MAGICAL COOL CAT MYSTERIES
VOLUME THREE
Copyright 2017 Mary Matthews United States of America
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In Memory
of
Little Athena
Rest in Perfection Little Kitty
CAT DANCE
Chapter One
It was the kind of speakeasy where any woman who said she was alone by choice had credibility. Grace knocked on the door. Not because she needed credibility. She’d recently married. A slit in the metal door partially opened and revealed a metal grate.
“What’s the password?” A tipsy voice asked.
“Lucky Lindbergh,” she said.
She walked past men in groups that smelled like champagne and women with sparkling jewelry. And there she was, a magnificent white Persian, on a bar stool, lapping up a bowl of cream on the counter.
Her companion, a black and white tuxedo cat, with a little pink nose, sat next to her, enjoying sardines hand fed to her by a sailor. Sailors and cats have an unspoken appreciation for each other. With sardines, words become unnecessary to a cat. And sailors feel the same way.
“Tatania,” Grace said quietly, petting the white cat, “you and Zeus need to come home.” They looked a little embarrassed by a human telling them to come home. Even thought Tatania had been deaf since birth, she seemed to hear sometimes.
“Do you not want Jack at home?” A man gestured to her husband, sitting next to him and smiling.
“Grace, you know we don’t let the cats do anything. Cats do what they want when they want. Especially ours.” He winked. Tatania blinked in agreement with Jack. Tatania was Jack’s special little cat he’d saved from drowning when she was a kitten. A breeder tried to drown her because she her deafness would mar her Persian Pedigree bloodline.
“I’ve been talking to your husband about this.” He handed her a piece of paper.
“How did you know he was my husband?”
“The way he looked at you when you entered the room.”
She smiled and looked at the paper he’d handed her. It was a brochure.
Meowie Wowie
Can you move as gracefully as a cat without sleeping several hours a day? Join the dance marathon. Prizes. $5.00 entry fee. Couples only. If you’re not a couple now, you can become one at Nick’s Dance Marathon. Warning: some of Nick’s Dance Marathon couples want to get married after dancing.
1st Prize $5,000
2nd Prize $500
3rd Prize $100
All the champagne you can drink, chocolate petit fours that send your tastebuds to the moon and back, all the music you ever wanted to hear, the party never stops.
“Why would anyone want a dance marathon? I love dancing but it seems all wet. Too much,” Grace said.
“Sex, sleep, and money are the only things you can’t have too much of.” Jack read the Dance Marathon flyer over Grace’s shoulder.
“Really?”
“Well, I guess I could do without sleep for awhile,” he said.
“Well, and the winners get five Grover Clevelands. That would be alright.” Grace pointed to the flyer’s promise of five-thousand dollars to the winners.
“They get a fifteen minute break every hour.” Tatania’s paw grabbed the flyer. Grace put it down and Tatania rolled across it. Tatania liked to decide what humans could read and when.
“That’s a lot of naps. You’d have to almost be a cat. To be a winner.”
“People come in and watch. Throw change at them.”
“Throw change?”
“On the floor.”
“Oh Dear, you could slip on the change.”
“That’s a new one. Sometimes, they throw bills too. And I give prizes to the winners of dance sprints.” Nick stroked his chin.
“How long does the audience usually stay?”
“It varies. Sometimes, we have people who come for the night to watch, with food and drinks, dozing on and off, enjoying watching the contestants sometimes fall apart.”
“And to see what everyone is wearing?” Grace suggested.
“Probably. The regular dancers or the ones who do their homework get local sponsors for a little dough. That’s why Jimmy wears the shirt that says Bail Bonds on it.”
“How long has Jimmy been on circuit?”
“Months. Since Chicago. When things began disappearing. He’s with a dame with a cleft lip. She’s his dance partner. Name’s Melanie.”
Coronado Tent City’s Dance Pavilion faced the ocean and gave its dancers a pier to continue to tango out towards the sea. Grace and Jack had danced there several times.
“In L.A., our contestants kept passing out. At first, we claimed it was from excitement, from being in love, from a dance as intoxicating as champagne. Some of them were changing colors. It started to look more serious. We found out that there was carbon monoxide leaking from the portable heaters we set up in the rest stations.”
“They needed additional heat?”
“At that time, we would put the resting stations outside. Surrounding the dance center. I want you and Grace in there investigating.”
Tatania and Zeus meowed.
“The dramatics are good for business, right?”
“Depends on how dramatic.”
Tatania and Zeus looked at each other.
“What do they eat?
“We give them all they can eat and drink. It’s one of the alluring things about it. Kids want to travel someplace new, they can follow us to different towns around the country and know they won’t have to worry about money when they get there. They follow us around. Very competitive. Difference between first and second place is forty-five hundred dollars. You could buy several Ford Model Ts and have money left over. I’m worried we have a saboteur who wants to ruin it for everyone. I want to be welcome in Coronado next year. Forever.”
“Don’t we all?” Grace asked rhetorically, twirling her pearls around her fingers.
Tatania played with the Wentworth & Brewster business card. While Grace and Jack chatted, Tatania thought about where she could have Tatania & Associates business cards printed. Jack got distracted by the swish of Grace’s hips. Grace got distracted by cute shoes in a window, and a jackrabbit bounding by caught Zeus’s attention. She stayed focused on the case. Carried them all to the solution.
“So do they stay a few days to enjoy the city? Count on winning something to stay? Or move on?” Grace asked.
“They’re like cattle to us. I think I’ve got a bad calf. Acting from the inside. A saboteur. And I’ve heard Wentworth & Brewster are the best detectives in San Diego.”
“We never argue with that,” Grace and Jack said in unison.
Tatania and Zeus meowed.
“If you have a saboteur, or saboteurs, we’ll find them. You know the difference between Grace and a pitbull?”
“She’s prettier?”
“No,” Jack said, “A pitbull eventually lets go.”
“Meet me at the Dance Pavilion,” Nick said and handed Jack a check.
Chapter Two
Zeus and Tatania led Grace and Jack to their home on glistening Glorietta Bay. With their view, when they woke each morning, they felt happy to be alive.
Jack e
njoyed leaving his personal plane, The Tatania, next to their new home on Glorietta Bay. Zeus loved to take naps in it but he left the flying to Grace, Jack, and Tatania. The deaf cat flew blissfully oblivious to the plane noise that startled Zeus.
They could hear the music playing from Coronado’s Dance Pavilion, where the Dance Marathon was staged, across the street from their home. Jack stopped and slipped his portable fingerprint kit in his pocket. “Do we need anything else?” He asked Grace.
“No. We have everything,” she said.
They walked across the street to Coronado Tent City holding hands.
They went by Tent City’s Merry Go Round, and Grace’s sparkling dress shone in the mirrors along the bottom and top. Tent City had its own amusements.
On the tracks, they saw a private railway car emblazoned with Nick’s Dance Marathon in bold print on its side. Grace and Tatania spotted a thin woman poking her head out of the railway car. She looked pale and there was a mark on her face.
The couples on the dance floor at the Pavilion looked as varied as relationships in any place or time. One was loud and vulgar, less attractive than her husband.
“That’s never a good sign,” Annie Knickerbocker whispered to Grace.
“What?” Grace asked their good friend.
“When a man is better looking than a woman in a couple. I think sometimes there’s an agreement she ages for both of them. Or he’s the pretty one.”
Annie stood by the buffet table. “I’ve got to stop eating so much,” she said, devouring chocolate cupcakes, “or, I’m going to look like him.” She gestured to a six-feet tall, three hundred pound Coronado Tent City wrestler.
“Don’t worry, Annie. You’re not going to be six-feet tall,” Jack said helpfully.
Tatania and Zeus decided to inspect the cots in the resting parlors. Naps are important. Tatania believed most problems could be solved if you didn’t fuss too much and never missed a nap.
In the resting parlors, each dancing couple had a separate curtained-off area with a cot and a table in it.
Zeus, her tomcat companion, could shed at a rate he seemed to control himself. It was as if he felt inspired by a white background and if he found a white blanket, he left some of his dark fur in an impressive geometric pattern behind. A feline art deco artist, born to live in the 1920s, he met Tatania when he was a feral and they became friends.
Tatania walked back out on the dance floor. She sensed a dancer trying to get her attention. Tatania turned around. She could see the dancer’s lips forming the word, Tatania.
It’s Princess Tatania to you, she thought.
“We’re going to fire up our dancers. It’s time for a dance sprint with a three-hundred dollar cash prize,” Nick said. “A bright, quick dance called the Fox Trot. When I was born, I was so bright my mother called me sun.” Nick paused, waiting for the laugh to rumble through the crowd.
“But lets begin with a tap dance from Candy. She can dance holding the two-headed calf embryo on display at the door with the vaudeville midgets.”
Candy energetically tap danced around the perimeter of the dance floor. The clock by the Hotel del Coronado began striking the top of the hour.
“A dancer’s failure to return will result in disqualification. Don’t let it happen to you.” Nick bellowed.
One couple, Dicky and Violet, lay on the beach, kissing and rolling around the sand even after Nick called them back. They looked like they’d get disqualified. They looked like they didn’t care.
“And the winners of the Fox are Linda and Don from Cincinnati,” Nick said when a happy couple bounded first through the finish line. They were crowd favorites. Linda devoured petit fours while she danced. He wore a soldier’s uniform and she looked as wholesome as milk. Their popularity continued through the Charleston and the Waltz. And then after the break, neither one of them could dance for more than fifteen minutes. Linda walked off the dance floor first, then Don, clutching his stomach.
Grace and Jack glanced at the buffet table with its bounty set out with cakes, petit fours, fresh fruit, and salmon. A beautiful cat was under the table. Tatania batted a wrapper out from underneath. It was for a laxative.
“Did they get disqualified from the marathon because they had the trots. Is that why they had to leave?”
“It would be a shitty reason to have to leave the marathon,” Jack said.
“I don’t want to eat here,” Grace replied.
Tatania meowed in agreement. They were lucky to have her looking out for them, she mused, grooming one front paw.
“But it looks delicious. Damn. I wish we could feel safe eating here,” Jack whispered, putting a petit four in his pocket for testing. Grace grabbed two cookies and slipped them in Jack’s pocket too.
“It doesn’t look that tasty. I don’t see any sardines,” Zeus meowed to Tatania. Two kitties understood each other in a world of their own language and secrets.
Tatania and Zeus were on the job of identifying food supply like bees on honey.
The atmosphere in the Dance Pavilion felt like a carnival. Nick had a two-headed calf embryo on display and jugglers and vaudeville twins that performed during breaks.
Tatania and Zeus were satisfied with their inspection of the resting parlors. It was important to see where you could nap. Could never have too many naps in one day. And they really hadn’t found anything that couldn’t be solved by taking a nap.
Zeus jumped on a cot, rolled, and tested it for comfort. Tatania jumped directly on the pillow. The cool white cat never shed fur. Magical cool white cat Tatania could roll around on a dark sweater without leaving a trace of herself.
Zeus inspected the area under a beige blanket, rear end up in the air, showing off the white streak of a beauty mark near his tail. He stuck his head back out. From his little pink nose, you couldn’t tell if he was disgusted or pleased by what he smelled. Dogs gave everything away. So Zeus was startled by an art print of Dogs Playing Poker on the wall. Dogs definitely don’t have poker faces.
A dancer named Melanie confided in Grace, “I’m dancing for my Mom. She needs an operation and we don’t have any money.” She wrung her hands. “At least we don’t have enough for the operation. Her headaches are getting worse. She has to lie down all the time. I’m dancing for the money for her surgery.”
Melanie had a cleft lip but seemed more concerned with her mom’s medical needs than her own appearance. Grace knew someone else might be dancing for money for cosmetic surgery.
Tatania jumped on Melanie’s lap and nuzzled her arm. Melanie pet Tatania. Zeus rolled around by her feet. He rolled to the left twice. Then, he rolled to the right, and stretched each paw out in succession.
“They could be dancers. They’re graceful.”
“Cats are great at everything.”
Dicky and Violet looked well satisfied later when Nicky announced their disqualification during the next round.
After Jack saw Melanie’s cleft lip, he said, “I have an Army buddy who became a cosmetic surgeon in La Jolla. He’d probably help her for free. Except I don’t know how to tell her.”
“When were you going to tell me you know a cosmetic surgeon?”
“When I thought you needed something.”
She slapped him.
“Ask him if he’ll come to Coronado. We never twist anyone’s arm to come here. We’ll figure out a way to tell her that he’d be honored to operate on her cleft lip for free.”
“The story of Linda and Don will be out on the Dance Marathon Circuit.” Nick confided in Grace and Jack.
“They’re saying that I’m ill and that dancers may be catching something from me and keeling over.”
“Someone is trying to put you out of business. And it’s someone inside who is watching what is going on from the inside. I called a lab and they ran tests. The petit fours were laced with laxatives. Someone who knew Linda likes petit fours did it.”
“How could they be sure someone else wouldn’t eat as much as Linda?�
��
“They couldn’t. It was irrelevant as long as they knocked out Linda.”
Chapter Three
A sea breeze came in the evening, rustling the drapes hung on open windows, carrying the scent of salt air and sprinkling fairy dust on the island. Tatania strolled through Coronado Tent City like she owned it.
Tatania thought the humans might lose focus on the case. They should change the name from Wentworth & Brewster to Tatania & Associates. She stayed on the case and didn’t get easily distracted. She strolled back in the Dance Pavilion and kneaded her paws on a cashmere sweater Grace left on her seat. Tatania focused her mystery solving skills. She liked the softness of the cashmere. She rolled over on it twice. Physical exercise enhanced her mental acumen. She batted the sweater once, debating whether it might be look better on the floor. She paused. She’d leave it on the chair for now. She might want to nap on it later.
Time for a library trip. She was getting hungry and the librarian usually hid a tin of sardines behind the counter. She needed to do some research.
While Tatania was away, Zeus caught a whiff of sea bass and followed it. A night fisherman, illuminated by the full moon, was coming in with his feast. Zeus moved quickly. He adored Tatania and Grace. And he liked Jack, but his heart beat like a feral cat’s and he needed time away from his family. He felt like a kitten again, scampering across the beach, jumping up on the pier and watching as the fisherman anchored his boat. The ocean lapped the white shores of Coronado. Zeus reached for the sea bass and twirled in appreciation of the fishermen.
A fisherman smiled, recognizing Zeus, cut off a chunk of fish, and threw it up at him. Zeus caught it in his mouth. He chewed, paused, swallowed, and felt his palate visit another stratosphere.
Zeus jumped in the boat. Tuna and sea bass lay across its deck. He’d keep the fisherman company while he sorted his catch. Zeus felt impressed. The fisherman cut another chunk off one of the smaller tunas for the cat. At this rate, all his fish would be flawed. But the cat was worth it. Cats were better than flawless fish or furniture. Zeus rubbed his cheek against the fisherman’s hand appreciatively. He wished more humans wore a tuna or sea bass scent. It would make a great aftershave or perfume. He’d mention it to Tatania. She could always be counted on to come up with a plan or idea to make it happen.
Magical Cool Cat Mysteries Boxed Set Volume 3 (Magical Cool Cats Mysteries) Page 1
