Cat In A Sapphire Slipper

Kit sat where Louie wasn’t. As petite as Temple, she could fit in the small space the resident alley cat wasn’t hogging at the moment. Temple perched on the sofa arm.

Their elfin figures and pose made them look like mother and daughter, and they sounded like it, with their matching slightly raspy voices. But they were aunt and niece, roughly thirty years apart. Temple was thirty about to turn thirty-one, and Kit was roughly sixty and planned to stay that way for a good long time.

Right now they were both going on eighteen.

“I never saw yours up close at the Crystal Phoenix party,” Temple said, peering hard at Kit’s left hand.

“I never saw yours at all that night.”

Midnight Louie suddenly stood, arched his back like a Halloween cat, and thumped his twenty pounds down to the parquet floor.

“Guess he doesn’t like girl talk,” Kit said.

They watched him stalk into the adjoining office with its tiny adjacent bathroom and the open window he used as an informal doggie door. Temple had long since given up treating Louie like a cat. He was more like a resident furry godfather, the Mafia kind. She sometimes wasn’t sure who was letting who live with whom. The only certainty was that Louie knew his way around Las Vegas inside and out, turning up as regularly as CSI personnel at crime scenes.

Letting him roam was less like letting a house cat loose in Sin City than exposing the town to feline muscle of the first water.

Speaking of the first water, which was a term for diamonds of the greatest purity and perfection, Temple slid into the spot Louie had vacated—hmm, warm—and fanned her left hand alongside her aunt’s. They both sighed.

“Yours is fabulous,” they said in concert, then laughed.

“Does ‘yours’ refer to the ring, or the donor?” Kit asked.

“Both, of course!”

“Temple, why didn’t you say something the night of the party celebrating the successful close of the Red Hat-Pink Hat case! You didn’t even wear your engagement ring.”

Temple sobered. “I had mixed feelings. What with Max so recently . . . missing.”

“Gosh, what has it been now?”

“Almost six weeks.”

“Six weeks, really? Aldo and I have lost track of time flying between my condo in Manhattan and looking for new digs here. And still no word?”

“Kit, a guy who sells his house and leaves town without mentioning it to his girlfriend is not likely to send homesick text messages.”

“It’s a mystery. You’ll solve it.”

“I will. Someday. But, meanwhile, we have to get you married to the eldest Fontana brother. All Vegas will be agog at this foreign New York City woman who skimmed the cream of the town’s deeply committed bachelors into her web of bewitchment in a few days flat.”

Kit, an ex-actress who could look as demure as Miss Muffet when called for, eyed the glittering square diamond solitaire on her petite knuckle. “He did go all out when he finally went over to the wedlock side.”

“The stone is huge!”

Kit batted her eyelashes. “I’ve never bought the idea that small women should wear small hats and jewelry, have you?”

“Absolutely not.”

“Besides”—Kit leaned in to examine the intricate ruby and diamond ring on Temple’s left hand—“who’d a thunk an ex-priest would come up with a vintage ring ripe for appearing in the original cast of Broadway Babies of 1935. That’s a work of Art Deco.”

“He got it at a little shop around the corner of the Strip. Fred Leighton. The wedding ring itself is a pair of ruby circle guards.”

“I’ll be right there, ogling it at the ceremony.”

“My matron of honor.”

Kit teared up. She’d been a big-city career woman since college, and single. Who’d a thunk a Vegas hunk years her junior (who was counting exactly?) would be Mr. Right?

“Why can’t you be my matron of honor?” Kit said. “That would be so deliciously unexpected. Aren’t you and Matt getting a civil wedding here before going formal and letting your mom and dad back in Minnesota know?”

Temple sighed. “Maybe. Whatever we do, I don’t want to rush it.”

“Probably wise,” Kit said, “given the large dangling loose end.” She saw Temple’s expression wilt. “Oh, sorry! Slap me so I bite my tongue! I didn’t remember that Max’s old magic act used suspended animation and bungee acrobatics.”

Temple nodded, not able to speak for a moment, secretly afraid that Max wasn’t just missing, but dead.

“Listen, kitten. Just think how flabbergasted Karen will be when she comes for the wedding and gets a load of Aldo. Her old maid sister marrying a devastatingly eligible Fontana brother.”

“Mom’s coming?”

“Sure. I mean, she is essential family. Isn’t she? Look, I know you’ve been kinda distant, and I don’t know why, except the same thing happened to me thirty-five years ago when I left Minneapolis for a bigger, more exciting city.”

Temple had her hands to her face, which made the ring’s dazzle explode in the daylight from the room’s row of French doors. “Mom’s coming! Oh, my God. I hadn’t dreamed of that. I thought Matt and I would fly up to see her and Dad and everyone in Minnesota . . . later.”