Cat in a Flamingo Fedora

by Douglas, Carole Nelson

  Her home office desk was littered with papers, notes and the latest copy of Elle, which featured a full-page ad the color of a Midnight Margarita with Michelle Bonard's pale face as a centerpiece. The widow's long, graceful, sinfully toned arms were sheathed in elbowlength, indigo -blue velvet gloves. Her velvet fingers held up a crystal flacon of "Secret" perfume like an offering from--and to--the gods.

  Temple sighed. Three of the suspect women were not the right age to be Cooke's daughter: Savannah Ashleigh, his ex-fling; Michelle Bonard, his wife; and Domingo's lost leech, Verina.

  The library had produced an excess of birth dates for the cagey Savannah (who had greeted the world thirty-five, thirty-one or thirty-eight years ago, and those dates were probably shaved before they were allowed in print). Savannah Ashleigh could be past forty! Temple crowed to herself.

  Michelle Bonard's true age and name were matters of record.

  Teenage Michelle Bonard apparently hadn't expected the graying of America to prolong her modeling career, and had been honest from the outset. She was a wonderfully well preserved thirty-eight.

  Darren Cooke was officially fifty-two years old, give or take two to four years more.

  Entertainers are multiple personalities when it comes to reporting birth dates.

  Even so, he would have had a hard time fathering a woman in her late thirties. The daughter must be younger, twenty-five to thirty-five years old.

  Three pages of Temple's legal pad were scribbled from top to bottom with the things she hated most: numbers. Words were her bailiwick. Numbers were for the birds. For the flamingos!

  She listed her mystery women, who all seemed to be twenty-somethings. A provocative finding. They were: assorted young things among Domingo's volunteer crew, Cooke's personal assistant and the mysterious brown wren in the checked miniskirt. The assistant could be checked out, but the brown wren .. .

  She flipped a yellow, lined page, and winced. Lines and lines of flight times and time-zone calculations. Even looking at it made her head ache. While she was browsing the Yellow Pages of the phone book, she looked under entertainment.

  After much reading of fine print, her forefinger pinioned an address on Charleston: Laughalot Productions. Darren Cooke's Las Vegas business office.

  Her watch said it was only 4 p.m. If she hurried, she might find the assistant in and closing down the office.

  She hurried.

  ***************

  Traffic was horrible, but within twenty minutes the Storm had snuggled up to the parking block in front of the usual one-story Strip shopping center. They all looked alike, this one a close twin to Matt's home away from home, ConTact. Temple had never officially visited there, but had driven past out of rank curiosity. Or rank infatuation.

  So why was she sitting outside the late Darren Cooke's office thinking about her love life?

  Her potential love life? Get with it, girl! You're here to Nancy Drew.

  She wondered if anyone had ever used a proper name as a verb before. She jumped out of her sleek little roadster, and approached the office of Carson Drew, her tall, distinguished father...

  Darren Cooke had been neither particularly tall nor distinguished. The vertical blinds on his office windows were drawn against the late-afternoon sun, or against the casual observer.

  Temple had parked beside a red Miata that she hoped belonged to the assistant, because she certainly didn't want to encounter someone official in the office. Maybe it was the wife, cleaning out, or cleaning up after her husband.

  Her knock was ignored at first, until repeated enough times to show she wasn't going to fade away.

  The door finally jerked open. Voila. The very woman, still as trim, fashionably redheaded and hostile as ever. The most unpersonable personal assistant.

  "Hi. I'm Temple Barr."

  "I remember seeing you Sunday."

  "I remember seeing you too, but I didn't catch your name."

  "It wasn't thrown."

  "Well, maybe you'd toss it out now."

  "Darby. Alison Darby. What are you doing here?"

  "Actually, I'm on a mission of mercy for Mrs. Cooke. Michelle. I had dinner with her--and darling little Padgett, of course--Wednesday night. She asked me to see that her husband's affairs were wrapped up. Ooh, that was a bad choice of words, wasn't it? Affairs, I mean."

  Alison Darby had grown visibly frosty as Temple gave her false credentials. She positively froze on the word "affairs."

  "You should know," she snapped, still refusing to step away from the door.

  Temple regarded her furious face. Why did the cool and aloof Miss Darby care who had vanished into Darren Cooke's bedroom of a Sunday noon? Besides, she should know there had been hardly time enough for even the most fast and fevered affair.

  "No, I plead innocent," Temple said. "Mr. Cooke asked me to the brunch to consult with him on a personal matter--not between us, between himself and a third party."

  "A third party?" Alison looked shocked. Her pale skin was white-marble against the burgundy tint of her salon-styled hair.

  "The matter was confidential, and still is, even though Mr. Cooke is dead."

  "What are you?" She backed into the room as if Temple were a ghost she feared would touch her. "I know everything about Mr. Cooke's undertakings. That was my job."

  "Ah, but did you approve of them?"

  "Approval was not a requirement of my job."

  Temple was far enough into the office to study it. Pretty mundane. A wood grain-topped desk awash with files. A swordfish on the wall that looked like molded plastic, that looked a lot like a lawn-ornament plastic flamingo. Temple knew it was partially the real fish skin preserved to resemble painted fiberglass.

  A silk ficus tree anchored a corner between two cheap upholstered chairs. Semi-Swedish modern best described the furnishings. Altogether a depressingly tawdry place.

  Miss Darby thought so too, from her disclaimer. "This was a . . . branch office. With Mr.

  Cooke's frequent performances in Las Vegas, he needed a base." Alison Darby was a pologizing, a weak position, which was just where Temple wanted her to be.

  "You must be exhausted!" Temple guided her onto a chair. "Let me get you some water."

  She filled a tiny paper cup at the bottled-water dispenser. "You must have been working on all this nonstop since Mr. Cooke's death was discovered last Monday."

  "Well, yes." Her face lost some of its taut strain.

  Temple examined her features for some trace of Darren Cooke. It wouldn't be too farfetched for the vengeful daughter to have insinuated herself into his entourage. Though her attire was often theatrically over the top, Alison had cultivated a forbidding, all-business air unusual in a young woman, one which made her an exception to the rule: Darren Cooke left her alone. That was something his daughter would want to ensure if she joined his inner circle.

  Temple sat on the adjoining chair, peering around an inconvenient branch of silk-leaved ficus. Her continuing silence stimulated the other woman.

  "There were engagements to cancel, accounts to get in order for the lawyers, for the estate, you know. Someone must do it. Someone must attend to practical matters. His wife--she's a foreigner and knows hardly anything about his affairs ... his business. I've got to go."

  "Miss Darby." Temple sat back in her uncomfortable chair, possessed of an insight. "Are you closing down his personal life before the lawyers and his wife have a chance to see any traces?"

  "I... covering up?" Her laugh rode the razor's edge of amusement and distaste. "I hardly approved of his lifestyle, but he was my boss."

  "And you hardly approve of what you're doing now, but you're doing it. He was your boss. Is it a little black book on computer you're erasing? Records of flowers and hotel rooms? What?"

  Her breathing accelerated until the bodice of her conservative beige linen dress heaved like a trapped rabbit's body. Temple had caught her at something. Whether she told the truth about her purpose or not, it was at least clande
stine.

  "You have no right! I'm only doing my . . . job."

  "I'm warning you. Cooke's death is a police matter, whether it's the suicide it appears to be, or something else."

  "Something else?" She jumped up. "No. You saw more of him on Sunday than I did.

  Everyone left after the brunch. He was alone. He must have become despondent for some reason. Maybe he drank. He could drink a lot, you know. Then ... it happened."

  "Did he always keep a revolver in his hotel room?"

  "Absolutely. This is Las Vegas; there's a criminal element that preys on tourists. In the dark they might mistake Mr. Cooke for just anybody, for a complete nobody. He took care of himself."

  "Yes, I think he did. That's why suicide seems so unlikely."

  "Don't say that! The police are perfectly content with their diagnosis. Their conclusions! No one has bothered us, until you."

  "Us?"

  "I mean, those of us associated with Darren. His wife, his friends, his staff. Why don't you just leave us alone!"

  Temple glanced at the desktop computer, its screen filled with a complicated spreadsheet that looked like Sanskrit.

  "Maybe I will. And maybe you should leave his office alone until the police are satisfied.

  They're never perfectly content, you know, even if they let it appear that way."

  " Who are you?"

  Temple knew a great exit line when she heard it. "Someone who's well acquainted with the sins of the father."

  Alison Darby blanched. She went as white as a sheet of Neenah bond paper. Her fingers clenched her beige linen skirt until the cords on her hands stood out in bas-relief and the skirt was irreparably wrinkled. Temple left.

  *****************

  She didn't think about that very odd interview until she was at home again. She pictured that unguarded computer, with the police too disinterested to investigate, and God-knows-what melting from its hard disks under the trembling fingertips of Alison Darby.

  Then she eyed the open phone books covering her desk and decided to let her rock-steady fingers do the walking.

  She needed to call a number so new to her computerized address list that she had to look it up. That's when she noticed that her own fingers had caught a bit of the Darby tremor.

  Temple shut her eyes. This was business. She knew no one else who combined the necessary computer skills with the necessary nefarious-ness.

  Still, calling this number felt clandestine. Even criminal.

  All she wanted was some petty breaking and entering, both into a building and a machine. A magician was just the man to do it. Max Kinsella was the man to do it.

  She knew why she hesitated. Asking Max for something, especially something slightly illegal, was handing him an edge in the tightrope act of their sundered relationship, and he never failed to use an edge. Turning to him meant she was turning away from Matt Devine, and perhaps the law-abiding side of society.

  Come on, she told herself. Don't make a federal case out of petty snoopery. You re not committing yourself to a life of co- conspiracy. Max owes you, and he knows it.

  Still, she held her breath as the phone rang.

  It was answered with an uncompromising "Yes." No hint of question in the word. Just "Yes."

  "Max," she said. He'd recognize the voice, just as he'd recognize the opportunity. "I've got a sick computer that needs a magic touch."

  "Your place or mine?"

  "Neither." Sternly. Flirting was more dangerous than felony for her right now. "And it'll take a magic touch just to get into it."

  "You make about as much sense as ever."

  "Thank you."

  "Temple, is this worth the risk?"

  "I don't know. I hope so."

  "What are you looking for?"

  "Something suspicious."

  "Temple, Temple . . . when and where?"

  She told him.

  He told her that she should stay out of it.

  She said she couldn't; only she would recognize what was wrong, if it were wrong.

  He again complimented her incisive logic.

  She again thanked him.

  He told her to wear black.

  She hung up, hyperventilating more than an apprentice cat burglar should.

  It certainly had been a Gangster's kind of week, and it was promising to be a Gangster's kind of night.

  Chapter 30

  Could Louie Die for Love?

  The life of a TV star is not to be envied.

  Here I sit, still a bit wet behind the ears and between the toes after having given my coat a thorough tongue-lashing from stem to stern and from tip to tail. I do not believe that I have even been so wet in my entire vagabond life as I was when Yvette and I were dragged dripping from the Mirage lagoon.

  Not that I have not been showered--(oops, wrong word)--provided with all the creature comforts.

  Miss Temple Barr has ensconced me in the bed, heaping the covers around my recumbent form, and has moved my food from the kitchen and my litter box from the spare bathroom to the bed's foot. (As if I would set paw in makeshift indoor facilities, or sink a fang into a pile of unadorned Free-to-be-Feline if I did not have to.)

  Although I sneeze now and then from my underwater outing, I am fine. People always think a wet dude is in need of succor. What he really needs is a bit of catnip to take the edge off.

  So, once my little doll is out, I am up and stretching. Then I scratch in the box until I have removed enough litter to make a pretty sand painting on the carpet. I next walk through it in such a way as to leave a message: will be out until later. Read my feet. Unfortunately, humans are not used to interpreting messages spelled out in spilled litter, and they miss a lot that way.

  Finally, I bury the Free-to-be-Feline with a few swift kicks of litter over the loathsome army-green pile. I am not being rude, just expressing myself in the most direct way I know.

  Before you can burp up a cricket, I am climbing my favorite route to the spare-bathroom window and eeling out into the wide world. Within twenty minutes, I have leg-rubbed my way into the Goliath Hotel and taken a ride in a linen trolley up the freight elevator. Now I stand, dizzy but triumphant, outside the Divine Yvette's closed hotel-room door.

  Here I must wait until some human or other decides to go in or out. (And they call my kind indecisive about which side of the door we wish to be on!) While waiting, I clean the litter from behind my nails and generally put the Ritz on my topcoat. A neat appearance does a lot for a gentleman with notions of a romantic nature. I figure that having played the hero and saved the Divine Yvette's life, she should be ready for a very hot reunion. And this time no Midnight Louise lurks to put the kibosh on love and the other facts of life.

  At last a maid's cart clatters down the hall. I dash over while the maid is inside a room, and stow away behind stacks of extra toilet paper. As color goes, toilet paper is not the ideal hideaway for me, but it is also stored so low that the maids reach down for a roll without really looking.

  I spend an idle hour or two on a slow boat to delight, batting toilet-paper rolls toward the maid's reaching hands, until we are back to Yvette's door. With the turn of a passkey, the maid is in. Behind her back, Midnight Louie is busted out and at large.

  I have already explored this public terrain from beneath Miss Savannah Ashleigh's dressing gown, so I streak for the bedroom where the Divine One hangs out. No one is at home but my darling, and she is not in her carrier! My heart and other romantically motivated parts of my anatomy quicken as I leap upon the bed beside her.

  Her little pink nose is cherry-red. I detect a pathetic sniffle.

  " Ma cher, are you indisposed?" I ask with sinking heart and other parts. "Have you been in a blue mood?"

  "I am always in a blue mood lately, Louie," she confesses. "I do not know what is wrong.

  When my mistress took me to the veterinarian yesterday, they did all sorts of nasty tests. My mistress was very upset. I heard her in the vet's private office. I am af
raid I might have contracted some dread tropical disease from that phony lagoon. And I am so tired after that dreadful dunking yesterday. It has ruined my hair!"

  I see that despite some quick licks and a human attempt at combing, the Divine Yvette's fur still has a shopworn, bedraggled look. Those Persian coats are murder to keep up! I am often glad I wear a close-cropped, plain old American alley-cat coat. Just a shake and a damp-down keeps it glossy and styleable.

  "Your hair is lovely," I lie. That is what guys do when the light of their life is growing dim over a hangnail or whatever. "I have heard that the Mirage puts only the purest distilled water in its lagoon, and distilled water was used for bathing in the time of the Egyptians."

  "Cleopatra bathed in milk, I heard."

  "For her, milk. Yes. But for the queen of our kind, only the purest distilled water."

  The tiny black vertical frown lines on my beloved's forehead crease. "Does not distillation take engines and machines and such? Did the ancient Egyptians have all that?"

  I can see that she wants to believe me, but needs more reason. "Tut-tut," I say. "The Egyptians did brain surgery. These humans used to be a lot smarter than they look. And, now, if I may just lick a lock of your ruff into place--"

  "Lou-ie," she answers with a short purr of forbidden delight. She coils into a kittenish comma, curling her forelegs, in their pale gray striped stockings, against her chest. What a living doll!

  I can see my moment coming. For the fact is, in my species the female is not exactly enthusiastic about certain natural acts. She is often not in the mood. Even when the stars and hormones are in conjunction, she is tricky to approach. She is not disposed to let any of the male sex behind her, will even hiss and bat a suitor away, no matter how sincere. Sometimes it is necessary for the male to declare his superiority by taking the bit into his teeth: he nips a bit of skin at the back of her neck and forges ahead, ignoring all yowls, scratches and protests.

  I do not know why it is so difficult. But I have never known the male of any species to have an easy time persuading the lady of his choice into the position of his need.