Temple stared at the phone. Like a watched pot that never boils, a watched phone never rings. Public relations rule number one. Public relations rule number two: never work with children or animals; they're too unpredictable and they'll steal every scene.
But that was all right if scene-stealing was the name of the game, and Louie was a natural.
"I wonder if they know your proclivities for crime?" she asked her only audience.
My proclivities for crime? The only proclivities for crime that I have in these latter domestic days of my lives are your habits of tripping over dead bodies. Maybe if you gave up high heels you would trip over bodies a lot less.
"Maybe my strange affinity for murder only works in Las Vegas. Maybe in New York everything will be different. I sure get a high-pressure feeling from that vice president. I thought this town thrived on hype--"
The phone trills again. I cannot take this Grand Central switchboard act. I leave Miss Temple to her fate and jump down to inspect my Free-to-be-Feline bowl. Still pretty uninspiring. The couch calls.
"Yes!" Temple was relieved to hear her aunt's hauntingly husky voice. It was like eavesdropping on an aural doppelganger. Temple cleared her throat, though it never helped to banish the fog from her voice. Why it should work by proxy, she didn't know.
"Got someone," Kit said. "Does this sort of thing all the time."
"What sort of agent?"
"An odd sort. Not an actor's agent. More like a personal-appearance agent."
"Is this person working for me, or Louie?"
"You, You're the only one who can sign a contract. Presumably you own the cat, not vice versa."
"Have you ever kept a cat?" No.
"Then you don't know how wrong you are. But I assume Louie will press his paw on the Jotted line if I make him do it. The trip to New York will be the test. If he doesn't like traveling, it's no deal. I'm not going to cart a twenty-pound feline protestor around."
"This could be a major opportunity for you as well as the Cat, T0emple. Quince tells me big money should be in it. You could become like . . . Shari Lewis and Lamb Chop."
"Louie's no Lamb Chop. If I want to make like he's a hand puppet, he'll probably eat my hand."
"Are you saying the animal is vicious?"
"I'm saying he's determined; there's a difference. He was a street cat for Lord knows how long. He went his own way and still does to some extent. At least Savannah Ashleigh has made sure that he won't father any inconvenient kittens, but he'll still be interested in any available girl-cats he comes across."
Any? I think from the other room. Does she believe that I exercise no discretion in these matters? What does she take me for, an alley cat?
At this point Miss Temple launches into a dramatic description of my recent kidnapping and stint as an involuntary subject of a mad plastic surgeon. I doze off, having heard this story before, in person.
I know all the important stuff anyway. We will fly to New York City. We might stay at a tony hotel, or we might stay at the aunt-doll's digs. Miss Temple will take me places to see people neither of us know, who will give us lots of money. We will have an agent. We will be big shots. We will have to watch our hindquarters. So what is new?
Chapter 2
Sofa, So Good
"When do you leave for New York?" Matt asked Temple.
The December sunshine refracted from the pool as they passed it on the way to the Circle Ritz's minuscule parking area.
"Day after tomorrow."
He stopped dead. "And this can't wait? Don't you have better things to do?"
She had stopped too, and stood jingling her key ring, which dangled a lot of hardware besides keys to jingle: police whistle, pocket flashlight, pepper spray. For a small woman, Temple's accessories were usually king-size.
"Can't wait," she explained. "It's my Christmas present to you, and I won't be here for Christmas."
"Believe me, I can get along without this at least until the New Year."
"But I can't! What do you gel the man who has nothing?"
"Nothing."
"You don't get off that easy. Come on. This'll be fun."
He doubted it, but once Temple made up her mind about something insignificant, she was as hard to stop as a Sherman tank. On significant matters, she was as two-minded as anybody else.
Matt followed the muted click of her high heels over the asphalt, the winter sun surprisingly warm on his sweatered back.
"You drive," Temple suggested, digging in her tote bag for the actual keys to the car. "I'll navigate."
"You're the expert."
He was glad to get into the Storm, small as it was, to adjust the seat, shut the door, take the wheel, after an exclusive stint on the Hesketh Vampire.
A motorcycle was an antisocial vehicle, he had found. You rode alone, even with a passenger behind you. A car was not only weatherproof, but a portable parlor as well.
"I know you probably hate this," Temple was commenting, "but it's a good lesson in everyday life." She nourished a fist of scrunched Yellow Pages torn from her phone book. "The best route would be The Bee's Knees first, then hit Leopard Alley. We can save Indigo Albino for last, or even swing past the Goodwill and Saint Vincent de Paul's."
"Sounds like a list of speakeasies." He started the car, amused. The expedition rather intrigued him, this innocuous hunt so unlike the genuine track-down on his mind.
"Just aim me toward the right part of town," he told Temple.
"That's the problem. Most of these shops aren't in the 'right' part of town, but in the iffy side. Rents are cheaper."
She directed him north to Charleston Boulevard, away from the Strip. Matt liked tooling around town on weekday noons, when everything was less crowded. It reminded him of Saturdays off from school when he was a kid, when his mother took him shopping in downtown Chicago for clothes.
And that reminded him of less pleasant plans.
"Some of this stuff'--Temple was studying her battle plan marked in ballpoint pen--"is pretty wild. Or far gone. But gems are still out there. A lot of it is fifties or sixties; you may not like that."
"I don't know what I like yet."
"Really?"
Matt shrugged, floating the Storm through a left turn. No sideways slippage, like on the Vampire. No charge of excitement either.
Matt could finally tell the difference, but didn't know which he liked better. Yet.
"What was the house you grew up in like?" Temple asked next.
"Built in the nineteen twenties. Our neighborhood was brick and stucco two-story, two-family places crowded together. Two-flats, they called them: small, dark rooms; small, mostly dirt yards, because that's where the kids all played."
"We had one of those bland blond fifties ramblers, one-story, everything rectolinear, like a railroad car. That's why I love the Circle Ritz. No room is square!"
"Our furniture was forties stuff. Saw tons of it in the rectories later, only that was rich parishioners' mahogany hand-me-downs. Every rectory looked like a set for The Bells of St. Mary's."
"Missed that one. A movie?"
"Forties movie with Bing Crosby as a priest and Ingrid Bergman as a nun." He hummed a bit of the title song.
"Wow. A real golden oldie. And old Ingrid running off to have an out-of-wedlock child, too."