Cat In A Sapphire Slipper

I have never been so far out into the empty desert. It is scary to look back and see Las Vegas as a star-small twinkling oasis in our wake. I am not frightened of much, but immensity. How will we find one small chicken ranch in this Big Uneasy Empty?

Taking Back

the Night

“We two guys may know what’s going on around here,” Nicky said in the hall, where he and Matt stood breathing deeply. “But that is still a hostage situation downstairs. My brothers and Uncle Mario are not going to like being taken for a ride by nobody. And when they find out that someone was killed while they were hog-tied, they’ll be seeing blood-red. We gotta change it before reinforcements arrive.”

“That why you told your wife things here were under control? They aren’t.”

“They will be by the time she gets here.”

“And I doubt Temple can solve a murder among strangers in a few hours.”

“At least she, and we, can sort out the suspects. It’d be good to have someone else to point a finger at. I’d have to testify that I found you in a very compromising position with the dead woman. It’s your hide that’s in real jeopardy. I know that Temple would drive to Mars and back to make sure no damaging whispers get out about your involvement in this. You’re the perfect fall guy. You were truly ‘just along for the ride.’ ”

Matt took another deep breath, and nodded.

Nick went on. “Those daffy bridesmaids are not going to give up on their empowering little kidnap scheme unless we make them. The only bloody ‘murder’ they wanted to hear about tonight was my brothers crying for mercy and marriage.”

“How are two guys who don’t want to hurt anybody going to stop this crew of up-in-arms women?” Matt asked.

“Excellent point. We have to take out the ringleaders.”

“How? Punch them? They didn’t teach that in seminary.”

Nicky winced. “At least I got through to Van. She’s bringing Kit and Temple and Electra. That ought to diffuse the situation.”

“Kit too? Here as well as Temple? Are you crazy? They are these women’s worst enemies, engaged women.”

“True, but Van’s coming. She’s no one to fool with. Well, yes, she is, in my case, but sheer executive steel outside the family circle. We’ve got to get control of the weapons, period. These women think they’re kidding, but they don’t know how dangerous that firepower is, or that someone has used their prank as a shield to commit murder. Can you imagine how wrong the police could go with a mob scene like this? And having it in for my family? We don’t want a SWAT team outside.”

“Agreed.” Matt felt that certainty deep in his soul. Besides the terrible danger of a misunderstanding escalating a wacky prank into a deadly standoff with the law, even an orderly intervention would be a disaster for Temple’s aunt Kit. And Temple.

So he talked himself into this gun-grabbing scheme of Nicky’s. The Fontana brothers’ arms were usually show-and-tell. Mostly. He hoped. But they were surely loaded and needed to be somewhere safer than piled on a Victorian table.

He still pictured the pale, dead body of the woman upstairs. She looked so unhappily like any woman in any brothel, anonymous, half-dressed, laid out . . . He couldn’t think more about it, he got too angry.

“So,” Nicky said. “I stroll into the parlor, upsetting the game. The missing Fontana brother who nobody noticed.”

“Sounds like a diversion. And I—?”

“You slip in near the table, commandeer the weapons, and hold everybody hostage until I can uncuff my brothers and we take our own back.”

“Uh, this scheme relies on me totally turning the tables in about two seconds flat.”

Nicky pounded him on the shoulder. “You got it. All eyes will be on me, and you get all the glory.”

That’s when Matt realized that “all the glory” was a relative term.

He wasn’t going to scoop up eight or nine Berettas in one armful.

“Your gun is in the pile too?”

“I don’t carry,” Nicky said.

Matt resisted commenting. Apparently, there were Fontana brothers, and then there were Fontana brothers.

“Fine,” Matt said. “Everybody’s overlooked us because you’re married and I’m as-good-as, besides not fitting the family profile. You appear in the archway between the bar and the parlor. I’ll sneak in through the entry hall and take control of the weapons table . . . if you trust a midnight angst disc jockey with all that firepower.”

“Absolutely.” Nicky punched Matt on the shoulder to show his confidence. “Just don’t freeze. Grab the nearest gun and look like you mean business and aim.”

“At whom?”

Nicky shrugged. “Try me. I’ll be the center of attention.”

Eight Berettas

for Eight Brothers

Of course they have not figured me into their plans.

I am the lowly foot soldier.

The guy at one-foot height. Literally. And literally.

I have been all over this crime scene like a cheap suit. I have been downstairs, upstairs, and in my ladies’ chambers. I have scoped out the place from parlor to pissoir. (That is a fancy French term for what you can figure out all by yourself.)