Unknown - 23_Cat_In_A_Vegas_Gold_Vendetta

“Until the last dog is hanged.”

“Cats. They’re all cats. Until the last cat has gone to its reward.”

“Which could be years, during which any tangible assets of the estate would be burned off.”

“It’s an addled old woman’s dying fantasy.”

“It’s a con artist’s dream. They don’t usually murder, though. Anything more than cats, that is.”

“Temple says some of Violet’s cats have been let loose, but none found killed. Nearby or visibly. That Temple knows of.”

“What Temple knows of would fit in a thimble on this case. Like I said, Devine, you’re confined to quarters when we arrive. You wouldn’t even be here if you hadn’t had clues to what your loopy fiancée thought she was up to.”

“It’s more than money and cats and old ladies?”

“Could be.”

Matt had been watching the route. He kept his mouth shut because he’d been there once and couldn’t think of a faster way to go.

The car lurched through the night streets far from the Strip. He couldn’t help thinking of Max Kinsella’s recent, last desperate race through the streets of Belfast that left him bereaved. Oh, God. Was it his turn?

“Pray,” Molina urged in an undertone. “That may be the best break we get tonight.”

Chapter 43

Goldilocks Boxed

Temple parked the Miata three houses short of Violet’s.

A housebreaker doesn’t pull into the driveway in the light of day, and it was nicely dark here. She’d never noticed before that the streetlights ended long before Violet’s house at the end of the block, the end of the line. Maybe someone with a softball aim had knocked out the nearest lights.

Temple needed more sensible shoes in this desert-dusted area, and was glad she had been wearing kitten-heeled mules when she decided she had to make a house call. Easier to tiptoe in.

Supposedly, a night home-health-care aide was on duty. Temple spotted a faint glow through the deeply shadowed windows as she approached. Of course she wouldn’t disturb Violet at this late hour, 9:00 P.M.

She couldn’t see into the dark around the side of the house or if any vehicles were parked near the abandoned garage.

Temple wasn’t sure how she’d enter without disturbing the residents. If she had to, she could come up with some song and dance for visiting so late, but she really wanted to slink in. She needed to revisit the Alexandra shrine now that she knew more about the strained relationship between Violet and her daughter, and to return what she’d taken.

She grabbed the tote containing Alexandra’s memory box and soft-shoed her way up the street. She imagined she resembled someone visiting the sick with gifts of cologne and hand lotion maybe or, in this case, cat treats.

While Temple paused on the stoop in the dark, weighing options, the front door swung soundlessly open.

A pale feline muzzle peeked out and then a calico cat eased out, more white than red, black, and orange in the interior light.

That was how some of the cats vanished! The front door was left unlocked and just a teensy bit ajar.

Temple knew from Louie’s window and door-massaging ways that a cat’s hopeful rub back and forth could sometimes edge them both open wide enough for an escape. She ached to corral the elusive calico, but a protesting cat in her arms windmilling all four clawed limbs would not aid her mission.

Reluctantly, she moved the surprisingly well-balanced door open with her forefinger, wide enough to slip through sideways. She turned to pull it almost shut, just to the point of making a telltale noise, then eased off.

A television cast a flickering rainbow of light in the main room, turned on for a sleepless Violet or the night attendant’s diversion.

Temple was able to tiptoe through the few slumbering cats into the dining room and then through to the hall, led by the flickering light of the eternal candle lit in Alexandra’s memory.

She bent to open the chest doors so she could replace the box. Nothing looked disturbed since she’d last seen it. Violet, unlike the sleeping cats, had not been ambulatory for some time.

Temple straightened to regard the three closed doors that led off the back hall. A bedroom for Violet. A guest bedroom. And …

She felt so Goldilocks for a natural redhead.

The door to the left opened as easily as the heavy-looking front door. They made houses true when this one was built. Level. Doors and windows opened easily, were not off-square and prone to stick or to make unseemly noises.

A huge Spanish bedstead declared this the master bedroom. The mattress was far too high for an invalid, hence the hospital bed in the living room.

This was Papa Bear’s room.

She tried the far right door next.

Mama Bear’s lair, the guest room, not crowding the residents’ area. The candlelight, amazingly helpful, showed a queen-size bed without a headboard, with a crocheted comforter and two piled pillows per side.

That left the middle bedroom. In this case, Baby Bear’s?

Temple turned the doorknob and pushed. She wasn’t surprised to find it locked.

Satin place ribbons had bookmarked the two diaries she’d spirited away. One had a key tied on to weigh it down between the pages filled with Violet’s lines of love, regret, and despair.

Temple had a hunch and had appropriated that key.

It fit exactly in the middle locked door.

Temple turned it after much jiggling, as if it hadn’t been unlocked in a long time.

The door edged open and she walked through, feeling she might be violating a sacred place. Even without any interior light, the candle flicker from the hall reflected from all three visible walls surrounding the white wicker “crown” of a single bed headboard fit for a princess.

Temple’s vision was confused by a surfeit of pink and white, and walls that were an eye-dazzling surface of myriad miniature windows.

And through each tiny cellophane window shone the face of a differently coifed and appareled Barbie doll. All exquisitely tiny and beautiful. All frozen faces of Alexandra, the perfectly imagined daughter who’d fled her controlling mother to lead an imperfectly imagined life and death. Far away.

Barbie doll boxes towered alongside and over the girly wicker headboard; they covered every wall, floor to ceiling, row upon row.

Temple stepped into the weird reflected aura of shining blue eyes and glossy red lips and Vegas Gold locks to turn and examine the door wall, also paved in Barbie doll boxes.

Mint condition.

In the box.

Temple recognized several of these blond babes from her Web perusal, spotting a few brunettes and redheads and bronze-haired later models among them. Even redhaired Deirdre of Ulster, from the Legends of Ireland sequence. When Violet had called her that, she took it for raving until she checked the Barbie sites. This was a complete collection, lavished on Alexandra as tributes and role models—and every last one of them never opened.

Not by Violet and certainly not by Alexandra. Temple guessed Violet had surrounded her daughter with temptation and forbidden her to open it. This entire room was a tribute and a tomb to a princess in a tower of her mother’s making.

And … this was the prize of Violet’s “estate.” A collection worth a couple hundred thousand dollars or more in its pristine completeness. These tiny boxed showgirls were Vegas Gold, but they’d never been anything a real girl could play with or live up to.

While Temple stared up, turning around and around, the bedroom door had opened wide without a sound.

She turned to face full into it.

And the human figure it now framed.

Chapter 44

Away All Cats!