Cat In An Alien X-Ray

Chapter 32

Identity Crisis

Temple didn’t know whether she was relieved or worried to find the Miata’s top down and Louie gone. Given Louie’s record of going rogue whenever he pleased, she was very, very afraid. For everyone else.

She grabbed the wide-brimmed hat with the built-in scarf she kept in the car. The unshaded lot was as dangerous for her redhead’s sensitive skin as driving a convertible with the top down. She put up the top to protect the car’s leather seats and steering wheel from frying in the sunlight.

As for Mr. Midnight Louie, missing “purrson,” she figured she’d find him, or vice versa, in the crowd. He’d just become another lead to follow.

While talking to Molina, Temple’s PR genes had stayed active and entered Eavesdrop Mode.

An ace public relations person could nod attentively and talk to one person, even an authority figure like a cop, while locating the presence and identity of at least half a dozen people around her at the same time.

Given the extreme appearances of the pro and con UFO crowds gathered, that was much harder right now. Basically, the crowd was fifty shades of weird. Being a PR person, Temple enjoyed every shade of weird. It made for easy publicity. That was surely true now, with vans from local TV stations jumping on footage of this event before L.A. could even hope to get a unit here.

During her almost subconscious pans of the crowd, Temple thought she’d spied a local personality who might at least know Midnight Louie if he saw him and help her corral her cat before Louie unearthed another body.

Looking for Crawford Buchanan’s head in a crowd was as bad as someone looking for hers, given his short stature. Having to want to find the sleazy cad-about-town was even worse.

She needn’t have worried. Buchanan had some PR vibes himself, because she heard a baritone voice from the mob intone, “And here’s a local light on the Strip PR scene,” just as someone grabbed her arm.

Temple turned into the bright light of a shouldered camera and smiled at least half as brightly.

Buchanan had switched to wearing a local cable TV gold sports coat with the station call letters on the breast pocket and ditched the crass diamond ear stud.

Luckily, the glare kept Buchanan’s regular but smug features in temporary darkness. “Miss Temple Barr,” he announced to whatever audience he represented at the moment, “feminine flack extraordinaire.”

She winced inside at his hokey and demeaning introduction, but maintained her broad smile. Flunk electronic media exposure these days, and it would be all over the world instantly.

“You are,” Crawford went on, “the presumptive PR rep for the shadowy individuals who own the murder site. I believe.”

“Goodness. You make me sound like I’m running for president with a PAC behind me. Yes, I’ve been in talks to represent one of the individuals who back this construction, but there was no desire on anyone’s part to own a ‘murder site.’ Besides, the coroner has not ruled on the cause of death, so any suggestion of ‘murder’ at this point is utterly irresponsible.”

Temple smiled demurely into the camera while Buchanan sputtered to think up a new question.

“So, Miss Barr, are you saying you don’t believe in UFOs?”

“Certainly many people do, and it’s not for me to say they’re wrong.”

“Rumor is the dead body was a plant.”

“Oh, no. I’m very certain he was some sort of Homo sapiens.”

“And naked as a jaybird.”

“I don’t think he was a bird, either. Or Superman sans costume. We just don’t know enough about him. This is not The Day of the Triffids, Mr. Buchanan. And I doubt ‘space spores’ have escaped a Star Trek set to invade a desert climate.”

The surrounding believers were muttering and pressing closer. “However,” Temple said, “his presence and death certainly give one reason to wonder. ‘The truth is out there,’ and I do believe that ‘We are not alone.’”

Scattered applause.

The videographer turned to pan on the crowd. Temple grabbed Awful Crawford’s mic and fisted her hand over it. “You’ve got your interview,” she told him vehemently. “Now you’ll answer some of my questions.”

“Absolutely, TB. I’m at your disposal.”

“I couldn’t put it better myself. Listen. You know my cat, Midnight Louie?”

“That black back-alley escapee. I’d expect a cute chick like you to own something more upscale, like one of those fluffy white numbers on the TV commercials.”

“Louie was on some TV commercials.”

Buchanan smirked at having irked her to the point of defending her cat.

“Anyway,” Temple said, back on point. “I need to round him up. Have you seen him in this mess?”

He gave her a reproachful look. “Don’t I have my finger on the pulse of everything that goes on around Vegas? Sure, I saw your alley cat, and I would have interviewed him if I could have. He did tumble into the scene of the body dump—”

The crowds muttered again.

“—or landing,” Crawford said quickly.

Temple dragged him away from the current eavesdroppers by pulling the mic with her. He was as attached to his on-camera persona as a dog to its leash.

Surrounded by a fresh crowd of imaginatively attired folks with rainbow skin and artificially altered noses and ears, Temple resumed her interrogation. “Louie? Where? When?”

Buchanan looked around. “Well, he was making eyes at the strangest little critter I ever saw.”

“Female?”

“How do I know?” He was indignant. “It was like a miniature sled dog. You know, a husky, only a foot by a foot, say, and that thing was with a woman I interviewed.…” He craned his neck and even went a bit on tippytoes in his height-assisted ’70s-style platform shoes. “That woman, there.”

Temple released the mic from her now sweaty hot little hand and started edging past ridged spinal frills and fairy wings (fairy wings?) to the relatively normal-looking woman twenty feet away.

A sound of labored breathing behind her revealed she had not quite shed the intrepid dork called Crawford Buchanan.

Temple immediately began scanning the ground, but the woman wore deck shoes unaccompanied by any miniature Siberian huskies or a particularly large black cat.

“Excuse me,” Temple said, by now a trifle breathless herself. “This gentleman”—that hurt—“says when he interviewed you earlier, you were accompanied by a small … dog? And a black cat was in the neighborhood.”

The woman gazed at her with shock. “I’ve never seen this man before in my life. And, frankly, if I had, I’d make sure I didn’t see him again. He looks like a really self-satisfied aggravating twit.”

Buchanan was sputtering again. “I must disagree, ma’am. I did a brief stand-up with you not fifteen minutes ago.”

“‘A brief stand-up’! What a phony accusation. I am not that sort of woman at all, and even if I was, I would not be that sort of woman with you.”

“You don’t understand, that’s a technical term,” he said hastily. “And I don’t understand. You were perfectly cordial when I talked to you earlier. Surely you remember me.”

“Surely I would do my best to forget your manners.”

“I have it on film. Where’s that cameraman?” Buchanan gazed around wildly.

A crowd was gathering again.

“You would actually film yourself making such offensive overtures? I saw some police people here just a moment ago.” She gazed wildly around this time.

By now, even Temple was gazing wildly around at both foot and head level.

“This is a misunderstanding,” Buchanan was saying. “I interviewed you. You must remember me.”

“There’s no law that I have to!” she shouted as the missing videographer, a tall portly guy, appeared and ushered Buchanan away. “What a putz,” she told Temple.

“Thanks for getting rid of him. I’m Temple and I’m looking for my cat.”

“I’m Penny, and I’m looking for my dog. He slipped the collar of his harness.” The woman pulled up her left hand, holding a leash and empty harness.

Temple had a feeling Midnight Louie had been the harness undoer. “That’s a tiny harness. What kind of dog do you have?”

The woman chuckled. “He’s a husky Chihuahua.”

“I’ve seen a few overweight Chihuahuas, but that would be big even on them.”

“Rens is not overweight, but he does look more like a Siberian husky, only tiny.”

“Gosh, he could get lost underfoot.” Temple looked around at the carelessly milling crowd taking photos of Area 54.

“He has a lot of sense, small body, big brain. But I do want to find him.”

“What brought you and Rens here?”

“We like to see the passing parade, and this sure is a doozy. I don’t believe in this stuff.”

Temple nodded.

“Besides, if aliens did decide to enter our solar system and check Earth out, I believe they’d be galactic conquerors or so different than us, they’d regard stamping us out the way we’d stomp on a scorpion.” Penny’s shoe stamped in demonstration.

Temple jumped. No scorpions were underfoot, but a cat tail … or a little dog paw could be.

Then she spotted a familiar street sight. “I’m going over there to look for Rens and Louie.”

Penny turned her head. “Good thinking. I’ll go the other way.”

Glad she’d hadn’t had time to don the hat before her impromptu “face time” in front of Awful Crawford’s videographer, Temple tied it on. The wide brim softened the glare and made searching the scene easier, and Buchanan—and Molina—might not recognize her, always a good idea.

When Temple reached the mobile “pop-up” hot dog stand, a little dog, who did sport the coat color of a husky, was sitting up behind the counter with the operator, getting hot dog bits from time to time. It was amazing. He had the bigger breed’s widow’s peak coloration on his forehead, and carried his feathered tail over his back in a wolf–spitz curl. Yet he was the size of a Chihuahua.

Temple’s sigh of relief could have launched a model sailing boat. This was definitely Rens.

Temple eyed the deep black shadow under the truck. She spotted a flash of iridescent green from a cat iris before it winked out.

She was willing to bet that Midnight Louie would be back at the Circle Ritz before she was.

Meanwhile, she needed to reunite Rens with his Penny.

“Hi,” she told the pop-up stand operator, a burly guy who could have played a marine recruiter in a movie.

“You want a dog, lady?”

“Yes. That one.” She pointed at Rens.

“This little fella?”

“That’s the one.”

“He just showed up, so how do I know he’s yours?”

“He’s not, but I’ve just been talking to his owner, who’s pretty distraught.”

“I don’t know … everybody’s been wanting to claim him.”

Temple didn’t have time or energy left to trek back and forth in this mob. She set her heels, opened her arms like someone about to burst into song, and called, “Rens!”

The little dog bounded into her chest like a furry bullet. Temple swayed on her feet, but got heel traction fast and closed her arms around one happy fluffball.

The burly man looked about to cry. “I guess this little guy knows his name, and you do too. I was thinking we’d make a good team, Big Mike and Shorty. My customers were eating him up.”

Temple hoped he wasn’t speaking literally.

“Visit the local shelter,” she suggested over her shoulder as she toted the lightweight dog away. “I bet they have more in need of homes.”

Shelters were overflowing with Chihuahuas and Chihuahua mixes, she knew, because of the “purse pooch” fad. Rens was sure a lot lighter than Louie.

She spotted a down-faced Penny gazing back and forth like a scanning camera as she returned to where she’d discovered Rens was missing. Then she saw her dog being toted along at shoulder level.

“That’s my dog!”

“Yes, I know.”

“Did you take him?”

Temple was stunned, and people around them were suddenly paying attention. “No. I found him for you.”

“How did you even know he was missing? How do I know that you didn’t take him?”

They were now the center of a circle of animal lovers. Holy jalapeño! Penny was even more suspicious than the hot dog vendor.

“We—we talked,” Temple said, Temple who never stuttered, who always had even the worst public relations disaster firmly in hand.

“I don’t know you.”

Temple felt the crowd pressing closer. Rens whimpered.

“Do you have any distinguishing characteristics?” Penny demanded.

“Uh, a few freckles, but I usually use a cover-up.”

“Besides your face.”

Temple thought. She looked down, where Rens’s tiny harness still hung empty at the end of the short leash. “My red high heels?”

“Oh. You’re that lady. Okay. Thanks so much!” She reached to take Rens into full custody as people turned away and moved on.

“My little Rens, where have you been?” She rubbed noses with the alert mini husky face.

“He got as far as the hot dog stand. Say, um, Penny, why were you treating me like a petnapper?”

“Oh, that.” Penny shrugged. “You should have told me you had red hair under that hat you just put on, not that you had freckles.”

“I guess my red hair is more memorable than my freckles, but I’m more self-conscious of my freckles.” Then Temple had a wild hope. Were her freckles really that minor and she didn’t know it? Could she throw out the vanishing cream?

“Your freckles don’t register with me.” Penny smiled. “To me your face is a blank space on a map. I have a learning disability that affects only two and a half percent of the population. It’s called prosopagnosia. My brain doesn’t process faces. And it’s hell. The condition has been covered by TV shows like Sixty Minutes.”

Temple nodded. She’d heard of that problem. She’d also heard that one facility humans had that animals didn’t was … the ability to recognize faces.

“I’m sorry. That must be … surreal for you,” she told Penny.

“I’ve learned to focus on pieces of a person. Like hair color, clothing, mannerisms, posture. Freckles! No go. Can’t see ’em. You’re freckle-free with me, kiddo! Just remind me about the red hair and high heels next time we cross paths.”

Temple doubted their paths would cross again.

“Do you know what the worst things about this condition are?” Penny asked.

Temple shook her head. She was almost afraid to hear.

“One, it makes me brutally honest, so I have a hard time keeping friends. I can’t lie, because I won’t recognize the person I lied to. So I tell the truth at all times. That can get to be a real pain.”

“So you genuinely forgot Crawford Buchanan,” Temple mused aloud, remembering his confusion.

“Yes, at first. But then I remembered his oily hair—way too much product, dude! So I played dumb just to tick him off because he was a stuck-up, phony sort of person. I got to snub someone for a change. Everyone always thinks I’m snubbing them in public, like you did here, when they see me in passing on the street and I don’t recognize them.”

Temple couldn’t begin to contemplate the adjustments such a condition would demand of her and her job, but she had a suggestion for one issue: “Just be a smiley person and nod at anyone you pass who makes eye contact. Strangers will think you’re a bubbly personality, and people who know you will probably stop to chat and you can use your ID system, or get a clue from their conversation.”

“Hmm. I’m not a bubbly person. I told you, I have to be brutally honest.”

That was a problem. No wonder Penny was so attached to Rens. His love was unconditional. He’d leap for the sound of his name and know her voice.

“Can you recognize Rens’s face?”

“It’s the same, except dogness is easier to isolate.”

“One other thing I’m curious about,” Temple said.

“Only one? You’re easy.”

“With this problem, why come out to join a mob of people like this, all faces you can’t really see? And you are really skeptical of the UFO fever all around here.”

“Simple. It’s a great laboratory. I practice remembering strangers in the crowd by things beside their faces. Plus, I think they’re all silly for getting caught up in this UFO and ancient-alien stuff. Any aliens who are out there, we definitely don’t want to meet.”

“Even if you don’t have to see their weird alien faces.”

“Especially if I have to remember them by other traits. I mean, who’d want to have a memory of tentacles?”