Cat In A Flamingo Fedora

Chapter 36

Temple Goes a Few Rounds

Temple spent Sunday taking care of old business.

She paid a special visit that morning to Midnight Louie at the vet's, when only the weekend staff was in.

"You are my main man, Louie," she told him. "Who needs a sex life, anyway?"

She went home to while away the night eating frozen yogurt and salted peanuts and watching public TV.

***

Temple awoke Monday morning a new woman.

She glanced at the empty coverlet just once, then got dressed. She bypassed the spikes in her closet for a sensible pair of two-inch heels.

She loaded her tote bag of the day, then called the vet's office as soon as it opened.

The receptionist said that Midnight Louie was the same: somewhat depressed. He had not touched a bite of food. Temple could visit him again in late morning, after surgery was over.

First Temple headed to the public library. In the reference section, she looked up the stock of celebrity address and biography books. For once in her life, she found herself wishing that Savannah Ashleigh were not a total has-been. That she still might be listed in one of these books.

Three gave her the brush-off, but an older edition of People Who Are Somebody did list Savannah. "Birth date: February 3, 1959." Savannah was only thirty-seven? Come on! "Born: Farleigh Heights, New Jersey, Susan Imogene Isch." Ischleigh? But... Imogene! Awful name.

Wonderful name. A culprit was born! Now Nemesis would track her down.

Temple drove to police headquarters downtown. She would not allow Molina to not be in.

Positive thinking. It worked on finding parking spaces. Sure enough, one open street spot waited outside the entry tower. The Storm just fit.

Temple crossed the street to the plaza. In the lobby, she asked the desk sergeant to call Molina, if she were in. Temple Barr was here to see her.

He did, she was and Temple did.

Molina came out to the worn leather couches in the visitors' area.

"More evidence? More suspects?" she inquired in greeting.

Temple made a face. "Louie was returned to me yesterday afternoon."

"What did I tell you?"

"In a bloody satin pillowcase stinking of anesthetic and bearing the initials SIA."

Molina actually looked stunned and sat down. "How ... is he?"

"At the vet's, on fluids. Won't eat. Looks like hell. They say he's 'depressed.' "

"This is awful, but why are you seeing me about it? I don't do crimes against cats and dogs."

"I'm just telling you that Savannah Ashleigh's middle given name is Imogene."

"Ugh."

"I know. She deserves it, unlike my middle name."

"You have an undeserved middle name?" Molina inquired on a lilt of interest.

"Irrelevant. The point is, Savannah resented Midnight Louie's becoming a bigger star than her cat, Yvette, in the A La Cat commercials. There have been several mishaps on the set--a vintage-car brake failed while Louie was in it; he apparently tripped while going down a long flight of stairs on camera; the boat he and Yvette were sailing in on the Mirage lagoon sank."

"Savannah Ashleigh may be a few ounces of silicone short of a full implant, but she'd hardly sink her own cat."

"She might if she were blinded by fury. Her name is all over this pillowcase. I just wanted to warn you that I'm going to have a showdown with her. In case one of us turns up missing."

Molina sat back on the couch. "I'm not too worried. The result of your last showdown with a possible perpetrator has been a total bust."

"How?"

"Number one, the background check on Alison Darby, so far, shows she was adopted.

Darren Cooke was indeed in the city where she was born before she was born, but it's likely she built this fantasy of his being her father from that fact. Or her mother may have tried to give her a sense of importance, but I doubt it. Alison's mother was a singularly conservative, unimaginative soul, and so was her husband. They were low-income people. Darby obviously fixated on more glamorous 'real' parents during her tumultuous teen years."

For a moment Molina's face wore a worried look. Maybe she was thinking about her own preteen daughter's forthcoming tumultuous years. She went on briskly.

"Number two, the letters." Molina gathered herself for an unpleasant admission. "They were in a safe at the Flamingo Hilton, and they do match Darby's handwriting, not Cooke's; we compared them to examples among Cooke's files. Darby made some effort to disguise her writing in the letters, or she developed a secondary personality to write them, but nothing flagrant enough that we can even commit her for mental-health treatment.

"Number three, the medical examiner has always been adamant that no crime-scene evidence--not a trace--not the angle of the bullet, not powder burns, indicates that Darren Cooke did not kill himself. To simulate such a setup, a killer would have to be not only terribly knowledgeable but as skilled as a foreign agent. They've managed some pretty seamless assassinations. This is not one.

"Finally, the sleight of hand with your business card was exactly what you thought: Darby found him dead and hoped to use it to deflect any interest from her. Given her close association and the harassing letters she had been writing, she was in a perilous position, and knew it. She is not as nuts as she has been behaving. She even seems to have mellowed a little. Now that he's dead, she realizes that she's lost something.

"So, congratulations." Molina stood, towering over Temple as usual. "You may have cracked a window of reason in the mind of a troubled young woman. If you do have a head-to-head, or a hair-to-hair, with Savannah Ashleigh, don't expect police assistance. Confronting her could be construed as harassment. On the other hand, I hope you win.

"Finally, I hope you will see fit to tell me someday who ducked out of your place when Mr.

Devine so kindly announced me to one and all like a British butler. I have my suspicions, but the police like hard evidence. And the harder it is to get, the more satisfaction there is in getting it.

"Have a nice day."

And that was that.

Dissatisfied, but unable to do a darn thing about it, Temple went on to her next surprise visit. To the Goliath, where Savannah Ashleigh dwelleth like Delilah of old. This time, Delilah was going to get a shave and a haircut, and two bits of Temple's mind.

**************

She had to park the Storm a couple of leagues away from the Goliath entry. While walking in, she felt her righteous anger building up steam like a pile driver.

Savannah had better be in her room.

The desk clerk wouldn't give Temple the room number, of course. He said he would ring Miss Ashleigh's room. Whom should he say was calling?

Temple almost shouted, Miss Ischleigh from Farleigh!

But she smiled instead and gave her name: that of one of the few female film producers in Hollywood.

The clerk hung up from calling Miss Ashleigh, his attitude reflecting hers.

"You may go right up. Twentieth floor. The Suite of the Seven Veils."

Temple bestowed a chill nod as she ambled toward the elevators. Nothing like dropping someone else's name in this town.

The Suite of the Seven Veils was not too close to the elevators, but not too far from the ice machine.

The desert did demand its comforts.

She knocked, and waited. The double doors were swept open with a flourish. Savannah stood there in veils of her own, which would have been far more effective with male producers.

"You!"

"You!" Temple replied, sweeping in before the doors could slam shut and sweep her out.

She drew the bloody pillowcase from her trusty tote bag.

"Not every crook is thoughtful enough to use initialed evidence."

"Oh! Take that ugly, messy, reddish thing away!" Savannah averted her supernaturally taut face, her expression perhaps curling a little at the edges to indicate disgust.

How could an actress act through a mask of laser-sculpted collagen?

Not well.

"Sweet dreams, Mrs. Macbeth." Temple threw it down on the pale satin settee nearby.

"I want to know where you kept Midnight Louie, what you did to him and why. I won't leave until I get some answers."

Savannah drew herself up, especially the silicone and collagen parts. She had seen scripts that called upon the heroine to show pride in the face of disdain. She had practiced this particular attitude in the mirror until she had it down pat. This moment was made for her!

"I will give you answers. Do you see that little tiny, helpless cat there? My darling Yvette?"

Temple gazed where directed. Yvette was reclining in shaded-silver languor on a gray velvet pillow atop a chaise longue.

She looked adorable. She looked convinced of it herself.

"Yes?" Temple asked politely. "I imagine she has never been delivered in a pillowcase to your door."

"Deelivered." Savannah Ashleigh dropped that word with a mannered relish. "She will be deelivered, poor darling, in not too many weeks. Of a litter. A litter of your evil black cat's Midnight degeneration."

Temple blinked. Savannah's delivery was as overarticulated as any admirer of the Del Sartian school of nineteenth-century acting could desire. But what did 'degeneration' mean in this context?

"Huh?" Temple responded elegantly.

"Oooohf!" Savannah stamped a Frederick's of Hollywood high heel. A full six inches high, like the fetishists get into, quite literally, unlike Temple's usual three-inch models. The stamping high-rise shoe was leopard-spotted with touches of gold lame.

"Don't play dumb with me! You are up against a master. Look at my lovely babesy-wabesy.

She is PG. Pregnant! She will have a revolting litter by your horrible alley cat, not by the Supreme National Champion of her own breed Mumsy has spent weeks and weeks finding. This is Yvette's first litter, and it is tainted! Your beast did it!"

"How can you know?"

"Because he likes her. He is always coming around."

"But you haven't done DNA testing?"

Savannah frowned. "A lie-detector test is not necessary. A mother knows these things."

She beat her breast to indicate the maternal heart pounding away in o mniscient knowledge, and Temple feared Savannah's personal Silicone Valley might suffer a major terrain shift.

"So what did you do to him? Drug him and kidnap him? To what purpose?"

"Oh, I had a purpose. I fixed him. I fixed him so he will never do this to another innocent pussycat in all his born days. I found him here, plying his oily wiles on my poor innocent. I took him right to Dr. Mendel and told him to fix that damn cat so he could never impregnate another baby like mine. You don't even have to pay for it. It's on the house."

"You have no right to snatch another person's pet and tamper with it. That's kidnapping and... and mutilation. Who is this unscrupulous doctor who'd do such a thing?"

Savannah drew herself up: her high, unfallen frontage, her taut, unlined neck, the taut, expressionless face so like a still photo.

"He is the best plastic surgeon in Las Vegas."

"You had Louie operated on by a plastic surgeon? That's crazy. Veterinarians operate on cats."

"Vegetarians do? I thought they didn't like protein."

"Never mind." Temple was too stupefied to be furious anymore. "I'm going to call this doctor. And if I don't like what I learn, I may sue you."

"You can't. I sue other people. They don't sue me."

"Maybe they haven't yet. But they could, and I will, and maybe the others will get the idea about countersuits before I'm through."

"You have a lot of nerve."

"Yes," Temple said pleasantly.

She left before her nerve reached her fingertips and she did something fatal to Dr. Mendel's other handiwork.

In the lobby, she mauled a Yellow Pages directory until she found the doctor's number.

"Dr. Mendel is with a patient," a receptionist informed her.

Temple was on the warpath. "I'm with the Secret Service. The First Lady is giving a speech in the area, and would like to consult Dr. Mendel on a personal matter. She is not staying in the area very long, but she has heard about him from Cher--"

"Oh! Just a moment."

In just a moment the doctor was in.

"Yes?"

"What did you do to that cat Savannah Ashleigh brought in?"

"I thought you were with the Secret Service."

"I am, and it's a federal crime to kidnap an animal to perform unsanctioned procedures, especially outside your own specialty. The cat was not hers. This incident could cost you your license, Doctor. Depending, of course, on what you did."

"N-nothing. Just what she said to do. I fixed the animal so it couldn't reproduce. Or, rather, so it couldn't father kittens. It's a simple procedure done all the time all over the country on thousands of men. Er, males. I'd never done it before, but I knew what was involved and it was only a cat, after all."

"Only a cat? This cat is a direct forebear of Socks, the White House cat. You have heard of Socks?"

"Yes. Oh, dear. Miss Ashleigh was most insistent, and she is a . . . constant client. I never dreamed the animal was not hers to do with as she would. It was a very simple, uncomplicated vasectomy, I assure you. No undue bleeding, just a couple of internal staples that will dissolve.

He should be as good as new in a day or so."

"A . . . vasectomy? Isn't that difficult on a cat's small, er, appendages?"

"Well, he is a rather large cat. And I am used to working very delicately."

"Isn't a vasectomy unusual in a cat?"

"Why should it be? That's the way we do people. It's not my specialty, of course, but I've read the occasional article. I assure you he got the best surgery available. I doubt any other cat has had such a splendid vasectomy performed. My work is virtually invisible. And I even did a small tummy tuck while I was at it."

"Thank you, Doctor. The, uh, First Lady is most reassured. It will not be necessary to subpoena your records, after all. But in the future, I would advise you to perform only procedures that Miss Ashleigh requests to have done upon herself. And, by the way, I do think a bit more collagen in the lips would be an enhancement."

"Aren't they sufficiently plump, as is? I went further than I thought aesthetic the last time, on her insistence."

"Fashions change, Doctor. You might consider more. I understand the First Lady is considering some enhancement in that direction."

"Really? I will, I will consider it, Miss, uh, Service."

Temple hung up smiling. That was one way to give Savannah Ashleigh the fat lip she deserved!

***************

Temple sensed that 11 a.m. was a tad early to call on Domingo. He did not rise with the flamingos, she guessed, or even the mourning doves. Still, she had neglected his interests lately, and thought it only polite to explain why.

She knew his suite, so didn't need the intervention of a desk clerk to get there.

When she knocked she heard some inside activity, then Domingo himself opened the door.

He was beaming from ear to ear when he saw who had come to call.

"Miss Temple Barr! I have been hip-deep in flamingos and thought I would never see you again. It's all going beautifully, everything you put in motion. I am having brunch; would you care to join me?"

Temple recalled the last brunch she'd had in the suite of an older, famous, charismatic man and was ready to shake her head . . . when she heard the unmistakable sounds of a child banging a spoon on a dish.

Domingo looked sheepish. "I am not used to it, either, but am told it will pass. Do come in."

At this point, a tank division couldn't have kept her out.

Temple edged in, to see a room-service table set up by the windows from which she had looked down on Las Vegas not many days ago.

A woman sat there, a woman in her late thirties with a cascade of curly dark blond hair like a Renaissance Madonna. And to go with the Madonna in the flowered sack dress was a toddler in a high chair who was busy turning fruit cocktail into a hat.

"Temple Barr, my guide to Las Vegas, this is my wife, Constance, and our child, Moira.

Would you care to have brunch with us?"

Temple could have eaten a plastic flamingo at this point and never even noticed. She edged toward the table sitting in a splash of Nevada daylight.

"How nice to meet you. Domingo never said--" She looked at Domingo.

He shrugged, sheepish again. "This is a different life for me. I am slow to share." He turned to his family. "Temple has been a great help to me, but she was only here to get the project started."

Some worry in Constance's eyes softened. "We're greenhorns about this sort of circus, Moira and I. Domingo thought it was finally time we were introduced to the madness."

"Madness it is, especially in Las Vegas," Temple agreed. "I came here only to tell Domingo that my other commitments are heating up. I won't be able to do much more on this project.

Frankly, I don't think he needs my help anymore."

"Nonsense! You were invaluable."

Young Moira had no patience with adult social rituals, or the time they took. She lifted the plastic bowl of fruit cocktail and put it upside down atop her head.

"Oh!" Constance tossed her linen napkin to the table and scooped the child out of the high chair. "A food sculptor in the making, I can see it already. Clean-up trip, if you'll excuse us."

"Sure," Temple said. "I recommend that she keep the maraschino cherry as a beauty mark, though."

Laughing, Constance carried her daughter into another room.

Domingo quickly commandeered Temple's elbow and led her to the windows.

"I owe you a great deal, and have not much time to thank you."

"Thank me? I just did my job, ran interference."

"You were afraid I had designs on you," he accused softly.

"Noooo! Well, yes. I'd had a bad experience lately with another famous man also infamous as a ladies' man."

"I know how bad I am considered. But I am that no longer."

"Verina--?"

"My last weakness. I would die if Constance should find out, which is why I thank you for freeing me from the last of my bad habits. I am a new man."

"How did I--?"

"That incident with the hat. It showed me how shallow and jealous Verina was. Now that I have a daughter of my own, I look at women differently. You are so fresh, so honest. I saw you as my daughter grown, not as a rival of Verina's, as she saw you. This had never happened to me before. It gave me hope.

"My marriage was my first step toward a new, more stable life. Art eats you up. And when you become notorious as a young man, you want to eat everything around you to feed your artistic appetite. It is a wasteful, foolish life, and I lived it for many decades, until the adulation of women became a necessity, especially as I got older and they got younger. I have fought this demon ego that men are encouraged to serve, and I finally think I will wi n. I am a vain man, but I am also a good artist, and this life will destroy my talent if I do not leave it behind."

"I didn't do this, Domingo. You did."

"With help. I had a very good counselor. An anonymous counselor. I gave him hell, but he never abandoned me."

"Really," said Temple. "And, I was just wondering, when did your wife and child arrive? I never saw them."

"It was a surprise. They flew in from Switzerland. Constance is an accomplished pianist, did you know? It was late, nearly midnight, and one of my darkest hours, I may tell you. And there they were in the hallway, my wife and baby. Just what I needed to banish forever the dark side of my self.

"I had been making progress, but so often when I was alone that dark side took over, goading me. You will never understand the temptations that come to a man in my position, and how easily they overtake him."

"I'm glad you've beaten yours, Domingo."

Temple put out her hand, and he shook it, then lifted it for a kiss.

On that Continental and unexpected parting note, Temple finished the last of her errands, with almost the last of her important questions answered.