Max had recovered his equanimity and grinned at her as the car bucked over the rutted desert road. “I’ll rephrase that. What did you think of that guy?”
“I thought of him as the great white hunter from a forties movie.”
“Central Casting is you. So what does that mean?”
Temple had to interpret her own reaction. “He’s one of those apparently smug men in what should be the prime of his life who’s seen it all go sour and is living out on the fringes, recapturing his virility by controlling the uncontrollable. How’s that?”
“Awesome.” Max spoke seriously. “Villain or victim?”
“How about a little bit of both?”
“Dangerous or posing at it?”
“Potential or pose, they’re both dangerous, aren’t they? I didn’t need as much help dismounting the Jeep as I got. There’s a kind of contempt for women that poses as gallantry.”
Max nodded. The dusty drive in the open car had ground sand into the fine lines radiating from his eyes, giving him a steely, early-Clint look Temple hadn’t seen before. But then she hadn’t seen Max in any but an urban environment.
He seemed to get grittier in the desert: more suspicious, like someone out of his element. Temple had never seen Max out of his element before.
“Why are you so interested in the Rafi character?” she asked. “Leonora said he’s a new hire. I doubt he could be involved in the death.”
Max’s hands tightened on the steering wheel, for no particular reason.
“That’s what we came out here for, to study the scene for suspects. Maybe he was hired to move a leopard indoors. Did you notice something odd about the empty leopard cage?”
“It had been washed down today.”
“Right. The leopard’s been gone for three days. Looks like somebody wants to make doubly sure there’s no trace evidence.”
“Of what?”
“Of whatever happened that moved a leopard from a cage outside into a living room.”
As the car jolted off the private road onto the highway, Temple immediately noticed that Max turned north, not south.
“Where are we going now?”
“To visit the only Ranch Exotica suspect we haven’t interviewed.”
“Suspect, singular? Aren’t you forgetting the animal-rights activists? I haven’t seen hide nor hair of them, excuse the expression, under the circumstances.”
“No need. I’ve kept pretty good tabs on them.”
“Oh. So I get to see the indoor suspects and you get an exclusive on the outdoor suspects. Smacks of great white hunter, if you ask me.”
“I can’t think of a good excuse to introduce you to the activists, who are a paranoid lot at best. But this last suspect is an outdoor/indoor variety, and there’s already a precedent for you paying a visit there.”
“So who is it?”
“The leopard, of course.”
Chapter 35
Tiger Paws
The sun comes up like a Pop-Tart, sudden and sweet and hot.
It smacks our trio of hikers in the rear like a Jedi light-sword. We leap forward, knowing that the gentle cloak of night is lifting from the sand and that soon every grain will be burning into our tender, sore pads.
The Yorkshire constabulary have their twin noses glued to that very sand, lifting them only at the usual patches of cacti.
“Are you sure,” I ask again. Panting. Still. “Are you sure you are following the same scent trail that you found in the leopard’s ex-cage at Rancho Exotica?”
They lift heads and once-shiny black noses, now desert-dried to matte black. Their high, squeaky voices are almost inaudible from thirst, but they are still game.
“Yes, Mr. Midnight,” says one, nodding until the wilted satin bow on its head is a blur.
“Yes, sir!” says the other. “We follow the man-steps, as always.”
“That is interesting.” I pause to sit under a spreading, er, Joshua tree, which, frankly, offers about as much shade as an upright crochet needle. “You have been telling me all night that a human has walked into the Rancho Exotica, and out, without benefit of wheels. Most unusual. We must have trekked for miles.”
The silver-gray heads nod, less vigorously than usual. “Indeed, honored Capitain,” says Golda with a sharp salute.
(I have encouraged the pair to adopt a French Foreign Legion approach to rank and discipline on this trek, that being the only desert model I am familiar with. I have never failed to watch old black-and-white reruns of ’50s TV’s Captain Gallant of the Foreign Legion. When it comes to situational etiquette, I would be lost without reruns.)
“Mon Capitan,” I correct her sharply.
I claw my way up a small dune to survey the terrain ahead of us. More sand, sweat, and tears. Luckily, neither of our breeds sweats or cries, although we certainly can suffer.
“I see civilization ahead,” I announce, farsighted leader that I am.
The Yorkies pitter-patter up the dune, pocking sand with birdlike tracks as they go. I am not sure that they are not really a species of kangaroo rats, so well have they adapted to desert warfare.
Their desiccated noses scent the arid air, still effective despite the lack of lubrication.
“The prey awaits ahead, mon Capitan,” Groucho announces in a sandpapered voice.
“Good,” croak I. “And water?”
“Nothing near,” Golda says with a forlorn headshake. “I could use a bath and an air-dry and a comb-out in the worst way.”
“Be of good cheer,” I counsel the troops. “Once we return to civilization you can return to all the comforts of home.”
I am lying through my dehydrated teeth, of course. It is called keeping up morale.
We resume our course, the Yorkies in the lead, noses to ground unless an impoliticly placed cactus has caused a deviation.
The morning shadows have shortened like clock hands before we are within sight of the distant buildings.
We pause to pant again, aware that water must await in the oasis before us.
I so tell the troops. “Water must await in the oasis before us.”
“It is an oasis, all right,” Golda agrees, sitting on her tiny haunches with her forelegs in the air, sniffing. “An animal oasis.”
“What gives you that idea? Your overeducated nose?”
She shakes her bow in a southeasterly direction. “The sign says so.”
I blink and look.
Indeed.
The little bowhead still has sharp eyesight as well as nostril power. A huge sign sits near a gravel road, and it reads “Animal Oasis.”
“Another hunt club?” I wonder aloud.
Groucho sniffs the wind. “I smell lions and tigers and bears. And antelope, deer, and rams.”
I shake the sand out of my claws for the umpteenth time, and point to the sign. “Furward!”
In no time flat, or flat-footed, we are slinking around the smells and signs of civilization again.
The diminutive dogs are sniffing circles, confused by the profusion of animal life, and the overwhelming scent of fresh water.
I give up and let them lead us to the water bowls first.
In minutes our three lips and tongues are plunged nostril-deep in an ample pond of fresh water.
In only another minute, we sense a large engulfing cloud that has shadowed our private pond. I look up.
Amazing how clouds will take on the shape of earthly beings. I could swear the Lion King himself is looming over us.
Oh.
“Hello, Mon Majesté.” I salute. “We are weary travelers from afar and athirst, seeking succor at your royal claws. Er, paws.”
Leo lays himself down, almost crushing the Yorkshire constabulary. They yip and dance away, their whiskers dripping purloined water.
Leo yawns, displaying a feline Himalayas of dental peaks. “Are these sand fleas?” he asks me.
“Compared to Your Royalness, yes.”
“And you are—?”
“The name is Louie. Midnight Louie. I am an investigator out of Vegas.”
Leo laps lazily at the pond that has been our salvation, almost licking up the Yorkies in the backwash.
“What can I do for you?” the lion asks politely.
Well. The Yorkies flutter to my side while I sit down, wring my whiskers free of excess water and make my presentation.
“We are on the trail of a dude who has something to do with the murder at the hunt club over yonder.”
“Hunt club?” Leo looks cross-eyed at a fly on his majestic nose, frowns, and swats it to Kingdome come. His flyswatter is the size of a pizza pan.
I decide right then and there not to tell him too many of the nefarious goings-on next door, so to speak. Might agitate the local wildlife.
“Murder?” Leo repeats again, yawning while the dislodged fly darts into his maw by mistake. “What is murder?”
I forget that these big guys, however domesticated, are serious predators without my fine-tuned and human-oriented sense of right and wrong. Leo would probably consider a dead big-game hunter a case of anything but murder.
“A human was killed and no one can tell who or what did it.”
Leo nods sagaciously. How could one not look sagacious with a head that big, wearing a wig reminiscent of an English judge with a blond dye job?
“You hunt the hunter,” he says.
We nod agreement for once.
“You are a little small for the job,” Leo notes.
I shrug. I refrain from pointing out that I am big enough to get by without needing an “Animal Oasis.”
Groucho is emboldened to squeak. “We are looking for a feline party, name of Osiris.”
“Oh, the little guy.” Leo nods again. With his head of flowing blond hair, he reminds me of a somber Fabio, the romance-novel cover dude. “I wondered why he was set apart. He does not look like a man-eater, but then it does not always show, does it?”
We nod. Truer words were never growled.
“I have never seen a man-eater,” Leo goes on, grooming a foreleg the size and shape of Florida. “I begin to think it is a mythical beast. I do not like stringy limbs and haunches myself, and I have not had to fend for myself, so cannot say much about this type.”
“Well,” I say, glancing at the pond, “thanks for the drink. We will mosey on down the line and have a chat with Osiris in person.”
“Be my guest.” Leo yawns and rolls over on his back, all four paws in the air.
The Yorkies have had to move briskly to avoid becoming mini-bath mats. Talk about a matting problem!
“That was a waste of time,” Groucho growls as we mush on through the sand like the Three Musketeers.
“Not at all,” I say. “We have checked in with the head honcho. That never hurts. That smell still doing it for you, Golda?”
“Oh, yes, mon Capitan!” She responds to authority as well as any individual of this feisty breed can. “In fact, I see a leopard pattern dead ahead, and the scent trail leads directly to his compound.”
Osiris is lounging in the shade of some sort of imported plant, digging his claws into a huge felt toy of some kind.
We sneak around to the rear of his area, where more imported greenery shades us as well.
When he spots me, his long, lean, measle-spotted body leaps up and bounds to the fence.
We shrink back, but it seems that Osiris is as happy as a hound dog to see us. Or rather, me.
His huge pink tongue laves the airy fence wires, missing my puss by only about three inches as I jump back as fast as he leaped forward. Nobody washes Midnight Louie’s face since I left my mama’s supervision.
“Thank you!” Osiris purrs, rubbing his decorator-approved side back and forth on the wires separating me and the tiny duo from his hyperactive four hundred pounds.
“For what?” I naturally ask.
“Lunch!” He pauses to regard the Yorkshire constabulary.
They rush in where pit bulls would fear to tread, hurling themselves yapping against the fence and incidentally a good portion of the pacing Osiris.
“Idiot feline!” they screech. “We are highly trained tracking animals here to clear you of a murder one charge.” They bounce off the wires and lunge forward again, rather like attacking Ping-Pong balls with very long fungus.
Osiris backs off, blinking, and sits on his lean haunches. He still looks like he could use some lunch, but I see that his idea of edibles is not the Yorkies.
“I meant,” he says, lying down to wash his face and much resembling a faux leopardskin rug. “Thanks for lunch the other day, at the other place. The two-legs had given me nothing for several dark-times and I was almost ready to eat the mats between my toes, which you two in some ways resemble, no offense.”
He is eyeing the Yorkies askance, which is the only way to regard such an uppity breed of sand-hugging dog.
I realize with chagrin that the big rug has mistaken me for Midnight Louise.
Much as I like to take any undeserved credit I can, I cannot let this notion go unchallenged, so explain that his benefactor was a friend of mine, not me.
“Ah.” Osiris nods sagely while cleaning behind his cauliflower ear. (The big boys have these round, blunt ears that look as if they had been in the ring for years, not the svelte, pointed numbers we smaller cats do.) “I did detect a whiff of female that is distinctly lacking now.” He gazes benignly on the Yorkies. “And are these your and the lovely little black Miss’s cubs?”
I do not know whether I am more insulted to be taken for sharing the state of parenthood with Midnight Louise, or to be mistaken for contributing to the production of the Yorkie twins.
“No relation. Despite appearances, these are dogs.”
“I am not familiar with the breed,” Osiris admits.
Imagine that! What a sheltered upbringing. “Now that we know who’s who we need to find out what’s what,” I go on. “Meanwhile”—I turn to Golda and Groucho—“you two track down the human scent you have been following. I want to know who from here hiked all the way out there and back again.”
They scamper off, happy to be of use, I suppose (dogs are like that) and happier to be away from Osiris’s big white teeth.
I settle down, my mitts tucked under me for a long summer’s siesta.
In no time Osiris is pouring out his life story. Now it is my turn to yawn. Basically, he has had a pretty soft time of it until now. He was born into a performing family, but separated at an early age by an animal trainer. He did some commercial film work—we chat about the ups and downs of that profession—and caught the attention of his recent master thanks to an ad for spandex animal-print pants from something called “The Yap.”
“I would stretch like this”—Osiris curves himself into a long, lean arc—“and they would superimpose an image of Cindy Crawford stretching in her leopardskin-print capri pants. I got a lot of fan mail from that one, but not as much as Cindy Crawford.”
“Yeah, the humans hog the limelight. Did it not bother you to advertise a product based on your hide, so to speak?”
“No, we are all protected now, and a guy has to make a living somehow. I figure if the humans are happy with faux, we are all better off for it. Besides, Cindy Crawford gets asked that all the time too.”
“About making a living from selling her hide?”
“Right. Some of us are just too beautiful to hide our light under a barrel.”
“That’s basket.”
“Whatever.”
“So how did you get out to the Rancho Exotica?”
“The what?”
“That is where the head human was killed. You know, the guy you were found dancing the cha-cha with, only he was dead?”
“Oh, him. I thought he was a stuffed decorator item. The place was filled with the kind of props I was used to seeing on a film set. Also, inside the new boss’s house. He is a good guy. He lets me indoors, which is why I was not completely lost when I woke up inside that place, although all t
he shapes and scents were new, and I did stumble around for a while, which is when I accidently sharpened my nails on the…on the—”
“Corpus delicti is what we call it in my trade. If Burkleo was already dead. Was he?”
“Oh, yes. Had a nasty smell about him already. I was quite upset I had mistaken him for a scratching post at first. But I was not quite myself from the stinging fly.”
“Tranquilizer dart,” I explained.
“Tranquilizer?”
“It puts you to sleep so the humans can move you without damaging you…or them. Surely they used such a device on you before.”
“No. I am trained. It is not necessary.”
“So. You would have been pretty unhappy to be ripped untimely from your new position with the Cloaked Conjurer?”
“My new boss, you mean. He was not my trainer, but he would visit to play and pet and feed.”
“And you were happy with him?”
“Oh, yes. He is a strange human. He has a face like mine in some ways, and a deep, buzzing, purring voice. I have never had such an agreeable boss.”
“So you want to go back to him?”
“Of course. I have not finished my training.”
“And you do not think he had anything to do with your abduction?”
“Why should he?”
I say one word, that even a naive leopard like Osiris can understand. “Publicity.”
He rubs his big blunt nose on a forepaw. “My new boss has too much publicity. I figure he likes to avoid it. He seems a bit litter-lonely. He would come out after dark and talk to me, as if we were the same breed. Performers, he said, are prisoners of the public. I had not thought of it that way. He said I was a good listener.”
Well, yeah. Like who can talk back?
Still, I do not wish to get between a boy and his human, so I only grunt what can be taken for agreement, then I restate the case:
“You were darted, woke up in a cage at Rancho Exotica, were watered but not fed for several days. Then you were darted again and woke up in the ranch house, alone except for what turned out to be the corpse of Cyrus Van Burkleo. You bumbled around, sharpened your claws on some handy portions of Burkleo’s body, then panicked and ran through the house, overturning furniture. Who caught you?”
Cat in a Leopard Spot Page 27