Carole Douglas - Cat in an Alphabet Soup

“That’s dumb. No one knew about them being missing except the B & T people and me. What kind of a diversion is a state secret?”

“No one knew only because you and Emily Adcock were so darn good at covering it up. That’s why the ransom was small; nobody wanted the money. What was wanted was a distraction, which you prevented, meanwhile running around and buttonholing everybody and his first cousin about the murder.”

“You think I know something?”

“I hate to admit it, but yes. And you probably don’t know what yourself, which would be truer to form. You really have a knack for screwing up an investigation.”

“Why blame me? It was my job to talk to the people involved and I’m in a better position to learn the inside story than any police representative.”

“It’s your funeral,” Molina said.

“I see what you mean. Have you evidence pointing to a certain suspect?”

“No.” Molina was even more sober than usual. “The key to the crime is motive, and that leaves little evidence—or little obvious evidence.”

“Chester Royal was a fiend. Everyone had a motive—his three top writers, his editor ex-wife, his ex-assistant and the current Reynolds-Chapter-Deuce PR director; even, I suppose, his old buddy lawyer,” Temple enumerated.

“I know about them,” said Molina. “Except for the lawyer.”

“Will you tell me what you found out about the Royal malpractice case?”

“You first.”

“Earnest Jaspar. Funny old guy from Minnesota. He’s staying at the Hilton. Chester had him on hand in case an uncertain author like Mavis Davis needed shoring up. Anyway, Jaspar defended Royal in the malpractice case in Illinois in the fifties. A woman had died on his operating table during the course of an illegal abortion her family swore she would have never agreed to. But if you’ve looked up the case, you know all that.”

“Not the details. The press in those days was discreet about abortion scandals. I’m having copies of the court documents sent, but it’ll take a while. We have been working this case over a weekend, you know, on top of everything else.”

Temple figured “everything else” meant her—and missing cats. “Weekend—has it only been a weekend?!’ She suddenly felt down-to-her-toes beat, as if it would be too much of an effort to say her name.

“I suppose your fevered brain has concluded that a survivor of the long-dead woman is seeking vengeance.”

“I don’t know if I even thought that far ahead. I just think that a malpractice case in the victim’s past is pretty interesting, don’t you?”

“Victims usually have a lot of interesting incidents in their pasts. But that malpractice case was decades ago. Pretty farfetched.”

“Where is it written that murderers have to strike while their fire is hot? It could be some disgruntled victim of medical foul play. Why not?”

Molina shook her head. “Why now , rather?”

“You mean, why wait all this time?”

“Right. We’re talking forty years. We’re also talking a senior citizen slayer by now.”

Temple thought a long, stymied moment, then looked up. “It would explain the knitting needle.”

Molina shook her head again. “Sure, a Grandma Moses killer. You’re getting punchy. I’ll have an officer drive you home.” Molina went to the door, opened it, and issued some instructions before coming back to stand over Temple. “I had your car driven back to your apartment, so you’ll be ready to go on your dubious errands tomorrow.”

“Hey, thanks. That was nice.”

A policeman entered with a sheaf of manila envelopes. Temple began shoveling the evicted contents of her tote bag into them. She stood up, her legs feeling rubbery. If only her high heels held up, Temple was sure she’d be fine.

Molina saw her to the interrogation room door. “You think of anything, you tell me—-immediately.”

“Sure.” Even if it meant she was cooperating with a... Temple looked down at Molina’s loafers and giggled—a flatfoot.

But just outside the door she turned, the manila envelopes clutched to her chest.

“Of course—the sign!” It hit her meandering brain like a flash of Flamingo Hilton pink neon. “What if Chester Royal was killed for medical, not editorial, reasons? What if the sign on the body didn’t mean STET, as in a copy editing direction, but STET as in... short for stethoscope?”

23

Cool Hand Louie

O nly one thing on earth can outperform Midnight Louie when he is doing a solo jazz riff for the ladies in some lonely back street.

That is the siren of a police vehicle. Usually I scram when I hear one coming and that is exactly what I do when I am fleeing my home away from homicide—the pound. I hightail it in the opposite direction.

How I accomplish this unheard-of feat of bustin’ out is a tale in its own right. Let us face it, folks, the survival statistics for those of my ilk in such an establishment are nil minus zero.

However common are those greeting cards depicting a quintet of kittens in a basket, gold-fish bowl or some other sentimental environment suitable for framing on kitchen walls, the harsh facts of feline life are that four of those five little sugarpusses will not celebrate their first birthday.

I have not reached my state of ripeness by ignoring odds, even if one is inclined to that sort of idiocy in a city like Las Vegas. And the odds here are that Miss Temple Barr has a lot more on her mind right now than the state of my skin.

One thing my tête-à-trois with Baker and Taylor makes self-evident. Miss Temple Barr is right. The napper of the duo with the withered ears is the perpetrator who edited out the old guy I stumbled over on the ABA convention floor so few days and so many lifetimes ago. I decide to take destiny by the flintlock and spring myself to share my information with a larger world. It is the story of my lives... I know more than is good for me and someone is out to get me.

First I size up the villainous attendant whom it has been my ill luck to encounter. This large-eared personage is slovenly as well as slothful; it occurs that I might use this weakness to my advantage. The plan requires risking my second most prized member, but I have not survived this long without a streak of derring-do in my soul.

When Jug-ears arrives with my evening swill, I manage to insert my glorious extremity, which is large, luxuriant and bushy, if I say so myself, into the frame of the cell door.

It takes all of my not insignificant self-control to avoid expressing outrage at the resulting competition between a rock and a hard place. They do not call it the “slammer” for nothing. Suffice it to say that the cell-door latch is not fully caught.

Once Jug-ears continues on his errands, I bat the cell door ajar, bound down to the floor and accept the catcalls of my amazed peers (whom I would spring were not their cell latches too tightly sprung, and their tails too scrawny to cushion any closing blows).

The pavement is still damp from ablutions of a repellent nature as I commence to wend my way far from this unhappy place. An unguarded gate or carelessly unlocked window always awaits the machinations of a fellow with my aptitude for going places, and a stairway of carelessly placed furniture or boxes usually leads me right to it. Once free, I hunker down outside to await the cover of twilight.