Кэрол Дуглас - Cat In A Quicksilver Caper

“You got it.” He frowned as he sipped the de rigueur watered-down wine. “Apparently, you don’t place all your faith in high-tech security.”

“I’ve . . . dated a magician. I think you’d do well to import some human bloodhounds to mingle with the patrons. Just in case the lasers and eyes-in-the-sky don’t work.”

“You have a security firm in mind?”

“No.”

Wordsworth lifted pale, caterpillar eyebrows.

“I have a discreet family business in mind, given that your patrons will be mostly middle-aged women.”

“Paying twenty bucks a head to eyeball the exhibition? Yes. And if they can’t drag hubby along, they’ll view it on their own. Diamonds and rubies and emeralds and sapphires and plique-à-jour enamels and Fabergé and all.”

“Exactly. The, uh, gentlemen I have in mind for the job are impeccably continental and most amenable to middle-aged ladies. To ladies of all ages, in fact.”

“I will get some references—?”

“Certainly. My aunt, the well-known novelist Sulah Savage, for one. And Nicky Fontana at the Crystal Phoenix, for another. They’re his brothers.”

“The Fontana boys?” Wordsworth sputtered a discreet swallow of wine spritzer into his napkin. “You do think outside the box.”

He sipped again to recover, then nodded, as if approving the wine’s vintage. It was something else he was approving. “They do discreetly straddle the line between legit and illegal.”

“To catch a thief . . .”

Randy nodded. “Perfect casting, now that you mention it. You have a theater background also, don’t you?”

Temple nodded. “Rather minor and very distant.”

“Still, with the Ocean’s Eleven and Twelve caper movies so popular, we wouldn’t want a nouveau Rat Pack trying a heist at the New Millennium.”

“I and six million women might, if George Clooney came along for the ride. After all, he and Brad Pitt are putting together a new Las Vegas hotel deal.”

“You know, that’s not a bad idea. Turn it around to focus on the star and not the deplorable use of robbery for entertainment. It’s like turning the Fontana Brothers out on security detail. I imagine they’d take extreme issue with anyone challenging their protective services.”

“Yes. Picture them as pit bull–Italian greyhound crosses. They’ve been extremely protective of me in the past. Sometimes I think ‘shady’ is just another word for sex appeal.”

Randy laughed until he needed to quiet his hilarity with another tepid sip of wine spritzer.

Temple went on. “Getting Clooney to attend the exhibition opening shouldn’t be too hard. Tape-cutting. Lots of high-roller comps from the hotel, the five-thousand-square-foot Nebula Suite, and flashy media up the ying-yang.”

“I’ll let you look into that. I’ll do all the traditional stuff: local press, major national general interest media. Anything off the wall is your area.”

“Don’t use that expression! We are talking about an art exhibition, after all. Nothing will be ‘off the wall’ on our watch.”

“Done.” Randy gave Temple a rather anemic high-five. They were talking serious culture here, after all.

Temple couldn’t believe it. The contract Randy would be sending to her home office at the Circle Ritz could keep her in everything, including Stuart Weitzman shoes, for a year. This was her first truly major PR commission for a major Vegas hotel. It took her breath away and almost took a girl’s mind off of all things Scarlett.

When she got home, Louie was waiting on the kitchen counter-top, white whiskers twitching on his Jack of Spades black face.

Temple opened three cans of mixed shrimp, scallops, and red snapper supper, and then added dollops of caviar and capers over the Free-to-Be-Feline cat health kibble he’d only eat if it was adulterated.

Or maybe not. After gazing at the lavish stew, he turned tail and thumped down. She followed him anxiously into the living room, thinking he was expressing annoyance at her recent absences. Although he had hardly been confined to quarters lately himself. . . .

By following him, she discovered that her answering machine was blinking red with a message.

“Temple, you formerly red-headed little rascal!”

Her aunt Kit’s dramatic contralto boomed into the room like a bolt of energy. “Thanks for the fix-up date. What a morning after! I felt like Judy Garland in the production number of ‘Get Happy.’ Remember that one? Judy in fedora and legs and black-tie jacket, borne aloft at the end by rows of chorus boys?

“As chorus boys go, the Fontana Brothers are the cat’s pajamas, all nine of ’em. Does that have anything to do with lives? Unfortunately, not mine. One can’t have everything all at once. Listen, my dear. I’d love to spend some time with you. I’m not needed in New York for ages. Well, a week or two. No bloody book deadline. I’m at the aging Oasis where the damn reality TV show put us poor judges up. Can we get together?”

Temple laughed at the message until she cried a little. (Scarlett O’Hara wake-up moments had a very bad effect on one.) Aunt Kit. Her Midwestern mother’s never-married sister, an actress turned novelist. In the old days, she would have officially been designated “spinster,” (kinda what Temple did for a living now, media wise). But Aunt Kit was the only woman in Temple’s family who’d gone somewhere and done something . . . adventurous.

Yes, they could get together!

Temple dialed the number Kit left and suggested that her aunt might want to do Vegas with a transplanted native and maybe bunk with her for a while.

When Temple hung up, she cringed. What a coward! Aunt Kit in residence would keep both Matt and Max at bay while Temple tried to adjust to her brave new role as a woman with two equally appealing beaux: playgirl of the Western world.

Eat Till You Drop

“Are you ready?” Randy asked the next day at the New Millennium.

He looked almost as quizzical as Danny Dove, Temple’s choreographer friend, at his most frantic or antic. She should be ready for anything, on the work front at least.

Aunt Kit had been installed that morning in Temple’s humble home-away-from-Manhattan and was left to her own devices. Why did Temple think those started with the initial F? Rule, Fontanas, Fontanas rule the Strip. Their ladies never, ever will be anything but hip .

Temple regarded the hotel’s deserted, gray flannel–upholstered media room, wishing she and Randy could sit here forever, playing tiddlywinks and video games with art and commerce.

“Ready for what, Randy?”

“Lunch with the Bigwigs.”

“Why do I think that title is capitalized?”

“Because it is. Today. Russia is no longer a Red State, excuse the expression.”

“Politics,” Temple said. “Damned if you don’t play politics, damned if you do.”

“This exhibition is a touchy blend of Russians Red and White. Ready to walk the tightrope?”

Temple thought about walking her own personal tightrope between two guys and a gal: Max. And Matt. And C. R. Molina, the interfering homicide lieutenant. Guess which one was the gal? If you could call it that.

“Tightrope walking? What,” she asked Randy, “do you think a self-respecting freelance PR person in Las Vegas has been doing all these years?”

“Excellent. We’ll be lunching in the Red Planetarium Room.”

“Why am I not surprised?”

Temple seriously wished for her natural red hair back when she sat down to lunch in the Red Planetarium Room fifty stories above the Strip.

The restaurant revolved, of course. In a city dominated by mini-me skyscrapers like the Eiffel Tower and the New York, New York faux skyline, real elevation was a turn-on. The ceiling was a slowly spinning electrified night sky as seen from Mars, with Earth a mar-bleized blue-and-white beach ball dominating the distant glittering galaxies.