Cat in a White Tie and Tails

by Carole Nelson Douglas

  “Too much marbleized fat for the senior citizen. Overrated. You will be wanting a well-done butterflied filet with truffle oil.”

  “Yeah? Where is this mythical beast?”

  “Already delivered and ripe for distraction and delectation at a table near the elevator.”

  The way to a male’s brain is through his stomach. In three minutes I have a slightly seared but rare-on-the-inside Godfather’s investor away from the dining arena and poised on the brink of the way down.

  “Louise,” he acknowledges me, boxing steak trimmings and shrimp crumbles from his midnight-black whiskers. “If you require my professional services, you should ask ahead of time, with a nice note.”

  “I require your backup. If you respond ‘nicely,’ I will put in a good word for you with Ma Barker.”

  “I need no favors from my street-gang-running ex,” he answers. “Also, I am very picky about where and with whom I exert myself these days. Borrow one of Ma Barker’s young toughs for backup.”

  “No time. I need a coconspirator fast to track a possible killer.”

  “Really? Crime most.… er, criminal. Junior, you know, fancies himself as the expert at that.”

  “Junior is off the map. I need a wise, sage partner I can rely on.”

  “And where will you be doing this ‘relying on?’”

  “At the Neon Nightmare.”

  “That is six blocks off the Strip and twenty down the Boulevard.”

  “Trust me, Granddaddy. You are not GoDaddy. We are not off to shoot elephants, but on a mission to preserve the wildlife in Vegas, as in four-footed. You can do the walk.”

  “You really need backup?”

  “I do.”

  “And I will do for that?”

  “You will.”

  “You are not wishing Junior was here?”

  “Absolutely not.”

  “And we are after killers of the human sort?”

  “Sneaky, treacherous killers of the human sort.”

  “Give me five!”

  I hit him with my best shot, a five-finger exercise, feline style, but with the razor tips only out a centimeter.

  “Ouch! That is my girl.”

  Chapter 4

  Louie on the Fly

  Leaving Las Vegas could be a hassle, but Temple hadn’t done it since visiting her aunt Kit Carlson in Manhattan for Christmas. A lot could change in five months, she mused while temporarily stalled in the McCarran Airport security line.

  Temple had been the missing Max Kinsella’s girl back then and Kit had not yet met and married the eldest of the many eligible Fontana brothers, Vegas’s last surviving pack of gangsters, designer gangsters on the Gucci loafer hoof.

  As Temple daydreamed, Matt Devine, a superior fiancé, although newly minted, used his superior height to peer ahead. Almost any adult’s height was superior to Temple’s, but Matt was a shade under six feet.

  “We’ve lucked out for a Saturday,” he said. “I’ve seen lines four people wide snaking all the way over the bridge areas to the initial security checkpoints.”

  Temple’s answer was a groan. Her carry-on was almost half her five-foot-zero size. Its chic leopard-skin-print exterior harbored twenty pounds of purse pussycat, Midnight Louie by name and furry anchor by weight and composition.

  She’d insisted on toting the twenty-pound cat in his fancy new five-pound state-of-the art carrier. “Or what good are workout sessions at the gym?” she answered Matt when he attempted, repeatedly, to tote the load that was Louie.

  And Temple had insisted Louie accompany them to see how he liked Chicago. Also, the Palmer House Hilton accepted pets under seventy-five pounds, so Louie was a lightweight when it came to hotel privileges.

  “I can carry that.” Matt again reached to claim the carrier’s wide shoulder strap like the gentleman he was.

  Temple shrugged his hand away. “You’ve got three bags to wrangle, and don’t forget we have to strip to go through the security point.”

  “I do this routine three times a month. I’m not about to forget doing the gray rubber-tub tango.”

  “I bet doffing wearing apparel for the security check is a real showstopper now that you’ve been on Dancing With the Celebs.”

  “It was your idea for me to do that downright risky show, remember?”

  “And look what it got you? A knife attack followed by a fast-track samba toward your own network TV talk show.”

  “We’ll see what happens in Chicago.” Matt frowned at the large leopard-skin-print bag Temple wouldn’t surrender. “What about Louie going through security?” he asked. “Did you look into that?”

  “Time crunch,” Temple said. “I know he can go through, I just don’t know how.”

  A discontented yowl emerged from the bag.

  They were shuffling through in a tight zigzag pattern of lanes that put every ear in its neighbor’s projection range.

  “Is that a cat in there?” A woman several spaces ahead of them was momentarily their closest neighbor.

  She peered through the mesh with interest. With her steel gray cap of hair and many frown lines, she looked more like your terrorizing high school physical education instructor than the average passenger.

  Temple fanned a protective hand over the bag, her left hand, thus flashing her ruby-and-diamond engagement ring. Their interrogator raised an unplucked eyebrow at the bling.

  “Cats are allowed on planes if ticketed,” Temple said.

  “Well, you are in luck. I’m an off-duty preboard screening officer. I deal with pets all the time. Usually the pet is removed from the carrier, and then the passenger carries the pet through the walk-through metal detector.”

  The bag erupted with urgent movement. Apparently Midnight Louie objected to metal detectors.

  The woman wasn’t fazed. “Cat, huh? They tend to be the bad boys of airport security personnel. If you have any concerns about your cat getting squirmy, just tell the person at the front position that you’d prefer to go into the private search room and take your cat out there because he may try to escape. My, that would be no exaggeration. Just how big is your cat? It looks like he’s fighting a wolverine in there.”

  It felt that way too. Matt was ready once again to relieve her of Louie’s carrier and the woman’s frown made a very rumpled rug out of her forehead. Would Louie’s natural boyish energies make him a purrson of interest to security personnel?

  Their instant advisor’s frown relaxed.

  “Sometimes they fail to tell trainees this, but we do this all the time. Put your other bags through on the conveyor belt. Another screener will take your carrier with your cat inside, meeting you after you walk through the metal detector. Once you and your bags have cleared, you’ll go into the private search room with your pet in the carrier. There you can safely take out the cat, and the carrier will be hand-searched.”

  Temple wasn’t sure that Louie would put up with any hand-searching, even if it was only of his carrier. Now she frowned.

  “The last thing we screeners want is a loose cat in the airport,” the expert noted, “so the private search room is always available for pets, and also for passengers, for that matter. Good luck!”

  Movement in the line whisked their advisor away.

  Matt looked relieved. “Good to have a plan. I’ll pass the carrier over to the screener, though. I think that operation requires some height and upper body strength. You’ll only have to play the ‘little woman’ for a couple minutes, promise.”

  “I guess it’s good that Louie knows he can count on you in a crunch as well as me.” Temple conceded.

  Midnight Louie’s lonesome wail was either agreement or dismay, but only he would ever know for sure. Travelers behind their party were already buzzing and sighing about a forthcoming slowdown due to animal transport.

  Now Temple knew how people traveling with kids felt.

  * * *

  Thirty-eight thousand feet in the air and six hours later, Louie dozed as Temple gazed o
ut the semi-smeared airplane window, knocking off photo shots faster than a gangster mowing down rivals.

  “I can’t believe it,” she told Matt when she leaned back to take a break. “This city is monstrous. It’s the Nessie of Lake Michigan. Manhattan is just a garter snake in comparison. I can’t believe how massive the buildings look.”

  “That’s because you’ve never flown over Chicago before,” Matt said.

  “True. And this is only my second time in first class,” she added in a lower tone, not wanting the presumed elite all around them to take her for a hick.

  Matt thought for an instant, then gave a tight nod without comment.

  Darn, Temple thought, he’s figured out my “first time” in first class was when Max and I left Minneapolis for Las Vegas. That was not a good place to leave your current fiancé, picturing another guy in his place, in this case an actual airplane seat.

  Being a practiced publicist by trade, Temple immediately switched into distraction mode, peering at the leopard-skin-print bag jammed under the seat ahead. This was one occasion when being five-feet-zero tall paid off. The capacious bag wasn’t crowding her foot room at all.

  “I bet I’m the only person in first class with a purse-pooch bag.” Temple whispered to Matt, “And look. Isn’t that a network news correspondent two seats ahead across the aisle?”

  A cabin attendant cruised by checking seat belts. “Nice to see you again, Mr. Devine,” she murmured at Matt.

  Luckily, today’s “stewardesses” weren’t the man-pleasing bombshells of yesteryear, at least from Temple’s point of view. This pleasant, almost plump woman was old enough to be Matt’s mother, but that didn’t stop her from sopping up his blond good looks. Temple eyed her as she moved away.

  “That’s right,” she told Matt in another whisper, “you’re a regular on this flight route from all of your Amanda Show appearances. Why would the producers fly you in on a family visit?”

  “My booking agent—you remember my mentioning Tony Valentine?—explained it to me way back when. As long as I’m a current ‘on-air personality,’ even off and on, there’s no such thing as my flying to Chicago without it being ‘business.’ That’s why we’re being put up at the Palmer House Hilton. As long as I’m a candidate for a new talk show, I’ll be treated like a prince.”

  “I can do ‘princess,’ but maybe our getting married will hurt your career?”

  “Temple, please. If my ‘career’ hurts any personal plans, I’m outta there.”

  “You’re certainly cucumber-slice cool about your future stardom.”

  “Yeah. I don’t need it.”

  “Keep up that attitude. It’ll drive the producers crazy to procure you.”

  Matt made a face. “Doesn’t this hoopla put you off?”

  “I’m a PR person, Matt. Hoopla is my middle name.” Actually, Ursula was. Temple hoped that it wasn’t required for a marriage license, because she simply would have to beg off matrimony. No one could ever know her initials were TUB. What had her mother been thinking?

  As the plane’s interior operational whine shifted tones to begin its descent into O’Hare, Temple bent down to make sure the under-seat bag was secure. When she straightened up, Matt was regarding her, his warm brown eyes sharp with sudden insight.

  “That’s right,” he said. “I never knew Max Kinsella when he was still performing as the Goliath Hotel’s house magician. You’re used to being linked with a ‘star.’”

  “A PR person always makes the client a star. I’m used to being an essential ‘nobody.’ No ego involved, believe me.”

  Matt leaned close. “I’d be happy to be an essential nobody with you anytime.” He pulled her close in the privacy of the high leather seat backs and engine drone. “Temple, traveling is brutally impersonal these days, but this trip is vital to me, not just because of the family thing. We need some time alone together. We need to become a team again. I’m afraid our own lives are getting lost in all these people and tangles from our past.”

  “Us? You think we’re getting lost? I had to … do what I did—”

  He fanned his fingers over her mouth. “Shhh. No rehashing. I spent too much time waiting and waiting and burning for you. If my ‘career arc’ threatens our relationship, I’ll go back to being a volunteer hotline counselor in two seconds. I don’t need anything but you.”

  “Matt, don’t worry.…” His intensity surprised her. Touched her. Excited her. “It’s just you and me against the world, and you are my world.”

  The roving cabin attendant paused to check on them. Temple looked up, smiled, and linked arms with Matt until she moved on. “And no stewardess is gonna ogle my guy. This is cozy, but not cozy enough for me right now.” She kissed his neck and whispered, “I’m glad we made this trip together.”

  He smiled and relaxed back into his seat. “Meet my crazy family and then tell me you’re glad.”

  “Mine’s more competitive and crushing than crazy. It’ll be good to start the ‘meet the parents’ thing in Chicago and work our way north to Minneapolis.”

  As a baby bawled relentlessly far back in the plane, a long, low yowl revved up at Temple’s feet. Maybe there was another guy in her life competing for her attention, after all. She leaned forward, whispering vehemently.

  “Pipe down. Your acid tones are going to strip the finish off your carrier and my matching leopard-pattern peep-toe pumps. You’re getting total star treatment, including that cushy plush carrier interior. We can breeze out of here as soon as we land and you soon will have this ‘toddling town’ at your feet. The worst is over.”

  And indeed, the worst was over for Midnight Louie, if not Temple.

  She believed in doing it yourself when it came to responsibilities and proving that a woman—a short, petite woman—could do anything all by herself. She had wrestled a lot of heavy display panels and moved a ton of folding chairs when it came to convention and special event emergencies.

  Louie, however, was quite an armful on those long airport treks from terminal to baggage claim. So while she consented to let Matt haul her big bag off the luggage carousel, she was thrilled to look around at the crowd for the deplaning celebrities common to Vegas’s McCarran. Other than them, of course. She spotted a Man in Black from cap to toes holding up a white card reading DEVINE.

  “We have a car!” she told Matt. He looked up from attaching the carry-on to their behemoth bag in common and caught the dark-suited man’s scanning glance with one of those raised-finger waiter salutes.

  “And you have groupies,” Temple noted, impressed.

  Matt’s usual genial expression screwed a couple turns tighter.

  A gawking clot of people had spotted the name on the upraised card. They had clustered behind the driver to regard Matt with a blend of grins and raw curiosity.

  “Welcome to Chicago,” the driver said, approaching and appropriating the luggage.

  “I’ll keep this,” Temple said, turning away as he reached for her shoulder strap.

  Matt had kept “his” carry-on bag, which contained mostly what Temple would carry in her tote bag were Louie not hitching a ride on her shoulder.

  Louie’s claws were already doing the Swim inside the carrier but she was determined to manage the burden. Besides, she’d used tote bags in her working life before big clunky status purses were cool. Her life and interests were too diverse to be contained in the app-packed shell of a smartphone.

  Nothing barred their way. Apparently the fans were content to look and eavesdrop.

  Temple’s precarious peep-toe heels sounded as steady as a heartbeat on the stone floor as she and Matt trotted after their urban native guide, nodding cordially but briefly to their staring audience.

  “Who’s she?” A young female voice wafted into their wake.

  “Personal assistant,” her gal pal stated, disdainful of her uninformed and, in this case, unimaginative companion.

  “Personal assistant,” Temple hissed to Matt between clicks of her shoe
s. “Apparently your fans are too nearsighted to spot my engagement ring. Your engagement ring.” Temple frowned. “What’s the correct expression?”

  “Ours,” he said. “It’s not much farther. Just through the doors to the pickup lanes.”

  “Great.” Temple tamped down the urge to pant. Louie wasn’t getting any lighter.

  Then the weight lifted off her shoulder all at once.

  She turned to Matt. “I told you I can handle—”

  He’d dropped his carry-on by her feet. “Watch that,” he ordered.

  Instead, she watched him race past the now-stalled driver, who looked as confused as she did.

  Watch that. No “please”? Already they were acting like an old married couple.…

  Oh.

  “Watch that!” Temple ordered the driver, scooting after Matt and the disappearing leopard-print carrier.

  The carrier strap was now hooked over the shoulder of the person carrying it—the … the … petnapper—dressed all in black, a bulky figure in a trench coat. It was already halfway through one of the automatically opening glass doors.

  Just then Matt caught up and grabbed Louie’s carrier strap, slewing the thief around to face into the terminal’s interior. The kidnapper slipped the shoulder strap and bolted for the glass doors again, then onto the sidewalk outside, charging into the flow of travelers, lost behind the confusing reflections of the glass walls.

  Exiting passengers dragging bags jostled past Matt, forcing a retreat. He rejoined Temple and the driver, who were guarding the other bags. Fortunately, the one Matt carried still contained Midnight Louie.

  A rat-a-tat of running footsteps from an oblique angle showed a woman in uniform bearing down on the one motionless vignette in the swirl of oblivious, expressionless people coming and going. That tableau would be the obediently stopped driver, their luggage, and Matt holding the carrier while Temple crooned at the unseen contents.

  “Sir. Ma’am.” The security cop was slightly breathless. “What’s in that bag? Anything valuable?”

  “Just a former À La Cat spokescat,” Temple said.

  “Just a cat?” was the next question.