Cat in a Topaz Tango

by Carole Nelson Douglas

  Air, my fellow Americans! Please! We four-footed citizens only ask that you aerate your tootsies as fully and often as we do ours. You will notice that we are not subject to such ills as bunions, corns, hammertoes, and athlete’s foot, although we are better natural-born athletes than the whole kit and caboodle of you put together.

  Having fought my way through this chemical hazard of foot odor, I am able to insinuate myself next to the maternal unit, which is swamped in a chemical cosmetic haze of other, supposedly pleasant odors.

  A word to the wise: cover-ups never work.

  In the confusion, and under the cover of this one large, hysterical lady who goes by the appellation “Mama,” I am able to thrust myself into the heart of the problem: the tiny dancer’s still twitching feet.

  Whew! I will give credit to the heat of the dance. This little doll’s feet are sniffing up a storm. It is not the unnatural natural odor I am accustomed to.

  It is rank, but artificial. In fact, it makes me draw back and box my snout to stifle a sneeze. Itching powder? I have heard of such an item being used for practical jokes, but this is no joke.

  The first solo dance in the junior division has turned into a debacle. Although Miss Sou-Sou is something of a snot deserving of a comeuppance, I cannot endorse dirty tricks among the young teen set.

  As the fascinating feet in my purview are lifted aloft by the awesome CC, I resolve to do what my human associates cannot do in their present guises. I will accompany the victim until I learn what is going on, and who and what might be behind it.

  Ouch! Of course some careless foot has kicked me in the puss.

  Dodging these ticky-tacky boxes of milling footwear, I manage to maintain a low profile by stifling any indignant meows.

  At last I insinuate myself into the junior girls’ dressing room, although I am by no means either a junior or a girl, and join the privileged circle surrounding the now crying child, who alone of her group is still in the set area. For a thirteen-year-old human kit in pain is just that, no matter how many slinky costumes she wears.

  In a moment or two, it is as if I am back in my checkered past, fence-sitting at midnight and yowling some selected riffs guaranteed to attract any nubile females in the vicinity. Only I do not attract nubile females of any species, just the usual hurled footwear reeking of abysmal pedal swamps . . .

  These are a pair of petite mary jane-style shoes ripped off the feet of the suffering little doll. I dodge the Cuban heels, which could make a nasty dent in my cranium, and put my nose to work. You may notice I understand the fine points of female footwear, thanks to my roomie’s formidable shoe collection.

  The whines of the victim and coos of the comforters vanish from my consciousness as my nose for trouble inhales a big gulp of the hot and bothered linings of the shoes in question.

  Yeow!!! I leap back, forced to swallow my natural vocalizations. My pea-green peepers beloved of females of all species tear over and cry crocodile tears onto my jet-black bib. My sensitive, exposed nose skin burns like the very devil was exhaling the breath of Hell itself on it.

  I know what has happened, if not why yet.

  What a despicable plan, a dirty trick of the first water, and I do mean watering eyes! I backpedal out of the room as fast as I can, my mitts eager to box the obnoxious, polluting fumes from brutalized nostrils.

  No wonder the poor girl was screeching.

  Who would commit such a nefarious act?

  It is clever and underhanded and mean, and thus totally and utterly human in its conception and execution from first to last. I cannot wait for my humans to find out what has gone wrong.

  Mama’s Girls

  Molina came charging down the hall outside the junior girls’ hotel suite so fast the two hotel security guards at the door put their palms on their gun butts.

  “Chill,” she said, “LVMPD shield.”

  She produced it after transferring the tote bag containing Midnight Louie to Temple’s custody.

  “He was in the dressing-room area already. Pesky cat,” she growled at Temple. “And he weighs the advertised ton.”

  The guards glanced from the tote bag cat to Molina’s retro-sixties headband and love beads to her jeans and moccasins.

  “We’ve been told there were undercover city cops on the premises,” the old guy said.

  “The little girl will be all right,” Molina said. “It was a nasty prank. I want to interrogate the other girls and their mothers without it looking like it, so Ms. Ozone here and I will be doing that. And I’ll probably take a couple of the girls back to our high-roller suite, where your assistant security chief is . . . on duty 24/7. Of course no one is to know who I am or any of this, right?”

  “Got it, Lieutenant,” the young guy, Hank, said. “Rafi Nadir made me floor boss on this detail. You can count on me.”

  The older one just gawked. Lieutenants weren’t usually out in the field. Then he eyed Zoe Chloe and Midnight Louie and swallowed.

  “I’ll be ordering a couple of room service pizzas,” Molina added. “Check ’em and the waiter out, even though I said they’re coming. You know the room service waitstaff, right?”

  “There are an awful lot of ’em in a place this size,” Roy said.

  “I know the equipment and the drill, Lieutenant,” Hank assured her. “I’ll call human resources on them if there’s anything suspicious.”

  “I got a granddaughter these girls’ age,” Roy added as further reassurance.

  “Okay.” Molina knocked at the door and nodded at Temple to go in first. “Tell ’em the Goth fairy is bringing cat hair and pizza.”

  Molina might be a security fanatic, but did she know kids.

  Everybody in the room squealed when Zoe Chloe fronted in. She was the next best thing to a Los Hermanos brother.

  An announcement of pizza for all was the third best thing.

  And Louie to coo over was a solid fourth.

  Molina dutifully called room service like the Zoe Chloe Ozone middle-aged flunky she was portraying while the girls shouted out their druthers for toppings. Like most hotel order-in pizzas these days, an outside franchise handled the calls, so the menu was pretty standard.

  Except when Zoe Chloe Ozone ordered a custom shrimp, artichoke heart, and jalapeño one for her star-self alone.

  “Any news on Sou-Sou?” the question came from kids and mothers alike.

  Neither Temple nor Molina had gotten a good group look at the mothers. The overblown Smith woman was with her absent daughter, leaving only the two others present, since Mariah was serving as EK’s “manager.”

  Patrisha Peters, the only African-American contestant, was a lean, leggy skateboarder, but her mother was a pleasantly plump, attractive woman with a calm manner. She introduced herself as Frances Peters. Meg-Ann’s mother wasn’t anything like her hard-driving soccer-athlete daughter. Angie Peyton was unpleasantly plump, her clothing straining at all the most unfortunate places, her hair showing dark roots, and her manner both harried and disinterested. In a sense she was the sloppy side of Yvonne Smith. Temple guessed she was underemployed and financially stressed, probably through no fault of her own but divorce and bad luck.

  Snap judgments were often all wrong. Now was the time to ask the women to reveal themselves.

  Zoe Chloe plopped down cross-legged (all the better to show off her skull-head white-on-black tights) on a sofa.

  “This is my personal assistant, Vicki,” she said, waving at Molina. “I had her check with the staff backstage. What’d they say, Vick?”

  As she’d hoped, Zoe Chloe had invented a name for Molina that the policewoman hated, from the expression on her face.

  “Sou-Sou got a literal hotfoot from a substance put into her shoes,” Molina said, sounding way too copish with that “substance” talk.

  “Then it was deliberate?” Frances Peters asked. “Sabotage? None of us here would do that.”

  “That’s the thing,” Zoe Chloe said. “It doesn’t look good for any of
the other contestants. So we gotta find out who and What everybody is, so we’re ready when the police get involved, if they do.”

  “The police?” Angie Peyton asked, alarmed. “God, that’s just what our girls don’t need right now. They have enough stress.”

  “Hotel security was talking about calling them in,” Molina, aka “Vicki,” put in virtuously, as if she wasn’t one. “Ms. Ozone is right. The more we know about the junior group, the more everybody will be off the hook.”

  “What about that soap star whose heel broke?” Angie asked. “That was just an accident. Why isn’t this?” She seemed a woman born to be in denial.

  “It could be,” Molina answered. “We’ve got to be ready if it isn’t. You know tabloid TV will be all over this.”

  The girls remained listening, bright-eyed with curiosity and excitement at the mention of national TV exposure. The mothers’ brows were wrinkling with a realization of what bad press could do. Mariah was watching them all, not obviously. Even Ekaterina was serious and alert, trying to figure out what this meant.

  Would a girl like EK, with so much riding on winning this contest, be the one to stoop to sabotage? Temple wondered.

  “I suppose,” Frances Peters said slowly, “it’d be hard to say whether the girls or us mothers are the bigger suspects?”

  Molina jumped in. “Everybody is suspect. I’ve spent years trying to spin good publicity from bad, and it can’t be done. Even Ms. Ozone is suspect. You moms are here to protect your daughters, but I’m here to make sure Ms. Ozone’s career isn’t damaged.”

  Temple had to admire Molina’s gift for throwing a scare into people.

  Meg-Ann and Patrisha exchanged the uneasy looks of kids who might know more than their mothers did, and Ekaterina’s waif-wide eyes expanded to pizza pan size.

  Only Mariah remained unworried. She knew she was an undercover kid.

  “So, anyway, peeps,” Zoe Chloe summed up, “things could get pretty unpleasant for all of us until someone finds out who put the hot sauce to Sou-Sou’s shoes. Hey, sounds like a funky song title. I say we can turn this into a fun gig and find out about each other and chill with some hot pizza and Dr Pepper.” She turned to her personal assistant. “You did remember to order Dr Pepper, didn’t you? That’s all I drink.”

  Molina set her teeth and picked up the phone to order from room service, asking the other girls if they had any preferences.

  Awestruck by the Zoe Chloe Ozone presence, they only wanted what their idol ordered.

  Man, Temple could dig being a pop tart . . .

  Forty minutes later, everyone was sitting on the carpet, dozens of cheap paper napkins unfolded, smearing a gloss of red pizza sauce over lipstick. A lot of chitchat and chatter had gone down with the pepperoni slices and melted cheese, but no clues that stood out.

  Midnight Louie stole the show by darting out a black paw to snag yet another circle of sausage on the now-cold pizza remains. Everybody laughed. They hadn’t laughed earlier when he’d knocked a plastic shaker of red pepper flakes over on the carpet.

  “If we don’t know what,” Mariah opined between chews on the best-tasting generic pizza in the world, because tension had everyone feeling starved, “how can we begin to know who?”

  “Sounds like sound police procedure to me,” Molina put in, earning a glancing flash of gratitude from her daughter. “The police won’t know what until tomorrow morning. Tell you what. Since Ekaterina has no responsible adult present to look after her, Ms. Ozone and I will take her and her friend Mariah up to our suite, so you two mothers only have your own daughters to watch over.”

  Two maternal brows frowned at the idea. “Separate the girls?” Angie objected. “They were just bonding.”

  Mariah rolled her eyes, indicating the opposite, so Temple jumped in.

  “It’ll be easier to alibi the kids if anyone gets carried away and starts tossing out accusations.”

  A long silence indicated they all knew who might be slinging accusations around: Yvonne Smith.

  “That’s very generous of Ms. Ozone,” Frances Peters said. “And it might be best for EK.” Her glance at the girl also indicated just who’d been the butt of Sou-Sou’s snobbery.

  Molina nodded, well satisfied with the new arrangement in all of her identities: cop, mother, and undercover teen star flunky.

  Purse Pussycat Prowl

  It is not like me to be so clumsy but it is like me to be so nosy.

  Of course I did not “accidentally” overturn the red pepper shaker. That was just an excuse so that I could sniff around on all the shoeless feet and unguarded purses on the floor as children and mothers eat like starving lions and chatter like parrots.

  Oh, that silly fellow. He just has to have his nose into everything.

  Of course what I get for my sleuthing efforts is a flake up my left nostril and a sneezing fit. For this reason I doubt that actual pepper flakes were used in the incident.

  It is not easy to conduct discreet investigations while sneezing up a storm. So I hunker under a chair to smother my nasal paroxysms and wait for the fit to subside. It is actually a clever way to get all present to totally forget about literally little me.

  And that gives me plenty of time to overhear this and that, especially when Yvonne Smith comes in breathless about the vicious attack on her daughter and with a long report on Sou-Sou’s poor feet being tended by the hotel doctor in a security-guarded location. She is urged to sit down, relax, eat, and drink.

  Thus, everyone has been lulled into forgetting my presence and I have reduced my aversion to red pepper flakes to the occasional sniffle. Floor-sitting ladies tend to forget against which object of furniture they have laid their precious purses. I slink out from concealment and sniff my way to each in turn.

  Unfortunately, my clever red pepper exposure has served to blunt my usually sharp sniffer.

  Miss Frances Peters’s bag is a large leather Stein Mart affair decorated with safari pockets and lots of metal hardware. You would not want to take it through an airport security line.

  I detect a few ancient flecks of tobacco in the very bottom. Since I detected no such scent on the owner, I make the deduction that she purchased the bag from a resale establishment.

  Nothing wrong with that! My Miss Temple does that all the time, especially in regard to high-end high heels, an item the original owners of which turn over almost daily, like Band-Aids for bunions.

  This purse was never high-end, though, so I am guessing the Widow Peters is putting a lot of her money into survival. Patrisha’s win in this contest would get the kid opportunities her mother could never afford. Something to bear in mind.

  Next I snuggle up to the bright yellow ruched leather bag favored by Angie Peyton, mother of the innovatively named Meg-Ann. You would never know her daughter was an athlete, but maybe Meg-Ann needed to overcome that first name.

  Parents are even worse at naming offspring than they are at naming animal companions. I cannot complain about “Midnight Louie,” though. It is my street name, bestowed on me in my first neighborhood before I moved uptown. It is a moniker used by the street people who shared their humble meals with me when I was a kit, and I wear it proudly. My magnificent mature physique is a tribute to the less fortunate and their care and consideration for the even less fortunate.

  If my Miss Temple does not have me down to a wraith again with her slavish devotion to feline health food! But I am not here to criticize anyone’s home cooking, and Angie Peyton’s bag is sweet rather than hot, holding loose chocolate-covered raisins and Oreo cookie four-packs.

  Next I push my schnozz into the late-arriving Smith purse. This is a scarlet patent leather hobo bag, within which I pick up the scent of a woman: peppermint—achoo!—candies from restaurants. Aha! A careful woman. Burt’s Bees lip balm, which indicates a nervous woman; and . . . aha! . . . a not tightly capped can of pepper spray!

  Granted it is not unusual for women to carry such self-defense items in their purses, but the
scent is dead-on exact to the smell inside Sou-Sou Smith’s dainty little Mary Jane dancing shoes.

  Should I sound the alarm on Mama Smith?

  If I can so easily find this incriminating item in her purse so could anyone who hangs out in the junior suite. In addition, these tween girls all carry fashionable little purses, except for Mariah, who totes one of those sensible, small oblong wallets.

  I see I have a long night of purse snatching, unlatching, and searching ahead of me while others eat, drink, and make merry.

  After many wearying attempts to break unnoticed into everything that could be construed as a purse, including a Hello Kitty one that belongs to EK, I return to the scarlet Smith one. It is large enough and an excellent color. I curl up on it and pretend to sleep so well that I actually do.

  The next thing I know, I am being shaken awake by my dear little doll. I remain limp and “sleepy.”

  “Louie! We have to leave. Come on.”

  She bends to heave me up. I have cleverly stuck my paw into the ajar frame and as she pulls me up the purse opens wide, like for a dentist. Oh, look what the purse fairy has left! A nice big can of pepper spray.

  Of course my brilliant associate immediately gets the message. She looks over her shoulder at Yvonne Smith, who is busy yakking with Mrs. Peters. She reaches for the spray, hesitates, and appropriately purses her lips.

  I can guess what she will do: alert those who need to know that Sou-Sou’s mother probably sprayed her own daughter’s dancing shoes to up the sympathy vote. It can’t be proven and I doubt Miss Temple would blow the whistle unless Sou-Sou wins.

  “What a good boy, Louie,” she tells me as she lifts me up to her face for a mushy cuddle. “You always get into mischief in just the right way.”

  That is ever the lot of the undercover operative, and he is glad to be of service even if he does not get full credit.