The red Miata wove through the packed Strip traffic like a computerized sewing machine on zigzag. Temple refrained from cell-phoning while driving, but her mind rehearsed what she’d tell Matt when she called him tonight.
Temple’s head was still bursting with wild ideas when she came home to her quiet Circle Ritz condo. She’d been too busy to check with Matt in Chicago earlier. He was used to her calling him because of her erratic freelance schedule.
She plopped down on her soft living-room loveseat, kicked off her Weitzman spikes, and kicked her bare heels into the luxuriant long fibers of her faux-goatskin rug. Then she grabbed the remote just in time to catch the opening of the six o’clock news. Matt was in a two-hour-later time zone, so she had time to chill, shower, and change before calling. More construction defaults and lower tourist numbers still made the news, along with a murder-suicide in Henderson, but the feature story tease was on “cannibal cats.”
Ick!
They even ran a five-second close-up of a poor, starving stray kitty gnawing on some bones.
Temple averted her face, but not before the cat’s color registered.
Black. And big.
The whiskers were an unusual pure white.
As long and straight as kabob skewers. Uh-oh.
Temple programmed her recorder and slipped into the kitchen to pour a glass of red wine. No, white. She might see something startling enough to cause a spill on her off-white couch. Forewarned was forearmed. Or four-armed.
Why would her Midnight Louie be making the evening news munching on bones? He had a perfectly fine full bowl of Free-to-Be-Feline dry, vitamin-packed, politically correct cat food in his kitchen bowl at this very minute. “Full” was the key word.
Oh.
The nightly news had perfected the art of tease. Between every boring roundup they flashed footage of a black feline muzzle and sharp white fangs snapping at the jagged ends of what sure looked like bones. Temple gulped wine.
During commercial breaks, she checked every cat hiding spot in the two-bedroom unit and shouted from the tiny balcony. No Louie anywhere. Had the trespassing cats on the news been taken into custody?
She opened and checked every last kitchen cupboard and refilled her glass with red wine.
The sacred sports and weather sections were coming up. If the cat story didn’t run soon, it would never run. Had she missed it during a commercial break?
An insect brushed her arm. No! Louie’s white whiskers.
He had just lofted over the sofa back to sit beside her. Must have come in the guest-bathroom window she always left ajar.
“Louie! You had me going. Where have you been?”
But his green eyes weren’t turned toward her. They were focused intently on the TV screen. His whiskers twitched as he settled into his haunches.
“Now here’s a gristly tale,” the female half of the anchor team intoned with relish, “better fitting Halloween than spring break. Animal lovers attending the Temple Bar Days annual festival at the Arizona area of Lake Mead called animal control to round up a couple of feral cats scavenging for food dangerously near the lake’s sadly lowered edge and not far from the defunct Three O’Clock Louie’s former lakeside restaurant. The foraging felines eluded capture, but the animal-control people found they had been snacking on a gruesome discovery.”
The camera pulled back to show crime-scene tape circling the littered lake bottom, then zoomed in on an odd formation.
“Yes, witnesses said the object of the cats’ interest appeared to be a pair of snapped off human leg bones mired in rock. Arizona police authorities are mum about the find, but the area is only an hour’s drive from Las Vegas, and the remains have been sent to the city coroner’s facility. Could stray cats have unearthed the remains of some early Vegas crime figure who had been given the concrete booties treatment and dumped in Lake Mead decades ago? Crime historians must be scratching their heads and searching their archives. Meanwhile, the carnivorous kitties made their getaway and are still at large.”
“Carnivorous!” Temple accused her seating partner, then imbibed more wine and reconsidered. “Of course all cats are carnivorous. They said ‘cannibal’ first! That’s all wrong. I am so mortified. I recognized your white whiskers instantly, of course. You are grounded, my lad. No more open window for you.”
Louie yawned.
“I’m going right now to slam it shut. See!”
He rolled over onto his substantial side to flash his fangs as he nibbled at a clawed toe.
Temple did as she had promised and returned triumphant.
“Did you hear that? Shut. Two. Cannibal cats, plural. So who was your accomplice? The other cat?”
Louie remained mum. And way too calm.
Temple sighed. “Three O’Clock Louie. Of course. Why the heck and how did you get way out there? Arizona, for Pete’s sake. I suppose gnawing on human bones can’t be considered cannibal for a cat. Oh.”
She punched the cell phone’s auto-dial to try Matt at his Chicago hotel number. “Our fiancé is going to be so disappointed in you, Louie. Old bones. Criminal bones. Gangster bones. What a news hook. Wonder who it is. Was.
“Bet the Glory Hole guys might have a clue, but who would even remember them to ask? This is a Temple Barr exclusive. Where the heck is Three O’Clock now, huh? You didn’t just leave your compadre to the coyotes and animal control, did you? No, of course not. He’s probably wherever that gang of feral cats that hung around here for a while went. And are you sharing that info with your loyal bed partner? Noooo. Just you wait. You are confined to quarters, mister, but I am going to be out on the town and on this first thing in the morning like a … carnivorous cat.”
And, Temple mumbled to herself, since when had there been an annual festival on Lake Mead with her name on it?
For a PR person to miss her own publicity was really humiliating.
Media Draw
Welcome home to the conquering hero.
I guess not!
Here I have been through a fatiguing trek to Arizona, for Bast’s sake, not to mention my roommate’s namesake place and event on Lake Mead, and I am scolded and locked in like a juvenile delinquent.
It would not sting so much had I not gotten a similar dose of dissing and moaning at my last stop before this.
The locked window does not curl my whiskers.
My Miss Temple flatters herself that I need her arms and two opposable thumbs to fly this coop whenever I please. The living-room row of French doors has horizontal pulls and latches that a kitten could open with its milk teeth.
The lamented, but perhaps not late, Mr. Max Kinsella had often warned Miss Temple about the doors’ flimsy security, but she had relied too much on my crime-fighting presence to take him seriously.
So I can blow this joint anytime I wish. It simply suits me to make like a couch potato and rest my burning pads for a while. Also, to run the watershed events of the past several hours through my weary brain.
Of course it was up to me to mastermind and pull off the “cannibal cats” routine. Three O’Clock had neither the imagination nor inclination to bestir himself, once I’d gotten myself out to Lake Mead and eyeballed his “find,” his “case,” his dubious “murder victim.”
Say it turned out to be Jimmy Hoffa. Now that would make multimedia news.
I have no such expectations, but I know that if I can rouse human interest in this odd piece of found art I can get us air-conditioned transport back to civilization. Obviously, the old dude cannot hoof it, or even move fast enough to hitch it.
My plan is risky, but the best ones always are. I mentally replay my favorite moments.
First, I pick up my sandy toes and trot to the neighboring hash house that is still solvent. The closer I get, the more succulent is the sniff of rare hamburger and well-done anchovies on pizza. My kind of buffet table.