Кэрол Дуглас - Cat In A Sapphire Slipper

Temple dissolved in laughter. “Kit, why am I having worse bridal nerves than you over this?”

“Because you’re next?” Kit cackled. “And I do expect to be matron of honor. I can wear the suit without the train, because of course you’ll be in pure, pristine white.”

“You’re sure?”

“Your mother, and Matt, wouldn’t have it any other way.”

Cleanup Detail

Carmen didn’t tell Morrie what she’d finally decided to do.

Father figures were great in theory, but her fathers had been confusing.

The Anglo mystery man who’d sired her had been driven out of the Hispanic family circle before she was born, her mother caving to ethnic, church, and family pressures. He was a literal ghost: pale, Nordic, blue-eyed. He lived on only in Carmen’s eye color, which had singled her out in every barrio and church and school photo of her early life. She would have hated him just for that if she’d had a chance to know him.

Her mother had married after her “mistake,” Carmen Regina, girl-child out of wedlock. Carmen had never bonded with her stepfather. As the eldest, she’d been half a mother to the many children they’d conceived in unfettered Catholic Hispanic certainty.

Every darling toddler seemed a rebuke. She’d loved them, and they her, but it was a sad charade of the half-life she lived. Carmen the half-breed.

She’d discovered some soul mates, old ladies she’d crossed paths with. They were the eldest children of men killed in World War II. Only children, only survivors. Their young, widowed mothers had remarried and started large fifties families. The lone older daughter who didn’t remember a father became the stepchildren’s quasi-mother from a very early age.

It didn’t make her crazy to go out and multiply on her own, whatever the church decreed.

Her liaison with Rafi Nadir was born of mutual alienation.

And then she’d ended up the mother of an only child in her turn.

Except she didn’t see hooking up again in her case, having more children.

Just this one. This precious one.

So her own only daughter was also a half-breed. Half Hispanic-Anglo, half Arab-American. Really, a quarter-breed.

People were supposed to say it didn’t matter. Ethnic origin. Skin shade. Eye color.

It did.

The knife wound had cut a swatch across Carmen’s olive skin.

Hatred was equal opportunity.

She felt the severing in her soul.

She’d been angry, anxious, insecure. Had let it pile up into a mountain of mistakes.

Why had Max Kinsella become such an obsession?

He’d gotten away without a scratch. Gotten away in a smart, slick, easy, painless way.

He hadn’t gotten stuck, as she had. He’d eeled out of a murder rap and even a miffed girlfriend he’d bailed out on for a year. Any other mortal would have paid, and paid big for being at the scene of the crime, skipping town, and coming back an uncatchable shadow. Not Max Kinsella. She hated people who got away with behaving badly. That had been her whole law enforcement life.

Maybe because she’d never dared to behave badly herself.

Until now. Breaking and entering. Arranging clandestine surveillance with an undercover cop who might be okay, might be rogue. Getting knifed, goddamn it, off the clock.

Now that her wound had forced her to lie still and think, alone at home, hurting physically, she realized that she’d made as many unwarranted assumptions as Max Kinsella ever had.

And she had been wrong! Kinsella was a target, as Matt and even Temple Barr had hinted. Not a perpetrator. He was an undercover operative? Kinsella! Holy Mother of All Things Annoying! She’d been chasing a shadow of herself.

Her attacker had knifed her while shredding Max Kinsella’s Las Vegas life to bits.

She’d thought she despised the man. She was a piker. Someone seriously whacked was out there.

Was Temple Barr safe? She had to think about that. Matt? Or . . . worse. Her attacker didn’t know who she was, just someone there. What if she’d been followed home? What if Mariah was now a target? She, Carmen, and her one-woman pursuit mission, had exposed her daughter to terrible danger perhaps.

Sitting up in bed made her belly burn as if she was in childbirth again.

Thank God for Morrie. He’d left her some ground to stand on: her job. She had to start using that better.

Number one: neutralize Rafi Nadir. He wasn’t going to go away, and if he really hadn’t tampered with her birth control device, why should he? Number two: distance herself from Dirty Larry. He’d come in handy for her, but you had to ask why. She didn’t need an ambiguous boyfriend. She needed . . . Morrie Alch. He was shrewd, loyal, and more than she deserved. Daddy dearest. She swallowed hard. Yes. She needed someone to look out for her. Yes, she still needed someone. Someone to watch over me.

The lyric and music played in her head. So what if she was a little feverish, a little Vicodined out.

She had a lot of catching up to do when she felt up to it in a few weeks.

Here Comes the Ride

Naturally, I have not been invited to the Fontana Family bachelor party for Aldo.

Naturally, that does not make a bit of difference to my intentions and actions.

I intend to be in on the action, however juvenile and rowdy.

It is not often that one gets to see a Fontana brother tie the marital knot in this town. I was there when the youngest brother, Nicky, got hitched, and I will be there when the eldest falls to the blow of domestic bliss.

It is a snap for Midnight Louie to crash a party of this nature.

Obviously, ten brothers, their notorious uncle, Macho Mario Fontana, and Mr. Matt will be transported in one of Gangsters’ famous theme limos. The boys own that company, and only their vehicles are long and large enough to transport so many in such luxury.

The key is to anticipate which model will have the honor tonight.

I stroll among the cast of custom vehicles in the Gangsters’ lot.

First, I had to customize two overzealous guard dogs. I had nailed their noses with a one-two to each long German shepherd snout. They were whimpering when the human guard called them off.

“Bruno! Horst! That is only a stray cat. What is the matter with you two tonight?”

I can answer that better than they can: quarter-inch-deep tracks on their hypersensitive German schnozzles. If they were weiner dogs you could call them “Weiner schnitzel” after I got through with them.

So now I am car shopping, sniffing tires for hints of where these glamorous vehicles have been. Umm . The scent of French bread. Must have been at the Paris last. A dude can travel the world just from sniffing the Gangsters’ tires.

Since the Fontanas favor pale summer suits of Italian design, I am torn as to whether the stretch Lamborghini or the stretch Maserati will be the lucky ride tonight.

Then I hear the scrape of many feet on asphalt.

Rats! (Not the cause of the skittering sounds, but merely an expletive dear to my kind.) My keen ears pick up the sound of custom-leather loafers surrounding a vehicle the whole damn lot away.

I skitter myself over there just in time to shadow the last pair of black Bruno Maglis into the last closing door on a stretch vintage Rolls-Royce Silver Cloud. Was I wrong about the ride!

Luckily, the open interior is carpeted in black-like-me. Also, everybody is joshing Aldo and doing that kind of human arm slapping and feet milling that is very hazardous to my health.

I dodge size eleven shoes to hunker down by Mr. Matt’s more sedate size tens. A family of all brothers can be a high-spirited bunch. It occurs to me that Mr. Matt, until not long ago a man of chaste and churchly ways, could use a bit of backup among this mob. Oops! I did not mean that last word personally. Macho Mario Fontana is the last of the red-hot capos in this town, but no one likes to comment on that.