Cat in a Quicksilver Caper

by Carole Nelson Douglas

  “Oh, I am not allowed to room with her. She is a star. Plus, she might nail me with her poisonous claws. Stars are very insecure, did you know that, Louie?”

  “Not being one, no. And I am not sure those claws are as lethal as advertised.”

  “Have you never been a performer, then?”

  “I did some commercial TV work for a while, but I am mostly employed as a dude-about-town. An . . . investigator, as you know. Death. Crime. Conspiracy.”

  Miss Squeaker furrows her blond brow, her blue eyes crossing slightly with concentration. What a charmer! “Are you now investigating the dangle toy on the exhibition floor?”

  “Above the exhibition floor,” I point out.

  “I saw the workers take him away on a stretcher with wheels. I recognized him, having seen him out and about.”

  “Part of the crew?”

  “I do not think so.”

  “So.” I dust off the itsy-bitsy spidery tail of an anchovy; these are squinky critters, let me tell you. “Where did you see him?”

  Here, Miss Squeaker settles down on her haunches to play with her food. One delicate nail-tip hoists an anchovy over to my side of the cardboard circle. I love a dainty eater, especially when she is not eating but letting me hog it all.

  “What do I know?” she says listlessly. “I am only worth anything for my resemblance to the great and powerful Hyacinth.”

  I bite my tongue. The great and powerful Hyacinth is one hot chick but not an empowering role model, I fear.

  “Louie,” she goes on, “I cannot sleep a wink at night, dreading our opening, my debut. Fearing that the web of lines we must work upon will fail and cause me to fall. So, I go up alone to walk the wires.”

  “Without a safety net?”

  “There is no safety net for this show. In rehearsal, yes, but once the run begins, it will be naked claws.”

  I shudder despite myself. This is no way to introduce an amateur to a circus act. “I admire your devotion to your job, and survival. So. No one knows you are up there putting in rehearsal time?”

  She ducks her head, then nods. “If I am to do well, I must seem to be a ‘natural.’ ”

  “Which is why you are.”

  She flashes her fangs. This is the equivalent of a feline smile, nothing predatory. “Have you ever hung sixty feet above a concrete floor, Louie?”

  “Just on a case, and then not happily. The only thing I think should be hanging that high is a piñata.”

  Squeaker blinks wryly at me. “And those are usually made in the form of donkeys. A very meek and mild creature.”

  “I often thank Bast that our kind does not have four hooved feet for then we would all be enslaved.”

  “Some of us still are.”

  I cannot argue. Squeaker was “rescued” but into servitude.

  “What did you see up there that no one was supposed to see?” “I see why you are a prime investigator,” Squeaker says, hunkering down.

  What sexy, sharp shoulder blades she has! A born sweater girl.

  “There have been,” she says, her whiskers tickling the vibrissae near my ears most lasciviously, “several mysterious humans up there with me.”

  “Humans are always mysterious.”

  “But not always . . . sneaky.”

  “No. ‘Sneaky’ is a word often applied, unjustly, to our breed. So. Who was hanging out under the ceiling with you?”

  “Two men.”

  “Not part of the crew?”

  “No. Strangers in black.”

  “Suspicious. Not my natural kind of black, I take it?”

  “Not fur, no. That second skin that humans wear.”

  “Spandex?”

  “Yes. I had not heard the word until I left stir for show biz.”

  “Understandable. What kind of men?”

  “Men. They are big, clumsy. They speak, smell. They would easily trod upon one’s tail and never notice if one fell at forty miles an hour to the concrete below.”

  “They would easily never notice that one had a tail.”

  “Exactly.”

  “So, they are not part of the crew?”

  “Many men who are not part of the crew hang around the set and exhibition.”

  “You mean hang around but not lethally. Did you see the victim?”

  “I cannot be sure. He was a man and wore black spandex. Some call it a cat suit, and now that I have met you, I see why.”

  She bats sea blue eyes at me.

  Merrowphhh, I do recognize when a nubile doll is making cow eyes in my direction. Squeaker makes her slinky sister Hyacinth look like a hooker on Zoloft.

  “Tell me, my acrobatic charmer”—can I help it if she giggles with a sort of throaty purr?—“how could that cat-suited man have managed to die when you have been able to survive, and thrive?”

  We nose the dressing room door open and she leads me through a circuitous backstage route and up into the flies via a webbing lattice that only those of us gifted with claws might manage.

  The setup is clear once we are high above the exhibition area. The magic act is laid out on an invisible web. You always knew every illusion comes with strings, did you not?

  A single tightrope stretches straight and strong across the chasm below. It is steel cable, a half-inch circumference of metal filaments, both flexible and taut. If one has the impeccable balance for the job, it is a royal road of stability. A human foot, trained to curl, can toe dance across . . . as long as the body above those feet is lean, schooled, and attuned for infinite balance. No magic, just rosin and gutsy skill. The feline foot, clawed by birth, is even more flexible and clingy.

  That is not to dismiss the heart and skill it takes for any living thing to perform sixty feet above the ravening crowd.

  Black bungee cords are all over the place, swagged against the side walls like anorexic curtains. The way they are arrayed, you could grab one and swing down from any point on any of the four walls, which narrow into a funnel at the very top.

  There is a ledge about twelve feet from the top. Squeaker (I will have to find a pet name for her, and soon!) points out black sliding panels that allow humans to enter and exit the scene and the black platforms where the Big Cats perform.

  Of course, from a vantage point far below, all the machinery blends into a solid firmament of black, against which any wires, cords, platforms and escape hatches become invisible.

  “So,” I ask myself as much as my guide, “the dead man had to have come out here, willingly or not, before he could get entangled in a bungee cord and garotte himself.”

  “Or before someone could ensnare his neck in a bungee cord and push him off one of the launching platforms.”

  I study these platforms. They are built for strength. The act’s Big Cats are of the leaner, smaller variety: black leopards. They weigh maybe a petite 250 to 300 pounds. The Cloaked Conjuror in all his gear runs perhaps 250 himself. Shangri-La, 110. Hyacinth, maybe 7 or 8. I am a bruising 20 pounds myself, and not even the tightrope trembles at my few steps upon it.

  “Louie! Do not toy with the tightrope. It takes a trained professional to walk it.”

  “I am a trained professional.”

  “On the high wire?

  “When this joint was brand new, I busted into it through the neon planet sign on the roof.”

  “Really!”

  “Really, S. Q.”

  “S. Q?”

  “A nickname, compliments of Midnight Louie. Short for ‘Cute-with-a-Q.’ Or the more common ‘Susie Q.’ Do not thank me, S. Q.”

  “I was not about to, M. L.”

  She is especially cute-with-a-Q when she is mad. “Tell me,” I ask again. “How do two black cat dudes, no matter how outsize, show up against all this black matte paint when they perform?”

  She uses her elegantly pointed tail to indicate the doused stars in our artificial sky. “Pinpoint spots. Plus, their coats are dusted with iridescent powders. Kahlúa with black diamond, and Lucky with rainbow plati
num.”

  I nod. Such serious shimmer will keep all eyes on the cats while their human partners do-si-do with illusion and misdirection.

  “What does Hyacinth do during the show?”

  “Her personal brand of acrobatics. She even has a fur-colored harness and does several high dives from a bungee cord.”

  If I could whistle, I would. Instead I manage a high-pitched wheeze. “That Hyacinth is no shy violet.”

  Squeaker sighs. “Do not remind me. They want a stage name for me, even though, as a body double, I will get no credit in the program.”

  “You mean that will be you bungee jumping your little heart out?”

  “I hope not, Louie. It is more than possible that Hyacinth will be strong enough and will not require a substitute. But if she does, I need my heart right where it belongs when I do these stunts.”

  I look down, eyes narrowed. Human workmen in white painters’ overalls blend with the pale travertine floor below.

  “So, you’re the bungee cord expert up here?”

  “Along with Shangri-La herself. She did not want to risk her treasured companion in rehearsal.”

  “The Cloaked Conjuror?”

  “Hyacinth.”

  I should have known. “So what does CC do here?”

  “Stays safe high above, on the platform. He has never been an acrobatic performer.”

  No, not weighed down with those height-enhancing boots, that heavy face-concealing, voice-altering device that makes him into the magician in the iron mask.

  “Wait a minute! Have you seen the whole act?”

  “Of course not. None of us has. Only bits. It is secret until the grand opening.”

  “Then maybe . . . just maybe, CC needed a secret body double himself. Maybe the double needed secret practice. Maybe that was the guy who got a little too friendly with a bungee cord coil and dove. And died.”

  “Maybe.” Squeaker’s big blue marble eyes light up, even in the shadows up here. “So . . . CC might need a replacement. Who could he get on such short notice?”

  I put a testing foot on the high wire again. Something in me would like to prove I could still give Death a run for my money. But I am older and out of practice.

  I wonder if Mr. Max Kinsella faces the same dilemma.

  Only one man—magician—in Vegas could step into the dead man’s shoes on short notice. That is a pun. Mr. Max Kinsella is six feet four of muscled tensile nerve. This would be a perfect way to secretly swing his way to a comeback if he wanted to.

  And did someone else figure he could, and would, want to? Did someone want the incomparable Mystifying Max up here for some reason? Did CC’s body double, if he was one, die to make room for Mr. Max?

  I look down. My poor Miss Temple’s common blond head is again on the scene with no idea that her faithful roommate is up here, above it all, watching her back and ruminating and contemplating risking his neck. Mr. Max Kinsella and I have way too much in common nowadays for me to be entirely comfortable with it.

  “Louie?” S. Q. sounds sweetly uncertain, but she is another one being forced into a situation where risking her neck is the only way to save her hide.

  “Yes?”

  “What do you think of Fontana?”

  “Which one?”

  “The one. For my performing name. ‘The Flying Fontana.’ ”

  I am picturing the Flying Fontana Brothers as a trapeze act and work so hard to smother a laugh that I almost overbalance into instant oblivion. But this will be the only comic relief I will have for some time, I fear.

  “Great,” I tell her. “Whatever makes you happy.”

  What I have learned up here does not make me happy. I sigh and step back from the hypnotic highway of the upper air. No tightrope walking for Midnight Louie. I am here to stand on solid ground with the Big Cats, and find out who is playing fast and loose with illusions and fine lines and fine art and lives. Both human and feline.

  A Moving Experience

  Temple returned to the Circle Ritz parking lot from a long day of spinning press releases into gold only to find a huge furniture store truck blocking her favorite parking spot under the shade of the lone palm tree.

  At least it wasn’t a Maylords truck, she thought, remembering her last PR assignment with a shudder. Not only had murder been involved, but one of the victims had been a good friend’s significant other.

  And not only was the behemoth truck keeping her from preserving her brand-new red Miata from sun damage, but a trio of laboring men were preventing her from entering her own building.

  Well, not her building. Electra Lark was the landlady.

  Electra herself was standing in the parking lot just like Temple, blocked from entering by the humongous cardboard package the visiting apes were wrestling into the Circle Ritz’s narrow fifties-vintage back door.

  “Quite some carton,” Temple said.

  “Don’t tell me!” Electra said. “I have no idea how that box is going to get up there. The elevator’s a thimble and the service stairs turn more often than a corkscrew. And there are two more cartons: box spring and frame. I’m afraid you’re stuck in a holding pattern, dear.”

  “I’m not in a hurry. What on earth is all this?”

  Electra, a chubby, cheery figure in a flower-patterned muumuu, her white hair sprayed to match each vivid tropical tone, eyed Temple oddly.

  “I can’t complain, I guess. He’s been such an ideal tenant. Not a speck of inconvenience to anyone. Like a ghost. Until now.”

  “Who? Mr. Simpson on four?”

  “No, Mr. Devine on two. Hold on to your pillbox hat, honey, that mammoth installation is going in right above you. I’d prepare for something going bump in the night, if I were you.”

  “What do you mean? Matt’s above me.”

  “Well, that’s his new bed, from what I can read on the boxes. And I tried to catch every word and number.”

  “New . . . bed?”

  Electra nodded. “I don’t know what’s gotten into him. He’s always been such a quiet tenant. The only significant piece of furniture he’s ever imported was that vintage red suede sofa you talked him into. You didn’t sweet-talk him into a huge new bed any time recently, did you?”

  “Me? No!”

  Electra turned at Temple’s vehement denial to eye her.

  Temple had protested too much.

  “Is it a waterbed?” she asked quickly to derail Electra’s curiosity.

  “Nope. The old-fashioned kind. A waterbed would have been easier to lug up two floors, although the frame would be hefty. As far as I can tell, it’s the usual king size with some fancy bedstead that must have cost a fortune.”

  “King size?”

  Electra eyed her again. “None of my business, of course, as long as the woodwork isn’t damaged. But it’s a far cry from that funky old-fashioned twin Matt bought when he moved in.”

  “A twin. How quaint.”

  “Poor boy. Just out of the . . . you know, what they call those priest places. I’m glad to see his horizons are apparently expanding.”

  “Big time,” Temple said. “Really, don’t worry about everything getting in. The building is old, but my . . . our . . . California king size made it in.”

  “Of course Max would need a California king size,” Electra said. “Such an extravagantly tall fellow like him. And I suppose even Midnight Louie is a yard or more when he stretches out.”

  “Easily,” Temple said quickly, happy to have the bedroom talk shift to her cat as opposed to her significant others. Other! Singular.

  “I’m pleased, actually,” Electra said, wincing despite her words as a workman braced the glass door open with his sweaty back. “Matt deserves a more . . . active social life, don’t you think?”

  “Absolutely. He deserves anything he can get. Within reason. And . . . within the rules of his religion, of course.”

  “Hmmm.” Electra watched the two beefy deliverymen wrestle the huge cardboard box into her building. “That bed
setup doesn’t look like it’s within the rules of any religion except the Playboy philosophy. But that’s none of my business.”

  By which she meant utterly the opposite.

  Temple nodded, afraid to say another word.

  About fifteen minutes later, Temple was allowed up into her own rooms. Above them came the expected thump and pound of a major furniture installation.

  Temple started like a nervous gerbil at every sound. Matt and a king-size bed was not good. Not good for her peace of mind. He’d just semi-proposed to her a few nights ago. Good thing Kit was out flitting about and not here to ask awkward questions.

  Temple still didn’t know what to make of the proposal, much less a new bed. Beds were way more stressful, actually. Especially when she knew about them. It. Big. Expensive. Not kidding around. The whole enchilada.

  Speaking of beds, Midnight Louie was staking his usual claim to hers, which used to be theirs when Max had still lived here. Louie had beaten her home, as usual. That was getting rather uncanny, if she had time to get rattled thinking about it. She would have loved to have a word with him about his New Millennium presence, but, unlike a human roommate, he never explained himself. Maybe that was a consummation devoutly to be wished.

  Temple smiled to view Louie’s luxuriating black feline form making a swatch like an Asian letter across her zebra-striped comforter. Beds were for stretching and sleeping, Louie announced in his catlike way.

  Don’t get paranoid about beds, Temple admonished herself.

  Then her doorbell rang.

  What didn’t she want to know now?

  By the time she reached the door, she was prepared to be perfectly blasé about any improvements her upstairs neighbor was adding to his apartment.

  Blasé went out the window when she found Danny Dove on the threshold, leaning like a lazy imp against the door jamb.

  “Danny! How are you? Come in. What a surprise to see you again.”

  “And these are your Circle Ritz digs. Charming. I adore this building.”

  Temple recalled that he and Simon had been enchanted with the idea of establishing a pied-a-terre here. Danny Dove, being a major—if not the major—Las Vegas choreographer, had a huge house in an older section of town. It was an empty big house since the death of his significant other, whom Temple had met only days before his demise.