Cat In A Topaz Tango

Chapter 21: Celebrity Is the Cat’s Pajamas

Chapter 22: Pool Shark

Chapter 23: Shaken, Not Stirred

Chapter 24: En Sweet

Chapter 25: Everybody Undercover, Quick!

Chapter 26: Insecure Security

Chapter 27: Reinvention Waltz

Chapter 28: Precious Topaz

Chapter 29: Brothers, Where Art Thou?

Chapter 30: Undressed Rehearsal

Chapter 31: Hot Stuff

Chapter 32: Wardrobe Malfunction II

Chapter 33: Hotfooting It

Chapter 34: Mama’s Girls

Chapter 35: Purse Pussycat Prowl

Chapter 36: Red Hot Chili Peppers

Chapter 37: The Shoe Must Go On

Chapter 38: Mercedes Pasodoble

Chapter 39: Chef du Jour

Chapter 40: Rapid Recovery

Chapter 41: Too Dead to Dance?

Chapter 42: Pasodoble Double Cross

Chapter 43: Stomp ’Em If You Got ’Em

Chapter 44: Too Hot to Handle

Chapter 45: Postmortem on a Pasodoble

Chapter 46: A Perfect Barbie Doll

Chapter 47: Madness in His Method Dancing

Chapter 48: Paso de Deux

Chapter 49: Another Opening, Another Blow

Chapter 50: One-armed Bandit

Chapter 51: Crime Seen

Chapter 52: Rehearsed to Death

Chapter 53: Fighting Form

Chapter 54: Rest and Recreation

Chapter 55: Last Tango in Zurich

Chapter 56: On the Topaz Trail

Chapter 57: An Open and Shut Case

Chapter 58: Fenced In

Chapter 59: Terminal Tango

Chapter 60: Curtain Calls

Chapter 61: Dial M for Motive

Chapter 62: Topaz Tango

Chapter 63: Ciao Ciao Ciao

Chapter 64: For Her Eyes Only

Chapter 65: Cane Dance

Chapter 66: Dancing in the Dark

Chapter 67: No Good Dude Goes Unpunished

Tailpiece: Midnight Louie Mulls Many Matters

Carole Nelson Douglas Plays the Dance Card

Cat in a

Topaz Tango

Midnight Louie’s Lives and Times . . .

There are a lot of fat cats in Las Vegas.

These glitzy media-blitzed streets host almost forty million tourists each year and a ton of camera crews. If cameras are not recording background shots for CSI: Crime Scene Investigation, they are capturing thousands of personal videos. People think they know this town—from film if not firsthand experience—know it from the flashy hotels to the seamy side of the Strip.

And a good number of them know one particular Las Vegas institution.

That would be me.

Oh, I keep a low profile. You do not hear about me on the nightly news. That is the way I like it. That is the way any primo PI would like it. The name is Louie, Midnight Louie. I am a noir kind of guy, inside and out. I like my nightlife shaken, not stirred.

I am not your usual gumshoe, in that my feet do not wear shoes of any stripe, but shivs. Being short, dark, and handsome . . . really short . . . gets me overlooked and underestimated, which is what the savvy operative wants anyway. I am your perfect undercover guy. I also like to hunker down under the covers with my little doll.

Miss Temple Barr and I are perfect roomies. She tolerates my wandering ways. I look after her without letting her know about it. Call me Muscle in Midnight Black. We share a well-honed sense of justice and long, sharp fingernails and have cracked some cases too tough for the local fuzz. She is, after all, a freelance public relations specialist, and Las Vegas is full of public relations of all stripes and legalities.

None can deny that the Las Vegas crime scene is big time, and I have been treading these mean neon streets for twenty-one books now. When I call myself an “alphacat,” some think I am merely asserting my natural male and feline dominance, but no. I simply reference the fact that since I debuted in Catnap and Pussyfoot, I then commenced to a title sequence that is as sweet and simple as B to Z.

That is where I began my alphabet, with the B in Cat on a Blue Monday. From then on, the color word in the title is in alphabetical order up to the current volume, Cat in a Topaz Tango.

Since Las Vegas is littered with guidebooks as well as bodies, I wish to provide a rundown of the local landmarks on my particular map of the world. A cast of characters, so to speak:

To wit, my lovely roommate and high-heel devotee, Miss Nancy Drew on killer spikes, freelance PR ace Miss Temple Barr, who had reunited with her elusive love . . .

. . . the once again missing-in-action magician Mr. Max Kinsella, who has good reason for invisibility. After his cousin Sean died in a bomb attack during a post-high-school jaunt to Ireland, he went into undercover counterterrorism work with his mentor, Gandolph the Great.

Meanwhile, Mr. Max is sought by another dame, Las Vegas homicide detective Lieutenant C. R. Molina, mother of teenage Mariah . . .

. . . and the good friend of Miss Temple’s recent fiancé, Mr. Matt Devine, a radio talk-show shrink and former Roman Catholic priest who came to Vegas to track down his abusive stepfather, Cliff Effinger.

Speaking of unhappy pasts, Miss Lieutenant Carmen Regina Molina is not thrilled that her former flame, Mr. Rafi Nadir, the unsuspecting father of Mariah, is in Las Vegas after blowing his career at the LAPD. . . .