Carole Douglas - Cat in an Alphabet Soup

“What kind of poor thing is it?”

“I’m not sure. Black. Feline. Heavy. Has a fearsome yowl.”

“A stray?”

“More like an unauthorized intruder. God, what a day!” Even a handsome stranger could not forestall Temple’s long-anticipated collapse. She groaned, then wriggled way, way back on the lounger, putting her feet up.

The man came over, encasing her briefly in cool shadow before he crouched beside the carrier. “Take a look at it?”

“But don’t lose it. The contents are a material witness in a murder.”

“You’re kidding!”

Temple shook her head. She debated removing her sunglasses to study her new acquaintance in full living color, but restrained herself.

“You weren’t kidding.” The man hauled a long black boa of fur from the cramped carrier. “He must weigh close to twenty pounds.”

“He?”

“Definitely.”

“You a vet?”

“I spent a few weekends on the grandparents’ farm,” He cautiously released the cat to extend a tan hand, accompanying it with a smile that would blind a mole. “Matt Devine. I’m staying here now—I guess. Mrs. Lark was cordial but a little vague.”

“Only a little? You must have made a real impression on her. Hi, Temple Barr. I’ve lived at the Circle Ritz for almost a year. You’ll love it, but you’ll have to like ‘a little vague’ a lot. Say, he is a big galoot, isn’t he?”

Temple sat up to inspect the cat, who sniffed long and intently at the heel of her shoe, the aluminum tubing of the lounge chair and Matt Devine’s hand.

“Did you mean that,” Matt asked, “about him witnessing a murder?”

Temple sighed. “I was exaggerating, a mortal sin for a public relations specialist.”

Matt flinched a bit at her words. Maybe he had something against PR people, Temple thought. A lot of ordinarily nice folks did. PR people as a group were often stereotyped as devious, shallow and phony.

“Actually,” she admitted, “Boston Blackie here should get a medal. If he hadn’t been AWOL at the convention center, I wouldn’t have found the body when I did, chasing him.”

“That must be rough, finding a body.” Matt had moved to chaperon the cat’s explorations of the landscaping.

“It’s not in my job description, for sure. Now I’m supposed to downplay the murder before it ruins the whole convention. Darn! This is my first assignment for the convention center. Booksellers sounded so stuffy; who’d have guessed? I need a drink.”

“Sorry.” Matt displayed empty hands and ranged toward the calla lilies, where a black tail was vanishing. “Try Mrs. Lark.”

“Didn’t she tell you to call her Electra?”

“Yes, but—” Matt bent into the chest-high leaves. “I bet she doesn’t want this guy taking a dip in her lily pond, whatever she’s called.”

“God, no! Back in the hoosegow for him. I gotta get to my apartment and find out if I’ve got any tuna fish; he can have the run of my place then.”

An ungentlemanly yowl from the lilies indicated the cat’s capture.

“What does Mrs. Lark—Electra—think about pets on the premises?” Matt Devine wondered.

“It’s only for the night. Somebody had to take him, and I was the one unlucky enough to catch him. Lieutenant Molina of Sex and Homicide is looking at me with a goldarn evil eye. That is not a comfortable place to be, if you’ve ever met Lieutenant Molina.”

Matt smiled at something that amused him, patted the cat’s sleek black head and stuffed it through the carrier door despite four black paws and a tail all lashing like octopus arms.

“Don’t hurt him!” Temple warned.

“Me, hurt him ? Have you seen the size of the claws on this kitty-cat?”

“Yoo-hoo!” came a yodel from the apartment building’s back door. Electra Lark—or rather the Day-Glo muumuu she wore—soon followed it. She was one of the last living women in America to holler “yoo-hoo” and wear muumuus, separately or simultaneously.

“Either of you play the organ?” The landlady stood panting before them, her hair a picturesque postpunk patchwork of lime-Jell-O green, old-lady lavender and fire-engine red.

Temple just shook her head. Matt looked too dazed to shake anything, which was a real shame in Temple’s opinion.

Electra Lark was checking a California Raisin watch on her chubby wrist. “Euphonia’s home sick and I’ve got to do a can’t-wait wedding at seven-thirty. earlier? It won’t seem legal without a march.”

“I play—a little,” said Matt. He was standing with his hands in his khaki pants pockets, looking adorably diffident.

“Really, Matt? You can play the organ?” Electra vibrated with relief. “Why didn’t you say so? I can give you a deal on the rent if you can back up Euphonia. She has four kids.” Electra rolled her eyes. “Emergencies are built in.”

“I only play by ear, and I don’t know Lohengrin,” he warned.

“Not to worry.” Electra’s amethyst crystal ear cuffs flashed as she drew Matt’s tanned, gilt-haired arm through her freckled, plump one. “Just so it sounds solemn and churchlike.”

Temple watched them stroll around the circular building, envying women of a certain age—say sixty-something—who could commit certain liberties with men of a certain attractiveness without anybody thinking anything of it.

Then she kicked herself—figuratively. (The Weitzmans were far too pointed for literal admonishment.) What was she doing—more to the point, thinking?

Here one man had left her flat and friendless in Vegas just three months ago; why’d she care if Prince Charming himself moved into the next apartment? Sure, Matt seemed friendly and low-key, but Max Kinsella had seemed a lot of things, also—including too serious about her to leave without warning. Max, who’d coaxed her out of the best PR job—position—she’d ever had, the Guthrie, for heaven’s sake. Three days and she’d jilted common sense to follow him to Vegas like a Pacific-bound lemming deflected to Sand Central. Max had found the Circle Ritz and charmed Electra into giving them a corner unit. He’d even charmed Temple into envisioning a someday-ceremony in the Lovers’ Knot Wedding Chapel.... That had been Max, an unlucky charm from first to last.

Resurrecting the memories of their intemperate romance and Max’s cool departure always pureed Temple’s emotions; Temple had been considered sensible until Max. If her Guthrie compatriots could see her now, flacking hither and yon, too ashamed to crawl back to the city she’d forsaken, too stubborn to give up on Vegas and herself just because a man had stranded her there.

Temple concentrated on the pool area’s deserted serenity, on putting the past back where it belonged. The Lover’s Knot Wedding Chapel was a long block off the Strip’s twenty-four-hour hullabaloo, but the Circle Ritz gardens, set back from the fevered honky-tonk action, were peaceful and secret.

Temple picked up the cat carrier and went indoors, where a vintage air conditioner kept the lobby temperature a steady 74 degrees during the long, torrid summer. Curiosity overcame her at the elevator doors. She left the case there to dash through the breezeway to the Lover’s Knot, trying not to let her staccato heels disrupt the wedding in progress.

The tiny chapel exploded with flowers (mostly recycled from Sam’s Funeral Home on Charleston Boulevard; Sam was either an ex- or a would-be beau of Electra’s). The happy but hurried couple stood poised in the trellised archway. Ranks of hatted heads filled the pews, but they covered brains of discarded pantyhose and Poly-fil, for Electra had fashioned this soft-sculpture congregation one figure at a time with her own talented fingers.