Cat in an Alphabet Soup # aka Catnap Read online

  She clicked out of the office, bag flapping, while Lloyd muttered something uncouth about “modern women” into his scalding coffee.

  Lights glared on the mammoth exhibition area, making the booths’ glossy posters and book-cover blowups into vertical reflecting pools. Temple threaded the maze of aisles. A few early-bird exhibitors were already at work, unpacking book cartons and readying their wares for opening day.

  She bustled past arrays of next year’s calendars, juicy dust jackets promising sex and violence in lavish doses, past lush photographic covers on massive art books, past ranks of reading lights and tasseled bookmarks.

  She heard Lloyd faintly calling “Miss Barr” and minced on. Few would believe how fast Temple could travel on her upscale footwear; in her favorite Stuart Weitzman heels she was even a match for a footloose feline.

  “Here, kitty-kitty-kitty,” she crooned as she neared the Zebra booths, slipping the Time-Life book bag from her arm in preparation for a genteel snatch.

  Nothing stirred but a dedicated exhibitor who was fanning book catalogs on display cubes.

  “Hee-eere kitty. Nice kitty.”

  Zebra Books’ life-size papier-mâché namesake glittered, seeming to move in stately splendor amid the eerie quiet.

  “Here kit-eee, damn it to—!”

  A scream of outrage deleted the rest of Temple’s expletive as she tripped on what felt like thick electric cable. She stumbled forward, looking down to see an abused feline tail streaking from the needle-sharp exclamation point of a single Weitzman stiletto.

  Lloyd ambled up to announce the obvious. “There it goes.”

  Temple went after, darting down aisles, careening around corners, caroming off unwary pedestrians.

  “The cat, catch it!” she yelled.

  Bemused exhibitors merely paused to watch her sprint past. A bald man with a wart on his nose pointed ahead without comment. Temple hurtled on.

  A black tail waved from behind a stack of paperback Bibles. Temple followed. The Tower of Babel fell again.

  “Baker! Taylor! Candlestick-maker,” she implored inventively. “Come back, little Sheba—”

  The flirtatious extremity bobbed and wafted and whisked through exhibit after exhibit. Flatter feet pounded behind Temple’s—Lloyd and a train of diverted spectators on the move at last. Temple sighted the cat’s tail vanishing under a booth’s back curtain and dove after.

  “Trapped!” she announced, her insteps grinding down heaped cardboard boxes, her elbows dueling the odd umbrella—very odd; who would bring an umbrella to Las Vegas?—and boxing aside rolls of tumbling posters as if they were origami bones.

  Her quarry was at last within grasp. Temple tackled a fat black shadow, throwing herself full-length, such as it was, indifferent to impediments, as she handled most situations.

  The cat, cornered in the dimness, sat regarding her prone body. Someone yanked back a curtain, admitting a swath of light.

  “Don’t let him get away,” Temple murmured, feeling for her glasses, which had decamped during her flying tackle.

  “Oh-my-God,” someone said.

  Temple patted the assorted lumps upon which she reclined until she found her frames. She assumed the glasses to glare triumphantly at the cat.

  “Holy cow,” Lloyd murmured behind her.

  “Someone help me up,” Temple ordered, “and don’t let that cat get away.”

  She had noticed by now that the escapee was solid black; from their publicity pics, Baker and Taylor were parti-colored. And this animal’s large, fully perked ears were nothing like the missing cats’ stingy “Scottish fold” earmarks.

  The heels of Temple’s hands pushed down for purchase. Then she realized that they pressed a man’s suit jacket, that her recumbent length was, in fact, badly wrinkling cold- cocoa-colored worsted.

  “So sorry, sir. I’ll just—” She thrust herself halfway up, palms digging into a hard irregular surface. “Ohmigod.” Temple gazed down into a man’s eyes. He was in no condition to protest her presence—or that of additional suit wrinkles.

  Someone grabbed her elbows and yanked. Upright, Temple stared at what had already mesmerized the crowd, and even, apparently, the cat: a man lay face up amid the booth’s backstage litter, a hand-lettered sign reading “stet” askew on his immobile chest.

  “Well.” Temple turned as the crowd began buzzing behind her. “Lloyd, secure the area until the authorities arrive. And put that cat”—she pointed, if there were any question—-“in this bag. Please clear the area, folks. There’s been an accident; we need to let the proper people attend to it.”

  Anyone minded to argue didn’t. Temple had pumped her tone with equal amounts of brisk authority and hushed respect for the dead. The crowd edged back. Moments later a dead weight hung from the Time-Life book bag Lloyd slung over Temple’s forearm. Becalmed green eyes blinked from the bag’s midnight-blue depths.

  Temple went to the front of the booth, the cradled cat swinging from her arm. It weighed a ton. A copper and black Pennyroyal Press sign glinted in the exhibition lights. So did the graphic image of a skull and crossbones rampant over an Rx prescription symbol.

  Temple studied the booth’s macabre illustrations before glancing nervously at the cat in her bag. Its yawn revealed a ribbed pink upper palate soft as a baby sweater, but its mouth was equipped with rows of sharp, white teeth.

  2

  An Editor Edited

  Irate book people—editors, sales reps, publishing bigwigs—milled in the aisles, but there was no helping it.

  Two rows were cordoned off indefinitely. With police permission, maintenance employees were emptying nearby booths, moving the displays into whatever space could be squeezed from the packed-tight exhibition area. On easels bracketing the cordoned zone, signs announced Keep Out, Filming Area—Temple’s idea. Filming was indeed going on, she thought, watching police cameras snap and whir.

  Detective Lieutenant C. R. Molina frowned down at Temple. “You were chasing a cat when you found the body?”

  “We couldn’t have one loose in the exhibition area; besides, I thought it had escaped from a booth that features cats.”

  “Live cats?”

  “Well... dead cats would be kind of tacky.”

  “What kind of convention did you say this was?” Lieutenant Molina’s skeptical blue eyes squinted at a visual cacophony of illustrations and type styles.

  “The ABA—oh, not the American Bar Association. Booksellers. The American Booksellers Association.”

  “So you found the deceased by accident?”

  “I assure you.”

  “And disarranged the body.”

  “Hey, he was as stiff as Peg-Board already, the Man in the Iron Suit. Must have been... dispatched late last night, but I guess the coroner will determine exact time of death—”

  “Where is the cat now?”

  “The cat? In the PR office. In a carrier. The cat didn’t have anything to do with it—”

  “And that’s the only reason you were in the area at that time, pursuit of the cat?”

  “I’m a PR person. That’s my job: to keep things running smoothly. To round up stray cats, if necessary.”

  “Stray? I thought you said the cat was missing from an exhibit.”

  “Um, it had ‘strayed,’ hadn’t it?”

  “I get the idea, Miss Barr, that you’re concealing something again. That’s part of a PR person’s job, too, isn’t it?” Lieutenant Molina prodded with weary logic. “Speaking of concealment, you ever hear from that missing boyfriend of yours?”

  “Not a word. Why do you think he’s called the Mystifying Max?”

  “Not just for a good vanishing act, I’ll bet.”

  Temple said nothing, waiting for the tall police lieutenant to finish eyeing the scene of the crime. Temple was withholding guilty knowledge—the continuing absence of Baker and Taylor. But that had nothing to do with... possible murder.

  “How was he killed?” Temple was unable to resist asking that.

  Eyes the color of a midnight margarita iced over. “We don’t know that he was killed; could have been natural causes.”

  Temple rolled her eyes. “With that sign acting as a tie tack?”

  “Who has access to sign materials?”

  “Everyone. The ABA centers on the printed word; everybody here wants to leave messages, sign a book, write orders. We’re just lucky only the thirteen thousand exhibitors were allowed in today; tomorrow the other eleven thousand hit. Even so, must be twenty thousand Magic Markers on this floor, easy.”

  Lieutenant Molina’s professionally stoic face puckered. Was the homicide detective annoyed because Temple had identified the object used to write on the dead man’s chest? Yo, ho, ho and a bottle of Magic Marker ink. “You know what this ‘stet’ means?”

  “Sure. To any journalist or copy editor it’s an abbreviation used to mark text. It means, ‘Let it stand.’ ”

  Lieutenant Molina waited, tall, patient and as implacable as an island god.

  Temple explained further. “ ‘Stet’ means that copy that’s been deleted or changed should be restored to its original state.” They turned as one to view the body. “In this case,” Temple observed, “ashes to ashes.”

  “Not quite yet,” the lieutenant remarked. “How will you handle the press on this?”

  “Discreetly.”

  “Good luck.” The lieutenant grinned significantly and moved on.

  Lloyd leaned close to Temple. “That broad sure likes to throw her weight around.”

  “Any woman who stands five-ten in flats scares the living Shalimar out of me,” Temple admitted. She shivered dramatically. “On the other hand, if Lieutenant Molina hangs around we won’t have to worry about the air-conditioning breaking
down—she could cool the Sahara single-handedly.”

  “I swear, Temple, you even chitchat like a PR woman, in snappy press-released superlatives,” a familiar voice slipped in. It was not a compliment.

  She eyed the approaching Crawford Buchanan, who eyed her back. “And you talk like a DJ, with capital I’s every fifth syllable. What brings you here from the Ivory Tower of the Daily Snitch?”

  Buchanan was entertainment writer for one of Las Vegas’s many newssheets, which were heavy on flacking and light on objectivity. He was also a free-lance hiree like Temple, acting as liaison between the ABA’s regular publicity force and the mysteries of the myriad local publications. Buchanan was a small man, neat as a wolverine, with permed grizzled ringlets, permanent bags barely upholding limpid brown eyes and spider-silk lashes, and the moral fiber of a sidewinder. Like many Napoleonically egotistical slight men, he figured Temple was just his size.

  He ignored her sally to eye the commotion. “Not good for business. Just what the LV C and VA wanted to avoid, T.B.” A devotee of Initialese, Buchanan had early on discovered the unfortunate effect of Temple’s. So far he hadn’t found out that her middle name was Ursula, thank God.

  “Well, they can’t avoid this,” she riposted, “not even the Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority. You’ve heard about the eternal unavoidables—death and taxes.”

  “Better get that off the premises.” His head jerked toward the body, or rather the figures clustered around it.

  “Not until the police are through.”

  “Maybe you should lean on someone at headquarters, T.B.” Buchanan smirked. “You’ve got such a powerful personality.”

  “Yeah, and you’re Limburger. Why don’t you stand over there and drive them out?”

  His fingers flicked like a snake tongue across the back of her neck. “Temper, temper, Temple.”

  “Cut it out!”

  But Buchanan had oozed on; he was a hit-and-dodge expert, always cozying up to unsuspecting women. Temple retreated to the ABA public relations office at the facility’s rear, anxious to measure damage.

  “Well, if it isn’t Jessica Fletcher, Junior,” Bud Dubbs, the guy in charge of free-lance flacks, greeted her.

  Temple flinched. “I thought I was bagging a missing cat; I would have been happy to find just a missing cat.” Dubbs squinted into the cat carrier’s small wire door through his half-glasses. Temple had sent an assistant to buy it once the cat was corralled. “That it?”

  “Sort of.”

  “And the police?”

  “Should be out of here in a few hours and we can open up the aisle again.”

  “What about the bad publicity?”

  “Maybe none of the local rags will notice it.”

  “Think they won’t?”

  “No... but maybe I can defuse it somehow.”

  “How?”

  “I don’t know yet.”

  “Was it murder?”

  “The police don’t know—or won’t say.”

  “You landed on the body.”

  “Death doesn’t advertise causes... except that sign sure looks like somebody enjoyed seeing the guy dead.”

  “Who was it?”

  This was the bad one. Temple moved the carrier to the side of her desk, off dead center. A deep growl remarked on this dislocation. She sat, always feeling more commanding in that position.

  “A publisher. Chester Royal, head of Pennyroyal Press.”

  “A publisher?” Dubbs glowered at Temple as if that was her fault. “A bigwig?”

  “Not that big. Pennyroyal Press is just an imprint, a mini-operation within a bigger publishing house.”

  “What’s the bigger house?”

  “Reynolds-Chapter-Deuce.”

  “That... sounds familiar.”

  “They all used to be separate publishers until they merged in the eighties.”

  “What you’re saying is this is one hell of a big outfit and it lost an executive at our convention center.”

  “No, you’re saying that. Bud, it’s not our fault that out of twenty-four thousand bodies streaming through the security lines one is a murderer maybe, and one a murderee. It could have happened anywhere—San Francisco, Atlanta, Washington.”

  “It happened here and it’s bad press. And tomorrow is opening day when all the booksellers and news-hungry media types come in. You’ve got to stop this from getting out.”

  “I can’t suppress the news, Bud, the public’s right to know.”

  “Public relations is your job. What’s the good of doing it unless you can launder what the public has a right to know?” Bud glanced at the cat carrier. “Once the corpse is gone, you better dump this cat.”

  “I don’t know about that.” Temple bent to peek into the dim interior. A pair of grape-green eyes regarded her accusingly. “I may have professional uses for this pussums.”

  3

  Nothing but a Pack of Flacks

  Temple slipped down the corridor past Charlton Heston and nodded automatically.

  Movie stars’ familiar faces bred the notion that one actually knew them, a wholly one-sided phenomenon, unfortunately. She stopped to watch Heston’s six feet three inches shoulder around the corner, shrugged and headed for room 208. Amazing, she ruminated, how a murder can alter one’s sense of proportion. Heston was en route to the interview room down the hall, where celebrities gathered like an exaltation of La-La Land larks, in high supply given Las Vegas’s proximity to Hollywood.

  Earlier during the setup period for the ABA’s long post-Memorial Day weekend, when Temple’s patience had been young and her feet uncallused—just yesterday, Thursday—she actually had been uncool enough to “peek” when a particularly stellar personality was flashing the flesh. Now,

  She could trip over Charlton Heston, Paul Newman or Sean Penn and she wouldn’t care—just so long as he wasn’t dead.

  Outside conference room 208’s nondescript door she paused to contemplate the coming ordeal. Nothing was worse than a triumvirate of PR persons with conflicting goals. A messy murder put a lot of public images on the line: the convention center’s, the ABA’s and, especially, that of the big publishing house that sponsored Pennyroyal Press. Temple lowered her glasses to her nose, lengthened her neck for an illusion of greater height and charged the door.

  Correction, Temple thought as she surveyed the two people in the otherwise empty room: nothing is worse than a trio of PR women, definitely the more dangerous of the species. Public relations was one of the rare fields where women could rise to the top; most of them would not settle for less, especially Claudia Esterbrook, the power-suited woman who’d run the ABA publicity circus maximus since the heyday of Messalina. That she didn’t show it was only thanks to the gentle art of plastic surgery.

  “We don’t have much time,” Claudia announced. Claudia’s lacquered hair was the color of tapioca. It was razor-cut and so were her mandarin-length fingernails. One tapped the table with Freddy Kruegerish emphasis.

  “I’ve got a rock star,” she said, “with a mouth that Drano couldn’t fix meeting the press in twenty-five minutes. I’ve got to be there for damage control.”

  “This won’t take long.” Temple clicked toward the conference table and slung her briefcase atop the beige Formica. “We better get our acts together before we rush out conflicting press releases on the Royal death. That would really prolong the agony.”

  The mouse-haired woman with a long, sinewy face sitting opposite Claudia Esterbrook nodded. “Lorna Fennick, director of PR for Reynolds-Chapter-Deuce. You’re right; if we’re not all tap-dancing in time, it’ll be Reverb City.” From her open patent-leather briefcase she withdrew sheaves of paper and spun them across the slick tabletop.

  “Bios of Chester Royal; a history of the Pennyroyal Press imprint; releases on its three biggest authors and a statement from our publisher expressing regret et cetera for Mr. Royal’s death.”

  “Great.” Temple grinned as she sat. This was going to be easier than she’d thought. Despite Lorna Fennick’s tough-turkey looks, she evinced the hyperactive efficiency of the best of her breed. “Here are copies of the convention center’s local and regional press list. That’ll let you know who you’ll have to fend off.”

  “Sure.” Claudia Esterbrook delicately raked her homicidal nails down her neck. “Something nasty, like murder, happens and we have to fend off the press. Do our regular jobs right—promoting good news, like books and writers—and we can’t fill a quarter of the ABA interview room.”