted second floor.

Her mind refused to believe her eyes.

A disembodied crimson thong trimmed in marabou feathers floated down toward her. Madonnah’s ghost was up and walking? Or crawling, rather. Even creepier!

The apparition was already breezing past her to the front door when she finally made out the black feline form whose neck it adorned. Finally! After all these hours out here, she had been granted a glimpse of her own elusive cat!

It had to be Louie. His broad-cheeked tomcat face squeezed out a snarl as his paw scratched a gash into the door’s dark wood.

Temple started laughing, hysterically. Louie in boudoir wear? A flaming red thong? Louie a panty sniffer? A pantywaist? A red-hot thong-head?

She almost doubled over from laughing, but figured that the small resident cat probably had a petite box that no one had remembered to change lately, and Louie might desperately need a potty break.