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Revienne ate some cheese, then stuffed some into the backpacks they’d bought on the stolen credit card.

“Come,” she said, whispering across the table. “I don’t want you unsteady on your feet with too much beer. After all those meds it could hit you hard, and I’m not strong enough to get you up the chalet stairs to our room.”

He grabbed his new cane, hand-carved tourist bait that leaned against his rush-seated chair. He didn’t bother to tell her he’d been off meds for some time. Still, the stairs took two turns, there was no elevator, and the new walking shoes made his gait clumsy. He was exhausted by the time she turned the key to their room.

He leaned against the wall just inside the door while she turned on the lamps—no overhead lights in the boonies—looked into the empty freestanding wardrobe and under the double bed piled high with a down comforter.

“The bathroom is down the hall,” she said. “This is not the American Plan part of the world. But don’t worry.” She hoisted a deep white pot from under the high bedstead. “There are emergency accommodations. Mike, don’t look like that! You’re still an invalid; you must take the simplest route. I am a medical doctor, you know. I’ve seen everything.”

Yes, but not his “everything.”

“You use the bathroom first,” she decided. “I’ll help you to and fro. Once you’re in the bed, I can use it.”

It took them an hour to accomplish their separate turns at the simple room with a bathtub, toilet, and sink. It was early, so they had no competition. Max used a cloth to wash off the three days of sweat and outdoor elimination, and donned the beige shorts from a village shop with relief. Luckily Swiss mountain men wore the equivalent of short shorts in the summer, almost as good as boxers. He felt like Tom Selleck in Magnum, P.I. shorts, but at least he could dump the hospital jammies in a knapsack for burying farther down the road.

The black, long-sleeved spandex turtleneck top was as silky as a second skin. The moment he put it on, he felt more relaxed. Something to his taste, apparently.

It didn’t make sense to struggle into the new, baggier jeans the stolen credit card had bought as well. Not for sleeping. Re-vienne would just have to see his pale legs, with the dark hairs rubbed off by the cast. He recalled her threat of a massage and chose to consider it a promise. He was, as she’d pointed out, an invalid.

The bedsheets were Egyptian cotton, maybe a thousand-thread count. Smooth as a baby’s cheek. The foot-high comforter was the only blanket or coverlet, and all that eiderdown was housed inside another silky, high-count shroud.

Max took deep, satisfied breaths. His stomach was full, his magic fingers knew how to lift a tourist’s credit card so smoothly no one would ever notice, the beer was making him drowsy, and he was going to let Revienne’s strong doctor-trained hands massage his abused legs.

He was half-asleep when she finished in the bathroom. She came back smelling of freesia soap and began running her hands over his aching leg muscles all the way up to the place where his butt began, where it hurt so good. . . .

This person named Max didn’t trust many or much, but tonight he fell asleep in the cradle of civilization.

Woman.

Warm.

Endurance Vile

After all and sundry have had a couple days to recover from being cooped up together in a residence high on bedrooms and low on other creature comforts, I amble up the Strip to visit my partner in Midnight Inc. Investigations.

Miss Midnight Louise can be found by my old office area among the canna lilies, overlooking the koi pond at the Crystal Phoenix.

Although she professes to despise the way I do things, I notice that she enjoys the shade under the tall, spreading foliage, and the way the wet fish scales shimmer in the sunlight.

Since she is house detective here now, not I, I do not comment right off that she is tolerating riffraff in the pool area. At least three skinny dames in skinnier bikinis have designer carryall bags containing yappy purse pooches beside their lounges.

When I innocently observe that she is leaving the canine intruders unmolested, she just shrugs.

“They may expose themselves to dangerous sun rays if they wish. Besides, those are not dogs so much as animated purse lint.”

I sit to clean the hairs between my toes. In human circles this would be regarded as an uncouth pursuit, but among our kind it is considered good grooming.

“Are your split shivs recovering?” she inquires.

“Yes, thank you. They will be their old Ginsu-sharp selves in another week.”

“What brings you over here? The wedding is not for two days. I presume you plan to crash it, as you did the bachelor party.”

“Of course not. I am an invited guest.”

Hmm.” Her brief purr is decidedly unimpressed.

“I have been busy about town sorting out the details and progress of the case.”

“And—?”

“I have it on the best authority—”

“Whose?”

“FBI agent Bucek’s.”

“Go on.”

Somehow I feel like a footman reporting to the queen when I am the kingpin here.

“He honored Miss Temple’s Circle Ritz and my abode with a visit and all the inside info he was free to spread around.”

“Who else was there?”

“Miss Kit Carlson and Mr. Matt Devine.”

“So he did not exclusively call on Miss Temple and you, but Miss Temple and her nearest and dearest, and you happened to be there coddling your claws.”

“Louise! I am as much a part of Miss Temple’s less formal investigative cases as those of Midnight Inc. Investigations.”

“Oh, stuff a catnip mouse in it, Daddy-o! You know you are just trying to appear all-wise and knowing. Can it. I am wise to you in a way you will never be wise to me.”

Those are fighting words. Louise is lucky my shivs are dull, but the back of my tongue is not.

“I can just leave you in the usual blissful ignorance,” I say, pausing to polish one of the shivs in question with the tongue in question. Then I shut up.

“All right, spill it.” She settles onto her haunches with a yawn that fools no one.

She is dying to hear who was really who and what was really what in the shenanigans at the Sapphire Slipper.

“First, the perp. He may be a nameless nebbish to us, and have made a really lame attempt at escape, but it turns out he has a murderous rap sheet as long as a kinkajou’s tail.”

“He is supposed to be what passes for a professional at this?”

“I share your amazement. Good hit men are hard to find in Las Vegas nowadays, I guess. This guy was from the East Coast mob.”

“And his inside contact was the lady known as Asiah?”

“No, she was his fortuitous outside contact, as my Miss Temple figured out. She set up the deal with him for the girlfriends, thinking he was just what he was masquerading as, a driver for Gangsters. She didn’t know he hitched a ride in the Rolls-Royce trunk, then hid in the garage until he snuck in later to fulfill his contract and kill Madonnah. Miss Asiah didn’t know until she saw the victim was strangled with one of her fishnet hose that he’d implicated her. Ma Barker found the second stocking in the peep room later. Miss Asiah knew to look for it in the bedroom and tossed it in there to put the blame on Mr. Matt.”

“Naughty! There must have been an inside contact.”

“Right. The Shoofly character took over as general factotum at the brothel about eight months ago.”

“Who is this General Fact-totem? Something to do with the military and the Indians?”