Unknown - 22_Cat_In_An_Ultramarine_Scheme

Aha! Matt had a young Chicago cousin, Krys. And there was Temple’s oldest brother’s daughter, Tabitha. What about Mariah Molina, if her mother would let her? Heh-heh. That would so get her mother’s goat and also help Mariah’s self-esteem. She was getting taller and leaner and needed to get over her teen crush on Matt. Watching him get married ought to do it. On the other hand, Matt in a tux was not a discouraging sight… .

Three bridesmaids seemed plenty, but Temple could picture all eight eligible Fontana brothers as groomsmen in pale formal attire, morning coats out of an Oscar Wilde play—to die for! Obviously a … summer wedding. So she needed five bridesmaids more by then. Her mother would be over the moon. Only one daughter, one mother-of-the-bride dress. Temple would manage it, the whole schmear.

Okay. Matt’s best man? He was short of relatives too. Maybe his birth father? Yes. Full circle.

Wait another minute! Temple was blue-skying the future when the present was a tangle of Las Vegas’s perpetual reinvention woes and bizarre deaths and buried secrets. Didn’t the past just always have to keep cropping up that destructive way?

She directed the Miata down the Strip and then off it, to Gangsters.

A parking valet in a Bonnie Parker beret offered to care for her car in the most personal way, with assurances it wouldn’t get hit with any nasty G-men bullet holes.

A Fontana brother had been alerted to escort her inside.

Temple shifted through her brain cells to identify the brother. The feature-shading fedora didn’t help. The Fontana did, though.

“Call me Ralphie the Wrench. We’ve all got new mob handles. Nicky’s idea.”

“Sure thing, Ralphie. I need to consult with the Glory Hole Gang. Where are they hanging out now?”

“The executive chef’s suite. It’s got a whole new test kitchen, but it’s also a bunkhouse. Nicky calls it that so they don’t feel it’s charity. The fellas are too old to be off on their own, except for Eightball, who is not about to give up his little house from the old days and his PI license.”

By then they had passed through the ka-ching chatter of the casino area to the elevators.

Ralphie the Wrench continued to play tour guide en route to the tenth floor. “Work on the Speakeasy’s bar and restaurant layout and the Chunnel of Crime is pretty intense, so the GH guys are mostly in the suite these days, menu planning.”

Ralphie pulled the latest fancy phone from his pinstriped breast pocket and rang up ahead of them, explaining afterward to Temple, “Even really old bachelor guys are not tidy enough for lady visitors without warning.”

Always the gentleman mobster, Ralphie the Wrench knocked for Temple, escorted her inside the suite, checked that the residence was fit for the presence of a lady, and then left her to her mission.

Pitchblende O’Hara was lounging on the huge upholstered conversation pit, wearing a flour-dusted apron and drinking a Red Bull. He jumped up at Temple’s arrival.

“I’m the designated welcoming committee, Miss Temple. Gollee, you look fresher than one of Spud’s French pastries right from the oven. We are gonna call them Bonnie’s Bits.”

“Well, maybe I just look flaky by now,” Temple said, waving good-bye to Ralphie as the door closed on his pinstriped back. “I need to talk to all of you. Can the kitchen crew put the experiments on heat-lamp warming and come out for a few minutes?”

Pitchblende rose and beat it back to the kitchen, drawing Temple’s attention to his size-thirteen feet in battered Roper boots. Serviceable, not fancy, and probably resoled and resewn a number of times.

Their well-worn clothes told the tale of the Glory Hole Gang’s obscure, last-but-not-best decades living in a ghost town until drawn into Vegas by another, earlier search for Jersey Joe Jackson’s silver hoards.

The first Glory Hole Gang member out of the kitchen wasn’t one.

Santiago bustled through.

He looked flustered to see her, but no more than she to see him.

“Ah, Miss Barr,” he said. “You have caught me. The sublime scents of the test kitchen penetrate to my suite next door, and I cannot control myself. Thanks to my neighbors, I’m indulging a fascination with genuine western barbecue.” He lifted a blue-and-white-checkered linen towel that added a smoky, spicy tang to the air, which had Temple’s stomach ready to growl. “Not my usual fare. They are going to call it Smokin’ Smothered Sirloin on the menu. Gentlemen, as usual, my gratitude and compliments to the chefs. Miss Barr.”

With a bow, he was out the door. He must be a barbecue fanatic to eat it in that white suit. Temple smirked to have seen a smudge of deep burgundy sauce on the edge of his pristine white sleeve cuff. Simply Santiago was simply … a freeloader.

“He’s been in and out like a boarder with a tapeworm,” Pitchblende complained, “slinging those fancy compliments like they were hash. I think he was afraid our fixin’s for the new restaurant would not be tony enough for his high-tech ‘installation.’ But we use the best aged beef, and those South Americans know prime steak when they taste it.”

“Howdy, Miss Temple!” The next kitchen émigré was Wild Blue Pike. The old man had the face of an aging angel, amazingly unwrinkled and pale. Maybe he was into Oil of Olay. He would have looked innocent in any lineup, with his lush white hair and distance-focused blue eyes.

Spuds Lonnigan came clunking out, wiping his wet hands on another checkered linen towel. Cranky Ferguson was munching on one of those flaky French pastries too delicate to put down, but he carried a saucer under it to catch crumbs.

Eightball O’Rourke exited the kitchen last. Whoops! He was not the last. A large black cat, not Midnight Louie, ambled out, tongue working some dropped morsel out of his long white whiskers.

“Three O’Clock has moved in?” Temple asked, pleased. “I thought he wouldn’t let you guys near him when you left the restaurant at Temple Bar.”

“Ah, he jest visits for the chow train,” Cranky said with a dismissive wave of his hand. “He’s like your house cat, a will-o’-the-wisp.”

“Not in girth,” Temple said.

“None of us are wispy these days,” Spuds said, “ ’cept Wild Blue and Eightball.”

“And our Miss Temple,” Eightball loyally pointed out. “I noticed,” he added, “you been admiring our footwear. There a reason you want our feet all in a campfire circle?”

Eightball was not a man to be fooled.

“Absolutely,” Temple said. “I confess. I was sizing up your feet.”

“And … ?”

“You’ve always worn cowboy boots?”

“Hell, yes,” said Wild Blue, “even in my flying days.”

“We don’t say ‘hell’ in front of ladies,” Cranky warned him.

“It’s okay now,” Temple countered. “I’m here to examine your boots, which is not a very ladylike pursuit.”

“Phew,” Pitchblende said. “You shore don’t want us to take ’em off before suppertime.”

“Sit down and make yourself at home,” Eightball urged. “You can eyeball our foot-leather better close-up.”

Temple smiled and pulled a folder out of her ever-present tote bag.

“I’m trying to solve the identity of the Three O’Clock Louie’s once-submerged corpse.”

Wild Blue winced. “Poor guy who was et away almost down to his anklebones? Those Lake Mean carp were hungry suckers, even when our restaurant was still going. Hate to think what they did before there were piles of tourists to feed ’em.”

“More like piranha,” Spuds agreed. “Say, we could serve catfish and call it something like Cannibal Catfish.”

“So you saw that TV news piece. How about Capone’s Catch of the Day?” Temple suggested.