A paw the size of a dinner plate thrusts through the bars.
I am afraid the dinner plate is out here, and we are sitting on it.
“Back! Back!” comes a falsetto cry.
Golda has leaped to my side and our defense with an ear-splitting yap.
“Back, back!” seconds Groucho, now pressing against my other side.
Half-pint courage is all well and good, but not when you are facing about forty quarts of snarling predator power.
Our opponent’s jaws spread wider.
I expect to hear a Fee, fie, foe, fum any second now, as this giant gets ready to grind the bones of whoever is dumb enough to stand up to it.
Then I hear something crack, and close my eyes. Bye-bye, bitty dog!
But the fluffballs bracketing me have not been snagged by the exploring mitt, and my eyes widen as I see the grin of death before me turn into a…yawn.
Another impressive jawbone crack, and superfeline smacks his fangs. “You. The runt cub in the middle. I saw you in my cage the other day, making off with part of my lunch.”
“Me? No, sire. I mean, sir. I was in Las Vegas doing my nails at the time. This is my first visit to Rancho Exotica. I swear it on my mother’s vibrissae.”
A growl again, but it sounds like a chuckle. “You do not look big enough to have whiskers, Cub, but maybe your mother might.” The huge eyes blink at my bodyguard. “Usually visitors bring rodents along only if a snake is in residence, and there is none on the premises now.”
“Snake.” I have visions of a boa constrictor big enough to swallow the Ritz Hotel. “Rodents. Oh, you mean my, uh, muscle. These are not rodents; they are miniature dogs.”
“Dogs.” The big dude yawns again. “They are lucky they feed us well here.” The broad brow furrows. “All except the theatrical guy from the New Millennium Hotel. Him they did not feed well. But he did not stay very long. Our population keeps coming and going, I am not sure why.”
I am not about to tell this dude the facts of life at Rancho Exotica. No use upsetting the natives when they might develop a nervous appetite in response.
“Yeah, well, I am a private investigator operating out of Vegas, and I am here to find out why some of our best cats are disappearing.”
“Vegas?” The big guy almost grins. “I hear that town is filled with disappearing cats. I am from Provo myself. I was a roadside attraction at a reptile ranch until the authorities confiscated me. Then I did time at an animal rehabilitation ranch until the management had a big spat over the donation money. We ended up being shipped hither and yon. And this is my hither.” He yawns again. “It is not a bad life, no worse than any other place I remember, but somewhat boring.”
I hate to tell him it will go from boring to fatal in short order.
“They call me Midnight Louie,” I introduce myself. “I would appreciate your not eating my bodyguards in a reflex motion. They are small but occasionally useful.”
“What a coincidence,” the big guy answers. “They call me Midnight. And Ebony. And Inkspot. It depends on where I land and how much imagination the two-legs have. But you can call me Butch.”
“So how long have you been doing time here, Butch?”
“I am a senior resident. About as long as it takes a fat moon to get skinny and back again.”
“And Osiris, how long was he here?”
“You know the theatrical dude! Why did you not say so at first? He was a little peeved and a lot panicked when he was here, but I cannot say that I blame him. They had him on rations so short they were invisible.”
“So you said. For how long?”
“Several suns. Then they took him away one dark time, and he never came back. That happens, though, like the waning of the moon and the swelling of the sun each day. We are always being brought and taken away.”
There is something so sad about such a big bruiser being caged and subjected to the whims of an inferior and weaker species that for a moment I am lost for words. These big guys in the Big House have not got the free will of the smallest alley cat.
In the silence, Groucho yaps out, “Sounds like the panther could use a good lawyer.”
Amen.
“Come to think of it,” Butch goes on, “I remember you trespassing on my territory twice. You brought back the picked-clean bone. What weird behavior. Must come of living and working in Las Vegas. Say, I get it! Were you bringing your compadre Osiris a secret snack?”
I wish I could say that I keep silent from modesty, or unwillingness to credit Midnight Louise with the life-saving operation, but I am mostly loath to let the big guy think that I stole his lunch for any reason whatsoever, in case he expects me to make it up to him personally.
“That was a good deed, little fellah,” he rumbles on.
I blink. He likes me. He actually likes me. “It was nothing that I would not not-do again.”
While he is trying to decipher that phrase, I press on. “In fact, we are here to find out where Osiris has gone. These here are my personal noses, which is why I would be grateful if you big dudes can refrain from munching them while we conduct our investigation.”
“Investigate away. We have always been curious about where our compatriots go.”
I hear a couple of short growls of agreement from near and far, and realize that we have been eavesdropped on by some mighty big ears.
“No one ever bothers to tell us,” Butch rumbles on. “It is like they think we are deaf and dumb.”
“Can I take it that the entire compound will give us carte blanche?”
“We do not have any carte blanche that I know of, but we will answer your questions if we can. We are more than a little bored anyway.”
So I make the rounds, in the course of my investigations meeting one toothless lion, two ocelots, and a puma in a dead tree.
They all confirm the panther’s story. Osiris was not fed while here and was taken away, never to be seen again.
We end up at the empty cage that housed the kidnapped leopard.
“Any scents worth trailing?” I ask the Yorkies.
They zip through the bars like floor mops, not even ruffling their trailing coats. I see their shadowy little forms, nose to concrete, vacuuming up the residue on the cage floor. At times like these I am glad that dogs, like the French, are more renowned for their “nose” than my breed.
“Ooh,” says Golda. “More Big Cat.” She sneezes so hard her ears lift horizontal to the ground. “Why do I not smell any dog out here?”
“They do not hunt dog for trophy heads,” I point out. “No value in it.”
Groucho growls at me, all four tiny feet braced. “We are more valuable as hunting partners than prey. What has your kind ever done to make itself useful to mankind?”
“We have inspired innumerable art objects, from the Sphinx to the MGM Grand lion.”
“Exactly nothing, then.” Groucho wheezes with laughter while Golda sneezes again.
I feel like the Cowardly Lion being berated by Munchkins, or toy windup Totos. If I did not need these noses at the moment, I would hand these two over to Butch and his ilk for between-meal palette cleansers. All that hair would make pretty good dental floss for those saber-tooth-size fangs, I bet.
But I control my savage side and play the urbane drawing-room detective.
“I hope, my little furry friends, that ‘exactly nothing,’ is not what your noses have come up with.”
While Groucho and I have been debating, Golda has been running around the cage floor in imitation of the Energizer battery ad bunny.
“Water, water everywhere,” she complains, taking another swab around the floor like an industrious mophead.
“Then all traces of who has come and gone here have been washed away,” I say.
Golda sniffs indignantly. “Not all. Not to the connoisseur.” I notice that Groucho is sitting back and letting her do all the down and dirty nose work.
She finally comes over to us and sticks her hairy little head through the bars.