Cat in an Alphabet Soup

26

Louie’s Last Meow

No one is happier than yours truly that this ABA thing is over. For one thing, I no longer have to worry about being nabbed on a homicide charge. Although I sport a couple fistfuls of switchblades, few even in this town would confuse any one of them for a knitting needle.

I have also reached a satisfactory arrangement with Miss Temple Barr on my domestic accommodations. She now leaves the guest bathroom window open just enough so that I can shimmy in and out of an evening.

At first I am afraid that Baker and Taylor’s close call in the city pound will encourage her to curtail my, ah, movements. But she lightens up once the wrong-doer is caught—and even more once Mr. Matt Devine makes a friendly overture—and I have no trouble swaying her to my way of thinking.

So I am out and about these days and even stroll up the

Strip to the Crystal Phoenix, where I am made much of, seeing as how even a little of Midnight Louie goes a long way.

I am doing fine, but I am not too sure about my pal Ingram. His muzzle turns a shade lighter in one day, I swear. The close call with Baker and Taylor preys upon his mind. He is not one to share his territory. His person, Miss Maeveleen Pearl, has severely undermined Ingram's confidence in her good taste and sense. He is often to be found curled upon those noxious tomes known as self-help books, such titles as People Who Love Pets Who Love Their Creature Comforts and When Good Things Happen to Bad Dogs.

“Uncivil accents, Louie,” Ingram rails when I come around for a stoopside chat. “No decent ears to speak of. Called me ‘laddie.’ In my own place!”

I can see the whites of his eyes.

It does not help that Miss Temple Barr, in one of the diplomatic gestures she is known for, has bestowed Baker and Taylor—the shills—on Miss Maeveleen Pearl, whose whimsy it is to arrange their floppy bodies in various spots throughout the Thrill ’n' Quill. Ingram is never sure where they will turn up next, perhaps in his very own bed.

Desist, I tell him, after hearing these complaints for the nth time. It is no use telling him that discussions in stir with the live Baker and Taylor on their abductor’s apparent gender—as well as the Scottish name Ian, and its kinship to the Gaelic Eoin and the Welsh Owen—enabled me to nail the ABA murderer.

Some might marvel that I, in my usual toothsome way, should emphasize as a clue the very word that is the culprit’s long-forgotten baptismal name.

The likes of Electra Lark would attribute my mystical moxie to previous lives (a viable theory, if you ask me), the deep spiritual powers of my kind going back to the time of the Pharaohs, or plain old feline intuition.

The fact is, I cannot masticate an entire title, leaving just Owen Tharp's byline, in the time I have available.

Also, too often the attempts of my species to communicate are dismissed as outright destructiveness. Call it a game of subconscious charades. By removing the other letters to leave an odd-looking remnant, "--E O---IN,” I created a memorable impression on Miss Temple Barr and produced what the literati might call a homophone of the murderer’s current moniker, or a halfway homophone, anyway. (This homophone is not a communications device for dudes of a specific sexual persuasion but is a fancy word to say that Owen and Eoin sound the same but are spelled differently.) Let the method fit the madness, in this case, the chaos of the ABA and all things literary.

To sum up, as Miss Temple Barr is most fond of doing, what the hell—it worked, did it not? Thanks to my usual blend of physical heroics and intellectual discernment.

Speaking of discernment, Lieutenant Molina, useful at last, has since checked the pound casualty list and found the name signed by the person who deposited B and T on the sadly substandard premises. “Gil Hooley.” Owen Tharp was playing word games to the last. And so the last nail is pounded into that coffin. I only regret that it is not one of my own.

Having settled my most pressing affairs and seen that all is right with the world, mostly, I can proceed to entertain myself in my customary fashion. I troll for carp in the pond behind the Crystal Phoenix, an enterprise all the more enjoyable for the necessity of avoiding the hotel chef’s roving meat cleaver. (Chef Song is a great fancier of carp, like myself, but after that there is a splitting of the ways, you might say.) My various lady friends require attentions of a censored nature. I have hopes of impressing them with my exploits, but true to past history, I do not get proper credit in the matter of solving the Royal murder. (That is always the case with us sleuths, from Sherlock Holmes on.)

It is lonely, dangerous and unsung work (not to mention unpaid), which is why I take the precaution of writing my own memoirs. Though I am a bit long in the fang I have no intention of going quietly, even if it is true that I wax more contemplative of late as I lounge about my retirement condo in Miss Temple Barr’s absence. She is out on the town with Matt Devine, hopefully gliding on the Goliath Hotel’s infamous Love Moat. Above me comes a gentle thump now and then from Miss Electra Lark's penthouse, which I notice often during Miss Temple Barr's absences—either our esteemed landlady has poltergeists or she is entertaining gentleman callers of an athletic persuasion.

Speaking of which; I spend many happy hours recalling ladyloves I have courted, rivals I have scratched off the map (so to speak) and my widespread, numerous and thankfully-ignorant-of-my-existence offspring.

Which brings to mind the rumor I heard when I finally caught up with Sassafras, who is strictly an old acquaintance these days. Street talk is that starlet Savannah Ashleigh has come so far down in the world since she made "Surfer Samurai” that she has slunk into Vegas to make a cheapie flick about a stripper and will show her stuff in the buff at the Lace 'n' Lust downtown. I could not care less about the state of either Miss Savannah Ashleigh’s film career or her unveiled epidermis, neither of which has ever struck me as having promise. Skin has never been my style. But when Miss Savannah Ashleigh previously visited Vegas, she stayed at the Crystal Phoenix and was accompanied by the sweetest platinum doll I have ever laid hopes on—the Divine Yvette, a petite aristocratic number up to her mascara in silver chinchilla fur. I definitely would strain my stride to see more of this little doll and her big blue-green peepers, not to mention her little pink nose and other more discreet parts of her anatomy. I will have to look in at the Lace ’n' Lust at the first opportunity.

It is on such a trip down memory lane that I inadvertently stir and depress the On button on the television’s remote control mechanism. Thus my ears are blessed with an extremely racy exchange from the daytime drama Lays of Our Lives. Or perhaps I mishear the title.

My ears are not what they used to be, and then again, I am often told I was born with a back-alley mentality.