Cat With An Emerald Eye

Chapter 15

Amateur Hour

You cannot imagine how surprised I am when I only do what I do best--get inside someplace where I am not supposed to be--and the supposed coal chute I stick my nose into turns out to be a slide to stardom.

Actually, the expression "slide" is too nice. It is really a drop, a ten-foot drop straight down to a bunch of bricks. Luckily, I instinctively execute my fabled feline twist in midair, which has been scientifically proven to save lives, and manage to enter standing, looking as if I were always Santa's little helper.

While the room is cooing over my spectacular entrance, I fade into the background and try to figure out what to do next.

I do not like the fog that is snaking around the premises. The occupants of the room seem much enchanted by it, but then they are an exotic lot, I see at first glance. Even my little doll looks more exotic than usual, but that is because she is attired in a gown that makes it look like she is peeking out from behind an azalea bush.

I am surprised to recognize an old opponent of mine. Crawford Buchanan. He is sitting at the table holding hands with some dame in a black hat that looks like it got caught on a mortuary trellis and brought most of it along for the ride. Then there is a white-hot witchy number in platinum-blond everything, a dude in black with hair Yanni might envy, a fat guy in the ever-popular black, a woman whose tail would be twitching if she had one, some bespectacled dude with no hair and the usual black, Miss Electra Lark in her usual Technicolor and a woman who looks like she should be hawking bug repellent in TV commercials.

While all present are debating my method of arrival and importance to the event under way, I sidle out of sight and look around some more.

There is something unnatural about the fog hugging the windows and ceiling and oozing all over the floor and table. It is white, like regular fog, and misty-murky, but something else bothers me. I sniff around, recognizing a scent that some of my kind go kit-crazy over, chlorine, the stuff they use to stink up swimming pools and spas, so as to keep the bacteria brigade from invading the neighborhood. If I am to sniff something sublime, it will be edible at least, or perhaps a bit of primo nip obtained through purely legal channels. This here chemical trip is not my type of transportation, however, and it leaves me untransported.

Then I figure it out. The stuff is not just seen and sniffed, like most unknown substances, it is also heard. I realize now what has fluffed my tail all along: the slight hisssss the fog makes.

Reminds me of our reptile friends, who are not always lethal, but who have propensities. I believe in giving wide berth to anything with similar propensities, so I forget the fog and take to the high ground to get a better handle on what is happening here.

Well. You would think I had jumped on the middle of their beds during a private moment or something. It is not as if there is food on the table that I might take away. No, the wood surface is as bare as Mother Hubbard's cupboard, and I have been superpolite and careful to keep all my fighting equipment stowed below deck before I sailed in this direction.

I am still casing the room, so I look for alternate routes of ingress and egress, simply because I have so recently found myself out of luck on that score, and forced to accede to the assistance of a dust-ball of long-distance feline electricity.

In fact, I spot a bright light reflected in one of the dark windows and cringe by reflex. This has everyone at the table forgetting my unwanted presence and oohing and aahing about my superior psychic senses and how a Presence from Beyond must be imminent.

They turn out to be quite right, but it is the wrong Presence and it is from a Beyond that is not as far removed as they would hope.

What happens is the camera operator moves, along with the big bright light that everybody has come to take for granted, only the reflection in the window of the big bright light does not move, but remains a little bright light.

"We are not alone," the dead-white blonde announces, and she is unfortunately too correct.

I blink, and the little bright light winks back twice to my once.

As I feared, my guardian Birman is with me, or at least a little of this Tibetan Tinkerbell's Stardust is. Where she was when I was plunging down the dark throat of the chimney, I cannot say. Perhaps she was out getting her twinkle adjusted. I sometimes suspect her headlights of being set on "dim." No doubt communing with unseen realms saps the IQ.

So I sit down to watch the evening's entertainment, even as the Little Light That Could hovers at the window to watch me. I am forgotten now that fresh phenomena threaten.

So it is with much bemusement that I watch the assembled physics stiffen and groan and twitch and sigh... and totally ignore the fascinating phenomena that show up in answer to their actions.

At first it looks like the fog has coagulated in the ceiling corner like a phantom icicle, but then I see stars glimmering through the bright white radiance and then I see a belt buckle the size of a pizza pan, and then I see a familiar, fuzzy face... and Elvis in his glitziest white jumpsuit slides down the corner of the wall like a fireman on a pole. Hey, the King still is as limber as ever, even if he has not lost an ounce in the Afterlife. And he gives me a big wink before lip-syncing a totally silent number. I think it is "Cat, Help! Falling in Love With You," but I am not a big lip-reader, and although I knew Elvis was into strange things, I did not think cross-species romance was one of them.

I look to see if the gathered experts can do a better job of translating the silent song lyrics, but they are ail staring elsewhere, oblivious. I look at Elvis, who gives me this shrug and his cute little sneery smile, then melts into the fog.

Meanwhile, my human companions are out to lunch, except there is not even food on their table. Talk about being twelve cards short of a full tarot deck!

So I clean my whiskers, Elvis's sideburns having reminded me that grooming is the mark of a gentleman, and while I am so engaged, I catch something else out of the corner of my eye.

This is a tall, portly old gent wearing a tweedy Norfolk jacket and a checked cap. He is adjusting one of the lighting sconces by looking at it and waggling his bushy white eyebrows.

Naturally, it goes faint and bright in turn, almost like one of those semaphores they used to signal people with over long distances in olden times, but do you think the assembled sensitives would notice a laser beam on their own birthday cake? No.

They are fussing at each other about how nothing is happening, and yes, the fog is interesting but what does it do?

The old dude, who is rather pale despite the plethora of plaids in his attire, pulls out a pipe and eyes me hopefully, like I should recognize him, or light his fire or something. I do not approve of smoking, so am about to do nothing of the kind, but--what do you know--the light of my life (I am being sarcastic here)--floats through the window-glass and ends up hovering over the old guy's pipe, which gives off a ghostly contrail of smoke that merges with the ubiquitous fog.

Apparently Beyond is not big on fire hazards.

The old squire's eyes light up for a moment too, until you would swear he was alive, then he starts the disappearing act, and for just a moment I think I know who he is. The name starts with d as in "detective," and if he would stay just a few seconds longer, I would make the connection and be home free. But he does not, and I do not, and life is like that, and sometimes even death is like that.

It is a pretty sad room in Vegas, however, when the dead present provide more entertainment than the living present. And I include those of my acquaintance in this judgment.

I am nothing if not impartial, and right now I would not declare my lot with the sad excuses for extrasensory perception gathered here tonight.

A few more prestigious personas from the past lend their presence to the gathering, unobserved by anyone but me. Mae West is looking as pneumatic as ever, and pale becomes her. It takes me a while to figure out who the lanky lady in the leather jacket is, and by the time I am ready to shout "Hey, Amelia, where on earth did you bow out?" she is fading away too, from lack of attention.

I tell you, it is enough to make a cat cry, to see all these newsworthy folks pass through without so much as a flicker of notice from the living. I am wondering if I can make a deal with some human with vision, and we could provide prognostications from the past, complete with the signature of the visiting ghost, when suddenly all hullabaloo breaks loose and the seance folks are looking lively.

This must be good. I look where they are looking so lively, and I see the fog has amassed in my former landing zone, the fireplace. Well, it is a lot of fog and there is a form sort of quivering on it like an out-of-focus vacation slide on a sheet posing as a screen. I can almost see a person in the vague design of light and dark, but it is nothing like the camera-ready sharp-focus of the famous folks I have been viewing in solitary splendor tonight.

In fact, the old English-squire dude comes blazing back by the wall sconce, puffing on his ectoplasmic pipe until smoke signals practically scream his presence, but no one notices. He looks happy, though, and makes fists as if to say "Yes! Yes!"

As the murmur of "Houdini" comes from the live ones around the table, I cannot help rooting for this long-dead dude myself. I always root for the underdog (only in that instance), as I always like to watch a good comeback. And if this Houdini dude came back, that would be world-class news. Not up to Amelia or Elvis, you understand, but one cannot have everything.

So I even get my ears perked up, and I am anticipating something spectacular, but instead I get more fog. This fog floats around the table like a waiter looking for a tip, giving every psychic a big charge as it nears each seat.

I think my little doll will get lines on her pert little face; she is frowning so hard during this performance. And she is right: an animated fog-sheet is not worth the price of admission. If only she were a kindred soul and could see what I see, like the old dude against the wall jumping up and down and mouthing "Houdini" right along with the chanting psychics. Doyly, that is his name. I believe that he had something to do with a British opera company called the D'Oily Carte. The British always aspire to French phrases when it comes to culture and cooking.

Anyway, old Doyly is having an out-of-the-body heart attack right in front of everybody, and all they can do is stare at this circular clump of fog, which strikes me as mighty suspicious.

Then suddenly something is thrown down hard on the smooth wood tabletop.

Everybody screams, and even I jump, because the object comes rolling right for me, nothing of human construction being purely level, I* jump too, because I do not know if the object will explode or something, but it is as dead as a dud dumdum, which is what it is, sort of.

Anyway, I know a bullet when I see one, and I gently pat and spin it for a 3-D examination.

At this someone waxes hysterical--I think it is the doll with the spasmodic eyelids--and the long-haired dude springs up to wrest the bullet away from me like I was playing with it or something. I hate to be underestimated. I was trying to calculate the caliber, but it is an older piece of ammunition, and hard to categorize. I would have to sleep on it (via an arms encyclopedia) to be sure.

Anyway, the fog has made the rounds back to the fireplace and is drifting away like smoke. I see that Doyly is long gone; not so. Karma, unfortunately.

Now the knickknacks on the wall start flying around, but I am not too alarmed, having dodged my share of hurled objects in my time. But the seance crowd is more than somewhat shook up. Even Miss Temple Barr looks a little pale as she tries to attend to the lady on her left, who has apparently fainted during the knife-throwing act.

So I look closer and I see that "fainted" is something more fatal.

Karma's little light is buzzing like a hyperactive mosquito back at the window, and the dumdums at the table are standing and frowning.

I understand immediately that this is a job for Lieutenant Molina of the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department. So does my little doll, for she gets a very wan and woebegone expression on her face, seeing as she was sitting next to and holding hands with the victim.

The bright side is that Crawford Buchanan was pinching pinkies with the victim's other hand, so who is to say he is not the likeliest suspect.

The other people around the table are turning up their headlights and beginning to realize that the hat-head was done in.

And they are beginning to say that Houdini did it.

I do not know. I would not know Houdini if he dove off the Circle Ritz roof into a teacup. I can definitely say, however, that Elvis Presley, Mae West, Amelia Earhart and the English Doyly dude did not do it. Too bad I am not allowed to testify.