Cat in a White Tie and Tails
Page 33
Being a fiancée apparently is being a worry wart.
Being King of the Cat Pack is much easier. All have scattered to their usual hangouts, but only mine is so soft and comfy and comes with a built-in massager.
This time I sigh and close my eyes. I personally am enjoying a little alone time with my roomie. Mr. Matt can take his own sweet time about getting home.
Chapter 59
Motorcycle Melodrama
Matt’s heart rate at the moment was nothing he’d want to parade on a visit to his primary care physician.
The single headlight had stopped behind him. In the red glare of his brake lights—he’d kept the car in Drive, brake on—he could see the massive bulk of a heavy-duty cycle tilted on its kickstand.
The ride was in his left rear blind spot, but he heard the creak of leather through his slightly lowered driver’s-seat window.
A black helmet with a smoked plastic visor made the approaching rider into an alien in his side-view mirror.
Matt waited, ready to burn the Jaguar out of there at zero to sixty in 4.4 seconds, as advertised.
The rider passed the window and self-boosted up onto the car’s sleek front fender.
The bare-knuckled black leather half gloves came off one by one and hit the car’s hood.
Matt winced internally.
The helmet came off to sit atop them.
Matt watched the rider shake out her long black hair. Motorpsycho Medusa.
The hip-length leather jacket was unzipped to reveal the feminine version of a wife-beater undershirt, not in Marlon Brando white, but femme fatale black.
She crossed leather-clad legs, the lower booted foot swinging against the Jag’s front wheel well.
Matt breathed an invisible sigh of relief to see no weapons drawn … yet. He zoomed the window full down.
“So,” she said, leaning out over the hood to address him. “The frequent Chicago trips weren’t just to cozy up to the audience of The Amanda Show. You have family there, and here, be it ever so humble.”
“Most people have family,” he said, “unless, like in a melodrama, they’re separated at birth.”
His remark had hit the target dead-on. She slid fast off the fender, her boots hitting asphalt hard together. “You were separated at birth, from your so-called father.”
The last word curled off her lips with loathing.
He understood why Jesus had banished demons. Some people lived with them for so long, they became them. How did she know his family drama? A job for SuperMax.
Matt got out of the car to face her. It was hard to read expressions in the dark.
“You were a pariah,” she charged. “From birth, as I was.”
He kept an unemotional tone. “True, on the surface of things. Your childhood was living hell. I just had purgatory.”
“I know who told you about me.”
“I know who you really want to harass. Why bother with me?”
“You’re easier.”
“Maybe not.”
“Being Mr. Big-time Radio Headshrinker has gone to your own head. You think you can get into my mind? I can get into those crawly little places in your soul you don’t want to admit exist.”
“I guess I’m as entitled to ‘crawlspace’ as you are.” Matt thought of the two casinos where the security “crawlspace” had been invaded by death in the past couple years. That was a great metaphor for what was happening here.
“You don’t want to kill anyone … at least not right away,” he told her. “You like to play with your prey. This is Las Vegas. Let’s make a bet.”
“You, Mr. Careful, gamble?”
“Stay away from your other favorite targets and sign up for some personal counseling with me. I bet I can ‘reach’ your inner angel.”
She laughed delightedly. “You’re actually being sardonic, Mr. Ex-Priest. ‘Inner angel.’ Even you don’t believe that.”
He could sense her eyes searching his expression for underlying motives. He kept it noncommittal. She fed on extreme emotion.
“You’d see me secretly?” she asked. “Leave your precious fiancée in the dark?”
“You can certainly see me secretly any time you like,” he pointed out.
She edged closer. “You think you can save my soul.”
“I’d have to find it first.”
“What arrogance! Souls don’t exist, but guilt does. Do you want to know my bet?”
“Breathless about it.” He was already seeing his refusal to overreact had drawn her into his bargain. He would have felt a little like Satan if she hadn’t been playing the same role.
She pressed herself close, full frontal, her upraised hands at his sides. He controlled the urge to draw back or push away, but his fingers made claws, ready to repulse another razor-knife attack.
She whispered, “I’m betting I can unchain your inner devil. Your body will betray you before my lost soul will fail me.”
Her hands clapped to his sides. He resisted the instinct to grab her wrists to hold off any unseen weapon. Her raised knee slid up the inside of his thigh. She habitually won by making love–hate, not war.
Matt was betting Kathleen’s obsession to seduce would keep her from killing him … too soon anyway. This unholy bargain with a sociopath would test just how good he was, as a psychologist and a man.
Tailpiece
Midnight Louie Has Mixed Feelings
I cannot believe it. After my expedition to the Oasis Hotel and reunion with the winsome Topaz, it looks as if little me is finally going to get the girl! This is unprecedented for the usual hard-luck noir hero. Usually the girl gets him.
I am an unusual dude for one of my breed, although I will admit, when pressed … or petted … that I am an exceptional example of it.
Yet both of my poor Miss Temple’s beaux are dallying with wicked women. What a rude turn of events. I must have words with my collaborator. She had not mentioned my promotion to Number One Male in this book.
I would have taken a thorough bath while Miss Temple was showering so I could appear in peak, glossy glory in the key bedroom scene of the Entire Book. At last my potential as an all-species sex symbol has been realized and allowed to shine forth.
I must admit I am … speechless.
Please do not mistake that for modesty.
I do not.
Very Best Fishes,
Midnight Louie, Esq.
If you’d like information about getting Midnight Louie’s free Scratching Post-Intelligencer newsletter and/or buying his custom T-shirt and other cool things, contact Carole Nelson Douglas at P.O. Box 331555, Fort Worth, Texas 76163-1555 or the Web site at www.carolenelsondouglas.com. E-mail: cdouglas@catwriter.com.
Tailpiece
Carole Nelson Douglas on Other Matters
Because some of the earlier Midnight Louie mysteries are dedicated to “the real and original Midnight Louie, nine lives are not enough,” some readers have thought the inspiring stray cat was part of my personal family.
Not so. His rescue was detailed in the Tailpiece to the first Midnight Louie book, Catnap. The woman who rescued the koi-loving homeless black cat from a Palo Alto motel and shipped him to her Minnesota apartment found him friendly but unable to adapt to confined living arrangements.
She put a long and intriguingly expensive ad in the classifieds section (remember those?) of the newspaper I worked for as a reporter and feature writer, offering him to a good home for one dollar. (She’d spent a lot more than that on his airfare back.)
I’d always liked to follow offbeat “leads” and wrote an article on Louie’s journey and the new home he found on a farm. After writing the first who/what/when/where sentence, I paused. Maybe I should let the cat tell his tale in his own words. Maybe the real and original Midnight Louie inspired me to do just that. Black cats do have that “mystical” aura.
Eleven years later, when I left my union-guaranteed-for-life newspaper job (remember those?) to write fiction freelance, that feline
“voice” revisited me and demanded a cameo role in four Las Vegas–set short romances (with mystery). The editor happily bought the quartet, then cut much of the mystery and Louie out, without telling me.
I told you nine lives were not enough for this canny feline survivor. Midnight Louie did an athletic flip-flop, landing on his feet in a mystery series bearing his name that featured any ongoing human romance elements in their proper place, as subplot.
In 1996, the series publisher, Tor Books, sponsored a wonderful Midnight Louie Adopt-a-Cat tour that brought me and homeless cats to adoption/book-signing events in every region of the country. They started in my new home state, Texas, with multi-city events. And, new to the animal rescue scene, the publicists didn’t know about no-kill shelters and “booked” me into the main city shelters.
I had six rescue cats and a rescue dog at home, but I saw so many, many beautiful kittens and cats, so many cats only a year old and kicked out, at stop after stop, it was heartbreaking.
When a small black cat in the open colony at Lubbock Animal Services looked up at me and “skritched,” I bent to pick it up. Midnight Louie Jr. had me on hello. There’s more to the story, but it wasn’t until three weeks later my husband and I drove almost seven hundred miles round trip to fetch our seventh cat.
We stayed overnight at a nice motel and came back to the room after dinner. I have never seen a cat so aware that he’d found a home, and so happy, not anxious at all. He jumped on the bed when we retired and moved back and forth on our chests all night, purring and meowing until he was hoarse by morning and we were sleepless in Lubbock.
He wasn’t very big, his coat was dull, and his tail had been broken in two places so he couldn’t lift it higher than a croquet-hoop position.
Long black hair turned glossy, and his tail did lift again, the mysterious break hidden. A short mystery story, “Junior Partner in Crime,” is my imagination of how he might have got in that condition following in Senior’s fictional crime-fighting footsteps.
Since there is only one “real and original” and eternal Midnight Louie, he became, after a brief detour as “Midnight Louise” (sometimes it’s hard to tell in busy shelters), the Midnight Louie Jr. seen with me in the dust jacket photograph.
After fifteen years, he was called to the Rainbow Bridge as I was finishing this book. He fought hard not to leave, and he did not go alone.
Xanadu, his longtime pal and the chow-husky cross pup I’d found on the street four months before meeting Louie Jr., had a massive seizure the very morning we were about to call the vet for Midnight Louie Jr.’s last appointment.
He may not have been “the real and original,” but he was the best and the brightest in our lives for a long time and will never leave, not really.
By Carole Nelson Douglas from Tom Doherty Associates
MYSTERY
MIDNIGHT LOUIE MYSTERIES
Catnap
Pussyfoot
Cat on a Blue Monday
Cat in a Crimson Haze
Cat in a Diamond Dazzle
Cat with an Emerald Eye
Cat in a Flamingo Fedora
Cat in a Golden Garland
Cat on a Hyacinth Hunt
Cat in an Indigo Mood
Cat in a Jeweled Jumpsuit
Cat in a Kiwi Con
Cat in a Leopard Spot
Cat in a Midnight Choir
Cat in a Neon Nightmare
Cat in an Orange Twist
Cat in a Hot Pink Pursuit
Cat in a Quicksilver Caper
Cat in a Red Hot Rage
Cat in a Sapphire Slipper
Cat in a Topaz Tango
Cat in an Ultramarine Scheme
Cat in a Vegas Gold Vendetta
Cat in a White Tie and Tails
Midnight Louie’s Pet Detectives
(anthology)
IRENE ADLER ADVENTURES
Good Night, Mr. Holmes
The Adventuress*
(Good Morning, Irene)
A Soul of Steel*
(Irene at Large)
Another Scandal in Bohemia*
(Irene’s Last Waltz)
Chapel Noir
Castle Rouge
Femme Fatale
Spider Dance
Marilyn: Shades of Blonde
(anthology)
HISTORICAL ROMANCE
Amberleigh†
Lady Rogue†
Fair Wind, Fiery Star
SCIENCE FICTION
Probe†
Counterprobe†
FANTASY
TALISWOMAN
Cup of Clay
Seed Upon the Wind
SWORD AND CIRCLET
Six of Swords
Exiles of the Rynth
Keepers of Edanvant
Heir of Rengarth
Seven of Swords
* These are the reissued editions.
† Also mystery
About the Author
Cat in a White Tie and Tails is the twenty-fourth title in CAROLE NELSON DOUGLAS’s sassy Midnight Louie mystery series. Previous titles include Cat in a Vegas Gold Vendetta, Cat in an Ultramarine Scheme, and Cat in a Topaz Tango. In addition to tales of her favorite feline, 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. Visit her Web site at www.carolenelsondouglas.com.
This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.
CAT IN A WHITE TIE AND TAILS
Copyright © 2012 by Carole Nelson Douglas
Cover art by Jo Tronc
Hand lettering by Iskra Johnson
All rights reserved.
A Forge Book
Published by Tom Doherty Associates, LLC
175 Fifth Avenue
New York, NY 10010
www.tor-forge.com
Forge® is a registered trademark of Tom Doherty Associates, LLC.
ISBN 978-0-7653-2747-5 (hardcover)
ISBN 9781429948272 (e-book)
First Edition: August 2012