Unknown - 23_Cat_In_A_Vegas_Gold_Vendetta

Of course I am stuck eight feet up in the air in the faithful mesquite tree outside Miss Violet Weiner’s house.

In the dark of night.

I pass the time by counting the varieties of predatory desert nightlife that come out when the sun goes down. Coyotes. Bark scorpions. Tarantulas, now in their mating season, and giant desert centipedes, both about six inches wide or long, however you want to reckon it. I reckon it as too big to tango with. Then there are rattlesnakes and my big brothers, mountain lions and bobcats, not to mention an endless variety of lizards.

Some of these my kin can eat. Some are poisonous and we would not want to. Most of them can eat us.

I am uneasy about leaving our makeshift cat clowder alone on the retention-basin land, but at least human predators do not usually go there. In fact, more of that lethal ilk is inside the former safety of Miss Violet’s house, now that someone has been leaving doors and windows ajar so that the feline population has been steadily declining, much to her somewhat foggy dismay.

At least so my inside dude, Maverick, reports.

Hark! What light at yonder kitchen window breaks?

“Psst! Daydreamer. Here’s a youngling for you.”

Maverick’s longhaired face has side whiskers like a Victorian gentleman does, or Brother Bobcat. Under it peeks out a smaller, striped version.

“Succotash,” Maverick reports, “is afraid to climb down the tree. This is the first time I have gotten him to the window.”

Even the most dim-witted human knows that getting a cat or kitten down a tree is a trying task, but this is the most concealed exit route from the house and we do not want the ill-intentioned human inside, or Miss Violet, to know we are removing the feline residents for their own safety.

If they make it down the mesquite tree.

By now the youngster is crouching on the broad adobe sill, claws out.

Succotash. What kind of moniker is that? You do not want to be named after something that is eaten when you are going out into the untamed desert.

“Come on, Pops,” Miss Midnight Louise harries me from the ground below. “If you cannot coax a kitten down a tree, make way for someone who can.”

The astute observer will see that I am caught in the middle here. Maverick is the trail boss. Miss Midnight Louise is the cowcatcher, so to speak. And I am the cattle prod.

I lean over the unnerved tiger-stripe. “Hello, Suckie, my lad. I know the ground looks far, but I use a tall old palm tree to enter and exit my exclusive condominium near the Vegas Strip every day. Do you not want to grow up to be a big dude about town someday? So take one little pounce to the tree trunk like it was an unwary mouse, and Uncle Louie will have you on your way to rejoin all your pals in no time.”

“No!” the little bugger yowls. Its small claws curl tighter, seeking purchase on the hard adobe.

I see the next customer already in line, a sleek shorthair dame wearing skintight solid gray velvet and winking at me with one emerald-green eye.

“Come on, Junior. No time for cold feet and fingernails.”

“Uncle Louie lies,” he squeaks. “I have never seen such a scary, dark, and horrible place—”

“Survival of the fittest,” I decree, ducking my head to pick up the impudent kit by the nape of the neck, like his mama had, and flinging him onto a fork of the tree just below me, hind feet first.

“Now, just pretend it is a giant scratching post and skedaddle down.”

By then I am looming over him. His eyes become as round as SpaghettiOs, but all four feet start “swimming” in concert. His tiny claws sound like a very loud zipper opening lickety-split all the way to the bottom of the tree and into the indignant embrace of Miss Midnight Louise.

“He is just a baby,” she hisses up at me, her eyes gleaming as lurid green as a demon’s in the dark.

“He is down, is he not?” I turn to the next customer.

“Now, young lady,” I purr. “Obviously, you will need to put your mitt in mine to bridge the gap from sill to trunk, but I can see that you are no stranger to performing alluring acrobatics on a pole.”

She coyly marks the side of the window niche with her sleek cheeks.

“And what is your name?” I inquire.

“Sirena.”

“And so appropriate. Here you go, Sirena. Just take the elevator to the main desert floor. I will join you later when all my rescue work is done.”

I watch her undulate down like a very furry snake.

When I look back up to the window, Maverick is shaking his head and long spidery vibrissae.

“What?” I ask. “You know the house is no longer safe for this crew.”

“I just hope you know what you and your semiferal partner are doing. My associates are confused and upset at the condition of one caretaker and the sudden absence of another, not to mention the strangers trooping in and out of the premises. Taking all these hothouse homebodies into the wilds is risky.”

“I am experienced in the perfidy of the human animal, and I tell you again, this house is raising all the hair on my haunches. Letting domestic slaves out one by one to drift off and get hurt or killed is not simple mischief. It is malice designed to hurt your beloved caretaker. The other caretaker has died already over that. These sorts of benign humans are hard to come by, trust me.”

“I know things are turned upside down, and our dear lady is unable to pet and feed us, and it is very bad,” Maverick admits, furrowing the faint stripes on his brow.

“At least I have an inside woman.”

“Miss Violet’s niece?”

“No. My faithful red-cream. She is not a partner in Midnight Investigations, Inc., but I have trained her well. She can handle anything, trust me.”

Chapter 45

Showdown at the Shrine

Jayden, his pale clothes looking luminous in the bedroom’s odd, rippling-underwater light, stepped inside.

“You?” He sounded truly amazed. “Savannah’s ‘friend.’ How did you get in?”

“The doors … opened for me. I think it was the cats. They seem to be jumping ship.”

“Maybe, but you’re trespassing. You shouldn’t be here. This is a storeroom. Violet keeps it locked. She’s very sick. She could go at any time.”

“Then shouldn’t you be there, for the signing of the will?”

“That was done this afternoon.”

“So I guess you’ve got nothing to lose now.”

Temple tried to figure out how to push past him. He ignored her accusation and seemed disinclined to move. He, too, was mesmerized by the walls of Barbie dolls in their store packaging.

“What are these things?” he asked. “Astounding. It’s very Kachina-doll, in a totally Vegas sort of way.”

“You’ve never seen this room?”

“Violet had her boundaries. I respected them.”

“As long as they included you, in the will.”

“I witnessed it,” he said, frowning. “You’re a terribly cynical young woman. That attitude will impede your path through life.”

“At least I’ve got a life.”

She regretted pointing that out as his odd-colored eyes fixated on her.

“You’ll be sorry…” he started to say.

And she couldn’t disagree.

Then Jayden bounded forward.

And tripped.

He fell facedown on the hard wooden floor, a ghostly Kachina doll with a dark arrow impaled in his back.

A paler shadow-figure behind him began to weave martial-arts motions Temple recognized from a zillion movies and TV shows and Matt’s shadowboxing by the Circle Ritz pool.

In the faint, flickering candlelight, the arrow in the back she thought had felled Jayden was starting to look a lot more like a … kitchen knife.

“Oh,” Temple said, backing up in the room of Barbie dolls, the cul-de-sac of Barbie dolls, the dead end of Barbie dolls, and probably her.