Кэрол Дуглас - Cat In A Topaz Tango

Only Mariah remained unworried. She knew she was an undercover kid.

“So, anyway, peeps,” Zoe Chloe summed up, “things could get pretty unpleasant for all of us until someone finds out who put the hot sauce to Sou-Sou’s shoes. Hey, sounds like a funky song title. I say we can turn this into a fun gig and find out about each other and chill with some hot pizza and Dr Pepper.” She turned to her personal assistant. “You did remember to order Dr Pepper, didn’t you? That’s all I drink.”

Molina set her teeth and picked up the phone to order from room service, asking the other girls if they had any preferences.

Awestruck by the Zoe Chloe Ozone presence, they only wanted what their idol ordered.

Man, Temple could dig being a pop tart . . .

Forty minutes later, everyone was sitting on the carpet, dozens of cheap paper napkins unfolded, smearing a gloss of red pizza sauce over lipstick. A lot of chitchat and chatter had gone down with the pepperoni slices and melted cheese, but no clues that stood out.

Midnight Louie stole the show by darting out a black paw to snag yet another circle of sausage on the now-cold pizza remains. Everybody laughed. They hadn’t laughed earlier when he’d knocked a plastic shaker of red pepper flakes over on the carpet.

“If we don’t know what ,” Mariah opined between chews on the best-tasting generic pizza in the world, because tension had everyone feeling starved, “how can we begin to know who ?”

“Sounds like sound police procedure to me,” Molina put in, earning a glancing flash of gratitude from her daughter. “The police won’t know what until tomorrow morning. Tell you what. Since Ekaterina has no responsible adult present to look after her, Ms. Ozone and I will take her and her friend Mariah up to our suite, so you two mothers only have your own daughters to watch over.”

Two maternal brows frowned at the idea. “Separate the girls?” Angie objected. “They were just bonding.”

Mariah rolled her eyes, indicating the opposite, so Temple jumped in.

“It’ll be easier to alibi the kids if anyone gets carried away and starts tossing out accusations.”

A long silence indicated they all knew who might be slinging accusations around: Yvonne Smith.

“That’s very generous of Ms. Ozone,” Frances Peters said. “And it might be best for EK.” Her glance at the girl also indicated just who’d been the butt of Sou-Sou’s snobbery.

Molina nodded, well satisfied with the new arrangement in all of her identities: cop, mother, and undercover teen star flunky.

Purse Pussycat Prowl

It is not like me to be so clumsy but it is like me to be so nosy.

Of course I did not “accidentally” overturn the red pepper shaker. That was just an excuse so that I could sniff around on all the shoeless feet and unguarded purses on the floor as children and mothers eat like starving lions and chatter like parrots.

Oh, that silly fellow. He just has to have his nose into everything .

Of course what I get for my sleuthing efforts is a flake up my left nostril and a sneezing fit. For this reason I doubt that actual pepper flakes were used in the incident.

It is not easy to conduct discreet investigations while sneezing up a storm. So I hunker under a chair to smother my nasal paroxysms and wait for the fit to subside. It is actually a clever way to get all present to totally forget about literally little me.

And that gives me plenty of time to overhear this and that, especially when Yvonne Smith comes in breathless about the vicious attack on her daughter and with a long report on Sou-Sou’s poor feet being tended by the hotel doctor in a security-guarded location. She is urged to sit down, relax, eat, and drink.

Thus, everyone has been lulled into forgetting my presence and I have reduced my aversion to red pepper flakes to the occasional sniffle. Floor-sitting ladies tend to forget against which object of furniture they have laid their precious purses. I slink out from concealment and sniff my way to each in turn.

Unfortunately, my clever red pepper exposure has served to blunt my usually sharp sniffer.

Miss Frances Peters’s bag is a large leather Stein Mart affair decorated with safari pockets and lots of metal hardware. You would not want to take it through an airport security line.

I detect a few ancient flecks of tobacco in the very bottom. Since I detected no such scent on the owner, I make the deduction that she purchased the bag from a resale establishment.

Nothing wrong with that! My Miss Temple does that all the time, especially in regard to high-end high heels, an item the original owners of which turn over almost daily, like Band-Aids for bunions.

This purse was never high-end, though, so I am guessing the Widow Peters is putting a lot of her money into survival. Patrisha’s win in this contest would get the kid opportunities her mother could never afford. Something to bear in mind.

Next I snuggle up to the bright yellow ruched leather bag favored by Angie Peyton, mother of the innovatively named Meg-Ann. You would never know her daughter was an athlete, but maybe Meg-Ann needed to overcome that first name.

Parents are even worse at naming offspring than they are at naming animal companions. I cannot complain about “Midnight Louie,” though. It is my street name, bestowed on me in my first neighborhood before I moved uptown. It is a moniker used by the street people who shared their humble meals with me when I was a kit, and I wear it proudly. My magnificent mature physique is a tribute to the less fortunate and their care and consideration for the even less fortunate.

If my Miss Temple does not have me down to a wraith again with her slavish devotion to feline health food! But I am not here to criticize anyone’s home cooking, and Angie Peyton’s bag is sweet rather than hot, holding loose chocolate-covered raisins and Oreo cookie four-packs.

Next I push my schnozz into the late-arriving Smith purse. This is a scarlet patent leather hobo bag, within which I pick up the scent of a woman: peppermint— achoo! —candies from restaurants. Aha! A careful woman. Burt’s Bees lip balm, which indicates a nervous woman; and . . . aha! . . . a not tightly capped can of pepper spray!

Granted it is not unusual for women to carry such self-defense items in their purses, but the scent is dead-on exact to the smell inside Sou-Sou Smith’s dainty little Mary Jane dancing shoes.

Should I sound the alarm on Mama Smith?

If I can so easily find this incriminating item in her purse so could anyone who hangs out in the junior suite. In addition, these tween girls all carry fashionable little purses, except for Mariah, who totes one of those sensible, small oblong wallets.

I see I have a long night of purse snatching, unlatching, and searching ahead of me while others eat, drink, and make merry.

After many wearying attempts to break unnoticed into everything that could be construed as a purse, including a Hello Kitty one that belongs to EK, I return to the scarlet Smith one. It is large enough and an excellent color. I curl up on it and pretend to sleep so well that I actually do.

The next thing I know, I am being shaken awake by my dear little doll. I remain limp and “sleepy.”

“Louie! We have to leave. Come on.”

She bends to heave me up. I have cleverly stuck my paw into the ajar frame and as she pulls me up the purse opens wide, like for a dentist. Oh, look what the purse fairy has left! A nice big can of pepper spray.

Of course my brilliant associate immediately gets the message. She looks over her shoulder at Yvonne Smith, who is busy yakking with Mrs. Peters. She reaches for the spray, hesitates, and appropriately purses her lips.