Cat in a Red Hot Rage

by Carole Nelson Douglas

  Little does Miss Midnight Louise know that it is because of her alley cat origins and rumored relationship to me (rumored mostly by herself) that I have been untimely dropped by She Who Was Formerly the Divine Yvette.

  She eyes me slyly. “I would bet that there is not much peaceful resting space there for you on Miss Temple’s zebra-striped comforter now. At least Mr. Max had the decency to absent himself frequently on impossibly dangerous secret missions.”

  Her words sting like a cat’s-claw cactus.

  The fact is my various extremities have been subjected to certain heedless rollings and pinnings, as if I were mere bread dough to be mashed and smashed, on what should be my supreme sprawling space, the California king-size bed. Not to mention all the sweet nothings that I have been forced to overhear, which would be enough to curl the ears on a Swiss chocolate cat who did not even understand English.

  So I admit to Miss Louise, “There may be some who enjoy kittenish caperings, not to mention squeals and mews and purrs, and find them amusing and even adorable, but I am not one. Not if it disturbs my sleep.”

  “Speaking of disturbed sleep, I have been spending my nights outside Chez Kinsella. I can tell you that what has been going on there lately may not be as titillating as late-night TV in your Circle Ritz boudoir, but it has been fairly puzzling, and . . . now . . . mind-blowing.”

  “Please, Louise. Do not resort to such uncouth and vulgar modern street expressions as ‘mind-blowing.’ ”

  “I believe that is the only way to describe Miss Lieutenant C. R. Molina breaking into Mr. Max’s ex-digs with that scruffy cop guy from her daughter’s Teen Idol idyll hot on her heels. And I do mean hot. He is seriously after the crooning cop. And so may be an anonymous perp, who stuck her with a butcher knife before exiting the premises. Or so I learned from eavesdropping in the dark. I am thinking Midnight Inc. Investigations should ramble on over to examine the scene of the crimes.”

  Molina. Hot cop guy? Mr. Max’s former premises? Butcher knife? Unapprehended perps?

  “What happened to the leggy veteran chorus chick you yourself witnessed in possession of those fabled premises not two days ago?” I ask.

  “Good question, Pops. That is the way your Miss Temple escorted by Mr. Aldo Fontana may have been meant to see it. Now it is full of all the old furnishings and as busy with trespassers coming and going as a park marked ‘Do Not Step on the Grass.’ ”

  “Aha! That order is usually because there are already snakes installed on the same grass.”

  “Apparently one was loose in Mr. Max’s former quarters. His clothes were slashed into fringe, from what I overheard.”

  “They did not catch you?”

  “No. Miss Lieutenant C. R. Molina had been so badly clawed she had to lean on Mr. So-called Dirty Larry, the undercover narc.”

  “No! She would not lean on a crutch if both her legs were broken. Where is she now?”

  “He said he was driving her to medical care of a top-secret nature.”

  “Then the house is empty.”

  “That is why I am here, Rip Van Wrinkle. You want to take a stroll through Mr. Max Kinsella’s formerly secret domicile and figure out how it changes from sold and inhabited to not sold and vacated in forty-eight hours?”

  I push my muscular legs into four inches of cotton batting, seeking to gain purchase. It is a cushy venue I am deserting, but something very strange is happening at the house formerly known as Mr. Max’s.

  “We will have to hitchhike,” Louise warns me as I land with an impressive thump on the wooden bedroom floor.

  “Fine. I am sure we can catch a ride on somebody slinging Review-Journals to the driveway at this hour.” Louise flicks her tail in annoyance at yet another ride from heck. “Where is your usual resident tonight?”

  I jerk my head heavenward.

  Miss Midnight Louise gets my drift immediately. “Maybe you can bunk with Ma Barker’s gang if you cannot stand the bedroom antics anymore. Are they getting any free grub here yet?”

  “I have told Karma to implant the idea in Miss Electra Lark’s noggin while she is sleeping, but the Sacred Cat of the Dalai Lamas claims our landlady’s head holds too much ‘static’ these days and nights to be influenced subconsciously. I guess you could call that, I suppose, ‘bad Karma.’ ”

  “Well, Miss Electra Lark is suspected of murder. That is enough to braise any mere human’s brain. We are going to have to raid a Petco for free food if your humans do not come through.”

  “Actually, I have found a temporary solution myself.”

  “Really?”

  “Really.”

  “And?”

  “I have plenty of Free-to-Be-Feline around the place. I have been inviting the gang in via the palm tree trunk to have a nibble of kibble now and then. They may loathe the stuff as much as I do but these beggars aren’t too choosy right now, thank Bast.”

  “You are ‘palming’ Free-to-Be-Feline off on a gang of starving street cats?”

  “It is very nutritious. So say the label and my Miss Temple.” I dampen a mitt and run it over my rakish eyebrow. “And she is absolutely delighted that I am eating the swill down to the crumbs so well these days.”

  Chapter 46

  Sewed Up

  Imagine a barrio doctor having access to dissolving stitches, Molina thought as Larry drove her home from ninety minutes of patching up on the sleazy side of town. And of sheer hell medicated only by some straight shots of cheap tequila.

  Her blue eyes had fooled the doctor and the various gang types lounging around getting knife cuts sewn up too. They spoke in quick, idiomatic Spanish, and she got every word. Far more than Dirty Larry.

  Larry had managed to find her a separate room: the tiny laundry room rather than the kitchen table. For his trouble the doctor assumed Larry had done the deed in a domestic dispute.

  “This was a nightmare,” she told Larry in her car, which he was driving. “How are you going to get back for your vehicle?”

  “ ‘Vehicle,’ ” he mocked. “Six shots of tequila, a knife wound as long as a ruler, and you still use cop talk.”

  “Listen. I wouldn’t dis me if I were you. They were spilling their guts both ways in that place, literally and conversationally.” Only she said it “convershashionally.”

  “Right. I got some of it. What’d I miss?”

  “Big score going down in the Mercado parking lot tomorrow night.”

  “Great. Not another wild cocaine chase, I hope. Thanks.” He pulled the car into her driveway. “Mariah?” He’d first met her thirteen-year-old daughter-turning-diva during the dreadful Teen Idol stage, and case.

  “On a class trip. End of school year. End of grade school. Junior high, ready or not.”

  “Sure. I see you planned for everything but a maniac killer. Can’t blame you for being caught napping.”

  “I was not napping. I am not napping now.”

  “Sure,” he said, helping her out of the car. “I’ll check the house in case your stalker was busy here while you were busy getting stalked in the magician’s house.”

  That hadn’t occurred to her. Between the pain and the liquid painkiller, she could only nod sagely.

  Larry used her garage-door opener to enter the house and left her on the living-room sofa while he did a room-by-room and closet-by-closet check. He was fast and thorough.

  “Clear,” he reported, stuffing his hands in the pockets of his nylon windbreaker and looking down at her on the couch. “I can get you into the bedroom.”

  She regarded the fistful of big white tablets the doctor had given her for pain. Probably Vicodin. She wouldn’t take them.

  “No.”

  “I wasn’t ever going to get you into the bedroom tonight, no way, no how, was I?”

  “No. Not tonight. But thanks anyway.”

  His eyebrows were so blond they disappeared unless he frowned. He was frowning now. “You didn’t say not ever.”

  “You didn’t ask.”

&n
bsp; “I guess we should leave it at that.”

  “Right.” She waited until he was in the kitchen, behind her back, on the way out.

  “Thanks for the backup, though.”

  The kitchen door shut. She heard the garage door rattling closed a few seconds later. And then nothing.

  She supposed he’d hitch to where he was going, or catch a bus, or call a snitch.

  She didn’t worry about it. She worried about getting herself and the house right for Mariah’s return in the morning. And getting herself into work looking unhurt and unfrazzled. She’d need a giant bottle of Tylenol for that, and a really good acting job.

  And then she needed to think about Max Kinsella’s house. A shiver snaked down her spine. She’d been there, in that legendary hideout. With someone who apparently disliked him even more than she did. She wouldn’t have slashed all that expensive clothing.

  Who would? And if he was being stalked, even after he’d pulled a disappearing act, could it be the same person who was stalking her?

  Or was it all a Kinsella sleight-of-hand act to erase her suspicions and put her out of commission and off his case? He was capable of attacking himself to put her off the trail.

  Molina put her hand to her head. Her forehead was feverish and damp. Even MIA, Max Kinsella was the biggest headache in her migraine-ridden life lately.

  What more could go wrong?

  Chapter 47

  Mop-up Operation

  Were there still milkmen, we would have arrived with them at the humble, or at least low profile, abode formerly known as Mr. Max’s.

  As I predicted (call me Mr. Karma!), we hopped a lift in a newspaper delivery van. The night was still dark, but to our feline eyes a faint glow of dawn was creeping over the edge of the world.

  I must say having another pair of eyes and feet on the job so Midnight Inc. Investigations can cover two fronts is pretty handy. Uh, pretty mitty.

  Miss Midnight Louise leads me around to the back, where the evening’s earlier cat-and-mouse game has resulted in, according to her, multiple home invasion, confrontation, and escape events.

  I am beginning to think that Miss Midnight Louise gets all the down-and-dirty action while I dither among the much more civilized Red Hat set.

  I recall my Miss Temple remarking in the past that it would take a tank to break into Mr. Max’s house. These super-heavy safeguards seem to be mostly disabled, maybe because the original furnishings had beat a retreat and then been installed again.

  Obviously, my Miss Temple was meant to think Mr. Max was long gone. This raises my hopes that the newspaper article was a rush to judgment and that he is not really dead. Or maybe the returned furniture was meant to make someone else think that he was not dead, when he really is.

  My Miss Temple’s visit was predictable, but the subsequent visits of various dark-clothed intruders was not. I would love to know who they all were and why they were here.

  Despite all the nighttime action, the house smells deserted when the chit and I eel through the broken screen on the outer back door and the slightly ajar solid wood door itself. The inside is dim, but I can scent my Miss Temple’s previous trails through here, and so I tell Louise.

  “You are no bloodhound,” she scoffs.

  “Nevertheless, I have cohabited with Miss Temple for more than a year now. I know the scent of everything from her hair preparations to her foot powder.”

  “Well, I may not know those trivial scents, but I can tell you one thing. There is a trail of fairly fresh blood in the hall and in the adjacent room.”

  Blood! I trot along and do indeed find a dried trail in those places. Unfortunately, unlike the ignoble canine, I cannot recognize people by their blood trails. Besides, I would need blood samples to compare this trail with and I am not up to scratching random Las Vegas citizens in search of a similar taste. Yes, different people’s blood tastes different to my tongue. I do not know if all of my kind are similarly sensitive, but it works for me. In fact, if I do encounter someone who strikes me as a suspect for these break-ins, I might just give them a full-frontal, full-shiv whack to check it out.

  “You are sure that my Miss Temple was not among the cat burglars?” I ask Louise.

  “I do not think so, but I cannot be certain. You know how hard our signature color is to differentiate from the darkness? The other two I saw were large and likely male, like Mr. Matt.”

  “You are not suggesting—?”

  “Of course not. I only meant that neither larger figure was as tall as Mr. Max. So we cannot console ourselves that he was sneaking back into his own house. The first one turned tail and ran when the other two came, but those two arrived separately. One of the second two was hurt, and the third escorted that one out. I heard voices then. One was female, the other male.”

  “Maybe these are former associates of Mr. Max. The movers’ ninja costumes sound like something from a magic stage show. It is not easy to come up with so many so-called cat suits in a short time.”

  “They did move as if choreographed,” Louise concedes. “I can see that Mr. Max’s associates would wish to remove his belongings after his demise, but why would they replace them?”

  “Demise!” I huff. “That remains to be seen or, rather, the remains remain to be seen, and no one has, have they?” Miss Louise blinks old-gold confusion at my rather convoluted phrasing. “The answer to your question is clear. The house was changed like a stage set for Miss Temple and Miss Temple only, to convince her that seeking Mr. Max here was hopeless. Why would that be necessary unless he was not dead?”

  “I do not know. You have pulled a big disappearing act in your life, Pops, on my mama and all us kits. You just wandered off, never to return. You did not need to stage anything.”

  “Now, Louise, do not be bitter. We guys all wandered off in those days.”

  “Apparently you still are doing so.”

  I ignore her, always a good policy, and slip through the empty rooms again. My sniffer is not at the level of a professional like Nose E., the Maltese drug- and bomb-sniffing dog. But I have something better than a canine sniffer. I have experience.

  Hence it is that I discover the really shocking piece of physical evidence on the premises.

  “Louise! Take a look at this. It is right up our alley.”

  She hisses a little, but soon pads into the hall to pause in the doorway of the room I occupy.

  “What is it? A garbage can?”

  “It is something certainly ready for a garbage can. Get over here and look for yourself.”

  She does, her eyes not as adjusted as mine to the light level, and peers through the open closet door.

  “It looks like a fine nest for a nap. Count on you to lie down on the job.”

  “Look again. Go on, run your shivs through it.”

  She ventures into the closet, acting like she thinks I might slam the door shut on her any minute. If my moseying down the road after a short round of hanky-panky with her mother has made her the eternally suspicious little dame that she is, then maybe I have something to answer for, after all.

  Her mitts are testing the dark stuff on the floor, then moving it around and sniffing the pieces, her tail slashing back and forth hard enough to swipe the whiskers off my kisser.

  I step back. “Well?”

  “These are remnants of wool. Wool is subject to the attacks of moths, but these garments have been destroyed by slashes. Maybe Lucky and Kahlúa, the Cloaked Conjuror’s black panthers, came by for an exercise bout. The Fontana brothers wear the finest lightweight wool from Italy, so I ought to know. These are from a black sheep, though, whereas they wear only white sheep wool.”

  “Black sheep wool. A signature of Mr. Max. The person you saw helped out of here last night was not the only victim of knife work.”

  “A human was sharpening his claws on Mr. Max’s clothes?”

  “Or hers. Maybe the same person who engineered his fatal fall came here later to gloat.”

  “Grea
t. And we have no idea who all these people coming and going here were and where they are now!”

  “But we know enough to keep an eye peeled for them in future.

  You had better stay here on watch outside. I need to get back to the Crystal Phoenix until that crime scene is resolved.”

  “And what will I do for breakfast?”

  “I’ll, ah, see what I can pick up in the neighborhood.”

  With that I dash away like the busy CEO I am. I sure hope the refuse collectors have not hit the trash cans around here yet.

  Chapter 48

  Knife Act

  “Lieutenant?”

  Molina looked up from her desk, trying to keep her face smooth and untroubled. The knife wound felt like a pack of gerbils were gnawing at her side, trying to exit her chest cavity.

  “Yeah, Morrie?”

  It would have to be Alch, whom she not only owed common courtesy, but who had a way of seeing beneath surfaces.

  “It’s not looking good for Mrs. Lark over at the Phoenix. I don’t think she did it, but the local media is all over this Red Hat event and the department is looking bad for not making an arrest.”

  “We can’t just arrest the most likely suspect. We have to make it”—the word really stuck in her craw right now—“stick.”

  “You’re right. I’m right. I’ll try to hold back Su and the entire West Coast media.”

  “The media you can handle. Su, I don’t know.”

  “You okay?”

  “Why not?”

  “Look a little gray around the gills.”

  “Mariah. Out all night.”

  “No!” Alch, the single father of an only adult daughter, had watched Mariah growing into her teen years with delight and an empathetic pinch of despair.

  “A parentally approved sleepover, Morrie. All girls. Only who knows what those girls will get up to today?”

  He chuckled. “So you didn’t sleep a wink during Daughter Darling’s sleepover.”

  “Not a wink,” she answered with absolute conviction.

  “That’s me all over again. Say listen, I’m gonna come down hard on that big convention scene and come up with some other suspects, so help me, Sleeping Beauty.”