Carole Douglas - Cat in a Zebra Zoot Suit

“Excuse me,” Ernesto said, “your discussion should be private. The police are not giving out details of the killing because they are rather bizarre.” He had their rapt attention. “However, there is not a detail, no matter how closely guarded, that a Fontana brother somewhere will not find out some part of it. Between us and the color-coordinated cat lying on the black carpeting—”

“Louie’s here?” Temple interrupted, inspecting the pooling dark at her feet.

One slitted green eye opened near the door.

Nodding, Ernesto went on. “The late Mr. Dyson was not killed at the Araby Motel that night, as one would think, which is good for Miss Electra. He was found dead the next morning, in that old building near the Circle Ritz he owned, or perhaps had just sold, which I’m afraid is not good for Miss E.”

“How…truly strange,” Temple said.

“No matter how he died,” Matt said, “the fact is you and Electra put yourselves in the middle of a murder case by running off like hotheaded teenagers to an unsavory place at an unsafe time. Who’d you think you were? Max Kinsella and his cousin Sean?”

“Matt, that’s not fair!”

“It’s a pretty fair summary of the situation.”

“ Piano, Piano ,” Ernesto urged, fanning his fingers in a quieting gesture. He then excused himself to ride with the driver and left them to it.

“And this took a nighttime visit?” Matt asked as the limo proceeded after a pause.

“Electra needed to know what Jay had really done. We’d seen the people who were planning on putting in a strip club just down the street—”

“Must have been a classy crew.”

“Hardly. And the exterior of the Lovers’ Knot chapel had been vandalized—”

“Even worse if there were vandals about. How did you get to the Araby Motel?”

“Electra drove.”

“The Elvis edition Beetle I won and gave her?”

“No, she’d never risk that. Her old white Probe.”

“But she’d risk herself. And you.”

“She was the only person who could make her ex tell her the truth, and make him feel guilty enough about it to spoil any deal he had going. With, perhaps, mob elements.”

Matt threw back some peppermint schnapps and nearly choked. Schnapps was potent stuff. “How’d Electra even find out about this fishy deal?”

“Bits here and there. Diane, Jay’s most recent ex-wife, warned Electra Jay was in her neighborhood.

Temple went on. “When the Circle Ritz had the Incident of the Cat in the Night-time—you may recognize that the animal in question was a dog, not a cat, in the Sherlock Holmes story, but Midnight Louie gives it a whole new twist—when that intruder showed up in my bedroom, I thought maybe Stalker Kathleen was still around. Electra said, maybe not, and then showed me the defaced front of the chapel. Vandals had already been attacking the building. I can’t see Kitty the Cutter wasting her venom on architectural details when there are live people around to harass.”

Matt nodded, ruefully. “The only inanimate object Kathleen O’Connor had it in for was stealing your one shoe of the pair you planned to wear to my mother’s wedding in the chapel, and Kathleen actually gave that back to you.”

“Yeah. Dangled it off my balcony. So,” Temple said. “I wondered who would attack the building. Electra surprised me with a tour of some of her other properties surrounding the Circle Ritz. I then wondered if the vandalism was more general.”

“Was it?”

“No. Her tenants are having a hard time, though, being mom-and-pop businesses post-Great Recession. At the end of our walkabout, we found the empty building down the block that Electra doesn’t own was looking ready for revamping into a raunchy strip club.”

“Is there any other kind than raunchy?” Matt asked.

“Uh, there are traditional strip clubs and nowadays there are nudie bars,” she told him gingerly. “You would not believe what they are like.”

Temple hated to disillusion Matt about how low Las Vegas could go, but she could tell her last comment had given him pause. He had a funny look on his face, and it couldn’t all be the peppermint Schnapps.

She pushed her advantage. “You can see that would devastate Electra’s livelihood at the wedding chapel, not to mention the quality of future Circle Ritz tenants and possible condo investors. We may leave, you know, but she’ll always be there.”

“Yeah.” Matt was looking even sicker. “I see you were trying to help her out. How did you know where the old rogue—what’s-his-name—was holing up?”

“Ex-wife Diane again. She kept tabs on him. I’m sorry I didn’t tell you where I was going. I know you ’d never sneak around investigating stuff without telling me, but this came up, and Electra’s livelihood was at stake, and I owe her. And…I was afraid she’d go alone. At least I can alibi her now for that time.”

Matt nodded slowly. “You probably don’t know this. I wouldn’t want to upset you, but the Araby Motel is one of the places I looked for Cliff Effinger when I first came to Vegas. I hate thinking of you visiting such a scuzzy dive.”

“Oh. Yeah, that joint so totally has ‘Cliff Effinger’ written all over it. No wonder it gave me the creeps. The hookers were nice, though.”

“Temple!”

“Sisterly solidarity overcomes all lifestyle biases.” She drained the Daiquiri as the limo oozed to a stop so smooth and slow it felt like slipping into a bath of warm molasses.

She put Matt’s empty glass back in the bar, then laid a penitential hand over his. “I know y ou ’d never go out somewhere scuzzy alone at night without telling me, Matt. Not now . Not now that Kathleen’s not around to blackmail you into secret rendezvous with her poisonous self. Oh, maybe back in the day when you were hunting Effinger too, but that’s over now.” She tried a smile.

Matt looked embarrassed and something else Temple couldn’t name before he swept her into an encompassing hug. “You are much too good for me, Temple Barr,” he said.

“Not really, but I’m working on it.” She grinned. “I’m sorry I left you out of the loop. I just had a relapse of Nancy Drew-itis and was so curious to see what Electra’s ex was like. She can’t have murdered him, not morally or physically. Anything we can do to help clear up that mess, we should do.”

“Amen.” Matt nodded to the unseen chauffeur and his sibling behind the dark-tinted privacy window. “And those guys up front are just the dudes to help out.”

“So Vanilla—as in Fontana brothers’ ice-cream suits—is the New Black. And…the Fontana brothers are New Max?”

Matt nodded slowly. “Never thought of it that way, but probably.”

“Well, I happen to know that Julio is on Lieutenant Molina’s cell phone speed dial.”

“We might need an inside man at the Circle Ritz,” Matt said, exiting the dim, cavernous cabin for the sizzling sunshine in the building’s parking lot outside.

Temple blinked as she was caught between the cool dark inside the limo and glaring daylight. The wink of Louie’s single eye gleamed like an emerald ear stud on the inky-black floor carpeting. Apparently, he was riding shotgun for the Fontanas now.

23

Just Hanging Around

As the saying goes, “A cat may look at a queen”.

I get a bit confused by that. A pedigreed lady-cat who is breeding stock is called “a queen”. And then there are England’s Elizabeth the First and Elizabeth the Second, queens of England. And though one was and one was not breeding stock, they are called queens too.