“Daddy,” cries another voice in syrupy, sarcastic tones. (That one is not okay. I am not a family guy unless it is spelled with a capital F as in fierce, fearless, feline, footloose, and fancy-free.)
Alas, I am not footloose and fancy-free now, for a third yowl comes: “Lover boy.”
What is a guy to do, held hostage in a house of pleasure along with a lot of other dudes?
Rolling over and playing dead is not an option.
I fan my shivs and snick them back into their sheaths. “Ladies, please. There is enough of me to go around.”
“In your dreams,” jeers Midnight Louise.
“You could use a street diet and some sparring time,” Ma Barker says.
“You are a one-queen kind of guy, I know it,” Miss Satin says, all moony-eyed.
Oh, Cheese Whiz! Here I am, trapped, caught between three generations of clinging females. At least I am outdoing the Fontana boys all by my lonesome self. At least only one of these dames has any serious designs on me.
One is bad enough.
I had better get some designs of my own on them. Quick!
First I spring to my four furry feet, claws unsheathed.
Then I growl, “What took you so long?”
“Us?” Midnight Louise spits in disbelief. “You are the one who was napping on the job.”
“Tut-tut.” I strut forward and brush past them, brush past Satin, that is, and into the hall. “I was not napping. I was planning the best dispersal of our agents.”
“And what have you planned, oh, sage snoozer?” Louise asks.
“We need reliable reports from all fronts on my Miss Temple’s interrogations. She is usually pretty sharp, but your eyes and ears are better equipped to spot telling signs among such a bevy of potential baddies. Satin, you will join your sister residents in the parlor. Midnight Louise will hang with the bridesmaids in the kitchen.
“Ma Barker, your alley cat instincts have not been blunted by the decadent comforts of domestic life. You still live by your eyes and ears and nose. I want you to give the murder room the going-over of your life.”
“And where will you be,” Miss Midnight Louise asks, “while I have been confined to the kitchen with the women?”
“I will be in the bar with the men. I can break their macho codes and tell when they are lying, and when they are just bragging to save face.”
“It is true that they will swagger more in your presence,” she concedes. “And bragging men often give away far more than they mean to. Your assignment roster makes a certain kind of accidental sense.”
What? Miss Midnight Louise agreeing with me?
“Good. We clear on our assignments?”
Docile head nods all around. By gummy bears, executive authority agrees with me!
I watch two sets of fluffy tails, unnervingly upright, salute as Louise and Satin turn and head downstairs, looking more like lit-termates than mother and daughter.
“That cathouse girl has some moxie,” Ma Barker growls to me under her breath, which is rank. Regular hard kibble should help that. “You do not worry about my pad prints being all over the death scene?”
“The authorities know we are notorious carnivores. They may rag on my Miss Temple and Mr. Matt and the Fontanas for not securing the crime scene better, but who can stop an alley cat from checking out dead meat?”
“Your lady friend, Satin, may know better what’s what in a bordello bedroom.”
“Yes, but I want a virgin nose on this scent.”
Ma Barker emits a curt cough. Now I know where she gets her oddly canine name. “You are dreaming, boy, but I will give it my best once-over.”
Devised to Disguise
The police professional always interviews suspects in a murder case separately, one at a time, Temple knew.
The police professional did not usually have to deal with bulk lots of suspects numbering eight or more. Nor did one have—Temple checked her bangle-style watch—less than twenty hours to do it in if Matt was to make his midnight radio advice program by the next night, Tuesday.
It occurred to Temple how thoughtful the Fontana brothers had been to hold the bachelor party on Matt’s one night off, Monday. She was sure that was a concession to her and her own engaged state.
So now she sat around several long kitchen tables with her aunt Kit and an octet of strange females aged from the mid-twenties to the beautifully preserved late-thirties. Everybody was swigging various flavored and antioxidant-laden bottled water.
There were four brunettes, three blondes, and a magenta-black redhead.
She was encouraged that blondes were in the minority, not that they were stupid, only they were so darn hard to tell apart. A Blond Miasma that went with the hair color blinded all onlookers’ senses. Temple knew that now from personal experience, not just non-blond prejudice. She’d been a bottle blonde for a few weeks, thanks to an undercover assignment for her personal pain-in-the-bleach bottle, Lieutenant C. R. Molina. Now she was rinsed and conditioned to a lively strawberry red, which was a vivid version of Aunt Kit’s faded fiery locks.
Temple was a public relations freelancer now, but her former jobs as a Midwestern TV reporter and PR person for a repertory theater in Minneapolis—and her former experiences in amateur theatrics—made her a perceptive group interviewer. As a reporter, she’d learned to spot or hear any hint of insincerity, and a little acting experience only honed that gift. Kit, being a former acting pro and now a novelist, was equally sharp in this respect.
Their quick conversation outside the kitchen had cast Temple as Good Cop, Kit as Bad Cop. Temple had decided they should have a go at it before Electra relieved Kit.
“I’ll have to go some,” Kit complained, “to reach the heights of your Lieutenant Molina in the role.” This was laughable because Molina was six foot in shoes with flat heels and Temple and Kit were five foot each, period.
“Ooh, don’t call that annoying non-woman ‘mine,’” Temple whispered before they pushed through the swinging barroom doors into the serving area. “Hi, guys,” she addressed the women sitting at two of the four tables in the area. “My name is Temple, and I’ll be interviewing you. My aunt Kit will help.”
“Oh, she must be the old hag who nailed Aldo,” someone said.
“This is going to be fun,” Kit whispered, donning her Leona Helmsley bitch-goddess manner in the next, loud sentence. “Who said that? You, the mouse-brownette with the cheek mole shaped like a turtle? Beauty marks went out with Little Orphan Annie’s freckles, sweet jowls. Get it lasered off. I’m here to extract your names, addresses, and occupations, so just spell it out for me.”
The now-abashed girlfriend produced, “Meredith Bell. I’m a lifestyle coach.”
Temple noted that down, along with the physical characteristics Kit had nailed.
The rest of the wedding party-to-be if no one was arrested were: Wanda, honey-blond and a massage therapist; raven-haired Judith, a runway model; white-blond Jill, a pharmacist; the mahogany redhead, Alexia, a horse trainer; Tracee, a dark brunette Pilates instructor; Evita, an auburn-haired ventriloquist; and Asiah, an exotic black beauty with blond hair, who was, surprise, a showgirl.
Temple didn’t even want to know which woman went with which Fontana brother, but she did ask and note down the pairings. She couldn’t help thinking that Kit and she would be overwhelmed by these long-stemmed beauties in the wedding party, although Alexia and Jill were more petite.
Several of the women needed strength in their professions: the massage therapist, horse trainer, Pilates instructor, and showgirl. Yes, the showgirl. Those huge, glamorous headdresses weighed about forty pounds each. It wasn’t just Third World women who could balance heavy weights on their heads to earn their daily bread. . . .
“Okay,” Temple told them. “I think you know that a woman is dead upstairs. Apparently she’s not one of you.”