Кэрол Дуглас - Cat In A Topaz Tango

“Rats,” hissed Molina as her group retreated as ordered by Crawford Buchanan’s deep bass over the microphone. “No badge, no gun, no authority. Undercover sucks.”

“No kidding,” said a retreating videographer who overheard her, lowering the camera to reveal his face.

Dirty Larry.

“Welcome to my world,” he said.

“Did you film anything important?” Rafi demanded.

“Kid squalling. Couldn’t tell why. We’ll go over all the footage with a magic-tech program later.”

“Who’d sabotage the junior contestants?” Temple wondered.

“Someone wanting to raise a ruckus,” Dirty Larry said promptly.

“To create a distraction.” Rafi turned away, lifting a cell phone to his ear to warn his security forces to watch the adult competitors.

“Take Mariah to the suite where she’s staying with the rest of the junior dancers,” Molina ordered Temple. “I’ll be along as soon as I can check on the injured girl backstage.”

Zoe Chloe Ozone could have pointed out that she didn’t babysit, but at least Molina wasn’t ordering her daughter home, which would have produced a tantrum that would have made Sou-Sou’s distress look like an attack of the sniffles.

“Bring Louie along when you come back,” Temple told Molina.

“I’m not toting your alley cat anywhere.”

“I’m not babysitting your daughter unless I have a bone fide feline icebreaker present. Louie will distract those girls into speaking truth.”

“I’m not hunting all over for a cat.” A smug light dawned. “Maybe I’ll call Rafi to bring him to me backstage.”

“Whatever floats your barge. Just trust me. Bring him.” Temple turned to Mariah, who’d watched their battle of wills with sharp eyes and ears. She was getting a whole new take on her mother.

“Come on, big-time manager,” Zoe Chloe told Mariah, who sat beside a dazed EK, “we gotta get tight with our homegirls before any more of them end up dancing on hot coals.”

“She’s a little bitch,” Mariah said as they left, trailing the mothers shepherding their dancing daughters. EK, her eyes bigger than dinner plates, trailed them. Mariah was her ersatz mother. “Isn’t she, EK?”

The girl nodded, and from her wince at the phrase, Temple guessed Sou-Sou had been meanest to the most defenseless of her competitors. And maybe the most talented. EK had a quiet intensity and intelligence that was almost disturbing in a girl so young, if you didn’t know she’d escaped a terrible political situation.

Who knew what EK had already needed to do to survive? Maybe a bit of sabotage was child’s play compared to what she’d already faced—loss of home and family, starvation, and death. Who could guess how badly she wanted, needed, to win to ensure a scholarship to guarantee staying in this country?

“Wow!” When the party arrived at the elevator to the suite, one of the girls ahead turned back to regard the trio taking up the rear. It was skateboarder Patrisha. “Zoe Chloe is hanging wi’ us, sistahs! Kewl.”

The mothers frowned and blinked at the gaudy Zoe Chloe persona, mystified.

“For sure,” ZC answered, moving forward to high-five her fans. “I’m gonna see you girls and mamas get safe home to your hotel suite, so these hunky boys in uniform can guard your door.”

One of the two security guys who’d joined the party, probably on Rafi’s orders, was under thirty, but one was fat, bald, and on social security.

He was the one who chuckled and said, “You betcha, ladies. We’ll keep the big, bad bedbugs from your door. You can count on Roy.”

The three girls collapsed in giggles at the idea of this old guy being hunky.

“I’m Hank. Hank Buck,” the younger, buff one said. “I’m in charge of operations for this jamboree, so you’ll be seeing me around. You’ll never know when and hopefully anybody bad won’t know when either. I’ll be looking out for you girls, trust me.”

“We are getting more security than Los Hermanos Brothers,” Meg-Ann boasted to her friends as they rode up in the elevator.

“That rocks!” Patrisha agreed.

Zoe Chloe stood outside the suite’s double doors as mothers and daughters and mini-manager filed in, the girls still giggling, as they passed the guards, eyeing the younger one.

“Don’t you belong in there, miss?” Roy, the older guard, asked. “It ain’t very safe out here.”

“No, sir,” Zoe said, all pretend pouty. “I guess media stars like Los Hermanos Brothers and me don’t rate attempts on our performances and sanity. Pooh ! We’ll never make Excess Hollywood that way.”

The senior citizen guard glowered at her irresponsible attitude, but the young one eyed her overexposed fishnet-clad gams. He was only, like, twenty-nine and had no idea she was an older woman.

Kewl.

Temple bopped Zoe Chloe Ozone outa there into the hall before she triggered a response from some lethally jealous tweenybopper. Girls just want to compete.

Maybe to the death.

Hotfooting It

If there is anyone in this entire place who is fully qualified to smell a rat, it is I.

I mean this quite literally.

A lot of scents assail my highly developed sniffer during these recent, critical moments since I pushed my way past a phalanx of human legs to the side of the little doll who was most cruelly afflicted.

First, human foot odor. Arghh!

This alone is enough to knock a sensitive dude—a short , sensitive dude—off his four pins. Why will they insist on confining and cooking the unhappy aroma of their pathetically unclawed feet inside these thick leather and canvas boxes?

Air, my fellow Americans! Please! We four-footed citizens only ask that you aerate your tootsies as fully and often as we do ours. You will notice that we are not subject to such ills as bunions, corns, hammertoes, and athlete’s foot, although we are better natural-born athletes than the whole kit and caboodle of you put together.

Having fought my way through this chemical hazard of foot odor, I am able to insinuate myself next to the maternal unit, which is swamped in a chemical cosmetic haze of other, supposedly pleasant odors.

A word to the wise: cover-ups never work.

In the confusion, and under the cover of this one large, hysterical lady who goes by the appellation “Mama,” I am able to thrust myself into the heart of the problem: the tiny dancer’s still twitching feet.

Whew! I will give credit to the heat of the dance. This little doll’s feet are sniffing up a storm. It is not the unnatural natural odor I am accustomed to.

It is rank, but artificial. In fact, it makes me draw back and box my snout to stifle a sneeze. Itching powder? I have heard of such an item being used for practical jokes, but this is no joke.

The first solo dance in the junior division has turned into a debacle. Although Miss Sou-Sou is something of a snot deserving of a comeuppance, I cannot endorse dirty tricks among the young teen set.

As the fascinating feet in my purview are lifted aloft by the awesome CC, I resolve to do what my human associates cannot do in their present guises. I will accompany the victim until I learn what is going on, and who and what might be behind it.

Ouch! Of course some careless foot has kicked me in the puss.

Dodging these ticky-tacky boxes of milling footwear, I manage to maintain a low profile by stifling any indignant meows.

At last I insinuate myself into the junior girls’ dressing room, although I am by no means either a junior or a girl, and join the privileged circle surrounding the now crying child, who alone of her group is still in the set area. For a thirteen-year-old human kit in pain is just that, no matter how many slinky costumes she wears.