Cat in an Alphabet Soup

by Carole Nelson Douglas

  She got out, clicked around to the passenger’s side and finally wrestled Midnight Louie’s carrier through the gaping car door. Her credit card might be a hundred and forty dollars lighter, but she could swear the carrier was heavier than before. Perhaps this was the result of passive resistance; Louie had been silent and ominously still all the way home from the vet’s.

  Tilting to balance the carrier’s weight, she struggled toward the condominium’s back gate. Three steps took her into silk-searing sunlight. Temple could feel her hot pink top bleaching and the crown of her red hair fading to pink.

  She was a tiny woman who didn’t like to be reminded of it, not even by herself. So she gritted her teeth and took one laboring step after another, counting each one. The high heels didn’t encourage efficient locomotion while toting overweight cats, but elevation was enough of an issue with her that she didn’t mind. Three, four, five steps... uh. Maybe Matt Devine was by the pool working on his tan and his physique, both already perfect, but why stop now? He could help her with Louie. No, she could make it herself. Eight, nine, ten steps. The gate. Ah.

  She eased the case to the hot concrete and sighed as her shoulder joint assumed its normal alignment. The vet was right; Louie desperately needed a diet.

  A distant droning she took for bees in the honeysuckle vine draping the pierced concrete wall grew louder. Temple frowned and eyed the cat carrier. Was Louie growling again? He had not accepted his trip to the vet in the best of graces. The noise increased into a surflike roar.

  Temple peered through her sunglasses toward the side street as the roar crested, then slowed into a chatter. Something large, silver and meaner-looking than a robotic junkyard dog, Terminator-style, turned into the driveway and rolled directly toward Temple.

  She felt the nasty little twinge motorcycles had inspired since The Wild Bunch. They conjured visions of Nazis and Hell’s Angels. Today’s anonymous riders, now helmeted with obscuring black visors, did nothing to improve the image.

  This motorcyclist wore a black nylon windbreaker and rolled the machine right up to Temple, the engine still clattering.

  Temple eyed machine and rider, ready to dash through the gate should it or he/she jump either the concrete car-stop or her person. Then she read the hot-pink words emblazoned over the smoked-Plexiglas helmet visor.

  “Speed Queen?” Temple articulated incredulously.

  The engine died with a final clank as the rider’s ankle-boot-clad feet hit hot asphalt. One hand lifted from the handles and whipped up the visor.

  Electra Lark’s genial sixtyish face peered past the bowling ball of silver metallic paint that covered her head. She was grinning like a Halloween pumpkin.

  “Just me. And wait a minute. You gotta see this.” Electra slung a leg over the long black leather seat and engaged the kick stand as soon as she stood on her own two feet.

  Temple nervously watched the older woman stepped away from the motorcycle. It tilted but did not tumble. At her high-heeled feet, Louie growled warning. No chattering silver metal beast was going to intimidate him, not even after a dose of something as civilizing as “shots.”

  “A beauty, isn’t it?” Electra demanded.

  “If you like cold steel.”

  “Hot steel, honey.”

  “It will be if you leave it parked in this noonday sun for long.”

  “Oh, no. This baby will shelter in the shade of the gardening shed at the back.”

  “Has it always been kept there?”

  Electra’s open glance shifted. “Not always. But it’ll be coining out a lot more now. I just got my license today.”

  “Hey, that’s wonderful!” Temple was always primed to applaud another person’s self-improvement program. “It can’t be easy to drive one of these monsters. But, Electra... why?”

  The woman pulled off the sinister helmet, revealing a spiky crew cut of silver hair ending in a long pigtail in back. On most late-middle-aged women such a hairdo would seem a pathetic attempt at kicky youth; on Electra it looked funky and even elegant.

  Electra’s head tilted until her ear cuffs chimed. She eyed the silver motorcycle and tried, “Because it was there?”

  “But why was it there?” Temple persisted with the determination of an ex-TV reporter. “You never mentioned having one. I’ve never seen—or even more to the point, heard it before.”

  Electra’s hand patted the leather seat as if stroking the flank of a favorite steed. “It was Max’s.”

  “Max’s?” Temple hadn’t meant to sound sharp, or shocked, but she did. Both.

  Electra’s silver-metal boot toe kicked the asphalt. “A cycle’s real practical with all the traffic jams in Vegas. And it is a beauty.”

  Temple stared at the thing as if it had landed from Mars. “I had no idea that Max liked—had—a motorcycle.”

  “Hey, he used it as the down payment on the condo.” Temple eyed her landlady incredulously. She was getting tired of learning things about Max after he was gone—long gone. Four months gone without a goodbye, with no explanation.

  “Speaking of the condo,” Temple began uncomfortably, “I had to take Louie to the vet and it cost a fortune. I might be a little late with the monthly maintenance money, but not the mortgage.”

  “Don’t worry about it, dear.” Electra’s waving hand ignited a shower of glints from the many rings covering her fingers like chain mail. “I know it’s tough when suddenly one person is paying on a place instead of two. Besides, according to folks who know their motorcycles, this baby is worth major moolah. It’s a classic.”

  “How classic can a motorcycle get?”

  “Plenty. It’s a Hesketh Vampire.”

  “No wonder it gave me the shivers when I heard it coming. Why on earth is it called a vampire?”

  “Maybe because it sounds dangerous. It howls in prime gear when the wind whistles by.”

  Temple shook her head. “Hesketh Vampire,” she repeated numbly. “Any relation to a Sopwith Camel?” That was some sort of early biplane, she thought.

  “Well, it is British-made.” Electra proudly circled her new toy, ticking off its assets. “A full-liter engine, one thousand cee-cees. Nickel-plated and overbuilt to go literally millions of miles.”

  Temple followed Electra around the massive machine, eyeing the steeply raked windshield, the fluid silver front casing—not shiny like chrome but matte-soft, classy—and the emblem of a crown surmounted by an angry rooster head above the Cyclopean front headlight.

  “Max had this, really?”

  “Yup.” Electra’s finger stroked the word “Hesketh” under the regal but surly rooster. “The famous Hesketh flying chicken. Now it’s chicken à la queen.” She chuckled and lifted her emblazoned helmet.

  Temple just shook her head. “I don’t know much about motorcycles—and apparently knew even less about Max—but this is a humongous machine, Electra. Is it safe to drive?”

  “Ride,” Electra corrected quickly. “Driving is for sissies.”

  “Can a woman handle it safely?”

  “Safety is not the idea with a superbike, dear,” Electra explained sweetly.

  “But a woman your age—”

  “A woman my age can use a little excitement. They say women are horse-crazy, but those ninnies are living in the last century. This thing rides like a rocket. Besides, it’s a good way to meet men, if you’re so inclined. I found me some guys who knew something about cycles and they taught me the ropes.”

  “Where’d you find bikers?”

  “They’re not bikers, just some older guys who tinker a bit. Wild Blue works mostly on vintage planes, but Eightball has played with a bike or two.”

  “Eightball? Not Eightball O’Rourke?”

  “Yeah, how’d you know him?”

  “He’s the private detective I hired to tail the ABA cat-napper.”

  Electra looked bemused. “No kidding? Until not too long ago, he and his pals were fugitives.”

  “Fugitives? Eightball claimed he
had a security background.”

  Electra nodded sagely. “And so he does; nobody around Las Vegas has been as secure as Eightball all these years. He and the Glory Hole Gang hid out in the desert looking for some silver dollars they hijacked during World War Two and hid so good they couldn’t find them again themselves. Buried treasure. The statute of limitations had run out by the time anyone found out about them, and now they run Glory Hole as a tourist ghost town; it’s in that string of abandoned towns off of Highway 95.1 think Eightball got so used to looking for that lost treasure that he decided to get into the business of looking into this and that. Hooked on hunting, if you know what I mean.”

  “But he had a license, he said he’d been employed in detection for years!”

  “What would you say if you had a dicey background and were trying something new at age seventy-plus?”

  “I can’t believe you know these people, Electra.”

  Electra eyed Temple for a long moment. “I’m not responsible for what my friends or acquaintances do or did, but these are sweet old guys. Helped me out a lot, for nothing. They even had to chop the seat padding down so my legs could reach the ground.” She slapped the black leather again, and Temple winced. “Hated to do it, but face it, Max isn’t coming back. No sense letting a primo machine rot.”

  “Right,” Temple murmured fervently.

  “Heck,” Electra added, “I bet even you could ride my new baby with the seat this low. Come on, hop on. I’ll take you for a spin around the block.”

  “No, thanks.” Temple turned to inspect her own “baby” in his vetmobile. “Louie needs to get his breakfast just as soon as I can tote in the twenty-pound bag in the trunk. I’ll pass.”

  “Chicken?” Electra grinned wickedly, donning her helmet.

  Temple didn’t honor that with a direct answer. “I’ve got a lot of work to get out on my computer before the WICA meeting at five-thirty. Sorry. Some other time,” she added with rare insincerity.

  Electra’s platinum-gray eyebrows lofted nearly to the helmet’s brim. “Wicca? I didn’t know you were interested in witchcraft.”

  “I’m not. It’s Women in Communications, Associated. Great for networking, and digging up freelance clients in the recession is more like doing black magic than white witchcraft.”

  “I wouldn’t joke about the dark arts, dearie,” Electra said with a shudder, flipping down her sinister visor.

  Despite needing to hustle, Temple couldn’t resist waiting to watch the landlady mount, expertly kick away the support, start the engine and chatter off in low gear to the shed around back.

  Then she glumly lugged Louie through the gate, shut it and headed across the area bordering the pool, relieved that Matt Devine wasn’t in sight.

  She couldn’t believe that Max had never mentioned that thing, much less using it for a down payment on the condo.... He had glossed over that issue when he’d put the place in both their names. Electra was financing it, so it was simple—if not monetarily easy—for Temple to take over the payments after Max skedaddled. And here Temple had hoped buying instead of renting had indicated that Max was as serious about permanent relationships as she was... hah!

  While these thoughts festered, her autopilot had called the elevator, punched the proper floor and gotten her off before the doors sliced together on her or Louie’s carrier.

  She walked down the semicircular hall to her door, unlocked it and sat Louie’s carrier on the entry-hall parquet. When she opened the grille, he sulked inside, reduced to a resentful glare of electric green eyes.

  “Sorry, boy. I’ll feed you as soon as I drag the bag back from the car.”

  She was back in minutes, staggering, to find the carrier empty and Louie nowhere in sight. Temple sighed, slung the huge brown-paper bag to the kitchen countertop and proceeded to exercise her nails on trying to puncture the stitched-shut top. She finally fetched the kitchen shears and took several ill-tempered stabs at the tough paper until she worried a ragged hole in one comer.

  Then she hefted the heavy bag and squatted to pour its contents into Louie’s empty banana split dish. Green-brown pellets plugged the hole, then burped out in a dirty hail, scattering like run-amok marbles on the black and white tiles.

  “Oh, holy horseradish! This feline health food is gonna break my back. Louie! Come and get it.”

  He refused to show, so Temple stomped into her bedroom to look under the bed. Nothing animal there but dust bunnies. The louvered closet doors were shut, but she jerked one open just the same. Jerk. Speaking of which, there was Max, face-to-face.

  She studied the glossy, oversized poster she knew like the markings on her mauve snakeskin J. Renees. By now, Max, the most mobile of men both mentally and physically, had become frozen into this single, hype-ridden image: black turtleneck, black unruly hair, green stare. The Mystifying Max, vanished magician, former roommate, lost lover. Was he ever.

  And now his past recycled: a massive silver Vampire on wheelies. It must have meant something to him, owning a classic. He must have ridden it at one time; left it behind when his act toured distant cities like Minneapolis. He must have figured a Heckwith, or whatever, Vampire wasn’t Temple’s speed, or he’d have kept it, shown it to her. Said, Hop on, I’ll take you for a ride. He hadn’t needed a motorcycle for that.

  Temple sat suddenly on the bed, still staring at the poster. She wasn’t a motorcycle moll. She couldn’t see herself roaring along the never-ending white centerline on two narrow tires and a bloated black belly of steel. Maybe Max couldn’t see that either. Maybe that’s why he’d left; she was too conventional, took herself too seriously.

  Maybe she would have liked it, plastering herself behind Max, wrapped up in gear with a dark crystal ball for a crown and the wind rushing at them, the road running away behind them and speed thrumming with exultation between their conjoined thighs....

  Temple rose, then used her long, lacquered nails to peel the tape very carefully from the four comers of the poster. She folded the excess tape down on the back before rolling the heavy paper into one long white cylinder. Then she stuffed it down in the far dark back comer of the closet where the last of Max’s clothes hung waiting to be taken to the Goodwill someday.

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  www.carolenelsondouglas.com

  Carole Nelson Douglas is the award-winning author of 60 novels in the mystery/thriller, science fiction/fantasy and romance/women’s fiction genres. She currently writes the long-running Midnight Louie, feline PI, cozy-noir mystery series (Cat in an Alphabet Soup, Cat in an Aqua Storm, Pussyfoot, Cat on a Blue Monday etc.) and the Delilah Street, Paranormal Investigator, noir urban fantasy series (Dancing with Werewolves) set in imaginative variations of Las Vegas: contemporary and paranormally post-apocalyptic.

  Carole was the first author to make a Sherlockian female character, Irene Adler, a series protagonist, with the New York Times Notable Book of the Year, Good Night, Mr. Holmes. She has won Lifetime Achievement Awards from RT Book Reviews for Mystery, Suspense and Versatility, and was named a Pioneer of Publishing. Her Midnight Louie novels and stories also won several Cat Writers’ Association first-place Muse Medallions, including for “Butterfly Kiss” and “The Riches That There Lie.” Carole has e-published the first four Irene Adler novels and some shorter fiction. (www.wishlist.com)

  A daily newspaper reporter, feature writer and editor in St. Paul, she moved to Fort Worth to write fiction fulltime and was recently inducted into the Texas Literary Hall of Fame.

  ALSO BY CAROLE NELSON DOUGLAS

  “Her fine Sherlockian novels and her Midnight Louie books have turned her into a genuine mystery star. Pick one up and you'll see why.”—Ed Gorman, founder of Mystery Scene magazine

  The DELILAH STREET, Paranormal Investigator, series in print and eBook

  Dancing with Werewolves... Brimstone Kiss... Vampire Sunrise... Silver Zombie... Virtual Virgin

  The New York Times Notable IRENE ADLER Series in print and eBook

 
; Good Night, Mr. Holmes... The Adventuress... A Soul of Steel... Another Scandal in Bohemia... Chapel Noir and Castle Rouge (Jack the Ripper duology)... Femme Fatale... Spider Dance

  Novellas in eBook

  Alice Holds the Cards

  Fruit of the Tomb (ML)

  Monster Mash (DS)

  Once Upon a Midnight Noir

  (in print also) ML & DS

  The Private Wife of Sherlock Holmes (IA)

  Christmas Stories

  The Rakehell’s Christmas Angel

  Scrogged: A Cyber Christmas Carol

  A Wall Street Christmas Carol

  The MIDNIGHT LOUIE Feline PI series in print

  Cat in an Alphabet Soup... Cat in an Aqua Storm... 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 Topaz Tango... Cat in a Sapphire Slipper... Cat in an Ultramarine Scheme... Cat in a Vegas Gold Vendetta... Cat in a White Tie and Tails... Cat in an Alien X-Ray... (Forthcoming: Cat in a Yellow Flash... Cat in a Zebra Zoot Suit...Cat in an Amber Bookend

  * in eBook, F to K forthcoming in eBook

  Table of Contents

  Cover

  Back cover

  About the Midnight Louie Mysteries

  Start Book

  About the Author

  Also by Carole Nelson Douglas

  Midnight Louie, P.I.

  Chester’s Last Chapter

  An Editor Edited

  Nothing but a Pack of Flacks