Unknown - 19_Cat_In_A_Red_Hot_Rage

“I didn’t, I tell you.”

“That’s not good enough. I need evidence. I need to know who did.”

“Now, sweet potato, why would I know that?” he wheedled. “You wouldn’t starve a man because of what he didn’t know.”

“He’s lying,” Electra said.

“Yes, but what about?” Temple said, frowning.

“Come on, girl, you don’t want to hold out on your future sugar daddy.”

“All the sugar you’ve got’s in your lying words.”

“No. Swear to God. I’m gonna have a pile as high as the Luxor. I’ve got me ranch land up in Reno. Dirt-poor, but it’s like you, sweet potato. It’s what’s under the surface—”

A scuffle was heard. Starla giggled and pretended to pretend to resist, that much was clear.

“We might have to rescue her,” Judy said. “I don’t know how much pawing a Red Hat woman should have to put up with.”

Temple hesitated. This scheme had been a bust, except for the store that had sold them the bottle of Johnnie Walker.

“Wow!” Phyll whispered from the front of the van, peering between the seats through the tinted windshield. “Who’s that heading for Elmore Lark territory?”

They all crowded to hunch behind her while the receiver broadcast sounds of heavy breathing and slap and tickle as Starla tried to fend off Elmore without turning off his expansive tipsy monologue.

A tall, thin woman in blue jeans and boots and a plaid blouse was striding toward Elmore’s door. She never hesitated to knock, but jerked it open.

Starla screamed on the receiver. A thump sounded as she or Elmore fell to the floor.

“You idiotic bastard!” the newcomer shouted in a deep, disgusted voice. “I leave you alone for a few hours and you’re with some drunken floozy.”

“Hey, lady. I’m not drunk. He is.”

“Even worse!” the woman shouted. “Get out of here.”

“I just need to get my things together.” Starla was playing for time, wanting to record this interloper who apparently knew Lark well.

“Cheap whore! Go, or you’ll be sorry.”

“Just a minute. My—my purse.”

“Forget it. You’re not getting paid for anything.” There was a silence where all the rapt listeners could hear was heavy breathing from all parties involved.

“Bunnie, honey,” Elmore began wheedling.

“You’re not just a little out of it,” the new woman said. “You’re downright drunk. What did you tell her?”

“Nothin’, honey. I told her nothin’. I said nothin’, I told her I did nothin’ to those women, jest got dolled up a bit in those Red Hat duds. Even Dustin Hoffman does drag sometime.”

“Get outta here, you stupid chippie!” The woman obviously had Starla by the jacket lapels and was shaking her. “I oughtta wring your neck.”

“And she’s the one who did it!” Temple jumped up, only avoiding braining herself on the van’s ceiling by being so short. “Come on!”

Phyll and Judy put their weight into pushing the side van door open so all of them could pour out onto the hot pavement.

The two guys fiddling with the car suddenly jumped up and headed for the door, one pulling it open before Temple and company could reach it.

Starla had been leaning against the door. Around her neck was a Red Hat scarf. The strangling ends of it were in the hands of the long tall woman who’d popped in on Elmore Lark.

Losing the support of the door, Starla fell into the supportive custody of the man who’d jerked it open.

The other guy had the strange woman’s hands behind her back … and tied there with her own scarf in thirty seconds flat.

Elmore was weaving on his feet in the seedy motel room, clinging to a cheap plastic cup still in its plastic wrapper but filled with expensive scotch …

… which Temple was going to have a big bolt of when she got home.

They’d nailed the strangler, but Temple had never seen her before and had no idea on earth who the hell she was.

Chapter 61

Footnotes

Detective Morrie Alch came into the tiny LVMPD conference room where Temple, Electra, her Red-Hatted League sisters, and the two car guys, aka Armando and Ralph Fontana, were waiting.

He wore his scary, emotionless police face and his first words were: “Elmore sang like—excuse the expression—a lark.”

That broke the tension as the ladies laughed and eyed him with interest.

“Is it true, Miss Temple Barr,” he went on, “that you have no idea of who the woman who tried to strangle Starla is?”

“True, but I have a footnote.”

He chuckled, gazing at her deliberately dirty white tennis shoes.

“You usually have an interesting footnote, but I hope today it’s a lot better-looking than those skaggy tennies.”

“I’m working undercover, Detective,” she rebuked him. “You know I’d never be caught dead in these shoes otherwise.”

“At least you weren’t in danger of being caught dead this time.” He glanced at Starla. “I remember when you were doing bounty hunting, Miss Starnes. You always had a lot of nerve. This was a flea-brained and dangerous scheme,” he added with almost-Molina-like severity, looking back at Temple. “Fontana brothers in reserve or not.”

And where was Molina anyway? Temple wondered. “So,” Alch asked her directly. “What is your footnote?”

“First, I have some papers to leave with you: my copy of Oleta’s full manuscript and my notes on Natalie Newman’s recordings, with a copy of both DVDs. But my ‘footnote’ is in the form of a statement, like on Jeopardy! ‘Dressed Elmore Lark in drag for his raid on the hatbox.— Alch’s law enforcement expression thawed again as he threw a wallet stuffed with credit cards and IDs down on the table.

“Right on, Little Red. And the question is: ‘Who is Candace Crenshaw?’ “

Electra and her gal pals squealed as one. Their reactions were swift and universal.

“But she’s a Red Hat celebrity!”

“She performed at the convention.”

“She’s a star! What did she want with Elmore?” That was Electra.

“It’s complicated,” Alch said. “And it’ll come out at the trial. After Miss Barr found some references in Oleta’s manuscript, we checked some sources up north. Elmore was suddenly sitting on some very uranium-rich acres up there in Reno. A vengeful and illegitimate ex, not to mention other not-really-exes, not only confronted him with doing time for bigamy until death did him in at the prison, but the common-law wife and ex-wife legalities—once his good luck got out, and it would have—would tie up the land and the fortune for years.”

“What was Candy Crenshaw’s stake in all this?” Temple asked. “She seems to have come out of left field.”

“Not really, if you dig a bit. We found out she was a member of the same Red Hat group as Oleta. Say she’d become Elmore’s latest but secret sweetie up in Reno, so when big money entered the picture, she wanted to be the wife of record with a legal claim to his bucks.”

“And Elmore would go along with this?” Electra was indignant.

“He’d always been a weasel and a fool for women. He did what she said down here, like shadowing Oleta. We don’t know if he knew she killed Oleta, but when Candy Crenshaw got what legal entitlements she wanted, he’d probably have been strangled by his bolo tie and left to rot in the desert.”

“Instead he’ll rot in prison,” Temple told Electra, who just shook her head, bewildered by both of them.

That was all that Alch was going to tell them for their trouble, so they left the busy, bustling building (murder was big business in Las Vegas) and stood outside in the hot sun, unwilling to just disband in an anticlimax.

The two Fontana brothers were the first to peel off, hunting a change of clothes and a close shave of a different sort than Starla’s.