Cat In A Leopard Spot

She glanced again at Midnight Louie, getting an idea. He’d once favored hanging out near a canna lily stand and koi pond like Sam Spade keeping office hours behind the….

“Of course,” she told Savannah Ashleigh. “We could meet at the Crystal Phoenix Hotel.”

“Yes,” she repeated her caller’s reaction, “it is ‘always gracious to do business over a good belt.’ I’ll meet you at the Crystal Court Bar. Three P.M.”

Temple shut off the connection.

Louie was regarding her, enormous green eyes reducing his pupils to their most condemnatory slit. Temple made excuses, fast.

“It is Savannah Ashleigh, as you heard. Maybe she meant ‘belt’ in the sense of…a solid Austrian crystal Judith Lieber designer belt—yum—or Conchos or shells, or even a black belt.”

Louie gave his opinion of this meeting by swiping the last printed-out pages off her desk. Now that was a “good belt.”

“You can come along and visit Midnight Louise,” she coaxed him. “Wouldn’t that be nice?”

Midnight Louise was a black stray who’d taken his position of house cat at the Phoenix after Louie had moved in with her at the Circle Ritz condominium and apartment building.

Nice? Louie had no comment but chewing the hairs between his toes.

“Besides,” Temple mused. “I’m wondering why Savannah Ashleigh wants to see me about a murder. Aren’t you even curious?”

That comment propelled him off the desk to the floor.

Temple checked her watch. Eleven A. M. It must be five o’clock somewhere and she could use a belt or two as well. Matt wasn’t coming home from a career-changing personal appearance on The Amanda Show in Chicago for three days and what was left of Max was flying in from Northern Ireland late this afternoon.

Temple guessed she could use a time-wasting rendezvous with a has-been B-minus movie actress to keep her mind off the forthcoming personal apocalypse.

This is a work of fiction. All the characters and events portrayed in this novel are either fictitious or are used fictitiously.

CAT IN A LEOPARD SPOT

Copyright © 2001 by Carole Nelson Douglas

All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book, or portions thereof, in any form.

A Forge Book

Published by Tom Doherty Associates, LLC

175 Fifth Avenue

New York, NY 10010

www.tor.com

Forge^® is a registered trademark of Tom Doherty Associates, LLC.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Douglas, Carole Nelson.

Cat in a leopard spot: a Midnight Louie mystery / Carole Nelson Douglas.—1st ed.

p.cm.

“A Tom Doherty Associates book.”

ISBN: 978-0-312-85370-9

1. Midnight Louie (Fictitious character)—fiction. 2. Barr, Temple (Fictitious character)—Fiction. 3. Public relations consultants—Fiction. 4. Women cat owners—Fiction. 5. Las Vegas (Nev.)—Fiction. 6. Cats—Fiction. I. Title.

PS3554.O8237 C2765 2001

813'.54—dc21

00-047711

^*also mystery

^*also mystery

^*also mystery

^*also mystery