Кэрол Дуглас - Cat In A Quicksilver Caper

This will never do. I happen to be in possession of a lot of insight from my hours hanging up top with Squeaker and the other cats big and small, like Hyacinth, high above the New Millennium exhibit space. Time to share the riches, and I do not mean the Czar Alexander scepter, only the likely disposition of who did whom in to get it.

I understand the rules of the game: Mr. Max must not be nailed. Pity. I am beginning to think he deserves it for conduct unbecoming to a progenitor of the species.

I get up and swagger into the office off the living room.

“Louie,” she calls after me. (Dames are always calling after me.)

“It is too late to work. Come back here and settle down! I promise Aunt Kit won’t roll over on you again. Louie!”

Hah! Promises are cheap and my ribs are still sore. . . . Besides, I have something in mind, and something in store. Now. How to communicate with a professional communicator of the lesser species—? It will be a challenge, which is why I like hanging with my Miss Temple.

“Lou-ie!”

She is after me like a puma on catnip. What did I tell you? I got It.

By now I have hopped up on the bookshelf opposite her computer desk, having first dislodged a few annoying impediments.

“Louie!”

She is so cute when she sounds annoyed with me. Like I do not know she will come over forthwith and scratch my chin and tickle my tummy and tell me I am a bad, bad boy. I must admit that these humans have foreplay down cold.

“Louie.”

She is crooning now, in the palm of my paw. I stretch out a foreleg, casually, and let her hold my, er, hand.

“You naughty boy! Why do you have to knock everything off a shelf before you lie on it?”

Because I can! And I am not “lying,” I am telling a bigger truth than anyone has told you on this case. Read my lips. In this case, my hips, which have dislodged a big fat clue right onto the parquet floor. Read it and weep! Read it! Well, just notice it! And then think!

I tell you, leading these humans around by the nose hairs is a very fatiguing business. What? You say I am the one with nose hairs? I beg your pardon. These whiskers are vibrassae, a high-toned Latin-language accessory if there ever was one.

But, hush! My Miss Temple is noticing. And thinking. At last. Shhhh . . .

“Gosh.” She sits on her heels and pages through a few of the paperback tomes I have cast to the floor to make room for my luxuriating torso. “I remember reading these books way back when while waiting up for Max to do his last show at the Goliath and come home.”

Now she is sniveling! Not my desired reaction!

“Short stories by H. H. Munro, known as Saki .”

“Sake?” I did not want her to turn to the bottle, although I can understand why she might want to.

“And . . . oh, my goodness. My favorite Agatha Christie.”

Warm.

“I always loved the ones with exotic settings.”

Warmer.

“This was my favorite. Reminds me of a Russian blue cat, in a way.”

Skip the rival breed! I am an all-American alley cat. And black to the bone.

“A Russian blue is an exotic breed but basically . . . gray.”

She sits up as if she had borrowed a swordfish’s spine.

“Oh! That might be why . . . that might be it . . . that might be the answer!”

Duh!

The Murderer in the

Gray Flannel Suite

Temple breezed in to the New Millennium the next morning and asked Pete Wayans for the use of the gray flannel suite.

“We are way past planning sessions, Miss Barr. In case you haven’t noticed, our exhibition is ravaged, our magic show is compromised, and our joint credibility is zilch. It’s not your fault, but you were a major hire. C’est la vie.”

“No. C’est la key . I’d like everyone involved in the exhibition convened there, this afternoon. May I order a round of hors d’oeuvres?”

“That would cost hundreds. If you deduct it from your contract.”

“Of course, but if I solve your murders, the same amount goes to me as a bonus.”

“A bonus? I’m sorry but the police solve murders.”

“Sometimes. Sometimes I do if I must. A clean slate would give this exhibition and show a new lease on . . . death.”

By then Randy had joined them. “What’s up, chief?”

“Your little Miss Barr. She’s making bail-out noises.”

“Not me wanting to bail out,” Temple said. “Me wanting to bail you guys out.”

“We could use a bail out,” Randy said. “I advise we listen.”

“Your job is at risk.”

Randy visibly braced himself. “Could things get any worse? I say we go along to get along.”

“Crudités,” Wayans snarled.

“A large happy carrot stick to you too,” Temple said.

She couldn’t help being upbeat, although Randy winced as Wayans stalked (get it, celery!) away.

“He’s the big man, Tee. Our futures are riding on this.”

“I’m feeling very futuristic. Can you make sure that all concerned show up?”

“Yeah, but why?”

“I have places to go and people to see. See you later, defribulator.”

Randy clutched the area of his heart but headed out to do his duty.

Temple speed-dialed her cell phone. “Dear Detective Alch,” she began.

He swore. Conservatively but colorfully and with a certain paternal certainty that she would absorb every rough syllable and still twist him around her little finger. . . .

The main thing was that Molina was not here.

This was a totally not-Molina operation.

Temple glanced at Alch. He knew that she knew he was bucking the command structure. She knew that he knew that she knew he had a soft spot for earnest young women with agendas. And that Molina no longer qualified. Too old. Too wired. Too seriously screwed. Too hung up on Max. Either way.

Temple eyed the full complement of White Russian exhibition professionals around the conference table, from the aristocratic elders to the brave new proletariat.

“Two people have died in the course of mounting this exhibition,” she began.

Lips were bitten, heads lowered, crocodile tears shed, so to speak.

“In the course of mounting this exhibition, the prime piece on display, the Czar Alexander scepter, has been stolen in plain sight.”

More feet shuffling under the long conference table, more downcast eyes. Temple stood at the head of the table. Several file folders shifted under her fingernails.

Detective Alch stood, back to the double–conference room doors, fading into a forgotten gray-suited figure. Another man in a suit had slipped in just before the conference room doors closed for good. Tall, angular, sharp, the opposite of Alch, except for the gray suit.

Those gathered around the table fidgeted like the courtroom cast in a Perry Mason television mystery. Some possible witnesses, some possible perps. The semi-anonymous Moscow muscle stood at the table’s opposite, bracketing Dimitri. He was sweating.

Madame Olga’s neck was stretching longer than a swan’s. Count Volpe’s crepey eyelids sank shut like weary sails.

Swans and ships and sealing wax on bureaucratic documents, Temple thought. They were all suspects. Any one of them could have skewered the exhibition for any imaginable cause, old or new.

Except not one of them had done it. Had done anything. None of them had pushed Art-Andrei off a pinnacle platform. Had sabotaged the rigging before the dress rehearsal. Had taken the scepter. Had planned the operation.

Max, she knew, had been a wild card. The joker. The Fool in the Tarot deck. The unsuspected, unpredictable element. Ah, wasn’t he always? Temple smiled in tribute, even as she doubted she’d ever tell him about this moment. About her triumph. That he’d ever be near her again to hear about it.