Cat In An Aqua Storm

This is why, despite a half-dozen flunkies of officialdom bustling around the body, I lurk literally under their busy, oblivious feet, awaiting my opportunity. Some accuse my kind of sneakiness, but it is survival instincts that direct me to be discreet The moment will arrive when a morgue attendant will turn aside, or a comment will distract their joint attention. Then I will dash in for the kill—or the diagnosis in this case.

Yet they are many, and no one leaves the body for a moment.

The fatal bag is produced, and I quiver in my boots. My sniffer is a world-class apparatus, but polyvinylchloride is one substance it cannot penetrate with any degree of accuracy.

At that moment, I hear the tread of large flat feet. A voice directs the assembled crew's attention to the body's former position, and the unearthly glow upon the noxious carpet that outlines the area.

For a few precious moments, little Miss Kitty is as unattended as a wallflower at the high school prom.

I seize the opportunity and run with it—run, in fact, toward her immobile body. My whiskers twitch with recognition. An insinuating scent wends its way to my flared nostrils. Miss Kitty has been branded with the same odor as her predecessor in death.

I pussyfoot out of sight, and hunker down under a banquet table swathed in white, floor-length linen. Beyond me, a crew of men bags the lady, and lifts her onto a cold metal gurney. She feels nothing, but my whiskers twitch in indignation.

I will not rest until I have traced this fatal scent to its origin. The killer.

Somewhere, on some forgotten swell of sea and salmon, the old dude would lift his venerable snout to the wind, and be proud of me.

21

A Walk on the Wild Side

The palace guard was loath to let Temple enter the ballroom again until she used the password of Molina’s name and rank. She doubted these private cops much feared the regular force, but they wanted them out of their territory as fast as possible.

Despite Molina’s grumblings, the crime scene was clearing. Nothing remained of the body but a faint powdery luminescence on the carpeting—fairy dust from a Tinker Bell whom no one had cared about enough to clap for.

Molina joined her, looking harried. “Tell me about your encounter with the victim.”

“Her name,” Temple said pointedly, “was Katharine. With an ’a-r’ in the middle. I picked that up from her pronunciation, so... precise. Like a child’s who is lost and wants to make sure you understand perfectly so you can get her home again.”

“Katharine? You’re sure?”

Temple turned at Molina’s sharp tone. “Of course. I hadn’t been knocked half silly yet.”

“I don’t mean to contradict you—” Molina frowned, whether at her own train of thought or at what she was about to tell Temple wasn’t clear. Molina consulted her notebook in the spotlight glare that was both too intense and too diffuse to read by.

“That’s odd.” She pursed her lips. “Everyone I talked to said her name was Kitty. Kitty Cardozo. She’s well known around town, worked here for years. Has a kid attending UNLV.”

“A kid in college?” Now Temple was puzzled. “She didn’t look a day over twenty-four.”

Molina’s eyes stayed on her notebook. “Thirty-five. Started young.”

“Stripping or having kids?”

Molina sighed. “They usually start both too soon. Now tell me about her.”