Cat In An Alphabet Soup (Catnap)

1

Chester’s Last Chapter

“Some cat’s cutting loose on the convention floor,” the guard grumbled, heading for the office coffeepot. “Thought we were supposed to be on the lookout for international terrorists.”

“A cat!” Temple’s head whipped to attention, abandoning her computer screen. “Where?”

The guard shook his own head, which was decorated by a wilted lei of gray hair, and donned his cap. Caffeine piddled from the spigot until foam lapped the rim of his Styrofoam cup. “Kitty Kong. Some terrorist.”

“Listen, Lloyd, a very valuable cat happens to be missing from an exhibit this morning—two, in fact. We need to corral them before we open the floor to the exhibitors. Where was it seen?”

Lloyd scratched his scalp, almost dethroning his cap. “You office girls are all cat crazy.”

Temple made her full five feet zero as she stood, slamming the oversize glasses atop her head to the bridge of her nose.

“I’m not an ‘office girl.’ I’m liaison for local PR for this convention, and I don’t give a flying fandango about pussycats on the job unless they’re relevant to public relations, so you can bet that corporate mascots like Baker and Taylor are bloody vital to the American Booksellers Convention. Baker and Taylor happens to be one of the country’s top book wholesalers.”

Temple paused, breathlessly, to dive under her desk and withdraw a formidable canvas bag emblazoned with the words “Temporus Vitae Libri." A freebie from Time-Life Books.

She edged around the desk, frowning. “Now where is this rogue feline? If he’s beneath your notice, I’ll bag him personally.”

Lloyd examined her three-inch heels, her elephant-bladder-size bag and her implacably determined face. She didn’t look a day over twenty-one—despite being in imminent danger of pushing thirty, well, twenty-eight, and regretted it bitterly. July was her natal month and this was the cusp of May and June.

Lloyd’s head jerked over his shoulder. “Somewhere near the sequined zebra on the stick.”

“Zebra on a stick? Oh, you mean the Zebra Books carousel. Damnation”—Temple eyed the silver-dollar-size watch face that obscured her wrist—“the doors open at nine. Good thing book people sleep late. Probably up reading all night.”

She clicked out of the office, bag flapping, while Lloyd muttered something uncouth about “modern women” into his scalding coffee.

Lights glared on the mammoth exhibition area, making the booths’ glossy posters and book-cover blowups into vertical reflecting pools. Temple threaded the maze of aisles. A few early-bird exhibitors were already at work, unpacking book cartons and readying their wares for opening day.

She bustled past arrays of next year’s calendars, juicy dust jackets promising sex and violence in lavish doses, past lush photographic covers on massive art books, past ranks of reading lights and tasseled bookmarks.

She heard Lloyd faintly calling “Miss Barr” and minced on. Few would believe how fast Temple could travel on her upscale footwear; in her favorite Stuart Weitzman heels she was even a match for a footloose feline.

“Here, kitty-kitty-kitty,” she crooned as she neared the Zebra booths, slipping the Time-Life book bag from her arm in preparation for a genteel snatch.

Nothing stirred but a dedicated exhibitor who was fanning book catalogs on display cubes.

“Hee-eere kitty. Nice kitty.”

Zebra Books’ life-size papier-mâché namesake glittered, seeming to move in stately splendor amid the eerie quiet.

“Here kit-eee, damn it to—!”

A scream of outrage deleted the rest of Temple’s expletive as she tripped on what felt like thick electric cable. She stumbled forward, looking down to see an abused feline tail streaking from the needle-sharp exclamation point of a single Weitzman stiletto.

Lloyd ambled up to announce the obvious. “There it goes.”

Temple went after, darting down aisles, careening around corners, caroming off unwary pedestrians.

“The cat, catch it!” she yelled.

Bemused exhibitors merely paused to watch her sprint past. A bald man with a wart on his nose pointed ahead without comment. Temple hurtled on.

A black tail waved from behind a stack of paperback Bibles. Temple followed. The Tower of Babel fell again.

“Baker! Taylor! Candlestick-maker,” she implored inventively. “Come back, little Sheba—”

The flirtatious extremity bobbed and wafted and whisked through exhibit after exhibit. Flatter feet pounded behind Temple’s—Lloyd and a train of diverted spectators on the move at last. Temple sighted the cat’s tail vanishing under a booth’s back curtain and dove after.

“Trapped!” she announced, her insteps grinding down heaped cardboard boxes, her elbows dueling the odd umbrella—very odd; who would bring an umbrella to Las Vegas?—and boxing aside rolls of tumbling posters as if they were origami bones.

Her quarry was at last within grasp. Temple tackled a fat black shadow, throwing herself full-length, such as it was, indifferent to impediments, as she handled most situations.

The cat, cornered in the dimness, sat regarding her prone body. Someone yanked back a curtain, admitting a swath of light.

“Don’t let him get away,” Temple murmured, feeling for her glasses, which had decamped during her flying tackle.

“Oh-my-God,” someone said.

Temple patted the assorted lumps upon which she reclined until she found her frames. She assumed the glasses to glare triumphantly at the cat.

“Holy cow,” Lloyd murmured behind her.

“Someone help me up,” Temple ordered, “and don’t let that cat get away.”

She had noticed by now that the escapee was solid black; from their publicity pics, Baker and Taylor were parti-colored. And this animal’s large, fully perked ears were nothing like the missing cats’ stingy “Scottish fold” earmarks.

The heels of Temple’s hands pushed down for purchase. Then she realized that they pressed a man’s suit jacket, that her recumbent length was, in fact, badly wrinkling cold- cocoa-colored worsted.

“So sorry, sir. I’ll just—” She thrust herself halfway up, palms digging into a hard irregular surface. “Ohmigod.” Temple gazed down into a man’s eyes. He was in no condition to protest her presence—or that of additional suit wrinkles.

Someone grabbed her elbows and yanked. Upright, Temple stared at what had already mesmerized the crowd, and even, apparently, the cat: a man lay face up amid the booth’s backstage litter, a hand-lettered sign reading “stet” askew on his immobile chest.

“Well.” Temple turned as the crowd began buzzing behind her. “Lloyd, secure the area until the authorities arrive. And put that cat”—she pointed, if there were any question—-“in this bag. Please clear the area, folks. There’s been an accident; we need to let the proper people attend to it.”

Anyone minded to argue didn’t. Temple had pumped her tone with equal amounts of brisk authority and hushed respect for the dead. The crowd edged back. Moments later a dead weight hung from the Time-Life book bag Lloyd slung over Temple’s forearm. Becalmed green eyes blinked from the bag’s midnight-blue depths.

Temple went to the front of the booth, the cradled cat swinging from her arm. It weighed a ton. A copper and black Pennyroyal Press sign glinted in the exhibition lights. So did the graphic image of a skull and crossbones rampant over an Rx prescription symbol.

Temple studied the booth’s macabre illustrations before glancing nervously at the cat in her bag. Its yawn revealed a ribbed pink upper palate soft as a baby sweater, but its mouth was equipped with rows of sharp, white teeth.