Cat in a Zebra Zoot Suit

by Carole Nelson Douglas

  “Seeing you eel your expanding midsection through an eyebrow window sounds like an entertainment I could sell tickets to. What was he after, then?”

  “She has a bad habit of sticking genuine and costume jewelry in her bedroom scarf drawer. I have fished out an amusing string of freshwater pearls for my own entertainment a time or two.”

  “Hmpfft. Besides the flash on her ring finger that Mr. Matt gave her, she has not much in the way of fine jewelry to interest a thief.”

  “Or…” Here I pause, to build suspense. It does not work.

  Louise merely rolls her eyes and yawns. “Senior moment, Daddy dude?”

  “No! Or…someone is after the secret map of Vegas Miss Temple put together for where Miss Kitty’s secret stash of big-time money and guns for the IRA might be hidden in town, or hunting remnants of the Synth conspiracy to continue their aim to stage the Vegas heist of heists.”

  Miss Midnight Louise is still yawning. “Those scheming magicians are dead or scattered. Nobody who ever looked for that ‘buried treasure’ saw more trace of it than a rat-chewed, crumpled bearer bond. The underground tunnels between the Crystal Phoenix, Neon Nightmare nightclub, and the Fontana brothers’ Gangsters hotel have now been remodeled into entertainment entities so popular and crowded you could not hide a mouse whisker in there.”

  “Still, there is the Ophiuchus connection between several of the deaths our associates have investigated.”

  “Ophiuchus is a constellation of a man battling an improbably big serpent. The ancient myth-tellers and modern comics purveyors are fond of that notion. I know this ‘forgotten thirteenth sign of the Zodiac’ appeals to conspiracy nuts, like those UFO freaks that recently descended on the city. I would hope that superior and sensible species like ours are not so gullible as the human one. If one cannot see, hear, or eat it, it is likely to be a hallucination.”

  Well, I have been told off! I guess I will not remind Louise that a drawing of Ophiuchus was found only a couple of weeks ago in an old lockbox the late Mr. Clifford Effinger left with Mr. Matt’s mother in Chicago. Vegas is as full of lost treasure tales as Oak Island is on cable TV. At least Vegas has had seventy years of mob shenanigans to make it a more likely spot for harboring such mythical things.

  “Very well, Louise,” I say. “I will keep an eye and ear on Miss Temple. You will have to tail Mr. Matt.”

  She sighs. “The hours are lousy and it is a long midnight trek back and forth from his radio station, but the Jaguar has a splendid sound system, at least. I will have to monitor his show. His call-ins do nothing but caterwaul about their personal woes. And then I must put in a full day as Crystal Phoenix house detective. It will be a taxing, boring assignment, but someone must do it, and you cannot be in two places at one time.”

  “Yet,” I say. “You are whining like a Weimaraner dog. Except for the occasional intruder, I predict it will be a snoozer around the Circle Ritz too. I must agree that Mr. Max and Miss Kitty enlivened the neighborhood a good deal.”

  4

  Off-Base

  “I come bearing Pecan Sandies,” Electra told Temple the next morning when her summons on the unit doorbell was answered. “If you have the coffee.”

  “I love Pecan Sandies. Stand and deliver.”

  Electra presented the box and followed Temple into the kitchen. The arched white ceilings reflected the sun rays flooding in from the balcony as Temple poured a stream of dark-chocolate-rich coffee into two mugs.

  “Ooh.” Electra pored over a selection of individual flavored creamers while Temple arranged the cookies onto a plate.

  “What can I do for you?” Temple asked after their mini-feast had been transferred to the living room coffee table.

  “Get outa town fast,” Electra said in a blissful cookie-crunching mumble.

  “Which I’m planning on doing as of now.” Temple sipped a double dose of caramel mocha coffee, then leaned forward to add yet another creamer. “Matt and I are flying to the Twin Cities ASAP. He’s a major frequent flyer because of his talk-show guest appearances in Chicago, so he got tickets for Saturday morning.”

  “And a lucky thing.” Electra had concentrated on the cookies first and was shaking more out of the box onto the plate. “Is Matt beside himself because of last night?”

  “He wasn’t pleased that some clumsy ninja broke in. The police patrol car didn’t find anyone suspicious lurking in the neighborhood. We weren’t planning to move in together until we got married, but—”

  “Excuse me, dear. You know I never pry…” Electra’s be-ringed right hand, free of cookie crumbs, patted her temporary hair-coloring choice du jour, magenta and purple. Electra used her snow-white hair as a canvas, and her mode was avant-garde.

  Temple politely didn’t contradict her.

  “But…” Electra went on. “Matt doesn’t, er, cohabit here nights, does he? I mean, we all know these are modern times. And he is right above you every night. Maybe I should rephrase that.”

  “You know we’d talked about Matt buying his unit and combining it with mine.”

  “I’m not averse to a two-story unit, but I don’t understand what keeps you two kids living like a couple in a fifties sitcom.”

  “Matt is too considerate to wake me up when he gets home from his midnight gig at WCOO.”

  “‘Considerate’?” Electra repeated. She cocked a gray eyebrow. “Oh, wait. I suppose Max’s California king-size bed might have issues for him.”

  Temple glanced through the bedroom’s open door. “It certainly doesn’t for Midnight Louie.”

  Electra half-rose from her chair to peer in. Temple had spotted Louie’s four limbs and signature tail sprawled like a big furry Rorschach blot on the zebra-pattern comforter with red piping.

  Electra sat back to sip coffee. “You’re not taking Louie with you to Minnesota? Or is he still snubbing your new carrier?”

  Temple glanced at the red-lined, zebra-striped canvas cat carrier with its door open like a protruding tongue. Inside lounged catnip mice and other goodies. “So far he’s boycotting his new travel carrier. I’d hoped the zebra pattern would remind him of his favorite snoozing spot, but you know cats.”

  “Contrary,” Electra said, nodding.

  “I did just get something amazing for the trip, and I’ll wear it whether Louie and his new carrier are on board, literally. Wanta see it?”

  Electra eyed the unlabeled shopping bag leaning against the sofa. “I’m always ready to be amazed by your doings, dear.”

  The rattling of the paper bag brought Louie racing in from the bedroom to investigate.

  Some people, like magicians, were good at pulling amazing things out of hats, but Temple excelled at pulling amazing hats out of bags. Now she had an audience of two for her latest score at her fave vintage shop, Leopard Lady, only it was a horse of a different color.

  Her landlady, Electra Lark, perched on one arm of her off-white living room sofa. Midnight Louie had jumped up to pose on the other arm. Both stared unblinking at what Temple whisked out of the bag.

  “Voila!”

  “Oh my word,” Electra said. “In my wild youth I had a hat just like that in leopard print. Fuzzy like real fur too.”

  “This is definitely fabric, and not politically incorrect hide.” Temple lifted the zebra-print pillbox hat atop her wavy cascade of red-gold hair.

  “A pillbox hat,” Electra mused. “Like Jackie Kennedy wore. We smart young things all had to have one in my day, with a “birdcage” veil, no less. Women were still slaves to fashion, and it was not a casual age.”

  “Yours or the times?” Temple asked mischievously. “Aren’t these tiny combs sewn inside the lining to anchor the hat to your hair just the cutest things?”

  “Adorable, like you.” Electra glanced at her fellow panel member, the cat. “And your new hat goes with Mr. Midnight Louie’s new zebra-print carrying case. Too bad the party pooper is staying home.”

  “Just as well this time.”

  “
Louie accompanied you to Chicago to meet Matt’s family. You don’t want your family to meet the grandcat when you and Matt visit?”

  “We’re not thinking of relocating to Minneapolis,” Temple said.

  “Don’t worry. Louie and I will hold the fort while you and Matt are gone,” Electra promised. Then she frowned. “You seem a bit hyper or nervous, Temple. Surely you’re not afraid of going home?”

  Temple lowered the hat and then dialed back her smile.

  “I am nervous,” she admitted. “My first candidate for a serious partner was not popular. It’ll be Matt’s debut for meeting the whole family, which means my four strapping brothers who only speak Sports and who only have sons among their sets of offspring. They’re threatening to out-populate the Fontana brothers, only louder. Testosterone is an air freshener in my parents’ house.”

  “You’re the lone girl?”

  “Except for my mother.”

  “No wonder you’re such a feminine woman. Somebody had to bear the flag for the kinder, gentler, smarter gender.”

  “Maybe. And, thanks to looking fourteen, I’ve never been given credit for growing up.”

  “You’ll thank your lucky stars for ‘looking fourteen’ a few decades ahead.”

  “And then, oh, Electra, there’s the terrible gaffe I just realized I made with my mom, now that I need to call her again to tell our arrival plans.”

  “You? Made a gaffe? You’re Miss Smooth PR lady.”

  “Not with her.”

  “I met your folks just to nod at during the dinner before Kit’s wedding. They didn’t seem at all like ogres.”

  Temple groaned and cast herself down on the couch, sitting with her hands over her eyes. “Of course you ‘met them just to nod at’ during the big Crystal Phoenix dinner. Of course they’d flown in one day for the dinner and out after the wedding the next day. Of course you were there because you were going to officiate for Aunt Kit and Aldo Fontana’s wedding the next day. Of course you’re only forty-some years older than I am, and you still have a memory.”

  “Temple.” Electra sat beside her to pry the fingers away from her face without getting grazed by a long strong fingernail, all as natural as Louie’s. No fakes for Temple. “Tell me what’s troubling you. It can’t be as bad as you think.”

  “It is. I got up my nerve to call Mom a while ago, before that crazy Area 54 project caused major havoc in my work life. I picked a Saturday noonish, when Dad and the boys were off pestering fish or something, to prepare her for Matt and me making a quick trip up to meet the whole Barr mob and discuss wedding possibilities.”

  “Which will include a lovely civil ceremony at the Lovers’ Knot Chapel as a possibility.”

  “Yes, you’re still in the running. Electra. As Unitarian Universalists, my folks wouldn’t blink at a non-church wedding, unlike Matt’s relatives in Chicago, who’d go ballistic.”

  “All in-laws fight for custody of the cross-country wedding locale, although the bride’s family has the edge. We can have a secret, private ceremony here, if you like.”

  “Secret and private sounds just the ticket right now.”

  “So, dear girl, what did you do when you called your mother that has gone down in history as a Gaffe. Where did that word come from anyway?”

  “It’s from the French for ‘blunder’. To me it’s a combination of ‘ghastly’ and a self-effacing social error. In other words, you want to crawl under the bathroom throw rug and never come out. And maybe throw up for good measure.”

  “What could you do that’s so awful?”

  Temple cringed, delicately. “I forgot.”

  “What?”

  “Everybody.”

  “Everybody who?”

  “My parents.”

  “Oh. Bad.”

  “And…Matt.”

  “Worse. And this happened at the wedding banquet for Kit and Aldo?”

  Temple nodded solemnly. “When I called Mom recently, I forgot that Matt and Aldo had joined my folks and Kit and me for dinner, and we announced my engagement. So I ‘broke the news’ to Mom all over again, and she played dumb and went along as if this were the first she’d ever heard of it. I only realized, duh, I was in the world’s worst rerun when I was talking to Kit about my wedding arrangements.

  “And Kit says, ‘Thank God you ran Matt past them at that huge Crystal Phoenix dinner. So wise to confine the first meeting to such a short and chaotic visit. I was happy my big wedding hoopla provided cover. I don’t think what happened really sank in with Roger. When you and I brought out our engagement and wedding rings, I think Roger took Matt for a jewelry salesmen, rather than a fiancé.’”

  “So your dad thinks you’re marrying some kind of jewelry distributor, like Avon but only via Tiffany?”

  “Maybe. But my mom must think I’m nuts. Or, worse, flighty.”

  “You do seem to have a hang-up about going home. You haven’t in two years.”

  “It was major trauma and family dramatics when I met Max at the Guthrie Theater and relocated to Las Vegas to live with him. You’d think it was a crime, the Barrs’ ‘baby girl’, running off with a traveling magician without any visible signs of commitment.”

  “Bosh. Not criminal, but wonderfully romantic,” Electra said. “I eloped with my first and third husbands.”

  “Eloping implies you get married right away. Max and I didn’t.”

  “You were thinking about it, though.”

  “Sure, seriously. When thugs from Max’s counterterrorism past forced him to ‘disappear’ without a word, I especially couldn’t ‘phone home’ then. My judgment would really look Missing in Action.”

  “Poor thing.” Electra patted Temple’s shoulders. “But Max came back several months later. All’s well that ends well. Thugs will never come for Matt and make him ‘disappear on you’. Your mother seems to have been more amused than alarmed by your ‘gaffe’. She may understand your being flustered more than you think. My goodness, I’d be flustered if I had just one of your two very eligible beaux buzzing around me.”

  “How will I explain my temporary amnesia, though, to my mother?”

  “I have a great idea!”

  Temple sat up, ready for redemption.

  “Make it a game, and re-announce your engagement again, then say you hope the family won’t make a big deal of it. Just sound very coy, like you’re giving her the pleasure of hearing the news an extra time. You know how to spin it better than I do.”

  Temple sat up even straighter. “Yeah. I could do that. I could say she only has one daughter, so I’m giving her rerun engagement announcements so it feels like more.”

  “And then move on quickly to trip arrangements.”

  “Electra, you are brilliant! That’s just what I’ll do. I can’t thank you enough.”

  “I’m not brilliant,” Electra said into Temple’s hair and heartfelt hug. “I just have a lot of experience with weddings, and marriage and mothers and daughters and nerves and all. And I’d be proud to call you my daughter no matter what you forgot, or ever could forget.”

  Somebody sniffled. Maybe two somebodies.

  Midnight Louie yawned, and sat down on his haunches. He eyed the bag, hat reinstalled. Anybody who had been watching would see he had some mid-night romping plans for them.

  “So,” said Electra a while later, nibbling on a Pecan Sandie, “when you’re gone, I’ll have Ernesto and some other Fontana boys over for lunch and a security evaluation. With particular attention paid to your unit.”

  “The Fontana brothers are doing private security now?”

  “Honey, if you are on their A list, the Fontana boys will do anything to help you out. Although, if Max still lived here, it’d be even safer.”

  “I’m not so sure.” Temple frowned. “There’s only so much you can do with an old building like this,” she added. “All these cute balconies are a liability. That’s how my would-be thief got in.”

  “What about that crazy stalker who was bedevili
ng you all?”

  Temple shook her head. “Can’t be her. Last I’ve heard, she was going so far away she’s practically off the planet.”

  “I’m sorry to hear that.”

  “Sorry? Electra, why?”

  The landlady made a sheepish face. “She’d be a good scapegoat for some recent disturbing events. Now I really have to worry about the locals. I didn’t want to alarm the tenants, but the Fontana boys were going to upgrade security here before your break-in last night. There’s been some exterior vandalism.”

  “Here?” Temple looked over her shoulder and walked toward the balcony to view the residents’ parking lot below. “On cars, or what? Matt’s Jag and my Miata might be tempting targets. Vandals are usually jealous and mean.”

  “Oh, the cars. Another thing to worry about. I’ll have Ernesto see to that too.”

  “Where else would the vandalism happen?”

  “If you want to take a stroll, I’ll show you.”

  Her appetite dampened, Electra put down her half-eaten cookie, although Temple had not yet snagged a one, and they left their coffee mugs cooling on the kitchen counter. Temple was getting alarmed again. She grabbed her tote bag on the way out, for the keys and cell phone inside.

  They only had to go down a floor in the tiny elevator. Once in the charming but small foyer, Electra turned right into a part of the building Temple rarely visited.

  “The wedding chapel hasn’t been harmed?” she asked, concerned. Matt’s mother had recently been married there and it was on Temple’s long list of possible wedding sites.

  When Electra unlocked the door, they entered, then stopped. The space was airy and bright, a bower of green and gold with rows of white pews inhabited here and there by a gentle company of mute attendees. Temple picked out her favorite soft sculpture figures, elegantly hatted ladies with painted cloth features tricked out in estate sale clothing, so many decades were represented. The gentlemen were fewer, and not as colorfully attired. Of course, a jumpsuited Elvis was the glittering exception. She also glanced at the Lowery organ, where her then brand-new neighbor, Matt Devine, had played an unexpected wedding march, a Bob Dylan song.