Carole douglas - Cat in an Indigo Mood

"The timing is awkward," I say. "Perhaps it would be better to wait until morning."

"Wait until morning!" the pair chorus in pipsqueak indignation.

"After all we went through to get here?" Louise demands all by herself."

"In the meantime," I tell Nose E., "you can put your schnozzola to work and see if you pick up the scent I do, and if it leads where I think it does."

"Hmmf," he yaps, bending head and nose to the ground. After a few circles in the parking lot he snuffles along like a pig after truffles to the small shed at the rear of the lot.

"Sweet smell. Sickly smell," he declares.

"A dead smell?" Miss Louise wonders.

"Tut-tut. Nothing of the kind. It is one of those smells that some humans adore, and that other humans loathe. Odd lot, humans. Dividing smells into likes and dislikes, when they are ail of equal use. Of course, their nasal abilities are nil. I do not know why they even bothered to grow noses. They might as well not have them, for all the olfactory skill they exhibit."

"Yes," Louise says. "We know how superior your nose is. If it were any more superior it would be so high in the air you would trip on your ears and never get anywhere at all."

I can see that several hours in each other's company under stress has raveled the relationship.

"Hush," I admonish. "This shed is locked, but it contains a motorcycle. If we could follow its trail into the past, l am sure that we would ultimately find the human who bears the sick-sweet smell."

"I have not heard of any time-traveling motorcycles," Miss Louise notes. "World-class nose or not, we can only go forward in time. Nose E. cannot follow the trail all through Les Vegas."

He is now in the regulation Sherlock-Holmes-human-bloodhound posture, crawling over the ground, nose only centimeters from scraping itself off. "I could follow it for some distance, but once too many scents overlay the trail, l would be as lost as any housecat. Or even a human."

I ignore the jibe at housecats, because neither Miss Midnight Louise or myself is one, not by any attenuation of the imagination.

"We can only hope that Mr. Matt Devine will once again be in contact with the scent-bearer."

"We can only hope?" Miss Midnight Louise's huge golden eyes regard me with astonishment. "If you are right, we are to hope that Mr. Matt puts himself in the vicinity of a murderer."

"It will not be the first time," I answer briskly. "You forget that he has had that dubious honor before, and survived. Now. Nose E., I want you to follow that scent into the Circle Ritz and to whatever door it leads you."

Marching orders do much for the notoriously undisciplined dog. Nose E. puts nose to the ground and makes circular snail tracks right to the round building's side door.

"You know where he is going," Miss Louise points out from her position at my side.

"I want to make sure that the Nose knows where he is going. If we are going to rely upon a dog, l want to ensure that he is in working order.

"Now," I tell Nose E., speaking slowly and clearly. "I will introduce you into Mr. Matt's domain. It is up to you from there on.

You must . . . doggedly . . . you do understand the expression 'doggedly'?"

"Oh, yes, Mr. Midnight." Pant, pant, pant.

Well, they can be disgusting, but they mean so well.

"You must doggedly cling to the scent I mentioned--the scent on his pant leg. You must stop for nothing. You must be indomitable."

"Yes!"

"All right, Sergeant Nose E. I will lead you to the arena. Remember! Sniff, cling, and be cute!"

He nods, sending his topknot into a cascade of cute.

Four pounds. I could snack on him. But there is that world-class nose. Touch not the Nose.

Quelle domage! as the Divine Yvette would say.

"What a sucker," Midnight Louise observes as she watches Nose E. trot up to the Circle Ritz door. "I must say that you have a way with canines, old man."

"Experience," I admit.

Nose E., of course, has no notion of how to open the door. He just sits there as if waiting for Santa Claus, who will not be passing this way again for around eleven months.

"That is the human door," I tell him. "The cat door is this away, up the palm tree to the third-floor balcony."

"Palm tree?" he squeaks. "I may have some rudimentary nails. but these claws were not made for climbing. I will have to find another way in."

Louise snorts. "There is no sense in all of us waiting out here until morning. It can get chilly."

"And my undercoat is still damp," Nose E. adds with a ferocious sneeze. "I am not used to alfresco adventures. I am an indoor dog. I could catch pneumonia."

Louise and I exchange glances. The little canine is right. We do not want the best Nose in the business sniffling its last on the stoop of the Circle Ritz.

We realize what we must do, distasteful as it is.

We curl up next to Nose E., one on one side, one on the other.

"Go to sleep." I tell him. "We will get in tomorrow morning when someone comes out and lets us in."

"I am used to sleeping alone in a flannel bed filled with cedar chips."

"You are sleeping alone." Miss Louise informs him. "Think of us as guard-cats. We are virtually invisible at night. Besides, I will uncrimp your neck hair again in the morning."

"Oh, thank you, thank you! I cannot bear to have my coat mussed. I will try to sleep, even though I have strange bedfellows."

He is almost instantly wheezing softly through his precious nose.

Louise and I shake our sagacious feline heads. What we do for the greater good!

We put our put-upon heads down upon our paws and drift into instant sleep, an Oreo cookie of fur. Only those who have dozed next to wet dog hair know what a sacrifice we are making.

Chapter 48

Working It Out

Max faced the various apparatuses in the comer of Gandolph's den with the trepidation of a heretic being confronted with the torture instruments of the Inquisition.

There was nothing medieval or even magical about this gear: a gleaming steel jungle-gym arrangement of weights, pulleys, and hand grips. A home workout center.

He could tell by a hitch in his shoulder, a strain in his leg, that the months of inactivity since he had deserted the fanatically fit condition of a practicing magician were beginning to show. No more shrugging off an attacker without feeling it afterward. It was only sensible to prepare for more of same.

Still, this was a momentous occasion: For the first time in his life, merely keeping busy doing what he did wasn't keeping him in shape. Like all sedentary' people in their mid-thirties, he would have to work at it.

Max sighed, aimed the remote control at the big-screen TV across the room, and zapped it with enough oomph that he might as well have been shooting at it. Being forced to consider exercise for its own sake made him want to shoot at something. But, no, he would make like a traveling executive in a hotel exercise room and blend the morning news with his morning routine.

Max began fiddling with settings and weights, trying to decide where to begin. He had heard enough about working out with weights that he felt confident enough to avoid the ignominy of a local health club. Besides, he needed to keep out of sight as much as possible. He had found Garry's workout sweats in a closet, and though his late mentor had been a much bulkier man, the gray shorts tied with a cotton string adjusted to any width.

Now. All he had to do was get some sweat on the sweats.

Max sat down on the bench and began with arm presses, three sets of ten, breathing in on the out-stroke, out on the in-stroke.

The president, a perky female newscaster was informing him, had made headway during trade talks with Korea. The perky male newscaster came on soon after to narrate footage of a celebrity golf tournament at Caesars Palace.