From Library Journal
The adventures of black tomcat Midnight Louie and owner Temple Barr, Las Vegas public relations person, continue. The pair run into theft, missing treasure, and a ghost when Barr attempts an image turn-around for an ailing casino.
Copyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc. -- Dieser Text bezieht sich auf eine vergriffene oder nicht verfügbare Ausgabe dieses Titels.
Copyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc. -- Dieser Text bezieht sich auf eine vergriffene oder nicht verfügbare Ausgabe dieses Titels.
Pressestimmen
"This is the best Louie adventure yet, full of intricate plotting and sharp characterization. And Louie? Nine lives wouldn't be nearly enough for this dude."--Publishers Weekly
"Already an established literary star, Midnight Louie outdoes himself in his newest adventure, leaving us begging and pleading for more. Brimming with a wicked, absolutely irresistible wit, this romantic puzzler is the cat's miaow!"--Romantic Times
"Already an established literary star, Midnight Louie outdoes himself in his newest adventure, leaving us begging and pleading for more. Brimming with a wicked, absolutely irresistible wit, this romantic puzzler is the cat's miaow!"--Romantic Times
Kurzbeschreibung
Midnight Louie, the best tomcat in the crime-solving business, and his human partner, petite redheaded publicist Temple Barr, are once again in the thick of things in the city of sin. The manager of the Crystal Phoenix, one of Las Vegas's premier vacation spot, has hired Temple Barr to help clean up the hotel's image, but soon more than the Phoenix's reputation is in danger. The phoenix becomes prey to mysterious saboteurs whose little pranks just happen to keep endangering Temple's life.
When Temple tangles with ex-priests, local police, FBI agents, obnoxious reporters, and a pasell of semi-reformed mafiosi who wear pastel zoot suits, it's up to Midnight Louie to get her out of knot....before it's too late.
When Temple tangles with ex-priests, local police, FBI agents, obnoxious reporters, and a pasell of semi-reformed mafiosi who wear pastel zoot suits, it's up to Midnight Louie to get her out of knot....before it's too late.
Leseprobe. Abdruck erfolgt mit freundlicher Genehmigung der Rechteinhaber. Alle Rechte vorbehalten.
Chapter 1
Bless the Beasts and Children
"How old is--?" Temple stared at the bald, bouncing, burbling infant, desperately seeking a safe synonym for "it."
And failing.
She would have to commit.
Suicide.
"He/she?" she uttered in a rush.
"Cinnamon is five months." Van von Rhine, the no-nonsense manager of the Crystal Phoenix Hotel and Casino, spoke with maternal fondness.
"Cinnamon," Temple repeated, dazed. "You can call her…Cinny for short."
Temple winced at her own small talk, but hoped that she at least had the gender right. These days, given naming trends for both sexes, one could not be certain. Such uncertainty was no way to impress the boss. The potential boss.
Luckily, fond maternal doting was deaf as well as-apparently--blind.
"Isn't she adorable, if I do say so myself?" Van, a petite pastel-blonde who was nevertheless the terror of hotel staff everywhere, and at the Crystal Phoenix in particular, hefted Cinnamon to her shoulder for a back-pat and a burp. "Nicky wanted to call her 'Nicole,' but I convinced him that French names are too trendy nowadays. Men are so vain."
While Van von Rhine frowned at her husband's natural inclination to give his first child a name that echoed his, Temple recalled a rumor that "Van" was short for "Vanilla." That would make little Cinnamon a chip off the maternal spice rack. Men weren't the only blindly vain ones.
"How's Louie?" Van asked in the tone of one giving equal time to a guest's nearest and dearest.
"Huh?" Temple was seldom flummoxed by sudden subject changes, but pretending to admire babies turned her usually astute brains to, er, pablum. A PR person loathed nothing more than something she knew nada about.
"Oh, would you like to hold her?" Van von Rhine's tone now indicated that she had been seriously and socially derelict.
"Ah, no thanks. Louie? Oh, you mean the cat!"
"Yes." Van's madonnalike smile matched her bland blond serenity. Princess Grace was not dead but resurrected in time for the evening news. "But Louie would not like being referred to as 'the cat.' There is nothing generic about Midnight Louie."
Yessir, that's my baby, Temple's brain insisted on drumming. "Louie's …fine. I'm sorry he wandered away from the Crystal Phoenix--"
Van nodded to a lurking teenaged nanny who quickly removed Cinnamon before Baby burped Gerber's split-pea soup on Mother's immaculate champagne-pale Versace suit shoulder. Talk about Exorcist,V
"We miss him," she said simply.
"I do, too, now and then," Temple chimed in before catching herself. "I mean, he does come and go as he pleases."
Van von Rhine nodded. "Louie is his own fur person. Nicky finally convinced me that there was no point in trying to keep a rolling stone. I'm amazed that Louie deigns to reside with you on a semi-permanent basis."
"Free-to-be-Feline," Temple confided.
"I beg your pardon?" Van von Rhine's pale eyebrows elevated like polite ghostly caterpillars.
"Louie would never leave his Free-to-be-Feline," Temple explained with laudable confidence, "especially now that I dish shrimp Creole over it. Lots of shrimp. Cans of it. It's good for him; the Free-to-be-Feline, not necessarily the shrimp."
"I see." With Cinnamon whisked away, Van's voice indicated boredom with feeding formulas. She sighed. "As for your presence today, Nicky insists it is high time for a hotel makeover. I suppose he's right, given the appallingly short attention-span of the American public. In Europe, hotels pride themselves on their immutability, not on an annual facelift."
Temple remembered the lightly tanned Italian Romeo who had accompanied his wife to the convention center office to reclaim Louie weeks before, luckily to no good effect. Louie, borne away in a silver Corvette, had returned alone and on foot, and that was the end of his unofficial residence at the Crystal Phoenix. Temple wondered why, then sniffed a lingering scent of infant on the air--part Johnson & Johnson's powder, part Pampers, part pea. Perhaps Louie was even more allergic to something besides unadulterated Free-to-be-Feline.
"Wasn't the Crystal Phoenix completely redesigned only a couple years ago?" Temple asked.
"Exactly my point." Van von Rhine, baby and beast dispensed with, resumed her executive manner by folding pale, manicured hands on her sleek, glass-topped desk. "Las Vegas is changing before our eyes, Miss Barr. When Nicky and I introduced the remodeled Crystal Phoenix, 'class,' élan, what-you-will was a novelty in Las Vegas. Now…well, I can't say the town has grown sophisticated, but the marketing emphasis has changed. One must keep up with modern times. The Crystal Phoenix is not about to desert the 'classy' image that has set it apart, but we also must bow to modern economic pressures. We must offer a Family Plan."
Temple nodded seriously. She had never fallen in love with Las Vegas, although she had always rather admired its unpretentiously wacky instincts. But the feisty, money-grubbing town that Bugsy Siegel had imagined in the forties, that had exploded in the fifties, expanded in the sixties, frolicked in the seventies and splurged in the eighties had foundered in the nineties.
Las Vegas needed more than a face-lift to compete with Disney World and dial-a-lottery. It had to showcase more than babes, betting and blinking lights; more even than computerized slot machines and the occasional dose of class. It had to dispense family entertainment.
"Gentleman Johnny Diamond, our ballad singer," Van went on, "was always behind--and therefore has come out ahead of--his time. The hotel decor, which I supervised, is refined to the max."
Temple winced at the last word of the last expression, for personal reasons.
"Our floor show," Van said with prim satisfaction, "was always more reminiscent of the Lido in Paris than the Lace 'n' Lust downtown. But I admit that the Crystal Phoenix lacks the proletarian approach. We must reposition ourselves to attract the full-value, family customers that Las Vegas seeks nowadays. Can you devise a program for us, Miss Barr, that converts 'class' into 'family class?'"
"What a challenge," Temple responded to buy time. "Perhaps I should inspect the operation first."
"Excellent idea." Van von Rhine's trim fingernail, buffed to a rosy sheen, pressed a call button on her desk.
Instantly, a young man knocked on the door and entered the office. "You rang? Your slave is absent and I was passing by, so I thought I'd answer and see what was shakin'."
"Ralph," Van said, looking none too pleased, "Miss Barr needs a tour of the hotel. Is Nicky around?"
"Nicky is always around."
Ralph's lazy grin struck Temple as familiar, not only for its easy intimacy, but for its current shape and form.
Ralph was not an apt name for a suavely swarthy guy in his late twenties wearing a Nino Cerutti ice-cream suit guaranteed to melt female hearts at fifty paces. Temple would have taken him for the lounge singer, Johnny Diamond, had Van von Rhine not called him "Ralph."
"In other words," Van said, frowning, "Nicky's nowhere to be found when he's needed. I'm afraid that you'll have to escort Miss Barr yourself."
Ralph shrugged exquisitely padded shoulders. "No problem." His introductory glance was flattering to Temple, who had recently passed the landmark of thirty, and was therefore likely an "older woman" to him.
"One of Nicky's brothers," Van von Rhine added dryly. "I think you'll be safe."
"Really?" Temple's voice lilted with interest.
The Fontana brothers were infamous in Las Vegas for their obscene number (nine or ten, Temple recalled), their spiffy tailoring, and their latent mob tendencies. Nicky, of course, was the impeccably respectable businessman of the bunch with his purchase and restoration of the Crystal Phoenix and his marriage to Van, the daughter of a...
Bless the Beasts and Children
"How old is--?" Temple stared at the bald, bouncing, burbling infant, desperately seeking a safe synonym for "it."
And failing.
She would have to commit.
Suicide.
"He/she?" she uttered in a rush.
"Cinnamon is five months." Van von Rhine, the no-nonsense manager of the Crystal Phoenix Hotel and Casino, spoke with maternal fondness.
"Cinnamon," Temple repeated, dazed. "You can call her…Cinny for short."
Temple winced at her own small talk, but hoped that she at least had the gender right. These days, given naming trends for both sexes, one could not be certain. Such uncertainty was no way to impress the boss. The potential boss.
Luckily, fond maternal doting was deaf as well as-apparently--blind.
"Isn't she adorable, if I do say so myself?" Van, a petite pastel-blonde who was nevertheless the terror of hotel staff everywhere, and at the Crystal Phoenix in particular, hefted Cinnamon to her shoulder for a back-pat and a burp. "Nicky wanted to call her 'Nicole,' but I convinced him that French names are too trendy nowadays. Men are so vain."
While Van von Rhine frowned at her husband's natural inclination to give his first child a name that echoed his, Temple recalled a rumor that "Van" was short for "Vanilla." That would make little Cinnamon a chip off the maternal spice rack. Men weren't the only blindly vain ones.
"How's Louie?" Van asked in the tone of one giving equal time to a guest's nearest and dearest.
"Huh?" Temple was seldom flummoxed by sudden subject changes, but pretending to admire babies turned her usually astute brains to, er, pablum. A PR person loathed nothing more than something she knew nada about.
"Oh, would you like to hold her?" Van von Rhine's tone now indicated that she had been seriously and socially derelict.
"Ah, no thanks. Louie? Oh, you mean the cat!"
"Yes." Van's madonnalike smile matched her bland blond serenity. Princess Grace was not dead but resurrected in time for the evening news. "But Louie would not like being referred to as 'the cat.' There is nothing generic about Midnight Louie."
Yessir, that's my baby, Temple's brain insisted on drumming. "Louie's …fine. I'm sorry he wandered away from the Crystal Phoenix--"
Van nodded to a lurking teenaged nanny who quickly removed Cinnamon before Baby burped Gerber's split-pea soup on Mother's immaculate champagne-pale Versace suit shoulder. Talk about Exorcist,V
"We miss him," she said simply.
"I do, too, now and then," Temple chimed in before catching herself. "I mean, he does come and go as he pleases."
Van von Rhine nodded. "Louie is his own fur person. Nicky finally convinced me that there was no point in trying to keep a rolling stone. I'm amazed that Louie deigns to reside with you on a semi-permanent basis."
"Free-to-be-Feline," Temple confided.
"I beg your pardon?" Van von Rhine's pale eyebrows elevated like polite ghostly caterpillars.
"Louie would never leave his Free-to-be-Feline," Temple explained with laudable confidence, "especially now that I dish shrimp Creole over it. Lots of shrimp. Cans of it. It's good for him; the Free-to-be-Feline, not necessarily the shrimp."
"I see." With Cinnamon whisked away, Van's voice indicated boredom with feeding formulas. She sighed. "As for your presence today, Nicky insists it is high time for a hotel makeover. I suppose he's right, given the appallingly short attention-span of the American public. In Europe, hotels pride themselves on their immutability, not on an annual facelift."
Temple remembered the lightly tanned Italian Romeo who had accompanied his wife to the convention center office to reclaim Louie weeks before, luckily to no good effect. Louie, borne away in a silver Corvette, had returned alone and on foot, and that was the end of his unofficial residence at the Crystal Phoenix. Temple wondered why, then sniffed a lingering scent of infant on the air--part Johnson & Johnson's powder, part Pampers, part pea. Perhaps Louie was even more allergic to something besides unadulterated Free-to-be-Feline.
"Wasn't the Crystal Phoenix completely redesigned only a couple years ago?" Temple asked.
"Exactly my point." Van von Rhine, baby and beast dispensed with, resumed her executive manner by folding pale, manicured hands on her sleek, glass-topped desk. "Las Vegas is changing before our eyes, Miss Barr. When Nicky and I introduced the remodeled Crystal Phoenix, 'class,' élan, what-you-will was a novelty in Las Vegas. Now…well, I can't say the town has grown sophisticated, but the marketing emphasis has changed. One must keep up with modern times. The Crystal Phoenix is not about to desert the 'classy' image that has set it apart, but we also must bow to modern economic pressures. We must offer a Family Plan."
Temple nodded seriously. She had never fallen in love with Las Vegas, although she had always rather admired its unpretentiously wacky instincts. But the feisty, money-grubbing town that Bugsy Siegel had imagined in the forties, that had exploded in the fifties, expanded in the sixties, frolicked in the seventies and splurged in the eighties had foundered in the nineties.
Las Vegas needed more than a face-lift to compete with Disney World and dial-a-lottery. It had to showcase more than babes, betting and blinking lights; more even than computerized slot machines and the occasional dose of class. It had to dispense family entertainment.
"Gentleman Johnny Diamond, our ballad singer," Van went on, "was always behind--and therefore has come out ahead of--his time. The hotel decor, which I supervised, is refined to the max."
Temple winced at the last word of the last expression, for personal reasons.
"Our floor show," Van said with prim satisfaction, "was always more reminiscent of the Lido in Paris than the Lace 'n' Lust downtown. But I admit that the Crystal Phoenix lacks the proletarian approach. We must reposition ourselves to attract the full-value, family customers that Las Vegas seeks nowadays. Can you devise a program for us, Miss Barr, that converts 'class' into 'family class?'"
"What a challenge," Temple responded to buy time. "Perhaps I should inspect the operation first."
"Excellent idea." Van von Rhine's trim fingernail, buffed to a rosy sheen, pressed a call button on her desk.
Instantly, a young man knocked on the door and entered the office. "You rang? Your slave is absent and I was passing by, so I thought I'd answer and see what was shakin'."
"Ralph," Van said, looking none too pleased, "Miss Barr needs a tour of the hotel. Is Nicky around?"
"Nicky is always around."
Ralph's lazy grin struck Temple as familiar, not only for its easy intimacy, but for its current shape and form.
Ralph was not an apt name for a suavely swarthy guy in his late twenties wearing a Nino Cerutti ice-cream suit guaranteed to melt female hearts at fifty paces. Temple would have taken him for the lounge singer, Johnny Diamond, had Van von Rhine not called him "Ralph."
"In other words," Van said, frowning, "Nicky's nowhere to be found when he's needed. I'm afraid that you'll have to escort Miss Barr yourself."
Ralph shrugged exquisitely padded shoulders. "No problem." His introductory glance was flattering to Temple, who had recently passed the landmark of thirty, and was therefore likely an "older woman" to him.
"One of Nicky's brothers," Van von Rhine added dryly. "I think you'll be safe."
"Really?" Temple's voice lilted with interest.
The Fontana brothers were infamous in Las Vegas for their obscene number (nine or ten, Temple recalled), their spiffy tailoring, and their latent mob tendencies. Nicky, of course, was the impeccably respectable businessman of the bunch with his purchase and restoration of the Crystal Phoenix and his marriage to Van, the daughter of a...
