Carole Douglas - Cat in a Zebra Zoot Suit

Among the oleanders, Ma Barker awaits us with a voice as sharp as her claws.

“About time,” she growls. “I have stationed all the shades and patterns of brown and gray from the clowder around the building in question. That’s the best camouflage color inside and out, and the police seem to have it in for us black cats lately.”

“So no Black Cat Ninja Brigade?” I ask. Browns and grays are, well, pedestrian.

“This is a dead scene,” Ma answers. “The crime has been committed and the forensic team has recorded and dusted and scanned the place from asphalt to attic. As you suggested, Louie, people have come lurking around. Perhaps word of suspicion falling on your clowder leader at the Circle Ritz has disturbed her charges.”

(I should point out here that Ma Barker is feral to her fingernails and not attuned to human social structures. Since she is the female leader of the pack, she considers Miss Electra Lark as an equal, and considers Miss Electra’s human residents as both Miss Electra’s underlings and responsibility.

That is not much different from my position inside the Circle Ritz, or indeed, any of our breed’s. We all have underlings and thus responsibilities.)

Louise and I hustle around to the other side of the Circle Ritz, strolling by the half-occupied shopfronts to the huge abandoned building where Jay Edgar’s body was found. The police are keeping the COD top secret. That means Cause of Death, not Cash On Delivery. Although, it could have been a hired hit, who knows?

Even now Ma is pacing toward the banned building, strutting under the yellow crime scene tape like she was queen. It is a cakewalk for us to survey and sniff the perimeter, then slink inside through a sloppily boarded-up back door.

“ Hmm ,” Ma pauses to note, wiggling her skimpy black whiskers. “A rodent-rich environment. I see why people find this a desirable property.”

Louise and I exchange head rolls. Ma is a product of her times. She even thinks the cages of the Trap, Neuter, Return groups are alien UFOs landing to abduct our kind and her gang to some distant planet. She will complain about not seeing a clowder member for a day or so. Then sniffing alcohol on him or her (or should I say, the new “It” cat?)—after said abductee returns dazed and unsteady, she will accuse the poor soul of cozying up to a human out on a binge.

Still, no one has better scouting instincts than Ma Barker. We follow her somewhat bent tail. Ma has paced far down the long corridor between the first floor stalls. The place is reminiscent, if not redolent, of a horse stable.

At last we reach a point where the floor grunge has changed from a patina of dust into a carpet of actual refuse and dirt.

“ Hmm ,” Ma opines. “Some homeless humans had a clambake here.” She sniffs the area, between sneezes. “Only the usual street filth ground into shoe soles. Unfortunately, humans do not lick those clean.”

“ Meeuw ,” Louise comments in disgust. She follows the disturbed filth to the edge.

I have an idea inspired by my out-of-body mind experience here. “These marks in the grit. Reminds me of old-time ballrooms, when humans shuffled around on soap powder they dribbled on the floor.”

“You are an old-style gigolo, all right,” she accuses me. “You know what I mean.”

“This could just be the usual CSI: Las Vegas shuffle, Louise, but what puzzles me is that I detect no smell of blood.”

“But why is the floor disturbed here in the middle of things?” Louise has moved to the first step of the central staircase. She gazes farther up. “Was the victim pushed down these stairs, and therefore the fatal injuries were internal?”

“This mountain is made of steps.” Ma Barker sounds puzzled.

I have forgotten the only Vegas structure Ma has ever entered was when I recently smuggled her into the Crystal Phoenix. As a life-long feral, she has encountered curbs, and even perhaps a back step or two, but an entire one-story flight is utterly foreign.

“You want to watch yourself, Ma,” I warn. “Those boards may be shaky.”

“ Hah . I have excavated Dumpsters the size of boxcars in my day, sonny.”

I still worry, because she is creeping up the outer edges of the steps, quite a balancing act for one of her years.

“Louise,” I hiss under my breath. “Go up and shadow the old dame so she does not fall.”

“Fall?” Louise’s burning look singes me. “She is preserving the crime scene evidence. Even from here I can see that many footsteps have been dancing up and down those stairs.”

I take another squint and am shocked. My standing as primo private eye is about to be eradicated by dames of two different generations. How could I miss the faint disturbances on the steps? Rats! I mean, I took them for rat and mouse scratchings.

After giving a backwards sneer, Louise has obeyed me and is following Ma’s trail. I take the other far side of the stairs and shoot up it like a rocket, arriving up top first, at least.

Looking down, I notice ladders leaning against some deserted cubicle walls. S -shaped trails through the dust show they have been moved and replaced.

Meanwhile, Ma and Louise contemplate the ragged ski slide to death from their perches atop the stairs.

“My Bast-blessed side whiskers,” Ma mutters under her breath, “this manufactured mountain deathtrap has my head whirling worse than playing on the giant Jungle Jim at the Neon Graveyard museum. No wonder this Jay Edgar person with his pathetic, useless, slippery soles skidded right into the Clark County Morgue. I could strike the killing blow myself with one good leap at the back of his knees with all claws out.”

“He must have been inspecting the property,” I muse as I circle the disturbed dust at the top of the stairs. A jerking plunge to one’s death should produce some blood, though, even if it is only the artistic dribble out the side of mouth TV crime shows excel at creating. And I smell no blood at all, which means I smell a rat.

I must admit that my girl assistants have treaded carefully around any human traces, leaving plain imprints of their neat little feet.

Then I spy a strange symmetry in the stair-top markings. Parallel lines here and there, some brushed across, others clear as ice skate blades. Skates up here? Was some daredevil human so stupid as to attempt to skateboard down the staircase of an abandoned building?

I leap atop the newel post at the top of the stairs, confident I am disturbing no evidence.

“Louie!” two yowls reprimand me.

It does not matter. From my higher perch I have spied evidence for my unique and undoubtedly correct theory.

Poor Ma. Poor Louise. Their vision is limited by their born-feral perspectives.

Mr. Jay Edgar Dyson did not fall to his death.

He was not pushed to his death.

I nod my head at the dull, dust-coated glass chandelier hanging above us and disappearing into the high cathedral ceiling above. Random glints on one of the chandelier’s giant, strong, curved branching arms indicate where a rope or heavy drapery cord rubbed the glass clean.