Douglas, Nelson - Cat in a Flamingo Fedora

I yowl the entire way down the elevator to the parking garage, but people in the elevator, people we pass on the way out, only shake their heads.

"Does not like to travel?" they ask, smiling.

"He will get over it very soon," Miss Savannah answers grimly. Every time.

In front of the Goliath she hails a cab and gives an address on the professional side of town.

Not a bad neighborhood at all. She places the carrier on the cab floor. Her toe kicks it every now and then, keeping time while she sings a little song about boots made for walking, stomping all over you.

I do not believe that there is a rodeo in town at the moment, so she cannot mean to throw me into the bull ring. Of course, there are greyhound training stables, and illegal pitbull fights, where she could also import me at great risk to my handsome hide.

There is no doubt in my mind. Miss Savannah Ashleigh is in a killing fury, and I am completely under her control at the moment.

It will take an act of Bast to save Midnight Louie this time.

Chapter 31

Break In and Pass Enter

"A Strip shopping center, for heaven's sake, Temple!"

They sat in Max's black Ford Taurus (courtesy of the late Gandolph the Great) a block from Darren Cooke's office.

"Nothing but flat open spaces and street lights," Max continued.

"Does it have a back entrance?"

"I don't know. I didn't think of breaking in until I got home. Don't you have a--you know--

bag of tricks?" She examined the car's front seats, then leaned over the headrests to study the backseats.

"No. Stop jumping around like a four-year-old. Simple is best," he added. "And the less incriminating evidence on you if you're caught, the better. Houdini used picks so tiny he allowed himself to be searched naked."

"Gee, I hope it doesn't come to that. Molina wouldn't know what to make of it."

"How about a case of breaking and entering? Along with the usual murder."

"Stop acting so martyred, Max Kinsella. You know you love this sort of challenge."

He suddenly grinned. "Yes, I do. Impossible tasks are the spring board of my life. Where'd you get that rather clingy catsuit? I don't remember it."

"Didn't have it in your day. You said black. I don't have much black. I needed this for a Black Cat wine promotion earlier in the fall."

"Speaking of black cats, where's that one of yours?"

"I left Midnight Louie lying quietly tucked in my bed after a difficult drenching while shooting a cat-food commercial at the Mirage lagoon. I can count on knowing where he is nights," she added, untruthfully but with great righteousness.

"You always knew where I was: at the theater, until I had to duck out."

" 'Duck out.' You make it sound like you took a little run to the men's room. Six months, Max."

"We didn't argue like this before."

"We didn't know the whole truth about you before."

"You still don't." He grinned again.

"I know."

"And you love it. You love a mystery."

"I know, I know. Okay, let's start cracking this one."

He put the idling Taurus in gear to cruise past the deserted shop fronts once more, peering over the steering wheel at every door.

Finally he nodded. "None of the neighboring businesses have a reason to have anyone there at this time of night. That's a plus."

As the car turned the corner at the block's end, Temple saw that the building backed up on the rear of a similar shopping center. Though no loading dock loomed into the space between, there was plenty of room to park delivery trucks.

Max made a U-turn in mid-street and parked the car on the side street facing the main drag.

Although only a couple above-door lights lit this service area, the concrete paving was so starkly pale and bare that Temple couldn't imagine crossing it in her black cat-burglar suit; she would be like Midnight Louie trying to be invisible on a glacier.

"Come on," Max urged, "and no banging the car door."

"How am I supposed to shut it?" Temple had never heard a discreet car door.

"Leave it not-quite shut, if you have to. Nobody's going to steal the car in twenty minutes."

"Trust a crook to trust a crook to be predictable." Temple came around to the car's street side on soundless, catlike feet.

Max glanced down. "Much better. When did you get black tennis shoes?"

"I didn't. I used black shoe polish on one of my pink metallic pairs."

"One of--?" Max lowered his voice even more. "From now on we only whisper, and not much."

She nodded and crossed the street beside him, wishing for the cover of a nice midwestern avenue arched over with veiling elms . . . only most of those had succumbed to Dutch elm disease, so even midwestern streets weren't the sheltered spaces she remembered from her childhood.

Max's shoes were black and as well mannered as hers. They walked like ghosts, Temple trying to recall how many shops Darren Cooke's office was from this end.

Apparently Max had taken care of that detail already. He stopped at a nondescript metal door, and pulled something pale from somewhere on his pe rson. "Surgical gloves. Put 'em on."

He did himself as he had advised her, then gave the door an examination such a plain entrance hardly deserved, examining even the roofline for security devices and wires, she supposed.

"Turn around," he whispered. "What you don't witness you can't testify to."

Shivering in the lower night temperatures, Temple crossed her arms over her chest and obeyed. The neighborhood was deadly quiet. She heard every small noise behind her, the occasional brush of clothing on itself, snicks and scrapes. Unconsciously, she braced for the sudden blaring shriek of an alarm system.

Finally, she leaned against the building. Not watching was worse than watching, because she could only imagine what Max was doing and when it might be critical. She didn't know what particular moments to dread, so she dreaded the entire, unseen exercise. Maybe Max loved this stuff, but she loved the prize at the end of the hunt, not the means of getting to it.

She pictured Matt here at this moment; he would be mulling over the situational ethics. To break the law to break a case, or not. He wouldn't even be here.

So why was she?

She heard a snicking sound, and then the doorknob turning.

"Get in fast," Max advised, so she did, the black shadow that was her merging with the black shadow that was him and both disappearing through what seemed a literal crack in the door.

When he shut it behind her, the darkness inside was total.

Temple let out a ragged breath.

"Don't worry." Max's voice echoed a little. "This little light of mine will guide us."

It flashed on, the beam of a pencil-thin high-intensity flashlight. The light whipped around the room, showing Temple three plain doors leading to other rooms, some empty worktables, a disconnected table lamp, cardboard cartons and a pyramid of toilet paper and paper-towel rolls against one wall.

Max followed the dancing beam around the perimeter, returning to her in two minutes flat.

"Bathroom, storage room and outer office. You notice whether the exterior windows have any coverings?"

"I can't remember, but they must. The sun glare would hit them hard at either morning or evening."

"I'll check out the office. Stay here."

"In the dark? Alone?"

"You saw it; nothing here but paper products."

She nodded, but he already had flicked the light toward one of the doors. Then it went out.

Temple waited. In the dark her hearing grew more acute. She now discerned the et ernal rumble of a ventilation fan, which snapped once in a while from something caught in it. And smell! The bathroom broadcast that awful, fruity, sweet-strong air-freshener scent used in cars.