Unknown - 19_Cat_In_A_Red_Hot_Rage

“Do you think they do pat downs?” the woman in front of Temple giggled.

“Only of bags,” she replied, “and of course you don’t want to be taken for a ‘bag.’ “

Natalie had been plucked from the line to be queried on the exact nature of her job and her work here, as if that were a rare and special activity of tremendous interest to the interrogating Fontana brother.

Her sunken cheeks began to pinken at such intimate and solicitous attention. She didn’t even notice that the other women shuffled past, allowed to proceed far more quickly than she.

Temple was soon the only woman behind her. No others had been recruited after her.

Everything was very airport: the beige wall dividers. The sounds of a big machine churning out of view.

Natalie turned to watch Temple’s tote bag being whisked out of her custody with the same charming patter as her own had been.

“This is ridiculous,” Natalie whispered to her, suddenly a partner in being subjected to bureaucratic idiocy.

“It looks like they’re targeting oversize bags,” Temple whispered back.

“These other silly cows seem to actually like being examined by these greaser gangsters!”

“Well, they’re here to have fun and I suppose this adds a bit of drama.”

“These are the same silly, stupid women who watch soap operas and read romance novels. They’re making idiots of themselves and don’t even know it.”

“Isn’t it hard to record the convention when you despise the attendees?”

Natalie’s pale lips pursed. “I’m not a PR flack like you. I’m a journalist. I can … be objective about anything.”

“Except Purple Cows,” Temple said innocently.

Natalie’s unplucked brows clashed above her nose like broadswords.

“It’s fine for you girly little things to think you can slide through life on your looks without any moral or social conscience. Some of us aspire to more than easy money and the attentions of”—she glared at the Fontana brother handing her tote bag back with a small bow and a big smile—“gigolos!”

Temple and Armando watched her depart, driving those porn-film high soles into the marble floor like flatirons.

“It was a pleasure,” he mused, “to pick the pocketbook of such an unpleasant female undetected. We will have video in fifteen minutes in your conference room. Julio will fetch a chilled bottle of Asti Spumanti for your viewing pleasure.”

“It’s only 10:00 A.M. I don’t need wine.”

“But we do. It really is necessary to rinse the taste of that unhappy woman out of our mouths.”

In the conference room, Temple’s tote bag awaited her atop the long conference table opposite the dead-body-long television that had descended from the ceiling.

A DVD player sat like a centerpiece at the exact middle of the long table. Temple wasn’t even going to ask what it had taken to extract and copy the media in Natalie’s hidden camera, and then replace it as if nothing had transpired, but technical boxes of unknown abilities crouched along the sideboard.

The four Fontanas active in the operation took seats along either side of the conference table, one using a remote to darken the lights and start the player.

Immediately the buzzing chaos of the convention-goers filled the room. Snatches of conversation. Laughter. The footage had a film verite feeling.

The screen was filled with deep purple. Then the camera’s eye zoomed out to reveal the very large purple butt of a woman bending over a wheeled canvas bag.

The camera roved at hip level, zooming in on swollen ankles in laced-edged red anklets, then swooping up to creased and folded middle-age faces wearing blobs of red and purple on lips and eyelids.

“You look darling!” a female voice caroled as the camera closed in on another, decidedly not-darling close-up of an unsuspecting woman.

“Jeesh,” a Fontana murmured, “this is character assassination.”

Temple nodded in the dark. “She’s using a fish-eye lens to distort their faces and bodies. Natalie’s pretty good at operating that tote-bag camera blind. She must have done a lot of this.”

“What’s the point?” Eduardo asked. “She’s getting paid to film the convention.”

“As I suspected, her real agenda is mocking it. Paid to undermine. Nice work if you can get it. I bet she’s done this before. Time to ask the Internet to cough up any references on her.”

“If she’s using her real name.”

Temple glanced at Eduardo. “She’s been a stringer for national news magazines, and I hear that’s her married name. And she doesn’t care how angry the Red Hat Sisterhood is, organizationally or individually, once she’s got what she wants in the can, or on the DVD, rather. Amazing how technology is outdating all our expressions.”

When the recording had run its course, Temple refused a glass of wine, but lifted her water glass in their honor. “To the Fontana brothers. Long may they wave.”

“Cin-cin,” said Armando, pronouncing the Italian toast “Chin-chin.”

“Salud,” said Eduardo in turn, using another romance language, Spanish.

“Prosit,” said Emilio, resorting to German.

“And Skoal,” finished Ralph, going Nordic.

“L’chayim,” Temple finished in Yiddish, saluting life with her water glass, hoping they’d recorded a clue to untimely death with this session.

Temple eyed her co-conspirators for one last toast in English. “To the Red Hat Sisterhood! Your inspection line not only may remove a murderer hiding in their midst, but it was a high point of the day for all the women I overheard raving about their time in the ‘Guy Line.’ “

“Those,” Eduardo said, obviously leaving Natalie Newman out, “were charming ladies. They have a zest for life that is quite Italian.”

“We will have the proper equipment delivered to your Circle Ritz domicile so that you can see both recordings completely.”

“Thanks, but I think I know what’s she up to now. About six-three with those shoes.”

“Those are knockoff Versace,” Eduardo sniffed, opening the double doors to release Temple back into the noisy flood of P and R adherents. “Just as she is a fake.”

Chapter 52

Ms. Apprehension

Temple returned to the lobby to be greeted by a shrill, Hitchcockian film scream. Before she could triangulate on the direction it came from, she saw the flock of Fontana brothers behind her racing past, cell phones glued to their ears.

She spun on a resale Jimmy Choo spike heel and trailed them through a crowd of excited, muttering women that gave way as the Fontanas charged past.

What the women muttered wasn’t encouraging.

“Another murder—!”

“Strangled.”

“Boa?”

“No, scarf.”

“Are those guys hot! D’you think they’re undercover cops?”

By then Temple was weaving in and out of the gathered conventioneers, trying desperately to catch up to the Fontanas.

The crowd around the entrance to the Hatorium Emporium was particularly thick. Temple found herself using elbows and heels to pick her way through, leaving a chorus of ows in her wake.

“It’s another Pink Hat,” someone cried.

Her own pink hat got several tugs.

“Don’t go in there!”

“It’s death to Pink Hatters.”

Someone swiped the hat off her head, but Temple snatched it back and carried it.

No way the police would be on-scene for this latest attack. She and the Fontana brothers were the first responders. Maybe they’d catch the perp.

Suddenly she’d caught up with them, but they were a ring holding everyone back.

“Ernesto!” she asked the first one whose attention she could snag. “What’s happened?”