Carole Douglas - Cat in a Zebra Zoot Suit

“Of course,” Nicky said. “My bros don’t need cribs and could always take over a floor at the Crystal Phoenix, if they want.”

Temple was very glad Nicky’s wife and the hotel manager, Van von Rhine, wasn’t here to learn of her husband’s grandiose hospitality. But then, every Fontana brother was grandiose, and that would be criminal to stamp out.

Ernesto presented Electra with a suspiciously rum-colored giant cocktail glass accessorized with paper umbrellas and drew up a bamboo ottoman.

“Now you just rest your feet and sit back, Miss Electra. Let us boys figure out who mighta done it—even better, who we’d all like to nail for doing it—and who our concerned close friends, Mr. Matt Devine and Miss Temple Barr, need more information about once we have laid out criminally suspect persons in this local cast of Clue .”

Electra wiggled her toes in their carnival-colored cork sandals—once Ernesto had swept the ottoman under them—and sipped on the long, long straw in her umbrella drink. “I’m most intrigued to see your presentation, fellas.”

Temple smiled at Electra’s joie de vivre . Now that luxury brand Céline had made an octogenarian Joan Didion their ad icon and Yves Saint Laurent had done the same with septuagenarian singer-songwriter Joni Mitchell (who’d written a song on the Magdalene asylums), Temple could revel in the idea of someday being a hip little old lady. She hoped to live long enough to be seriously removed forever from the “small and cute” and young category, like a lapdog.

Darn those Fontana brothers, their antique gallantry somehow got women feeling empowered! Of course the entire family fortune was based on Grandmama Fontana’s Italian sauce empire. Sauce equals sauciness.

“Now.” Aldo was evidently the chief prosecutor. “We have consulted family archives back to a time in which the Fontana escutcheon was slightly tainted in the public knowledge by the aura of Family connections not quite within the strict confines of The Law.” He turned, his double back-vented jacket swaying as gracefully as if on a Milano runway. “As some would say, not ‘legit’.”

Temple could hardly stop from laughing. Any minute now, she expected the assembled Fontana Brothers to form a Broadway musical chorus and break out singing the “Sit down, sit down, you’re rockin’ the boat” chorus from Guys and Dolls .

She conjured a paraphrased second line, tailor-made for Fontana, Inc.

“And the Devil will drag you under by sharp lapels of your Emanogildo Zegna coat. Stand up, stand up, you’re shakin’ the boat.”

Meanwhile, Ralph Fontana, his single diamond ear stud twinkling like a wink, hurried around the roomy patio to ensure the laptop computer projected the right image, a photo of the forlorn empty building.

“First,” Aldo said, “I wish to notify those not acquainted with police photos of crime scenes and the like, that some images may be hard to take. Happily, we start with an architectural long shot of the building in which the gruesome discovery, Mr. Jay Edgar Dyson’s dead body, was found.

“We Fontanas have been asked to research some of the possible perpetrators who might have what is called ‘mob’ corrections. Of course, we all know—” he pushed his impossibly stylish Italian sunglasses atop his head so his face was an open book, “—the FBI drove out all mob factions from Las Vegas by the end of the nineteen-eighties.”

Nicky Fontana cleared his throat. Loudly.

Temple knew mob activity remained alive and well in offbeat areas like controlling meat sales rather than the more glamorous gambling violations.

“Anyway,” Aldo went on, “we have learned that Mr. Dyson owned, as did his ex-wife, Miss Electra Lark, quite a bit of land surrounding this, what I can only call an abandoned hulk, on a nameless side street. Mr. Dyson, we learn, was lured to Vegas to discuss selling this vintage edifice, most recently a purveyor…” Here images passed in succession. “…of wigged-out old dolls (nothing personal to the older lady among us), chipped metal-painted toys and Depression glass, which I believe is called that because it is so depressing to look at, being all moss green and yellow colors, and often chipped besides.”

Temple cringed as the dolls with their balding wigs and cracked China faces passed by, looking like escapees from old horror movies.

“And,” Aldo added, “several hundred amps of rhinestone jewelry that Miss Temple Barr no doubt would covet.”

Since all the illustrated pieces were either G-strings or showgirl bras, Temple doubted that, particularly since she was a 32 AN. All Natural. Still, she was flattered Aldo thought she might be interested in something other than crime scenes.

“This building looks innocent of everything but urban blight,” he said. “Now we will segue to the Unusual Suspects.”

Aldo flipped the screen image to images from old photos to present film clip as easily as his suit jacket vents fluttered in a Vegas breeze.

“First, the understudies.” He clicked to a jail intake photo of a tough-looking guy. “In these shots, the suspects’ ‘performance’ names are noted,” Aldo explained. “Punch Sullivan did just that—punch and get punched—until taking too many ‘dives’ in fixed fights ruined his profile. Kat with a K was ‘Cathy’ with a C when she was assisting Vegas’s lowest-level con men and street magicians off the Strip, and hooking on the side. Naturally, they were soon ready for bigger money-making ventures. After they got together and shifted their focus, they became a Team around Town. We are looking at a pair of known adult entertainment figures, two of dozens in Las Vegas. You gonna open a strip club, you need sexperienced overseers to keep strippers and patrons in order.”

“Those two sound like something out of pulp novel,” Matt whispered to Temple. “You actually met this odious pair?”

“Sort of.”

Aldo went on. “In the Most Interesting Personality Involved category…” he said, bringing up a mug-shot photo. “The one, the only Leon Nemo,” he finished with a flourish.

“My money is on that guy.” Electra sat up and dumped her soggy paper umbrellas on a side table. “He’s a bad ’un. He could railroad a weakling like Jay Edgar. I’d bet my instincts about my last, and late, husband on that.”

Ernesto grabbed some copies of Nemo’s photo and marched around the assemblage to pass them out. The letters and numbers under Nemo’s photo were impressive, too, especially since they were in black and white.

“This jailhouse portrait was taken before nineteen sixty,” Temple said. “Nemo is old enough to have been active in the heydays of the Vegas mobs.”

Aldo’s long, buffed forefinger nail pointed to Temple. “A dollar to the little lady on the money! His dyed black hair aside, Nemo is as old as the dessert dirt that hid Ten Binion’s multimillion-dollar buried safe. He knows where the bodies as well as the booty in Vegas are buried, and if he’s involved in the Lust ‘n’ Lace takeover, it ain’t for the G-string dollar bills.”

Temple smiled modestly as he confirmed her suspicions. “Then what?” she asked.

Fontana brother padded shoulders lifted in unison. “To be determined later.”

“Having hit an impasse with the cast of crooks,” Nicky said. “I suggested we look into the strange scene of the crime.”

“And the bizarre manner of death, I hope,” Temple said.

“Our sources on the Vegas scene are impeccable,” Ralph stepped up to say. “For one thing, we have a bit of living history in our Uncle Macho Mario.”

“A bit? He is the entire Old Testament,” Julio said. “Problem is, he is a bit reluctant to testify against his old acquaintances. A matter of honor.”