Unknown - 16_Cat_In_An_Orange_Twist

Funny, but her hands shook a little. The Brit bubbly burbled over her glass lip onto the limo’s carpeting.

“Oh! I don’t know why I’m so clumsy!”

“It’s the rough ride,” Julio crooned consolingly. (Was his middle name Iglesias?) Temple frowned. “This limo is as smooth as a cloud.”

“No doubt your dainty little hands are fatigued from hanging onto that big olive oil spray can for so long,” Ernesto sans earring suggested suggestively.

“Extra-virgin olive oil,” Aldo corrected.

“Will you get off the sexual state of my cooking oil!” Temple was shocked that her temper had frayed so easily. It wasn’t

like her.

Ralph tilted the glass toward her lips. “Chugalug this A-one English bubbly and you’ll feel steadier. It takes a lot of energy

to hold off a flock of Hell’s Angels.”

“They weren’t Hell’s Angels! They were a lot weirder, if not any less mean. Why were they after me?”

“We don’t know,” Guiseppe said. “But we’ll find out.”

“We’ll also get you a new can of”-Ralph glanced at his brothers-“that Julia Child stuff.”

The limo lurched gently as it took the long slow swing into the Circle Ritz parking lot.

The boys picked up her tote bag, and her, practically. They eased them both out of the limo’s cocooned shadow into the bright Las Vegas sun.

Temple blinked, her sunglass case buried in her tote bag. “My car,” she remembered. “My keys.”

A red roadster (like Nancy Drew’s?) roared up the short incline into the parking lot. Eduardo stepped out, looming over the Miata like Paul Bunyan (if the legendary Minnesota woodsman had lost a lot of weight, seen a world-class hair stylist, wore thousanddollar suits, and had a Beretta instead of a giant blue ox as a sidekick).

“Your keys are right here, Miss Temple,” he said with a courtly bow, dropping them into the bottomless Black Hole of her tote bag.

“Thanks.”

She looked at the half-circle of dark-favored men in light-c o l o r e d s u i t s , l i

Runyon-Frank Capra movie. And not really men, really something infectious and boyish about them, despite their hunky good looks.

They were trying to distract her from what had been a pretty scary attack.

Emilio had grabbed the Champagne bottle and her glass from the car. “We’ll see you in. Get you settled.”

“I’ll do it,” said Armando, who had thus far not spoken. Or was it Armando?

Funny. None of their mouths had moved.

She looked where they were looking. Behind her.

Oh. Matt. Looking utterly unlike a Fontana brother, except for being buff and a bachelor, but looking as annoyingly overprotective as they did. But sweet, really. Huh?

Just how much of that Champagne had she “chugalugged” on the ride home?

Anyway, somebody had her by the arm and someone took her tote bag off the other arm.

Temple accepted the Champagne bottle that was thrust into her maternal care, but refused the glass.

“Who’s this guy?” Aldo asked. Fontana brothers relinquished nothing easily, even their good manners.

“My neighbor,” Temple said. “It’s all right. He’s a priest,” she added airily.

Fontana jaws dropped in unison. They stood paralyzed. On the one hand, they were reluctant to surrender Dorothy. On the

other, to a priest … well.

“Ex-priest,” Matt said over her head. “And current neighbor. I take care of her in the daytime. It’s all right. I’ll get her settled

safely. I’m a black belt in karate.”

Temple tried not to look shocked. The Fontar.a brothers didn’t bother to disguise it.

“He’s giving me lessons,” she explained.

They looked even more shocked.

“In self-defense. Hai-ya! See?” She almost dropped the Champagne bottle.

Someone pulled her away, toward the building.

“I’m all right,” she told Matt. “I’m just a little tiddly. They plied me with Champagne in the limo after I fought off the Rocky

Mountain Horror Show biker gang with a spray can of extra-virgin olive oil. It was all very innocent.”

“The Rocky Horror Show biker gang was innocent?”

“No, the Champagne plying afterward. They thought I was shaken up. Not the Champagne. Me. They’re not as … er, organized as they look. We go way back. They’re Nicky Fontana’s brothers. You know, he and Van own the Crystal Phoenix, which I work for. I’m the brothers’ sort of … mascot, like Shirley MacLaine and the Rat Pack in ’60s Las Vegas.” She finally looked at him instead of the wavering ground. “Oops! That apparently isn’t as reassuring as I meant it to be.”

“Come on, Shirley-Temple or MacLaine, or Shirley, Justice, and Mercy, or whoever you are this week-you can tipple all you like in your own place.”

Matt guided her into the elevator and punched the button for the second floor.

“Lucky you happened to be around,” she said, leaning against one varnished wooden side of the small, vintage elevator as it creaked upward. An elevator made for two. Or three. Or four. Or more. Wasn’t that some old song lyric? Oh. “Just Me and My Gal.” And the we-will-have-a-family. What was in that Fontana brothers’ Champagne? Or Gangsters Champagne, really. It came with the car.

“I was waiting for you,” Matt said. It seemed a long time before she really noticed his comment, and the silence, afterward.

“It could have been a long wait.”

“I don’t have much to do all afternoon. The advantage of a midnight job. I get to look after you in the daytime.”

“I don’t need looking after. Yes, there was an incident, but I was taking care of it, very innovatively, I don’t mind saying. I would be fine if I hadn’t asked the Fontanas to explore what was behind all those damn burlwood doors in the Gangsters limos. I

wanted a Mountain Dew.”

Matt hefted the condensation-dewed Champagne bottle from her arms. “I see Mountain Dew has a whole new marketing future. Where are your door keys?”

“In the absolute bottom of my tote bag, where the helpful Fontana brother dropped them. It’s not his fault. They’re all bachelors and they don’t know a thing about women’s purses.”

“I’m with them,” Matt said. Grumbled. Putting the Champagne bottle on the carpet and digging in her tote bag. “At least you won’t break a nail,” she observed.

“As a bachelor who doesn’t know a thing about women’s purses, I bet I and the Fontana brothers are pretty much clueless on the extreme trauma of that kind of event, too.”

“Well, it hurts like hell if it pulls back against the quick too much and it takes ages to grow out.”

“Here.” He flourished the keys. “I’d say, cut ‘em short, but then I may be missing something I wouldn’t want to.”

Temple wondered if she was hearing the implication she thought she was hearing. Mumm’s was definitely not the word for

her.

Matt opened her door. “I’d better get the Champagne, and you, settled down. I think you’ve both been shaken up too much

and are a little too bubbly.”

“It’s very scary to be almost mowed down by motorcycles that look like they’ve escaped from Disney’s Fantasia. We have

a right to ‘bubble.’ “

“Right.” Matt took the heavy bottle and put it in her refrigerator. “You’re way too involved in the Maylords crimes. You’re a

PR woman, not a PI. I know Danny’s a pal, but you can’t solve everybody’s troubles. It’s not safe.”

“It’s my job.”

“No, it isn’t.”

“Are you saying I’m in the wrong career?”

“I’m saying you have the wrong attitude. It’s not your job to micromanage murder investigations.”

“You sound like Molina.”

“Maybe Molina’s not always wrong. Is that faintly possible?”