Cat In An Indigo Mood

Chapter 13

Louie's Grim Discovery

Of course, I only appear to be napping.

That is what I tell Miss Midnight Louise when she returns from her tour of duty around the exterior of Miss Fanny FurbeIow's beloved's house.

"There is a hole in the back screen door I could enlarge into an entryway, but the inner door is solid wood and locked," she reports, eyeing me with disfavor. (But when did she eye me with anything else?)

"What about windows?"

"There are a few," she admits. "All closed tighter than a pit bull's jaw."

"And the front door?"

"Also solid wood: also locked." She cocks an eye at the adjacent house. "No wonder the Window Widow is so upset. If the resident human does not return, I do not see any way Wilfrid could get out, were he still inside."

We glance toward the neighbor's house, to see Miss Fanny Furbelow's mouth gape wide in a distress cry we cannot hear through the window glass.

Miss Louise sits down beside me, the tip of her tail thrashing to show that she is peeved with both the situation and my calm in the lace of frustration.

I stand, stretch, and scratch my neck just to get a rise out of her ruff.

"We are not here to watch what passes for a workout with you nowadays," she says.

"I will inspect the site. See what I can come up with."

She rolls her eyes most disrespectfully.

I admit to myself that I have no hot ideas for cracking into this joint. It is a small, old house of the modest sort, but they are built far better than the trendy shacks sprouting up like postmodern mushrooms in Henderson down the highway.

However, I would much like to enhance my status in the eyes of Midnight Louise, not to mention in those two-tone models of the lovely White Widow. As soon as I am out of sight of both females, I sit down, and scratch my head this time. Maybe I will startle some brain cells into working overtime.

I decide to work this case and this scene from the human angle, rather than the animal, for once.

If Miss Furbelow is correct, and Wilt the Sylph's "pet" went off without any prior planning, something bad may have happened to her. I decide to examine the doors and windows for signs of attempted human break-in.

Midnight Louise does know her Las Vegas architecture. These classic old ranch houses may be unimaginative in style and construction, but they were built to repel sunlight and heat loss, which means that windows are few and far between and all means of entrance or egress are on the small side.

Air-conditioners are hoisted up on the root in this state, and do not hunker down on the ground alongside the house to act as convenient stepping stones. Also, the ground here is desert-dry, which means footprints rarely leave much of an impression.

Midnight Louise has let no trace, l notice as I pussyfoot around the place. The stucco exterior needs work and the painted wooden frames of the windows are peeling. The hole in the back screen door was made by a cat stretching up to sharpen his shivs.

I doubt that I will have any more luck than the missing Wilfrid in getting the back door to open, especially now that there is likely no one inside. I sit to consider matters. Although my foremost problem is assisting my client in finding out where her missing swain is, I have another dilemma.

Midnight Louise is already crowing about her superior agility in mounting the prow of Cleopatra's Barge to examined the dead guy affixed thereon not long before. I do not like to strike out twice in the pipsqueak's eyes. It is bad form for the masculine gender to let these new-model femi-felines get too uppity.

So I badly need to crack into this house, if not crack the case right this minute. I admonish my whiskers with a wet mitt, a gesture that often assists my thinking processes. I fear that there is nothing for it; I will have to use subterfuge and human help, rather than my solo skills as a street operative.

This is a bit of a comedown from my usual modus operandi, but I suppose l can share some trade secrets with the kit. She might come in handy as a gofer now and again, and there is nothing like letting a female think that she is going to get to do more than she is for ensuring cooperation.

So I rise and amble around the front corner of the house.

She is waiting for me like a rabid panther, ready to pounce on any little failure on my part.

"Well?" she demands in a soprano shrill.

"Tighter than a tick on an Airedale."

"I did not think you would knock a door down all by your lonesome."

I sit to inspect my nails, very casually. "I do not want the scene disturbed, in case there is a big-time crime here."

"With a missing house cat?"

"Stranger things have happened."

"Name one."

I do hate it when my figures of speech are asked to stand up and defend themselves.

I nod at the attractive white silhouette, so to speak, in the opposite window. "I believe it is time to learn more of Miss Furbelow's domestic situation."

"Oh, you would just love to turn this case into Froggy Went a-Courting! Is it not a conflict of interest for an investigator to harbor romantic notions about a female client who asks him to find a missing mate?"

"On the contrary. If you read a bit more classic literature, you would know that it is standard operating procedure."

"Classic literature! You are no doubt discussing the volumes at the Thrill 'n' Quill Bookstore, with all the cool dudes and the hot dames on the covers."

"Exactly. Classic literature. Anyway, if you care to amble alter me, you will see how the old hand uses human nature to work for him without pay."

She is so silent after this, that when I arrive beneath Miss Fanny's window I am not even sure that Midnight Louise has followed me.

Miss Fanny wiggles her airy eyebrows at me, but I shake my head to show that I have found no answers across the way. I lean up against the house wall and call for her to come out.

She shakes her head, but l persist. I watch her glance over her shoulder now and again, as if undecided. Finally, she disappears.

"What is the purpose of this pantomime?" Midnight Louise asks sourly. "A road show of Romeo and Juliet? "

"Please. I am working."

"Yes, I can tell. No doubt this house would fall over if you were not leaning up against it."

"Can it, sister. I heard something around the front."

"Are you claiming an incestuous relationship with me?"

"I am claiming no relationship. That is a just an expression."

"No doubt from one of those seriously out-of-date books you lounge around on at the Thrill

'n' Quill. You would be more in keeping with the tempo of the times it you called me 'girl,' as in

'you go, girl, go.' "

This is too much. This is the last whisker! I sit right down and curl my upper lip.

"Listen, squirt. I do not lounge on anything but my laurels at the Thrill 'n' Quill. I go there only on business to consult my, er, librarian, Ingram. As for calling you 'girl,' I am given to understand that would be the supreme insult. I do not mind tossing the casual insult, but I do try to avoid the socially irredeemable faux pas. And now you tell me that 'girl' is okay?"

She shrugs, looking very pleased with herself, which is nothing new in her arsenal of expressions.

"Times change, Daddy dudest. 'Girl' is now considered a term of empowerment. I guess you could call it discrimination reversed."

I shake my head, hoping that the rattling I hear is water in my ear rather than my brains hitting a dead end.

"Look. I do not care about terminology. I am more worried about termination at the moment."

Her ears prick. "You are saying you suspect serious foul play in the disappearance of Wilfrid?"

"Now the . . . ahem, girl gets it! And first I have to talk to Miss Fanny again." Midnight Louise puckers her black-velvet brow and says no more for the moment. I think I have faked the kit out. I was not born yesterday, as she is too fond of reminding me.

I trot to the front door to find a pretty picture installed there: Miss Fanny Furbelow sitting on the stoop with her long white train fluffed around her dainty feet.

"Just shoot me with a Hasselblad," Midnight Louise mutters, but it is under her breath.

"What a coquette."

"A lovely girl." I say pointedly, before trotting over and getting down to business. "I assume you are here because I requested your presence."

Miss Fanny nods, looking a bit confused.

"I also assume your . . . pet . . . is at home to let you out."

"She is a retired meter maid and is usually amenable to my requests, since I am fixed and only go next door."

I nod, well pleased. "Good girl," I say. Hey. if an uppity, ultra-liberated snip tells me this is okay, I will use it to the max, if not to the manx.

"Now, the next thing we must get your, er, pet to do is to come out alter you."

Jeez, I do not like using the term "pet" for humans. Apparently a movement is afoot to grab every denigrating term in the book and flaunt it. I do not need to prove my superiority to humans by calling them "pets." The difference is obvious to any trained observer.

Of course such an observer cannot be human.

Please do not waste time calling me a feline chauvinist. I am impervious to politically correct cant. Or can.

Meanwhile. I have two dames on my hands, both of the "girl" persuasion.

"Oh," says Miss Fanny. "I do not think I can get my pet to do everything I say. She is very independent."

"Nonsense," Miss Midnight Louise spits. "These humans are pushovers it you know how to handle them."

"For once we agree." I say with a small smile. "All right. It is obvious that your 'pet' has one soft spot."

"Where?" Miss Fanny asks with wide-open blue-gold eyes. "I am soft everywhere, of course, but she is soft only in certain places, which I have selected for private pummeling when I am in the mood."

"I am not interested," Miss Louise spits, "in your private dependency relationships."

"You," l say, gazing deeply into Miss Fanny's eye-eyes, "are her soft spot. Therefore, we will put you in danger."

"Daddy dearest! This is the client. We do not risk the client."

"l understand that, gentlest girlie," I grit right back at the little spitfire. "We merely make the gullible pet believe that the soft spot is in danger. Therefore"--l turn to Miss Fanny in a businesslike mode-"you will 'disappear' for the nonce, while Miss Louise and l have hysterics by your window. When your loyal body servant comes to the scene of the disturbance, we will subtly lure her to the neighboring house, encouraging her to think that you are trapped therein.

She will obviously leave no modern method of entry untried in her fever to enter the place."

"Oh!" Miss Fanny's odd-colored eyes melt into caramel and blueberry syrup as she gazes upon me. "You are so clever. I have only to play hide and seek for a while, then, and leave it to the professionals?" She looks trustingly from Louise to myself.

I pat her gently on the, er, flank. "Exactly. Now, do you have some special hiding place in the vicinity?"

"I do rather enjoy the arbor under the oleander bushes in bloom."

"Excellent. Off with you, and leave the rest to us."

She scampers away, tail high, wide, and handsome.

"You are quite an operator," Midnight Louise admits. Or accuses. Sometimes I cannot quite tell the difference.

"Thank you. Girl."

"I did not say 'operative.' I said operator. There is a difference, but I am sure you are unable to discern it."

"Whatever. Now comes the hard part. We must attract the pet's limited attention span, and lead it where we wish it to go.

Are you ready to scream yourself hoarse, it need be?"

"I am ready to walk a tightrope on my hind legs, if need be. I believe you are climbing up the wrong tree, but if you are willing to pussyfoot out on a limb, so am l. I do so like to watch things fall."

I say nothing in response. We return to the widow's walk window, now empty of a piquant little feline face, and proceed to yowl in tandem and hurl ourselves up at the glass.

It takes only ten minutes to draw Miss Fanny's meter maid to the window.

"Goodness," she mouths through the glass. "The neighborhood cats are getting very vulgar."

In another ten minutes she begins to worry about her precious Fanny.

In five more she opens the door, only to find us serenading the dickens out of her postal box.

"Go away, you alley cats!" she cries. "Fanny! Come home."

But Fanny does not come home, having strict instructions not to.

| jump off the stoop, run toward the neighboring house, then stop, fix the meter maid with my best please-I-have-to-park-here eye, and wait.

"Go away, that is right!" she admonishes me. "You do not belong in this neighborhood." She has got that right.

I race to the next door house and begin gouging track marks in the stucco under the window.

Belatedly, Louise runs over and does likewise.

"Why, you crazy cats. It is as if you are trying to tell me something."

Yes, Timmy's mother. You did this a thousand times on Lassie and that was only a dumb dog. Come on, lady; you are old enough to have seen Lassie on TV. Just call me Classie, because l am a cat.

"Oh, my," she says. "I hope my little Fanny hasn't got caught under that house."

Her fanny is not little, but I refrain from commenting on that fact. Ever the gentleman.

Before you know it, she is knocking on the front door, next door.

"Monica. Monica, are you home?"

Soon the knocking has her knuckles red. I yowl as if facing a firing squad, and, after a withering look, Louise unleashes a howl that could raise the dead.

"Oh, dear. Something must be terribly wrong. They say animals can sense earthquakes."

Her hands wring, then try the from door latch.

Lo and behold, it opens as it a friendly Zephyr has blown through.

"Oh, Monica! You left your door open. How careless. My Fanny must have pushed it open, then shut, and became trapped in your house while you were out."

Miss Meter Maid is one of those people who live alone and talk to their cats and themselves. I am grateful for this; it allows me to learn much about the situation.

"You were always too trusting, Monica. Fan-nee! Fan-nee!"

I brush by her, Louise hard behind me.

My nostrils have told me what poor Miss Meter Maid is incapable of discerning. Something has died in this house, and recently. I fear that it is bigger than a mouse.

Miss Midnight Louise brushes past me, eyes narrowed in a very ungirlish way. "Death on the premises. Do not let her see. I will check out the bedrooms."

I resent this supplanting of my natural leadership role, but have no chance to object.

Midnight Louise is a shadow disappearing down the hallway.

"Oh. Where is my lovely Fanny? Monica? Say you are here, please. And that my cat is all right."

I spring after my renegade partner. I do not want the crime scene disturbed.

But I need not have worried.

Midnight Louise has stopped dead at the bedroom door, staring at something out of my sight.

"We have to let the human 'discover this," she mutters, "though it will be too much for her.

You were right, Pops. There is one very dead homicide victim in here. I was convinced it was a member of the other species, but no such luck."

I stare past her shoulder into the room. The floor is old-fashioned wood planking, but a rag rug lies rumpled beside the bed.

On it, dead center, and definitely dead to the world, lies a handsome tiger cat.

Louise and I mew piteously, and brace ourselves for human hysteria.

We are not disappointed.

Although she is discreetly hidden outside, in very short order Miss Fanny Furbelow will discover that her widowhood is now a fact, not a fear.