Cat In An Aqua Storm

“Please,” she rumbles throatily, and what is an honorable dude to do?

I leap down to the floor In one bound, and assist her off the chair.

A light still beams in Miss Savannah Ashleigh's dressing room. The Divine Yvette minces, one fine, furred foot set in front of the other, toward the ajar door. Even I can hear the muted sobs within.

Yvette noses open the door, turns to give me one last, lingering look that would melt a snow leopard, then shoulders her way through.

I hear a gasp. A cry. “Oh, Yvette! You’re back. Momsy is so glad her baby-waby is backy-wacky!”

I stifle a gagging noise. It would be impolite to deposit a hair ball outside the Divine Yvette's door.

At the sound of a zipper being opened, I turn and walk away.

Miss Temple Barr is waiting up at the Circle Ritz. No doubt the caffeine In the Black Russian has given her the heebie-jeebies. I loft through the bathroom window, and she pounces on me with a full food dish.

“Louie!” she cries. “See! No more Free-to-Be-Feline. This is Salmon Surprise, from the Kat-sup company. And no declawing, so help me.”

She mentions nothing of the other abhorred procedure, and far be it from me to remind her. At the moment she is hanging over me like a pendulum and massaging my neck, while cooing my name. The Divine Yvette she isn't, but I have been in worse spots in my nine lives.

33

Electra City

Matt Devinestepped around to the passenger door of the aqua Storm and opened it.

Temple couldn’t “just say no” when Matt had offered to drive tonight. How could she explain knowing that he had no license? He must have had one once upon a time. He knew how to drive.

“Are you sure you want to return to the scene of the crime?” he asked.

Beams of light lanced the Saturday night Las Vegas sky, announcing the strippers’ competition to the very heavens. The colossus’s diaper was the focus of a thousand kilowatts of laser light every seventy-five seconds. A neon sign boasted Babes... Bodies... Boys.

“And miss Electra’s debut?” Temple answered. “Your landlady’s not a stripping finalist every day. I hope you don’t regret skipping your stint at ConTact tonight.”

He shook his blond head, which looked as gilded as Gypsy or June in the artificial light of the hotel entrance. “No regular client is calling now. Even though I said that knowing is worse than not knowing, I’m grateful you managed to solve who she was. I won’t have to wonder about what happened to her forever.”

“Forever,” Temple said, “is a long time.”

Matt nodded. “So is a day. Or a night. Why is Electra going through with the stripper contest?”

“She’s getting a charge out of it, what can I say? We can at least try not to laugh.”

“I’m not in a laughing mood.”

“Me, neither.”

They entered the hotel, Temple bracing herself to pass the Sultan’s Palace and The Love Moat. Then Matt started asking her about the details of the case and she forgot to brood over these emotional landmarks.

“Molina says the case is cut and dried,” Temple told him. “Wilma—Carter’s her last name—has a history of mental illness, and there’s no doubt her daughters were molested by her husband. They’ve all vanished, and she’s left holding the bag of guilt. She’ll be put away, but not in prison. It’s harder to get out of a mental hospital than a jail, these days. Would you think I was crazy if I visited her?”

“I’d think you were a twenty-four-carat human being. I envy you,” he said, as the velvet ropes parted for Temple’s VIP pass. It was the least Ike Wetzel could do, and Ike Wetzel always did the least.

“Why?”

They were soon seated in a wine-velvet-upholstered banquet. An obsequious waiter dashed up with glasses of champagne on the house.