Cat In A Leopard Spot

“I don’t know that stuff. I jest hear about it from the animal-rights folks after it’s over. ’Sides, where can a fellah reach the Magnifying Max these days anyway?”

Max smiled. “The Mystifying Max. That is a problem. Temple can give you her card.”

Granger suddenly relaxed into his usual good-ole-boy charm. “You sure you want to take that risk, partner? I might be tempted to call her number jest to hear that nice growly little voice of hers. Sounds like a tiger cub.”

Temple cleared her throat and presented a card.

“Acts like it sometimes too,” Max said. “So I wouldn’t bother her unnecessarily.”

“You’re jest like that leopard there, Max. Territorial.”

Max shrugged this time. “Only way to be, in this wicked world.”

“Well, this here’s my territory.” Granger squinted into the monotonous distance. “And no animal that gets here gets hurt. Unless it’s a man with a gun.”

As they drove away, Temple shook her feet out of the sandals and planted her bare soles on the car’s cool carpeting.

“Ummm. I’ve inhaled enough dust today to pass for an air cleaner. What is it with you and that panther and leopard? This is the man Midnight Louie won’t honor with a passing glance, and you practically have leopards and panthers eating out of your bare hand. What are you, Dr. Dolittle?”

“No trick. They’ve both been trained to work with humans.”

“Both?

Max glanced at her just before he was occupied with turning onto the highway and merging with traffic.

“Both. That’s what I found so interesting.

“Wait a minute! This is the Cloaked Conjuror’s leopard, but you said the Synth may have kidnapped it.”

“May have.”

“And then…sold it to the hunting ranch? Why?”

“The Synth is angry with the Cloaked Conjuror. I wondered why he hadn’t gotten a ransom demand. Obviously, the leopard was worth a lot to him, professionally. And you don’t work with an animal without getting attached to it. I wonder if, after it had been killed, he would have been sent the head.”

Temple made a noise of revulsion. “Why didn’t you just tell Mr. Granger who the leopard belongs to and get him home?”

“For one thing, I don’t want to alert whoever abducted the leopard that anyone knows where it is. That might be dangerous for the leopard. For another, Kirby has become less liberal since the days when he provided my cockatoos. He no longer approves of performing animals, no matter how well they’re cared for.”

“What about Siegfried and Roy and their breeding program for rare white tigers?”

“I don’t know. Kirby’s more of a hard-liner now than when I worked with him before.”

“Maybe having a canned-hunt club for a neighbor has something to do with it.”

Max nodded, looking abstracted.

Temple amused herself by trying to dust off her diamonds using the soft inside of her knit top.

“You can take custody of this,” she said after a minute.

“You don’t like masquerading as the rich and famous?”

“And as the mugged? I don’t think so. Did you see how Leonora couldn’t take her eyes off of it? And that Rafi guy, when he first spotted it, the look he had.”

“What?”

“Angry. And hungry.”

“Interesting. What did you think of him?”

“I already told you.”

“As a woman.”

“As a woman. You mean if I met him in a singles club, which I wouldn’t because I don’t go there.”

“Glad to hear it.”

Temple thought back. “He must be forty…”

“Age is the first thing you notice about a man?”

“That’s the problem. I really wouldn’t have noticed him if you weren’t asking me to make observations. He’s one of those older guys—”

“Older? At forty. Remind me to not have any birthdays for the next few years.”

“He seems more like fifty, really. I get a sense he’s been through the mill, that he’s down and out and has been for a long time, but he used to be something once. There’s an air of authority. Granted, it comes out as arrogance, but there’s something unconscious about it. Oh, and my opinion as a woman, by which I assume you mean how sexy I find him: I don’t, because I’m not looking for sexy, at least not outside the neighborhood, but he has a certain appeal in a noir kind of way. He’s pretty good-looking, or would be if he didn’t look so dissolute. You think he and Leonora have a thing going?”

“Now, that’s an idea. Husband dies, he shows up.”

“Now I get to ask you what you thought of Leonora.”

“Why? Tit for tat?”

“I’ve seen her before and you haven’t.”

“Something to see, all right. What would possess a normal woman to systemically rearrange her face into something out of Cats!?”

“Fashion, I suppose. And a weird kind of tribute to her husband’s business? But what did you think of her, as a man?”

“She comes across as sexually predatory, but I sense no heart in it. It’s automatic. If anything, I’d suspect she’s frigid.”

“That eliminates a hot affair with Rafi.”

“She might be able to fake it to get what she wants.”

“Which is…was…hubby dead?”