I, naturally, had seen her preparing her rather amateurish little trap at our home base. She sacrificed a half ream of printer paper to create the proper mound on the hatbox cover. I immediately saw through her ruse, but was mystified as to how I could do my duty and provide her effective backup.
Not that I alone am not sufficient for the task, but extra sets of shivs are always welcome when dealing with a rogue human of unknown origin. Miss Midnight Louise, of course, has been stubbornly pursuing the Missing Max case. (If you ask me, she is way too interested in the comings and goings of dudes of another species.) So it is just me and the Ashleigh girls, who are now plenty riled from their dive and digging out, just as 1 needed them to be. I realize that I have led them into what would be the equivalent of an opium den to my forebear shamus, Sherlock Holmes. And I have then expected them to contain themselves until the exact right moment.
Even my PI-hardened senses have been twitching at the air of universal prey wafting around this huge, darkened, empty ballroom. Everything our night-piercing eyes view through the crack in the door trembles temptingly with tension.
The air-conditioning wafts the scent of all the things that trigger our predatory instincts. Feathers. Feathers small and coarse, as from turkeys and chickens. Feathers airy and long, as from ostriches and emus. Feathers soft and frilly, as from the elusive marabou, perhaps a relative of the elusive caribou, who knows? Feathers fan-long and colored like deadly poisons, from the stately peacock.
We also scent fake fur. Umm. Soft and plush and so claw-able. Microfiber! Double-knit! Spandex! Fabrics, not feathers, but also divinely designed by the great Bast for joyful stalking and rending and reducing to tatters.
I am reminded of the stalker whom Midnight Louise said had shredded Mr. Max’s wardrobe. A very sick individual, as humans go, but there was something of the jungle cat in that primitive action. I too lust after the soft dangling attractions inside human closets. Of course we domesticated cats have learned, mostly, to control these primitive destructive urges. However, we never avoid a legitimate reason to unleash them.
Taking down a murderer will do nicely.
My shivs are slipping in and out of their sheathes, eager to impress themselves on human skin and all the intervening surfaces. I can hear the rip and roar now.
But my doughty roommate’s scream is our version of the late, lamented blue-light special at Kmart stores. The Ashleigh girls, released from pampered civility by a nod of my sagacious head, surge past me, rapacious streaks of riffling fur.
“Not the one who bears my scent,” I remind them with a final snarl, and gallop forward myself, heading for the elevated area where I had earlier spied the tiny light winking as bright as a Birman’s eye.
My well-prepared missiles have hit their shambling target on the ballroom floor by the time I leap up onto the stage.
I hear the mingled screeches and screams of two species, the sublime sound of shivs skiing down several feet of snagged fabric, above and below the belt line. In my observation, there is nothing like the dainty and fluffy Persian for ripping the heck out of anything.
By now the arias of feline fury and human pain have summoned reinforcements. Security people thunder through the front double doors. Some thoughtful person has found the lights and put them all on full power.
Human eyes blink in the glaring light, but my pupils shrink to slits as I focus on my Miss Temple, clearly visible on the Glamour-Glo PhotoLaser stage not twelve feet away. Her low-shod, high-hatted red ensemble is enough to put my fangs on edge, but no one else present is rocked by her shocking and unusual lack of taste.
She is conferring with Fontana brothers three who have materialized with the lights, over the pale-painted mannequin in the hot seat.
Meanwhile, I turn to regard the ballroom floor, where the Ashleigh girls have the target down and are voraciously pummeling a pile of red-and-purple rags that appears to be still moving. And moaning.
Since my Miss Temple is surrounded by sufficient human muscle, I hurtle after my accomplices. Much as I would enjoy joining in on the fun, my position in the community as an upholder of law and order forces me to put a damper on the Ashleigh girls’ exuberant killer instincts.
“Sit and pummel,” I order, moving around to examine our catch.
Whoever described the human female as “a rag, a bone, and a hunk of hair” must have come upon one after a full frontal, two-pronged, thirty-two-nailed feline epidermis workout.
Even I am impressed. I cannot wait to hear what Miss Midnight Louise thinks about the very recent exploits of Louie’s Angels.
Chapter 57
The Naked Truth
“Nasty,” Julio said, gazing with his brothers and Temple at the seated corpse of Natalie Newman.
Temple was still shuddering, which encouraged Ernesto to put a bracing arm around her shoulders.
If Oleta Lark’s corpse had looked unnervingly alive, Natalie was definitely dead according to the TV crime scene stereotype. Her exposed flesh was bluish gray. Blotches of pooled blood streaked her narrow legs like horrible varicose veins.
Even worse, what held her upright was the scarf that had throttled her. Its ends were wrapped around the upright of the wooden chair she sat in. The scarf was purple with a flock of flying red birds. It was not the lethal Oleta Lark scarf design, at least.
“She must have been killed hours and hours ago:’ Temple suggested.
Ernesto nodded, pointing to the black-surfaced floor of the portable stage.
“Drag marks,” he said. “She was killed much earlier and hidden behind this curtain background.”
“No one working the photo presentation must have gone back here:’ Temple said. “Not until I ducked behind the curtain to hide. Darn! With her death, there goes my main suspect.”
“For the Oleta Lark murder?” Julio asked.
Temple nodded unhappily.
“Then,” demanded Ernesto, “who’s that facedown on the ballroom carpeting under the killer cats?”
“I have no idea. Whoever it is was determined to lay hands on the manuscript of Oleta Lark’s autobiography. I salted the dead woman’s booth with a fake version. I figured that would draw the murderer, but I figured the murderer was Natalie Newman.”
Julio eyed Ernesto and Emilio. “We’d better rescue the unknown lady from the feral felines and turn her over to the police for questioning.”
“Hey, that’s Louie,” Temple said as they got closer. “And the frantic felines who shredded everything in sight are Savannah Ashleigh’s pampered Persians.”
They all paused to study another body, this one definitely alive, but prone and moaning faintly.
Temple took in the purple fishnet stockings and wedgie shoes, red-satin elbow gloves, purple wig, crushed red hat … the microfiber muumuu snagged over every visible fold by the Persian girls’ fancy footwork.
“Candy Crenshaw,” she breathed, “the convention’s singing clown princess. I haven’t even dug up a decent motive for her yet.”
“Good,” said a gruff voice behind her. “You’ll leave something for the local police to do.”
She and the Fontana trio turned as one.
Detective Alch stood there, looking officially severe.
“You four get out of here. You’re contaminating the crime scene, whatever it is.”
“Scenes,” Temple said, pointing out the lethal vignette onstage a hundred feet away.
It took Alch a few seconds to realize he was gazing on a model corpse.
“Su,” he called, “secure the stage and the body.”
Temple saw the other detective leaping up on the stage, sans stairs, to do just that. Louie distracted her from that sad scene by swaggering over to massage Temple’s calves with his sides.
“The cats stay,” Alch ordered. “Our crime techs will need to get their, urn, claw prints. So, who do we have here?”