Carole Douglas - Cat in a Red Hot Rage

I edge over the hot tiles despite my worries.

Two carriers, sizzling hot pink. Two residents, both pink at the ears and nose, or just hot-tempered.

I approach on velvet paws, sniff carefully. I look in one carrier and see my once-smitten now-snooty diva passed out colder than the Crystal Phoenix's buffet-line salmon.

I butt canvas with the other carrier.

A brick-red purebred nose pushes against its black mesh side.

“Louie?" a low voice whispers on a hint of pure Persian purr. "Solange?"

“Louie!"

“Solange!”

It is your classic noir dialogue. Full of unsaid ... little nothings.

“Yvette is in the adjacent carrier," Solange points out, literally sticking a pale scimitar of nail through the mesh in the right direction.

“I saw. So I should care?"

“She will not waken. She is so high-strung that our mistress gives her Prozac for her nerves."

“I do not approve of doping animal companions, but in this case it permits us to conduct our affairs in confidence.”

“Oh, Louie."

“Oh, Solange."

“I am sorry. I do not want you to see me now. I am forced to wear this pansy hat of red and purple. I do not think it flatters my coloring."

“Your coloring goes with everything, especially ... black.”

“Oh, Louie."

“Oh, Solange."

“I cannot ... betray my sister."

“Betray? No. I merely need an on-event guide?"

“First, you must free me I do not have these mini-saber-tooth canines for nothing. I use one to pull down the zipper of her container.

Miss Solange steps out, a muff of glorious golden fur tipped with the divine color, black.

Her petite face is surmounted by a bonnet of purple straw covered with purple pansies and crimson roses. She looks like a Victorian Valentine's Day postcard.

I tell her so.

“My, you are well traveled, Louie. I do not believe that I have ever seen a Victorian Valentine's Day postcard."

“They are all very feminine and elaborate, like you and the Red Hat ladies."

“My mistress will be distraught about my unauthorized liberty.”

I snort, despite the delicate company. "Your mistress is sucking up to those annoying Mexican hairless dogs, the better to pass as Paris Hilton and her ilk. Taco Belle indeed! Cheesy, cheesy, cheesy!"

“We have felt relegated to second place of late."

“You and–?"

“My sister Yvette," she whispers in my ear, so close that her vibrissae exchange feints with my vibrissae. (Whiskers to you human types out there.) This is a very titillating conversation. "Your sister Yvette," I tell her, "is in my bad books now."

“You mean for her slurs against your associate who may be a blood relative?"

“Right," I say, knowing that the only way Miss Midnight Louise will be an admitted blood relative of mine is if we mix it up.

However, since Miss Midnight Louise now has my job of house detective at the Crystal Phoenix, the only way we could come to blows is if she got between me and my koi. And I have swom off the expensive show fish. Too big and chewy for the refined palate of a dude-about-town.

“I find Midnight Louise very pretty and agreeable," Solange says.

Well, that is Solange's generous take on a brutal world, and who is to say it is not superior to my own cynical point of view, honed by my sharp incisors?

“If a guy has got to have a partner," I concede, "she is pretty okay."

“Louie!" Solange shivers until her thickly furred coat collar tickles my shoulder. Somebody ought to outlaw that move. "You play the tough guy but you are all pussycat underneath.”

Not all, baby. Oh, well. I am supposed to be the gentleman here, not to mention the private dick enlisting a house spy.

“Now, here are the names I need you to recognize, Solange. Just let the ladies pick you up and pet you, and keep those shell-pink little inner ears perked and recording what they say.”

She nods soberly and follows me over the hot tiles to the air-conditioned dim interior of the Crystal Phoenix.

Cacophony and voices echo off all the hard lobby surfaces, marble, wood, granite, glass. Scooters bearing Red Hat ladies dart over the shiny marble floor like water bugs.

We need to be on our toes, making like Mexican jumping beans to avoid getting our nether members run over.

“I see what you mean, Louie. This place is a death-bymisadventure waiting to happen?”

I begin to worry that Solange is too sensitive a soul to do undercover work.

Then a scooter wheels past and she lofts up to the seat like a Hell's Angel mascot born.

“Oooh!" cries a passing Red Hat lady, gawking at Solange in her flowery and feathery chapeau. "What an adorable cat! And that hat! Where did you get her?”

The rider shrugs purple shoulders. "She just jumped aboard."

“What a darling! I'll walk along with you a little so I can pet her."

“Be my guest."

“Did you hear what happened off the lobby yesterday?”

“No, I just got in."

“Someone got killed!"

“No! Not one of us?"

“Yes! And they're saying another of us did it.”

Off goes the Gossipmobile, Solange installed like a beauty queen on a parade float. A PI never had a sweeter eavesdropping machine!

Chapter 12

Old Acquaintances

If anything, more Red Hat ladies crowded the Crystal Phoenix lobby when Temple returned from the Circle Ritz.

If anything on earth was purple, or red, or purple and red, it was gathered in this lobby. Rolling luggage bags boasted these royal colors, as did clothing, tote bags, purses, scarves, shoes, hose, nail polish (red or purple), and eye shadow (only in purple, thank God).

The gaudiest women, dripping red and purple feather boas and scarlet lace, plume, and rhinestone-swagged Victorian-size hats, posed on a huge photo poster announcing "Candy Crenshaw and the Red Hat Candies," Candy being the lead singer and "clown princess.”

Pink-hatted ladies, like herself, stood out, but there stillwere a fair number. It occurred to Temple that a mad serial killer of pink-hatted ladies might be at work here. If so, she had firmly put herself among the potential victims.

This was not a new feeling for her, but she had a new significant other now. Matt might not be as easy about that as Max had been, because he was tied to a job and couldn't watch over her the way Max had.

The feeling of total responsibility for herself was heady. She'd sometimes resented Max's omniscient ways in regard to her life and how she lived it. And risked it.

Yet she worried that Matt would be a lot less liberal than Max about the times her PR work turned into PI work. Still, he'd recognized her sleuthing tendency almost as soon as they'd met.

So if she was so liberated, why was she standing there dithering about what Matt or Max would think? She needed to know what she thought about the problem at hand.

There were many reasons someone might have killed Oleta Lark, none having anything to do with the Red Hat Sisterhood or Oleta's skimpy relationship to Electra.

Temple strolled into the ballroom housing all the Red Hat shops. Oleta's body was gone now, but the murder scene might not have been "released" yet.

As always in Las Vegas, any major Strip crime scene was quickly concealed. A uniformed Crystal Phoenix security guard in a tasteful black-and-tan uniform kept the public from wandering behind the freestanding screens. A pair of Fontana brothers cruised the area, easily drawing away the eyes of arriving Red Hat Sisters.

A third Fontana brother buttonholed Temple, recognizing her despite her new pink hat.

She didn't think of Nicky Fontana as one of Fontana Inc. He was the youngest, cutest Fontana brother, but cast in the same winning mold of olive skin, black curly hair, deep brown eyes, and supernaturally white teeth that probably had inspired the rush to whiteners in the rest of the population.