“And?”
“Where he got out was one big litter box. I decided against masquerading as a deposit for the next few hours and stayed with the car.”
“Hmmm. A dedicated operative would have followed my instructions and stayed with Mr. Max. That was the one you were assigned to tail. You were not asked to take a cushy joy ride with Miss Temple.”
“Yeah? Well, did you want me to find the missing leopard or not?”
Miss Louie spits on her fist and boxes away at her face as if wishing she were wiping me off the floor instead of knocking the desert dust off her cheekbones.
I am speechless, not to mention spitless. I send her out on one tailing operation and she nails the missing leopard. And all I have to show for today is having my undercarriage prodded by Dr. Mendel and my reproductive history filmed for posterity. Of which Miss Midnight Louise is not one. Any posterity. Of mine.
While I mull over the bitter fruits of fame and fortune, Miss Midnight Louise leans back and honors me with a report. Only it feels more like a lecture.
“My choice was clear. Did I follow the unreliable and unpredictable male, ruled more by hormones than by head, even though you had instructed me to? Or did I stick with the plucky and intuitive female? Did I have a choice?
“Your Miss Temple drove, fairly sedately for her, until the road ended at a mountain. I suppose most roads around here do.
“I smelled the spoor of many beasts, including those of the fortunate feline species, and also enough leavings to knock a sensitive nose to its knees, so it is a good thing I had not invited Nose E. along. This was far too crude a job for one of his connoisseur-level sniffing abilities. I mean, a blind human could have followed the ordure to its origins.”
“Miss Temple noticed the obvious scent?”
“I fear not. Superior as she may be, in this case she was totally bedazzled by the structure built at the mountain’s base, and getting into it. It was a modern, yet formidable sort of place, and I made my second momentous decision. I decided that I would sniff around on my own outside while she investigated inside. My greatest risk was that she and the vehicle would depart without me.”
“From what you say, that would have been a disaster.”
“Indeed. But as you see, that did not happen.”
I look hard, but I do not detect the slightest trace of a callus on her dainty footpads. Drat! A long, dry, sandy walk would do her good.
“So what did you find?”
“A zoo,” she says, working hard at the tufts of hair between her toes. “It will take me days to rinse off the scents of such a Babel of beasts. And interviewing them all was not a picnic either. I deserve hazardous duty pay.”
“Cut to the chase,” I growl.
“Strange you should mention that word. I do not know if you can scent the fear from where you sit, but I have spent the day dealing with animal sacrifices on the hoof. They are there not to be chased but to be easily caught. There are whole herds of horned beasts born and bred there and kept merely to be killed in their own pens by people who come in solely for this purpose. Fortunately, these herd-running creatures are far less intelligent than our breed, so they do not quite see the big picture, only that men come and lightning strikes, felling some of their numbers. Blessed are the dim of brain, who do not see the ax from the first.”
I cannot help shuddering. I have never had any problems seeing the ax. I have been hunted in my homeless past by BB guns, handguns, arrows, and, on performance nights, shoes. It is never fun to be prey, and to be penned in for the kill is truly vicious.
“But the prize objects of these hunts,” Miss Louise goes on, “I find in cages rather than herded into pens.”
Miss Midnight Louise’s voice has grown deep and ominous. She bites savagely at a matted foot tuft, then spits out a hank of fur.
“I regret to inform you that our larger brothers and sisters are the most prized victims of this coward’s excuse for a hunt, and it is here that I found the leopard known as Osiris in his stage persona.”
“He is to be hunted to death?”
“That may be the idea, but I do not think it will happen.”
“He is safe?”
“I did not say that.”
“Then speak up, girl, and quit beating around the bush!”
“There is very little bush out in the desert to beat around, and very little for the hooved ones to hide behind. But I doubt that Osiris will live long enough to be hunted and killed.”
“Why?”
“When I found him, he was in a wrought and pitiful state. He had not been fed since his abduction.”
“Not fed? Why not?”
“I cannot say. Even I could smell the raw meat in the other cages, but he had only a water bowl. A large water bowl, but only water nevertheless. I had no idea these big cats were quite so big. The lions and tigers seemed the size of Mr. Matt’s new car.”
“They have lions and tigers too?”
Louise gazes into the distance. “I was forced to, er, negotiate an abstraction of some undevoured meat from a black panther to give to poor Osiris.”
“You took the food out of a panther’s mouth?”
“Well, it was sleeping, so I slipped into its cage and wrestled a big nasty bone with lots of meat on it through the bars and dragged it into Osiris’s cage. Then I was forced to wait while he devoured it so I could drag the evidence back into the tiger cage. I think it is best that the animals who run this death camp not know that I foiled their abuse of Osiris. In fact, if we cannot persuade your human friends to get Osiris out of there, one of us should return daily and feed him by the method I have devised.”
This causes me to frown, and frown harder.
My so-called “friends” are not exactly at my behest. In fact, I am the most undercover of undercover artists, and work best in subtle and mysterious ways.
How I am to stage-manage daily jaunts to this distant desert hideaway to feed a kidnapped leopard, lead Mr. Max Kinsella to said leopard, and still tend to my hunt for the lilac Siamese while working for the good of my Miss Temple?
It is more than I can solve in the next few minutes, so I follow Miss Midnight Louise’s example in berating my toe mats and chewing on both problems at once.
She, however, exhausted from her labors, has gone to sleep with her tail tip wrapped around the end of her little black chinny-chin-chin.
I foresee no such luxury for Midnight Louie.
Chapter 19
Sketched in Suspicion
“Sorry I couldn’t see you sooner,” Molina said.
She was rushing into her office where Janice Flanders had been waiting for—she checked her watch and stifled a word she wouldn’t want her daughter Mariah to overhear—twenty minutes.
“Everything exploded this morning,” she continued. “The caseload has been outrageous.”
“I know, Lieutenant. Don’t worry about me. I’ve been studying the portraits on your walls.”
Molina glanced up at the familiar frieze of mug shots and most-wanted posters.
“Trophies?” Janice asked, “or just generic crooks?”
“Some we nailed. So. What did you get at…what’s-its-name?”
“Secrets. Sounds more upscale than it is. I owe you thanks. I never would have visited a strip club otherwise. Neither would have Matt.”
“You took a date?”
“I took muscle.” Janice smiled. “Or thought I did. The star attraction ended up hitting on him.”
Molina shook her head. “From rectory to raunchy. You and I have a lot to answer for in the education of Matt Devine.”
“He did better with her than I did with the house muscle.” Janice leaned forward, the pencil in her left hand tapping the glass atop Molina’s desk. “I’ve made a find, I think. Remember the guy you had me sketch recently?” Janice glanced over the walls and frowned. “I don’t see his handsome face on your Wall of Infamy.”