Cat in a Topaz Tango

by Carole Nelson Douglas

  Temple grinned. How could she and Zoe be any safer? She had two relentless protectors in the form of feuding bodyguards, each competing to be the more perfect parent and police officer.

  Insecure Security

  The ballroom where the show would be held seemed football field huge, with electricians and stagehands running around it like fire ants.

  Temple eased her candy-apple red patent leather platform shoes over the snakes’ nests of black cables crisscrossing the carpeted floor.

  “Watch your step, little lady.” Rafi took her elbow and almost hoisted her above the entangling cables.

  On her other side, Molina frowned. “You two are on cozy terms.”

  Rafi gave Temple a Cheshire cat smirk. “It’s all about working together on that reality TV show. Bonds form fast.”

  “You and a bunch of teenage girls. I may heave.”

  “Not on the cables. That could be dangerous.”

  She looked mad enough to spit on both of them, but shrugged and stalked ahead, her tailored loafers missing every sheaf of cable.

  “Man, she is wired,” Rafi said.

  When Temple laughed, he caught her eye.

  “Appropriate choice of words, right here,” he said. “I don’t know whether her problem is concealed pain or . . . concealed something else.”

  Temple was not an ex–marital counselor, like Matt, so she let that lie. “How do we go about investigating in this massive place? A determined killer could be running around in one of these work-man’s overalls.”

  “I’m sure that’s where Carmen’s gone. She’s got undercover cops here. They’ll have checked lists of workmen, program personnel, waitstaff, anyone with business in the area. And they’ll continue checking. You think you could find an outfit more likely to scream, ‘Here I am, mob me or kill me’?”

  Temple looked down at her black-lace leggings, racy red shoes, and short, full skirt. She waggled her fingers in the long spiderweb-pattern Goth gloves and hefted the orange patent leather tote bag holding Louie and little else higher on her shoulder.

  “I have to be fashion-forward. The world expects that of Zoe Chloe. Golly, Rafi, how long do I have to lug Louie around as a purse pussycat? He weighs a ton!”

  Louie’s large, cheeky tomcat face looked very Halloweenish peering over the pumpkin-colored tote bag.

  “Cats aren’t supposed to like being carried around,” Temple complained further.

  “He’s a good prop,” Rafi said, lifting the double tote straps off her right shoulder.

  Before Temple could sigh her relief, Louie hissed at his new custodian and wriggled out of the bag onto the floor. In a few smooth darts, he threaded the workmen’s legs before they even noticed his presence and, like Molina before him, disappeared.

  “That cat has a nose for trouble,” Rafi commented. “If Carmen wouldn’t have my head for leaving you, I’d follow him.”

  “Let’s both do it. Louie thinks best on his feet.”

  So they tripped the cables fantastic until they arrived at the backstage area where floor directors, the producer, the music director, and press agents were milling around.

  “Miss Ozone!” exclaimed a jovial man shaped like a bottom-heavy wine bottle that comes in a basket wrap. He waddled over, operating a cell phone camera. “Fab to have you here. You look fab. The show will be fab with you emceeing our junior division and bringing all your online fans along for the ride, not to mention making new fans through your appearances here. And this gentlemen is?”

  “Mr. Raphael d’Arc, my manager and occasional personal security agent.”

  “Hmm.” The officious fellow looked Rafi over and decided he looked both secure and personable. “Not the usual mindless muscle in hip-hop bling. Quite refreshing, Miss Ozone.”

  “I aim to refresh,” Temple said. “So tell me what’s all happenin’ so I can jive with the jukebox in perfect one-and-ah-two-and-ah-three-and-ah-bam git-down, tank-up, thank you, ladies and gentlemen time.”

  “She is a pistol, isn’t she, man?” the guy asked Rafi as if they were secret frat brothers, with a wink and a would-be jab in the ribs.

  Rafi easily evaded any contact and drew his black denim jacket back to reveal a tan leather holster. “This is a pistol, man. Who are you and why are you accosting Miss Ozone?”

  “Hey, chill, dude! I’m the DJ for breaks on this show. Gotta keep the live audience mellow yellow between segments. I’m just a fan of Miss Ozone. She is one scintillating little mama.”

  “You’re on the set the day before the actual broadcasts?”

  “Yes, sir!” The DJ was getting very Private Gomer Pyle after seeing the iron Rafi was pumping. “I need to watch the rehearsals, get the rhythm and the routines down. Just like Miss Ozone here. That’s why you’re here early, isn’t it? A real hip little pro. Always a 110 percent for the gig. These teen pop tarts are all energy and nerve and flash edges, even if they burn out fast.”

  Temple thought that was pretty true, but coming from this oil-slick guy it made her sick to the stomach.

  Rafi had the same reaction and he had a wanna-be pop tart daughter who was still as naïve as cornflakes. “Maybe. But Miss Ozone is only paid to perform on stage. You keep your distance and do your job, and your lame little soul patch will not be torn right off your chinny-chin-chin.”

  Temple shivered as the guy shimmied away like a bowlful of lard. “That was mean.”

  “He’s a creep. This is what Mariah wants to run deadhead into. Today’s entertainment industry is run by gangsters and creeps on the make and slimy celebrity ‘judges’ who make dough from ridiculing people, some of them pathetically hungry for approval, on live TV.”

  “Wasn’t it always that way?”

  “No. Talent used to matter and bullying wasn’t entertainment.”

  Temple blinked.

  Rafi shrugged. “You discover you have a kid you never knew about, you start to worry about the world. It’s nuts, I know.”

  “I think it’s kinda sweet.”

  Rafi’s fist took a mock swing at her upper arm. “Cut out that kinda talk. You don’t mess with my rep as the Big Bad Wolf That Ate L. A., Red.”

  “I’m closer to a lively strawberry blond these days.”

  “And a tasty little fruit tart you’re playing. But don’t underestimate the fruit flies.”

  Temple nodded. She was liking Rafi Nadir more and more.

  Would that frost Molina.

  Maybe she did have a guardian angel, Mr. Raphael d’Arc, even though Max was gone. Temple wondered where his wings were in residence now, and hoped it wasn’t heaven.

  Reinvention Waltz

  Fiery leg aches sent shooting pains through his entire frame, but for the first time since his escape, sitting in the elegant Hummerbar drinking an aquavit, he felt he lived up to his real name, “Max.”

  Maximilian Fleming was registered at the Hotel St. Gotthard on Zurich’s main shopping, eating, banking street—the Bahnhofstrasse.

  Five new stolen credit cards reposed in the eel skin vertical wallet in the breast pocket of his new leather blazer. His magician’s fingers were still matchless at the Misdemeanor Waltz. The five cards had been extracted from obvious American tourists, all the better to remain undiscovered for longer. Tourists moved on fast these days, and, in patchwork Europe, could scoot two countries over in a day.

  His slacks and silk turtleneck were Ralph Lauren, his shoes Bruno Magli. He’d also bought an electric razor that would beat back his black beard (with a slight gray sheen—when had that happened? Or was it new? Just how old was he?) to a disguising, yet film-star-hip smudge of three days’ growth. The way the bristles had annoyed him on the road, he figured he’d been smooth-shaven previously. His hair had been expensively barbered into the miserable spiky male coxcomb in vogue nowadays that made guys look like the village idiot, or worse, Clay Aiken. Everything elegant and costly was available within walking distance on the Bahnhofstrasse, despite the current economic swoon, a key advant
age. Conspicuous consumption never died.

  He figured bold was the best disguise. A rich Irishman would not be out of place here. The once-impoverished island nation where his forebears had starved for want of potatoes was having an Irish Spring of high-tech industrialization.

  Yes, he’d donned a faint mist of brogue. It came as easy to him as German, even the Swiss variation. As had the facts of recent Irish economic upswing before the recent global recession. That he knew these geopolitical facts and other languages made Garry Randolph’s story about their being partners in counterterrorism for years ring ominously true.

  The only things he didn’t know about was his childhood, boyhood, and personal, educational, professional, and romantic history. Details.

  He’d shopped before he approached the Gotthard’s front desk, where he’d muttered in broken German about a skiing accident in the Alps having delayed his getting to a banking appointment in Zurich. He was rather embarrassingly marooned at the moment but had a crucial appointment at Adler and Company, Privatbank, in the morning. Was any sort of suite or even a single room available?

  His illness-drawn face and the hokey carved cane, which he regarded with rueful disdain and reluctant dependence, had convinced the hotel manager. That and his Gucci bag. Snooty service staff assessed women first by their handbags, then their shoes, and finally their jewelry. For men, the order was watch, luggage, wallet, shoes.

  That’s why a shiny new Patek Philippe high-dollar watch weighed down Max’s bony wrist, courtesy of an oil company executive from Texas. Max didn’t like the piece’s looks and overhyped luxury, but wore it proudly in the name of Enron ripped-off ex-employees everywhere. Corporate greed deserved a comeuppance.

  See? It was all coming back. The nightly news. The exhausted American economy, the Irish renaissance. Brand names. Foreign words. But . . . nothing Personal. He felt like a data-gorged robot.

  Maybe that was why he was chasing Revienne and her Mercedes chariot when he ought to let her go her own way, villain or victim, true purpose unknown.

  But he couldn’t. She’d laughed over dinner in the mountain village, and wolfed down her meal like a real girl. She’d scavenged for him in the mountain meadow farmholds, finding a saw to cut through his imprisoning casts, begging food and clothing. She’d massaged his mending legs until he’d fallen asleep, as trusting as an infant.

  If she’d been kidnapped because of him . . .

  If she’d been leading him on . . .

  Who was Max? Hero or killer? Or just Garry Randolph’s protégé, long past the age of needing mentors?

  After this drink, and a dinner of the restaurant’s famed seafood, Max would be whisked five stories high in this 1889-vintage building to an arty suite with an Internet connection.

  Did he even know how to connect to the Internet, much less real people, including Revienne? Had to. If the languages had come back to him, so would the technology. Just . . . nothing Personal.

  His mind did another of its disconcerting flashbacks: to bright alpine wildflowers, a bouquet of fragrant yellow freesias, a pretty brunet bus driver who wrangled a major German bus and had granted him passage, and . . . a redheaded woman with gray-blue eyes. Revienne was blond.

  Max lurched up. The “lurch” was partly his legs and partly his aquavit. Time for dinner and then a tour of the world by Internet. He’d punch in the words “Garry Randolph,” “Revienne,” “Schneider,” and “Max.”

  As Edward R. Murrow, the pioneer TV broadcaster, used to say in closing his TV news program, “Good night and good luck.”

  See! He remembered vintage catchphrases from before he was born.

  Why not his own damned history?

  Precious Topaz

  While my human posse is introducing itself to our new venue, concentrating on the Dancing With the Celebs set and environs, I figure I better get my black velvet pads pussyfooting over the Oasis Hotel’s entire layout.

  One never knows when the big picture will come in handy.

  The Oasis is one of those midlevel Las Vegas people palaces, like the Luxor, and the remaining grand old dames of the Strip like the Riviera.

  This does not mean that the Oasis is not the usual wild and crazy theme park of an attraction. Where the Luxor exploits the archeological fascination of ancient Egypt, the Oasis concentrates on eastern mysticism in general. Which is a nice way of saying that architecturally and thematically it is a hash of pop culture: ancient hidden treasure, camel trains of stolen jewels, Marco Polo, a little Sinbad and the 1001 Nights, harems, gypsy fortune-tellers, belly dancers, you get the Kodak. It has grabbed the lost Aladdin Hotel’s marketing spot with a more multicultural air.

  An undercover operative like myself often ends up spending the most time on the shady and elite sides of the Strip. Crime tends to erupt at the extremes of the social scale. The happy middle is where passion and money tend to be on the mild and cheap scale. It is not surprising that Mr. Rafi Nadir could quickly rise to a second-in-command security position here, not to take anything away from his admirable reformation.

  Apparently, discovering an unknown out-of-wedlock child can stabilize a man.

  I cannot say that the discovery of my reputed offspring, Miss Midnight Louise, provided me with any impetus other than to run the other way. My impulse was intense, I will give the situation that. Miss Midnight Louise would be cranky that I am operating solo now, but purse pussies do not come in pairs, unlike shoes, or even gumshoes.

  So I prowl the busy-patterned carpet underfoot, a mere shadow in the corner of everyone’s eye, busy educating myself to the scene of any crimes to come. For there will be at least one, with so much ill will already expressed in terms of death threats and the repeat appearance of the Barbie Doll Killer’s calling cards.

  A Vegas hotel floor plan is like a small city to a guy my size. My walking tour would be hard on my pins were it not that I have discovered that this place houses something of deep personal interest, namely a dame.

  She first appears to me on the back of a playing card that has fallen to the carpet. Now, this is a mortal sin, or at least a killing offense in Vegas, where every card being accounted for is a matter of life and death.

  Loose cards imply dirty tricks, fixing, or worse.

  So I nudge my find farther under the blackjack table, braving overexcited and milling human feet. The light is not so good here but I can still make out the lithe photographic form: sleek, asphalt-dark curves fast enough to derail a Porsche, legs that never end in black silk stockings, a flexible rear appendage long enough to derail a train, and the most unearthly, twenty-four-karat golden eyes I have ever seen.

  These orbs—and, yes, that expression is okay, folks, because they are as round and brilliant as harvest moons—would hypnotize a Svengali.

  Phew. I can hardly tear my gaze away already. I am so smitten I risk exposure to scale the table and eye the dealer’s shoe, which is not footwear, but a device for holding several decks of cards. Oh, my yes. Bingo! Every card slipped out of the shoe is a graphic tribute to this most sublime feline form.

  “Hey!” some twenty-one happy gambler carps at my sudden presence. “I was just about to double down.”

  I spit out the card I found on the floor so it falls to the green felt.

  “Uh,” the loudmouth grunts. I found the card under his chair.

  The dealer is frowning. “Stay right there, sir.”

  “Damn cat!” the guy spits at me.

  I snatch up the card and jump down. “Damn cat!” the dealer yells in parting. I can hear the crooked player chuckling to see the evidence vanishing with me.

  I am not about to give up my card until I can find the model and have her personalize it.

  There are two things I now need to locate: a pedigree pin-up book to pin down what breed of cat she is, and info around the hotel to find out who and where she is.

  First I stash the card under a roulette table.

  I cannot go wandering around a casino with a loose pla
ying card clenched in my hot little black lips and sharp white teeth. Being an ace investigator, I know it is no coincidence that this hot, hairy little honey is backing every last darn Oasis playing card.

  Pretty soon I am seeing those opulent gold eyes gazing soulfully down at me from posters and signs all over the hotel.

  There she is, Miss American Beauty, curling into the Big O of Oasis over the show ticket booth, atop the registration desk on giveaway cards in Lucite boxes, six-feet-long lounging over the word “Theater” in the marquee to the nightly show.

  Oh, no. I hope she is not literally a Big Cat. (There are some limits to even one of Midnight Louie’s romantic prowess.)

  By now I am frantic.

  I cannot believe that a dude of my discrimination and wide-ranging territory and nose for news all over Las Vegas has failed to notice the hot new girl in town! I must lay eyes on her, if nothing else.

  It is while crossing the casino carpet, ignoring the hustle and bustle and jostle, that I at last catch her scent. It is sweet, earthy, musky, like expensive perfume. I immediately think of rare amber-gris. It may or may not be based in that treasured effusion of the sperm whale that the ancient Egyptians burned as incense—they worshiped cats, if you recall, so they were the smart sort—but it is music to my nose. It means that she is not “fixed,” that abomination of birth control perpetrated on my kind for its own good, but also for a major reduction in fun for me.

  Now that I have a scent to follow, it is nose to the nap around the casino. In fact, I am so much the bloodhound on a trail that I bump into a table leg, face-to-face.

  No! Not a table leg, but the leggy object of my search.

  She is sitting there like a statue of regal Bast, the Egyptian cat goddess, only she is not eight feet tall, or even three feet tall like a Big Cat, but only a foot or so high and warm and satin-furred and I am lost.