Cat on a Blue Monday Read online

  Chapter 1

  Louie' s Dog-Day Afternoon

  I like nothing better than playing the role of Sage in the Shade.

  I am well suited to the part, particularly when I tuck my four limbs underneath me--l am the agile type, and double-jointed to boot. Then I let my limeade-green eyes narrow to inscrutable and attractively tilted slits. Just give me a Number One Son and a sackful of fortune-cookie sayings and on a clear day I'll find Judge Crater, or maybe even Jersey Joe Jackson.

  So here I am, on a dog-day afternoon in August, lounging in the shade of the calla lily stand behind the Circle Ritz condominiums, doing what comes naturally: watching others work while I snooze.

  My delightful roommate, Miss Temple Barr, is occupied by the pool with Matt Devine. For once, these two are sensible enough to stand in the shadow of the lone palm tree that dusts the ocean-blue Las Vegas sky while clouds swirl above like schools of succulent albino carp.

  In fact, this pair is sensibly attired in what look like dust sheets you put on unwante d furniture in abandoned houses, possibly haunted. Normally my little doll takes care of her innate stature problem by balancing on three-inch heels, but today she is--for the first time in my acquaintance with her---out of doors and barefoot.

  She does not act happy about this fact, moving her weight from one narrow tootsie to the other until she reminds me of those shilly-shallying hot-pink neon birds perched atop the front of the Flamingo Hilton like an avian chorus line. I must admit that I prefer a short woman. She has less tar to stoop to extend affectionate greetings and thu s does it more frequently. Also, being petite, she is less inclined to try to do what I abhor: pick me up. I am not your run-of-the-mill pickup. As for Miss Temple Barr, she finds her ow n lack of stature a shortcoming, so to speak. Me, I say you see a lot more interesting things closer to the ground and can smell out a rat--human or literal--in no time flat. Why do you think Sherlock Holmes was always scrabbling around on his hand s and knees looking for clues? He's t rying to overcome his height handicap, of course, not to mention a ge netic predisposition to insufficiency of the sniffer.

  Right now the ground at Miss Temple and Mr. Matt's end of the pool is not good clue territo ry, being covered by thick mats, which in t urn are covered in an irritatin gly bright blue vinyl. I can smell the chemical perfume of pure plastic from here. Obviously, Mr. Matt Devine is about to give Miss Temple Barr a lesson in the ancient and oriental arts of self-defense.

  This I cannot object to, despite the sloppy dress code and the vinyl mattresses defacing my view and foiling my olfactory skills. My little doll could use some beefing up in the self-confidence concession. '

  Because of the intimate relationship I share with Miss Temple Barr, I have seen her sit bold upright in the night, ever since two dudes with ball bearings for knuckles did a number on her in the Goliath Hotel parking ramp a couple of weeks ago.

  As I say, I will be snoozing with my usual concentration when she will lift up from the bed linens like a corpse about to take an unauthorized stroll in a horror movie. I awake at the slightest disturbance of the sheets, and cannot recline on wrinkles, being as sensitive in this regard as a princess to a pea.

  At such times, I smell the slight tang of human sweat, which overpowers even the English lavender-scented dusting powder Miss Temple uses after her bath. (Unlike superior species, she must actually immerse herself in large quantities of water to keep clean; hence the need for powder afterward, so her clothes do not stick to her skin. I am a practicing nudist myself, and have never heard any complaints, especially from discriminatin g ladies of my kind--end others.

  "Oh, Louie, " Miss Temple Barr will say a moment after jerking out of her slumber. She sounds glad to see me there, which she should be. When it comes to protectio n, I am nothing to sneeze at.

  She curls her lacquered claws into the role of muscle at the back of my neck, which has me positively purring. Unlike a lot of ladies these benighted days, Miss Temple Barr has long, strong nails that she does not hesitate to paint in a carnivorous red color. This is not the least of her attractions for me, although her equal propensity for being up to her matching lipstick in crime and punishment is also encouraging. I love a mystery almost as much as I do a massage.

  In f act, my own set of claws came in handy in apprehending the Stripper Killer at the Goliat h Hotel Rhinestone G-string Con test---incidentally saving my little doll from a dreaded death-by-Spandex.

  A small La s Vegas Scoop it em in Crawford Buchanan's Broad side column described my late st foray into criminal apprehen sion----the criminal being the one who was apprehensive, not me, As usual. Buchanan put my feat in the most degrading light: "An alley cat around Las Vegas leaped into literal action last Friday when the Goliath Hotel serial Stripper Strangler went after local PR flack Temple Barr. The cat, an overweight, solid-blac k lay about named Midnight Louie, f ell from atop a costume cabinet where it was sleeping just as the Strangler was about to tie the luscious Miss Barr's neck into a double-Windsor knot. The sleeping puss proved unlucky to r the killer when its claws, ex tended during the plunge, accidentally raked the perp. Talk about a timely pussy foot. Must have been Friday the Thirteenth somewhere? "

  Crawford Buchanan can mangle the truth faster than the Goli ath killer could strangle a stripper. My plunging to the rescue of my delightful roommate was no accident: I was buying time until Lieutenant CB. Molina could rush in with the cavalry from down the hall.

  Of course, I am used to feats of derring-do, thanks to my back-alley days, now l ong behind me. Miss Temple Barr, on the other hand, is a tiny thing, though spirited. I fear that the shock of a severe beating followed by the Attack of the Stripper Strangler would m ake even the heroine of a Roger Corman movie a trifle overwrought.

  She now keeps a flashlight beside her bed. This is a sinister implement, sheath ed in a black, rubbery material that would serve well as a weapon in addition to lighting up the darkness . It also stinks. If only human attackers were as sensitive to smell as I am, they would be knocked out.

  Every time my little doll has one of these midnight misadventures, she performs the same routine. First she sinks her fingers into my warm fur, if I am there, which I usually am these days or nights, rather. I do have an escape clause: the open bathroom window. Miss Temple Barr's rooms are on the third floor and the window is small, so no felon larger than a midget is able to enter, although I can both enter and exit with the ease of a garter snake. Nowadays the domestic life suits my more laid-back style. I rarely t ake a nighttime stroll unless I have business of a crime-fighting or personal nature abroad.

  Anyway, Miss Temple takes up her high-tech flashlight and l see the back of her Garfield T-shirt as she makes a tour of the premises, particularly of the French doors leading to the patio.

  She returns, often with a granola cookie. This I keep strictly between herself and me: a lady's night time habits are no one's business but her own. I must adm it that I do not relish crumbs i n the bed, especially when they are the sort I do not personally find consumable, but l understan d my little doll's need for comfort after her attack, and at least she has not yet imported any crumbs of another sort entirely to her--and my--queen-'size bed. There is only one King of the Hill here and the name is Midnight Louie.

  0f course, it is because of a dude before my time that Miss Temple was so rudely interroga ted by the pair of hoods in the Goliath garage. His name at lea st I approve of: the Mystifying Max. His game was okay also : magician. What was wrong with him was that he vanished--per manently, and without bothering to tell Miss Temple. I would not d o such a thing to a little doll like her unless I was road kill, w hich l fear is one of the theo ries that is bothering my lo vely roommate about her missing ex-sign
ificant other.

  To tell the truth and speaking from my own experience around here, l cannot understand why a ny dude in his right mind would walk out on Miss Temple Barr, who has hardly any faults except f or her addiction to certain health foods, including a preparation called Free-to-be-Feline. That is h er only lapse in taste, and the Mystifying M ax could have put up with it. Af ter all, he did not have to eat anything worse than granola. I have managed to ignore the Free-to-b e-Feline for nearly a month now, with the result tha t I am getting a superb class of delicacies Iadl ed over the top as a temptation: smoked oysters, baby shrimp in Creole sauce and other appetizers that add up to a full-meal deal, a s they say on the television.

  Perhaps there is one tiny inciden t I am not fond of, although it is understandable. After the att ack on Miss Temple, her helpful neighbor, Mr. Matt Devine, stayed the night. I hung around long enough to see him ensconced on the living-room hide abed ; then I comforted my little doll in the bedroom until she drifted off to a Tylenol-3 sleep before l skedad dled on errands of an investiga tive nature. All right, in this particular case I had a personal interest ----my lost ladylove, the Divine Yvette, had witnessed the first stripper murder.

  All that is history as I sit here drowsing, humming along with the bees circling the calla lilies. The Goliath killer is in an institution for the criminally insane, and I am the victim of a criminally frustrated romantic entangl ement. The Divine Yvette has re tur ned to Malibu with her mistress, a so-called actress named Savannah Ashleigh.

  Chapter 2

  Nancy Ninja Strikes Again

  "Where's Louie?" Temple stared toward the calla lilies', red and yellow blooms bright against large green leaves. "He was there just a minute ago."

  "Probably got bored by how long it was taking us to get going," Matt said pointedly. "I thought you didn't want any witnesses."

  "Right, I'm still not sure I'm cut out for this." Temple savagely jerked her waistline sas h tight. "I feel like Dopey the Dwarf in this outfi t."

  She stared down at herse lf drowning in loose, white cot ton pajamas she wouldn't have worn to a junior-high slumber party.

  The most disconcerting sigh t was her bare feet, flour-white against the blindingly blu e-vinyl mat they both stood on. Matt's feet were lightly tanned, at least, and therefore interesting instead of pasty, of course. Temple found everything about tall, blond and ha ndsome Matt Devine interesting, darn it. Matt remained o blivious to all but his lesson.

  "This outfi t is called a 'gi'," he said, pronouncing t he word with a hard "g." Gee, Temple thought. Okay. She plucked unhappily at a gigantic sleeve.

  "You'll get used to it," Matt said, "and it shouldn't feel too big. I got a child's size, after all."

  Temple watched his w arm brown eyes grow dismayed as he realized that his intended reassurance had gone right for a sore spot with Temple: h er height, or--more precisely-- the lack thereof.

  She shrugged fabric-swaddled arms, not used to making a hissing rustle with her every move. "Great. Teach Shirley Temple to do this, then; not me. She'd probably even sing something."

  "This won't be so bad. I 'm not going to give you chapter and verse of any particular discipline, just some tricks that you can use if anyone attacks you again. Jack Ree showed m e the short-form women's defense stuff. Anyone can do it."

  Temple eyed Ma tt, who looked as right in his g i as Robert Redford would, if ever RR would descend to doing a martial-arts movie. Maybe Matt's light tan and sun-gilded hai r made his gi look less like a fl our sack with a rubber band in the middle.

  "I still don't know if I want to do it," she said. "I've never been good at athletic things. Balls always went over my head and team c aptains always picked me last." "That's the beauty of the martial arts," Matt insisted with an enthusiast's seriousness. "They all grew out of the peas ants' need to defend the mselves without the weapons the nobility took for granted. And Asians are a small people; any martial art is based on discip line and skill, not on size and brute force."

  The last two words made Temple wince in memory . "Those two guys were brute force, all right, up close and personal."

  Matt stepped nearer and lowered his voice. "Are you going to group?"

  "Going to group! That's so California, Matthew." Temple looked up at Matt in the sh ade. This was defi nitely one way to get closer to Matt Devine, and she certainly wanted to do that, didn't she?

  "Group therapy is not exclusive to California, and my name isn't short for Matthew." He sounded a little stiff, even a little miffed. Temple's sur prised silence forced a further revelation. "My name is . . . Matthias."

  "Oh." Matthias was an odd name; was that why it both ered him? Temple decided to move past the issue. "It still shortens to 'Matt ' and couldn't I see a counselor solo?"

  "Sure ." Matt relaxed into his usual good humor once back on neutral ground. ''But then y ou wouldn't hear the stories of people who've been through the same thing as you have."

  "Most of them haven't ." Matt's smooth face roughened as he began to object. "I know they've been attacked," Temple said quickly, "but by muggers or husbands and significant others, however nasty. How many other people in 'group' are going to have to own up to getting creamed by a couple of professional thugs intent on beating information out of them? They won't bel ieve me. In fact, I have a hard time believing me."

  Matt's smile was rueful. "I've never known anyone who was so outright embarrassed at being the target of a crime, but I 'l l bet there are a couple just li ke you in that group therapy session. That's why you need to put your own expe rience in perspective. And this is an all-women's group."

  "I'll look like a crybaby compared to people who've been really abused. Rape victi m s--"

  "Survivors," Matt corrected. "We're trying to get away from reinforcing the victim feeling. You're a survivor."

  "Survivor, I guess if I can survive interrogations by Lieutenant Molina, I can survi ve playing Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle with you. Okay, Coun selor. I'm ready. Let the games begin."

  Matt's manner became all business, as if a screw at the top of his head had tightened. Temple, still sheepish about what she was trying to do and the costume she had to wear to do it, realized that the martial arts were serious stuff to him.

  "First." he said. " Are you pretty much recovered physi cally? No sore spots?"

  Temp le nodded. "Amazingly recovered, I can see how abused women keep hoping the abuse will stop."

  "You don't have any old injuries, say, from high school , a broken wrist or anything?"

  Temple shook out her arms in the long sleeves. "Not yet."

  "You won't break anything here. That's why the pads. You said you wer en't at hletic in school. What about at home, in your family? Did you have any brothers and sist ers to tussle with?"

  "Not in the physical way ." Temple let her head wag from side to side in resignation . "You sound like Molina during an interrogation. Yes, Officer , I had brothers and sisters; two each. And, no, we didn't go at it much, for fun or for fu ry, becau se I was--naturally--the youngest, and the littlest.

  With eight years between me and the next youngest, obviously my siblings were too grown-up to have much to do with me --other than providi ng endless icky clothes to hand down."

  "So you were almost an only child; that's interesting."

  "To a counselor, maybe, to me, no, you know how they say parents over control the fi rst child and loosen up for the later ones? Well, I was such a tail on the dragon that my parents got neurotic all ove r again. In fact, my brothers and sisters all joined in, when th ey weren't bequeathing me cloth ing in lousy taste. Everybody knew what was best for me, except me."

  "Sounds like you were the apple of the whole family's eye.

  "Yup, My father called me 'Ladybug' till l left home. And when I flew away from home and left Minneapolis with Max--they went ballistic."

  "They sound a little smoth ering. Try to direct your frus tration with your family in to what we're doing here. Redi rect the irri
tation into action. A nd remember, I 'm not going into the 'Kong F u' mystical s tuff. These are just some moves you can use to get an attacker off balance."

  "Will I be able to throw you over my shoulder?"

  "Eventually," he promised with a smile.

  She sighed, looked around again for witnesses, found none, and then gr imaced. "Just don't call me 'Grasshopper.' "

  Temple padded barefoot int o the Circle Ritz and up to her apartment. She hated to "pad. " It made her feel like a child who'd gotten out of bed to ask for a glass of water, like she had to ask permission of someone for whatever she wanted.

  Matt had been right. She was more deeply irritated by her family's over protectivene ss than she knew. When she drew on that ancient annoyanc e, pretending to be Nancy Ninja didn't feel that weird. Not that she'd get to the stage of tossing him that quickly.

  In her bedroom she fought the fabric knot and won, Round One for the lit tle lady in bare feet. When she shrugged off the--wha t was it, a uniform, a costume?--Gi, the unfurling fabric released th e scent of her own sweat, faint and plea santly pungent rather than reek ing.

  Temple changed into aqua knit shorts and top, and then slid her bare feet into cork-soled wedgies two-and-a-half-inches high at the h eel. Did she feel more self-confi dent-- any more vindicated, or vindictive? Had she made a breakthrough in her slo-mo relationship with her attractive but elusive neighbor? Maybe.

  She walked to the bedroom /off ice at the unit's other end, detouring through the kitchen to snag a glass of Ruby Red grapefruit juice. Visions of chopping a thug in the bridge of his nose with the hardened edge of one hand, then jamming the heel of the other hand under his nostrils so the presumably broken bridge bone would drive, splintering, into his brain, burned as gory-red in her head as the grapefruit juice in her hand.

  Matt wasn't teaching her that maneuver, but she'd heard of it. Maybe going through the motions now, learning the moves that she hadn't known when the two men had attacked her, would restore something they had taken. Maybe, at her desk, a pale-pink Post-it note with the group-therapy phone number stuck out from the top of her computer screen like an anemic tongue.