Carole douglas - Cat in an Indigo Mood

can finish his sniffing duties before poor Earl E. thinks he has been kidnapped.

While we are all contemplating worst-case scenarios, one that nobody has yet thought of makes itself painfully clear.

The taint shriek of police sirens--nowadays a scale of loud and soft yodeling that would chill the blood in a crocodile--comes hurtling toward us like a meteorite.

Apparently Earl E. is no dummy, and he has concluded that Nose E. is in the hands of a dangerous drug lord or a mad bomber. That little hairball is about to get the Circle Ritz surrounded.

Chapter 53

Our Flag is Still There...

Temple had never been so humiliated in her life.

First the entire population of the Circle Ritz had been rousted and forced outside, until it was all too clear where a certain white Maltese dog resided for the time being.

Even the police had retreated at this revelation.

Then bullhorns had blared forth for everybody left in the apartment to come out, their hands empty.

That meant leaving the cats and Nose E. behind.

She and Matt faced the audience of ousted residents, including an Electra Lark whose face had gone as white as her pixie hairdo. While uniformed officers corralled them near a squad car, bomb squad experts in what looked like beekeepers' outfits rushed past to storm the empty building.

Temple and Matt were not searched, but they were asked pressing questions about Nose E.

and how he had come "into their possession."

Why was Matt unwilling to give his address and phone number to the dog's rightful owner?

"The dog's rightful owner had sounded a little odd on the phone. Asked if I was smoking dope."

And were you?

Matt shook his head. "Never in my life."

"He used to be a Catholic priest," Temple explained in rapid-fire PR-person-ese. "Until very recently.

Then had she been smoking dope?

"No! Why would this weird guy who owned Nose E. even suspect such a thing? He sure couldn't tell it over the phone."

"Nose E. is not just any dog," the young policeman said solemnly.

They waited.

"He is a drug-and-bomb-sniffing ace, if he wandered off, he was probably on the trail of either illegal drugs or incendiary devices."

"He was on the trail with my cat, who is still up there," Temple said. "Cats do use catnip.

Perhaps Nose E. has been suckered by a perfectly legal odor."

This caused the first frowns to develop on the mustached officers' young and tender faces.

The frowns deepened when the guys in the jumpsuits, gloves and face-masks came down to pronounce the building all clear, except for two black cats and a white dog in 3B.

Officer A was uneasy. "I don't know what to do," he admitted. Temple decided that strong, even odious, measures were called for. "Get in touch with Lieutenant Molina in Crimes Against Persons."

"These are two cats and a dog, ma'am."

Temple hated it when men, especially young men in their twenties, called her "ma'am." She was only thirty-and-a-half herself. She drew herself up to full, three-inch-heel-implemented height.

"I am thinking of crimes against persons, particularly against police persons, that haven't happened yet. Like wrongful detention lawsuits."

What a difference twenty minutes makes.

The unmarked car drove up; Molina got out and walked past the assembled, currently evicted residents, past the beekeepers' apprentices, past the boys in the uniform, past Temple and Matt. She spit one word in her wake: "Follow."

Obviously, she had been briefed.

Temple scampered after her, Matt coming along more deliberately.

The building was eerily quiet. Not even an aging faucet squeaked somewhere while someone ran water for the dinner vegetables.

They saw or heard no trace of Molina ahead of them as they "followed," not even the flicker of the third-floor elevator light.

"Why did you have them call Molina?" Matt asked as they rode up in the empty elevator.

"Because l think this is relevant to her cases."

"To Strawberry Lady and Church Parking Lot Lady?"

"And maybe Stripper Lady."

"So it's a trio!"

Temple nodded grimly. "Three women strangled to death within a week of each other. The stripper hadn't been stripped of her ID, but the other two sure seem like mirror slayings."

"But . . . the cats, the dog. Surely, no one would take anything they did seriously."

By then they were outside his open door.

Inside, they could see Molina squatting in front of Nose E. She wore latex gloves and was pulling a short muzzle hair from the dog's perky little face.

He whimpered and jumped back.

Molina deposited a few hairs in a plastic Baggie, straightened, stuffed it into her pocket, and turned. "Good. Round up the cats. I need samples from them too."

"Couldn't this be considered invasive?" Temple asked. "Don't you need permission to take hairs for DNA testing?"

"DNA l don't need. Just the species will do fine."

"You don't have to pluck the cat hairs. Just pet a cat, your hand will come up with several loose specimens."

"You contemplating a police brutality suit?"

"Among other things," Temple said.

While the women were word-sparring, Matt had done sensible things like shutting the door and picking up Louise.

He offered the pretty, semi-long-haired cat to Molina. "I think a couple loose ones are already hovering." Like bombs bursting in air?

Her pale-gloved fingers pincered onto a couple of likely specimens. 'With perfect gravity, she put them into their own plastic

Baggie, labeled it, then glanced at Midnight Louie, who was under the sofa, "His Majesty next."

His Majesty was not so sure of that.

He had chosen well. The sofa was just wide enough that no human arm could quite reach in far enough to capture a furry body. Oh, a fingertip could flirt with search and seizure. A hand might brush a soft swath of fur. But curl around and extract a feline extremity? Never!

Temple felt like Nose E. (who had again attached himself to Matt and his pant leg) as she crawled from sofa front to back to side. Each time Louie impeccably adjusted his position so that he was utterly out of reach.

"Louie! This is the end! No more Free-To-Be-Feline for you if you don't come out this instant!" she bellowed.

Underneath the couch, Louie seemed to smile like the all-but disappeared Cheshire Cat.

Ooooh!

"I'll trick him out," Temple swore, rising to study the landscape of Matt's apartment like a sneak thief. "I need a tassel, a cord, a tape measure, a ribbon, a . . ." She leaped upon Nose E.

and undid his collar.

Moments later, she was shivering the short length along the sofa edge.

Louie wouldn't budge.

"Smarty-pants! You're in trouble," Temple threatened, quite emptily.

"That does it." Molina spoke in the voice of authority. "Devine." She nodded at Matt, who came to stand at the sofa's opposite end. They lifted, Molina swung the bulk sideways, and Temple dove onto the stranded cat.

Matt had to help her upright, since holding twenty pounds of cat didn't leave a hand free to lever herself up.

Temple shut her eyes. "Please be quick."

A moment later Molina announced, "Bagged."

Temple opened her eyes to see a third plastic bag vanishing into Molina's bottomless jacket pocket, along with the latex gloves.

Matt waited patiently by his post at one sofa end, Nose E. happily gnawing his pant leg, for Molina to pick up her end and swing the sofa hack into place.

All three humans collapsed on it, having at length defeated the three nonhumans.

"Do you mind explaining the hair scavenger hunt?" Temple asked.

"I do mind," Molina admitted, "but l see no help for it. I've had my best investigative team on the Blue Dahlia strangulation case, and there is no question that the victim's house contained long, white hairs, and black hairs, both long and short. I would like to thing that she was done in by a salt-and-pepper haired killer, but the inescapable conclusion, given eyewitness testimony in the neighborhood, is that two black cats were in the house, certainly after the time of death.