“You were fine, and I still say they are adorable.”
“The Fontana brothers?”
Revienne laughed. “They as well, but I meant the honored couple. The handsome blond man and the lively little redhead. She’ll age as well as her mother.”
“Yes,” Max said, a bit shocked. “That pair do make a handsome couple. But … ah, the older woman is Temple’s aunt Kit, not her mother. And the honored newlyweds are the aunt and her recent bridegroom, the eldest Fontana brother. Aldo is over there by the bar.”
“Ah, I see,” Revienne said. “How European. I didn’t know American women were enterprising enough to marry younger men. And the other couple?”
“Engaged.”
“Friends of yours?”
“As of my return to Vegas, yes. And before.”
“Poor man.” Revienne took his arm. “It must be like walking on ice, living again in a city filled with people you don’t remember. Not knowing who’s a friend, or an enemy.”
“Oh, I think I was used to that,” Max answered, again surveying the people they’d been discussing. But their positions in the room had changed.
As he turned, he almost brushed the extravagant bouffant veil of the living-statue bride.
This concept had been charming when introduced but was getting to be annoying, he thought.
“What the—?” He moved Revienne so quickly aside that the champagne flute in her right hand spilled.
Temple was bearing down on them at a fast, determined clip.
“Oh,” Revienne objected.
“Max, watch out!” Temple shouted.
Chapter 21
Let Them Eat Crow
I have been the perfect party guest. Unseen.
The copious greenery and potted plants make a perfect cover for the jungle-stalking kind, so I have observed this fancy social gavotte at the Crystal Court lounge from the cover of massive canna lily leaves.
My favorite humans are delightfully nimble, if predictable, at the cocktail game. If the soles of their shoes left fluorescent imprints on the pale marble floor, you would have a pattern showing enough to-and-fro traffic to emulate Times Square on New Year’s Eve.
I, however, am not fooled by the usual ins and outs of the usual cocktail party. Like my Miss Temple, I am here to sniff out danger among the daiquiris.
“Hah!” comes an unwelcome greeting from the rear that has my tail hair as stiff and splayed as a radiator brush.
“Hanging about your old haunt, hoping for a job offer?” Miss Midnight Louise speculates. “I could use a pool boy.”
I shudder as my flagship member settles back into its usual sleek condition. “Water is not my medium, Louise, especially chlorinated water. It is hard on the eyes and coat.”
“Just saying. Your old spot by the canna lilies bordering the hotel pool is vacant, and the fishpond is teeming with fat, out-of-condition koi.”
Of course, she knows just how to evoke my sentimental side … schooling fishies glittering in the sun, high-heel-sandaled bathing beauty feet passing to and fro. Bronzed bodies baking in the sun, and scaled golden torsos swaying just below the water level, plump and tasty …
“I no longer crave the swim-spa experience, Louise,” I tell her. “I am on guard duty. If you had your ears perked right, you would know that the most dangerous female in Las Vegas could very well be within eyesight.”
“I spot several suspicious females, including your roommate. She is dangerous to be around. Dead bodies have a habit of suddenly appearing.”
“She is just curious. It is a characteristic of the human breed—only my Miss Temple has a double dose of that personality trait. Which other suspicious female has your hackles twitching?”
“There is that smooth blond foreign number.”
“Are you talking sports cars or human beings? Miss Van von Rhine has not lived abroad since she came to Vegas after her father died and she met and married Nicky Fontana.”
Miss Louise gives my whiskers a slightly exasperated boxing. “I know who the Crystal Phoenix boss lady is. I have been unofficial house detective here longer than you ever were before you decamped with Miss Temple Barr to the Circle Ritz.”
“Oho. We are going into past history and ‘he said/she said,’ are we?”
“We are going into ‘I am the law of the paw around here now.’ And I say Mr. Max Kinsella’s new girlfriend looks like the calico that ate the cream cheese.”
“Mr. Max has not already transferred his affections from my Miss Temple?” I feel indignant hairs stiffening all over my body. “The cad!”
“Or just absentminded,” Louise says. “Like you sometimes.”
Before I can get huffy about that comment, my sharp eyes focus on a movement as minuscule as a mouse might make. Mmm. I have glimpsed a white-slippered toe moving behind a snowy waterfall of bridal skirt.
I could swear I saw that toe pushing something not white out of sight.
“See, Pops. You have totally tuned out,” Louise is whispering in my ear.
“Why should I tune in to nonsense when I have just spotted a major criminal on the scene? If the person under that white makeup and gown is not Miss Kathleen ‘the Cutter’ O’Connor preparing to attack Mr. Max and my Miss Temple and all those near and dear to her, I am the cat that ran away with the spoon.”
“The dish,” Miss Louise says in her best schoolmarm tone. “The dish eloped with the spoon. The cat just fiddled away.”
“This cat is not fiddling around.” I give a fearsome battle cry along the lines of Tarzan of the Apes vocalizations.
Then I leap three feet forward into the open as Miss Midnight Louise cries behind me, “Pop. Stop! What are you doing? Stop! You will humiliate yourself. Stop! You will cost me my job. Stop! This is my turf. Stop! They will think you are me, oh no.”
You would think Miss Louise had gotten a job as a telegraph operator with all those “stop” commands.
I am about to unveil the psychopath among us, and nothing will stop me.
I barrel toward the albino bridal couple at full speed, watching their composure crack as I near and throw myself two-thirds up the bride’s full skirt, clinging like a giant burr until my weight pulls a huge tear in the material.
“Stop!” a male human voice yells.
“Louie,” Miss Temple wails.
“This cat is crazy,” my stauesque victim screeches.
“Louise!” Miss Van von Rhine calls out, having indeed taken me for the house detective.
I leap higher to catch my shivs in the long trailing bridal veil, hoping to bare the black locks of Miss Kathleen O’Connor, human chameleon and Most Dangerous Woman Alive.
I pull down yards and yards of a cloud of tulle, that airy netted stuff, and uncover a … head of pinned-up brown hair.
Brown. That is not the hair color of a femme fatale.
I stand abashed, while human feet and shoes encircle me and human voices drift down in admonishment and anger.
In all the excitement, the living statues broke character and tried to escape my onslaught. Can an individual mount an onslaught? I do not know, but I am pretty impressive in ninja mode, especially against an all-white background.