Cat In A Sapphire Slipper

“Humans are way too anal-retentive. We cats like to bury our leavings both physical and emotional as soon as possible. You are lucky that your untimely impact with a Brinks truck impressed you on my memory, so I developed a sentimental attachment.”

I am starting to get that I am not a priority among most of the females of my breed. Except at breeding time.

“So what is Mr. Matt’s hot clue?”

“I was able to tail him unnoticed to the courtesans’ break room and slip into the bedroom of the one known as Miss Madonnah. She was a mysterious lady. Never looked the same twice. Apparently she’s the number one candidate for the murder victim. He unearthed something in the purse in her bottom dresser drawer. It was a gum wrapper with something written on it.”

“What?”

“It was Juicy Fruit, a particularly cloying and unmistakable scent.”

“Not the variety of gum! What was written on the wrapper?”

“Something short. I was hiding under the bed and couldn’t see it without leaping up and out, and pulling Mr. Matt’s arm down, and that would not be a wise undercover move.”

“Actually, it would have been great. People expect us to make unexpected attacks on their extremities and you might have been able to read the message.”

“Unlikely at that speed. His lips did move as he attempted to memorize it. Humans often do that sort of pantomime.”

“Memorize it. It must be a number!”

“To what?”

“Perhaps a Swiss bank account. Who knows? We must find out more.”

“I suppose it could be a number to the safe,” she muses.

“Safe? What safe? Where?”

“In Miss Kitty’s office, inside a hidden closet.”

“I suppose she does handle a great deal of cash. Many of the gentlemen callers would not want their stay recorded on a credit card.”

“No, but the corporate name is Desert Deposits, so it is not a dead giveaway.”

I shudder. “That sounds like coyote droppings to me. I had a bad experience with that once.”

“A coyote, or droppings?”

“Both,” I reply tersely. “What else might be kept in the safe?”

“The courtesans’ IDs. Oh, and probably the surveillance films.”

This makes my neck hairs stand to attention.

“There are surveillance tapes?”

“Not in the bedrooms, of course. That would be illegal, but in the bar, parlor, and foyer, just to keep a record of our clients. In case one is naughty.”

“I have news for you: they all are ‘naughty’ just for being here.”

“I mean, if one is rough with a courtesan, or is drunk. Miss Kitty is careful to back up any testimony she might have to give. Humans can be brutal.”

“No kidding! The safe is very interesting. You must find out what kind of number Mr. Matt found.”

“Humans do not exactly confide in us.”

“But he will surely communicate this to Miss Temple. I must remain here until the rest of the crew checks in. Go back downstairs and glue yourself to Miss Temple or Mr. Matt, without attracting attention.”

“That is silly. I always attract attention.”

I give her and her turquoise cape the once-over. Good point.

“Make it look like you are hanging around for food or flattery,” I advise. “They will never suspect a thing.”

Missing Max

Garry Randolph had two roles to play that awful morning.

One was genuine. Heartfelt.

His charge was gone, had vanished. Overnight. His “nephew, Mike Randolph.”

This grief he didn’t have to feign. Max was . . . was . . . is . . . so much to him. Pupil. Peer. Partner.

The clinic bedroom reeked with treachery. An overturned IV stand. Far under the bed, a full hypodermic needle. It rested in Garry’s capacious suit coat pocket now. Not for him, or his physical type, the sleek fitted suit. For him the large, lumpy one, capable of holding as many magicians’ tricks as a suit coat the size of the Colosseum in Rome . . . .

“But what happened here?” he asked the supervising doctor, acting as ignorant as he felt for once.

“These head cases can get strange obsessions. The man, who knows what he was thinking, simply ran. Fled who knows what demons in his stressed brain?”

The man, thought Randolph, ran because his life was threatened. Garry had no doubt the syringe would prove to be filled with something fatal.

Max! Out of his head but still possessed of that rare, acute prescience Garry had seen in him as a terrorism-wounded boy of seventeen. A middle-class American boy catapulted into the worst the world had to offer, the worst of global politics a man or boy could face.

Garry had faced it too long. He yearned for a happy ending. The restoration of memory. The restoration of peace. Hope. Happiness.

Now, here, he was called upon to exert all his old, devious skills.

“Perhaps,” he suggested to the night physician, “we should talk to his psychiatrist about this.”

“Gone?” he said, hearing himself sound honestly astounded forty minutes later.

His heart didn’t know whether to soar or sink.

So the able Dr. Schneider had gotten Max out of here. For what? Debriefing? Rescue mission? Laugh at that one. For . . . sex? Max had been attracted, as any man who wasn’t brain-dead would have been.