Unknown - 16_Cat_In_An_Orange_Twist

Sphinxlike immobility. I am on duty, as statu e s q u e a n d s t i l l watching a s green Ba passinga s t

observer might notice is like the Egyptian glyph of a human eye. It knows all, sees all, but is as motionless as the dead.

Actually, this whole place is as dead as a tomb. It is hard to keep from drowsing off. In the rooms a few people come and go, but

seldom, and they are amblers shuffling along from vignette to vignette.

I do hear the authoritative click of high heels in the distance. The sound is sharp and brisk enough to be my Miss Temple. I freeze even more than motionless as I hear those emphatic footsteps heading my way.

My Miss Temple has observed me at my leisure on a sofa too often to be taken in by my act when it is on the road. My cover is as

transparent as a G-string at the Saran Wrap strip joint. So I squeeze my peepers totally shut. It is primitive instinct to hope that if you cannot see, you cannot be seen. I know better, but I will try anything.

My ears reverberate. Stilettos have not pounded ground so hard since the railroaders nailed down the Golden Spike at Promontory,

Utah, and that was two centuries back, give or take a few decades. Speaking of which, that is what every second feels like to me now. I do not want Miss Temple to think that I am spying on her.

The footsteps come within a couple feet of me and stop cold.

I continue playing dead and wait for the whistle to blow.

Only my Miss Temple will not whistle. She will whisper, and demand what I am doing here, even though I cannot answer, for more reasons than one.

I hear the sound of one toe tapping. Ooh. She is really mad.

I crack one eyelid the teensiest bit.

Well, that is a high heel and the toe is tapping, but it is way too big to belong to my charming roommate. It must be big enough to cradle a kitten, a size eight, say, or even a nine. Ugh. We are getting into Molina territory with that shoe size, and what my Miss Temple decries, I despise as well.

But this is not Molina, not with that much leg showing, although it is as spindly as that of a giraffe. I follow the figure upwards and see its back is toward me.

Well! Am I not sufficiently riveting even when comatose that an unbiased observer would give me a second glance?

The figure is slim and surmounted by a curly fall of matte black hair. The person is apparently staring at the vignette now between me and it, a snazzy Art Deco design that I heard Miss Temple say was the work of the late and very lamented Mr.

Simon Foster.

There have been no more footsteps approaching but suddenly I spot another person arriving on the scene.

The woman who has the toe-tic suddenly senses his presence, but not mine, and turns. She has pale narrow features set in a perpetual sneer.

“Jerome! You startled me.”

Jerome does not look like he could startle a gerbil, but I see he wears those thick-soled tennis shoes, so he certainly could pad around as soundlessly as I do.

“Just carting your latest accessories to the model room you wanted to revise.”

“Good. Maybe you can tell me who switched these Ert� prints again.”

“It cannot have been Simon. He is dead. I figured you had done it.”

“No! I made sure they were the way I wanted them as soon as he was dead.”

Silence greets this confession.

“Uh,” she says, “they were never hung right and I caught that nosy PR woman switching them, so I, urn, thought it only fitting to rearrange them as a final memorial.” She frowns as she turns back to the ersatz wall on which the prints under discussion are displayed.

“Cannot leave even the dead alone, can you, Beth?”

“Jerome. You are pushing it.”

“At least I am not pushing daisies, no thanks to your continual carping. You have no right to boss me around. You have no

official authority over anyone in this store.”

“The worm wiggles, but it does not quite manage to turn, poor thing. Maybe I do not need official authority, Jerome. Maybe

I have a better kind of authority.”

“What? Blackmail? I never thought you could sleep your way up, even at a Hell’s Angels rally. Blackmail. You would be game for that, but I can’t see who or how. Everybody knows that half the staff is gay, so you cannot ‘out’ anyone. Or can you?”

Okay, I am trying to put this modern parlance into play on the crime scene here. I did not know half the staff was gay, although I have known a few gays among my own kind. That gets to be a very gray area for catkind, because sometimes the most heterosexual dude is so high on testosterone that he would mistake a fun fur for a romantic target. This has never happened to me, I hasten to reassure. I am thoroughly fixated on the female of the species … er, any species. That is just the way I am, as others are another way. We all live in the same skins, after all.

“Maybe it is Simon’s ghost.” Jerome is staring at the Ert� prints. “He never did like you messing with his design layout. Maybe he has come back to switch prints just to spite you, Beth.”

She is quiet a heartbeat too long.

Jerome goes on: “It is weird how all the artwork on the walls keeps changing around here. I really think we have a dead decorator in residence. What do you think?”

“I think the world is ‘designer,’ schmuck, and that you had better tote that ugly clown painting where I told you to, and shut up.

You are right. One word and you will not have a job.”

“A hollow threat. Maybe someday the Maylords ghost will hang you up to dry, although I doubt your hide would do much for

the walls.”

“You-”

Jerome glides away on his Reekboks, i.e., smelly, rubber soles, so the only person to hear the end of her epithet is me. - asshole.”

That is when I join the entire staff in taking an eternal dislike to Miss Beth, despite my usual tendency to revere and assist her gender.

“Ghost!” she harrumphs out loud.

And steps up to the wall to reverse the position of the prints. This is one obsessive-compulsive lady.

The next set of footsteps are firm and readily detectable. “Beth. What are you doing?”

“Mr. Maylord.”

“Well?”

“I was changing these prints.”

“Why? They look fine the way they are.”

“Simon would have preferred-”

“Simon. Yes. Poor fellow.”

I study a man in his early thirties, well dressed, with an air of eager authority. Eager authority never cuts it, I have found. If

you have true authority, you do not need to be eager for anything. He who can wait, rules. Observe the humble housecat.

And I can outwait any of them.

“You know, Mr. Maylord, I merely want the showroom floor to be as perfect as possible?’

“Yes. Well. I have heard that your methods have riled some of the employees, including the late Simon Foster. We are looking for employee synergy here at Maylords, Miss Blanchard, not controversy. Perhaps you had better leave the walls designed by others alone. You have your own space, do you not?”

“Yes, Mr. Maylord.” Her tone is insolent. “I suppose your brother would have the same philosophy.”

“My brother-? He has nothing to do with this location. Nothing. Surely there is something you could do elsewhere. Sales to be made, perhaps.”

“You mean clients to be enlisted.”

“Right. Carry on.”

And he leaves the field to her. She glances around, a bit nervously, her eyes skimming past me as if I were Dumpster fungus. Then she steps up to the wall and reverses the prints despite everything.

Still, she looks a little unnerved, so I loose a hiss beneath my breath and escalate it into the faintest, ghostly wail.

“Stupid!” she tells herself just as harshly as she berates others. “Nothing haunts this place but blind fools it is a pleasure to make bigger fools of. Simon, see what you got for blowing me off and messing with my adjustments? Burn in hell!”