Cat In A Flamingo Fedora

Chapter 9

Call Her Stage Mama

If ever a child of hers were in the school play, Temple would never show up at rehearsal to embarrass the poor thing, be it boy or girl.

But Temple didn't have a child, she had an it. A cat.

And supervising a cat's participation in a television commercial was more akin to being an animal-rights activist than a stage mother.

Stage mothers were the pond scum of the earth and the dust ball under Sir Laurence Olivier's bed, for good measure. Animal-rights watchdogs were assertive, altruistic people.

Why, then, did Temple feel like the fifth wheel on somebody else's little red wagon just for being back here at Gangster's, hovering over Midnight Louie's carrier like a loan officer expecting an imminent repossession of the family farm?

Maybe it was the stormy look on the face of her competition for the stage -mother sweepstakes.

Savannah Ashleigh, chic in an acid-green satin spandex jumpsuit, glowered at Temple and Midnight Louie's humble discount- store carrier as if they both were infected with the plague.

Temple wished that it were so, but only for the privilege of passing on the lethal germ to the film star. On the other hand, a nice dose of plague might spring Temple and Louie from the tedium of waiting for the hours and hours it took to set up a TV commercial.

Temple flipped down the empty theater seat to the left of Louie's big beige carrie r and sat.

Savannah Ashleigh, glaring, did likewise on the right side of Yvette's carrier, a small pink bit of baggage like her mistress.

"I'm here," Savannah announced to no one in particular, and thus to everyone, in her breathy ersatz-Monroe diction, "to see that my Yvette gets the proper number of potty breaks."

"Funny," Temple said. "I am here to see that my Louie doesn't get pointless trips to the box.

He has such terrific self-control, you know, due to his sturdy proletarian roots."

"He is a Communist cat?" Savannah's heavily powdered brows, clashing together, raised a small dust poof of disapproval.

"I was speaking of his vigorous bloodlines."

"You mean alley-cat stew!"

"Exactly. Louie's genes have not been watered down by generations of over breeding. No wonder your Yvette . . . wets."

"Yvette is a sensitive, delicate creature who takes her responsibilities before the camera to heart. Has your cat had any on-camera experience?"

"Quite a bit, lately," Temple said loftily, thanking her unlucky stars for the recent Halloween-seance filming that had put Louie in the spotlight. For once Crawford Buchanan and his cursed Hot Heads kamikaze camera lens were good for something. "And, of course, Louie's done a good deal of still work." Like the newspaper photos recording his exploits in the body-finding and death-defying departments.

"Still studio work means nothing these days." Savannah's dismissive shrug further dislodged her off-the-shoulder neckline.

"I guess you should know," Temple conceded politely.

"At least Yvette can benefit from my vast experience in the film field. Your Louie is not so blessed. Cats are not often called upon to do--what is your line of work?--oh, yes. PR."

Savannah might as well have articulated the childishly dismissive word, "Pee-yew."

"Somebody has to do it," Temple said cheerfully, "and Louie is actually quite good at it.

Guess he was born with cat charisma."

"We shall see when the film begins to roll," Savannah retorted dubiously. "No director can afford expensive delays and reshoots for an amateur."

"You should certainly know," Temple answered again, much less politely.

An even more impolite silence ensued, just as a lull in the onstage action arrived. The previous day's dress-rehearsal cast was scattered around the dramatically tiered set, a symphony in sherbet-colored costumes.

Temple didn't care much for revue-style shows, and Las Vegas versions were more bloated than most: bloated with dancers and production numbers, with chorus girls attired as God made them, except for pounds of glitz everywhere on their persons that immodesty permitted, with ponderously written jokes as ponderously delivered.

Still, the Darren Cooke show, from what she had glimpsed of it, seemed determinedly snappy. Its star sucked energy from being onstage as greedily as every little lightbulb in Vegas siphoned off the millions of kilowatts generated by nearby Hoover Dam.

Hoover Dam. Temple pictured that Cinemascopic curve of mighty gray wall, plastered with pink plastic flamingos, twisting gently in the breeze like rearview mirror trinkets. A monumental achievement...

An assistant mounted the stairs to the stage, Yvette's pink carrier in hand. Apparently she had no stand-in, poor overworked little thing.

Temple glanced across the two in-between seats at the other bereft owner. The shared stress of waiting helplessly while one's beloved pet was carted away to the crowded stage had done nothing to melt the Iron Curtain between the two women. Savannah rose to stalk away on Miami Beach, wood-soled high-heeled sandals. Their slender straps carried a cargo of enough fake fruit to make Carmen Miranda's neck snap.

Temple shrugged to herself and scrunched down in her seat to watch the forthcoming action.

"May I join you?"

The tone was low, but the timbre thrummed with excitement. Temple glanced up to see why, amazed when Darren Cooke, every razor-cut hair precisely out of place, pushed down the flip-up theater seat to sit beside her.

If she'd been Little Miss Muffet and he had been a tarantula, she couldn't have been more surprised. Glancing around, she saw that they alone sat in the house seats. Everyone else was clustered up on the stage to watch the rehearsal.

Cooke's smile revealed Hollywood-white teeth and a perception of just how much his fame and reputation nonplussed her.

Oh, what white teeth you have, grandfather, Temple thought. And big eyes for another conquest maybe.

"I understand your cat is the star of the coming big scene."

"Co-star. Savannah Ashleigh's Yvette actually was contracted for the commercial before Louie."

"Louie? I still love it. A great name for an alley cat."

"Midnight Louie," she reminded him.

"Even better." He peered politely into the dim carrier, but Temple would bet he didn't give a fresh fig about cats. "I assume he's black. Black animals are usually harder to film. How did he get the part?"

"He, ah, crashed the site of the last commercial shoot. Louie seems to have an abiding interest in Yvette."

"He's not a tomcat?"

"I'm afraid so. I meant to get him fixed, but . . . things keep happening."

"What things?" Cooke's face was sober now, one of those unusual men's faces that look more handsome when they're not smiling. Like the young Brando or Beatty.

Temple was reluctant to explain all the ins and outs of her and Louie's careers in crime. Her hesitation seemed to please Darren Cooke.

"The Divine Savannah called you 'Nancy Drew' the other day. Why is that?"

"That's what you call her, 'the Divine Savannah'?" Temple found that a scream, attaching an adjective coined for the Divine Sarah Bernhardt to a strictly B-movie actress like Savannah Ashleigh.

"Not to her face," Cooke added with a slight smile.

"And why would she be talking about me to you?"

"Savannah is like Scarlett O'Hara. She sees herself as greatly wronged by the inequities of the world. Apparently your alley cat coming out of nowhere to share the billing with her purebred is beyond her endurance."

"Too bad. She'll just have to hope that tomorrow is another day."

"But what's this Nancy Drew stuff?"

"Silliness. Why do you want to know?"

He frowned, a nice manly frown that would come across well on camera. Film actors knew their every bad angle, their every winning expression; they practiced hiding one and flashing the other daily. Temple sometimes wondered how they survived without a flunky carrying a mirror around for them. She had seen young actors that could no longer look someone they were talking to in the eye. They were that busy searching out a mirror, or any reflective surface.

Cooke was a veteran; the mirror was internalized by now. He could feign concentration on another person pretty well. No wonder he was a ladies' man.

Now he was looking sincere, but decently reluctant. "I have a delicate problem I don't want to discuss with the usual . . . professionals. I would trust an amateur more at this point. And a woman. If you are a grown-up Nancy Drew, and you are a fetching candidate for the role," he added with a rapid sizing-up, "I might-- want your advice. For a professional consideration, of course."

"Mr. Cooke, I've never been paid by anybody for stumbling onto the scene of a crime. As a public-relations person, I have a responsibility to see that events I'm coordinating are efficiently run."

"And murder is so inefficient."

"Exactly. Not to mention bad press. The sooner it's off the books, the sooner the status quo is restored. That's how I got involved in what I got involved with."

"Fascinating. Crime-solving as good PR. It makes sense. I know you might not want to take on a commission, but it's really advice I need, and badly. Tomorrow's Sunday. I throw an eleven a.m. brunch for friends and crew in my suite at the Oasis. Come up for a bite, and we'll find time for a talk. That's all I ask."

Temple was a veteran PR woman. She'd had her fill of celebrity socials where everyone used the mirror of her spectacles for a looking glass. Still, this was the first time she'd been invited by the host celebrity before. Even more interesting, he was a notorious womanizer who seemed more interested in her little gray cells than her crimson curls.

As she hesitated, he said something astounding.

"Please."

Temple nodded mutely. The last time she had turned down a man she suspected of lascivious motives, he had died before her eyes. Only then had it occurred to her that she had a certain reputation in this town for getting to the bottom of things. She wasn't just a young, single woman in Las Vegas anymore, she was P.I. PR woman, supersleuth!

Just like Louie was about to become Mr. Midnight, TV star!

As Darren Cooke discreetly slipped away to rejoin the cast onstage, another low voice was at her ear.

"Miss Barr."

Sharon Hammerlitz, the hostile animal trainer (not that the animals were hostile, just the trainer), leaned over her.

"Keep Louie calm. Frank is going to do a run-through on the sequence with Maurice, but we'll need Louie backstage now to slip in for the final take."

"Why Maurice first?"

"He's a stuntcat, so call him Midnight Louie's body double. I know how to make Maurice go where they want, so they can get a quick fix on the entire action sequence. Then I put Louie in, and hope."

She sounded crabby and Temple, watching Sharon walk off with Louie's heavy carrier, couldn't blame her. A perfectly adequate and trained pro, Maurice, had been pushed aside by a rank newcomer who probably would muff his business. Luckily, Louie had no lines to blow, as far as Temple knew.

Temple trained her attention on the stage, and noticed Savannah Ashleigh at stage left, glaring out at the empty seats. Empty except for Temple.

She was obviously wishing either Temple or Midnight Louie dead, and probably both.