Carole Douglas - Cat in a Zebra Zoot Suit

“What connections?”

“Okay, it is a hunch.”

Ingram glares at me.

“I had a…dream.”

Ingram shakes his head slowly.

“Call it Karma.”

“That flake! I am talking documented history here, not woo-woo speculation. There is nothing concrete about that site down the block except it will be the end of all small businesses in the neighborhood.”

Ingram is, sadly, correct. I cogitate. When I look up at Ingram again to declare defeat, I am mesmerized by his…feet. His right shivs are tapping his folded forelimbs in agitation.

“I am forgetting a prime sales category at the Thrill ‘n’ Quill, so to speak, Louie.”

“Am I suppose to wax hopeful over the word ‘prime’ or ‘category’?” I ask sourly.

“Both, my good sleuth. Miss Maeveleen has descended, er, expanded, into selling used videos.”

“So? I can see all that on retro TV. Miss Temple does provide me with best in cable and recorded entertainment.”

Ingram lifts an admonitory claw. On him it is not a weapon of mass deconstruction. “Tut, tut. You say the Circle Ritz headwoman and your paramour are arriving here soon?”

I do not quibble about his demeaning descriptions. He would not fare well by me either. “Yes. It is our last best chance to clue them in on the nefarious doings at the future Lust ‘n’ Lace strip club site.”

Ingram shudders in distaste. “Ghastly name. Let them come, and I will build it. A stunning big ‘reveal’, as we say in reality TV, only this will be live and in furperson. just get them to follow me when they arrive.”

Am I to pin all my hopes on Ingram as Pied Piper? I must say he is the brainy type. And, when it come to push versus shove, when it comes to Ingram versus my Miss Temple’s keen investigative instincts, I must put my money on her making the giant leapt for human kind.

It has been a twenty-minute wait and I am nibbling on my toenails.

The clever gong of funeral bells reverberates when Miss Electra and Miss Temple enter the mystery bookstore. I was too intent to notice that small touch on my earlier visit.

The three women confer, tsking over the challenging economic climate for the small entrepreneur, the crassness of the Vegas Strip mentality, and the superiority of cats over men as boon companions. Sadly, my Miss Temple is silent on this key issue, but she always is the diplomat.

Then Ingram goes to work as an ankle massager of world-class moves. I am shocked, but have agreed to give him the lead role.

Within two minutes he has the trio cooing over the rack of plastic-covered recorded items. Within thirty seconds he has pried one loose. It tumbles to the floor.

“Oh, look,” says Miss Electra Lark, “the clever boy has selected our latest home entertainment. What a fun fat cat on the cover.”

I manage to catch a glimpse of Ingram’s selection and am left speechless and barely able to wiggle a whisker, or whisk past a female ankle.

“Zoot Cat” is pictured on the cover. It is that loathsome Tom from the Tom and Jerry cartoons where the Jerry-mouse gets Tom-cat’s goat every episode. These are artifacts from a politically incorrect age and I am shocked that they are still available in their old, unadulterated form.

“Maeveleen,” Miss Temple says, fishing the odious portrayal up off the floor. “So you have a DVD player for this vintage cartoon?”

No, no! It is denigrating to cats everywhere. We are long past these dated depictions as dumb and gullible and manipulated by mice. We are the smooth operators these days.

I cringe as Miss Maeveleen produces a laptop computer and the tinny period music unfolds and we all see the dated cat action in cartoon view.

“Yoo-hoo! Hey, Toots!” yells Tom at the door of a lady-cat. “What’s cookin’, Toots?”

Tom peeks through the window and sees Toots listening to a radio while painting her claws. The radio airs a commercial for a zoot suit. Tom decides to make his own zoot suit from an orange-and-green hammock.

Tom cat goes awry right there with that awful color combination , I think with a shudder.

Toots loves the suit Tom models for her…the coat hanger that widens the jacket shoulders and the long pocket chain, which is actually a bathtub plug.

“Now you collar my jive,” Toots says. “You are on the right side, you alligator.”

They jive dance, but Jerry clips the hanger in Tom’s jacket to a window shade, then kicks Tom. As Tom pursues the fleeing mouse, the shade unravels and rebounds, rolling up Tom and tossing him into a fishbowl, where his wet zoot suit slowly shrinks. It pops off his body and drifts to the floor. Jerry jumps into the shrunken suit, now a perfect fit and dances away.

Everybody laughs.

“You know,” Miss Maeveleen says, “this reminds me of a fifties-era nightclub near here called Zoot Suit Choo-Choo. Isn’t that funny?”

Very unfunny. This is a cartoon entertainment, but they have always been about violence.

Maybe even murder.

35

A Pool of Suspects

It is not usual police procedure to convene a meeting on a murder case poolside in Las Vegas, but this was decidedly not a police operation.

The pool area was the only space at the Circle Ritz that could hold all the friends and neighbors of Electra Lark. And all of these people present were concerned about her being a person of interest in a spectacular murder case with overtones of an elaborate mob hit.

“A ‘mob’ of Fontana brothers, all ten, were an awesome presence on their own, especially accessorizing their pastel-cool summer suits with hot, black-framed sunglasses that would put them at home with George Clooney (the new Cary Grant) in a new Ocean ’s Las Vegas heist film.

In tune with its vintage perfection, the Circle Ritz had a quaint little pool house with a striped awning to provide deep shade for Electra, flanked by Temple and Matt.

The Fontana boys had arrived with a large portable screen and small laptop computer. They proclaimed they had a “most intriguing” Powerpoint presentation based into their research into the scene of the crime.

“Not to worry, Miss Electra,” Aldo Fontana told the guest of honor, bowing like a prosecuting attorney about to put on trial the real “person or persons unknown” they were searching for. “If your custom falls off because of this cloud of unjustified suspicion, I assure you we Fontanas shall purchase and occupy any lost tenants’ residences.”

Temple sat boggled by the implications. Under Aldo’s plan, the Circle Ritz could become the coolest Fontana Brothers upscale frat house in Vegas. Hip people would kill to rent or own there. And the security would be Fort Knox-class.

“Wouldn’t it,” Matt asked, “be simpler to finger the fraudsters and the murderer or murderers without a mass move-in?”