Cat In A Sapphire Slipper

Temple had leaned inside to crane her neck left and right, and down and up, avoiding the bed and its occupant.

“That huge mirror wall in the rococo frame is the one that’s see-through from the other side?”

“Yes,” Matt said. “It’s a small room, maybe eight-by-ten, with mini-blinds on the inside window. There’s a table with a low-level lamp. And a chair. I sat on it; but it felt creepy.”

“Kind of like taking a seat in a porno movie house,” Nicky suggested. “Not that I frequent such places,” he added quickly.

“Like any place illicit,” Matt said, “it had a nasty feel to it.”

“So you stood?” Temple asked.

“No. I moved to sit against one wall. I didn’t need or want to see anything through that secret window.”

“Was the floor carpeted, like the bedroom?”

Matt thought. “Yes, I guess. It wasn’t cold anyway.”

“It wouldn’t be,” Nicky said, “out here in the desert, but the steel-blue carpeting continued through the false baseboard on the section of wall that was a hidden door. How’d you find it?”

“The seam was a bit off. And I was desperate. Those women hooting up a storm in the hall were heading my way. I had no idea proper young women could be so rowdy, and bawdy.”

“Oh, Matt,” Temple said, “they probably ate up a tour of a bordello by its residents the way I’d devour a backstage tour of a major Vegas magic show. I’m a little weird that way, preferring magicians’ illusions to peeks into a bordello. Women find ‘naughty’ very interesting.”

“Men too,” Nicky added.

Matt said nothing, just sighed pointedly.

Temple studied the room. “Definitely on the kinky side. You’re sure the mirror above the bed is not see-through?”

“No,” Matt and Nicky said in unison.

“No, or not sure?”

“It’s pretty irrelevant. When I found Matt in here bending over the girl on the bed, doing CPR,” Nicky said, “I just checked on her condition, dead, and his, in shock, and got us the hell out of there.”

“What did you learn from bending over her?” Temple asked Matt.

“That her eyes were blue, to match the decorating scheme. Maybe it was a color-coordinated murder. And the thin black scarf around her throat flared at the ends so I could see it was a fishnet stocking. They are stockings, aren’t they, not panty hose?”

“I’m not an expert on fishnet stockings,” Temple said. “They have a long rep as sexy entertainer accessories, on the trashy side, although they came back into high fashion briefly a couple of years ago. The manufacturers are always trying to get women back into hose again, even in this suffocatingly hot climate. Didn’t work with me.”

“Does with Van,” Nicky said. “She’s an executive woman; dresses to the nines.”

“I dress to the Easy Eights,” Temple said with a smile, offering her bare calf and foot in its medium-heeled mule.

“Speaking of the Not-Easy Eights,” Nicky said, “we need to discover if this corpse is one of my brothers’ significant others, or one of the resident ladies.”

“The madam didn’t recognize her.”

“Okay, she might be somebody entirely unknown, but then how did she end up here?”

“How did most of us?” Temple asked. “You twelve guys were hijacked.”

“An imported body,” Nicky mused. “That’s kinky. I suppose she could have been imported in the limo trunk without anyone the wiser. Where do you hide a semi-naked dead woman you want to ditch?”

Matt added, “We need to identify her. Is she known to the people who are here now? Not that they wouldn’t lie. How can we try to identify her without entering the room again?”

Nicky flourished his cell phone, hit a button and rapidly clicked through close-up and distant photos of the seminude dead woman. “While I was guiding you out of the crime scene, I took these. You were pretty stunned. Giving CPR to an almost nude dead woman would do that. Damn cell phone may not get great signals way out here, but the photo feature works swell.”

Temple shivered to see the woman’s features close up in the small screen, as blank of expression as a doll’s face. She was young and pretty enough to be either a sex-for-hire object of desire, or a Fontana girlfriend. Such a waste.

“First thing,” Nicky said, “I’m going to search around here for her clothes. I doubt she arrived here undressed, and even a resident would start with more than some inciting lingerie at least. Maybe she was undressed just before, or after, her murder.”

“Why?” Matt asked, appalled.

“Confuses the issue of who she . . . was,” Temple said, “and therefore, who might have killed her. Whoever did it must have acted on impulse. You couldn’t set up a situation like this.”

“Well,” Nicky pointed out, “eight vengeful bridesmaids did. Maybe one of them figured she could off a rival while she was at it.”

“But your brothers surely weren’t ever customers here?”

Nicky frowned at Temple. “I’d say no, they don’t have to patronize brothels. But there are a lot of them and I certainly don’t keep up with their entertainment and personal lives.”

“And there’s always Uncle Mario,” Matt put in.

“Of course!” Temple eyed Nicky. “An older man might need more . . . exotic stimulation.”