Carole Douglas - Cat in a Red Hot Rage

They were just average working people, squinting through spectacles, wearing wrinkle-free khakis, and free of nipple-showing T-shirts and blouses. Their salaries were likely lower than hers, and she was a risk-laden freelancer.

Temple compared their ordinariness to their TV alter egos to avoid staring rudely at the corpse. But now she did.

Oleta Lark's face was turned Temple's way. She looked like a fallen department store mannequin lying there. Several were already on display in the ballroom, some of them decked out in unabashedly girly doses of pink and lavender. Oleta's own skin color was still normal, lifelike, but her eyes were open and glassy, sightless, so unnervingly still. Her pink hat had fallen aside to reveal hair so highlighted that any base color was lost in the red-gold-brown blur.

Though the pink hat proclaimed her as under fifty, it wasn't by much. The dead flesh was pasty and slack and her body had a sacklike look that an upright position and animation might have made hard to notice.

The Lolita of yesterday who'd stolen Electra's husband had been history long before someone had wrapped the purple scarf dotted with red flowers around her neck and pulled until dead.

“The detectives okay this?" a CSI woman asked Temple, rising from the floor next to the corpse. She didn't have chiseled features and a hot haircut. In fact, she had a double chin and a couple of not-telegenic zits.

“Detective Alch did," Nicky said, turning on a hundred-watt smile. "I'm Nicky Fontana. This is my hotel, and this is my PR representative, Miss Barr. I want her to be able to give an accurate account of where we're all not at on this.”

Nicky being modest and genuine was pretty irresistible. He may have been married, but he still had that Fontana brother charisma down pat.

The woman smiled.

“We're just working the scene. Detective Alch will make what he sees fit available to the hotel and the press. If it's okay with him that you gawk for a while, gawk. Even we won't know a thing until the lab processes everything. It ain't as fast as on TV."

“Understood," Nicky murmured.

Temple took that invitation at face value and gawked to take in more detail.

She'd seen a few dead bodies in her time and on her sensitive job of making Las Vegas safe for good news, not bad. She'd never seen a strangling victim before.

She'd been relieved that Oleta Lark's tongue wasn't extended and black in a pallid post-death face. The scarf wound around her neck did not cut into flaccid flesh like a piece of barbed wire. It looked like an accessory. There was a "Got Milk" ad slash of foam on her bright pink lipstick and her open blue eyes were bloodshot.

Still, if ever a wronged wife had wanted to see a rival brought down, this postmortem image would do it. Temple couldn't have wished anything more demeaning on Kitty the Cutter, and God knew she had her reasons, number one being Max, number two being Matt.

Electra hadn't done this. It would take not only strength but deep, long-simmering hatred to pull tighter and tighter until a body's breath was just a memory. Temple couldn't believe Electra would ever succumb to such a rage.

Temple liked to think no woman could or would do this, and most strangulation murderers were indeed men, something sexual about the process. Often they were sons of smothering mothers. But Temple had learned to know her own gender in all its proud and petty glory, and didn't underestimate the female of the species.

Anyone would have the strength to do this, if determined: man or woman. And, face it; this was a convention of women drawn from all over the country. Grudges recognized no borders. Women were more than their ages, despite social assumptions that cast them as either pursuable young bunnies or uninteresting maternal mama rabbits.

Oleta had started out to be someone's bunny and had ended up a helpless rabbit choked to death. But why?

For what she knew? For what she was?

Or for what she was not?

Chapter 8

Honorary Older Women

"Okay," Temple told Electra when they were safely back in the bosom of the Red Hat Sisterhood thronging the hotel's main floor. "You haven't been arrested. Yet. Su would love to; Alch is Mr. Wait-and-See. I need to be on the scene."

“But here you are! And you work for the hotel."

“No. I need better credentials. A reason to be able to enter all the convention event rooms. And," she added, spotting Kit's hand waving above the milling hats as her aunt spied them and darted forward, "it wouldn't hurt to have Aunt Kit on our side."

“Easy," Electra said. "We get you both registered for the convention. We could say she's a Red Hat hottie from Manhattan. I've been handling registration among some other things. That's it! We have the Sinsinatti Reds chapter. Why not the Ragin' Red Manhattan Hatties? And you? You're such a baby. You have to be a Pink Hat."

“So think Pink.”

Electra cupped her double chin in her hand and thought. She straightened, grinning. "I know! You solve crimes, right?”

“Sometimes."

“The Hot Pink Panthers chapter!"

“Seems to me a lot of the Red Hat Sisterhood chapter names use the word 'hot.' Is there a hidden statement in that?"

“Hat. Hot. They're so close. I guess we think women who wear hats are hot.”

Kit joined them. "Make mine pink."

“That's cheating," Temple said.

“What's cheating?" a passing Red Hat woman stopped to ask with the speed of an ice skater turning on the toe of a blade. All three were struck dumb with guilt.

“It's great to see new members enlisting at the convention," she went on. "Are you from Las Vegas?"

“I'm from Las Vegas," Electra said quickly. "The Red-Hatted League chapter."

“I'm a Vegasite too," Temple admitted.

“Manhattan:' Kit said.

“Wonderful! I'm Jeanne Johnson.”

The name struck Temple as familiar. Maybe because it was a good Nordic Minnesota name and Jeanne Johnson had that natural blond, semiathletic look about her. Like she could ski down an Alp on tennis racquets if she had to, enjoying the below-zero windchill. In other words, one cheerfully determined woman.

Then Temple got it, encouraged by Electra's elbow digging into her side. She'd seen the name in the Red Hat Sisterhood program book she'd been studying.

“Oh! You're the founder.”

Jeanne released a six-hundred-watt grin.

“My official title is 'Her Royal Hatness.' Who would have believed that we supposedly over-the-hill dames can all don tiaras and be queens of our own inclusive kingdom? Who would have believed in a few short years we'd be a national phenomenonwith hundreds of thousands of members? It's all based on a poem, you know. Not many organizations are."

“A poem:' Kit asked. "That's pretty amazing. Something from Shakespeare's Winter's Tale?"

“ No, it's by Jenny Joseph, about a woman musing that when she's older she'll indulge herself by wearing purple, and a red hat that doesn't go with it by conventional standards."

“Free spirit:' Kit summed up.

“Exactly. Women of a certain age often find themselves with empty nests, or divorced or widowed, with no intense job commitments and falling faces and fannies. The Red Hat Sisterhood encourages them to band together. Sure, we have crazy, mixed-up fun, but we have a thirst for moving in new directions and mutual support too. And even spreading good cheer among the less fortunate than we."

“I can't wait until I'm a full Red Hatter," Temple said, catching Red Hat fever.

Her Royal Hatness assumed a sober expression. "We'd love to have you then, but don't wish your youth away. Too many women do. Now, what can I do for you? You looked at a loss standing here.”