“Who has been two-timing our favorite suave swingers?”
“Speak for yourself,” Midnight Louise says. “Every Lothario must have his day of reckoning, including you. They were whispering about it, but no names were mentioned. Since Judith, Tracee, Evita, and Meredith were the ones whispering, I suppose that Jill, Alexia, Wanda, and Asiah are all suspects.”
I frown, knowing it gives me a mature, commanding appearance. “But a truly clever turncoat would be among the gos-sipers, pointing the finger at some innocent party.”
“So we are back to square one,” Louise says.
“Not necessarily. At least we know at least one is not on the up-and-up. You had better eavesdrop on them from now on.”
After Miss Midnight Louise leaves, none too happily, I sit and mull the puzzle pieces that are coming together. Madonnah had something to hide. So does a bridesmaid who is not really as upset about being unproposed-to as the other girls may think. Maybe such a disgruntled ex would want the brothers Fontana caught with their Berettas in a brothel.
Maybe there were two crimes in the offing tonight: Madon-nah’s death and the Fontanas being framed for it. It was only bad luck that the most innocent party, Mr. Matt Devine, should be cast in the role of prime suspect.
It is quiet up here, so I can think plenty, and my mind goes around and around the maypole without coming up daisies. Or whatever.
Then I hear a violent sneeze down the hall, and two seconds later a lean black form bolts around the corner and pastes itself against the wall.
Ma Barker’s ears are as flattened to her head as her whole form is to the floor. One might take her for a big grease spot. Her street skills are awesome.
I hear a nose being blown down the hall.
“Big lummox,” Ma says, sitting up and letting her scraggly hackles lie back down. “I figured he would never leave, so I had to goose him out of my way.”
“How did you manage that?”
“I scratched a snowstorm out of my hide and wafted it upward with my tail. Humans’ eyes close when they sneeze, you know. Only for a second, but that is all I needed to dash out and disappear.”
I am impressed by the Sneeze Diversion, but it would not work for me. My skin is not dry and flaky from years of street life in the desert heat. I can recommend a good anti-dandruff shampoo, but then Ma Barker would lose her edge, and the treatment smells bad.
“So what did you learn communing with the corpse?”
“Is that what you call it? The corpse was as mum as day-old bread. Starting to get a bit fragrant, though. Only to an expert nose. I am sure some of the forensic geeks on CSI: Las Vegas could tell us just which insect larvae was going wild in there.”
“Please, Ma. No gruesome speculations. I want hard evidence.”
“Not much to see in there, and too much to smell. I did detect the presence of lilac cologne. And I found the second fishnet stocking.”
“No! Where was it?”
“In the adjoining peep room.”
“No! That is even worse for Mr. Matt!”
“That is no skin off my nose, which has been skun by better than you. But I knew you would be distraught, so I dragged the item out and rolled it into a ball and put it under the bed.”
“That is evidence tampering.”
“I thought your Job One was to get this Devine guy off.”
“With evidence, not shenanigans.”
“There are no fingerprints to be found on fishnet anyway.”
“What about claw marks?”
She flashes her shivs and then retracts them nail-by-nail, smooth as a magician doing a baton roll through his fingers. “They call me the Hooded Claw in the ‘hood.”
Oh, great! That makes me Son of the Hooded Claw. Sounds like some cheesy old serial movie.
Fortunately, I have established a reputation for fine sleuthing as well as slicing fisticuffs in this town.
If the other fishnet stocking was in the murder room, they must have been worn by the dead woman, not an imported garrote, but a tool of opportunity. That looks like someone who came to the Sapphire Slipper tonight, unexpectedly ran into the victim, then did her in with her own intimate accessory.
Unfortunately, that theory makes the Fontana party and their scheming girlfriends and innocent ride-alongs all still the prime suspects.
Just Kidnapping
When Temple told Aldo she’d like to interview him alone in the Victorian boudoir, Kit raised an eyebrow.
Heck, the eyebrow almost jousted with her hairline.
“I’m looking for some context here,” Temple told the room, including a scowling Macho Mario and a thoughtful Matt. “Only the eldest will do. Of the brothers, that is,” she said quickly to shut Uncle Mario’s already open and about to object mouth.
Aldo rose, shot his jacket sleeves over his pristine white cuffs, paused to whisper in Kit’s ear at the parlor archway, then glanced into the kitchen.
“I may need a bodyguard to pass through that gauntlet of pissed-off girlfriends.”
The joke lessened the tension behind . . . and the dawning tension ahead as the girlfriends’ chatter became dead silence. They all broadcast an air of heightened interest as a Fontana brother crossed their sight line.
In the foyer, Aldo took a deep breath. “Everybody is twitchier than a Valentine’s Day Massacre trigger finger. Uncle Mario does all the talking for the family when things get tight.”
“It’s just me,” Temple said.
“Right now, ‘just you’ is our designated savior. Don’t fool yourself. The cops will be furious we kept quiet about the crime scene so you could play detective. We’re all in deep scaloppini.”
“But what a way to go,” Temple said as he followed her upstairs, kissing her fingers to the air like a chef. “Pasta, olive oil, and lots of sauce.”
“We may find all those ingredients in the Victorian Room upstairs.” While Temple tried not to blush—racking her brains for any uses of pasta in kinky sex—although the olive oil and sauce she got, Aldo went on. “Why the Victorian Room?”
“I figured it wouldn’t be wired. None of them are supposed to be, but you never know. Recording would ruin the illusion. But I’m counting on you to check it out first.”
“Right. Wait here.”
Aldo slipping into the room’s saccharine pale blue décor resembled a white-clad black panther invading a froufrou shop. It took more than ten minutes, but he examined everything from four-poster canopy to carpet to furniture to walls and ceiling.
He stepped out into the hall to report.
“All is as ersatz, authentic Victorian as could be desired. No wires, no peepholes. So.” He folded his arms and eyed her with an arched eyebrow. “What did you really have in mind here?”
Temple grabbed his arm, ducked inside, and shut the door on them.
Aldo did not look worried. Nor did he look hopeful.
He didn’t have to. She would never even flirt with her aunt Kit’s guy.
“You’re right,” she said. “The police will tear this charade to pieces, making all of us look guilty and no doubt dragging every one of our names through the media. After my first round of interviews it’s becoming evident that, while there are a ton of suspects on the premises, there’s also plenty of room for outside skullduggery.”
“Outside as how? Sapphire Slipper employees?”
“First and foremost, yes. The place had to be reserved; that was a forewarning. The girlfriends think they were clever and that their designated caller sounded like an executive secretary making arrangements for a bunch of businessmen on a company-paid rampage, but it might well have sounded suspicious to the staff here. Then there’s the question of how these babes in the woods managed to subvert your regular Gangsters’ driver and take over.”