Carole Douglas - Cat in a Midnight Choir

The leaves close like emerald curtains and we are alone once more.

“See,” says Louise. “That was not so bad. We can consider this a family business. No one will think anything of it.”

I think something of it, and it is not good! But I have not lasted in a cruel world so long without being a smidgeon adaptable, so I lick my lips and weigh how badly I want to track down the rotten Hyacinth against how much I hate conceding anything to Midnight Louise.

“All right,” I say. “You are in the firm: Midnight Louie and Son.”

“And son!”

“That is what they usually name two-generation businesses.”

“I am not a male!”

“Yeah, well, one could not tell by looking at you. You could be one of these poor souls the Fixers got. A business has to have a name the public will have confidence in: Midnight Louie and Son. What’s not to love, like, and lap right up?”

“How about Midnight Louie and Daughter?”

I try not to snerk up my plush leather glove. The kit is so busy defending her gender she has neglected to note that I remain the first and foremost element in the billing.

“Who ever heard of a PI firm with ‘and Daughter’ in the name? Not that I concede that you are, of course. My daughter, that is.”

“I do not care what you concede. I am not moving a foot on the way into that Fort Knox of a house until you come up with something reasonable.”

When a dame uses the word “reasonable” she means her way, period.

I shift my weight from forefoot to forefoot. I must admit that Midnight Louise has certain talents she may have gotten from a brilliant second-story dude like myself. She does have potential, and I could use a schnook now and then. But I cannot stomach, in this life or any other of my remaining eight,“Midnight Louie and Daughter.”

If ever I was called upon to be brilliant and devious, it is now.

I clear my throat. I hum a few bars of “Melancholy Baby.” I rid myself of an irksome nail sheath.

“Quit stalling, Mein Papa. You are cornered and you know it.”

I am at my most inventive when cornered, so…invent!

“All right,” I say portentously. “We will be partners in a firm. We will have a sexy, Richard Diamond kind of aura.”

“Richard who?”

“TV PI, had a secretary with a world-class pair of gams.” (Which were provided by Miss Mary Tyler Moore, who went on to become even more famous for tossing a hat into the air at the opening of a TV show.)

Midnight Louise blinks. I do not think that she knows a “gam” from a “gat” or she would be all over me for that sexist remark. I swallow my smirk.

“We will have a name that says it all,” I go on, caught up in my own scenario.

“We will be equal,” she warns, flattening her ears and fluffing her fur.

I am not afraid of a family spat with Midnight Louise, but I am well aware that her lurking backup outweighs me twenty to one, and there are two of them.

I straighten, shake out my coat until it is in gleaming order, and pronounce: “Midnight Inc. What could be better?”

I catch her flat-footed and wimp-whiskered. “You mean like in India ink?” she asks, confused.

“No. As in Murder Inc. Capisce ?”

“It does sound dangerous,” she concedes.

“It is compact.”

“It does include both our names.”

“Indeed.”

“It is gender neutral.”

“Of course,” I growl. I hate gender neutral.

“It will do.”

With that she turns on her tail and struts forward, assuming that I will follow.

Having dodged “Midnight Louie and Daughter,” I do. For now.

I do . The expression smacks indecently of wedding vows.

Well, there is always divorce and, in business unions, dissolution. And finally, in Midnight Inc.’s line of work,’til death do us part.

Sunset Boulevard

I stare at the pool behind the house.

It is big and old-fashioned, just a huge, deep rectangle of blue mosaic tiles seen through a glassy viewfinder of chlorinated water, darkly. Some jungle leaves the size of elephant ears float like lily pads, lending an air of disuse or of the macabre, I cannot decide which.

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 bare-footed 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.”