Кэрол Дуглас - Cat In A Crimson Haze

Now she could correct the blue screen of the color monitor, sharpening Crawford's dull wit and lopping off leaden lines, adding her own impromptu spin. He would be furious, but she was having fun. Such nice, messy raw material he provided! Temple loved operating on club-footed prose.

She was so busy she hadn't even noticed when the office door opened.

But it must have opened, because Midnight Louie was now serving as the fourth corner paperweight on the plans, his black muzzle nestled deeply into the toe of her red shoe.

She noticed him with a start, then saw that the door had been nosed ajar. Apparently the secretary was off secretaring.

''Glad to know you're alive," she told him. ''I guess you're sorry you ever moved to the Circle Ritz. If you miss my shoes so much, I can leave a pair with Van von Rhine for your future delectation."

But the cat was not about to go quietly on a guilt trip of Temple's making. He yawned and rolled over to display his impressive underbelly. Temple gave the black fur a good scratch and also tickled his chin for good measure.

''We both have been spending a lot of time at the Crystal Phoenix," she admitted aloud. "I hope your sojourn has been less traumatic than mine."

At that Louie blinked solemnly, as if to sympathize.

He stretched out a fat paw and patted the curled corners of the hotel plans.

"No messing with the floor plans, fellah. I haven't even had time to look at them yet."

Temple turned back to her computer. She was in the process of integrating Crawford's tasteless "June Is Bustin' Out All Over" number into her grand finale. Her remodeling would require a new wardrobe of complicated costumes, but the effect would be socko. Shocko!

Boffo! Psycho! Danny Dove wouldn't mind. After all, she wasn't kicking the Lace 'n' Lust ladies out of the show, she was simply giving them a whole new platform, a fresh facade, a free facelift, so to speak.

She snickered wickedly, Crawford would be finger-flaunting furious.

Her office door cracked open, hitting the wall. The sudden inrush of air sucked the papers on her desk into rustling rearrangement.

Temple spun to face the door and found a brace of Fontana brothers frozen in an action pose worthy of a movie poster, guns in hand.

She decided not to hit the floor. People with glass-topped desks have nowhere to hide.

"We saw your door was ajar and suspected an invader." the nearest brother explained, eyeing the empty office with displeasure.

"Just something the cat let in . . . the cat.''

She pointed to Midnight Louie, still hunkered atop the crinkled pile of hotel plans, his significant overweight the only thing that had kept the whole shebang from scattering. Her shoes lay at opposite corners of the desk. Paperclips glinted everywhere like solid silver rain.

''Sorry, Miss Barr," Ralph offered lamely, ''We thought that crack in the door was suspicious." He bolstered his semiautomatic and bent to join his brother in picking up the pieces.

"Kinda wrinkled," said the other brother, probably Julio, as he plopped the disheveled pile of Crawford's scripts back on the desk.

"Hey, our suits will be fine with a fresh pressing," Ralph said. "That's nothing compared to making a mess for Miss Barr. You don't have to mention this to anybody, do you? We'd look a little . . . trigger-happy."

"I appreciate the protection, but right now I could really use some peace and quiet while I work."

They left, drawing the door shut so slowly and quietly that it took twenty seconds to close it.

Temple counted.

She sighed and regarded Midnight Louie, who was stretching luxuriously on his favorite snoozing surface--papers. Architectural plans were almost roomy enough to accommodate his full length.

He began pulling up the corners to construct a nest.

"Enough. You're as awkward as a Fontana brother doing flying tackles. You're as clumsy as a kitten up a tree, and it isn't even spring. Oops. I've been writing too many song satires lately. Get off the papers; they're bent out of shape enough already!"

Temple shoved Louie's lolling weight aside and tried to stack the plans like a giant deck of cards, but the sheets were too battered to push meekly into one pat pile.

Then she saw the problem: they weren't single sheets, but pairs, stapled together at the upper left corner. No wonder they were so cumbersome.

She stripped off the first pair and held them up in her arms, which barely stretched from edge to edge.

The top sheet showed the remodeled Crystal Phoenix entrance and lobby, complete to a small square indicated dead-center. That must represent the Plexiglas plinth that upheld the gorgeous Lalique glass sculpture of a phoenix.

She struggled to flip over the huge page so she could see the next drawing.

Not much to see. More marshaled lines going every which way in rectilinear precision, like Mondrian in a blue period. Except that ...

Temple frowned and set down the plan, reaching for her shoes to act as corner anchors again. The paper underneath had an ocher cast, and the drawing style was different.

She studied the plan. It was like trying to create a jigsaw puzzle, breaking the design into pieces that would tell her more than the whole.

For one thing, this layout was the same general shape and size of the top sheet, only there was no square placed dead center for a mythical bird.

She flipped back the top sheet, and then flipped it away again to study the bottom sheet.

They were the same, but different. Then she saw it: the bottom drawing must be the plans for the original hotel that Jersey Joe Jackson had built in the early fifties, the Joshua Tree.

Temple sat down, studying blue lines until an orange grid remained before her vision when she glanced up at the pale grass cloth walls.

She grabbed a second set. Midnight Louie yowled his displeasure as another layer of paper was whisked from under his sprawling limbs, torso and tail.

Examination revealed the same system. The remodeling plans overlay the original construction plans.

''Kind of neat, huh, Louie? Past and present in one tidy package. The basement-level plans should be the most revealing. You can bet Jersey Joe Jackson never built in the elevator stage and all the neat technical stuff."

But when she got to the bottom set of plans--by then Louie was lying on cold, unforgiving glass, his ears back and white whiskers twitching--there was only the top sheet.

Temple riffled through all the other sets, accompanied by enough crackles of stiff paper to simulate a fire on a radio show, but found no original of the hotel's lowest level.

So she picked up the phone receiver and punched in Van von Rhine's extension.

''Temple here. Yes, I adore the office and Midnight Louie looks very dashing against the pale motif. Yup, he showed up. Apparently it's not me he's avoiding, but the' Circle Ritz, I can't imagine why. Anyway, I've got the remodeling plans and each page is stapled to the original plan for that area, except the basement. Why is that missing?"

Temple turned her blue pen upside down and rapped gently on the glass desktop as she digested Van's explanation.

"You never found a set of plans for the basement? Then how did your architect . . . ?

Remeasured every inch, huh? Ouch. That must have played havoc with the budget. No, no real reason, just curious. You know me. You're sure? ... I see. Thanks anyway."

Temple replaced the phone on the console and continued tapping her pen, until a big black paw swiped it sideways.

"I'm not playing, Louie. I'm thinking. Why is the plan for that one floor missing? That would have all the important mechanical areas and everything. Granted that Nicky and Van's architect worked around it, why did he have to? The plans for everything else were intact, and in order."