Cat in a Flamingo Fedora

by Douglas, Carole Nelson

  Pardon me, there was one male who apparently had solved the conundrum of the ages: Darren Cooke, by all repute. And you see what happened: he is dead.

  I am now licking the Divine Yvette's long silver ruff into order and working my way downward. She twists and turns with delight, I will soon be in a position to . . . well, this is not a how-to book. Suffice it to say that all my dreams will come true in a nip and a tuck.

  In fact, I have made so much progress without protest that I am not prepared for the scream when it comes. It is a doozy. I look up to see what has gotten into the Divine Yvette, but her eyes are wide open too, and her little pink mouth is firmly shut.

  Then I realize that the scream is inhuman, but that it is coming from a human.

  Savannah Ashleigh is standing in the open bedroom door, her purse a heap on the floor, surrounded by its spilled contents, her hands fists of fury.

  "You worthless alley cat!" she screeches in my direction. "You ugly, nameless prowler!

  Rapist! You're the one who made my poor, darling Yvette pregnant!"

  I look at Yvette. She looks at me.

  Obviously, no one has seen fit to inform either of us.

  "Who--?" I begin.

  But I have no opportunity to question the only one who would know.

  Miss Savannah Ashleigh swoops toward me in her flapping black cloak. Now I know how poor little Toto felt. If there were a yellow brick road leading from this chamber, I would take it.

  If a twister funnel were making like an eggbeater outside this twentieth-story window, I would leap into its eye without a qualm. If there were a dumbwaiter in the suite, or even an empty elevator shaft, I would plunge into it and take my chances.

  But there is none of this. There is only one way out, and Miss Savannah Ashleigh, screaming like a banshee, is blocking it.

  I jump off the bed and then slither underneath it.

  The springs groan as Miss Savannah performs a flying tackle.

  I try to skitter to the bedroom door, but she Is across the room like a bullet, kicking It shut with one spike-heeled foot. I dodge the needle-sharp heel that aims at my brain and take cover under the bed again.

  Trapped. I know it.

  All is quiet beyond the dust ruffle. I wait, then hear a zipper being shut or opened. Can Miss Savannah be calming down and undressing?

  I stick a few whiskers out from cover. I see nothing ahead of me. No shoes, no legs. I twist my head to look above. Nothing leans over the bed's edge.

  I ease out. The door is still closed. I am ready to take cover again, when a big pink cloud descends on me like a flock of flamingos. I am smothered in pink, and turn over, wrestling the cloud. In a second my weight overturns it, and I hear a zipper straining shut. Bet Miss Savannah has put on a few pounds, heh-heh. Lying on my back, I kick at the pink cloud with both back feet, shivs out.

  They bounce off sturdy canvas as I finally realize what has happened.

  The zippers I heard were not in Miss Savannah Ashleigh's clothes, but in something else, something inescapable. I have been scooped up in the Divine Yvette's pink cat carrier. Miss Savannah Ashleigh grunts in a most unladylike way as she struggles to set the carrier upright. I do not give her any help.

  "Got you, you molester! Ruin my beautiful, innocent purebred, will you? She was destined for a champion Persian stud. They would have had beautiful babies, instead of the mongrel spawn my poor baby now will have to labor to deliver. Those offspring will go off to the pound as soon as they're old enough, do you hear? As for you ..."

  I see her legs scissor back and forth in front of me. I have heard the anger in her voice and seen the madness in her eyes. Poor Yvette. Her mistress has gone over the serrated edge. She is loony for real this time.

  "I have had it with your gender, buddy." She stops to lean her face way down to the mesh side of the carrier. "First that jerk Darren makes it pretty clear that he considers me over the hill!

  Me! I am almost young enough to be his daughter, yet I am 'too old' for him. And now you. You will never see Yvette again."

  I hear an anguished mew from the bed, very faint.

  Miss Savannah Ashleigh hears nothing but the madness of her own heart beating.

  "What to do with you that's vile enough? The pound would be too easy. Someone might find you, or even adopt you. No, I need something permanent, a punishment that fits the crime --"

  Inside the carefully applied black eye makeup, Miss Savannah Ashleigh's eyes are bloodshot and deranged. They suddenly squinch almost shut with an idea.

  Her face vanishes as she stands. I feel a jerk on the carrier handle, then am lofted a full four inches from the floor. "I am going to take care of you, Mr. screw 'em and leave 'em to have kittens on somebody else's bed. I am going to fix you forever."

  I yowl the entire way down the elevator to the parking garage, but people in the elevator, people we pass on the way out, only shake their heads.

  "Does not like to travel?" they ask, smiling.

  "He will get over it very soon," Miss Savannah answers grimly. Every time.

  In front of the Goliath she hails a cab and gives an address on the professional side of town.

  Not a bad neighborhood at all. She places the carrier on the cab floor. Her toe kicks it every now and then, keeping time while she sings a little song about boots made for walking, stomping all over you.

  I do not believe that there is a rodeo in town at the moment, so she cannot mean to throw me into the bull ring. Of course, there are greyhound training stables, and illegal pitbull fights, where she could also import me at great risk to my handsome hide.

  There is no doubt in my mind. Miss Savannah Ashleigh is in a killing fury, and I am completely under her control at the moment.

  It will take an act of Bast to save Midnight Louie this time.

  Chapter 31

  Break In and Pass Enter

  "A Strip shopping center, for heaven's sake, Temple!"

  They sat in Max's black Ford Taurus (courtesy of the late Gandolph the Great) a block from Darren Cooke's office.

  "Nothing but flat open spaces and street lights," Max continued.

  "Does it have a back entrance?"

  "I don't know. I didn't think of breaking in until I got home. Don't you have a--you know--

  bag of tricks?" She examined the car's front seats, then leaned over the headrests to study the backseats.

  "No. Stop jumping around like a four-year-old. Simple is best," he added. "And the less incriminating evidence on you if you're caught, the better. Houdini used picks so tiny he allowed himself to be searched naked."

  "Gee, I hope it doesn't come to that. Molina wouldn't know what to make of it."

  "How about a case of breaking and entering? Along with the usual murder."

  "Stop acting so martyred, Max Kinsella. You know you love this sort of challenge."

  He suddenly grinned. "Yes, I do. Impossible tasks are the spring board of my life. Where'd you get that rather clingy catsuit? I don't remember it."

  "Didn't have it in your day. You said black. I don't have much black. I needed this for a Black Cat wine promotion earlier in the fall."

  "Speaking of black cats, where's that one of yours?"

  "I left Midnight Louie lying quietly tucked in my bed after a difficult drenching while shooting a cat-food commercial at the Mirage lagoon. I can count on knowing where he is nights," she added, untruthfully but with great righteousness.

  "You always knew where I was: at the theater, until I had to duck out."

  " 'Duck out.' You make it sound like you took a little run to the men's room. Six months, Max."

  "We didn't argue like this before."

  "We didn't know the whole truth about you before."

  "You still don't." He grinned again.

  "I know."

  "And you love it. You love a mystery."

  "I know, I know. Okay, let's start cracking this one."

  He put the idling Taurus in gear to cruise past the d
eserted shop fronts once more, peering over the steering wheel at every door.

  Finally he nodded. "None of the neighboring businesses have a reason to have anyone there at this time of night. That's a plus."

  As the car turned the corner at the block's end, Temple saw that the building backed up on the rear of a similar shopping center. Though no loading dock loomed into the space between, there was plenty of room to park delivery trucks.

  Max made a U-turn in mid-street and parked the car on the side street facing the main drag.

  Although only a couple above-door lights lit this service area, the concrete paving was so starkly pale and bare that Temple couldn't imagine crossing it in her black cat-burglar suit; she would be like Midnight Louie trying to be invisible on a glacier.

  "Come on," Max urged, "and no banging the car door."

  "How am I supposed to shut it?" Temple had never heard a discreet car door.

  "Leave it not-quite shut, if you have to. Nobody's going to steal the car in twenty minutes."

  "Trust a crook to trust a crook to be predictable." Temple came around to the car's street side on soundless, catlike feet.

  Max glanced down. "Much better. When did you get black tennis shoes?"

  "I didn't. I used black shoe polish on one of my pink metallic pairs."

  "One of--?" Max lowered his voice even more. "From now on we only whisper, and not much."

  She nodded and crossed the street beside him, wishing for the cover of a nice midwestern avenue arched over with veiling elms . . . only most of those had succumbed to Dutch elm disease, so even midwestern streets weren't the sheltered spaces she remembered from her childhood.

  Max's shoes were black and as well mannered as hers. They walked like ghosts, Temple trying to recall how many shops Darren Cooke's office was from this end.

  Apparently Max had taken care of that detail already. He stopped at a nondescript metal door, and pulled something pale from somewhere on his pe rson. "Surgical gloves. Put 'em on."

  He did himself as he had advised her, then gave the door an examination such a plain entrance hardly deserved, examining even the roofline for security devices and wires, she supposed.

  "Turn around," he whispered. "What you don't witness you can't testify to."

  Shivering in the lower night temperatures, Temple crossed her arms over her chest and obeyed. The neighborhood was deadly quiet. She heard every small noise behind her, the occasional brush of clothing on itself, snicks and scrapes. Unconsciously, she braced for the sudden blaring shriek of an alarm system.

  Finally, she leaned against the building. Not watching was worse than watching, because she could only imagine what Max was doing and when it might be critical. She didn't know what particular moments to dread, so she dreaded the entire, unseen exercise. Maybe Max loved this stuff, but she loved the prize at the end of the hunt, not the means of getting to it.

  She pictured Matt here at this moment; he would be mulling over the situational ethics. To break the law to break a case, or not. He wouldn't even be here.

  So why was she?

  She heard a snicking sound, and then the doorknob turning.

  "Get in fast," Max advised, so she did, the black shadow that was her merging with the black shadow that was him and both disappearing through what seemed a literal crack in the door.

  When he shut it behind her, the darkness inside was total.

  Temple let out a ragged breath.

  "Don't worry." Max's voice echoed a little. "This little light of mine will guide us."

  It flashed on, the beam of a pencil-thin high-intensity flashlight. The light whipped around the room, showing Temple three plain doors leading to other rooms, some empty worktables, a disconnected table lamp, cardboard cartons and a pyramid of toilet paper and paper-towel rolls against one wall.

  Max followed the dancing beam around the perimeter, returning to her in two minutes flat.

  "Bathroom, storage room and outer office. You notice whether the exterior windows have any coverings?"

  "I can't remember, but they must. The sun glare would hit them hard at either morning or evening."

  "I'll check out the office. Stay here."

  "In the dark? Alone?"

  "You saw it; nothing here but paper products."

  She nodded, but he already had flicked the light toward one of the doors. Then it went out.

  Temple waited. In the dark her hearing grew more acute. She now discerned the et ernal rumble of a ventilation fan, which snapped once in a while from something caught in it. And smell! The bathroom broadcast that awful, fruity, sweet-strong air-freshener scent used in cars.

  Flamingo-pink stuff, now that she remembered it, that smelled like ... dead flamingos, for sure.

  Dead ducks. Her and Max, if caught. Red faces, and worse.

  The wait and the silence grew intolerable. Time seemed motionless. Surely Max had been gone at least twenty minutes, maybe thirty. An occasional muffled thump from the other room offered some reassurance, until she wondered who else it might be.

  She heard the door crack open, then a cue stick of light pointed to the floor.

  "It's clear. I've got a desktop lamp on, but we don't dare use the overheads. And I turned the ceiling fan off because they might move the vertical blinds apart."

  She followed his harsh whisper into the other room, but it wasn't the one she had visited more officially earlier today.

  Her heart began thumping with dismay. Max was bending over the laptop computer on a desktop corner.

  "What are you looking around for?" he asked.

  "This isn't the office I was in today! This is the wrong place."

  "Inner office. Check beyond that door, but don't open it too wide. Those vertical blinds would move at an angel's sigh."

  Peering through as he had instructed, she saw Alison's desk and the copier. "I never suspected an inner office."

  "Had to be someplace where the boss could duck visitors if he had to. I doubt Cooke came here much. Let the help run his business. The big computer out front is full of booking dates and tax returns. All the routine business stuff. This is where he'd stash anything private. So what are we looking for?"

  "Number one, a thick manila envelope filled with letters."

  "You do the drawers while I try to figure out if there are any safeguarded areas on this computer."

  He put the laptop on his knees and pushed the cushy leather desk chair away from the desk the length of his long legs. Temple searched the office furniture to the accompaniment of clicking keys and the occasional balky beep of an operating system that was being pushed against its inclinations.

  She took Max's nasty little flashlight to examine the inside of every drawer, then the underbelly of the desktop and the drawer bottoms. She pulled each one out to study the drawer backs.

  She crawled into the kneehole and felt all the exposed and hidden surfaces. She lifted the plastic chair mat. No hidden manila envelope. She took apart the small bookshelf the same way.

  She even lifted the silk jacaranda tree's pot and looked beneath it; only rusty water stains on the cream-colored carpeting. Who would water a fake plant? Maybe an office cleaning service. She poked through the real bark surrounding the phony trunk, dislodging a small spider.

  The desktop was bare as Mother Hubbard's cupboard, but she checked under the desk pad and protective paper tucked into its four leatherette corners. She eyed the desk lamp, a Danish modern affair that hid nothing. The countertop under the small bookcase bore the most office litter: a coffeemaker, empty plastic-cup holders. Temple shook her head at the unreal real world. O-ring padded folders, piled up. An electric shaver, still plugged in. A recipe box painted with tole flowers, probably a silly gift put to office use. And a huge Rolodex.

  Temple jumped on the Rolodex like Midnight Louie on a morsel of meat. She took it to the desk lamp and crouched down to examine the alphabetized entries under the brightest light available.

  "What is Darren Cooke's da
ughter's name?" Max's voice sounded strained, he had been silent for so long.

  "The sicko one? I don't think she used one on the letter. Just 'your daughter.' "

  "No, I want the baby one, the apple of his eye."

  "Oh. Urn .. . Padgett."

  "You can spell that?"

  "You can't? P-a-d-g-e-t-t. If they didn't get New Age Hollywood and change it to something like P-a-g-e-t."

  Max hit a short riff of keys. "They didn't." He sounded pleased with himself. "Found a password area. Might contain some interesting stuff. You turn up anything?"

  The CRT screen lit his face from below, highlighting the concentration lines etched deeply into his features. Computers were just another complicated cryptogram for Max to solve.

  Temple liked to use computers, but she never went more than screen-deep into their mysteries.

  Wait a minute! Max had never even met Darren Cooke. How did he know what the password would be?

  Temple crouched there pouting a little at the patented Kinsella enigma: the windmills of his mind were always hidden within boxes within boxes. Sometimes the closer she got to Max, the farther she got from the real person.

  He must have used logic to find the password, must have read articles on the tendency to choose family names. She knew a little more about Darren Cooke than he did. Maybe she could pull a rabbit out of a hat too. But what--? She shoved the Rolodex away. It was crammed with business cards, erratically filed. A manila folder would never fit there, anyway.

  Max's irritating whistle signaled he had found something juicy onscreen and she was supposed to go over and gawk at it.

  "What?" Temple asked, not moving.

  "Doing business with insider traders, looks like. The IRS would love to break into this area. If the assistant were erasing anything--and more likely she was transferring it to floppy first and then erasing-- this is it."

  Temple stared at the small, hard square disks piled beside the computer. "Why do they call them 'floppies,' anyway, when they're as hard as Mexican tiles?"

  "Didn't used to be." Max looked up. "What's the matter? Couldn't find anything?"