Carole Douglas - Cat in a Red Hot Rage

“And he wasn't a smoker?”

Alch shook his head. "Although nicotine can be lethal in more than cigarettes over years of inhalation, it wasn't in this case. In this case it was a, er, smoke screen."

“So something else was lethal to Elmore Lark? He was a drinker. Maybe one of those airplane-sized bottles of scotch was how he concealed it. That would fit in a jeans pocket.”

Alch paused. He didn't dare speak too loudly, or plainly.

“Let's just say that Elmore Lark wasn't toasting his own health.”

Temple felt she had pushed Alch's envelope to the seam-splitting point. She said her thanks and good-bye, and mulled the detective's parting words as she left the room for the colorful chaos of the Red Hat Sisterhood–populated lobby.

Elmore Lark "wasn't toasting his own health.”

A toast had killed him? Alcohol? Sure, you could kill yourself by overusing alcohol, usually over years. But how could someone else kill you with it if not with poison in it? And Alch had implied alcohol wasn't the medium.

If something at the debate hadn't poisoned him, the attempt looked much more premeditated and distant. But ifs were all she had. She sure wasn't going to get any more information about it from the LVMPD.

At least Matt and the water pitcher were off the hook. Except hers.

Chapter 35

Hints and Intimations

Temple eyed the swirl of red and purple pooling around her, the echo of laughing voices exploding from all the shiny hard surfaces that lined Las Vegas hotel-casino's public areas.

If you could hear yourself think in a Las Vegas hotel-casino, they weren't doing their job right. The cheerful clatter and clinks of slot machines kept up that subliminal cash-register chatter, while excited human voices competed with them.

And then she realized, what with all her concentration on El- more Lark's possible habits and many means of poisoning, no one—at least not her—had checked out Oleta Lark's hat habit. She wove through the crowd, jousting brims with ladies of dif- ferent colors, red, pink, lavender, until she reached the ballroom that hosted the Red Hat Sisterhood stores, aka the Hatorium Emporium.

Oleta had bought a merchandise booth here, not the one where she was killed. Presumably it had been set up before her death and was still standing. At least Temple would learn something about Oleta's personal taste, if nothing more.

But the convention "store" was a riot of cheerful disregard of taste, at least in the conservative sense. The atmosphere of women-only shoppers jostling each other at tables filled with frivolous fun products jogged more than her body. It triggered her memory, spurring one of those déjà vu feelings of slipping back in time.

That's when Temple remembered where she'd bought the costume jewelry ring reminiscent of the one Max had bought her and Shangri-La the magician had stolen onstage.

For some reason Matt came to mind. A flashback slide of him rooting through her scarf drawer. There was something intimate and sexy about that act, that memory. Wow. Her scarf drawer and the rings that resided in it are now a Freudian paradise...

Of recovered memory!

Temple stood shock-still as people and conversation flowed around her. She'd been handling PR for the annual women's show at the convention center a few months ago. Such shows were orgies of girly self-indulgence, showcasing products that soothed the savaged soul: massage and bath oils, jewelry and clothes.

Just as here and now, there were how-to sessions on using hairpieces and false eyelashes for fun, and for older women who were getting scanty in both outgrowths. Cooking seminars with kitchen gadgets. New cosmetics. That's where Temple had first seen the Besamé vintage color cosmetics and the mineral-only makeup powders that were now a commercial rage.

And that's where, on the show's Sunday sell-off before closing, she'd spotted the ring uncannily like the one she'd lost and had never stopped missing. The woman behind the display discounted it to less than forty bucks (it had real cubic zirconias) and slipped it into a little box and then into a little bigger paper bag.

And . . . sometimes your subconscious could kick up a long forgotten and buried memory, one not openly noted at the time. And the . . . the bag had sagged a little on Temple's arm as she'd turned to leave the booth.

It had almost felt like the lightest touch snagging her bag, providing a second's worth of drag.

Had that been when the second ring box bearing the worm Ouroboros ring that Kathleen O'Connor had dumped on Matt had found its way into her possession?

Temple was always busy. She'd dumped the paper bag on her dresser top, and later, dumped the ring box in her favorite catch-all spot, the scarf drawer.

Why would anyone lay that sinister ring on her? Who would have had it? Only Kitty the Cutter O'Connor.

People intent on shopping continued bumping into Temple. This was a room of constant movement and female chatter, shopping nirvana. But Temple stood still, frozen in thought, beating the fringes of her memory.

What had she looked and sounded like, that vaguely noticed saleswoman?

Short. Like Temple. Kitty had been maybe three inches taller than she. Still qualified as "short." A typical saleswoman, all perkiness and persuasion. She had "talked" Temple into the first ring, almost as if she had known it would appeal to her. Because she knew it was similar to the real opal and diamond ring? No. Shangri-La knew that.

Temple was mixing up her villainesses. If Kitty O'Connor had been masquerading as the saleswoman . . . No, that would have been too difficult to arrange just to taunt Temple with a mock ring. She was a saleswoman on that day, for some reason, and she was a saleswoman who had taken advantage of an amazing opportunity. A second chance to snooker Temple. Except it was Shangri-La who'd relieved Temple of Max's ring.

Okay, no one had ever figured this out at the time, not even high and mighty Lieutenant C. R. Molina.

Like Sherlock Holmes had said—now that she'd encountered "The Red-Hatted League" she was recalling her childhood acquaintance with the Canon—"Once you eliminate the possible, whatever remains, no matter how improbable, must be the truth." Or something to that effect.

Ah. Temple ignored a particularly intense bump that almost knocked her off her feet. She was almost knocked out of her shoes.

“My sweet Stuart Weitzmans!" she murmured.

Shangri-La was Kitty O'Connor. Or, rather, Kitty O'Connor was Shangri-La. That could be the only explanation if Matt's worm Ouroboros ring had gotten into Temple's possession on the same day a double for Max's semiengagement ring had. Who else would recognize that the cheap imitation ring bore a striking resemblance to the one from Tiffany's and Max? It all made terrifying, mind-boggling sense.

Random thoughts, more like twinges, hit Temple then too.

But Kitty O'Connor was dead. Max had seen her die in a solo motorcycle accident out on Highway 61. No, that route was in Minnesota and from an old Bob Dylan song. Kitty must have spun out on Highway 95. Temple had never asked Max where, only accepted the what.

Unless Max had been lying and Kitty hadn't died. Or he'd been mistaken somehow. No, she was buried.

But Shangri-La wasn't.

Except she had died recently too, in costume. Or had she? If the two women were the same. They were both dead. Or not.

Temple looked around the room thronging with women squealing and flaunting red or purple feather boas and umbrellas and stockings and satin gloves at each other.

“Look!" they were caroling. "Look. Look at what I found! No, over here! It's fabulous! It's too great to be true! Let me see it!”