Cat in a Flamingo Fedora

by Douglas, Carole Nelson

  "And some he welcomed more than others."

  Molina's assertion brought no answer but a guilty silence. Everyone resisted glancing at Savannah Ashleigh.

  "I think," Molina went on, "the female contingent could answer that best. I understand that Darren Cooke was quite a ladies' man."

  When no answer came, Molina flipped back her notebook cover and began to scan the contents. "I should say that some of you were spotted at his hotel suite in the past few days."

  Temple felt her high heels turn into carpenter's nails and impale her to the floor.

  "I'll have a word with you over there." Molina waved the notebook at the mostly deserted Prohibition Bar. "Kyle Conrad." The director. "Savannah Ashleigh." Savannah looked as guilty as Temple and twice as rebellious. "Sharon Hammerlitz." The animal trainer from hell, now that was interesting. "And Temple Barr. The rest of you can go do what you were planning on doing. I don't believe I'll need to interrogate the cats."

  "Yvette does not leave my side," Savannah burst out in a hysterical falsetto. "You will have to wait to shoot her until my grilling is over."

  "Miss Ashleigh." Molina's smile was so tight it resembled a rigor-mortis grin. "If you were truly getting the dreaded 'grilling,' it would be downtown in a bare, tiny room and no cats would be allowed. Keep Yvette with you, if you wish. But I will accept no whining and screaming from either of you."

  "Oooooh," Savannah's shaky little moan came perilously close to a whine.

  Temple waved Louie and his carrier on. He didn't like incarceration, but he was a perfect gentleman about it: no howling, hissing or pissing.

  The group drew up chairs around an empty table for six. Molina plunked her notebook on the table and drew out a tiny pocket recorder.

  "I'm compiling a roster of who was with the deceased the past few days. Since he entertained so often, it's hard to get a complete guest list. If any of you recall other attendees you knew, I want their names. This is all routine, I assure you."

  Yeah, Temple thought. A homicide lieutenant on a suicide investigation. If suicide were the cause of death, with no reservations, Temple doubted Molina would even be here . . . unless to harass Temple.

  Paranoia, Temple reflected further, was the curse of the thinking class. Like Hamlet, she thought too much, and look how that had ended!

  "Mr. Conrad." Molina began with the director. "I understand you were present at Mr.

  Cooke's Friday-night cocktail party at his hotel."

  "Yes, purely a professional courtesy. I only met him when we began working on this cat commercial. He was a generous man, and so included me on his guest list. I was hardly on a level with most of his guests, who are recognized 'names' in the business."

  "Was anyone else from the crew or associated with the cat commercial present that night?"

  Kyle eyed the table as if to refresh his memory. "Only Miss Ashleigh. But she had known him for years."

  "For years," Molina repeated unnervingly, jotting the information down.

  "Not that many years," Savannah corrected. She had removed Yvette from the canvas carrier and was holding the slim little cat to her chest and cheek as a child will cuddle a favorite teddy bear.

  "How many?" Molina was as cool as a frosted beer mug.

  "Years? Well, I don't know exactly. I first met him when I was doing House on Heavenly Isle.

  That was released in nineteen eighty-four, so . . . eight years ago or so."

  "At least twelve," Molina corrected.

  Savannah puckered her blond eyebrows and rubbed her prominent cheekbone (probably an implant) against Yvette's pretty Persian face. Yvette rubbed back.

  "I can't be sure. I'm only thirty-six and I'm sure I made that film when I was about twenty, maybe?"

  "We can check the film dates," Molina said, hiding a smile by forcing her mouth corners down.

  Obviously, Savannah Ashleigh was so used to manipulating dates in her favor that she was hopelessly lost in a tangle of wishful lies when she discussed her career and its longevity.

  "And you are--?" Molina asked the animal trainer.

  "Sharon Hammerlitz. I train animals. I never knew Cooke before this project. I don't know why he invited me to his Friday-night party, but it was too good an opportunity to miss. We animal handlers are rarely invited to high-level parties, or any parties at all."

  "So you went out of curiosity?"

  "Like a cat." Sharon smiled for the first time in Temple's memory.

  "You didn't sense that Mr. Cooke took a personal interest in you?"

  "Me? I'm just a twenty-four-year-old animal trainer. What would a famous older man have an interest in me for?"

  "You're attractive. Mr. Cooke never failed to notice an attractive young woman. How did he happen to overlook you?"

  "Dozens of prettier types at the party; real starlets. I was just a lowly extra. I drank one margarita, nibbled some crackers and crab and left by nine."

  Molina lifted an eyebrow at Kyle Conrad.

  "True. I hardly saw her, and only stayed until ten myself. Nobody was much interested in talking to me. It was a closed crowd. They knew each other."

  "I'm impressed by all your moderate hours and abstemious ways. And was Miss Barr present?"

  Kyle and Sharon exchanged glances, shaking their heads in tandem.

  Molina's eerily blue eyes finally rested on Temple again. "You weren't i nvited, Cinderella?"

  Temple shook her head, wondering if she should volunteer her presence at the Sunday brunch, a much more incriminating day.

  While she debated, Molina snapped her notebook shut and turned off her tiny tape recorder. "Just checking on the decedent's last days. He strike any of you as suicidal?"

  More head shakes, very definite.

  Temple sat there biting her tongue. If she didn't volunteer her presence in Darren Cooke's suite, admitting it later would look very bad. Perhaps if she had a private word with Molina --

  But the lieutenant had stood and was thanking them perfunctorily for their time. The chance, now lost, would be awkward to reclaim.

  "Well, are you coming?" Savannah Ashleigh demanded beside Temple. "We're back in business as usual, and your big tomcat must be gnawing at his carrier grille to get another chance to sully my little Yvette."

  "Louie doesn't sully anything," Temple answered, hastening after the others and leaving Savannah to reinsert Yvette in her carrier, zip it up and come trailing after.

  Chapter 20

  Louie Goes for a Ride

  I am a tad peeved with Gangster's.

  Their advertisements claim they will pick up anyone anywhere in town. They certainly pick up Miss Savannah Ashleigh and the Divine Yvette, and bring them to the set every day that we are shooting. They certainly return Miss Savannah Ashleigh and the Divine Yvette from whence they came at each day's end.

  Why, then, am I suffered to be "dropped off' and "picked up" by Miss Temple Barr? It makes me sound like dirty laundry. Of course, I realize that Miss Temple is a working mother (so to speak, especially if it is Savannah-speak, though Miss Temple has never called me "Mummy's little darling baby." Thank Bast!).

  Still, I think I would look most elegant arriving in the passenger seat of a long, black limo.

  And it appears that I am finally going to get my due. The Divine Yvette and I are about to be portrayed as passengers of some fancy vintage mobmobile. We are also going to be fed again (the best part of the commercial racket). As I overhear it, this sequence is a takeoff on that mustard commercial where two old British snobs roll up to the stoplight in their chauffeured Rolls-Royces, each of them slathering something they call Great Poop-on on their wienies. This strikes me as a strange name for a product meant for public (if not proletariat) consumption, but those Brits have some weird names for things and I do not always hear too well as I snooze during every commercial I am subjected to.

  I do not get to slather Great Poop-on on my wienie for this commercial. I must scarf down more A La Cat from a sissy dish without a
dab of Great Poop-on to make it palatable. (This Great Poop-on has a spunky, spicy taste, though its name is for the birds, or rather something that went through the birds. I think it is the same "Poop-on everything" they are always asking people for in the advertising biz. If these Madison Avenue hucksters can sell that poop goop, they can certainly unload a lot of A La Cat with two glamorous types like myself and the Divine Yvette hyping it from here to cat heaven.)

  The car the Divine One and I will share is no limo, but one of those cavernous, beetle-back black numbers from the thirties. We do at least have a front-seat driver, a dude who looks like he escaped from Alcatraz. Dis is one tough-looking dude, let me tell you, and the Thompson submachine gun poking a steel nose under his zoot-suit lapel only adds to the ambience.

  We are stuffed in the backseat, which is then hit with about two million kilowatts of spotlight. Now I know what they mean by the phrase "being on the hot seat," for those lights could broil an ice cube. I inquire whether my lady friend is suffering due to the heavy fur coat she wears at all times.

  "No, Louie," she tells me while lolling on her side to cool off. "Being overheated is one of the prices of natural beauty." Va-va-varoom!

  All around us sit polished, stalled cars of a similar vintage, though some are more colorful than our hearse like vehicle, like tan or even cream-colored. But most are the same basic black as our car.

  Of course we are back in costume: I in my flamingo-pink fedora, Yvette in her feathers and diamonds. Our A La Cat servings are salmon fricassee , so the color goes well with my dashing but ridiculous headgear. If Bast had meant me to wear a hat, she would have made them all with ear-holes. A massive picnic hamper reclines on the car floorboards. Its open cover reveals such niceties as silverware and china plates, cans of pate and long loaves of French bread, none of which appeal to our predators' palettes. But I suppose it adds some eye-appeal to the human viewers who actually buy the glop that the poor house cats are forced to eat.

  I glimpse my mortal rival, Maurice, on the sidelines. He is out of his carrier and in the cat trainer's arms, apparently quite the favorite. I realize that the animal trainer has a big stake in her alley cat's mangy hide. Favoritism is an ugly tendency.

  The next thing I see I do not like one bit. The crew is rolling another humped, black car alongside ours, with another punk-looking driver and--who do they plunk in the backseat but His Majesty Maurice Two, the Maurice One slayer? That is like Macbeth giving King Duncan a friendly ride home in his Rolls while his missus lurks in the boot with a knitting needle.

  Miss Temple has dawdled behind, no doubt questioning the boys and girls of the chorus about the demise of their leader. I know it is important for her to feel useful by making her little inquiries, but I do think she should be here protecting our contract from infringement. In my understanding, this was to be the Midnight Louie/Divine Yvette show. Maurice was nowhere mentioned.

  And he also has footloose privileges while the DY and I are locked up. This kind of favoritism will only give him a chance to booby-trap the commercial. He has deceived this same set of subcretinous humans before. So he is only a body double who offed the celestial body he was substituting for, i.e., the star. They do not know nor care.

  At last my ears hear tiny heels clicking on the hard-composition floor paving the car-museum area. I leap up and put my paws on the sill created by the rolled-down window.

  You should hear the screeching! You would think a colony of bats were abroad.

  "No! No paw prints on the finish!" the crew screams, descending on me in a raving horde.

  "Ugly damp pads."

  They are lucky that I make my protest only with paw prints. There are other, even more corrosive ways of damaging prized human property, if I make myself clear?

  Miss Temple does not help my cause.

  "What has he done now?" she asks, clattering up to the car door I am desecrating.

  "He was sitting in the backseat nice as pie," the trainer explains, "then he was up on his hind feet looking around."

  Miss Temple, to give her credit, examines the scene of the crime by walking around my car.

  "Maybe he's upset because this other male cat is hogging the backseat of the neighboring vehicle. I thought Louie and Yvette were the focus of the commercials. What's Maurice doing here?"

  Way to go! Keep those legal beagle tough questions coming.

  On the seat beside me, the Divine Yvette bestirs herself. "Is that nasty Maurice causing problems, Louie? I do not like him. He is a bad boy!"

  My heart glows to hear my rival dismissed by the one who counts.

  "Do not flutter your furs, my dear," I return in my manliest swaggering tone. "My mistress will make Vienna sausage out of him, with no Great Poop-on to ease the transition."

  The animal trainer comes to loom over Miss Temple, which is not hard to do even when she is wearing high heels, which only make her a feisty but tottery five-feet-three.

  "Listen, lady, your cat is completely untrained. At least Maurice knows some tricks and responds to clacker signals."

  "Louie is a natural performer, from what we saw of his improvised dance down those stage stairs. And what about Yvette's contract? Is she supposed to be shoved into third place by that camera-hogging yellow mongrel?"

  Miss Temple's germane inquiries have even stirred Miss Savannah Ashleigh from flirting with the twenty-five-year-old cameraman. She undulates over in languid irritation.

  "What is this about another cat intruding into what is already an imposition on my Yvette, who was to star solo in these tawdry commercial epics?"

  By now the director has come over, patting shoulders, even mine.

  "Calm down, everyone. The trainer suggested a spoof of the mustard with the two old gents commercial, and I thought it was a good idea. Maurice is simply in the scene as a loser, the cat who carries a no-name brand of cat food that Louie and Yvette can sniff their noses at as they partake of A La Cat. We will only see a flash of his swill and his hide, I promise."

  "Just so he is not as prominent as my Yvette."

  "Just so he does not get more airtime than Louie."

  The director keeps nodding and crossing his heart and patting the ladies' shoulders. There is nothing like a good pet for soothing the savage beast. Not to mention Miss Savannah's savage breasts, of which the like I have never seen.

  The ladies calm down and back off the set, but their two sets of eagle eyes watch director's and cameraman's every move. I notice both men's hands shake ever so slightly as they set up camera angles.

  "Is the rude interchange over, Louie?" ma petite's voice mews from her recumbent form.

  I must say that these Persians are very laid-back cats, except when they are mad.

  "All is well," I reassure her, adding a lick or two, including a slow tour of her shell-pink ear.

  "Louie!" she simpers with feminine delight. 'That could show up on camera."

  "Let it," I declare. 'This scenario could use a little more spice, and that certainly will not come from Maurice, so it is up to us to uphold the standards of the species."

  "Whatever you say is so sensible. You may lick my other ear, if you wish."

  I waste no time taking up her invitation, and hear the director telling the cameraman to

  "catch that."

  But they will not catch anything from us, as we are both exceedingly clean, especially after all this ear-licking.

  So the action begins. I mean the commercial-filming action, of course.

  The two cars' facing back windows are rolled down. I am tempted to our car's inside window by a feather on a stick peeking up over the windowsill. Frankly, this tired feather, dyed a disgusting orange, would not lure me into a bordello of Birmans. But I do know what is expected of me, and bound to the open window, planting my broad black paws on the surface. No cries of paw prints on the wax job now. This is show business, and this pose is my business.

  "Good boy," the director croons as the trainer crouches below the oppo
site window with the same tawdry toy.

  And, lo! The awful Maurice puss pops up in the opposite opening like an ugly jack-in-a-box.

  It is all I can do to refrain from sticking my tongue out at him, but I know that this would be an unflattering pose for the camera. I am trapped by fame and fortune from following my basest instincts. This is not a good trade-off.

  We make faces at each other for a minute or more. The computer geniuses will add lip movements in the studio to fit the script. I have read the script, and know that I am supposedly boasting about the superiority of my brand of cat food, so Maurice must be singing the praises of some real poopon stuff.

  The cameras pan past us to focus in turn on dishes of glop on each of our backseats. I do not know what ugly stuff is showcased in the ugly Maurice's ugly container, but our set features an Irish-crystal bowl heaped with this stylized A La Cat that has been plumped and tooth-picked until it resembles a beehive hairdo from long ago--if hair were usually salmon-pink.

  I do my business by pushing the bowl of A La Cat toward the reclining Yvette. She reaches out a dainty paw to pat the bowl, then leans her little face into the mess and begins nibbling away.

  I sigh in a way that is not detectable on camera, then insinuate my face into the bowl, so our whiskers interweave as we sup.

  At the director's call of "Cut!" this particular segment is history.

  "Look at how Louie stops eating the minute the director calls cut," Miss Temple points out with fond maternal glee. "It is like he knows he is off camera."

  "Maybe he just does not like A La Cat," Miss Savannah Ashleigh says as she sashays over to wrest Yvette from my tender custody.

  'Then he fakes it pretty well," Miss Temple crows, also drawing me out of the vehicle.

  I try not to interfere with her magic moment, but I am a lot more pussycat to lift straight up than the Cotton-Puff Queen, the Divine Yvette. Miss Temple's dramatic reclamation of myself is less than graceful, and there is nothing I can to do prevent her further embarrassment.