Oh, and made a bag of popcorn in the microwave.
A Fontana Brothers Production was nothing if not thorough. Assured that Temple wanted for nothing (besides a murderer with a cast-iron motive), he bowed and left.
To read or just sit back and watch? That was the modem Hamlet’s dilemma.
She and Matt were a new couple. There was no tacit plan to spend their nights together either here or there. Temple, on her own for more than two years, preferred suspense to habit by now. Max had trained her well for his unexplained absences.
Except this one. Was Molina right? Had he been the Phantom Mage? He hadn’t missed a beat when dealing with the White Russian exhibition acrobatics. He seemed in peak form. Something may have gone wrong, but Temple couldn’t saddle her new relationship with worries about an ex-boyfriend.
She sipped the wine, turned down the lights, and ran Natalie’s secret recording, a notebook on the sofa arm, roller-ball pen in hand. The manuscript would be next.
Chapter 60
A Fool and His Honey
Temple woke up with daylight oozing through the sheer curtains on the French doors to the balcony.
A set of those doors were ajar and a trail of Free-to-BeFeline nuggets—like large, army-green ants—were marching from there to the kitchen. Or vice versa.
“Louie?”
The protesting meow came from the other side of the couch. Louie was coiled there like a furry snake, his one open green eye looking very annoyed.
“I guess you had a big night last night too,” she admitted, patting his head.
He barely restrained a hiss.
On the other hand, his access to the Ashleigh girls had been suddenly cut off.
“I didn’t get any last night, either,” she consoled him. Oddly, this didn’t seem to console Midnight Louie. He yawned to show his fangs and tongue, then licked his whiskers. “More food? You’ve been going through that Free-to-BeFeline like there’s no tomorrow lately.”
He jumped down to the floor, then stalked to the kitchen, where he turned and glared accusingly at her.
Temple pushed herself up from the corner she’d been curled into and went to open another ten-pound bag. What was going on here? Louie would soon be the size of Nero Wolfe.
While she was up, Temple poured and drank a glass of milk, then dribbled the dregs over the Free-to-BeFeline.
Louie remained bowed over the bowl, but only making the occasional crunching sound. No wonder he was full! He’d been through three bags of it in the last week.
With him taken care of, Temple went to shower, sharpen her brain, and gather her evidence for a fast trip to the LVMPD Crimes Against Persons unit.
Did she have a crime scenario for them! All thanks to Oleta’s manuscript, Natalie’s film, and Fontana brother wine.
Luckily, nice Detective Alch was in when she phoned, although he was sure it was unnecessary to see her.
“I have physical evidence as well as theories,” she said. “You’ve been holding something back from the police?” Nice Detective Alch was sounding sharp.
He’d been looking frazzled lately, come to think of it. Molina must be riding the rag. Okay, that was sexist. Shame on Temple! But she felt no rules of politically correct behavior applied when it came to her, and Max’s, archenemy.
“Have you still got Elmore Lark in custody?” she asked.
“No. We don’t have any crime scene evidence connected to the murder of Natalie Newman, aka Markowitz, and we don’t have any on Oleta Lark.”
“But Elmore nearly killed himself trying to make Electra look guilty.”
“We don’t have enough evidence on her either. And Elmore Lark is an obvious loon, dressing up in that crazy drag outfit to pursue your obvious trap of the hatbox. This whole case is laughable.”
“But any other possible suspects are leaving town with the convention.”
“We’re not closing the case. We just don’t have one on anybody yet.”
Temple decided arguing with the police was a lost cause. She made her good-byes and hung up. She had a feeling something was distracting Alch these days. Maybe a personal problem.
At least Electra wasn’t in danger of imminent arrest, but she wasn’t completely cleared either.
Maybe it was time for the Red-Hatted League to take matters into their own hats and swing into action.
Six hours later, Temple and Electra and the core Red-Hatted League members were hunkered down in a minivan way too new for the Araby Motel parking lot. They’d had a lot of fun wetting down the dust in a vacant lot and throwing handfuls at the vehicle until it acquired a disreputable patina.
They were all wearing scruffy clothes anyway, jeans and faded velour jogging suits saved as car-washing rags. Temple even had white tennis shoes on.
The older women were the utter opposite of their gaudy, glitzy Red Hat selves.
Except for Starla. Her lips and nails were a fresh, gleaming crimson color. She was out of her Red Hat Sisterhood red and purple, but poured into denim glitz: low-rise rhinestone-decorated jeans and matching jacket, low-cut white T-shirt featuring a sequined image of a sexy cowgirl on a bucking bronco horse.
Her frankly bleached blond hair was sprayed into a hussy hive of bedhead waves and her painted red toenails peeked out from strappy hooker-high heels.
She was “strappy” someplace else: in the recording wire taped to her torso. The ex-bounty hunter had all the right equipment for going undercover, if not under the covers, with Elmore Lark.
“It’s wonderful you know how to get wired,” Electra commented.
“When you’re a bounty hunter,” Starla explained, “sometimes you gotta surprise ‘em, or ambush ‘em. And sometimes you gotta trick ‘em.” She heaved her breasts higher in the tight T-shirt, giving the cowgirl a potent buck. “And sometimes you gotta seduce ‘em.”
“In Elmore’s case,” Electra said fervently, “I’m glad you gotta do that, not me. But I can hear every word in the van, right?”
“You all can. Ole Elmore is not only gonna be recorded, he’s gonna be broadcast live. You think that anonymous bottle of Johnnie Walker we sent over four hours ago has done the trick?” she asked Electra.
“He and Johnny must be bosom buddies by now. He was never a drinker, but he never had this much pressure.”
“I just hope he hasn’t passed out:’ Temple said.
“If he has, these’ll wake him up. When high-tech equipment lets you down, the low-tech equipment never fails.” Boosting her boobs again, Starla tested the spandex in her jeans by leaving the van, then minced across the hot parking lot to one of the ground-floor doors.
Temple slid the van door closed as soon as Starla’s last spike heel was out of the way. That quick glance around showed an abandoned lot, except for two bejeaned guys with scruffy dark jaws working a junker sixties Impala blistered with Las Vegas sun psoriasis.
Starla’s knuckles were hitting a faded, painted door. “Y’ all in there, honey? I’m that friend of Johnny’s.”
Starla turned to wink at the van a moment before the door opened and she vanished inside.
“What do you hope Starla will get out of Elmore?” Electra asked as she and Judy and Phyll and Mary Lou hunkered down beside Temple by the radio receiver. An attached recorder was taping away.
“Bragging. Unguarded answers. I prepped her on where to lead the conversation. Shh! We’re rolling.”
“Sit down, honey,” came Elmore’s smarmy voice. “Bed’s fine. This dump hasn’t got a chair you could put more’n a wastebasket on without breaking, and you’ve got a bod born to break beds, if you don’t mind my sayin’ so. So you sent me this nice full bottle of whiskey! What was the ‘Congratulations’ note for? When did you join my fan club, which is purty low on applicants lately?”
“I just thought you got a raw deal. I don’t like dames who kiss and tell. That Oleta deserved having her neck wrung.”