Unknown - Cat_In_A_Hot_Pink_Pursuit

I point out that it offers the advantages of being periodically deserted and that the black marble floor and black granite countertops afford us a degree of camouflage we can obtain nowhere else in this huge house.

She sniffs.

Which is exactly what we are here to discuss.

When she showed up on the scene so unexpectedly (probably just to complicate my life), I was forced to come up with a task for her that would occupy her over-busy brain and yet keep her out of my way. (You can imagine how she would interfere with my necessary interrogations of the Persian girls!) I do believe there is a reason for the great detectives having a right-hand gal in the office, not on the mean streets with them. Dames do like to ride herd on a dude!

So I had to share with her, by proxy, the one precious clue in this case that I have held close to the chest hairs from the beginning.

Had I not followed my protective instincts in following my Miss Temple to the shopping mall, where she made herself so obnoxious in her brilliant way, I would never have picked up the trace of a killer.

We are not dogs, but do we not have noses? Do we not lay our own scent of ownership hither and yon? Are we not better equipped than humans for following the trail of murder? Or, as in this case, murders?

So I had conveyed to Louise as best I could the strange, sickly sweet odor of the puddle outside the mall.

“You are sure it was not diluted blood?” she had demanded.

“I know blood in any state, my dear Louise. No, it was the sort of thing humans eat but should not.”

“That is legion. Can you be a tad more specific?”

“Something cloying, and it was pink.”

“Everything pink is cloying when it comes to humans.”

“I hope you except the cat world Swiss Army knife from that judgment, that marvelous instrument of myriad uses, the feline tongue.”

“Speak for yourself, Romeo. So what is the scent I should search for?”

“Strawberry.”

Louise makes a delicate gagging sound, a prehairball sortie.

“Or perhaps cherry or raspberry. I am no connoisseur of fruit flavors. Then again, it could be that dreadful pink bubblegum flavor. Whatever it was, it was tacky enough in both senses of the words to cling to someone’s shoes. I have been tracing it upstairs, downstairs, and everywhere but my lady’s chamber.”

“So why should I pollute my nose following disgusting Dumpster leavings?”

“Because I first sniffed it someplace else than here.”

“Such as?”

“Such as the parking lot of the mall, where I tailed my Miss Temple when she made her debut as Miss Xoe Chloe by auditioning for this very madness.”

“Parking lot?” Miss Louise is sounding properly intrigued now.

“Right. I found it next to a body that was the focus of a lot of police attention, including that of Miss Lieutenant C. R. Molina and her new squeeze.”

“No.”

Louise is sounding satisfactorily shocked at last. “Miss Lieutenant C. R. Molina has a new squeeze? I thought she was beyond such things.”

“Apparently not, but the point, Louise, is that a poor young girl had been struck dead on the spot. And there was this melting puddle of sticky pink stuff beside her. I have smelled the same stuff on some shoe that has been moving around the place, from the pool area where the mats were sprayed with shaving cream to these supposedly secret passages.”

“Me-wow!” Louise has sat down in front of me in a dazed condition. I can finally see a bit in the dark and I do not like what I am seeing. “I never dreamed Miss Lieutenant Molina would be a traitor to the cause of female independence.”

“Maybe he is not her boyfriend. Maybe he is just a new associate. I merely remarked that something more seemed to be going on, but forget it! The point is, whoever killed that girl is here and has killed again. We must follow the putrid pink trail.”

So I had argued with Miss Louise until she felt her feminine sensibilities were on the line, i.e., anything I can smell she can smell better.

Passing on a scent, no matter how strong, by proxy, is not easy. But Miss Louise spent several diligent moments vacuuming my whiskers for any remaining traces and pronounced that she had the idea but the methodology of getting it was most repugnant.

Forensic evidence is often like that, I told her.

So we have been sniffing our way through the Teen Queen Castle ever since in search of likely candidates. For I had observed at the crime scene that the killer, with the usual insufficient human olfactory equipment, had trod unknowing in the melted ice cream.

Sickly sweet strawberry scent does not go gently into that dark night. Observe the car freshening products so beloved of patrol car and cab drivers. And most of them strawberry scented.

Miss Louise is indelicate enough to point out that this could confuse the issue.

I point out that we are inside a house, and a huge house, not a moving vehicle. (Although I do wish that Miss Louise was inside a moving vehicle at this moment, headed for the Valley of Fire.) However, the trained professional does not allow personal druthers to affect his effectiveness in the field.

“So,” she asks, “what is our total suspect list? Although I report the strange actions of your Miss Temple and Miss Lieutenant Molina’s Mariah in the dietitian’s office, I could detect no more cloying scent upon them than one usually encounters paging through certain fashion magazines. Strawberry is far too bourgeois for such venues.”

Huh? Normally I am in command of French, for it is one of those languages that you are in command of or it is in command of you, but I am a little lost here.

So, when in doubt, hold forth. I pace back and forth on a floor so clean there is not any odor other than Pine-Sol to distract me.

“I have detected suspiciously sweet odors on the footwear of a cameraman who tried to kick me in the pool area.”

“You have a pool area? I am impressed, Pops. Is it a front bay or a back bay pool area?”

“Most unamusing, Louise. You are right that I am ill-disposed to a kicker, but unfortunately the gorilla in question has no other counts against him than slinking through the technical corridors, and that is his job.”

“I have traced a sickly sweet odor to the tacky Payless loafers so appropriate to the person of Crawford Buchanan,” she says. “I would so like him to be a murderer. Say it is possibly so.”

“It is. He is what humans call a ‘tech,’ which means he likes to chase young girls. Molesters are in big disfavor nowadays. Perhaps the murdered woman was trying to interfere in his pursuit. They could have destroyed his reputation just as he was trying to make the leap to TV media.”

“Ah.” Louise digests that idea happily. Like my Miss Temple, she cannot stand Crawford Buchanan.

“Sickly sweet odor?” she offers. “Did you ever check his cologne? Me-eeeuw.”

“Agreed. A guy knows these things. He uses Old Lice, I believe, which I understand is good for repelling mosquitoes as well as females. It could be possible he spilled some, from the amount he slaps on each morning, and stepped in it.”

“Speaking of sickly sweet in the face of sickly sour, Dexter Manship’s suede Bass shoes have that odor about them. I fear it is that illegal weed people are so fond of smoking.”

“Close but no cigar. I must confess, with regret, that my most recent Elvis visitation—”

Here she snorts her disbelief with a vehemence that would get her arrested were she not an innocent-looking feline.

“You and Elvis! That is a delusional mutual admiration society. As I recall, he was a dog and horse man. And I would not expect his ghost to be any different.”

`That is just it, Louise. Not every Elvis apparition is the real thing.”