He admits us both into the kitchen area as if we were gourmands or something. I nearly swoon. I smell duck. Fish. Eel. Eeew. No eel. I do not eat snakes and lizards and other desert delicacies.
Miss Louise mushes me through the fragrant preparation area ringing with the cymbals of copper lids.
Before I know it, we are dodging the usual footwear bazaar in the main casino and edging around the darkened exhibition area to the access ladders and ramps at the back.
“Up again!” I protest, eyeing the climb. “I thought I had made all this moot.”
“Scoot!” she says, with a prickly encouraging pat.
“The place is deserted,” I protest, as I climb the long, dark, and winding road built into the access area for the magic show installation far above.
“ ‘Up’ is your motto,” she replies, prodding from the rear.
I must admit it is more than mere weariness that makes me loath to repeat this journey. A man and woman died on these artificial heights. On these man-made mountains, my Miss Temple lost her Mr. Max to obligations she had no power to overcome.
And I nearly strained everything I had to rescue a feline assassin who probably deserved to kiss concrete as much as her human mistress did. There! I do think that there are villains, and villainesses in the world, and that they should meet their just desserts.
On the other hand, my just desserts are lingering in the kitchens we have just forsaken.
“Onward!” Louise matches gesture to vocal command.
Ouch!
We reach the top, and I am immediately struck by the emptiness of the area. The fallen structures still dangle there unanchored. I almost smell the recent death reeking in my sensitive nostrils. I picture the powerful persona that had commanded these black-painted perches on the edge of nowhere: CC, the Cloaked Conjuror, who had lost a performing partner.
The exhibition would continue but the sky-high magic show was suspended, like Siegfried and Roy, maybe forever.
Shangri-La, mystery woman, no friend of my Miss Temple and her Mr. Max, yet a sublime performer and a cat person. Hyacinth, her familiar, the performing partner who had inadvertently sealed her fate and caused her death. Loyalty carried to a lethal degree. How did she deal with dealing her mistress death when she meant only to preserve? I shuddered to think of being in her skin.
Of being in her skin. Right. Where was it? Now. Exactly. I gaze at Midnight Louise. I must admit the kit has climbed every mountain with me.
“Where is she?” she asks now, echoing my thought.
“Hyacinth?”
I do not know. We saved her from dangling death. We risked our own skins—me, Louise, and Hyacinth’s shelter-rescued body double, the delicate and shy Miss Squeaker, aka S. Q.
“Hyacinth is not to be found?” I both ask and declare. She was a magician’s familiar, an apprentice. She would not simply walk away. But she might . . . vanish!
Midnight Louise does not mince words. (When has she ever?) “She has not been seen since S. Q. and I threw ourselves into her rescue.”
“And moi,” I point out. “I was the counterweight.”
“True. We could not have made it without you.”
Yes!
“But I am not concerned about Miss Hyacinth,” Louise says.
Why not? That is truly disturbing. Where can a pampered show cat like her go?
“Squeaker is missing also.”
Oh. My blood runs cold until it chills out my super-overheated tootsies.
I recall the shy shelter cat known first as “Fontana,” and later as “Squeaker.”
No one recalled her when clearing out the paraphernalia of the abandoned magic show. CC had his Big Cats to remove. Who spoke for the late Shangri-La? Who for her performing partner, Hyacinth, and the lowly body double, Squeaker?
“Hyacinth?” I ask.
“She can take care of herself,” Louise says.
That leaves Squeaker.
“She was shy,” I say. “We need to check all the duct work. Especially that engineered by . . . Mr. Max.”
Louise flashes me a twenty-four-carat okay from those orangegold peepers.
About half an hour later, I am beginning to think that Midnight Inc. Investigations should be renamed Mummy Central. These ducts and escape routes are as empty and dry as King Tut’s tomb.
Midnight Louise and I poke our kissers out of equally empty escape routes and compare notes.
“No Hyacinth?” she asks.
“No flowers of any description,” I report.
I must admit that this ceaseless scrambling down narrow, dark ducts is wearing me out. Again. I lay back to pant out my frustration.
And then I hear a sigh.
A shaky sigh.
I push myself as erect as I can manage (my frame, not anything personal) and sniff around for a source. The odor is faintly lavender. As in lavender Siamese.
I edge forward until I spot some ruby irises in the dark. That always gives away a blue-eyed girl. I belly crawl the last five feet and am rewarded by the sight, sound, and sniff of Miss Squeaker.
“What are you doing hidden away down here, girl?” I ask.
“They have forgotten me, Louie. And if they remember me, they will whisk me away to the nearest shelter. I do not ever want to go back to one of those places.”
“I have been there,” I point out carefully. These spooked runaways are touchy. “I do not ever want to go back there either.”
“Oh. I am sorry Hyacinth is gone. When she vanished, the others appeared to forget about me. But there is . . . nothing to eat here.”
“No. As you can see, I do not approve of a state of nothing to eat. If you will inch forward, just a little, I believe that Miss Midnight Louise and I will find you a fine Asian buffet not too far from here.”
“They will know I exist! And destroy me!”
Unfortunately, she is not too far wrong.
“Miss Midnight Louise and I have strings to pull in this town. Often those strings are wrapped around main courses for our kind. Just edge your smooth lavender stockings along this pipe, and you will soon be on your way to a free dinner.”
I ease her out, step by step.
Louise is waiting at the end of the tunnel, all purrs and velvet paws.
Yeah. Like I should get that.
* * *
Later, the guy in the white pipe-stem hat is purring over how hungry Squeaker is for his appetizers.
Louise and I consult in the corner of the busy kitchen, trying to ignore a bunch of lobsters who are held captive for the main course.
“Where can we take her?” I ask.
“She is too sensitive for Ma Barker’s gang.”
“And then some. She is a very timid individual, due to early kit-hood trauma,” I add.
“I had early kithood trauma and you do not weep for me, Argentina.”
“Huh? I have never been to Gaucholand. Or Evitaland. Or Madonnaland. I am just saying that she is not accoutered for survival on the raw edges of anything.”
“It is the raw edges of Ma Barker’s gang, or nothing,” Louise says.
“Maybe not,” I say, looking like my usual inscrutable self.
It takes a lot of paternal persuasion, but Miss Louise and I get a well-fed Miss S. Q. easing on down the road.
I will not describe the rides we have had to hitch, or lies we have had to tell to coax our charge along, but at last we are hotfooting it through a very upscale part of town.
This is where and when it gets tough. We have to prod little Miss S. Q. onto a foreign stoop, and then whip up a helluva faux cat fight right before her eyes.
I take as great a satisfaction in boffing Miss Louise in the nose as she does in giving me a Swedish massage via her toes. We howl and yeowl to beat the band and a few audience members too.
Squeaker cringes against a potted hibiscus on the porch.
Perfect!
At last, the porch lights come on, and Louise and I split for the front hedge.
A human comes out blinking into the dark. When have they ever done differently?
“What is going on out here?”
Louise and I are silent. All one can hear out here is Squeaker’s shoulder blades and teeth clicking together.