Unknown - Cat_In_A_Midnight_Choir-spaces_ru

I almost expect to see William Holden floating facedown in the limpid water as I look beyond to the stucco mansion looming beyond the pool like the white cliffs of Dover.

“What a spread,” I say.

“It belonged to Carissa Caine, a mistress of Jersey Joe Jackson before he lost his stash. That man had more mistresses than Howard Hughes had phobias.”

Louise sits to tick off her research on her toes. Or perhaps she is licking off her research from her toes. Now that she is my partner, I will be darned if I will call her “Miss” anymore. Business is business. “That is why a spread of this size still exists inside Las Vegas,” she goes on. “It was like Sleeping Beauty’s castle. Jersey Joe went crazy and while the tabloids were busy reporting his slow self-destruct, Carissa faded away, as untouched as this mansion. She was a little touched in the mad sense of the word, because she didn’t want to be alone after she died, so she turned the streetside acres into a cemetery. Everybody forgot about the house and grounds behind it.”

“Only in Las Vegas can the façade become the reality,” I note. “So the Cloaked Conjuror grabbed up this cold property when he started getting death threats for exposing the secrets behind magical illusions in his act.”

“He wanted to be near the Strip, but needed to be discreet. Los Muertos was perfect.”

“‘Lost’ Muertos is more like it. And the Big Cats up front make dandy bodyguards.”

“Oh, the Cloaked Conjuror has every security device in the firmament. Even the Mystifying Max would have trouble breaking into this joint.”

“But you cracked it.”

“I am small and subtle,” she says demurely.

“Small, yes. So Hyacinth and her mistress now inhabit the house with the Cloaked Conjuror?”

“His friends call him CC. It saves one’s breath.”

“Yeah, one would worry about saving one’s breath around this creepy place.” My ears prick up, and then my nostrils flare. “Dogs?”

“Not just dogs. Rottweilers.”

“Oh, weinerschnitzel! How do we get around them?”

For answer she leaps into one of Sleeping Beauty’s thorny vines and starts climbing.

She may be small and subtle, but I am larger than life. I follow in her footsteps, but not without collecting as many snags as a cheap pair of nylons. All right, pantyhose. A guy must move with the times, although even my Miss Temple, the high-heel queen, hates pantyhose. I do not want to mention how many times she goes barefooted and high-heeled, but I understand that this is all the fashion now among the starlet set.

I manage to muffle any cries of protest as I am raked right and left on the way up.

I suppose my reward is the sight of two Rottweilers, heads bowed and nostrils sucking sand, snuffling and whimpering at the foot of the vine that has been our high road to heaven.

Louise is already intently pawing a mullioned window.

I join her on the wide sill to lick down my worst wounds and cowlicks.

“Forget the grooming fetish,” she advises. “No one will see us to care how smooth your coat is. I hope.”

“So this Shangri-La is crashing with CC.”

“Speak sense, Poppy.”

“She is residing at the house. Do you suspect some hankypanky?”

“Really! I choose not to dwell upon the disgusting mating habits of humans, which never cease. I suspect that since CC must remain in constant hiding, anyone who joins the act is forced to stay here so they can practice.”

“Practice! Mr. Max Kinsella has never been seen to practice.”

“No doubt he has his own hideaway for the purpose, unless you believe that magicians can really work magic?”

“Of course not. But what has brought you to trespassing on such sinister grounds?”

Midnight Louise shrugs the silver-tipped ruff that nestles around her shoulders like an open bear trap with a fun-fur cover. “I wanted to check up on the boys, make sure that they were being treated right here.”

“Like you would be able to do something about it if they were not,” I jeer.

She ignores me, which is very hard on a jeerer. “Everything was on the up-and-up on the outside, where the Big Cats are kept. It was what was going on in the inside that kept me sniffing around.”

“How did you manage to breeze in through a window if the joint is so protected by security?” I ask, eyeing the cushy chamber beyond the mullioned window. A guy could film Rebecca here, the place looks so old-Hollywood-style lush, and creepy in that inimitable blend that only black-and-white movies can convey.

“I did not. Every aperture is wired for sound and fury, including the chimneys.”

“Then how do we —?”

For an answer she flips her busy tail in my face and ankles off along the ledge.

I cast one last hungry look at the Leave Her to Heaven bedroom, all chiffon and brocade and oil portraits of to-die-for dames and tall glass perfume bottles that resemble a cityscape of mid town Manhattan.

Instead of busting into Manderlay I am taking the high road to agoraphobia.

At least Louise is doing point.

Way up here the oleander bush tops scratch on the brickwork and it is a hard twenty-foot fall to the foundation landscaping, which looks to be a variety of thorny hedge.

At last Louise pauses at a porthole the size of a salad plate and sits down with unpardonable pride.

“This is a peephole?” I suggest.

“This is the only unwired entry in the place.”

I peer through the aluminum-lined opening. “I can see why. A snake would have trouble breaking and entering here.”

“Luckily, the snakes stick to the ground cover.”

I peer below, picturing serpents writhing among the thorns. No way do I want to go down.

“This is a perfect entrance,” Louise goes on. And on.

It seems she has stumbled across a former clothes dryer vent pipe in a closet that everyone has forgotten was once an ultra-modern second-floor laundry room, only now it is filled with racks of costumes and stage props. The pipe, she says, exits into the back of a red-satin-lined cape, sort of like the escape chute on an airliner.

A moment later, the tip of her tail is vanishing into the pipe. She has not even paused to consider that I might be a rather tight fit. Young kits nowadays!

Normally the Rule of Entry and Exit is: if the head will fit, you must commit.

However, this helpful motto does not allow for individuals whose proportions tend more toward those of Nero Wolfe than the Thin Man.

I must admit to wolfing down my food more often than not of late, especially when I get out and have a chance at something other than that arid mound of Free-to-be-Feline Miss Temple keeps endlessly replenished at the Circle Ritz. Luckily, Las Vegas is as much a town to eat out in as to lose your lunch (and bargain buffet breakfast) in.

However, I cannot have Miss Louise saying I am the slowpoke of the outfit, so I nose my way into the pipe.

It is dark and cold as only bare metal can be in this climate. I can already feel my innards shrinking from the chilly contact, which will only do me good in slithering through this foul worm-hole.

Still, it is quite a job to wriggle through, requiring all my superior muscular strength. I recall an anaconda from a previous case and pretend that I can propel myself by rippling muscle tone alone, as Trojan did.

Finally my head pokes through into free space. I feel like I can breathe again, and grunt and huff as I pull my body through the eye of the needle that Miss Louise’s wonderful, handy, forgotten entryway has proven to be.

I plop with a thump onto the advertised red satin lining of the cape, which is so slippery I can barely get the traction to push myself upright without flailing my battle-shivs through it until it is shredded wheat.