“I can use some brothers-in-law, especially if they treat me the way they do you.”
“They’re pretty . . . nice,” Temple said. “I don’t know why some lucky girls never got their claws into them . . . I mean, converted them to matrimony.”
“Overrated,” said Electra, the much-married, and divorced, woman. She was frowning at Van. “That girl is getting sober. Fast.”
“Van’s always so dignified,” Temple said. “It’s nice to see her loosen up.”
“Van’s never as white as a Halloween sheet,” Electra said, her fingers patting the air to quiet Temple and Kit. “Something’s going on.”
Van was making writing motions with her right hand and looking way not tipsy. Or happy.
“The Sapphire Slipper. I’ve heard of it, but—”
Kit ravaged a distant desk for pen and paper. Temple pulled a two-inch-thick Vanity Fair magazine off the coffee table to offer it as a writing surface. In a few seconds, Van was jotting down frantic phrases.
They were all listening hard now, memorizing the words Van repeated as she made huge, sloppy, slanting notes.
“Isolated. Iffy cell phone. Temple. Take the . . . Rover. Kidnapped! By whom? Murder?”
While Temple and Kit stared at each other in utter shock, Electra disappeared.
“Nicky,” Van was shouting. “I’m losing you! The connection. Nicky!!!”
Cool, cool Van von Rhine was shaking when she reluctantly snapped the cell phone shut. Her hands were smoothing her mussed French twist.
“Nicky swears it will soon all be under control,” she said, “but he says we have to get out there ASAP.”
“We?” Temple asked. “Not the police?”
“He says the bachelor party—him, Aldo, their brothers, Uncle Mario, and Matt—” Van glanced sympathetically at Temple. “They’ve all been kidnapped. Even Midnight Louie is there!”
“My cat? Who’d kidnap a cat?”
“He must have been along for the ride. They were hijacked to a different location than the expected bachelor party in town. This . . . notorious brothel in the desert. Somebody look up the address—”
Electra bustled in. “I’ve got the coffee on and found the telephone book. Just give me a minute. Van, you need to get online and get a map to this Sapphire Slipper place. They’re sure to have a Web site.”
“Of course. Online.” She stood up. “Nicky said—”
“What did he say?” Temple demanded, jumping up.
“He said they need you out there to solve a murder. They need a cool head and an outside eye. He said that Matt discovered the body, and Nicky discovered Matt with the body, and they’re the most likely suspects. We get a jump on the police, or they . . . jump on them. It was a prank. Just a prank. The bridesmaids went berserk. It was supposed to have been funny. Now maybe one of them is dead. Murdered.”
“Who can drive?” Kit asked.
“Me,” said Electra. “I was planning on ‘cycling home, so went light on the champagne. Plus, I’ve got the extra poundage to metabolize it. Sometimes fat girls do have less fun. Van, you get the map and order the Rover from the valet captain. If cell phones don’t work out there—”
“There’s a satellite phone in the Rover,” Van said, racing for her home office and the computer.
Temple sat down. Everybody seemed to have it together.
All anyone needed from her was on-scene detective work.
All?
Matt? A suspect. Matt at the Sapphire Slipper brothel? Oh, my. Oh, Matt.
She was starting to shake like Van had at first. Nicky vulnerable, too.
Something soft intruded on her crazed, anxious mental soliloquy.
Midnight Louise was rubbing against her calf, looking up through serious, round, gold eyes.
And Midnight Louie out there too!
Midnight Louise spoke. One meow. Loud and strong.
“We’ll get them all out of it in the twitch of a cat’s whisker,” Temple said, stroking the little cat.
She didn’t believe one word of what she said.
Hitchhikers
Sorry, Miss Temple, I do not need a pat on the head, I need wheels and some armed and dangerous backup.
The women are still a bit shocked and shaky despite their brave talk, but it is no surprise at all to me that a midnight phone call reveals that the old man is ruff deep in a hotbed of shady women, dangerous men, and murder most sleazy.
I am surprised, though, that Mr. Matt Devine, who provided my first temporary shelter after I showed up as a stray at the Crystal Phoenix, would be in any danger of a murder rap.
No way, Bombay! That is not going to happen with Midnight Louise around.
I let the women-behind-the-men on the hot seat out in the desert run around and mount what passes for a rescue party.
I take careful note of their urgent shouts and consultations.
My sharp ears (both in their external appearance and aural effectiveness) twitch this way and that to take it all in. This Sapphire Slipper is tucked away on the backside of any reasonable distance, but where there is a will, there is a way.
“Won’t we need, uh, weapons?” Miss Kit Carlson asks, sounding as fierce as her frontier gunslinger namesake.
“No. Nicky said not.” Miss Van von Rhine is her sharp, efficient self again, her hair slicked down and smoothed for a rumble. “The brothers were traveling fully loaded, and the mock-kidnapping has turned into a hysterical hen party, he says. The boys will soon be in charge again.”
“When were they ever not?” Miss Temple Barr asks.
Miss Van von Rhine lifts an almost-invisible eyebrow. These pale human show cats have barely any vibrissae over their eyes, unlike my lush black spidery lashes.
“Apparently for a few hours tonight they have been disarmed, bound, and held utterly helpless.”
Miss Temple gives a disbelieving cry.
I agree. No wonder murder was afoot if the Fontana brothers were tied hand and foot. Who would be so stupid as to take the only decent muscle in Las Vegas out of action?
“I do not care what you say,” Miss Electra says. “We can stop at the Circle Ritz on the way for a couple useful switchblades I got from my motorcycle club guys. Forearmed is forewarned.”
Now we are rockin’! My switchblades are built-in, and I do not go anywhere without them. They are my American Excess card.
I follow the rescue party down in the elevator and into the blare and glare of the hotel’s busy gaming and public spaces . . . unnoticed.
Naturally no one would think to take me along, but I cannot allow the senior partner of Midnight Inc. Investigations to stew in his own aging juices. Besides, I can hardly wait to see the old buzzard held captive in a brothel. He will never live that down. Not while I am around.
I must admit that Miss Electra is a pistol at the wheel. She wrangles that well-mannered Brit Rover through the Vegas traffic like a broncobuster. We run over a few curbs and dust a few fenders, but what the hell. We move too fast to hear the curses in our wake.
While the big vehicle purrs on idle in the Circle Ritz parking lot and the ladies race inside to round up items suitable for an impromptu kidnapping-murder party, I hop out of the door behind Miss Kit Carlson and dive into the attractive shrubbery. The oleander bushes, though poisonous to us, make great cover for our kind.
“Paging Ma Barker,” I yowl.
She is in my face faster than a fistful of switchblades. Which she happens to be carrying.
“Who goes there?”
“Your putative granddaughter.”
The word putative stops her colder than granddaughter. I pick this vocabulary up from lawyers around the Crystal Phoenix.