Cat in a

Sapphire Slipper

By Carole Nelson Douglas from Tom Doherty Associates

MYSTERY

MIDNIGHT LOUIE MYSTERIES

Catnap

Pussyfoot

Cat on a Blue Monday

Cat in a Crimson Haze

Cat in a Diamond Dazzle

Cat with an Emerald Eye

Cat in a Flamingo Fedora

Cat in a Golden Garland

Cat on a Hyacinth Hunt

Cat in an Indigo Mood

Cat in a Jeweled Jumpsuit

Cat in a Kiwi Con

Cat in a Leopard Spot

Cat in a Midnight Choir

Cat in a Neon Nightmare

Cat in an Orange Twist

Cat in a Hot Pink Pursuit

Cat in a Quicksilver Caper

Cat in a Red Hot Rage

Cat in a Sapphire Slipper

Midnight Louie’s Pet Detectives

(anthology)

IRENE ADLER ADVENTURES

Good Night, Mr. Holmes

The Adventuress* (Good Morning, Irene)

A Soul of Steel* (Irene at Large)

Another Scandal in Bohemia* (Irene’s Last Waltz)

Chapel Noir

Castle Rouge

Femme Fatale

Spider Dance

Marilyn: Shades of Blonde (anthology)

HISTORICAL

ROMANCE

Amberleigh†

Lady Rogue†

Fair Wind, Fiery Star

SCIENCE

FICTION

Probe†

Counterprobe†

FANTASY

TALISWOMAN

Cup of Clay

Seed upon the Wind

SWORD AND CIRCLET

Six of Swords

Exiles of the Rynth

Keepers of Edanvant

Heir of Rengarth

Seven of Swords

* These are the reissued editions.

† Also mystery

Cat in a

Sapphire Slipper

A MIDNIGHT LOUIE MYSTERY

Carole Nelson Douglas

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This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

CAT IN A SAPPHIRE SLIPPER: A MIDNIGHT LOUIE MYSTERY

Copyright © 2008 by Carole Nelson Douglas

All rights reserved.

A Forge Book

Published by Tom Doherty Associates, LLC

175 Fifth Avenue

New York, NY 10010

www.tor-forge.com

Forge^® is a registered trademark of Tom Doherty Associates, LLC.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Douglas, Carole Nelson.

Cat in a sapphire slipper : a Midnight Louie mystery / Carole Nelson Douglas.—1st hardcover ed.

p. cm.

“A Tom Doherty Associates book.”

ISBN-13: 978-0-7653-1861-9

ISBN-10: 0-7653-1861-X

1. Midnight Louie (Fictitious character)—Fiction. 2. Barr, Temple (Fictitious character)—Fiction. 3. Public relations consultants—Fiction. 4. Las Vegas (Nev.)—Fiction. 5. Women cat owners—Fiction. 6. Cats—Fiction. I. Title.

PS3554.O8237 C27697 2008

813’.54—dc22

2008028538

First Edition: September 2008

Printed in the United States of America

0 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

For all the dedicated animal lovers who help feral cats lead better lives

through Trap, Neuter, and Release programs across the country,

and particularly for Alley Cat Allies and Feral Friends,

which helped advise me on our first feral rescue.

Contents

Previously in Midnight Louie’s Lives and Times . . .

Chapter 1:

A Surprising Scenario

Chapter 2:

Shallow Wound, Deep End

Chapter 3:

A Deeper Shade of Black

Chapter 4:

A Winning Pair of Diamonds

Chapter 5:

Cleanup Detail

Chapter 6:

Here Comes the Ride

Chapter 7:

Girls’ Night In

Chapter 8:

High Anxiety

Chapter 9:

From Here to Urbanity

Chapter 10:

Perennial Partner

Chapter 11:

Deja Vu

Chapter 12:

Cell in Solitary

Chapter 13:

Courtesans on Parade

Chapter 14:

Name Day

Chapter 15:

Bridesmaids Revisited

Chapter 16:

Champagne Suite

Chapter 17:

Garden of Lies and Spies

Chapter 18:

Boys Just Want to Have Fun

Chapter 19:

Peep Show at the Chicken Ranch

Chapter 20:

Dirty Laundry

Chapter 21:

Hen Party

Chapter 22:

Dead Spot

Chapter 23:

Rescue Party

Chapter 24:

Hitchhikers

Chapter 25:

Taking Back the Night

Chapter 26:

Eight Berettas for Eight Brothers

Chapter 27:

Mental Clime

Chapter 28:

Slippery Slope

Chapter 29:

Feline Fatales

Chapter 30:

Compromising Positions

Chapter 31:

Wildest Schemes

Chapter 32:

Terrorizing Trio

Chapter 33:

Posthomicidal Nerves

Chapter 34:

Highly Suggestive

Chapter 35:

Crime Scene

Chapter 36:

Mama Molina!

Chapter 37:

Three Cat Night

Chapter 38:

Devised to Disguise

Chapter 39:

Mass Matrimony

Chapter 40:

Memories of the Fall

Chapter 41:

Ladies-in-Waiting

Chapter 42:

Happy Hooker?

Chapter 43:

Command Post

Chapter 44:

Dead of Night

Chapter 45:

A Fine Kettle of Fish

Chapter 46:

Wheel of Misfortune

Chapter 47:

Loving Dangerously

Chapter 48:

Break Dancing

Chapter 49:

Louie’s Imps

Chapter 50:

Missing Max

Chapter 51:

Gossip Girls

Chapter 52:

Just Kidnapping

Chapter 53:

Babes to Boots

Chapter 54:

Meeting Mr. Wrong

Chapter 55:

Ex Marks the Spot

Chapter 56:

A Real Pickle

Chapter 57:

Peace of Paper

Chapter 58:

Not So Safe

Chapter 59:

Mincemeat

Chapter 60:

Monkey Business

Chapter 61:

Louie Puts Up a Red Flag

Chapter 62:

Leading Questions

Chapter 63:

Radio Silence

Chapter 64:

Peace in the Valley

Chapter 65:

Come Into My Parlor

Chapter 66:

Farewell, My Lovely

Chapter 67:

Traveling Music

Chapter 68:

Sanctuary

Chapter 69:

Endurance Vile

Chapter 70:

Family Circle

Chapter 71:

Nuptial Nuances

Chapter 72:

Resurrection

Chapter 73:

Au Revoir, Max

Tailpiece:

Midnight Louie Has Issues

Carole Nelson Douglas and Nitpickers

Cat in a

Sapphire Slipper

Midnight Louie’s

Lives and Times . . .

There are lots of fat cats in Las Vegas.

These glitzy media-blitzed streets host almost forty million tourists each year and a ton of camera crews. If lights, action, and camera are not recording background shots for CSI: Crime Scene Investigation, they are taping any of thousands of personal videos. People think they know this town—from film if not firsthand experience—know it from the flashy hotels to the seamy side of the Strip.

And a good number of them know one particular Las Vegas institution.

That would be me.

Every last neon bulb and grain of sand in Greater Las Vegas is my personal territory. Oh, I keep a low profile. You do not hear about me on the nightly news. That is the way I like it. That is the way any primo PI would like it. The name is Louie, Midnight Louie. I like my nightlife shaken, not stirred.

Nowadays, though, I am in an unprecedented position. I am torn between two assignments. Usually I am torn between two Persian showgirls, so this is a new predicament for me.

On the one mitt, I am worried about the once-significant other of my roommate, Miss Temple Barr. Mr. Max Kinsella was last seen performing incognito as a masked magician and hitting the Neon Nightmare nightclub wall at fifty miles an hour on a bungee cord. Not even an ace illusionist could survive an impact like that. He has not been seen since and is presumed dead by all and sundry who might know about his masquerade as the Phantom Mage. That includes only me and my business partner-cum-purported daughter, Miss Midnight Louise.

That this tragedy coincides with my ever-lovin’ roommate going over to the Light Side (our handsome blond neighbor and former priest, Mr. Matt Devine) in her romantic life only adds to the confusion. I believe there is a film of recent vintage called Two Funerals and a Wedding. In my estimation, the current situation is One Funeral and Two Weddings.

Because here I am, Vegas’s most macho gumpad (and, boy, do I step in a lot of that stuff) and I am overhearing talk about nothing but upcoming nuptials.

Well, you will soon have to suffer from all that drippy sentimental stuff yourself. I will console myself by summing up the much more dudely and dastardly events that have happened to me and mine previously.

I am a noir kind of guy, inside and out, the town’s top feline PI.

I am not your usual gumshoe, in that my feet do not wear shoes of any stripe, but shivs. Being short, dark, and handsome . . . really short . . . gets me overlooked and underestimated, which is what the savvy operative wants anyway. I am your perfect undercover guy. I also like to hunker down under the covers with my little doll. My adventures would fill a book, and in fact I have several out. My life is one ongoing TV series in which I as hero extract my hapless human friends from fixes of their own making and literally nail crooks.

That is why my Miss Temple and I are perfect roomies. She tolerates my wandering ways. I make myself useful looking after her without letting her know about it. Call me Muscle in Midnight Black. In our time we have cracked a few cases too tough for the local fuzz of the human persuasion, law enforcement division.

So when I hear that any major new attraction is coming to Las Vegas, I figure that one way or another my lively roommate, the petite and toothsome, will be spike heel–high in the planning and execution. She is, after all, a freelance public relations specialist, and Las Vegas is full of public relations of all stripes and legalities. In this case, though, I did not figure just how personally she would be involved in a bizarre murder far from the madding Strip.

After the recent dramatic turn of events, most of my human associates are pretty shell-shocked. Not even an ace feline PI may be able to solve their various predicaments in the areas of crime and punishment . . . and PR, as in Personal Relationships.

As a serial killer finder in a multivolume mystery series (not to mention an ace mouthpiece), it behooves me to update my readers old and new on past crimes and present tensions.

None can deny that the Las Vegas crime scene is a pretty busy place, and I have been treading these mean neon streets for twenty books now. When I call myself an “alphacat,” some think I am merely asserting my natural male and feline dominance, but no. I merely reference the fact that since I debuted in Catnap and Pussyfoot, I then commenced to a title sequence that is as sweet and simple as B to Z.

That is where I began my alphabet, with the B in Cat on a Blue Monday. From then on, the color word in the title is in alphabetical order up to the current volume, Cat in a Sapphire Slipper.

Since I associate with a multifarious and nefarious crew of human beings, and since Las Vegas is littered with guidebooks as well as bodies, I wish to provide a rundown of the local landmarks on my particular map of the world. A cast of characters, so to speak:

To wit, my lovely roommate and high-heel devotee, Miss Nancy Drew on killer spikes, freelance PR ace MISS TEMPLE BARR, who had reunited with her elusive love . . .

. . . the once missing-in-action magician MR. MAX KINSELLA, who has good reason for invisibility. After his cousin Sean died in a bomb attack during a post–high school jaunt to Ireland, he went into undercover counterterrorism work with his mentor, GANDOLPH THE GREAT, whose unsolved murder while unmasking phony psychics at a Halloween séance is still on the books. . . .

Meanwhile, Mr. Max is sought by another dame, Las Vegas homicide detective LIEUTENANT C. R. MOLINA, mother of teenage Mariah . . .

. . . and the good friend of Miss Temple’s recent good friend, MR. MATT DEVINE, a radio talk-show shrink and former Roman Catholic priest who came to Las Vegas to track down his abusive stepfather, now dead and buried. By whose hand no one is quite sure.

Speaking of unhappy pasts, MISS LIEUTENANT CARMEN REGINA Molina is not thrilled that her former flame, MR. RAFI NADIR, the unsuspecting father of Mariah, is in Las Vegas taking on shady muscle jobs after blowing his career at the LAPD. . . .

In the meantime, Mr. Matt drew a stalker, the local lass that young Max and his cousin Sean boyishly competed for in that long-ago Ireland . . .

. . . one MISS KATHLEEN O’CONNOR, deservedly christened Kitty the Cutter by Miss Temple. Finding Mr. Max impossible to trace, Kitty the C settled for harassing with tooth and claw the nearest innocent bystander, Mr. Matt Devine . . .

. . . who tried to recover from the crush he developed on Miss Temple, his neighbor at the Circle Ritz condominiums, while Mr. Max was missing in action. He did that by not very boldly seeking new women, all of whom were in danger from said Kitty the Cutter.

Now that Miss Kathleen O’Connor has self-destructed and is dead and buried, things are shaking up at the Circle Ritz. Mr. Max Kinsella is again apparently lost in action. Mr. Matt Devine had nosed him out on the run for the roses, anyway, the prize being the heart and hand of my lovely roommate, Miss Temple Barr.

Her maternal aunt, MISS KIT CARLSON, ex-actress and current romance novelist, came to visit and stayed to hook up with ALDO, the oldest of the fabulous Fontana brothers, hitherto all bachelors save for the youngest, NICKY, who runs the Crystal Phoenix Hotel and Casino with his lovely wife, MISS VAN VON RHINE.

You would think everything is lovely in Las Vegas from my last paragraphs.

But there are almost forty million potential victims in this old town, if you include the constant come and go of tourists, and everything is always up for grabs in Las Vegas 24/7: guilt, innocence, money, power, love, loss, death, and significant others.

All this human sex and violence makes me glad that I have a simpler social life, such as just trying to get along with my unacknowledged daughter . . .

. . . MISS MIDNIGHT LOUISE, who insinuated herself into my cases until I was forced to set up shop with her as Midnight Inc. Investigations, and who has also nosed herself into my long-running duel with . . .

. . . THE SYNTH, an ancient cabal of magicians that may deserve contemporary credit for the ambiguous death of Mr. Max’s mentor in magic, Gandolph the Great, not to mention Gandolph’s former onstage assistant as well as a professor of magic at the University of Nevada at Las Vegas.

Well, there you have it, the usual human stew, all mixed up and at odds with one another and within themselves. Obviously, it is up to me to solve all their mysteries and nail a few crooks along the way. Like Las Vegas, the City That Never Sleeps, Midnight Louie, private eye, also has a sobriquet: the Kitty That Never Sleeps.

With this crew, who could?

A Surprising Scenario

The after-dinner crowd was exiting the Crystal Phoenix Hotel and Casino’s revolving rooftop restaurant, the Crystal Carousel.

Temple and Matt still stood at the head table, watching the last stragglers file up to Temple’s aunt Kit and Aldo Fontana farther down the table, congratulating them on their surprise engagement announcement. The nine bachelor Fontana brothers had been a Vegas institution until Temple’s novelist aunt from Manhattan, sixty and scintillating and devotedly single all her life, had hit town and hit the eldest Fontana brother, Aldo, “in the eye like a big pizza pie,” as the old song went. That’s amore.

The dinner had celebrated Temple’s public relations triumph for her employers at the Phoenix: solving the murders at the Red Hat Sisterhood convention and saving the hotel from Bad Press Hell.

“We still could have said something about us,” Matt whispered to her.

That “something” would have been the surprise announcement that Miss Temple Barr, Vegas’s premier freelance PR woman and occasional crime-solver, was engaged to be married to Mr. Matt Devine, more widely known as “Mr. Midnight” on a syndicated late-night radio counseling show.

This engagement had been more than a year in coming, since Matt, an ex-priest, had first come to Vegas searching for an abusive stepfather. He had subleased a condo in the same building Temple had lived in with her significant other, the missing magician, Max Kinsella, aka the Mystifying Max.

A lot had happened in a year. Max had returned after almost a year away, but Temple had already sympathized with the handsome ex-priest trying to settle old family matters and exchange his longtime celibacy for an enduring new love.

It had looked like Temple might be the one until Max—Temple’s earlier, tempestuous love—had turned up again. But Max was a man with a secret mission. A counterterrorism operative since his teens, a man with a price on his head was in no position to maintain a serious relationship, even with Temple trying her best to warm the embers of her old love.

Now, Max was mysteriously missing. Again. Now, Matt and Temple had committed the sin of full emotional and physical commitment. She had the engagement ring. All that was left was to arrange the church ceremony, blessing and legalizing their love.

Temple the woman could live with that. She would always love Max and wish him well, but a girl had to move on. Matt was a dream of a man, not only attractive, but decent and caring in the extreme. And she’d secretly wanted him, bad, for a long time. Ever since Max, for good secret agent reasons, had abandoned her so long for her own safety.

Temple the crime-solver chafed at the idea that Max could vanish for good and all this time, and she’d never know why. Or where. Or whether he was alive or dead.

Matt squeezed her hand. “A Sacajawea dollar for your thoughts.” He knew where her feminist sentiments lay. But he didn’t need to know her still-raw regrets about Max.

She needed to tell Max her decision herself. She needed to say good-bye.

“Hey.” A couple was coming up to address her and Matt, not the official lovebirds.

Some couple. It was Lieutenant C. R. Molina’s two top homicide detectives, the seasoned Morrie Alch and the petite but persistent Merry Su.

Su sparkled in her black sequin-trimmed riding jacket and thigh-high-slit slim black skirt. She looked like the Dragon Lady and had been acting that way toward Temple since Molina had asked the PR woman, and not Su, to go undercover as a teenager at a reality TV show shot in Las Vegas, on which Molina’s teen daughter was a contestant.

Alch, always the diplomat, drew Matt into conversation and edged away as if glad to escape his partner’s company for a bit. Su was a tenacious detective, but she could be abrasive. Temple understood that. Short, petite women like her and Su had to compensate somehow. Temple did it with an extensive high-heel collection. Su did it with nerve.

“I suppose,” Su said, “you miss your pal Lieutenant Molina being here.”

“Hardly my pal,” Temple said. She and the tall, no-nonsense lieutenant had wrangled over Max and why he went missing and whether he’d committed an unsolved murder on the way out of town for more than a year.

Still. She would have loved Molina being in the audience when her engagement to Matt was announced. The half-Latina detective might have harbored a hankering for the dishy Polish-American ex-priest. They were the same religion, after all, and Molina had never married and must be pushing forty. Temple was on the cusp of thirty-one, and Matt was thirty-four.

Su smiled, always a bad sign. “The lieutenant hasn’t been in to work the last couple of days.”

“Really,” Temple said, unwilling to admit she was interested.

“The flu, they say.”

Temple frowned.

“The Iron Maiden of the LVMPD never is out sick,” Su continued.

Temple wasn’t surprised. Molina had never let up in her vendetta against Max. They’d even duked it out mano-a-mana (if there was such a thing) in a Strip club parking lot. Molina had finally caught Max and he needed to get away fast because he knew Temple was in danger of becoming the next Stripper Killer victim.

Su’s piquant face had a sly, triumphant look.

Payback time for Temple, a rank amateur, copping a prime undercover assignment she had wanted. It didn’t matter that it had frosted Molina’s tortillas to ask such a favor of an antagonist. Temple had gotten the job, not Su, who was as capable of looking sixteen as Temple was, if that was an advantage when one was almost thirty-one and aching to be taken seriously in life and love.

Su leaned close to whisper, at just the right level of Temple’s left ear.

“The rumor is that the lady lieutenant flipped and eloped with that hunky magician you used to call yours. That’s why Max Kinsella is missing. She is too! They’re off together on a quickie marriage license and making whoopee in some cheap motel.”

NO!

Temple fought to look unruffled. No. Max would never—Molina would never—but look at Shakespeare’s The Taming of the Shrew. Men like a challenge, and nobody liked a challenge more than Max. Strong women like stronger men. And Molina was a strong woman.

It made a kind of crazy sense.

Temple’s pulse was pounding in her . . . temples. She moved away from Su, who slunk into the waning crowd like a snake relieved of its poison. Temple was aghast. Disbelieving. Stunned. Betrayed. Jealous.

She looked for Matt, for a glimpse that would restore stability, remind her how much she loved and desired him.

He wasn’t there. Nobody still lingered at the head table. Everybody had drifted away without her noticing.

It wasn’t just Max anymore. It was everybody.

She gazed around.

The entire room was empty.

She was alone at the banquet table with its abandoned dessert plates and crumpled peach linen napkins.

This was a nightmare!

She needed somebody to tell her so, and nobody was there for her.

Not even the malicious Su anymore.

Max and Molina. Max and Carmen.

No!

Temple swallowed. She wanted to shout the word, but she couldn’t.

She couldn’t move. Couldn’t speak, shout.

No.

This was a nightmare.

Her nightmare.

She blinked her eyes open in the dark.

A warm hand was on her arm.

“Are you all right?” Matt’s voice came from the dark. “You were making almost strangling noises. Temple?”

Was she all right?

Obviously not, if she was still dreaming about Max.

Maybe this dream was the real good-bye. Her unconscious had paired Max with her worst enemy, the woman of her nightmares, and bid him adieu. Said good riddance to them both.

That was it. The dream was a sign any feelings for him were over. All gone. Gone with the Molina.

So revolting! Ugh.

She shuddered.

“You’re cold,” Matt said, tightening his grasp. “Let me warm you up.”

Shallow Wound,

Deep End

Morning, after another long, fitful night.

Carmen Molina could hear her daughter and Morrie Alch talking in the other room, through a fog, darkly.

Mariah’s light, girlish voice made a pleasant counterpoint to Morrie’s low, street-cop growl. Carmen smiled. Making detective had never softened that rumble-busting vocal grumble. Then she took her own inventory.

She wasn’t used to being helpless. Ever. Yet she’d lain here for three days on antibiotics and Vicodin, like some zonked-out druggie. Matt Devine hadn’t swooned into bed like a Southern belle when he’d been stabbed.

But his had only been a short superficial slice. Hers was superficial too, but long. Sitting up, even breathing and talking and eating, were darn unpleasant.

A homicide lieutenant ought to be up for a stronger adjective than “darn,” but she habitually watched her language around Mariah. Besides, it unnerved the unit that she’d always been so eternally in control. A lot of females in male-dominated jobs tried to relax their male subordinates by matching them curse for curse, shout for shout. A couple of football coaches, notably Super Bowl winner, Tony Dungy, went the opposite route. That’s why they called her the Iron Maiden. Quiet but unflappable, invincible. Silent as cold steel.

Not very iron lately.

The voices were coming closer. Mariah bearing her morning slop: canned soup! But Morrie had done it: whipped her hormonal, edgy, unreliable teen daughter into a meek little nurse.

Molina pushed herself up against the piled bed pillows, trying not to grimace as the eighty-six stitches in her stomach and side screamed bloody murder at the motion.

A deep wound knocks you out. A shallow one tortures you to death.

Morrie turned on her bedside table light, leaving the shutters closed. He didn’t want Mariah seeing or guessing any more than she should.

“Something new from your friendly neighborhood grocery shelf,” he said. “Mac and cheese.”

“Great.” She meant it. The thin soups were getting old. “Thanks, honey, but you better get to school.”

“You guys just want to talk about something I’m not supposed to hear.” Mariah ruffled her blond-highlighted hair into a suitably unkempt appearance for Our Lady of Guadalupe Catholic school. Her uniform jumper was a rigid navy-and-green plaid over a crisp white blouse, but her hair was now as punk as the school rules would allow.

She still looked like a pretty decent kid.

“Thirteen,” Morrie commented after Mariah had eased out of the sickroom, then slam-banged through the house and out. “Around seventeen you can expect some relief.”

“I can’t believe she’s buying the Asian flu excuse.”

“She’s probably relieved to see you helpless for a while. Not going to question her luck.”

“Or yours?” The first spoonful was so hot she had to dump it back into the bowl.

He chuckled. “Even Superwoman has to run into a little kryptonite now and then. It was too bad you had to miss the Crystal Carousel shindig, it was quite a party.”

“I didn’t plan on getting knifed.”

“While breaking and entering Max Kinsella’s empty house.”

“What a wasted effort,” she said. “The bastard was gone and now I have to figure out who hated him enough to trash his house and clothing, even with him not in it.”

“Besides you.”

“I don’t hate him, Morrie. I despise his lawless, laughing attitude. But it’s moot. This time I believe he’s really gone. For good. End of story. I can’t get him on the old Goliath Hotel murder, but he doesn’t get to slink around Vegas in secret screwing his girlfriend and laughing at law enforcement.”

“No screwing anymore. Except the law. Temple Barr is pretty cozied up with Matt Devine now. I would have expected their engagement to be announced before one for her visiting aunt, Kit Carlson, and Aldo Fontana.”

Molina frowned. “I’m not sure that’s the best combo around.”

“Carlson and Fontana?”

“Well, any one of the playboy Fontanas, but I meant Temple and Matt. He doesn’t seem her type. Too nice.”

Morrie shrugged. Molina’s judgment on the Circle Ritz residents had always been skewed. “So. You think you can come back to work Monday?”

“I do,” she said. “You ever been cut?”

He shook his shaggy Scottish terrier head, gray at the ears.

“It’s quite a trip, Morrie. Every move you make tears everything. I’m seeing the doctor again Thursday.”

“Good thing she knows your job title. Civilians always expect us cops to engage in regular fracases. From the TV shows.”

“This is pretty obviously a knife slash. And I am pretty obviously not in a domestic violence situation. But I still had to get the damn third degree about it.”

Morrie pulled the dining-room chair doing bedroom duty by the window closer to the bed. “Better eat your noodles while they’re still hot.”

“Yes, Nurse Alch.”

“Speaking of domestic violence, just what is between this Rafi Nadir guy and you?”

She nodded toward the empty main rooms. “Only Mariah. And that wasn’t by my choice.”

“Regrets?”

“Lots. But not Mariah.”

“The guy raped you?”

“God, no! I was a street cop then. They sicced me on all the black brothers in Watts. Women got the shit details; we were supposed to fail. Rafi and I . . . we lived together. Don’t look so shocked. I was a half-Hispanic woman; he was an Arab-American man. We were both predestined to flunk Street 101.”

“So Mariah—?”

“Not a planned pregnancy. I found a pinprick in my diaphragm. Not my doing. Yeah, laugh. I was more Catholic then. Couldn’t quite go against the Pope and use the pill.”

“So why’d Nadir want you pregnant?”

“I was moving up faster than he was. He’s Christian, but from a culture that ranks women with pack donkeys and pariah dogs. I assumed it was a ploy to build his ego two ways. He probably thought it would make me quit the force.”

“You mean you assumed he thought that.”

“You are a wicked interrogator, Alch. Act so easy, but go right for any narrow window of opportunity. You’re right. Motivation rests on assumptions, but they need to be proven. Yes, I’m no longer so sure that he sabotaged my birth control. It’s just that I was so careful about using it.”

“Could have been a manufacturing flaw, or some drugstore smart-ass product-tampering.”

“I’ve been considering that. Thinking about the infamous ‘lot of things.’”

“Thinking is always good.”

She gobbled the rest of the cheesy noodles—an apt description two ways—set the bowl and tray aside, then pushed herself higher against the pillows.

There were two things wrong with that. It made her grimace with pain, and she was wearing a long T-shirt with no bra. She had not been seen by a man with no bra in a long time, except when she was performing occasional gigs as Carmen, the torch singer at a local club. She wore vintage thirties and forties evening gowns for that and they didn’t allow for much underwear.

Still, she could talk better from a sitting position and she had to start rebuilding her stomach muscles for Monday morning.

“Morrie, I owe you for helping me out with this. With the captain, the doctor, and Mariah. I also owe you some explanations.”

“No, you don’t. But I am curious enough to take them.”

“One, Rafi Nadir. When I realized I was pregnant, I was cooked. My career was shot. I was too Catholic to get an abortion, but a patrol officer is at too much personal risk and I wasn’t going to subject a child to a dead mama. I was damned if I’d let a man put me in a corner like that. I secretly resigned the LAPD, grabbed what I could, and ran. I had a good record despite my brutal ‘initiation.’ I used my mother’s maiden name, got a patrol job in Bakersfield, and eventually worked my way to Las Vegas.”

“And Nadir?”

“He didn’t take to being low minority on the totem pole. I had ways of checking. He really blew it after I left, and got kicked off the force.”

“It takes a lot to get kicked off the LAPD.”

“Tell me about it. Along with New Orleans, Chicago, and Minneapolis, L.A. is considered one of the most minority-unfriendly forces in the country. Maybe it’s changed by now. I did make lieutenant in Vegas.”

“This Nadir guy turning up here must be a nightmare.”

“Worse. I’d never dreamed of such a thing. Now he’s found me, and therefore, Mariah. He’s not stupid. He knows he’s her father. He wants her to know it.”

“I see your problem.”

“That’s not the only one. I may have been wrong about Rafi. I may also have been wrong about your pal Temple Barr’s longtime sweetie, the Mystifying Max Kinsella.”

“You did have a hard-on to nail him for that old Goliath murder.”

“That’s how you saw it? I was too convinced he had done the murder? Look. He had just finished his magician act contract at the Goliath Hotel that very night. Then this dead man dropped from the ceiling above the gaming tables, where only a cousin of a garter snake could go. To top it off, Kinsella was not to be found or heard of after that for more than a year. Any judge would have issued a warrant on probable cause, but he skipped town right after that murder, which is obviously still unsolved.”

“Obviously, he came back to haunt you. As did Nadir. Why?”

“My rotten luck?”

“You don’t believe in luck, Carmen. You believe in hard work.”

She patted her stomach gingerly. “Whoever did this was running amok in the Mystifying Max’s well-concealed house. I finally traced Temple Barr to the place and went in on my own to check it out. I interrupted, or just preceded another Max Kinsella fan as disenchanted as I was. Maybe more. Someone was going through the rooms, slicing his clothes into shreds in the closets. And I thought I despised the guy.”

“Maybe it was that big alley cat of Miss Barr’s, Midnight Louie, miffed at the man for vanishing on her again.”

“Nice try. A knife did the slashing, a big butcher knife from the block in the kitchen. That’s what grazed me. It probably had a ten-inch blade.”

“Four inches can kill you.” Alch picked up the empty food bowl, then donned his purse-lipped thinking hard expression. “Seems to me your biggest problem is keeping your B and E secret. That could kill your career. You could go the lawyer route with Nadir, hold him at bay for a while.”

She thought too. “Maybe I should do something even more draining about him.”

“What’s that?”

Molina picked at a loose thread on the bargain percale sheet hem. “Maybe I should talk to him first.” She sighed, and it hurt. What didn’t these days? “When I can stomach it.”

A Deeper Shade

of Black

Black. Black.

Everything was black.

He was in a tomb. Or a tunnel.

Did he see a flicker of light? No.

Did he feel anything?

Only the slightest twinge of consciousness after long unconsciousness.

Or could he be sure of that?

He was either blind, or his mind was a blank, like a blackboard with no writing on it.

Wait. Blackboard. That was a concept. He had a mental picture of it, framed in wood.

His mind was not black. Only his senses were.

No feeling, no sight, no hearing, no smell.

But taste. A bad, dry taste in his mouth, like he’d tried to swallow a toad.

Toad. Another concept. Another mental picture.

Something or someone was keeping him prisoner like this. Sense deprivation.

An abstract concept. Not a thing, like a blackboard or a toad.

He could think in concrete terms, in concepts and analogies.

He just couldn’t see, hear, taste, smell.

But he could think. That was a hopeful sign. A spring, a feather, a dove . . .

Ideas were spinning in the blackness of his blackboard mind, but he felt even that feeble grasp on beingness fade to a deeper shade of black.

There was no where, no what, no when.

No who.

No one else.

Nothing.

A Winning Pair

of Diamonds

“Oh! I almost squashed Midnight Louie again.” Kit jumped up again before sitting on Temple’s living-room sofa.

“He’s hard to squash.” Temple watched the big black cat stretch luxuriously, claiming even more territory with his long muscular body and extended legs and tail. “He’s reclaiming the sofa because you used it for a bed before Aldo exported you to whatever hidden love nest you’ve been calling home lately.”

Kit sat where Louie wasn’t. As petite as Temple, she could fit in the small space the resident alley cat wasn’t hogging at the moment. Temple perched on the sofa arm.

Their elfin figures and pose made them look like mother and daughter, and they sounded like it, with their matching slightly raspy voices. But they were aunt and niece, roughly thirty years apart. Temple was thirty about to turn thirty-one, and Kit was roughly sixty and planned to stay that way for a good long time.

Right now they were both going on eighteen.

“I never saw yours up close at the Crystal Phoenix party,” Temple said, peering hard at Kit’s left hand.

“I never saw yours at all that night.”

Midnight Louie suddenly stood, arched his back like a Halloween cat, and thumped his twenty pounds down to the parquet floor.

“Guess he doesn’t like girl talk,” Kit said.

They watched him stalk into the adjoining office with its tiny adjacent bathroom and the open window he used as an informal doggie door. Temple had long since given up treating Louie like a cat. He was more like a resident furry godfather, the Mafia kind. She sometimes wasn’t sure who was letting who live with whom. The only certainty was that Louie knew his way around Las Vegas inside and out, turning up as regularly as CSI personnel at crime scenes.

Letting him roam was less like letting a house cat loose in Sin City than exposing the town to feline muscle of the first water.

Speaking of the first water, which was a term for diamonds of the greatest purity and perfection, Temple slid into the spot Louie had vacated—hmm, warm—and fanned her left hand alongside her aunt’s. They both sighed.

“Yours is fabulous,” they said in concert, then laughed.

“Does ‘yours’ refer to the ring, or the donor?” Kit asked.

“Both, of course!”

“Temple, why didn’t you say something the night of the party celebrating the successful close of the Red Hat-Pink Hat case! You didn’t even wear your engagement ring.”

Temple sobered. “I had mixed feelings. What with Max so recently . . . missing.”

“Gosh, what has it been now?”

“Almost six weeks.”

“Six weeks, really? Aldo and I have lost track of time flying between my condo in Manhattan and looking for new digs here. And still no word?”

“Kit, a guy who sells his house and leaves town without mentioning it to his girlfriend is not likely to send homesick text messages.”

“It’s a mystery. You’ll solve it.”

“I will. Someday. But, meanwhile, we have to get you married to the eldest Fontana brother. All Vegas will be agog at this foreign New York City woman who skimmed the cream of the town’s deeply committed bachelors into her web of bewitchment in a few days flat.”

Kit, an ex-actress who could look as demure as Miss Muffet when called for, eyed the glittering square diamond solitaire on her petite knuckle. “He did go all out when he finally went over to the wedlock side.”

“The stone is huge!”

Kit batted her eyelashes. “I’ve never bought the idea that small women should wear small hats and jewelry, have you?”

“Absolutely not.”

“Besides”—Kit leaned in to examine the intricate ruby and diamond ring on Temple’s left hand—“who’d a thunk an ex-priest would come up with a vintage ring ripe for appearing in the original cast of Broadway Babies of 1935. That’s a work of Art Deco.”

“He got it at a little shop around the corner of the Strip. Fred Leighton. The wedding ring itself is a pair of ruby circle guards.”

“I’ll be right there, ogling it at the ceremony.”

“My matron of honor.”

Kit teared up. She’d been a big-city career woman since college, and single. Who’d a thunk a Vegas hunk years her junior (who was counting exactly?) would be Mr. Right?

“Why can’t you be my matron of honor?” Kit said. “That would be so deliciously unexpected. Aren’t you and Matt getting a civil wedding here before going formal and letting your mom and dad back in Minnesota know?”

Temple sighed. “Maybe. Whatever we do, I don’t want to rush it.”

“Probably wise,” Kit said, “given the large dangling loose end.” She saw Temple’s expression wilt. “Oh, sorry! Slap me so I bite my tongue! I didn’t remember that Max’s old magic act used suspended animation and bungee acrobatics.”

Temple nodded, not able to speak for a moment, secretly afraid that Max wasn’t just missing, but dead.

“Listen, kitten. Just think how flabbergasted Karen will be when she comes for the wedding and gets a load of Aldo. Her old maid sister marrying a devastatingly eligible Fontana brother.”

“Mom’s coming?”

“Sure. I mean, she is essential family. Isn’t she? Look, I know you’ve been kinda distant, and I don’t know why, except the same thing happened to me thirty-five years ago when I left Minneapolis for a bigger, more exciting city.”

Temple had her hands to her face, which made the ring’s dazzle explode in the daylight from the room’s row of French doors. “Mom’s coming! Oh, my God. I hadn’t dreamed of that. I thought Matt and I would fly up to see her and Dad and everyone in Minnesota . . . later.”

“I doubt your brothers will come. Weddings are too girly. Bad enough they had to be at their own.”

Temple laughed shakily. “Oh, God, yes. Men in flannel shirts, wearing Frye boots.”

“Why did you leave Minneapolis for Vegas a couple years ago?”

“Yeah, but I did, love. I was doing PR for the Guthrie repertory company when he came through with his magic show.”

“He must have been some barnstormer to shake you loose of your Midwestern roots.”

Temple smiled nostalgically. “And . . . it was pretty overpro-tective up north. When my four older brothers stopped dodging me as a hopeless tagalong, no one would let me go anywhere on my own. Max was the Big Bad Wolf who stole Little Red Riding Hood.”

Kit reached out to stroke Temple’s shoulder-length hair. “Semi-red now. I love that strawberry color you put in over the blond dye job. How many PR women in this town go undercover for homicide lieutenants, I wonder?”

“You think the hair came out okay?”

“Great!”

“Why not? It’s our color, our Pink Lady color.” Temple was referring to her and Kit’s masquerade as Pink Hatters at the recent, and deadly, Red Hat Sisterhood convention at the Crystal Phoenix Hotel and Casino.

“My blushes, Watson.” Kit put her hands to her cheeks this time. “As an actress I just can’t bear to advertise my age to one and all.”

“Wearing a red hat does announce one is over fifty these days. Besides, red is not really your color.”

“Damn right. Unless I’ve put a foot in my mouth again and am emulating a beet. So you do like lilac. We’ll have to hit the high-end shops. No bridal shop regalia at my wedding. Something different.”

“Maybe vintage?”

“Maybe. Maybe Italian designer. Aldo is springing for my duds and price is no object.”

“Ivory leather? I saw a fabulous suit at Caesar’s Apian Way shops.”

“A leather wedding suit? Love it! You are radical.”

“It’s a pearlized ivory leather, with the jacket’s puffed sleeves and bodice leather done in cut-lace detail. It has a short skirt with a detachable bustle train that ends in just trailing lace. That would be too long on you, but all the more bridal.”

“Wonderful! Let’s go get it. We’ll find something for you along the way. I can’t believe I got talked into a formal wedding within six weeks of the engagement.”

“No problem, Kit. Van von Rhine could mount a British royal coronation in five days flat. All you have to worry about is showing up dressed.”

“Well, if I wanted to make trouble for myself, I could worry about the bachelor party the other nine Fontana boys are throwing for their eldest brother.”

“When is it?”

“Tomorrow night. It’s a Monday, Matt’s night off at the radio station, so he can attend.”

“Where is it?”

“That’s the problem. It’s a secret. I know boys will be boys, but these ‘boys’ have been men on the town for a long time. I expect it will be bawdy, involve cigars, and strippers jumping out of things a lot more interesting than giant cakes.”

“Hey, Kit. Aldo’s not going to blow his first attempt at matrimony.”

“It’s not Aldo I’m worried about. It’s those fun-loving, hunky brothers of his.” Kit looked closely at Temple. “You’re frowning. You’re worried about the bachelor party too?”

“Well, Matt will be there, and that’s not exactly his scene. But, no, my mind was moss-gathering.”

“You’re too young for ‘moss-gathering.’ ”

“Issue-gathering, then. I just can’t believe Mom is coming to a place like Las Vegas on such short notice.”

“Kid, with us, the notice is always ‘short.’ “ Kit mugged the line, with an elbow to Temple’s ribs and a wink. Both were five feet flat, which is why they wore high heels. “Your landlady runs a wedding chapel, for heaven’s sake. She’ll help. The ceremony’s going to be held at your main hotel account, the Crystal Phoenix. Everything’s in place.”

“Except . . . except I wasn’t anticipating introducing Matt to my family so soon.”

“Why the hell not? He’s as presentable as Prince Charming. An ex-priest, for God’s sake. Any overprotective family has gotta love that. I mean, as Universal Unitarians, they’re very ecumenical, and he comes shrink-wrapped. What’s safer than that?”

Temple was blushing again. “Don’t remind me. They’ll worry about that. Ask embarrassing questions about his sex life. Matt isn’t used to family interrogations.”

“Un-huh. He handles anonymous callers with every kind of hang-up imaginable at the radio shrink line six nights a week. What makes you think he can’t handle your mother?”

“Because I can’t?”

“Gracious, girl. You’re all grown-up now. You’re a maid of honor for a mature bride. An engaged woman. You have been the paramour of a world-class magician and have an ex-priest lover. You have unmasked murderers.”

“Kit! You’re plotting a romance novel, not reality.”

“However you put it, I’d say maybe you’re grown-up enough to face down my sister, Karen. Who can be a teensy bit conservative.”

“You skipped town to get away from family pressure too.”

“True. Look, I’ll back you up. She will hit the roof over any off-white, high-end, train-trailing bridal gear of mine. I won’t tell her it was your idea. That ought to take the heat off. And we’ll get you something Miss Muffety in voile and satin with a Victorian high-collar neckline and a bow on the butt.”

Temple dissolved in laughter. “Kit, why am I having worse bridal nerves than you over this?”

“Because you’re next?” Kit cackled. “And I do expect to be matron of honor. I can wear the suit without the train, because of course you’ll be in pure, pristine white.”

“You’re sure?”

“Your mother, and Matt, wouldn’t have it any other way.”

Cleanup Detail

Carmen didn’t tell Morrie what she’d finally decided to do.

Father figures were great in theory, but her fathers had been confusing.

The Anglo mystery man who’d sired her had been driven out of the Hispanic family circle before she was born, her mother caving to ethnic, church, and family pressures. He was a literal ghost: pale, Nordic, blue-eyed. He lived on only in Carmen’s eye color, which had singled her out in every barrio and church and school photo of her early life. She would have hated him just for that if she’d had a chance to know him.

Her mother had married after her “mistake,” Carmen Regina, girl-child out of wedlock. Carmen had never bonded with her stepfather. As the eldest, she’d been half a mother to the many children they’d conceived in unfettered Catholic Hispanic certainty.

Every darling toddler seemed a rebuke. She’d loved them, and they her, but it was a sad charade of the half-life she lived. Carmen the half-breed.

She’d discovered some soul mates, old ladies she’d crossed paths with. They were the eldest children of men killed in World War II. Only children, only survivors. Their young, widowed mothers had remarried and started large fifties families. The lone older daughter who didn’t remember a father became the stepchildren’s quasi-mother from a very early age.

It didn’t make her crazy to go out and multiply on her own, whatever the church decreed.

Her liaison with Rafi Nadir was born of mutual alienation.

And then she’d ended up the mother of an only child in her turn.

Except she didn’t see hooking up again in her case, having more children.

Just this one. This precious one.

So her own only daughter was also a half-breed. Half Hispanic-Anglo, half Arab-American. Really, a quarter-breed.

People were supposed to say it didn’t matter. Ethnic origin. Skin shade. Eye color.

It did.

The knife wound had cut a swatch across Carmen’s olive skin.

Hatred was equal opportunity.

She felt the severing in her soul.

She’d been angry, anxious, insecure. Had let it pile up into a mountain of mistakes.

Why had Max Kinsella become such an obsession?

He’d gotten away without a scratch. Gotten away in a smart, slick, easy, painless way.

He hadn’t gotten stuck, as she had. He’d eeled out of a murder rap and even a miffed girlfriend he’d bailed out on for a year. Any other mortal would have paid, and paid big for being at the scene of the crime, skipping town, and coming back an uncatchable shadow. Not Max Kinsella. She hated people who got away with behaving badly. That had been her whole law enforcement life.

Maybe because she’d never dared to behave badly herself.

Until now. Breaking and entering. Arranging clandestine surveillance with an undercover cop who might be okay, might be rogue. Getting knifed, goddamn it, off the clock.

Now that her wound had forced her to lie still and think, alone at home, hurting physically, she realized that she’d made as many unwarranted assumptions as Max Kinsella ever had.

And she had been wrong! Kinsella was a target, as Matt and even Temple Barr had hinted. Not a perpetrator. He was an undercover operative? Kinsella! Holy Mother of All Things Annoying! She’d been chasing a shadow of herself.

Her attacker had knifed her while shredding Max Kinsella’s Las Vegas life to bits.

She’d thought she despised the man. She was a piker. Someone seriously whacked was out there.

Was Temple Barr safe? She had to think about that. Matt? Or . . . worse. Her attacker didn’t know who she was, just someone there. What if she’d been followed home? What if Mariah was now a target? She, Carmen, and her one-woman pursuit mission, had exposed her daughter to terrible danger perhaps.

Sitting up in bed made her belly burn as if she was in childbirth again.

Thank God for Morrie. He’d left her some ground to stand on: her job. She had to start using that better.

Number one: neutralize Rafi Nadir. He wasn’t going to go away, and if he really hadn’t tampered with her birth control device, why should he? Number two: distance herself from Dirty Larry. He’d come in handy for her, but you had to ask why. She didn’t need an ambiguous boyfriend. She needed . . . Morrie Alch. He was shrewd, loyal, and more than she deserved. Daddy dearest. She swallowed hard. Yes. She needed someone to look out for her. Yes, she still needed someone. Someone to watch over me.

The lyric and music played in her head. So what if she was a little feverish, a little Vicodined out.

She had a lot of catching up to do when she felt up to it in a few weeks.

Here Comes the Ride

Naturally, I have not been invited to the Fontana Family bachelor party for Aldo.

Naturally, that does not make a bit of difference to my intentions and actions.

I intend to be in on the action, however juvenile and rowdy.

It is not often that one gets to see a Fontana brother tie the marital knot in this town. I was there when the youngest brother, Nicky, got hitched, and I will be there when the eldest falls to the blow of domestic bliss. ...