Cat in a Hot Pink Pursuit (Midnight Louie Series #17)

by Carole Nelson Douglas

Overview

Ace freelance PR woman and amateur detective Temple Barr is 30-going-on-19 when she agrees to do homicide lieutenant Carmen Molina a big favor and go undercover as a contestant at Teen Idol, a TV reality show. The lieutenant is worried because someone is threatening the contestants--including her own 13 year old daughter--by leaving mutilated Barbie dolls all over Las Vegas.
Reliving the years of melodrama and teen angst while acting as a nanny-cum-diversion is bad enough, but Temple is dismayed to discover her professional nemesis is in charge of PR for Teen Idol-and, even worse, her romance novelist aunt has flown in from New York to be a judge. Can redheaded Temple fool her nearest and least dearest with a black dye job to complement her new punk persona, Xoë Chloë Ozone?
Temple is on her own among 28 unnatural blonds, who all say they'd kill to make the final cut and be named Teen Idol Queen... and one of them might actually do it. Usually Temple has an ace or two up her sleeve, but Max Kinsella, Temple's ex-magician boyfriend, is AWOL plotting to infiltrate a sinister cabal of terrorist magicians, and neighbor-slash-sometime love interest Matt Devine is in Chicago, tracking down his shocking family roots.
Luckily, there's one one alpha male Temple can always lean on: Midnight Louie, her black alley-cat roommate. Louie is already on the case, ensuring that all the "little dolls" under his care debut on national TV as more than lovely corpses.
At the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781429911474
Publisher:	Tom Doherty Associates
Publication date:	08/22/2025
Series:	Midnight Louie Series , #17
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	465
File size:	843 KB

About the Author

In addition to tales of Midnight Louie, Carole Nelson Douglas is also the author of the historical suspense series featuring Irene Adler, the only woman ever to have "outwitted" Sherlock Holmes.  Douglas resides in Fort Worth, Texas.

Read an Excerpt

Chapter 1
Hello Kitty
Homicide Lieutenant C. R. Molina’s desk hosted two very different images.
One was a glossy 11-by-17-inch poster of a Barbie-doll-cute teen girl tricked out in industrial-strength amounts of hot pink.
The other was the same image, cut into jagged pieces that had been grafted onto photographed body parts of an actual Barbie doll.
The phrase “Teen Idol” on the first poster had morphed into “Twisted Sister,” with a welter of blood-red spatters, on the second one.
“Sick,” Molina said, unnecessarily.
They all stood gazing down on the twisted twin posters, neither of which was exactly wholesome. One was merely Extreme Fashion. The other had been refashioned into something freakishly violent.
“Being the mother of a newly teenaged daughter, finding this stuff strewn around a shopping mall parking lot makes me shudder,” Molina said. “The slashed poster reminds me that some things are scarier than adolescent hormones.”
“Mariah’s thirteen already?” Detective Morrie Alch asked, surprised. He was comfortably into his mid-fifties and his lone daughter was grown, gone, and a mother herself.
How Molina envied him.
“Just turned,” she said. “A month ago. I’m already considering a barbed-wire perimeter around the house. This is so sick.”
“The Teen Idol concept,” Detective Merry Su asked, “or the threatening poster?”
“Both.” Molina shook her head. “So tell me about this Teen Idol thing.”
“Reality TV hits Las Vegas,” Su said. A petite, twenty-something, second-generation Asian American, Su looked ready to compete for a teen title herself.
“Can’t prove it by me,” Molina answered. “We’ve been hosting reality TV since the New Millennium Hotel went up five years ago.”
“It’s a quest to name a’Tween and Teen Queen,” Alch said.
“Two age groups, thirteen to fifteen and sixteen to nineteen,” Su said.
“Got it. Teens-in-training and the full-media deal. Is this a singing competition?”
Being a closet vocalist herself, Molina had actually caught a few episodes of American Idol. She found the concept exploitive of the pathetic wannabes every art form attracts and a mockery of true talent by letting the public select winners for emotional reasons. Look who they felt most sorry for.
“More than that: talent of any kind, made-over looks and improved attitude.” Su was always eager to overexplain. “This is the triathlon of reality shows.”
Alch nodded at the unadulterated poster. “Yup. This girl here looks real athletic, all right. I bet it challenges her biceps to load on that amount of mascara and lip-liner every day.”
“‘Lip-liner?’” Molina called him on it. “Still keeping up with the girly stuff, Morrie, even with the daughter long gone?”
“You haven’t hit the bustier stage in your house, I bet. Hold on to your Kevlar vest.”
Molina chuckled, imagining some busty contestant wearing a bulletproof vest in a glamour roll call on TV. Whoa. Maybe that would have a perverse attraction.
She tapped her forefinger on the oversize plastic bag encasing the altered poster, protecting it for forensic examination.
“We’ve got … what? Dozens of teenage girl competitors from around the country pouring into a Las Vegas shopping mall in their Hello Kitty finery for auditions—and one sick puppy already announcing that he’s out there waiting?”
“That’s about it,” Alch said. “No fingerprints. No way to trace the color copier to a local Kinko’s.”
“Kinko’s are us,” Su said.
“No kidding.” Molina frowned. “You know the routine. Keep it quiet, keep an eye on the audition event. If we’re lucky, the uniforms will find him before this ridiculous show launches. When?”
“This week’s local auditions finish the selection process,” Su said. “Then they narrow the field down to twenty-eight finalists in the two age groups and seclude them all in a foreclosed mansion on the West Side. For two weeks.”
“Two weeks?” Molina didn’t like the wide window of opportunity that much time afforded a pervert with a publicity addiction. “This could be the work of a kook as harmless as Aunt Agatha’s elderberry wine. Or not. Keep on it.”

Molina was still at her desk, with a different wallpaper of paperwork covering it, at seven thirty that evening when someone knocked on her ajar door.
No one knocked in a crimes-against-persons unit. She looked up—glared—from her paperwork. As the only woman supervisor, she never let down her guard.
A man entered as if he owned the joint.
Brown/brown. Five ten or eleven. A stranger who acted way too at home on this turf. On her turf. In her hard-won private office.
“Yes?”
“Working late?”
“Always.” She waited. His clothes were casual but hip: blue jeans, black silk-blend tee, khaki linen jacket, big diver’s watch face full of specialty minidials, and a sleek gold bracelet with a subtle air of South American drug lord. Couldn’t see his shoes. Too bad. A man’s shoes told as much about him as a woman’s.
“You don’t recognize me.” He sat in the single hard-shelled chair in front of her desk, meant to discourage loiterers.
Recognize? No. He was way too hip for what usually showed up in police facilities, except for a five o’clock shadow too faint to be anything but a trendy shaving technique.
“You’ll have to excuse me—” she began sardonically, still searching her memory banks.
“I consider that high praise.”
“That you’ll have to excuse me?”
“That you don’t recognize me in civvies.”
Okay. She ran a mental roster of uniforms, and came up blank. This was beginning to get annoying.
“I’m heading out,” she informed him, slamming her desk drawers shut, picking up the black leather hobo bag she toted to and from work and nowhere out on the job.
“How about a drink en route?”
“How about an ID? And … no.”
He laughed then. “You’re usually onto this stuff. Tough case on your desk?”
“They’re all tough. What’s your name?”
“You really don’t recognize me?”
He cocked his head, and then she had him.
“Dirty Larry?”
“All cleaned up.”
“Gone Chamber of Commerce! To what do I owe—?”
“How about a drink on the way home? Some noncop bar.”
“Why?”
“Personal police business.”
She didn’t like the way he drawled that out but checked her watch. Mariah had stayed after school tonight. Sock-hop committee at another student’s house. Her baby daughter! Thinking about dancing with wolves. All harmless teenybopper stuff, hopefully. Staying at the Ruizes’ for dinner until eight or so.
Dirty Larry, the Mr. Clean edition, waited. He watched her with an amusement that hinted he knew the pushes and pulls of her private life.
Bastard! Her vehemence, unjust, pulled her back from the brink. This was a colleague, after all. An undercover narc. Maybe he had something for her. He’d be used to private rendezvous in public places.
“Okay. Five minutes?”
He nodded, got up, and ebbed into the hall. She speed-dialed the Ruizes and got a commitment that they’d keep Mariah until ten, just in case.
Copyright © 2005 by Carole Nelson Douglas

Table of Contents

	Previously in Midnight Louie's Lives and Times ...	13
Chapter 1	Hello Kitty	17
Chapter 2	Spooks	21
Chapter 3	Swinging for It	30
Chapter 4	Male Call	37
Chapter 5	Mail Call	42
Chapter 6	Undercover Chick	45
Chapter 7	Bait Boy	52
Chapter 8	Separate Lies, Part II	56
Chapter 9	Bling-Bling Babies	61
Chapter 10	Louie Goes Ape	68
Chapter 11	Good Golly, Miss Goth Girl	70
Chapter 12	Turnabout Foul Play	78
Chapter 13	Macho Nachos	85
Chapter 14	Bad Daddy	91
Chapter 15	Sweet Tooth	96
Chapter 16	Monday Morning Coming Down	99
Chapter 17	Mr. Chaperon	103
Chapter 18	Pretty Putrid in Pink	108
Chapter 19	Chicklets	114
Chapter 20	Whipped Scream	121
Chapter 21	Hanky Panky	127
Chapter 22	A Meeting of Minds	135
Chapter 23	Exercised to Death	138
Chapter 24	Great Big Beautiful Doll	142
Chapter 25	Close Encounters of the Weird Kind	146
Chapter 26	Midnight Attack	153
Chapter 27	Midnight Assignation	161
Chapter 28	Contingency Plan	165
Chapter 29	Home Sweet Harassment	177
Chapter 30	The Extent of the Law	180
Chapter 31	Kissing Cousins	189
Chapter 32	The Wig Is Up	194
Chapter 33	Upping the Auntie	201
Chapter 34	Two-Faced	204
Chapter 35	Diet of Worms	208
Chapter 36	Diet Drinks	218
Chapter 37	American Tragedy	224
Chapter 38	North into Nowhere	227
Chapter 39	Awful Unlawful	233
Chapter 40	American Idle	239
Chapter 41	Wolfram and Heart	245
Chapter 42	Feline Shepherd	249
Chapter 43	In Old Cold Type	253
Chapter 44	Old Tyme Revival	257
Chapter 45	Past Tense	260
Chapter 46	Closet Encounter of the Third Kind	266
Chapter 47	Filing Their Nails	272
Chapter 48	Recipe for Murder	279
Chapter 49	Conscentual Adults	284
Chapter 50	A Hasty Hand	289
Chapter 51	Heartfelt and Red-Handed	292
Chapter 52	Dress for Success	299
Chapter 53	Tailings	303
Chapter 54	No Glimpse of Stocking	311
Chapter 55	Shoe Biz	315
Chapter 56	As Blind as Bast	322
Chapter 57	The Past Is Prologue	325
Chapter 58	Showdown	332
Chapter 59	An Invitation She Can't Refuse	340
Chapter 60	Caught in the Crossfire	344
Chapter 61	The World His Oyster	355
	Tailpiece: Midnight Louie, Paterfamilias	360
	Carole Nelson Douglas Makes Room for Daddy	363

Editorial Reviews

"Temple Barr, public relations whiz, rocks Las Vegas with her wacky friends and enemies, fast-paced action, and laughs!"- New York Times bestselling author Janet Evanovich on the Midnight Louie series

"This feisty feline detective is fast gaining a reputation of being one of America's top investigators...If either Mike Hammer or Columbo had a cat, it would be Midnight Louie."-Cat Fancy on the Midnight Louie series

"A furry Sam Spade."—People on the Midnight Louie series

"If Midnight Louie prowled only the predictable streets of genre fiction, all the murders in his ersatz world would be resolved. But each new installment in this exuberant series compounds the complexity, leaving us between books with mysterious bodies and looming menace."-Kirkus Reviews on the Midnight Louie series

"Midnight Louie defies critical comment. To some cat fanciers, he is as tasty as a fresh bowl of Fancy Feast."-Booklist on the Midnight Louie series

"A new Midnight Louie book is pure reading catnip... the irresistibly witty Louie [is] a legendary sleuth who ranks right up with the greats-Travis McGee in fur!"-Romantic Times on the Midnight Louie series

"Those readers who follow Lillian Jackson Braun's Cat Who series will love Midnight Louie!"—VOYA on the Midnight Louie series

"It is always a joy to be reunited with that adorable tomcat, Midnight Louie, whose thoughts, deeds, and devotion make the feline seem more human than most Homo sapiens."-Affaire de Coeur on the Midnight Louie series

From the Publisher

"Noted for its delightfully tongue-in-cheek briskness, the indefatigable Midnight Louie series never seems to run out of steam…."

Booklist