I then spy my own Miss Temple exiting the Circle Ritz wearing sunglasses after dark, stopping to perch on the top step while our esteemed landlady gets her car. Why is Miss Electra not driving her usual Elvis Blue Suede Shoes edition Volkswagen Beetle?
I race over to the oleanders ringing the parking lot. A certain stand of the hedge they form always harbors a guard cat or two from Ma Barker’s clowder. I have ensured this handy presence by dragging down excess bounty from my despised stock of Free-to-Be-Feline for the feral community. My act of charity was almost outed last night by the mysterious intruder.
This is an excellent exchange program. Inside, I get kudos and head pats from Miss Temple for “doing so much better on eating your healthy food”. Outside I get shoulder rubs for providing gourmet inside-cat food to the feral crew.
This is known in international diplomatic circles as a win-win situation.
Luckily, my business partner and aspiring daughter, Miss Midnight Louise, happens to be on Free-to-Be Feline patrol tonight. She eats up that trendy tasteless kibble that resembles rabbit turds. I keep silent on the matter, since it is handy to have her in my debt, but I would like to believe that no blood relative of mine would eat that stuff if not forced.
“Quick, Louise!” I say. “I need some impromptu tailing.”
Her pointed little face with the harvest-moon-golden eyes pokes through a makeshift bonnet of spiky green oleander leaves. I must admit she is enough of a looker to be a relative, but I am not copping to that rap. They can sue guys for illegal littering these days, you know.
“Is Mr. Max back?” she asks eagerly.
“We have just determined he is gone, so no.” He is her favorite tailing assignment, but she has been put on the Mr. Matt Devine detail in recent weeks and is none to happy about it, given the nightly round trip to outlying radio station WCOO.
“And,” I add, “no silver Jaguar detail for you tonight, Mr. Matt is already at the radio station. Miss Electra’s getting out the old Probe. Something Is Up.”
Miss Louise boxes her airy eyebrow hairs. “That is a very rough ride. Perhaps they are just going out for a Dairy Queen.”
“Whatever! I want you undercover and with them. Hurry. You’ll have only a minute to eel into the backseat when Miss Temple enters the front one.”
“At least she does so slowly, so as not to scuff her precious shoes. Although they are oddly ordinary sneakers tonight. Now that is suspicious.”
“You cannot judge her on that. Poor people! They are forced to cover their very insufficient lower feet. They do not have our elegant retractable shiv design. At least my Miss Temple paints her pathetic toenails a vibrant Predator Red to make up for it.”
Louise has tired of me defending my roomie. Her black coat melts into the asphalt as she hastens away, avoiding overhead lights. She is lurking beside the doorstep as the white Probe appears and stops.
Miss Temple enters the passenger seat, and slams it shut more speedily than is her wont. I cringe.
Yet when the Probe pulls away, Miss Midnight Louise is nowhere in sight, not even a hair of her luxurious rear member caught against the white car door.
What a relief! I would never hear the end of it if her precious “train” had suffered a fender bender. And so to bed.
With the flurry of Miss Temple and Mr. Matt leaving to catch a plane early the next morning, I do not expect a report from Louise for a while.
After they depart, I am enjoying a morning snooze from my undercover position beneath the oleander bushes, imagining my lost love, the Divine Yvette, cosseting my ears and purring pretty little French nothings into them. You might wonder how a French purr differs from a plain American one. There is a world of difference, believe you me.
“Phffft.” I awake spitting. Miss Midnight Louise is looming over me, cleaning her toe hairs right under my nose. I sneeze again. “You will never pass as French with that kind of public grooming,” I warn her.
“When I want to pass as French, I will eat some pâté de fois gras.”
“Goose liver is not my favorite appetizer. Neither is it the goose’s. So you accompanied the Circle Ritz ladies home last night?”
“I accompanied them home early this morning. They barely missed coming through the parking lot ahead of Mr. Matt Devine.”
“Why, that would be almost three a.m.”
“I am stunned by your adept math skills, Daddy Densest.”
“What would the ladies be doing out at such an hour?”
“What ladies of the night do.”
“What? Not my Miss Temple.”
“And your Miss Electra. They visited a party who was checked into the Araby Motel.”
Now I am sitting up, nursing my indignation. “That is a low-brow haunt of lowlifes and the ladies of the night they attract.”
“Or the ladies of the night attract them. It is not fashionable, and especially not French, to bad-mouth ladies of the night nowadays. That is a lifestyle choice.”
“Not for my Circle Ritz ladies.”
“Chill, dude. From what I heard, they were there to admonish a certain resident named Jay Edgar Dyson.”
“So this human was of the male persuasion?”
“In a very understated way.”
“Huh?” Louise can get on her high horse to the point of vagueness.
“Like you, only in human terms. Old, fat, and apologetic. A good role model for you.”
“Most amusing, Louise, but untrue. I am merely middle-aged, solidly muscled, and never apologize. That way lies the low road to cringing and whining like the inferior canine species.”
Louise fans her fore-scimitars to show off their exquisitely curved points. “You are right that this Jay person alternated between whining and bluster. I had to listen at a steel door, so some comments were slightly garbled. Jay Edgar is a former mate of Miss Electra Lark and is allowing shady characters about Vegas to buy property of his that adjoins your landlady’s holdings.”
“I knew she was upset about neighborhood interlopers, but am surprised Miss Electra owns enough real estate to have it considered ‘holdings’. This is beginning to sound like a game of Monopoly. That should be fun.”
“Not for Jay Edgar. Miss Electra cussed him out worse than a rabid wolverine. She was mad enough to end his leash on life, and as much as said so.”
“That does sound like no chance of a reconciliation.”
“Both of your Circle Ritz lady friends gave him the two a.m. shuffle, and left him flat. He came out shortly after to try his luck with the lurking ladies of the evening, but they said his tastes were too peculiar and moved their business operations to the motel down the street.”
“Well, that is a whole lot of nothing to report.”
“It would be, if that was all I observed.” She flicks a crumb of Free-to-Be-Feline from one long whisker. (Why has Miss Midnight Louise bought the party line on that putrid excuse for kibble? Sometimes I think she does things just to annoy me.)