Кэрол Дуглас - Cat In A Sapphire Slipper

He found another zipper inside the outer inner face of the bag.

There! His half a gum wrapper! And on the plain back, a phone number jotted down in faded pencil. It looked like something even the owner had forgotten.

So he committed it to memory, not knowing where the area code was from.

He dropped the purse back into place in the bottom drawer and pushed it shut with his borrowed tissues.

As he stood and looked around a last time, he couldn’t help thinking the room was so devoid of personality and effects that it resembled a simple convent bedroom for postulants who had left all worldly goods behind. The late Madonnah, had her wigs been headdresses and her clothes habits, reminded him more of a nun than a courtesan.

Matt pulled a couple fresh tissues from his pocket and unlocked and opened the door. He felt confident he’d left as little trace on the room as she ever had.

Louie’s Imps

As soon as my Miss Temple has finished with that old gang of ours I head to the Midnight Inc. Investigations rendezvous spot, the upstairs hallway.

The presence of a dead body and a live Fontana brother on watch discourages all but the stout of heart from venturing up here.

Luckily, my breed is expected to venture where no man has gone before, or will go again, so I duck into a doorway niche to another bedroom and wait for my troops to reassemble.

Ma Barker is either still in the murder room and needed a distraction to dart out again, or she had departed before the Fontana brother called to the downstairs family powwow had returned to his post.

Her I am not worried about. In either case she will think of something, and act on it.

Nor do I worry about Miss Midnight Louise. I know she has been soaking up every bit of gossip, every inadvertent verbal slipup, every guilty whiff of sweat from the assigned bridesmaids below.

Besides her well-honed street smarts from her life among the homeless, she has a personal aversion to dames who are overde-pendent on the regard and support of the male of the species, any species. So I can count on her to not take any of these Fontana squeezes at face value, and know that if she has run across a hot clue she will follow it on her own.

Therefore, I am not surprised that the dainty Satin is the first of my three operatives to return to base operations.

“Turn up any hot clues?” I ask.

I do not expect an affirmative, seeing Miss Satin is new at the shamus stuff.

“I did not find any, but Mr. Max Devine seems to have.”

“Matt! It is Matt Devine.”

“Max, Matt, what is the difference? No more than Kitty, Kit.”

“Let me tell you, there is a big difference to those names among the humans I associate with, and, come to think of it, between Kitty and Kit too.”

For while Matt is Miss Temple’s current swain, I explain, Max is the previous one, now missing.

Miss Satin shrugs her vibrissae as her muzzle makes a charming moue.

“Humans are way too anal-retentive. We cats like to bury our leavings both physical and emotional as soon as possible. You are lucky that your untimely impact with a Brinks truck impressed you on my memory, so I developed a sentimental attachment.”

I am starting to get that I am not a priority among most of the females of my breed. Except at breeding time.

“So what is Mr. Matt’s hot clue?”

“I was able to tail him unnoticed to the courtesans’ break room and slip into the bedroom of the one known as Miss Madonnah. She was a mysterious lady. Never looked the same twice. Apparently she’s the number one candidate for the murder victim. He unearthed something in the purse in her bottom dresser drawer. It was a gum wrapper with something written on it.”

“What?”

“It was Juicy Fruit, a particularly cloying and unmistakable scent.”

“Not the variety of gum! What was written on the wrapper?”

“Something short. I was hiding under the bed and couldn’t see it without leaping up and out, and pulling Mr. Matt’s arm down, and that would not be a wise undercover move.”

“Actually, it would have been great. People expect us to make unexpected attacks on their extremities and you might have been able to read the message.”

“Unlikely at that speed. His lips did move as he attempted to memorize it. Humans often do that sort of pantomime.”

“Memorize it. It must be a number!”

“To what?”

“Perhaps a Swiss bank account. Who knows? We must find out more.”

“I suppose it could be a number to the safe,” she muses.

“Safe? What safe? Where?”

“In Miss Kitty’s office, inside a hidden closet.”

“I suppose she does handle a great deal of cash. Many of the gentlemen callers would not want their stay recorded on a credit card.”

“No, but the corporate name is Desert Deposits, so it is not a dead giveaway.”

I shudder. “That sounds like coyote droppings to me. I had a bad experience with that once.”

“A coyote, or droppings?”

“Both,” I reply tersely. “What else might be kept in the safe?”

“The courtesans’ IDs. Oh, and probably the surveillance films.”

This makes my neck hairs stand to attention.

“There are surveillance tapes?”

“Not in the bedrooms, of course. That would be illegal, but in the bar, parlor, and foyer, just to keep a record of our clients. In case one is naughty.”

“I have news for you: they all are ‘naughty’ just for being here.”

“I mean, if one is rough with a courtesan, or is drunk. Miss Kitty is careful to back up any testimony she might have to give. Humans can be brutal.”

“No kidding! The safe is very interesting. You must find out what kind of number Mr. Matt found.”

“Humans do not exactly confide in us.”

“But he will surely communicate this to Miss Temple. I must remain here until the rest of the crew checks in. Go back downstairs and glue yourself to Miss Temple or Mr. Matt, without attracting attention.”

“That is silly. I always attract attention.”

I give her and her turquoise cape the once-over. Good point.

“Make it look like you are hanging around for food or flattery,” I advise. “They will never suspect a thing.”

Missing Max

Garry Randolph had two roles to play that awful morning.

One was genuine. Heartfelt.

His charge was gone, had vanished. Overnight. His “nephew, Mike Randolph.”

This grief he didn’t have to feign. Max was . . . was . . . is . . . so much to him. Pupil. Peer. Partner.

The clinic bedroom reeked with treachery. An overturned IV stand. Far under the bed, a full hypodermic needle. It rested in Garry’s capacious suit coat pocket now. Not for him, or his physical type, the sleek fitted suit. For him the large, lumpy one, capable of holding as many magicians’ tricks as a suit coat the size of the Colosseum in Rome . . . .

“But what happened here?” he asked the supervising doctor, acting as ignorant as he felt for once.

“These head cases can get strange obsessions. The man, who knows what he was thinking, simply ran. Fled who knows what demons in his stressed brain?”

The man, thought Randolph, ran because his life was threatened. Garry had no doubt the syringe would prove to be filled with something fatal.

Max! Out of his head but still possessed of that rare, acute prescience Garry had seen in him as a terrorism-wounded boy of seventeen. A middle-class American boy catapulted into the worst the world had to offer, the worst of global politics a man or boy could face.

Garry had faced it too long. He yearned for a happy ending. The restoration of memory. The restoration of peace. Hope. Happiness.

Now, here, he was called upon to exert all his old, devious skills.