Unknown - 19_Cat_In_A_Red_Hot_Rage

“May I help you?” Aldo held the phone away from his ear so that Temple could hear the raging soprano aria on the other end. Temple guessed who it was; a female seriously disinclined to swooning: Detective Su.

Meanwhile, her aunt Kit, a thirty-year-older petite version of herself, cozied up to her side.

“Sorry I didn’t call to announce a change of venue last night, but it was awfully late.”

Temple could easily imagine a woman forgetting the time in Aldo’s company, and shrugged. “I know a New Yorker like you can take care of yourself, Aunt, and anything that might come up.”

“Speaking of that, what’s going on? Why are you here apparently being berated by a cell phone?”

“Electra called me at the Circle Ritz. There’s a death connected to this convention and the authorities are holding her for questioning. That was one of the detectives in charge of the case.”

Meanwhile, Aldo had snapped her cell phone shut and returned it with a flourish.

“The Lalique Suite. The police have set up shop there.”

Temple raised an eyebrow. She’d been the hotel’s PR person for a year now. The Crystal Suites were pretty fancy for police use.

“ ‘This convention’?” Kit looked around, as if seeing all the purple and red for the first time, and indeed, she probably was. A swarthy Italian hunk in expensive clothes as pale and soft as creamery butter would be hard to see past.

Temple took her aunt’s arm as they followed Aldo to the private elevators. “‘Big Wheel in Las Vegas’ convention for the Red Hat Sisterhood,” she explained, having gleaned all that from attendees on the way in. “It’s for older women with style, joy, and pizzazz. Like you.”

“Oh. Except that I’m with Aldo and they’re not.”

Temple eyed the many women around them who had stopped short, riveted by his tall, smooth passage through them.

“I wouldn’t bet on that if you were so foolish as to unhand his arm and let him loose. They’d be on him like an expensive suit.”

“But I’m not going to unhand him,” Kit said. “I’m sure Aldo can convince the police that Electra Lark is not a crook.”

“It’s ridiculous,” Temple agreed when the three of them were alone in the stainless-steel elevator, wafting upward, “for anyone to think my landlady would kill someone.”

Aldo waved his manicured fingers. One would never guess they were rattlesnake-fast to draw a Beretta.

“The police always make snap judgments,” he said, suiting gesture to words. “It saves them thinking. I’ve paged Nicky. He’ll put a stop to this police nonsense.”

“Nicky?” Kit asked.

Aldo smiled tenderly down at her and even Temple felt the heat. “My youngest brother. He owns the hotel.”

“Wow. And what do you own, big boy, besides a Viper and an expensive collection of aged scotch?”

“For one thing, my luscious linguini, a race horse.”

Kit was truly shocked, and Temple too. She’d never known what supported the litter of Fontana brothers, excepting Nicky, the white sheep of the family, and some iffy side businesses.

Kit leaned into Temple to whisper an explanation for the pet name. “He thinks I’m really rather … supple for my age. All those cheerleader splits didn’t hurt.”

“Aunt! I don’t need to know these things,” Temple hissed back. “What’s your horse’s name?” she asked Aldo to get the discussion onto a higher plane.

“Midnight Louie,” he answered. “Black as coal, fast as greased stainless steel, took second in his last race. A real comer on the inside.”

“But—”

“I figure your cat has been lucky for you and has at least nineteen lives, from what I’ve seen. What can it hurt?”

Louie with a thoroughbred namesake! Temple doubted that he cared much about such connections, but she was impressed.

The elevator doors spit them out onto an aubergine-carpeted hallway, deep purple to the common folk. Temple had never seen the Crystal Suites, nor had much needed to. Now she did.

The soft-lit sconces along the silver suede-covered halls were priceless vintage Lalique frosted glass.

The suite itself had huge Lalique door handles of facing phoenixes, commissioned for the hotel.

Another Fontana brother opened it before they could ring the bell, but it was not a usual member of the “frat pack.”

“Nicky!” Temple cried, embracing her boss (as near as a freelancer can have a boss) and biggest client and remembering to add, “It’s me, Temple, passing as a blonde.”

“Good thing it’s you:’ he said. “Van doesn’t like me canoodling with any blondes but her.”

Van had just arrived to peek over his shoulder.

“Temple, I see you’ve come over to the light side,” she said, smiling at the blond dye job.

Nicky’s wife was an Alfred Hitchcock blonde, smooth, cool, and dignified, like the stars of his best films: Grace Kelly, Kim Novak, Eva Marie Saint, and animal rescuer Tippi Hedron. One of her films, a rare lesser Hitchcock effort named Marnie, had featured a young pre-Bond Sean Connery! Yum. Temple may be engaged now, but age did not wither nor custom stale the Scottish actor’s sex appeal.

Van von Rhine was Nicky’s wife and the hotel manager. Where he was all macho charm, like any Fontana brother, she was cool Anglo efficiency and smoldering drive. If they were both on this scene, the situation was serious.

Nicky high-fived Aldo, then the couple settled in to hear Kit introduced, managing not to appear surprised that Aldo’s latest squeeze was also Temple’s visiting maternal aunt.

“Listen,” Nicky said, his low tone pulling everybody conspiratorially close.

“Van and I got this TV cop show off the main floor. We do have a murder on the premises, and your friend Electra was there for the denouement:’ he told Temple. “I don’t know how even a sharp PR diva like you is gonna keep both the hotel and your friend out of the headlines.”

“Electra’s my landlady and I doubt she’d kill a gnat. Can I talk to her?”

Van spoke for the first time. “It’s a he-she detective team. She spits nails; he slings mashed potatoes. Do love your hair.”

“Su and Alch,” Temple diagnosed. “I know them. He’s tougher than he acts, but she isn’t. She’s the real deal, a mini-Molina. Lieutenant Molina is my bane on the LVMPD. Born to be bad, particularly to me. Thanks for the vote for the hair color. It’s temporary, though.”

“Bleach never is, baby,” Nicky put in.

“Eventually,” Temple said, finished with coiffure matters. “Keep Aldo and Kit on the fringes with your camp. I’ll wade in and see if they’ll let me talk privately to Electra.”

“You a lawyer now?” Aldo asked incredulously.

“No,” Kit answered, “but she is a Carlson on the distaff side and we are nothing to mess with. Viking stock, you know.”

Aldo blinked at the image of petite, low-rise Kit, or Temple, as Valkyries.

What did he know? Columbus had been preceded to North America by the Vikings. Everyone north of the forty-fifth parallel knew that!

Temple went inside first. The room was expensively pale in decor and furnishings, except for a big bright blob of red and purple in the seating area near the floor-to-ceiling windows.

As she approached, Temple saw the canny detectives had placed Electra facing the windows so her features were in blinding daylight while they were silhouettes to her aging eyes.

Bullies!

But it worked.

Electra was in her sixties, which Temple now regarded with shock and awe after a heart-to-heart with her aunt about what aging women could expect. She was almost thirty-one, unmarried (although with strong prospects), and suddenly very sympathetic to the problems of aging women in a culture that worshiped young and thin and shallow.