Unknown - 19_Cat_In_A_Red_Hot_Rage

And then I race back to the elevators, leap to hit the down button, and hope for the best.

Chapter 55

Red Tide

Temple’s connections at the Crystal Phoenix got her easy and secret access to a passkey that allowed her to sneak back into the locked ballroom housing the Red Hat stores.

Nicky Fontana had not been crazy about her doing that, but she explained that she wanted to search the premises without anyone, including Van, knowing.

She told him a small but reasonable lie about smuggling via the shops that might explain Oleta’s death, if not the attempt on Elmore’s life. She didn’t want, she said, to embarrass the hotel and the Red Hat Sisterhood if her suspicions were wrong.

Nicky recognized that as a noble and necessary motive.

So she’d tucked her blond hair under a big red hat restingatop a red-knit turban and had donned huge gold circle earrings. This was not a Temple Barr look. It was more a mini-Carmen Miranda look.

That 1940s Latina entertainer had worn towers of fake fruit on her head. Temple had settled for red chiffon roses and ostrich feathers nestled in veiling. She also resorted to red running shoes in another effort at disguise. It had worked: the mirror told her she resembled a walking crimson mushroom with a very lavish cap.

Nobody glanced at her twice as she left the bathroom off the lobby and headed toward the ballroom areas. Red Hat ladies had been sweeping past en masse en route to the big dinner events at both the Phoenix and the neighboring Goliath. She was just a late-goer. While half the Red Hat Sisterhood attended a program and banquet in the Phoenix’s Crystal Court ballroom, the other half made merry at the Goliath Hotel across the Strip.

The Hatorium Emporium ballroom had doors on three sides, one set far down a dark hall abutting the hotel’s cavernous service and kitchen areas. Temple unlocked the padlock and chains with no witnesses. Any Marley’s Ghost clanking sounds she made were masked by the loud muffled sounds of stage announcements and laughter coming from the hotel’s huge central ballroom.

She knew better than to shut the slightly open door behind her. These things could make terrific thumps, as convention-goers who try to sneak out of boring presentations find out. She often wondered if that was meant to keep people inside.

Once she slipped inside the ballroom, she paused to orient herself.

This place was not on anyone’s most-wanted list for the evening. The demonstration stages circling the room stood empty and still. The ballroom was silent, as it should be. Yet the air-conditioning gave it the look of a deserted dressing room. All the dozens and dozens of racks of hats and clothes trembled in the interior breeze, especially with so much of it feathered.

So the room seemed occupied, anyway, by a mute congregation of twitchy wearing apparel. Temple felt a bit twitchy too.

She’d promised everyone from Matt to Kit to Nicky to Detective Alch to avoid risks. But the Red Hat Sisterhood would be flowing out of Las Vegas in a giant Red Tide starting tomorrow. And with them might go a murderer.

That would leave Electra to take the blame for the death of Oleta and the attempted murder of Elmore Lark. Temple didn’t know if a prosecutor could get a conviction, but she didn’t want the matter to come to trial so they all could find out. Despite the offer of Macho Mario’s personal defense attorney, Temple did not trust in law and order to resolve these crimes.

So she’d do what none of the people closest to her would understand or approve. But Max would.

If you want to catch a crook, you don’t need a crook. You just need some high-profile bait. And it wasn’t her, for a change. She was just here to hide and watch.

Because there it was. Her bait. By the light of the ballroom’s red exit signs (a rather chilling sight) and the low-level security lights still on in the ceiling high above, Temple glimpsed the giant-size piece of cheese she’d placed in the ballroom this morning. Surely a human-size rat couldn’t resist trying to take it tonight.

It was Oleta’s lost hatbox that had been stored in the conference room. Its top was mounded high again with computer paper, redecorated and glued. Under that carpet of lavender net roses, lay … blank sheets.

That morning Temple, in red hat and heels, had noisily donated it to the booth to raise money for a memorial for Oleta. Everyone could buy chances to win it, and Temple had announced she’d filled the hatbox with ten-dollar bills. She bought fifteen five-dollar chances to start the hatbox rolling.

Of course, all the folks at the stages surrounding the booths had paused in their glamour photos, hairpiece displays, and makeup hawking to announce the “Oleta Lark Memorial Hatbox” prize over their mikes.

At noon luncheons at both the Phoenix and Goliath, Temple was introduced by Her Royal flatness herself as a “generous donor” of a “magnificently decorated personal hatbox” belonging to “our late beloved sister so brutally taken from us.”

Nothing like murder and lavender net roses to stir up a crowd.

Now, Temple was willing to bet, someone would be slinking into the closed ballroom to “win” the prize before anyone else could. Someone who suspected it might contain what Temple had found: Oleta’s complete manuscript, not worthy of publishing, not full of clues to her murder, but perhaps inadvertently able to draw out an insecure murderer.

Temple eyed the situation. She decided high ground would help her spot a sneak thief in the semidark. Tiptoeing on her rubber-soled and well-named sneakers, she climbed the four steps to a demonstration area that would permit her to watch the hatbox booth from a height.

A nearby mannequin dressed in full feather was perfect to hide behind. She got into place, then eyed the area she’d chosen. Lots of clothes and hats hung on racks up here too. A table, empty now, sat in front of a folding screen.

Temple couldn’t decide what this booth hawked, besides the clothing. Didn’t matter. At least it provided a dummy to hide behind. Even better were the curtains behind it. She retreated farther, sticking her head out of the part in the curtains.

No sooner had she settled down to wait than she heard something move. Clothing brushing, feet shuffling. The sound wasn’t coming from the distant, locked ballroom doors. It was coming amid the rows of booths.

Oh. An intruder wouldn’t be able to beg or borrow a security passkey from the hotel owner. An intruder would have to hide, like Temple, and wait until the room was empty.

Had the intruder heard Temple arrive? Get into place? She’d been quiet about it. The stealthy sounds continued, micelike rustles anybody else would dismiss. The stealth made Temple think the person hadn’t heard or spotted her presence.

Temple didn’t want to lose her vantage point, but she hunkered down farther behind the standing female mannequin. Those things were always six feet tall with linebacker shoulders, anyway. They could conceal three Temples, four on a day when she wasn’t wearing high heels. Like today. Tonight.

Her retreating back heel hit something narrow but hard. She craned her neck backward. Just a glint of light off the metal legs of a light plastic chair. Another mannequin was sitting there, all dressed up with no place to go. Too bad. Temple could have sat on that chair and watched in comfort.

Ooh. A shadowy figure was moving behind the boas in Oleta’s booth.

Temple crouched lower, this time brushing the mannequin’s shod foot. The sole slid out of place a bit, making that telltale sandy drag that you hear in a soft-shoe routine.

In this big empty ballroom, it sounded like a spurt of sound from a chain saw.