Cat in an Alphabet Endgame: A Midnight Louie Mystery (The Midnight Louie Mysteries Book 28)

by Carole Nelson Douglas

  The small white box with the all-important wedding rings inside has not yet been affixed to my tie-band.

  Why not? It is safer on my neck behind the formidable thorn bush of my ever-ready shivs.

  But no. I have been “parked” in my conveyance on the end of the front pew overlooking the aisle and forgotten. All around me enough rustle and bustle to launch a major Broadway show opening is going on.

  I hear Danny Dove’s drill-sergeant basso voice projecting to the wooden beams high above, presumably representing Heaven itself.

  “Places, people. Please. We do not have much time for the run-through before the actual-time rehearsal.”

  Well, I am not a “people”, so I suppose sitting ignored is good enough for me. At least I have invited some of my own “guests”, my nearest and dearest, which I blush to reveal includes my business partner and semi-honorary “daughter”, Miss Midnight Louise.

  We of Midnight Investigations, Inc. had a serious senior-junior talk before I allowed myself to be carted away from my Circle Ritz home, perhaps never to return again. (No one and nothing stops Midnight Louie from going where he pleases, but I may finally be too proud to come crawling back.)

  “Louise,” I say. “This is a very happy, yet sad day for me. I must let my Miss Temple follow her heart and go away with someone else.”

  “Jeez, Pop. Our Lady of Guadalupe is just a half hour’s trot away.”

  “The road she follows from there goes ever on and on.”

  “And so do you sometimes.” She sways a bit from side to side, considering. “You still have your PI business.”

  “Perhaps. But I only went into it to help Miss Temple after I found her first dead body at the convention center. I cannot be her sole bodyguard anymore.”

  “There are other bodies to guard.”

  “Louise, you have survived on the streets alone. You have never had a strong bond with a human. I understand. So, I am here to tell you, Louise, that it is possible, in some remote way probable, that you are…related to me. More than somewhat.”

  Her golden eyes widen. Definitely a bit of the Oasis Hotel’s sizzling feline mascot Topaz there, or of Satin, the Sapphire Slipper bordello cat.

  “Daddy Dearest!” she purrs. “Then I can get my name on the business as a Junior?”

  “No. You are not a boy. Only boys are ‘Juniors’.”

  “So what!” She gives me a friendly air-swipe on the cheek. “It can read, ‘Midnight Louie, Sr. and Midnight Louise, Junior Miss’. I like that. Classy with a feminine touch. We can amp up the clientele for more female customers.”

  “Way too wordy, Louise, like you.”

  I sigh. Then…and now, coming back into the present with a mental lurch. I wonder where Louise is, given all this chaos.

  I can only pass the time watching the flashing tuxedoed legs of multi Fontana brothers churning by, showing off their silver satin side stripes.

  This is a wedding, folks, that may utterly and forever rearrange my happy home. You are lucky I am willing to participate in this folderol at all… I could very well go rogue and run off with the wedding rings.

  But I am not heard or heeded, of course. I have always had a very bad feeling about the time and place of this wedding. And, luckily, I prepared well in advance.

  The procession music sequence is about to begin. Distant voices from the choir loft at the back of the church are checking mic settings. I can only glimpse tall Miss Lt. C.R. Molina’s dark hair in her persona of songstress Carmen.

  I have nothing better to do now that I am once again confined to zebra-stripe quarters (is that not what convicts had to wear in the old days?) to hearken back to discussions the couple-to-be had within my hearing at the Circle Ritz only a week ago.

  Well, actually, we all were in the privacy of my Miss Temple’s bedroom, where I have been a planted listening device for more than two years.

  When I occasionally flick an ear to fine-tune my built-in woofers and tweeters (not referencing dogs and birds), she sometimes wonders aloud if I have a flea in my ear and require a preventative treatment.

  Please. No flea would dare to challenge the lightning justice of my super-sharp shivs, but I allow Miss Temple to monthly dab a little ‘perfume’ purported to ward off vermin on my neck. Rather like a vampire bite.

  Frankly, warding off vermin—insect, or mammal, or human—has always been my job and I am very good at it without the assistance of applied substances, except for a bit of nip now and again.

  Anyway, I am cleaning my toe hairs when I overhear the very discussion in question now, noxious as it is.

  “Wedding-wise,” Miss Temple says to Mr. Matt, “what are we going to do about your irregular family situation? My dad and mom can play their traditional roles, with dad walking me down the aisle, but nowadays the groom’s parents may walk him down the aisle too, which is less sexist.”

  Mr. Matt mutes Jimmy Kimmel on the late-night TV. See, they are like an old married couple already. Disgusting! However, I have always wanted to mute Jimmy Kimmel, so I give Mr. Matt an invisible high-five and listen ever-so-much more intently, as the Gossip Girls do.

  Mr. Matt considers with a sigh, “That would have to be my mother and her new husband.”

  “Who is genetically your uncle.” Miss Temple frowns. “Wedding planning can get complex.”

  “The weddings I officiated at—” he begins.

  Miss Temple threads her arm through his, rests her tousled red head on his shoulder and coos, “I would love to be married by you to you.”

  “Cannot happen,” he says. “Anyway, the groom and his best man always lurked in the sacristy and appeared at the altar just in time to watch the wedding party coming down the aisle, starting with the mother of the bride and ending with the father of the bride. Simple enough.”

  “I invited both brothers and spouses, on the pretext that they are the sole brothers in the new step-family your mother has married into. You know how much being there would mean to your ‘real’ father. That man must be heartbroken to have been kept ignorant of your existence and not have been there for you from cradle to priesthood because of his parents’ manipulations.

  “If I had been the screenwriter on that situation,” my Miss Temple adds indignantly, “I would have put the love-at-first-sight teen lovers back together in their middle years.”

  “You are a charming romantic, Temple. I know my father would have ‘done the right thing’ and acknowledged my mother and me, if he had known. But he went off to the military, against his family’s wishes, anyway. And they ‘handled the situation’ without telling him.”

  “Was it because of their mondo money or were they just mean?”

  “Parents back then expected to have authority over their children, ‘for their own good’. Did not yours freak even now when you went off to Las Vegas with Max?”

  “They were not happy. I was their only daughter and youngest child, but I was in my late twenties. Time to slash the cord.” Miss Temple is quiet for a few moments. “Max helped me do it.”

  “Which is why, having been through several cord-slashings myself…my mom, the family, the church. the city of my birth, etcetera, I wish him well.”

  “That is so very noble of you. I see why you are such a star at advice-giving.”

  “In that mode, I am sure my father would have stood by my mother if he had known, because his family-approved wife has proven to be selfish and shallow.”

  “Really?”

  “He does not love her, but he will never leave or divorce her, as a Catholic man, and for the sake of their children.”

  Miss Temple shakes her head. “He must see Mira often, with his brother at family events. It must be so painful.”

  “Yeah, but not unprecedented,” Mr. Matt says. “There was a case in Chicago of two judges when I was on The Amanda Show. One married the other’s divorced wife and, to retaliate, the other brother married his brother’s longtime paralegal assistant.”

  “How wei
rd.”

  “That is what people are. So no, on the gnawing pain factor,” Matt said. “My genetic father is a realist. Love at first sight is a miracle, maybe, but real adults have to make compromises. My mother marrying my father’s widowed brother, starting over, the two of them, at their age, has made her stronger than she has ever been. She knows the truth, and the truth is that you cannot go back thirty-some years to rewrite the present. And neither I, nor my ‘real’ father, would want to sacrifice seeing Mira strong and happy. And that is why I have come to peace with him and cherish him so much.”

  My Miss Temple swallows, and sniffles. “At least we have a happy ending, coming right up,” she says.

  I may have to relieve myself of a hairball right here on the zebra-print coverlet and gaze with loathing on the similarly patterned carrier against the bedroom wall. You are next, you foul portable prison, and all your ilk!

  I freeze as my Miss Temple’s fond glance falls upon me. “Louie has been flicking his ears back and forth all this time, and now he is hiccupping. Maybe that monthly omni-vermin application I use is not working.”

  Yes, there is always an app for that these days!

  Mr. Matt shakes the sheets. “Maybe a vet should check him out before the wedding. We do not want our Ring Bearer to have a case of fleas.”

  I am so insulted I could spit, but then they would think I had rabies.

  Whatever my human associates have decided to do about the fact that Mr. Matt has had three fathers of various stripes, I very well might have had brothers of different fathers. I sympathize with Mr. Matt’s true father’s lonely, isolated position. Among my kind, nature has decreed kitty litters commonly have multiple fathers. Yet I too have been tripped up in my past by secret patrimony.

  I actually look around now to see if Midnight Louise has chosen to attend, although she was offered no position of importance, as I have been, like Ring Bearer. I suppose she could have been chosen Flower Girl, but I believe she would have sniffed at being offered such a childish role, not to mention the humiliation of wearing a collar and having some odiferous posy affixed to it. Me, my performing career has required costume bits, and I can adapt without having an existential personality breakdown.

  Meanwhile, the show must go on. As the organ plays and Miss Carmen sings the processional song, various major players shuffle down the red-carpeted aisle, their order announced by Danny Dove from the church’s rear. I am not required to perform until last, and my cue will be when I am released from the carrier. I see the flash of various Fontana brother legs as they escort various ladies forward, Mother of the Bride and Matron of Honor and Flower Girl, as Best Man and Father of the Bride and Bride come in their ordained order. Ho-hum.

  It seems I have nodded off during these deadly dull ceremonial preparations, and am awakened by a most rude method.

  I find myself swung out and up, my stomach mimicking the motion to an alarming degree. I burp up a bit of forbidden Fancy Feast.

  “Ciao, Louie,” a Fontana brother whispers into my suddenly liberated ear as the sweet sound of zippers parting ways on my carrier sends a shiver up my spine akin to claws on a back fence.

  “Time to do your cameo soon, dude.” Julio’s nimble fingers affix a small white box to my white bow collar. Phfft. All that high-carat white gold is as light as an empty Temptations treat bag to my panther-like muscular neck and shoulders. Then…betrayed by a Brother. I am zipped into my prison again. At least I now have a better view.

  First I sit there and scratch my neck.

  That sissy white tie carries enough starch to float a barge.

  I look around. Next up to the choir loft. Hmm. More activity than I expected. But I am ready, willing and absolutely able.

  I look toward the altar to eye my future position between Best Man and Bridegroom, waiting to be relieved of the box affixed to my neck so the wedded couple can swear to be cuddlesome and clueless for eternity.

  Pardon me. My view of married life.

  But, lo, what light through yonder church front door breaks? It is the setting sun…and major felony is its name.

  My claws seize in and out, sharpening themselves in vain on the tough nylon lining of my so-called “carrier”. Peering through the black mesh sides, I am as handicapped as a film noir dame in a mourning veil.

  I hear heavy boots rushing forward, grinding on the terra cotta tiles.

  Silhouetted against the twilight, a crew of seven armed men advance with machine pistols, probably Uzis, one after another racking the slide on their firearms with ominous echoing metallic clicks.

  I sit caged and ignored by the front pew, watching the wedding crashers advance on the royal red wedding aisle carpet chosen to accentuate my Miss Temple’s pure-white five-foot-long-as-she-is tall wedding gown train.

  “Do not move,” the intruders bellow.

  My Miss Temple certainly cannot move. That train makes for one mummifying cocoon, as she attempts to turn from the altar toward the thugs. The entire wedding party—all in white, some lurid pastels, and manly formal dude gray—freeze in their positions at the top of the altar steps.

  My Miss Temple in her flowing white wedding finery resembles the famous “white marble” living statues at the Venetian hotel, models who move so subtly it is almost impossible to catch them in motion.

  That waterfall of tulle veiling her from face to waist is doing my Miss Temple no favors in a crisis. If only, I think, the wedding party girls were bearing Beretta bouquets—Viva Italia!—and the boys were wearing ice pick boutonnières.

  The invaders advance nearer, their weapons’ black muzzles sweeping the pews right and left. I can only see vague outlines of the pew people against the lurid stained glass light, but they seem dumbstruck and obedient as well.

  And who would not be dumbstruck by these bizarre wedding crashers. To conceal their faces, they are wearing white balaclavas!

  Pause action.

  Just what is a balaclava? It can be confusing, I agree. Is this foreign word the name of a Russian stringed instrument? Or is that word a balalaika? Or the name of a flaky Greek pastry? But I may be thinking of baklava. Normally, my kind does not eat sweets, but the Greeks, since even before the Trojan horse incident, were considered subtle and sneaky, and there is a lot of rich whipped cream cheese concealed between those flaky layers. Cheese is a protein, you know, suitable for carnivores. Ahem.

  I have learned in my own home, after movie and TV show study, that balaclavas are a major accessory for bad guys. They are black stretchy ski masks, leaving holes for the eyes and mouth only.

  Since no one can identify the wearers, they are worn by SWAT teams and criminals, like bank robbers and terrorists haughty enough to think that their ugly mugs are famous far and wide.

  Okay. But these pure-white balaclavas are like Lady Godiva white-chocolate masks.

  Wedding appropriate.

  While I am marveling at the brutes’ refined taste in headgear, someone steps up.

  “Please,” I hear proud Father Hernandez urge in a strained, almost unfamiliar voice of pleading, “do not sin on Holy ground, or hurt any of these worshippers. I have stepped away, see. I…we will not resist. All you see is yours, but know that our Holy Lord’s vigil light burning twenty-four hours above sees the sins in your heart.”

  “Sorry, Padre,” a basso voice growls insincerely. “We need to upset your ceremony until we get what we came for.”

  “Step back, Padre,” another invader’s voice orders. “Step back. You have been saying Mass for years over a fortune and your luck is about to run out.”

  The White Chocolate Balaclava Boys continue advancing, guns raised and at the ready, to the first altar step.

  Okay. We have got a bead on the bride,” another loud voice announces. “Everybody else, hands up and kept in sight. Move away from the altar.”

  One guy moves straight ahead, Uzi covering the bridal party.

  I see the leader’s ugly black wing-tip shoes approach the steps and the ladi
es’ dainty heels and black-patent men’s dress shoes parting to the right and left of the altar.

  “That is right, priest to the far left with the fluffy ladies, bride and whatever. Dudes to the far right, remembering I would love to pick off a Fontana or two.”

  Then the invaders take a wide stance and make a demeaning demand.

  “Wedding party, on your knees, bride, groom, do like the priest, and we will do a little holy excavation, Father, so you will live to genuflect another day.”

  “All of you. Drop on your knees.”

  Sorry. No can do. Not only do I kneel to no one, kneeling is not a default posture for my species.

  I drop and hunch, thereby tipping my zebra-striped container over sideways on the floor. I can no longer see the action. I buck like a bronco to move my portable prison into better viewing position through the mesh sides.

  A nudge (kick) from a Fontana size-eleven black patent-leather shoe in the carrier side is accompanied by a whispered, “Chill, dude” from a face leaning over my carrier zipper.

  I glimpse gray pant leg. I have lived to sorta see a Fontana brother on his knees? Mama Fontana’s Red Pepper Pasta Sauce forbid! The whisper continues. “Can the growling. Avoid attracting attention. You were supposed to be a stuffed stand-in here.

  “Your real part was supposed to come much later.”

  I sincerely hope there is a “later” for my part, or parts.

  The head guy says, “We have a bit of heavy lifting to do before any ‘I do’s’ are said and I do swear to shoot anyone who looks sideways at our operation.”

  Shoes shuffle over tile, then I hear rough grunting and cursing, and the scraping of stone on stone, like a giant is using a mortar and pestle. If this were a horror movie, which I kinda think it is, somebody would be opening the tomb of The Mummy or Dracula. I prefer Dracula, because there would likely be bats on the scene, and I love chasing bats, almost as much as rats like the present company.

  The grunts, curses, and scrapes get repetitive.