Cat in an Alphabet Soup

by Carole Nelson Douglas

  Molina actually cracked a smile. “Men move differently, even in the dark.”

  “And the needle—well, when my bag got skewered, that was the first thing I thought of.”

  “Bag? Show me.”

  Temple dragged the tote bag up from the floor. “What else could have caused that hole?”

  In the light, the puncture’s ragged edge defined a perfect circle the size of a number five knitting needle. Temple shivered.

  “I’ll need the bag for evidence, too.”

  “Oh, no! I can’t live without this bag. I’ve practically got my next of kin in here.”

  Molina shook her head. “Empty it. We’ll get you some manila envelopes to take your things home in.”

  Much as Temple loathed exposing the contents of her tote—her life, virtually—to the lieutenant, the word “home” had a nice, hopeful ring to it.

  She dredged out her makeup bag and schedule organizer, both the size of bantam chickens; some crumpled Dairy Queen napkins, her car keys and wallet; three breath mints, about fifteen outdated dry cleaning coupons, a small screwdriver, a wad of tissues; three packets of diet salad dressing, a sewing kit shaped like a strawberry, and assorted miscellanea.

  “You planning a trip to the bush?” Molina wondered.

  “Listen, this stuff saved my life when the killer took a stab at me.”

  “Okay. You said it. The killer. What does the killing of Chester Royal have to do with the kidnapping of two cats?”

  “Maybe the killer lurks around the convention center every night getting whoever shows up—like the Phantom of the Opera—and I happened to have a rendezvous with the kidnapper and the cats.”

  “The convention center will love that publicity angle, Miss Barr. The cats never showed. You realize what this means?”

  “They’ve been gotten by the killer?”

  “There never was any intention of returning the cats. It was a ruse to get you onto the convention floor, alone, in the dark.”

  “That’s silly, who would...” Temple tried again. “That means the killer... Me? Why?”

  Molina sighed. “I hate to contradict my own instincts, but it’s likely that the killer thinks you know too much.”

  “Me? Just because I stumbled over the body?”

  “I think your size fives have been stumbling over a lot more than that these last few days. Bud Dubbs tells me you’ve been running around on errands of an unusually vague nature, even for you.”

  “It’s my job to keep informed.”

  “It’s the killer’s job to see that no one gets too well informed about the murder. After hearing that the murderer used the cats to lure you onto the convention floor tonight, I think that’s why the cats were taken in the first place.”

  “By the murderer? As a... diversion?”

  “Yes.”

  “That’s dumb. No one knew about them being missing except the B & T people and me. What kind of a diversion is a state secret?”

  “No one knew only because you and Emily Adcock were so darn good at covering it up. That’s why the ransom was small; nobody wanted the money. What was wanted was a distraction, which you prevented, meanwhile running around and buttonholing everybody and his first cousin about the murder.”

  “You think I know something?”

  “I hate to admit it, but yes. And you probably don’t know what yourself, which would be truer to form. You really have a knack for screwing up an investigation.”

  “Why blame me? It was my job to talk to the people involved and I’m in a better position to learn the inside story than any police representative.”

  “It’s your funeral,” Molina said.

  “I see what you mean. Have you evidence pointing to a certain suspect?”

  “No.” Molina was even more sober than usual. “The key to the crime is motive, and that leaves little evidence—or little obvious evidence.”

  “Chester Royal was a fiend. Everyone had a motive—his three top writers, his editor ex-wife, his ex-assistant and the current Reynolds-Chapter-Deuce PR director; even, I suppose, his old buddy lawyer,” Temple enumerated.

  “I know about them,” said Molina. “Except for the lawyer.”

  “Will you tell me what you found out about the Royal malpractice case?”

  “You first.”

  “Earnest Jaspar. Funny old guy from Minnesota. He’s staying at the Hilton. Chester had him on hand in case an uncertain author like Mavis Davis needed shoring up. Anyway, Jaspar defended Royal in the malpractice case in Illinois in the fifties. A woman had died on his operating table during the course of an illegal abortion her family swore she would have never agreed to. But if you’ve looked up the case, you know all that.”

  “Not the details. The press in those days was discreet about abortion scandals. I’m having copies of the court documents sent, but it’ll take a while. We have been working this case over a weekend, you know, on top of everything else.”

  Temple figured “everything else” meant her—and missing cats. “Weekend—has it only been a weekend?!’ She suddenly felt down-to-her-toes beat, as if it would be too much of an effort to say her name.

  “I suppose your fevered brain has concluded that a survivor of the long-dead woman is seeking vengeance.”

  “I don’t know if I even thought that far ahead. I just think that a malpractice case in the victim’s past is pretty interesting, don’t you?”

  “Victims usually have a lot of interesting incidents in their pasts. But that malpractice case was decades ago. Pretty farfetched.”

  “Where is it written that murderers have to strike while their fire is hot? It could be some disgruntled victim of medical foul play. Why not?”

  Molina shook her head. “Why now, rather?”

  “You mean, why wait all this time?”

  “Right. We’re talking forty years. We’re also talking a senior citizen slayer by now.”

  Temple thought a long, stymied moment, then looked up. “It would explain the knitting needle.”

  Molina shook her head again. “Sure, a Grandma Moses killer. You’re getting punchy. I’ll have an officer drive you home.” Molina went to the door, opened it, and issued some instructions before coming back to stand over Temple. “I had your car driven back to your apartment, so you’ll be ready to go on your dubious errands tomorrow.”

  “Hey, thanks. That was nice.”

  A policeman entered with a sheaf of manila envelopes. Temple began shoveling the evicted contents of her tote bag into them. She stood up, her legs feeling rubbery. If only her high heels held up, Temple was sure she’d be fine.

  Molina saw her to the interrogation room door. “You think of anything, you tell me—-immediately.”

  “Sure.” Even if it meant she was cooperating with a... Temple looked down at Molina’s loafers and giggled—a flatfoot.

  But just outside the door she turned, the manila envelopes clutched to her chest.

  “Of course—the sign!” It hit her meandering brain like a flash of Flamingo Hilton pink neon. “What if Chester Royal was killed for medical, not editorial, reasons? What if the sign on the body didn’t mean STET, as in a copy editing direction, but STET as in... short for stethoscope?”

  23

  Cool Hand Louie

  Only one thing on earth can outperform Midnight Louie when he is doing a solo jazz riff for the ladies in some lonely back street.

  That is the siren of a police vehicle. Usually I scram when I hear one coming and that is exactly what I do when I am fleeing my home away from homicide—the pound. I hightail it in the opposite direction.

  How I accomplish this unheard-of feat of bustin’ out is a tale in its own right. Let us face it, folks, the survival statistics for those of my ilk in such an establishment are nil minus zero.

  However common are those greeting cards depicting a quintet of kittens in a basket, gold-fish bowl or some other sentimental environment suitable for framing on kitchen walls, the harsh facts of feline
life are that four of those five little sugarpusses will not celebrate their first birthday.

  I have not reached my state of ripeness by ignoring odds, even if one is inclined to that sort of idiocy in a city like Las Vegas. And the odds here are that Miss Temple Barr has a lot more on her mind right now than the state of my skin.

  One thing my tête-à-trois with Baker and Taylor makes self-evident. Miss Temple Barr is right. The napper of the duo with the withered ears is the perpetrator who edited out the old guy I stumbled over on the ABA convention floor so few days and so many lifetimes ago. I decide to take destiny by the flintlock and spring myself to share my information with a larger world. It is the story of my lives... I know more than is good for me and someone is out to get me.

  First I size up the villainous attendant whom it has been my ill luck to encounter. This large-eared personage is slovenly as well as slothful; it occurs that I might use this weakness to my advantage. The plan requires risking my second most prized member, but I have not survived this long without a streak of derring-do in my soul.

  When Jug-ears arrives with my evening swill, I manage to insert my glorious extremity, which is large, luxuriant and bushy, if I say so myself, into the frame of the cell door.

  It takes all of my not insignificant self-control to avoid expressing outrage at the resulting competition between a rock and a hard place. They do not call it the “slammer” for nothing. Suffice it to say that the cell-door latch is not fully caught.

  Once Jug-ears continues on his errands, I bat the cell door ajar, bound down to the floor and accept the catcalls of my amazed peers (whom I would spring were not their cell latches too tightly sprung, and their tails too scrawny to cushion any closing blows).

  The pavement is still damp from ablutions of a repellent nature as I commence to wend my way far from this unhappy place. An unguarded gate or carelessly unlocked window always awaits the machinations of a fellow with my aptitude for going places, and a stairway of carelessly placed furniture or boxes usually leads me right to it. Once free, I hunker down outside to await the cover of twilight.

  The night is warm and dark as I streak through it, invisible and invincible. I expect to make the Circle Ritz before Miss Temple Barr.

  As I ramble, I contemplate problems yet to come. For one thing, I know the culprit’s identity, yet have a long, unshakable tradition behind me (besides my tail) of keeping mum. Yet I am averse to keeping my dainty doll in the dark. A little knowledge is a dangerous thing, some high churchman-type pundit once said, I believe, and Miss Temple Barr knows just little enough to get into big trouble.

  So my feet fly over the tepid pavements, my mind churning ways of alerting my little doll without blowing my cover. Even as I ponder the future, I cannot help getting a warm, fuzzy feeling as I dwell on my triumphal escape from the Needles of Death. It is better than a magic act.

  Especially my parting gesture. As I bound past, I give the cell door a one-pawed punch. It slams fast in one blow, and I have single-handedly created the LV pound’s sole locked-room mystery.

  They can scratch their heads over it for days (and they will, given the parasite population tolerated in that fleabag), but my lips are sealed and sent COD.

  What we have here is a failure to communicate.

  24

  The Name of the Game Is Murder

  The pink neon clock in Temple’s kitchen announced an incredible hour—ten p.m. Only. Temple’s mind and body floated somewhere on the dark side of midnight about sixteen light-years from reality.

  She dropped the bulky manila envelopes on her kitchen counter, unmindful when her belongings spewed out like vomit. She’d already picked up her kitchen receiver to dial the penthouse.

  “Yeah, home. Just questioning. A long story. Oh, Electra, I’m afraid Louie’s gone for good! Sure. I’d love company.”

  Temple had changed into her favorite leopard-print sleep shirt before her doorbell rang—she loved having an apartment with a real doorbell, a melodic caroling that issued from a rank of long bronze pipes. Now it sounded like a dirge.

  The lush tropical pattern of Electra’s most Hawaiian muumuu vibrated outside her door, but the landlady’s chameleon hair was sprayed jet-black, as if she’d known mourning was in order.

  When Temple stared, Electra was quick to reassure her. “The hair’s for Lorna Fennick’s memorial service tomorrow—or rather Chester Royal’s. Don’t worry; just temporary.”

  “I’d forgotten about that.”

  “For you.” Electra offered the glass of scotch she clutched.

  “Thanks, but I’m not up to it, even after an interrogation at Headquarters. Great hot-shot detective I make, retreating to a tumbler of Crystal Light when the chips are down.”

  “How down are they, honey?”

  “Low-down. I’ve been stalked through the convention center and grilled by Lieutenant Molina and it looks like Midnight Louie has been—Put Away.”

  “How horrible!”

  “For a while tonight, I never thought I’d see this place again. Poor Louie must have felt the same before they—”

  Electra was looking at Temple strangely. In fact, Electra wasn’t looking at her at all, which was odd given the emotional fireworks that Temple was providing.

  “Dear, what’s that on your coffee table?”

  Temple glanced over her shoulder into the dimly lit room. Reflected street light shafts slid eerily across the rippled ceiling in shades of aqua and Mercurochrome. The furniture sat hunch-shouldered, downcast somehow. A foothill of silhouettes tumbled across the coffee table’s usually sleek glass surface.

  “Some novels a woman at the ABA gave me,” Temple answered. “Want any free books? I’m not in the mood to read medical thrillers.”

  “Not the books. That thing beside the books.”

  Temple looked again. “I must have thrown a purse down. I don’t remember. I’ve had an awful day—”

  Electra was brushing by, not a hard thing for Electra to do—her capacious muumuus always impinged in passing.

  She hit the living room light switch, making everybody blink, including the black cat that reclined Sphinx-like on the coffee table in the sudden spotlight of the ceiling fixture, its hindquarters sheltered by a Time-Life bag and its forepaws splayed upon a tumbled tower of books.

  “Louie!” Temple squealed.

  He yawned and licked a forepaw.

  “Louie!” Temple hurled herself between the coffee table and the love seat, reminded of a similar earlier moment in pursuit of this particular cat.

  Midnight Louie was more amenable to supposed capture now; at least he allowed Temple to stroke his head and regard him with the unqualified wonder generally reserved for newborn infants.

  “How did you get in?” Temple cooed. “How did you get out? If you ever were in the pound—”

  Louie had mastered the art of looking wise and keeping mum.

  “I wonder how long he’s been lounging here while I’ve been worried sick about him?” Temple mused.

  “Long enough to sink a few fangs into those books.” Electra deposited the scotch on the coffee table and shuddered for effect. “A creepy bunch of covers. I hate medical trappings like scalpels and surgeon’s masks.”

  “They sell books; some people eat this stuff up. Look, this was written by a nurse.” Temple handed over a Mavis Davis tome; Electra examined it dubiously.

  “Where? In Transylvania? Now that you’ve got your kitty cat back, I’ll toddle along. You should be safe here. Matt fixed your French door lock. M.L. won’t get out of it again, and I doubt anybody will get in.”

  “Where is Matt?” Temple glanced up from admiring Midnight Louie. The hour was late and she looked a mess, but it wouldn’t hurt to thank a good neighbor.

  “Working.” Louie stretched and ambled along the tabletop over the piled paperbacks. “Watch out!” Electra yelled. “He’s trying to drink my scotch.”

  Louie’s muzzle was indeed immersed to the whiskers in the low-b
all glass.

  “Doesn’t the ice bother him?” Electra wondered.

  “It is hot.” Temple absently excused Louie’s depravity, even as he lifted his damp jowls from the glass. “And he did have a harrowing experience. I think.”

  Louie deserted the coffee table for the kitchen, where he lofted himself atop the counter to nose among the manila envelopes and their erstwhile contents.

  “Watch out, he’s in the garbage,” Electra warned genially. Obviously her contact lenses were out for the night. “You’d better rest now. The service tomorrow is at ten sharp. Should I give you a wake-up call?”

  Temple nodded as she showed Electra out, then returned to the coffee table to survey the damage. Louie had really been taking a bite out of the books, she thought, studying the perforated glossy covers. Apparently people were not the only ones to eat these thrillers up. The major victim had been an Owen Tharp title, The Origin, which featured a striking-snake-coiled stethoscope. Perhaps glimpsing this image earlier had subconsciously led Temple to the STEThoscope connection she’d proposed to Molina.

  The Origin’s subject matter certainly wasn’t appetizing... a fiendish physician cloning an army of body-part donors from his unknowing patients. Louie had taken critical exception to it, no doubt, for he had gnawed the all-caps title until it resembled a theatrical marquee spotlight sign that was missing several bulbs; only the --E O---IN in THE ORIGIN were still legible.

  The cat thumped down from the countertop.

  “You’re trouble,” she told him in mock disgust. “Not only are your whereabouts usually unknown, when you are visible, you muck up everything in sight. Think you can manage to spend a quiet night at home for a change?”

  Louie accompanied Temple to the front door, where she noticed a brassy new chain lock and spent two minutes trying to make the end piece slide into the groove. Then she gave up and stumbled to the bedroom.

  She slept like a kitten, waking briefly now and then to make sure she was warm and limp and somewhere safe. She sensed Midnight Louie as a lump at her feet, then at her side, then gone, then back again.