Kerol Duglas - Cat In A White Tie And Tails

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For Midnight Louie Jr. and Xanadu,simply the best ever

Contents

Title Page

Copyright Notice

Dedication

Previously in Midnight Louies Lives and Times

Chapter 1:

Underwater

Chapter 2:

Let the Mind Games Begin

Chapter 3:

Las Vegas Leavings

Chapter 4:

Louie on the Fly

Chapter 5:

Second City Kitty

Chapter 6:

Fast Food 4 Thought

Chapter 7:

Suite Deal

Chapter 8:

Doves vs. Pigeons

Chapter 9:

Tunnel Vision

Chapter 10:

Family Matters

Chapter 11:

Collared

Chapter 12:

Prawn Patrol

Chapter 13:

Surprise Party

Chapter 14:

Gossip Guys: Doing Ones Nails

Chapter 15:

Prodigal Cat

Chapter 16:

Search and Unexpected Seizure

Chapter 17:

Subterranean Sunday Blues

Chapter 18:

Trapped, Stacked, and Zapped

Chapter 19:

Tail End

Chapter 20:

Lefty Behind

Chapter 21:

Past Tax Due

Chapter 22:

We Call the Wind Mariah

Chapter 23:

The Second Coming

Chapter 24:

A Tale Untold

Chapter 25:

Angst la Carte

Chapter 26:

Lurking Lusty Laddies

Chapter 27:

Brothers, Where Art Thou?

Chapter 28:

The Post-Midnight Hour

Chapter 29:

Bye-Bye Windy Kitty

Chapter 30:

Surprise Park

Chapter 31:

Missing Links

Chapter 32:

Bad Mews

Chapter 33:

Temples Table of Crime Elements

Chapter 34:

Fur Flies

Chapter 35:

Double Down

Chapter 36:

Ill Have a Double Agent

Chapter 37:

The Shadow Nose

Chapter 38:

Game for Adventure

Chapter 39:

Cold Case Contact

Chapter 40:

Brassy and Breezy

Chapter 41:

Sob Sisters

Chapter 42:

Back to School

Chapter 43:

Alien Eyes

Chapter 44:

Midnight at the Oasis

Chapter 45:

Million-Dollar Collar

Chapter 46:

Monkey-Suit Business

Chapter 47:

After-Hours Nightmare

Chapter 48:

Bringing Down the House

Chapter 49:

Maxs Last Act

Chapter 50:

A Very Vegas Affair

Chapter 51:

Makeover of Honor

Chapter 52:

Here Comes the Bride

Chapter 53:

Evening in Paris

Chapter 54:

Meddling Belles

Chapter 55:

Twisted Tight

Chapter 56:

Rematch

Chapter 57:

Invitation to a Duel

Chapter 58:

Domesticated Species

Chapter 59:

Motorcycle Melodrama

Tailpiece:

Midnight Louie Has Mixed Feelings

Tailpiece:

Carole Nelson Douglas on Other Matters

By Carole Nelson Douglas from Tom Doherty Associates

About the Author

Copyright

Previously in

Midnight Louies Lives and Times

Las Vegas is my beat.

I love this rambling, gambling entertainment capital with a supersized dose of lights, action, and camerasecurity or otherwise.

The lights the security and tourist cameras and the action remain as bright and frenetic as always. Our landmark hotel-casinos and allied institutions are still puttin on the glitz.

Me, although a Las Vegas institution, I have always kept a low profile.

You do not hear about me on the nightly news. That is how 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.

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. So would some other guys, but they do not have my lush hirsute advantages.

Miss Temple Barr and I make perfect roomies. She tolerates my wandering ways. I look after her without getting in her way. 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 and private relations of all stripes and legalities.

I must admit that our most recent crime-busting adventure took us a step beyond the beyond to a conspiracy of magicians and a collision with the mean streets of international terrorism and counterterrorism that left us both breathless.

Let me just say that everything it seemed you could bet on is now up for grabs and my Miss Temple may be in the loselose situation of her life and times.

Here is the current status of where we are all at:

None can deny that the Las Vegas crime scene is big time, and I have been treading these mean neon streets for twenty-three books now. I am an alpha cat. Since I debuted in Catnap and Pussyfoot, I commenced to a title sequence that is as sweet and simple as B to Z.

My alphabet begins with the B in Cat on a Blue Monday. After that, the titles color word is in alphabetical order up to the, ahem, current volume, Cat in a White Tie and Tails. (Oh, yeah? I would like to see what three gorillas are going to stuff me into any such monkey suit. Watch this space.)

Since Las Vegas is littered with guidebooks as well as bodies, I will 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 and future missing-in-action magician Mr. Max Kinsella, who has good reason for invisibility. After his cousin Sean died in an Irish Republican Army bomb attack during a posthigh school jaunt to Ireland, Mr. Max joined the man who became his mentor, Garry Randolph, aka Gandolph the Great, in undercover counterterrorism work.

The elusive Mr. Max has also been soughton suspicion of murderby another dame, Las Vegas homicide detective Lieutenant C. R. Molina, single mother of teenage Mariah.

Mama Molina is also the good friend of Miss Temples freshly minted fianc, Mr. Matt Devine, aka Mr. Midnight, a radio talk show shrink on the Midnight Hour and former Roman Catholic priest who came to Vegas to track down his abusive stepfather and ended up becoming a syndicated radio celebrity.

Speaking of unhappy pasts, Miss Lieutenant Carmen Regina Molina is not thrilled that her former flame, Mr. Rafi Nadir, working in Las Vegas after blowing his career at the LAPD, and for years the unsuspecting father of Mariah, now knows what is what and who is whose.

Meanwhile, Mr. Matt drew a stalker, the local lass that Max and his cousin Sean boyishly competed for in that long-ago Ireland