Carole Douglas - Cat in an Alphabet Soup

Temple shrugged and watched as a man angled toward their table, keeping his eyes on Lorna. She didn’t know what a prince of publishing should look like, but this one was tall, bald and wearing rimless spectacles.

Lorna rose as he neared the table. “Temple Barr, this is Raymond Avenour, publisher and CEO of Reynolds-Chapter-Deuce.”

“Thank you for your time,” Temple said, shaking hands with the CEO as he sat.

He shrugged. “Anything I can do to help, as I told the detective in charge.” A flash of instantly charming smile. “I’ve discovered that there are a lot of bright, attractive professional women in Las Vegas.”

Temple, who seldom bothered to protest the rote male gallantries common to the PR business, blinked as she realized what the man had said. She’d couldn’t quite put herself and Lieutenant Molina under the same umbrella, however flatteringly it was extended. She wondered what the blunt-spoken detective would say to such a remark.

But Temple didn’t carry a badge as backup, so she just got down to business. “Since I’ve had some experience in cultural PR, the officials are relying on me to offer some guidance to the book field. I confess, Mr. Avenour, that I’m confused.”

“What about?” he asked with another perfectly charming, perfectly bland smile.

“This imprint business. If Pennyroyal Press was an imprint of RCD, why wasn’t it included in the corporate name?”

“It would have been.” Avenour rebuffed an approaching waiter with a brisk shake of his head. “The matter was under discussion. The lines of control within an imprint and from it to the overall corporate entity are delicate and must be clearly defined.”

“It was a power struggle, then?”

“No! No.” Avenour gave a genial laugh. “You ever seen a book publishing contract, Miss Barr? They’re legal-length pages—and pages—of fine print on the simplest one-book deal. To unite separate publishing entities requires a whole telephone book of fine print and more lawyers than a Trump bankruptcy. The process is closer to a royal wedding than anything so crude as a power play.”

“But what if RCD had doubts that Chester Royal had all his marbles together? He was getting older and had been set in his ways for years. He was losing promising authors.”

Before Temple even finished talking, Avenour’s head shook as briskly as it had when warning off the waiter. “Authors can be bought back if they’re important enough. The point is, Royal built the imprint. He could run it as long as—and how—he wanted to. If he ran it into the ground, Pennyroyal Press would go under. Reynolds-Chapter-Deuce would be protected, you can count on that.”

The publisher was rising, fanning a palm to keep Lorna seated for his departure. “I hope I’ve dissipated your confusion, Miss Barr. Call on me for clarification anytime.” He spoke with such careless cordiality that only a fool or Crawford Buchanan would take him literally.

Soon after Temple said goodbye and raced off; somehow she didn’t have much of an appetite. She left Lorna nursing a third Manhattan. A PR director’s life was no bed of roses.

Neither was Temple’s.

When she got back to convention central, Emily Adcock was waiting by the press room door. A sprinkling of media types—their numbers lessening visibly as the convention lengthened—sat respectfully while a pop-singer-turned-kid’s-book-author tried to say something profound.

“He wrote a kid’s book?” Temple asked with some wonder. According to the tabloids, the singer had acquired the usual accouterments of success—drug and alcohol addiction and scandals involving underage females, and possibly males.

Emily Adcock nodded. “If it’s got a brand name, it’s probably written a book, or at least has a byline on one. Celebrity books sell, even if they’re mostly written by open or covert co-authors. I expect an unauthorized Bart Simpson bio by Kitty Kelley out any day. What’s so urgent?”

“Come into my parlor.” Temple led Emily to the office storeroom.

“Ooops.” Midnight Louie was in the act of using the litter box. He regarded their arrival over his shoulder with a glassy green glare. Temple pulled Emily around a pile of copier paper boxes. She dug in her ever-present tote bag until she produced a manila mailing envelope and tweezers.

“What on earth, Temple—?”

“Listen, this is the best I have for police lab equipment.” With the tweezers, Temple withdrew the white envelope and notepaper. “This was on my desk this morning—don’t pick it up. The police might want to dust it for prints.”

Emily read the message in an instant. “This is awful! Baker and Taylor kidnapped and potential ‘stew meat.’ Who would do such a rotten thing?”

“From the syntax, an idiot after a quick buck, but that may be done to mislead us. It’s no local operator. He’d know that Caesars Palace has no apostrophe. Ungrammatical as it is, that’s Las Vegas. You’re sure no business rival—?”

“Baker & Taylor doesn’t have any. Look. The two biggest national wholesalers are Ingram and us. Traditionally, we supplied libraries and Ingram handled the independent bookstores; you know, the local Book Nook and Cranny. Lately we’ve expanded our focus into the bookstores as well—”

“Aha!”

“But that doesn’t even border on cutthroat competition. Bottom line or not, there’s some gentility left in the book business yet.”

“Well, it’s time to call the local police. This looks like a rinky-dink operation. They don’t ask for much money—but it’s still kidnapping of a sort, and serious stuff.”

Emily clapped a well-manicured hand to her forehead; even that broad gesture didn’t completely obscure her worry wrinkles.

“Temple... no. I can’t. It was my idea to bring the cats here. I just can’t embarrass the company that way. I—we’ve got to get them back.”

“How? How are you going to get the money so fast? How are you going to deliver it with any personal safety? How can you be sure you’ll get the cats back, or that they’re not stew meat already?”

“I don’t know! Temple, help me!”

Temple thought. From the background came the rhythmic rasp of litter being pawed over the scene of the crime. How would she feel if Midnight Louie were in danger? How much would she herself do to avoid the humiliation of reporting a catnapping to someone like Lieutenant Molina? “We’ll hire a PI. Vegas is full of ’em.”

Emily moved her hand from brow to mouth, a wary expression in her eyes.

“He can deliver the ransom without risk to either of us,” Temple explained. “We can watch, maybe, and spot the crook. The big question is, how will you get the money?”

Emily shut her eyes. “My American Express Gold Card.”

“You could lose it.”

“As long as I find the bloody cats. Temple, I just couldn’t face losing those cats, professionally or personally.”

“It’s not your fault, Emily. Who’d think somebody’d bag ’em? That’s really odd—a murder and now a—”

“Well, well, well. Sorry, didn’t see a Ladies’ Room sign.” Crawford Buchanan was leaning in the doorway in an ice-cream suit, eyeing Emily Adcock with his usual predatory smirk. She was too distraught to notice.

“We’re leaving.” Temple stuffed the manila envelope back in her bag and grabbed Emily’s wrist.

The woman’s hand was cold and limp with anxiety; she numbly followed Temple into the office. Buchanan remained in the doorway, forcing them to brush by. A moment later Midnight Louie swaggered past his pant leg, leaving a swath of long black hairs on the pale fabric.

“Alley cat,” Buchanan hissed, kicking at the cat.

Louie leaped away like a heavyweight boxer avoiding a gnat.