Unknown - 19_Cat_In_A_Red_Hot_Rage

The central table was a slab of granite topped with inch-thick glass. The sleek Herman Miller office chairs didn’t take a World Wrestling Federation champion to move them.

The thick-piled carpet boasted a Chihuly-like design that would both wear well and perk up spirits.

And the coffee and tea services were sterling silver. The sugar bowls held sugar. An exotic wood box hid packets of exotic teas and Temple’s favorite sugar substitute, Splenda. The matching creamers held—heavens!—real cream and skim milk, the best of both worlds.

That fact may have been why not one, but two black cats had preceded them to the conference room. That Louie! He respected no boundaries, human or feline! She had to wonder if he was after more than filched cream. Everything he did was reasonably catlike, but it often seemed to have a second purpose. He had a definite penchant for death scenes, always someone’s unlucky black cat. Hmm, Midnight Louie as furry albatross …

Seeing the two cats together, Temple could tell that Louise’s furrier frame was much smaller and her tail hair was much fatter than Louie’s muscular buzz cut.

She also had old-gold eyes rather than green ones.

Despite the differences, Temple still wasn’t sure which cat had mixed it up with Savannah Ashleigh’s entourage. She had at first assumed it had been Louie, because he had no liking for the Ashleigh woman. But the Crystal Phoenix was Midnight Louise’s territory now.

“Waal, Puddin’ Puss,” Elmore boomed out. “I see the cats still come to you like rats to cheese.”

The cats eyed him with the same dubious gaze Electra gave him.

“Don’t keep calling me that, Elmore Lark, or I will commit murder.”

“See why I came down, PP? I knew you’d lose your cool. Even if you did knock off Oleta, you’ll need a character witness.”

“You’re only a witness to my bad judgment decades ago.”

“Sit down,” Temple suggested. Ordered. “If you two keep sparring in public it won’t do either one of you any good.”

“That what you brought us in here to say, Little Lady?”

“And you can drop that nickname too. As long as you’re here you can tell me why you didn’t kill Oleta.”

He laughed long and loud about that, then filled up a coffee cup with six teaspoons of sugar before coming to sit at the conference table across from Temple and Electra.

“I’da stood out a little in this Little Red Hen party, don’tcha think? Besides, me and Oleta’s been quit for, oh, three, four years now.”

“Were you officially divorced?”

“As much as God and Reno can make it so.”

“Then why did she describe you as a ‘bigamist’?”

“Haven’t any idea.” He spread his hands wide, his scrawny chest swathed in an innocent checked cowboy shirt with plastic pearl snaps down the front. A plastic cowboy.

Temple turned to Electra. “How did you know for sure you were divorced?”

“I filed the papers before I left. And a couple weeks later I got them, all stamped and signed.”

“By the county, or by Elmore Lark?”

“They looked official, and I was so glad to be quit of him.”

Elmore Lark was tapping his ten-gallon hat on his angular, bejeaned knee. When the women looked at him, he looked away. And whistled.

The sound brought the two black cats lofting onto the tabletop, sighting on him like a pair of hounds from hell, eyes narrowed, hair raised, and hissing.

Temple shook her head. “The divorce never went through. He sent you forged papers.”

Electra was stunned to learn she was still a married woman, and a bigamist herself on top of it.

“Why? Why on earth? He already had hot young Oleta waiting in the other stall?”

Temple narrowed her eyes at the utterly selfish old man. What had he gained by tricking Electra, and Oleta? “You bore his son.”

“And Curtiss turned out fine,” Electra said, “because he was with me only from the age of six on.”

“You weren’t likely to come back.”

“That’s for sure.”

Temple gave her take on the situation. “Elmore wanted Oleta, but not her greedy claws in him. She was entitled to nothing if it came out the marriage was bogus, and it would if he wanted it to. If something happened to him, when the courts asked for documentation, his worldly goods would have still gone to you and Curtiss.”

Elmore had stopped his irritating whistling and hat-tapping. He looked sheepish.

Electra looked like a little purple teapot with a red cover who was about to blow its top.

“Elmore Lark! Why? Do you realize that I’d remarried since then?”

“Several times,” Temple put in with a “so there” emphasis. Electra didn’t even hear that. “Is she right? We’re still … married?”

“That little filly Oleta. She wanted the whole deal. I don’t trust women like that. I trust women like you.”

“Stupid?”

“Trustin’, Puddin’ Puss. That little girl sorta ran me over. I wasn’t thinking, but I knew enough to make it so she couldn’t get ahold of my horse ranch.” He turned the hat in his bony hands. “Curtiss is my only son.”

“For all you’ve ever seen of him.”

“I’m not the raisin’ father type, but I am the leavin’ father type.”

“That’s for sure,” Electra said, standing up. “I could kill you for what you’ve done to me, and especially to Curtiss.”

Some people found women in purple outfits with red hats amusing and a little silly. Electra’s fervent tone would have convinced them otherwise.

Certainly it convinced the people just entering the conference room.

Temple cringed inside as she noticed and identified them: Detectives Su and Alch.

Chapter 20

Truth Has Consequences

Detective Su’s first name was “Merry,” which Temple had always found incongruous: Merry Su, a homophone for Mary Sue.

She understood that second-and third-generation Asian Americans often bore delightfully trendy American first names nowadays. It was a mark of assimilation, while maintaining pride in the family name of origin.

And Detective Su was another petite woman in a man’s world, even more petite than Temple’s five-foot-zero, size three and five in clothing and footwear. Su probably wore 0 and size four shoes.

So Temple totally sympathized with such a small woman making it in such a man’s world as law enforcement.

But .

Sometimes . .

Sometimes Temple thought Su was a mini-Molina, a female bully who liked to throw her badge and her figurative weight around. In C. R. Molina’s case, Temple was talking about an almost-six-foot-tall woman homicide lieutenant with the cojones of a pit bull and the open mind of a shut-tight miniblind.

This was one of those Su-Molina times.

“We don’t often walk in on a confession of murder,” Su said, folding her arms. She wore a black pantsuit over a white shirt. Her expression and mind seemed to be in an equally black and white mode.

Detective Morrie Alch loomed behind her, a symphony in gray, especially his hair and mustache. From him came a vibe of mature sympathy for all involved.

Not from Detective Su.

“What’s this?” she demanded. “An alternative on-site interrogation room? The hotel has asked us to be discreet. It didn’t require that we be co-opted by an amateur detective with two alley cats for backup.”

“Backup” was the word. Louie and acquaintance obliged by humping their spines like Halloween cats at Su’s approach.

Never duel a cat for attitude, Temple thought, watching Detective Su observe the animals’ fierce united feline front and wisely swagger around them to confront Temple.

“You are not Las Vegas’s answer to Veronica Mars,” she told Temple. “You had no business diverting this man, whom I take to be Elmore Lark, from the long arm of the law.”