Miss Temple has become so carried away by my athletic exertions that she picks me up and actually attempts to rise. I see that I am to be toted back down to my carrier, and am much touched by her efforts, but fear she has overestimated her toting power. I am no lightweight normally, and with half a pound of A La Cat turning to concrete in my gut I am even more unwieldy than usual.
Miss Temple's dainty shoes kick the almost-fatal trip wire to the bottom of the stairs.
Nothing like stumbling over the evidence. She misses the second-to-the-bottom step on the set and teeters for a moment before she gets her balance back. Then she cranes her head over my swollen stomach to examine the floor.
"Tsk. Someone left a piece of wire onstage. How careless. I'll have to get it once you're back in your carrier."
No, no! I look up. Maurice is slinking down the stairs unnoticed, like any second banana. I am helpless to resist, although I do offer Miss Temple a few delicate pricks of warning.
"Louie! Don't fight. I'll let you out as soon as we're in the car. Union rules require you to have a container."
Of course by the time she has carefully minced down the steps to the stage, dumped me in the carrier and returned to do her good deed and pick up the rogue wire, it is ...
"Gone," she mutters to the empty stage and house. "I could swear I stepped right on it."
By now Maurice has batted it a few dozen yards away into the wings, and if he has any smarts, into the nearest waste receptacle.
I swallow a growl of frustration, but it is a small one. I doubt he left any pad prints on the wire, and besides, no human would think to look for them, anyway.
If one is going to commit murder, an innocent facade is the best disguise, and fur is fail-safe in that regard. However, that works both ways, and if Maurice persists in trying to turn me into cured ham, I may have to fix his bacon.
The expression makes my stomach growl, but first I have to be rid of that A La Cat. I believe I will shock and over joy Miss Temple by gobbling down that awful Free-to-be-Feline when I get home. A few swallows of that ought to make everything come up in a most satisfying way.
Chapter 13
A Cooked Goose
"Oh, Louie!"
The cold, wet lump under Temple's bare foot told her she needed her glasses after all.
She hopped one-legged (like a flamingo) back to the bed and its companion table. Putting on her glasses, she examined the suspect part of the parquet floor. Yes, a damp grayish glob, like a wet cigar, defaced the wood.
Temple sat on the bed edge and wiped the bottom of her foot with a tissue. She pulled six or seven more tissues from the box, then went back to collect, wrap and deposit the giant hair ball in the bathroom wastebasket.
Through all of this, Louie sat majestically on the zebra-striped coverlet, licking off more hair to end up in yet another Major Hair-Ball Production.
"I suppose because you're a TV star-to-be now you think your hair balls are cashmere."
Louie stopped licking to regard her thoughtfully. At least Temple assumed his manner was thoughtful. She would hate to think it was possibly disdainful. He pushed up on his front legs, then leaped to the floor, carefully treading around the damp area. But he limped a little.
"Louie, are you all right?"
She trailed him, barefoot, to the living room, where he took a turn into the kitchen. There he paused over the Free-to-be-Feline bowl he had actually honored last night by consuming some of the contents thereof. After a sniff he turned back to the living room and finally hopped up on the sofa.
His limp had evened out on his travels, so Temple opened her door to collect the fat Sunday paper and left it on the coffee table while she returned to the bedroom to contemplate her options.
What to wear to a Darren Cooke Sunday brunch was the problem. Temple didn't usually fret over what to wear, except to worry about forecast rain or unseasonable cold. But Temple didn't usually hobnob with the city's influx of celebrities. And Savannah Ashleigh would probably be there. For some reason, ever since they became dueling stage mothers, she felt rather competitive toward SA. At least she didn't want to embarrass Louie, who was now known even to Darren Cooke.
Maybe she should follow his example and always wear black. A muumuu like Electra, but black. Except. . . Temple wasn't that fond of wearing black. And white was too summery now and her closet was a bore, along with everything in it, and half of that everything needed dry cleaning or drip-drying or small repairs with needle and thread, which she had not laid hand to in months.
Of course her scheme to replace all her wire hangers with smooth plastic ones had fallen apart half accomplished, so every other outfit she wanted to examine was tangled with something else. What Temple bought depended on her mood that day as well as what was on sale, and given her theatrical background, her wardrobe had multiple-personality syndrome.
When Temple complained about her lack of a signature style, Electra said that at least she didn't have a range of six sizes to consider, and no notion which she would fit into on that particular day, as Electra had faced until she had converted to the all-accommodating muumuu.
Temple guessed that would happen to her in a decade, when thirty became forty.
She decided to do Hollywood chic out of the Beatnik fifties--a huge white shirt (discreetly touched with eighties rhinestones, like fallen crumbs) cinch-belted over black leggings. For shoes... she bent to dig among the pairs impaled on a chrome rack . . . something Savannah.
Aha! A pair of vintage high-heeled mesh sandals with flamingo-pink feathers on the toes ... just the thing! This would subtly (or not-so-subtly) combine her current two assignments: supervising Louie's film-world debut and running interference for Domingo's flamingo fandango.
A pair of thin black-enamel hoop earrings completed the Arlene Dahl look. "Bet you don't even remember Arlene Dahl, dahling," she told Louie as she scooped up her favorite black-patent tote bag, grabbed her car keys from the inside-cupboard hook in the kitchen and headed out with about seven minutes to spare. "Neither do I."
Arriving too early for a Hollywood bash was haute gauche, she was sure.
****************
The Oasis's fabled towers looked flat and faded in the daylight, but the giant pair of entry elephants stood at attention, one foot and two tusks each raised in welcome.
Sabu the elephant valet pulled his tasteful brocade turban firmly over his ears as he bent to squirm into the Storm and whisk it away. Temple felt the car at least deserved valet parking on such an occasion, and she didn't think that she or the flamingo shoes could take a long walk from the parking garage.
It was already a long walk inside the Oasis to the elevators.
Like all Las Vegas PR people, Temple had attended an occasional high-profile press party.
She had been among crowds invited to hobnob with the newest semi-fading star to make a long Las Vegas engagement part of an attractive retirement package. Amazing how you almost never ran into the guest of honor at those wingdings.
This was the first time she had been personally invited by the host of honor, and she didn't know quite what to expect. Darren Cooke didn't want her flackery skills, but what Savannah Ashleigh dismissed as her "Nancy Drew" proclivities. Temple was a teensy bit impressed that Cooke would take her seriously, and apparently he was in serious trouble. She wondered if she had a right to step in.
The elevators were glass bullets, Hyatt-style, but fashioned like bejeweled Indian caskets. As her car rocketed smoothly up to the penthouse region, Temple was able to watch the lobby of greenery and temple ruins, exotic live birds and curtains of waterfalls slip past.