Cat in a Quicksilver Caper

by Carole Nelson Douglas

  “My only interest is serving her.”

  “Tsk.” I sit down and slick down the hairs between my nails. “An admirable, self-sacrificing attitude but short-sighted.”

  “I am not short-sighted,” she declares, so angry that she crosses her pale blue eyes, thus proving my point.

  “Every performer of every stripe should have a personal representative. An agent. Are you willing to take humans at face value? At their so-called word? There is no more slippery species on the planet. I give you Enron, Worldcom, Tyco.”

  “I know no cats of those names.”

  “Of course not! These are predatory humans called CEOs. I think it stands for ‘Cruel Evil Owners.’ They make man-eating tigers look tame! Of course there are way more of them than there are man-eating tigers left in the world.”

  “So. Are you one of these ‘representatives’?”

  “Yeah. I could be yours, if you were looking for something in the representative line. What kind of contract do you have with Miss Shangri-La?”

  Hyacinth hunches sourly into her shoulder blades again. “She owns me and I pretend to let her think she ‘trains’ me.”

  “That is it? No terms on length of contract? No bonuses for good behavior? No hazard pay for high-wire work?”

  Where physical threat stands no chance against a spitfire like Hyacinth, she positively caves under the burden of legal language.

  “None of that. Should I have it?”

  “Absolutely. What about disability pay when you are sidelined and a double like Squeaker subs for you?”

  “That namby-pamby, wishy-washy no-papers excuse for a Siamese! She is Melanie to my Scarlett. If I hadn’t strained my spine recently . . . er, during rehearsal, of course.”

  Of course not. I know precisely when she sprained her spine: under the tender attentions of a spitfire masseuse named Midnight Louise.

  Her eyes cross again as another thought occurs. “ ‘Pay’? Did you use the term, ‘pay’?”

  “Pay. That’s what I got when I did a couple of TV commercials for some cat glop. All specified by contract, seven pages of contract.”

  Hyacinth’s forehead furrows. It looks like bleached moss. “Maybe you should be my agent, Louie.”

  I see my opening and I take it. “Sure thing, Princess. My cut is only fifteen percent.”

  She rouses herself from her troubled reverie and snicks out eight purple-enameled shivs from her forepaws, plus two scimitarsize dew claws. “Your cut is ten percent, one for each of the trails I will leave in your hide if you try to cheat me.”

  I see that even her strong, long lavender-enameled nails are flexed for quick action. I cannot swear that curare is mixed with that nail polish, but I would not want to test the theory on my own hide.

  “Ten,” I agree. Besides, I am not in this for the commission. “Being your agent will entail my hanging about up here—secretly, of course. We never want to warn humans of impending legal obligations—and observing what you contribute to the operation and what would be just compensation. Grandfathered in, of course.”

  “What does my grandfather have to do with this? He is retired from stud duty on a farm in New Hampshire.”

  I am astounded that she knows the whereabouts of her grandfather, but most of these purebreds have nothing better to do than tote up their family tree back to Bast, no doubt. For all I know, my grandfather may be the Cheshire cat.

  “ ‘Grandfathering in’ is a legal expression, meaning, um, your compensation must be paid retroactively.” I am not at all sure about this, but when in doubt, sound confident.

  I watch her baby blues cross again. It is a rather fetching habit.

  I am on a roll. “ ‘Retroactively’ means it goes back to when you first began working with Miss Shangri-La.”

  “You mean she would owe me?”

  “Indeed. I think she owes you quite a lot. You are the only performing housecat in the magic game.”

  “How would I be paid?”

  “Any way you like. Fancy Feast coupons. Bejeweled collars. French nail enamel. It would all be specified in the contract.”

  “And could I trust an agent who maintains sleeping arrangements with a human who rubs my mistress the wrong way, and vice versa?”

  “Business is business. A commission on a hot act is a commission.”

  “Well.” Miss Hyacinth (formerly the evil Hyacinth, but a dude needs to show proper respect for a client or how will he get any for her in negotiations?) rises, stretches with only a trace of painful hesitation, and bares her fangs at me, in a friendly way. “I will show you all my hidey holes, for when I am having an artistic tantrum over the choreography. Perhaps not all, Louie. A girl needs her secrets.”

  She is back to her flirting, fickle self and I feel pretty relaxed myself.

  One does not wish to get too cozy with a deadly enemy, especially if one is using her for a higher purpose, but I have declawed the one creature up here who might blow my cover.

  Now, she will be busting her gray velvet garters to conceal my presence. I will be able to spy for my Miss Temple and make sure her project goes as smooth as spider silk. She can cover the infighting on the ground level; I will handle the high jinks on high. Plus I may be able to collect a sweet commission. In one form or another.

  United We Stand

  Temple wasn’t unduly religious. Not when she’d been brought up as a Unitarian Universalist. It was the one area where her usually staid midwestern family had kicked over the tracks.

  Slightly.

  There were only about 800,000 registered UUs in the U.S. of A., including four U.S. presidents, which made them a pretty significant insignificant minority, to turn a redundancy into a contradiction in terms.

  The universality and unity implicit in the name pretty much described the doctrine: inclusive. A UU didn’t even have to believe in God (as a sort of straight Leonardo da Vinci in a long beard and antiquated robes) or as anything other than an innate kindly bent in human nature.

  Backsliding in the practice of Unitarian Universalism was very difficult to do. They stood for such large, all-embracing concepts and had so few narrow, excluding ones. But Temple had managed to do it. Simply by not going to church.

  So making an appointment with the local UU minister for an office “consultation” felt like stealing. And operating under false pretenses.

  But Sue Hathaway had been perfectly willing, even eager, to meet and talk with Temple. Temple had a good feeling about a woman with a position few other women in the country held listing herself as “Sue” instead of the more formal “Susan.”

  It felt UU and even MU: Midwestern Unpretentious.

  And Temple needed all the good feeling she could muster for slinking around, just when the going got tough, to a church she’d ignored for several years. But when she’d told Max that they needed to talk, Temple knew she needed to talk to an expert first. A UU minister named Sue.

  “Come in.” Sue answered the door herself.

  She was only three or four inches taller than Temple’s five-foot-nothing, a high point in her favor. But she was the opposite kind of woman: wiry short hair, no makeup, blue jeans, linen blazer over a sky blue silk camp shirt; Birkenstock shoes, flirting with either side of forty-five. She was plain but reassuringly savvy seeming and competent, perhaps because of her plainness.

  “Temple Barr,” the woman, uh, minister, said. What should Temple call her? “An interesting name. Come sit down. Some espresso? Tea? The obligatory glass of afternoon sherry?”

  “Why don’t we wait and see what’s needed,” Temple said.

  Sue laughed and nodded.

  “By the way, I’m not usually a bottle blonde. This is just part of my last job.”

  “You’re an entertainer?”

  It was a natural question in Las Vegas.

  “Nothing so exciting, or lucrative. I’m a freelance public relations representative, but sometimes in Las Vegas—”

  “Always in Las Vegas. Say no mor
e. What can I help you with, Miss Barr?”

  “Temple, please.”

  “Miss Barr” was how Lieutenant Molina invariably addressed her. Temple did not want to think about the homicide lieutenant while on this particular, and highly personal, mission. “I was reared UU.”

  “Not in Las Vegas.”

  “No. In Minneapolis.”

  “But you haven’t been active.”

  “No. So I suppose I really shouldn’t be here.”

  “To the contrary. Welcome back. At least for a meeting. What can I help you with?”

  “I need a religious professional’s viewpoint on something.”

  “ ‘A religious professional.’ I’d never quite thought of it that way, but it’s true.”

  Temple sighed, big time. Then she plunged right in with the immediate problem. “I’ve been seeing an ex-Roman Catholic priest.”

  Sue Hathaway was a pro. Her expression remained supernaturally noncommittal. And she said nothing, so Temple had to go on.

  “I’ve learned a bit about that religion’s position on a lot of things, which are way more . . . definite than I grew up with.”

  Sue smiled.

  That forced Temple to blunder on even further. “Anyway, although he’s wonderful—smart and kind and well, hot looking—I once made this flip remark that modern girls don’t want to discover sexual compatibility or incompatibility on their wedding nights like in the olden days.”

  “One does tend to get flip when nervous,” Sue said.

  “And now he’s come up with the darnedest compromise between his religion, which is way anti-premarital sex, and what I sort of said I expected. Which was a”—Temple cringed—“a free sample.”

  Sue laughed. Hard. Until the tears came. “How long was he in?” she asked when she could. “The church, that is.”

  “About seventeen years.”

  “Ouch. Why and how’d he leave?”

  “It’s complicated.”

  “If it wasn’t, it wouldn’t be real life.”

  Temple sighed again, much to her surprise. She was astonished by how hard it was to talk about her personal ambiguities even to encouraging strangers of the same gender.

  “I told you he was smart. He figured out he’d entered the priesthood to be the perfect father because he was born out of wedlock. Then his mother married the most imperfect stepfather she could find.”

  Sue’s encouraging expression had curdled with instant understanding. “Poor woman.”

  “Girl. So there was”—Temple wouldn’t give away Matt’s name. Talking about him behind his back even with a stranger was bad enough—“my friend, dealing with all that. He says the attraction of celibacy was it was the only way in his church he could be a hero for not having children, which he’s still pretty conflicted about. He knows kids from abusive families can . . . abuse children.”

  “And you?”

  “Children? I don’t know! I’m single. I’m thirty. It’s hard enough to decide who you love, much less whether you want to add . . . cats-with-souls to the mixture.”

  “So, the immediate issue is—?”

  “He’s mentioned marriage.”

  “Very serious.”

  “Being a good ex-UU, I get that! He’s offered, actually proposed that we get a civil marriage here in Las Vegas. As a . . . test run. Then, if we’re compatible, we can remarry back wherever—my home, his home in Chicago—in a religious ceremony, probably ecumenical.”

  “And your question is?”

  “My question is a lot of things about marrying a devout Catholic and what it would mean to me, but I’m here to ask what this crazy idea means to him. I’ve never had to answer to a demanding religion like he has. I could get married here by Elvis and feel married. Or do a church thing and feel just as committed. But . . . I’m not sure where his plan puts him, in terms of his religion.”

  Sue leaned back, tenting her fingers. “I can tell you that he’s seriously sincere.”

  “I’ve always known that. It’s one of his best and most aggravating qualities.”

  Sue chuckled. “You like him. You really, really like him.”

  Temple nodded. “It’s my Sally Field Oscar moment.”

  Sue was old enough to recognize the reference. “You could love him.”

  “Yeah. Except I’m not mentioning my long-term boyfriend, who’s being pulled in directions he can’t help.”

  “Which don’t include you.”

  “Probably not.”

  Sue inhaled deeply, lowered her head, then lifted it and asked, “Sherry?”

  “Yeah.”

  The glasses were tiny and exquisite. The sherry was the color of watered-down blood. Temple killed hers with one swallow.

  Sue chuckled again. “At least you’re trying to figure this out. Listen. This man, the ex-priest, I don’t think he’s fooling himself. No, this civil marriage plan is not a way out for him. It is for you, if you don’t mind having a Reno divorce on your record. His church would never recognize the validity of a civil marriage. He’d have sinned. But both you and he could start over again, fresh. You’d be a Reno divorcee, not odd at your age. And he would have sinned but he wouldn’t have committed himself to a real marriage, the only kind his faith recognizes, a Catholic one.”

  “All this for a free sample?”

  “That was you, not him.”

  “Oh, God. Oh.”

  Sue shook her head and refilled Temple’s glass.

  “You two. You’re like a pair of blind people trying to meet in some nonexistent middle.” She leaned forward. “You don’t have Doubt One about your sexual compatibility with this man. You have doubts about your religious compatibility.”

  “It’s strange. I don’t want to think about some of these things in advance. I’m okay with sex, marriage, and what next? Who knows what I’ll want in three years? But my not wanting kids right away, or ever, would be a big religious no-no for him and his church. Yet he’s the one with a legitimate reason to worry about that.”

  “There are options. Natural family planning, for instance, is accepted by his church. You know, it means abstinence on presumed ‘infertile’ days. It works a lot better these days than when it was take-your-temperature-and-hope forty years ago.”

  “I don’t want to think about that. It sounds so . . . clinical. I want to think about who I love and could spend the rest of my life with.”

  “What about who loves you?”

  Temple smiled, shakily. “I’m lucky. I know two guys do. And I guess I . . . love them both. Is that possible?”

  “Maybe, but it doesn’t work very well. I can see you’ll be conflicted no matter which way you go.”

  “That sucks! Excuse me, Reverend.”

  “The truth often does.”

  “He said . . . my ex-priest friend, that he never wanted to confess anything that happened between us.”

  “Nor should any seriously sincere person, no matter his religion. I’m afraid, Miss Temple Barr, that you also are a seriously sincere person. It doesn’t make life easy. But it will make it rewarding. Eventually. That doesn’t help, I suppose.”

  “You’ve confirmed what I was afraid of. Ma—The ex-priest was thinking of me, not himself, when he came up with that civil marriage stunt. He’d still be in trouble with his faith.”

  “You gotta love a guy like that.” Sue smiled.

  “Yeah. But the other man has always looked out for me too, even risked his neck. It’s just that he’s been so . . . absent lately. I know he has good, even noble reasons.”

  “Sounds like you can’t live with one man’s religious values and the other’s man’s job.”

  “I can’t live with liking, needing, wanting, loving two men at the same time!”

  “A lot of women claim they can’t find one good guy nowadays. You have two. Can you spare one? I’m single.”

  Temple, on the verge of tears, found herself laughing instead.

  “Yeah,” Sue said. “I’m a fine one to gi
ve advice. Love isn’t for sissies. I think something will happen to push you one way or the other. It’ll just happen, and you’ll know what’s right.”

  Temple nodded and got up to leave.

  She had no doubt that Max was another one of Sue Hathaway’s “seriously sincere” persons too. Maybe the answer was not what she couldn’t live with—subdivided loyalties, conflicting love and lust—but what, or who, she couldn’t live without.

  And maybe she’d recognize that when she saw it.

  Police Work

  Now that Temple was a bottle blonde, Morrie Alch was salt-and-pepper putty in her petite little hands.

  She would bet that his only child, a grown daughter, had been a taffy-haired honey of twenty-two months at one time.

  “Thanks, Detective Alch, for handling this so discreetly.”

  He gazed up at the empty area above the peak of the exhibition ramp, where men in coveralls sat on boards suspended on paint-spattered ropes.

  “Thank the New Millennium,” he said. “They have clout in this town. We poor flatfoots do our job and bow out.”

  “You’re not a flatfoot; you’re a detective. You don’t fool me. That poor dead man. I’m still trying to find out if he could possibly have been hired by the hotel.”

  “Waste of time. All that fuss about him maybe being a Chechen rebel. He has a Slavic look, but ‘Art’ was a petty crook. A hotel hanger-on, all right, but more used to hanging paper around town than hanging dead over the site-to-be of a priceless artifact. It takes a superior criminal mentality to engineer a major art heist.”

  “I don’t doubt it.” Temple tried not to think of the superior criminal mentality she knew intimately. “We’ve tripled security.”

  “That ought to make somebody very unhappy.”

  “You think the exhibition is still endangered?”

  Alch shook his grizzled head. “Security is out of our hands. Homicide’s the name of our game. The LVMPD will offer some officers to watch things around here, but it’s up to hotel security now. That’s the way they want it.”

  Temple checked her watch. It was one of those easy-read dials big enough to cover her wrist. Nothing Paris Hilton would wear, but it kept her on time in a field where split seconds could make all the difference in the world.