Unknown - 19_Cat_In_A_Red_Hot_Rage

I expect her to be lying in wait, and I intend to be lying in wait with her, unbeknownst to her, of course. I am your unbeknownst go-to guy.

What good will it do if Miss Midnight Louise finds Mr. Max alive and in the meantime Miss Temple has been offed? That is what you would call an ironic situation, although it is more of a moronic situation, in my opinion.

I know it is up to me. As per usual. Because, of course, the Fontana litter are off seeing to Aldo and Miss Kit Carlson. Even the police are no longer hanging around here as much. The Red Hat ladies will be tuckered and tucked away for the night while visions of purple plums dance in their heads after the evening’s banquet.

This being Las Vegas, plenty of patrons and hotel personnel are stirring on the Crystal Phoenix’s main floor, but the Red Hat Sisterhood’s public spaces are shut down.

I realize I will need reinforcements before this case is over, but have nowhere to turn. The police are not expecting more mayhem on-site. The hotel security forces are top-notch, but they are only human.

What is needed here is the superhuman sight and hearing of my kind. I am ready to gnaw my nails in frustration, except that I will need them later, when a bright idea occurs to me.

It is not only fresh and exciting, but it will improve my status among the desirable ladies of my species.

I dash through a moving parade of feet to the elevators. How convenient that I was hanging about the lobby when the first convention-goers arrived, for I then burned a particular suite number into my inboard memory device.

The first carload only takes me a few floors up before emptying. I prance with impatience waiting for another elevator to stop where I have been marooned. Several stop, because I have leaped repeatedly at the call button until it depresses. I hang out of sight behind a cigarette butt stand while riders grouse about thoughtless people who call the elevator, then decide to walk and leave the doors opening on nothing.

Oh contraire, grousers! It is actually a very thoughtful feline who has summoned you to this floor. I wait until a car opens that is crammed with people yet to disembark, for I seek the hotel’s top floor. Too bad the particular guest I seek is not top-drawer to match!

Of course, I must time my leap aboard to the second. Whilethey are all craning their necks looking left and right down the hall, I slip among their pant legs, trying not to brush my softly furred sides against any sensitive bare female gams. (Not for personal reasons, of course. Normally, I am only too happy to massage female gams. Here, however, I am trying to remain undercover as well as underfoot.) It is my good luck that only one highly intoxicated (a redundancy, I fear) gentleman remains aboard when we arrive at the top floor containing the suites.

I follow his lurching path out of the car onto purple plush carpet.

I was blending into the bellman’s dark pant legs four days ago when I heard him instructed to take Miss Savannah Ashleigh’s gaudy luggage cart to the Baccarat Suite.

Knowing the Crystal Phoenix layout from my days as house detective here, I leave the amiable sot playing with his room key card outside his quarters and speed to the address in question. And they say we cannot be trained!

Something also in question is whether Miss Savannah is in residence at the moment or not. Although the time is late, past my namesake hour, it would best serve my emergency plan for her to be making merry elsewhere right now.

I scratch softly low on the door.

In an instant I am answered by the snare-drum scritch of delicate pads on paint. Pads, plural. Both Ashleigh sisters are awake and ready to rock!

It is true that I and the Supine Yvette, formerly known as the Divine Yvette, are on the outs, but Solange is still in my little black book. Okay, my large black book.

I can stomach the snobby Supine Yvette if the Benign Solange is in the picture.

I hiss under the door that they need to unlock it.

They plead the deadlock and the safety chain.

I ask if they have a pipe access door in the bathroom.

After a few minutes, Solange reports that they do, but that Yvette’s tail has become caught in the opening.

Manx! If I had been installed in a penthouse suite, my first piece of business would have been checking the air-conditioning and plumbing systems for egress. A dude always needs a back door.

But what can you expect from Persians? They are not exactly designed for street smarts. On the other mitt, they are sublimely designed for other purposes.

Speaking of the Sublime Solange, she is hissing at me under the door that there is another interior door at two-jumps level in the bathroom.

I sit down and think. I always think better sitting down, without pressure on my footpads.

Of course, all Las Vegas knows the Crystal Phoenix as a very classy hotel. It was classy before the many new mega hotels made a conscious effort to spend millions on high-end art collections. In fact, the powers that be along the Strip (and there are a lot of them) are eager to disavow the place’s gangster history.

But you can’t keep a good hood down. Or a good ‘hood.

Rumor has it that one obscure room dating back to the Bugsy Siegel era can still be found at the Flamingo Hilton. Bugsy, of course, built the first Flamingo and began the dot on an empty map’s evolution into Billionaire’s Row.

And here at the Crystal Phoenix, room 711 is still decorated with the forties flair popular in the day of its founder, Jersey Joe Jackson. They say when he lost his fortune he lived on in that small suite. They say he still lives on there in the dust motes that take human shape from time to time.

Me, I like to use the place for siestas. The hotel never rents it. And I may have seen a ghost there while in the twilight state between dreaming and waking up.

Right now I’m daydreaming about how this hotel used to be the Joshua Tree when Jersey Joe founded it. How it sat deserted and ruined until Nicky Fontana came along with mondo millions of clean dough from his grandma’s pasta empire and remade the place with the help of an imported little hotel marketing doll named Van von Rhine.

Of course, since then the Phoenix has been redone inside and out, and added onto up, down, and sideways. But its functional core is the old Joshua Tree, with its then-fancy “futuristic” features.

One comes to mind just when I need it. I seem to recall that it has a central vacuum system for cleaning.

No. I am not contemplating sending the Ashleigh sisters down a central vacuum system. That would be cruel, although speedy. And it would really wreak havoc with their hairdos.

However, I also recall from my early prowls of the premises when I was house detective, the old Joshua Tree had a system of linen handling that involved that old-fashioned, low-tech approach of … laundry shoots.

Two jumps up. I guess that even the pampered Ashleigh sisters could manage that if motivated. One waiting to bat the hinged door open while the other leaps through; one to perch on the sink surround and open the door manually (mittually?) and leap through after the first has gone.

It will take acrobatics not usual to short-legged Persians. It will take cooperation between sisters of a different color. It will take massive persuasion from Midnight Louie, perhaps with a soupcon of disinformation.

But my dear associate’s life is at stake, and species loyalty is worth two tins of sardines and a catnip spray can, under the circumstances.

I need reinforcements below, pronto! (To quote the Fontana brothers.) Fire in the hatch! Even if it’s a pair of furious felines!

I instruct Solange on how to get her and Yvette launched. I tell them that they will land on Cloud Nine.