Unknown - 19_Cat_In_A_Red_Hot_Rage

“And why is this anonymous ‘some bimbo’ attached to your movements and motivations?”

“Um, there’s an awkward connection the police found out about.”

“What awkward connection?”

“The good detectives—”

“There are not good detectives in a case like this, just suspicious and determined and not on your side.”

“Whatever. Anyway, I’d been seen earlier at the preregistration desk, showing newbies how to tie their scarves.”

“Around their throats to hide awkward wrinkles and sags, I presume.”

“Exactly, dear. Hides the turkey wattle and all those nasty sagging horizontal lines. What more could a woman do for her sisters?”

“And?”

“When they found the Pink Lady dead a few hours later, strangled by a scarf, naturally I came to mind.”

“Because—?” Electra was being way too evasive.

“I did use her earlier to demonstrate properly tying a scarf to the other ladies.”

“Not good, but not damning. So—?”

Electra looked down and wrung her hands. She even wore red and purple rings and some looked like real rubies and amethysts.

“Electra?”

“This convention meant so much to me. I wanted our chapter to shine, Temple. I wanted the Red Hat Sisterhood to have a stellar time in our uniquely glitzy city. I just wanted to help.”

“So what was the problem with that particular Pink Lady?”

“She was from Hollywood.”

Temple waited.

“Florida.”

“So?”

“So was my third husband.”

“But that must have been long ago. You’ve ditched several more husbands since then.”

“Oh, yes. We split almost thirty years ago. I’d thoroughly washed my hands of the cad after I found out he was stepping out on me, and this was back when I still looked like someone who shouldn’t be stepped out on.”

“You still do,” Temple said, putting a firm hand on Electra’s nervous ones.

Tears filled Electra’s gray eyes. “It was the name tags. So cute. Our chapter designed them. A chorus line of high-kicking red EiffelTowers on a lavender border. The EiffelTower in Pariswas originally painted red, you know.”

Temple shook her head. She didn’t know, and she didn’t know what that had to do with anything. Electra probably didn’t either at this point.

“Everything was perfect,” Electra went on, “was going to be perfect, until she came along.”

“The name tags. The Pink Lady’s name—?”

“Was Lark, just like mine. I hadn’t noticed it during the scarf-tying demonstration.”

“I had no idea you knew your way around scarves and knots, because I certainly could use tutoring in that knack.”

“Call on me anytime, dear, if I’m not in jail.”

“And you didn’t know you were advising an ex-rival?”

“Honey chile, she’d changed as much as I had. And my attention was on her neck, not her name tag. But when I saw it, after I’d done the scarf demonstration, I knew she was the formerly teenaged bimbo who’d lured Elmore Lark away from me. It wouldn’t have mattered, except I’d kept his last name because it turned out to be the only thing I liked about him.”

“So … Lark met Lark.”

“Then she got insulting. Said she’d never have recognized me and I said the same, because, believe me, those husband-stealing teen tootsies who shine at that age lose it faster than Bruce Willis loses hair.”

“Apparently you discussed your mutual revelations and revilements in front of God and everybody.”

“No. If God had been there, He would have struck her dead for illegal parking with my then-legal husband.”

Temple winced. “And within hours, she was really dead.”

“I didn’t do that. I respect a Red Hat Sisterhood scarf toomuch to wring that witch’s neck with it. Even with a lesser Pink Lady version. It is a sacred trust.”

“So is a marriage,” Temple said, who’d had reason to think about that very thing long and hard lately. “You know that. You operate a wedding chapel, after all.”

“Yes.” Electra sniffled. “That is my expression of optimism in a pessimistic world and time. I may have wanted to wring Oleta’s cheating neck, Temple, but I never would have killed her. And that’s why I was so surprised to find the fallen woman, excuse the expression, that I tried to help was her. Again.”

Electra’s purple-mascara-loaded lashes beat hard to drive back the tears.

Temple believed her. Wanting to wring someone’s neck was a common urge and almost never acted upon.

But maybe someone who’d had it in for this particular Pink Lady had witnessed Electra’s shock and fury and had decided to ride on it… .

An opportunist among a … brimful … a feather … a hat pin … of innocuous Red Hat Sisterhood ladies.

Or maybe not innocuous. Not all of them.

Chapter 6

Louie Among the Sisterhood

It is not a cakewalk to ease unseen into a suite at the Crystal Phoenix, much harder than fronting on down a yellow brick road out in Las Vegas proper, and there are plenty of yellow brick roads in this town, only they all are covered in green felt.

Thankfully, I know these Crystal Phoenix grounds and buildings well from my stint as an unofficial house detective here. Those room-service carts always hide the tableware and such under a thick white linen cloth. And I was always to the fine linen born.

So today I have gotten the lay of the land and the dramatis personae through a tablecloth, darkly. Thank heaven and Bast for these sharp black ears of mine.

I manage to sneak a peek or two when nobody is looking. Since I am always at ankle level, nobody is looking most of the time.

First of all, I cannot believe that Miss Electra Lark, major dame-o of the Circle Ritz, has sprayed her hair completely purple! It was one thing when she went multicolored. I know a lot of cats with coats like that. But I have never seen a purple cat. And Miss Electra does not even have the excuse of St. Paddy’s Day and green. Does she not realize that white-haired ladies tinting their hair blue is a cliché? That purple is just one half step up from that? That Blond is the New Blue for the post-sixty set?

Of course, I also cannot believe that Miss Electra Lark (even if she is a reformed “Mrs..”) would off some so-called Pink Lady just for the act of lassoing her man some decades before. If he was so lasso-able, he was lose-able in my estimation.

We all have our issues, and hopefully outgrow them. Like I have forgotten and forgiven Miss Midnight Louise for taking over my primo PI position here at the Phoenix.

Not!

Okay. I am a cool dude. I go where I am needed, I do what I must, and I always keep my whiskers dry.

I know my MissTemple will not sit still for our beloved landlady being railroaded for murder one, so we both are here for the duration.

I also know that if Miss Electra Lark is not returned soon to the Circle Ritz, someone will have to assume the duties of feeding and watering her reclusive Birman cat, Karma. And that will not be me! Every time I am around that mystical feline dame I get the heebie-jeebies. I do not know what the “heebie-jeebies” are (maybe a relative of cooties), but they are not conducive to the hair lying flat along my spine. Unless I wish to be known as the feline Rod Stewart, I will keep myself away from Karma and any hair-raising encounters.

In a way, though, I am glad this has happened. It will keep my MissTemple’s mind off her romantic dilemma. That is the trouble with romance, in my view; it always leads to dilemmas.

I advocate the way cats of my kind do it: wham, bam, thank you, ma’am, and off to one’s dudely pursuits until the next free-for-all called “heat” comes along.