Cat In A Leopard Spot

“Come to think of it, I’ve heard he does Savannah Ashleigh.”

“Who?”

“Never mind.”

“Well, good luck. I would certainly do anything I could to keep your Mr. Maximilian happy.”

You did it yourself for Mr. Van Burkleo, Temple thought, and look what it got you both.

“My face is my work of art,” Leonora added.

Cubist period, Temple added mentally. Hamlet was right, much as she despised the line: Vanity! Thy name is woman.

“I’ll look right into it,” Temple promised.

As soon as she hung up, she opened the Yellow Pages. Dr. Mendel, huh? She already knew him. She’d buffaloed him before, so she probably could flog some information about Leonora and her surgeries from him.

She dialed the office and asked for a consultation, soon. The matter, she said, was urgent.

Chapter 37

Human Error

Although I am the first to assert that my Miss Temple is a pretty sharp cookie you wouldn’t want to try snacking on without a lip guard, I must admit that she does have her unguarded moments. Usually when Mr. Max or Mr. Matt is around.

These moments also occur when she is in the act of entering or exiting a motor vehicle, which I find a most convenient failing. Especially if Mr. Max or Mr. Matt is also in the car.

In this case, it has been a real lifesaver for me and my partners in crime solving.

Thus it is that we three—me and the Terrierable Twos, Groucho and Golda—are safely sheltering under the oleander bushes bordering the Circle Ritz parking lot by the time she accosts Mr. Matt shortly after Mr. Max has driven off.

I say “accost” because Mr. Matt Devine is behaving as I have never seen him do before. Instead of suffering from an inability to take his eyes off Miss Temple, he is darting them around the parking lot as if aware that I and the Dustball Twins are under the oleanders. He is, in fact, looking like a minor character in a bad detective novel. Were I in such a production, I would be forced to describe him as looking shifty.

Fortunately, I am not and can instead say that he is moving his gaze around the parking lot perimeter as if worrying that even the bushes have eyes and ears.

Which they do at this time, thanks to my stage-managing a discreet exit from the backseat floor while Miss Temple has the passenger door open and one dainty foot brushing the pavement while she is arranging an exchange of diamonds and emerald with Mr. Max Kinsella.

Handing off fifty thou or so in vintage jewels is sufficiently novel that they keep their eyes firmly on the ring and each other, and not on any side issues escaping out the ajar door.

The G-forces have been admirably obedient during our escape from Rancho Exotica via the Animal Oasis.

Thanks to their keeping their yaps glued tighter than a showgirl’s false eyelashes, we have all been as silent and surreptitious as ninjas.

Wrrowwww-wrrowww-wow-wow-wow, goes Golda, ruining my self-congratulatory soliloquy.

Wrrowwww-wrrowww-wow-wow-wow, goes Groucho, doubling the odds of our attracting unwanted attention.

I need not have worried, Miss Temple has sped into the building, and Mr. Matt, with one last shifty glance around, has hastened to follow her. Would that the Yorkies were as consistent with me.

I sigh deeply as their Wrrowwww-wrrowww-wow-wow-wow duet falls on the slam of the Circle Ritz door.

Safe at home.

Then I see what they have been Wrrowwwww-wrrowwwing at.

Not so safe at home.

Miss Midnight Louise is sitting not two feet away, tapping the tip of her tail into the dry soil and raising, not Cain, but desert dust.

I sneeze, but get not so much as a “Bast bless you.”

“You drove off without me,” she finally says.

She is so mad that the sound comes out the side of her mouth, like spit.

“I could not help it. I could not get the interior latch open in time.”

“You? The city’s primo cat burglar, to hear you tell it? I think you could. I think you just decided to ditch me when the action got interesting.”

“Ditch you! If I had wanted to do that, I could have done it long before then. You know how heavy-duty those meat-locker latches are.”

“Yeah. They got to keep the meat from running away.” She is being sarcastic.

I nod sagely. “Sometimes, depending on the quality of the establishment for which the shipment is destined.”

She shakes out her ruff in disbelief and begins sweeping her rear member from side to side, raising a small dust devil.

“That leopard is mine,” she says.