Speaking of foolishness a wee bit closer to home, it is more than somewhat clear to me that if my Miss Temple is not acting her age, I need to be on the scene from the get-go to keep her little masquerade from turning dangerous.
So I enter the place with the film crew, who are obligingly loaded with so many long aluminum equipment boxes that a crocodile could slink in at their ankles and they’d never notice.
Make that one svelte black puddytat, and not even Tweety Bird would notice little moi.
I cannot imagine how my expedition has escaped the notice of my nosy partner in crime solving, Miss Midnight Louise, my wannabe daughter, but so far I am solo on this case and relishing the peace and quiet. This joint is so grandiose that it is easy for me to slip around wherever I feel like it. The floors are all marble or wood but my tootsies come stocking shod when I want them to. I skate over the shiny surfaces like a shadow glimpsed out of the corner of someone’s eye.
I overhear one of the tech guys joking that the place is supposed to be haunted by an Elvis imitator’s ghost.
Better and better. Elvis and I have a noncompetition agreement when it comes to haunting. And any untoward noise I might make is likely to be taken for an unearthly phenomenon.
I check out the kitchen first, because … oh, just because. Without Miss Louise on my tail demanding explanations for my every move, I am free to do as I please.
Wow. This place is huge. You could hold basketball games in the kitchen, which has three huge stainless-steel Sub-Zero fridges big enough to stash a limousine’s worth of bodies. Basketball-player-size bodies.
With the black granite countertops and black marble floors, this is not the kind of kitchen that tolerates the errant crumb. I see that I will have to do some creative cadging to provide my own meals during my stay here.
I eyeball the back yard, which has all the comforts of your average five-star health club … pools, spas, airconditioned exercise pavilions, distant athletic courts, none of them the sort of facility I would care to spend a minute in. Amazing how humans have to force themselves to physical action when my kind knows that sleeping twenty hours a day is the key to a healthy lifestyle.
In fact, I stretch out in the sun for a few minutes and someone coos and the next thing I know a camera is framing my lissome figure in its single eye.
“He must come with the property,” a camerawoman says. “This place is so big and bland, it’ll be nice to have a little animal interest to focus on.”
“When we are not close up and personal on all these teen sluts,” a guy answers.
‘They are not sluts. This is a very life-affirming program,” she says indignantly.
Like most indignation, it is lost on her hearer, a cameraman with a world-weary attitude.
“These reality shows are just a new network twist on T and A. You do remember T and A programming? And I do not mean Transit Authority. Back in the eighties. Jiggle shows. About the only life-affirming activity around here will be all those Ts and As getting exercised to within an inch of their lives and being uplifted into prime shape. Looks like your new pal the cat could use a little time on the treadmill, and maybe a shave and a haircut.”
I honor the crass slob with a hiss and a glare.
“See. He heard you! Animals are amazingly sensitive to human emotions.”
“That was not a human emotion. That was a professional opinion.”
A reeking boot swings at my mug. The smell almost knocks me over, though the boot never even grazed a whisker. Humans have no idea how overwhelming ground-level odors are.
“Watch your sneaky step, kitty. If you try to steal ascene and get in the way of my camera, you will be shredded cabbage.”
I do not deign to tell him I have kung fu moves that would make Jackie Chan look like he was standing still and whistling Dixie.
Let them underestimate you.
The woman coos at me and stands guard, arms folded, until the creep takes his hand-held camera and leaves.
“Poor fellah,” she says, bending down to pat my head. “Dick really lives up to his name. He’s a good cameraman but pretty pathetic in the public relations department.”
I hate to say it but during her solicitous gesture I get a really good view of T and A. Luckily, they do not attract in my case unless fully furred.
I give her a short appreciative purr, rise, and go back inside while the sliding kitchen door is still ajar, exhaling morgue-cold airconditioning on a desert world. At least there is no icky orange scent here to banish the odor of decay. Yet.
There are four ways upstairs: the front stairs, which resemble those at the Paris Opera House for marble-paved elegance, and the back stairs, which are plain unvarnished wood, steep and twisty, and intended for servants, or at least mothers-in-law. Then there is the elevator, which is way too small for me to easily blend in with the human passengers, and the silent butler in the kitchen, a capacious box open on one side, which operates at the push of a button and has shadowy recesses. Think of it as a large litter box set sideways and in upward and downward motion. Or a mini-elevator for domestics. Or domestic cats. I do.
I press the button with my strong right mitt and hop aboard. Soon, it wafts upward. I press toward the back of the box, like a lizard in a mailbox (a common phenomenon in this climate). When the mechanism stops, I peek out, find the upper hall empty, and thump down to the floor.
More wood.
In an hour, I have made a quick tour of about thirty-five bedroom-with-bath suites. This place is built like a bed-and-breakfast for Attila the Hun and accompanying Mongol horde.
Only once during my tour did anything untoward happen.
It was in bedroom number fourteen, I think. I was nosing around the perimeter when I noticed some unopened high-end luggage in the room, all in pink high-denier and all bearing the cursive initials S. A.
Of course, I naturally think of South America and wonder if Charo is in residence, speaking of T and A, or about to be. But then, as I backed away to the wall when I realized the room could be occupied at any time, I rear-ended my way into an impediment.
A somewhat wishy-washy impediment but an impediment nevertheless.
I whirl to face it and find myself confronting another pervasive pink canvas bag, except this one has a familiar look. And there is a familiar name emblazoned on it. Yvette.
My heart stops and does a double-axel somewhere two feet above the floor.
I inhale the rich, perfumed scent of the Divine Yvette. She is not here at the moment but she has been, and will be again.
What a lucky break! I can protect my Miss Temple from fire, flood, and overexposure on national television and still pursue my courtship of Miss Savannah Ashleigh’s pampered Persian siren at one and the same time.
I tiptoe out of the divine chamber, branding its location on my brain. Now to lay low until ail the players are in place and I can be about my quiet and stealthy work … and, as it happens, play.
Chapter 18
Pretty Putrid in Pink
Despite the bravado of Temple’s Rollerblading arrival at the Teen Queen Castle, she had hit the moment that made her quaiclass="underline" orientation.
This was like joining a sorority in public. Not only was Xoe Chloe not sorority material in any reality, but Temple herself was known by several of the show’s officials. Was her pre-makeover makeover good enough to fool them?
Max had always said brazen was the best disguise. She was about to find out.
The contestants assembled in the large and impressive library, good enough to serve as a set for the mystery board game Clue.
There, the organizers informed them that they were twenty-eight of the most promising young ladies ever assembled and would be working with the celebrity judges and coaches to bring out their true potential.