Other line?" An awful suspicion stirs my soul.
Just then I hear approaching feet and dive back into the canna lilies. The Divine Yvette is no dummy.
She curls up in her carrier as if nothing had happened, and indeed it has not.
My midday naps in Miss Temple Barr's closet have made me an expert in the styles and scents of human shoes. A jazzy high-heeled gold lame pair can only shod the feet of Miss Savannah Ashleigh.
Beyond a second, hard-shelled carrier that has been deposited beside the Divine Yvette's home-away-from-home, I spy some stodgy men's wingtips that speak of points east, like Chicago or New York.
All these feet are shuffling around, except Miss Savannah Ash-leigh's, which are doing tricks, such as arching the foot and rubbing a toe on the back of her shapely calf or on the calf of one of the wingtip wearers. Again her breathy voice is wafted down to me on a passing breeze.
"We must keep Yvette in the shade. I do not want her getting a freckle on her nose, although I suppose we could consider it a beauty mark. It was good enough for Marilyn. ... Is this the other animal?"
The words, "other animal," are pronounced in a distasteful tone I cannot quarrel with, for I suspect the identity of the Divine Yvette's performing partner sight unseen. Sometimes it is most depressing to be able to put two and two together. One comes up the odd man out. I have no doubt that I will momentarily be in this most unhappy position.
"Yes, Ma'am," answers a fellow whose voice has all the manly resonance of a hornpipe.
"Well, remove him from that... box. I want to keep Yvette protected in her carrier until we know he is reliable."
"He is very well trained, Miss Ashleigh."
"Still, I don't want that brute attacking Yvette for some reason. She is very sensitive."
"Perhaps she will not work out for the commercial, then."
"Nonsense. My Yvette always rises to an occasion. Still, I intend to see that nothing disturbs her. She is not some trickster cat bailed out of an animal shelter at the eleventh hour and kept by an animal trainer. She is a personal pet, as well as the result of decades of the most persnickety breeding."
"Yes, Ma'am," says Mr. Macho.
So I see him bend down to unleash the fate I fear awaits the Divine Yvette. The carrier's metal grill (how well I remember the other side of that noxious barrier a time or two when Miss Temple got carried away and carted me off to the House of Dr. Death for some unfortunate procedure or the other) opens.
I see a garden-variety pink nose poke through. This is not the delicate shell-pink that adorns the Divine Yvette's face. This is a big, bold tongue-colored nose in a big, bold face of yellow stripes, which clashes with the nose. Pink and yellow. Ick! A long, horizontally striped leg thrusts from the carrier. Then another. Soon all of the Divine Yvette's co-star is catching rays.
"He is so big," Miss Savannah Ashleigh complains. "And ... yellow. And ... striped. I had hoped for a more elegant cat."
"He makes a hundred-fifty thou a year," Yes-man answers, with feeling. "I guess he does all right. He has his own fan club, calendar and video. We plan to release a 'Cat Carols' cassette for Christmas, featuring his meows and a chorus of sleigh bells. Your Yvette will be lucky if she tickles the public fancy like our plain old alley cat Maurice here."
I am still toting up the probable dimensions of the fellow's financial empire when out slips the name I love to loathe. Maurice. Of course it is he. What other commercial cat is so infamous? That lolling-about, unemployed camera-hog who represents Yummy Tum-tum-tummy feline food. Have you ever heard a more obnoxious brand-name? All this, plus a singing career. It is enough to make an ordinary alley serenader, well... spit hairballs from here to Needles.
Maurice stretches until his belly touches concrete, then ambles past Miss Savannah Ashleigh's trim ankles (though they are not so well-turned as my roommate's). He gives her the brush-past, then sways over to the main event: the Divine Yvette's carrier. After an initial sniff along the side seams, he pokes his big mug up against the screen.
The Divine Yvette peeks through. I see the blue-green glimmer of her gemlike orbs.
She reaches up a silver velvet paw.
Then she swats Maurice across the intrusive nose, and follows up with a savage hiss.
That is my girl!
Chapter 15
Hocus Focus
Temple came to a dead stop just inside the hotel lobby, her mind in public-relations brochure mode: Picture this.
Picture walking into a Las Vegas hotel and casino.
Picture twinkling lights and clinking slot machines.
Picture Frank Sinatra leaning over a lobby balcony to greet the clientele.
Caesars Palace, you say? The new MGM Grand? Some other high-profile Strip hostelry?
No.
This is the only Las Vegas establishment to bear a woman's name, a woman whose forty years of film, song and dance put the E in entertainment of the old schooclass="underline" glitz before grunge, talent before attitude.
Aha! Shirley MacLaine, you think.
No, it isn't that Rat Pack token woman of yesteryear turned
New Age guru. It's--
"Debbie Reynolds's Hotel and Hollywood Museum," Temple mused aloud as she and Kit gazed up at Frank, who gazed right back without blinking a blue glass eye. "Why are we meeting your author friends so far from the Crystal Phoenix?" she asked her aunt.
"Security," Kit said. "This hotel is off the Strip, so convention-goers aren't as likely to wander over here. We want our instant little focus group to feel free to dish dirt. Besides, the group will adore touring the hotel's Hollywood costume museum after our little cafe-au-lait conference."
"I see," Temple said, though she didn't, "but here, even the walls have ears." She gestured to other celebrities lining the upper level.
"But deaf ears." Kit glanced at the well-attired mannequins. "Isn't that the Duke? In a tux? He really didn't have to dress for us."
"This is neat." After gazing up at the celebrity mannequins lit by a triad of massive crystal chandeliers, Temple returned her attention to the first floor, wading through a moat of slot machines toward a hallway guarded by Mae West in full feather. "Hollywood Walk of Fame," a light-bedazzled marquee above their heads announced. At the hall's opposite end, the glitz was multiplied by a theater marquee whose round flashing lights beckoned like Broadway on a Saturday night. Cardboard cutouts of Laurel and Hardy on the left wall welcomed them with hats in hand.
"I knew you'd like it." Kit hurried after. "I was only guessing what it would be like, though. You haven't been here before, really? And you a resident!"
"I can't keep up with everything in this town. When's lunch?"
Kit squinted at the thin, elegant watch decorating her wrist. "The others are coming in three different cabs, so as not to stir suspicion. Should be along any minute."
"You're sure these security measures are required?"
"Absolutely. The Phoenix is crawling with media and other eager ears ready to overhear and report.
You can't expect our . . . expert witnesses to spill their guts when they might end up on Candid Camera, or--even worse--that tacky tabloid TV show Hot Heads. "
Temple shook her own hot head of blistering red hair. "I can't believe that romance writing is such a dangerous game."
"A day ago, who would have thought cover modeling could be so lethal?" Kit demanded.
Temple nodded, ambling down a memory lane of memorabilia. The film-strip design carpeting detoured to a rest room alcove, where signatures of the kitsch and famous covered the walls. A cardboard-cutout Ann Miller lurked on a stairway landing, wearing mostly fishnet hose and a mile-wide smile.
"So these are all authentic props and costumes," Temple noted. "I always wondered where that stuff ended up."
"Sold at auction and separated," Kit said. "The idea here is to bring it all back together. I bet you're really aching to see Dorothy's ruby red slippers. A pair is on display here."