Douglas, Nelson - Cat in a Flamingo Fedora

"Matt! Then you didn't hear the last person to visit Darren Cooke arrive. You heard some other floozie arriving at some other Lothario's door."

"Sounds reasonable to me."

"This . . . ruins everything. My whole case."

"Maybe it shouldn't be your case, Temple. Maybe it's a sign to retire from the Nancy Drew business. We were wrong, all the way. Just plain wrong. And you're just as wrong about Darren Cooke's death being suspicious."

Temple couldn't think of a thing to say.

Everything Matt said was absolutely right.

Maybe.

When he hung up, she recalled that something (besides the Mystifying Max) had troubled her presleep mind. She often got her best ideas in that foggy limbo land between wakefulness and sleep. Now, fully awake and almost as disturbed by what Matt had just told her as she had been previously by her Mexican standoff with Max, Temple felt her barefoot way into the main room. Still no Louie. Great; another problem to worry terrier like at her overcharged mind.

Where on earth was Midnight Louie?

The copied entries from Cooke's recipes-for-rendezvous file lay dumped on the coffee table.

She had skimmed them at the office, recognizing some names, not most. But she had recognized something else without quite knowing it. Yawning, she stood next to the lit floor lamp, staring down at the pages. Should have set the copier's darkness feature higher. Some of the writing faded on upper and lower loops, making it almost cryptographic. She kept looking for the discrepancy that was bothering her unconscious mind.

Something was... different. Temple's glance lingered on the famous name of a West Coast TV talk-show anchorwoman. Why did she need to do the bedroom boogie with Darren Cooke?

"Midnight rendezvous in a limousine," was scrawled across the woman's embossed business card. "Great traction, but a sticky carburetor."

Temple frowned at the crude summation, then realized that the crassness didn't bother her as much as the handwriting. Was it really Darren Cooke's? She had seen a sample of his writing somewhere ... when?

She yawned. Where? At his brunch. On what? Then her eyes opened wide enough to let in too much lamplight. She rushed squinting back to her bedroom. What had she worn to Gangster's the first day she had watched Louie?

She must have absently tucked away Cooke's card, the gag one, on which he had scrawled his hotel-suite number for the brunch. She remembered consulting it before leaving for the Oasis Sunday morning and slipping it into ... no, she hadn't taken her tote bag for once, and she had worn leggings ... no pockets there, but the Big White Shirt she almost never wore had one tiny breast pocket for effect. Could she have slipped it in there, then returned the shirt to the lost-and-found department in her closet for another three years?

Turning on all the bedroom lights only made her eyes water, but she paged, blinking, through the hangers until her hand closed on the slightly wrinkled shirt.

A hasty pat-down revealed something flat and sharp-edged inside the pocket. Either a forgotten calculator or ... She reached in with a gingerly forefinger and thumb, and pulled out. ..

Cooke's card!

She didn't compare it to the copy paper she'd brought into the room until she was sitting on the bed. The handwriting on the recipe cards and Cooke's card were identical. But, Temple recalled, on her card, the one Michelle had found, it had not been quite the same. More heavily pressed down, slanted less, not exactly right at all. If only she could see her card to be sure!

Who had it now? Cooke's widow or Lieutenant Molina?

A slight difference in writing, if genuine, would explain why Temple was erroneously labeled for the trysting pile: Cooke didn't do it. Someone else did, either assuming that their brief bedroom interlude was romantic rather than of a business nat ure, or wanting someone--

people, the police--to think that Temple was Darren's last lover.

She had to see her card again. And there was something else she ought to look into. Who had any business imitating a busy man's handwriting? Who had any chance to become adept at it? No one but his very own personal assistant.

But not until morning. Temple settled down again in the dark.

"Goodnight, Max," she whispered. "Goodnight, Louie."

Wherever you are.

Chapter 32

Louie is Knocked Out

I awake, prone. I expect to be in a cage, but it is worse than that. I lie in a sort of homemade pen.

I recognize the room right off: small, pale, with a long table covered in white cloth and a smell of rubbing alcohol and disinfectant.

Despite the long, cloth-covered table, this is no dining room. There is only one chair, a rolling stool, in the corner. There is a built-in cabinet full of things that smell harsh and antiseptic.

Every bone in my body aches, and every muscle, and my head most of all.

I know I have been put into an artificial slumber with chloroform or some more powerful anesthetic. My memories of my arrival here last night are confused. This Mickey Finn they pumped into my veins is not helping me any.

The cab ride cost eight dollars and seventy cents. Miss Savannah Ashleigh tipped the driver a buck. I made sure to remember the amount in case I need to retrace my route here. I remember the driver grumbling about cheapskates. (As far as I know, skates are not very cheap these days; those on-line blades cost a small fortune.)

Uh! Why can I remember the small stuff and not the big? The room goes in and out of focus, like the walls are breathing and I am not. All right. The office was officially closed. I remember the doctor, a man in a white coat, (really precise ID, Louie!) complaining that he had no staff, no nurse.

"I will be your nurse," Miss Savannah Ashleigh had volunteered in an iron tone.

He had fussed some, about not being licensed for this. About criminal mischief. What about my owner? he had asked.

"He is a stray. An alley cat. No one owns him," she had answered honestly enough, vitriol searing every word.

The thing is, Miss Savannah Ashleigh believed that she was lying, that she was concealing Miss Temple Barr's relationship to me.

I can read the handwriting on the prescription pad. I am here to be put to death. It may be a private execution, but it will be as final nevertheless. I wonder what the Divine Yvette will be told. Probably that I ran off, never to return. What will Miss Temple Barr think? That I was run over or lost. She will search every crack in the Las Vegas concrete for me, leave no grain of sand unturned, but it will be useless. No one knew of my mission to the Goliath. No one will suspect that I was carried off by a vengeful, crackpot film star. No one will know. Ever.

I sigh. I plan to fight every inch of the way, but suspect I will not be given much chance. I may even be gassed in the Divine One's carrier, oh irony of ironies!

Now would be a great time to deliver one of my favorite closing speeches. "It is a far, far better" et cetera.

But there is nothing better about this predicament.

When the doctor comes at me with the needle, I duck and twist and buck, but ultimately feel the final prick. I do not understand why he is so reluctant. Surely he performs such nefarious acts every day. I must be at a shelter, accused of being rabid or some such story.

Certainly Miss Savannah Ashleigh acts as if she has some say-so over the doctor's actions.

But that was then ... and this, much to my surprise, is now. I find myself awake, as I did not expect to be ever again.

Now I feel pain.

And I realize that my fate is to be far more horrible than a quick a nonymous death in a neat little room.

I am to be kept alive. I am to be tormented. I am secretly in stir. But while there is life, there is a chance of escape, however slim. I am still a fighter.