Meanwhile, Midnight Louie had assessed the room and its occupants from his royal-purple perch on the person of Miss Renaldi. He finished with a final sweep of his head from corner to corner, and then released a low, loud meow with a nice vibrato of sheer rage under it.
"He does 'talk,' as advertised," a florid-faced man at the table replied.
"I'm afraid Louie has been confined to carrier for most of two days," Temple said. "He's feeling a trifle cramped."
The red-faced man patted the long wood-veneer conference table.
"Then let him out. Here, let's take a look at this wildcat."
"Here? Now?"
The others apparently heeded the man who spoke, for heads nodded all around the table.
Kendall leaned close to Temple. "Brent Colby, Junior."
Temple nodded and accompanied Kendall to a break in the chairs. In a moment the carrier straps were loosened and Louie himself was about to be loosed upon the eminences of advertising.
"Be good," Temple whispered as he tumbled out of the bag and rolled upright.
Oh, he was good. Very good.
First he stretched, starting at his front legs until his belly polished the conference table, then reversing the motion until he stretched out one back leg after another, his tail sketching a perfectly executed S in the air. This introductory maneuver elicited polite applause.
Then he sat, glanced around to ensure their full attention, and began fastidiously grooming a paw.
"Mick Jagger," murmured one advertising scion to another, an apparent compliment to the length and agility of Louie's tongue.
Louie flicked the commentator a glance, then yawned very slowly to display an extraordinary array of teeth.
"More like Jaws," said a neat, dark-haired man with a permanent five-o'-clock shadow as well as worry lines in his forehead.
"Victor Janos, Junior," Kendall whispered to Temple. She hastily pointed out the other figures at the table, Tony Renaldi was tall, dark and lean, quite handsome, but maybe Temple was biased. She was surprised by how many junior Colbys, Janoes and Renaldis populated the table, either founders or offspring. Apparently keeping it in the families was a priority among the high-level executives with the advertising firm.
Meanwhile, Louie worked his feline magic up and down the table, doing the Las Vegas Strip strut. Savannah Ashleigh was not too dumb to know when she was being upstaged. She fidgeted on her leather-upholstered conference chair until her clinging pantsuit squeaked.
"I really think Maurice has superior stage presence," she put in at the moment Louie appeared to be mesmerizing the entire group.
"Maurice." The name rolled off the tongue of the firm's president like a stale breath mint. "Perhaps he's been overexposed."
"Would you call Tom Cruise 'overexposed'? " a man leaning against a gray-flannel wall put in. Maurice had acquired a new handler, a crew-cut-haired man with the arms of a staff sergeant and the blunt red hair and freckles of a Tom Sawyer gone to beefy and unimaginative middle age.
"It's true that Maurice is established as a film personality," began an advertising guy, a still-perky youngster with a very discreet ear stud that glimmered like the Mark Cross automatic pencil parked behind the opposite ear.
A number two yellow pencil wasn't good enough for a copywriter at Colby, Janos and Renaldi? Temple wondered. She did some of her best thinking while doodling with disposable felt-tip Flairs.
Louie had taken advantage of the distraction to rise and stroll regally around the conference table, pausing frequently to ingratiate himself with the seated executives.
Before one, he sat to inhale the aroma from a ceramic mug.
"Hey, he wants my coffee!"
Louie moved on to stop before the head man himself. His lifted forefoot patted approvingly at a tiny tack on the boss's dull navy rep tie. It was shaped like the Empire State Building.
"We're about to get one of those in Las Vegas," Temple noted.
"I doubt he's into the tie tack. He likes my old school tie!" The boss looked flattered. "Sorry, cat. You'll have to put in four years to earn one of these."
Too much for Louie. He ambled toward the table's opposite side to toy with one woman's expensive pen (he was an equal-opportunity brownnoser), then to chew experimentally at the edge of a man's notebook. He strolled back to rub his chin on Colby junior's Rolex band, with impeccable taste, of course, in both executives and watch brands.
Kendall thought his conduct worth another sotto voce comment. "Temple, your cat sure knows who to cozy up to. Did you bribe the bosses' dry cleaners to put sardines in their breast pockets?"
"Say, what a dynamite idea! Grease their palms with fish oil. No, Louie just has It."
"Just what does Louie have? That's a serious question. How would we position his personality?"
Temple considered. "Mystery and distance. Yet an in-your-face charm when he wants to use it. He can be very affectionate in private, and aloof as a Dalai Lama at other times. He comes and goes as he pleases, shows up where and when he's least expected. Sometimes I think he reads minds. At other times, I think he's just a con man at heart."
Temple realized that her description also matched a certain missing-in-action magician of her acquaintance.
"He's the eternal male," she finished. "Fancy-free, but capable of being domestic when least expected. He's every man you knew who walked away, and every man you'd give your eyeteeth to have back."
"Wow. Is this a tomcat or a model for Lounge Lizard aftershave? Guess Louie doesn't shave, huh?"
"Oh, he's had quite a few close shaves, but they were purely metaphorical."
"That's right. He's been involved in real crimes, hasn't he? And so have you."
Temple nodded cautiously. She wasn't so keen on her crime-solving past now that she knew a murderer and had let said murderer go free.
"What a great double angle. You can discuss safety for cats and owners. Everybody loves personal-safety issues nowadays."
Speaking of personal safety, Temple didn't trust Louie to restrain himself with the women who had abducted him with the intention of neuter.
But Louie did enjoy a particular affinity for Savannah Ashleigh's cat Yvette, the shaded silver Persian who advertised Free-to-be -Feline, a feline health food that the portly Midnight Louie would not touch with so much as a whisker tip.
If Yvette were anywhere near her mistress, Louie might forgo revenge for a romantic reunion.
Temple looked high and low, but couldn't spy Yvette's pink canvas carrier, although Maurice was captive on the sidelines, looking fiercely lion-like in a cat carrier with a wire grille.
"I thought this was a done deal," Temple told Kendall, trying not to whine. "Now I find out there's competition not only for my role, but Louie's."
Nothing's certain in advertising but the uncertainty. Three weeks ago, the Allpetco account was firmly in the pocket of Sloan Van Eck and Associates. Now we get a swipe at it, and Christmas or not, peons labor overtime alongside the brass to make sure we meet the deadline with our best shot."
"Swipe. Deadline. Shot. Sounds. . . murderous."
"Advertising is murder." Kendall's statement sounded unnervingly sober. "We work twenty-hour days, sometimes, on a major account. Deadlines, and doing our darnedest until we drop. But we have fun too." She grinned. "Successfully selling your idea, yourself and your client's product is an incredible high."
Keeping an eye on the table, Temple saw Louie approach Savannah Ashleigh. He came to a full stop, lofted his tail and waved it like a scepter of office. Then, slowly, deliberately, he turned to show her his business end. The very spot she had intended to irrevocably alter
Temple could swear he shook his fanny at her before mincing in a manly fashion back down the shining lemon-waxed walnut to Mr. Big, whom he honored with a purring rub on the outstretched hand.