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  Usually a quick study, Temple was befuddled by the roster of Colby, Janos and Renaldi. Apparently all were founders or scions of family Company, by all appearances, but the family was not necessarily all happy.

  Kendall Opened the unmarked walnut door before them, and Temple waltzed confidently through, pretending to make a stage entrance as Joan Crawford.

  She was glad she had chosen to come in six feet tall, because she walked right into a set change as drastic as from rural Kansas to downtown Oz. Temple faced a huge multimedia conference room muted with upholstered gray-flannel walls. It was filled to the giant, built-in film and TV screens with men in, yes, Brooks Brothers suits. Here and there Temple glimpsed patterned suspenders as a racy, individual touch. One man even wore a bow tie. None cultivated mustaches or other facial hair. The women in the room, few but fierce, were Stepford wives: impeccably groomed clones wearing the latest version of the corporate woman's power suit.

  Except for one woman. Temple's rival. The film performer, and Louie's blond bete noire . . .

  Savannah Ashleigh.

  Chapter 10

  Cacaphoney

  A long, shocked silence that slowly became a long, hostile silence prevailed while those previously acquainted sized each other up.

  Unfortunately, only two people present were previously acquainted, and it hadn't been a success.

  The shivers at Temple's nape eased once she realized that Savannah Ashleigh had arrived for this key East Coast conference in full Hollywood Babe regalia.

  A television spokesperson must be neat, clean, thrifty, brave and conventionally attired at all times. Savannah's champagne -colored leather jumpsuit with brass studs interlarded with festive, cashew-size red rhinestones might work for a Country Western singer, or a reincarnation of Elvis, but it did nothing for a cat-food rep. Not to mention what cat claws would do to that butter-soft Rodeo Drive hide on camera, either the leather jumpsuit's, or Savannah's.

  And the shoes! For once Temple was conservatively shod in closed-toe suede pumps. Savannah Ashleigh's feet, however, were a playground of metallic leather and clear plastic straps on four-inch heels. Even at their highest, Temple thought from her new, lofty prominence of subdued taste, her own high heels never surpassed three inches.

  It was also obvious that Miss Ashleigh had been a fashion victim in too many B movies of late, as well as in too many plastic surgeons' offices.

  She wore a shoulder-dusting clatter of earrings, an overpopulated gold charm bracelet and several large cocktail rings of dubious ancestry. All that armament would chime against microphones and rattle on paper and batter the on-set furniture.

  Temple knew her fashion style was a happy-go-lucky hybrid of her theatrical and television-news backgrounds, and the one immutable, her petite frame. In casual clothes she looked like a thirteen-year-old, hardly a serious spokeswoman for a television news program. So on camera she'd resorted to stylish suits and very little jewelry. Jane Pauley used attractive pins as a riveting signature: very visible but also very out-of-the-way when hands and head had to literally be plugged into a national network.

  As for Temple's shoe-thing, it had always been there, like her freckles, from her earliest years. And female TV reporters, invariably shot from the waist up, sometimes expressed their real off-screen personality in footwear. Temple remembered a pioneer Twin Cities female reporter whose legendary pair of hot-pink pumps were never seen on screen, but were well-known and discussed witnesses to numerous juicy trials and other utterly serious news-making events.

  So Temple straightened her shoulders and prepared to go head-to-head with Savannah Ashleigh. If she felt intimidated by competing against a semi-movie star, she need only glance at the actress's lips. Miss Ashleigh's plastic surgeon had taken the suggestion Temple had impishly planted in retaliation for Savannah's altering Midnight Louie's personal plumbing only weeks ago.

  The Ashleigh lips were so collagen-inflated that they could pass for the Goodyear Blimp. Too, too, too much, dahling, Temple thought cattily. Hopefully, you now lithp!

  hat Savannah Ashleigh thought she was not actress enough to keep off her face. Dismay and shock jousted with fury. Apparently neither woman had been advised that this was to be a gladiator event, not a job interview.

  "Et tu, advertising?" Temple murmured.

  Kendall had the grace to color.

  Meanwhile, Midnight Louie had assessed the room and its occupants from his royal-purple perch on the person of Miss Renaldi. He finished with a final sweep of his head from corner to corner, and then released a low, loud meow with a nice vibrato of sheer rage under it.

  "He does 'talk,' as advertised," a florid-faced man at the table replied.

  "I'm afraid Louie has been confined to carrier for most of two days," Temple said. "He's feeling a trifle cramped."

  The red-faced man patted the long wood-veneer conference table.

  "Then let him out. Here, let's take a look at this wildcat."

  "Here? Now?"

  The others apparently heeded the man who spoke, for heads nodded all around the table.

  Kendall leaned close to Temple. "Brent Colby, Junior."

  Temple nodded and accompanied Kendall to a break in the chairs. In a moment the carrier straps were loosened and Louie himself was about to be loosed upon the eminences of advertising.

  "Be good," Temple whispered as he tumbled out of the bag and rolled upright.

  Oh, he was good. Very good.

  First he stretched, starting at his front legs until his belly polished the conference table, then reversing the motion until he stretched out one back leg after another, his tail sketching a perfectly executed S in the air. This introductory maneuver elicited polite applause.

  Then he sat, glanced around to ensure their full attention, and began fastidiously grooming a paw.

  "Mick Jagger," murmured one advertising scion to another, an apparent compliment to the length and agility of Louie's tongue.

  Louie flicked the commentator a glance, then yawned very slowly to display an extraordinary array of teeth.

  "More like Jaws," said a neat, dark-haired man with a permanent five-o'-clock shadow as well as worry lines in his forehead.

  "Victor Janos, Junior," Kendall whispered to Temple. She hastily pointed out the other figures at the table, Tony Renaldi was tall, dark and lean, quite handsome, but maybe Temple was biased. She was surprised by how many junior Colbys, Janoes and Renaldis populated the table, either founders or offspring. Apparently keeping it in the families was a priority among the high-level executives with the advertising firm.

  Meanwhile, Louie worked his feline magic up and down the table, doing the Las Vegas Strip strut. Savannah Ashleigh was not too dumb to know when she was being upstaged. She fidgeted on her leather-upholstered conference chair until her clinging pantsuit squeaked.

  "I really think Maurice has superior stage presence," she put in at the moment Louie appeared to be mesmerizing the entire group.

  "Maurice." The name rolled off the tongue of the firm's president like a stale breath mint. "Perhaps he's been overexposed."

  "Would you call Tom Cruise 'overexposed'? " a man leaning against a gray-flannel wall put in. Maurice had acquired a new handler, a crew-cut-haired man with the arms of a staff sergeant and the blunt red hair and freckles of a Tom Sawyer gone to beefy and unimaginative middle age.

  "It's true that Maurice is established as a film personality," began an advertising guy, a still-perky youngster with a very discreet ear stud that glimmered like the Mark Cross automatic pencil parked behind the opposite ear.

  A number two yellow pencil wasn't good enough for a copywriter at Colby, Janos and Renaldi? Temple wondered. She did some of her best thinking while doodling with disposable felt-tip Flairs.

  Louie had taken advantage of the distraction to rise and stroll regally around the conference table, pausing frequently to ingratiate himself with the seated executives.

  Before one, he sat to inhale the aroma from
a ceramic mug.

  "Hey, he wants my coffee!"

  Louie moved on to stop before the head man himself. His lifted forefoot patted approvingly at a tiny tack on the boss's dull navy rep tie. It was shaped like the Empire State Building.

  "We're about to get one of those in Las Vegas," Temple noted.

  "I doubt he's into the tie tack. He likes my old school tie!" The boss looked flattered. "Sorry, cat. You'll have to put in four years to earn one of these."

  Too much for Louie. He ambled toward the table's opposite side to toy with one woman's expensive pen (he was an equal-opportunity brownnoser), then to chew experimentally at the edge of a man's notebook. He strolled back to rub his chin on Colby junior's Rolex band, with impeccable taste, of course, in both executives and watch brands.

  Kendall thought his conduct worth another sotto voce comment. "Temple, your cat sure knows who to cozy up to. Did you bribe the bosses' dry cleaners to put sardines in their breast pockets?"

  "Say, what a dynamite idea! Grease their palms with fish oil. No, Louie just has It."

  "Just what does Louie have? That's a serious question. How would we position his personality?"

  Temple considered. "Mystery and distance. Yet an in-your-face charm when he wants to use it. He can be very affectionate in private, and aloof as a Dalai Lama at other times. He comes and goes as he pleases, shows up where and when he's least expected. Sometimes I think he reads minds. At other times, I think he's just a con man at heart."

  Temple realized that her description also matched a certain missing-in-action magician of her acquaintance.

  "He's the eternal male," she finished. "Fancy-free, but capable of being domestic when least expected. He's every man you knew who walked away, and every man you'd give your eyeteeth to have back."

  "Wow. Is this a tomcat or a model for Lounge Lizard aftershave? Guess Louie doesn't shave, huh?"

  "Oh, he's had quite a few close shaves, but they were purely metaphorical."

  "That's right. He's been involved in real crimes, hasn't he? And so have you."

  Temple nodded cautiously. She wasn't so keen on her crime-solving past now that she knew a murderer and had let said murderer go free.

  "What a great double angle. You can discuss safety for cats and owners. Everybody loves personal-safety issues nowadays."

  Speaking of personal safety, Temple didn't trust Louie to restrain himself with the women who had abducted him with the intention of neuter.

  But Louie did enjoy a particular affinity for Savannah Ashleigh's cat Yvette, the shaded silver Persian who advertised Free-to-be -Feline, a feline health food that the portly Midnight Louie would not touch with so much as a whisker tip.

  If Yvette were anywhere near her mistress, Louie might forgo revenge for a romantic reunion.

  Temple looked high and low, but couldn't spy Yvette's pink canvas carrier, although Maurice was captive on the sidelines, looking fiercely lion-like in a cat carrier with a wire grille.

  "I thought this was a done deal," Temple told Kendall, trying not to whine. "Now I find out there's competition not only for my role, but Louie's."

  Nothing's certain in advertising but the uncertainty. Three weeks ago, the Allpetco account was firmly in the pocket of Sloan Van Eck and Associates. Now we get a swipe at it, and Christmas or not, peons labor overtime alongside the brass to make sure we meet the deadline with our best shot."

  "Swipe. Deadline. Shot. Sounds. . . murderous."

  "Advertising is murder." Kendall's statement sounded unnervingly sober. "We work twenty-hour days, sometimes, on a major account. Deadlines, and doing our darnedest until we drop. But we have fun too." She grinned. "Successfully selling your idea, yourself and your client's product is an incredible high."

  Keeping an eye on the table, Temple saw Louie approach Savannah Ashleigh. He came to a full stop, lofted his tail and waved it like a scepter of office. Then, slowly, deliberately, he turned to show her his business end. The very spot she had intended to irrevocably alter

  Temple could swear he shook his fanny at her before mincing in a manly fashion back down the shining lemon-waxed walnut to Mr. Big, whom he honored with a purring rub on the outstretched hand.

  "He likes you best, B.C.," said a junior executive identified by a non-navy suit.

  The boss chucked Louie under the jet-black chin. "He knows who's Santa Claus around here at Christmas bonus time. All right. Let's see Maurice in the flesh."

  Temple took advantage of the changeover to retrieve Louie's carrier, and approach the table to claim Louie.

  "Have a chair." A man stood to pull back the heavy armchair he'd been occupying.

  Temple hesitated, then took it, establishing Louie in his carrier on her lap. That would prevent any sudden lunges at Maurice, whom Louie did not appear to care for one tiny bit.

  But Louie was on supernaturally good behavior, almost as if he understood what was at stake. Still, Temple could feel his big body tremble with excitement when Maurice vaulted from the open carrier atop the conference table.

  "Yellow photographs better than black," the handler noted as Maurice strutted his stuff.

  Tony Renaldi doodled on his personalized notepad. "Film technology today can overcome that old shibboleth. We need a charismatic cat here, whatever the color."

  "And a dashing one. Kevin Costner in fur," Colby added.

  "One who makes the ongoing romance with the A La Cat feline fatale credible," a young woman said, upping the ante from the sidelines.

  Brent Colby, Jr., frowned into the half-glasses resting on his nose like an odd see-through bug. His regular features, softening with middle age, were hard to read. "Not too credible. Makes the damn cat too hard to handle. Animal rights people find tomcats politically incorrect."

  "Ahem." The handler cleared his throat. "I'm sure that we're all aware that somehow Maurice slipped past the scissors." He smiled nervously. "A little play on words: slipped past the censors."

  Savannah Ashleigh ground leather on her chair, crossing and uncrossing her legs.

  "Are you saying that the rape of my darling Yvette was just a little slip of the tongue? Actually, of something a lot worse than a tongue! My adorable girl's bloodlines have been wasted on a worthless litter. I'm told that the publicity in the tabloids about her litter of little yellow . . . bastards has the cat-food manufacturer reconsidering her spokescat role."

  "Now, Miss Ashleigh." Brent Colby was obviously the tone-setter at the firm. "We'll talk to the representatives of Allpetco tomorrow, all of us, and iron our any little differences. How are Yvette and the little, er, children doing?"

  "Yvette is shattered, but tries her best to be a good mother. She refused to travel without the miserable little half-breeds, so they are all back at my hotel room. I can bring her out on her own, though her coat is sadly dulled by the strains of motherhood. A lawsuit is in preparation." Savannah glowered under white-blond brows at Maurice and his handler.

  "There is," Victor Janos put in suddenly, "a morals clause in her contract. We don't know if the company will wish to invoke it."

  "She was raped!" came Savannah's soprano wail. "While my attention was misdirected to that green-eyed Lothario Midnight Louie--even the name would make a careful parent suspicious!-- that yellow-bellied molester in prison stripes was sneaking up on my undefended baby, who is, by the way, underage for recommended breeding. So if there is a morals clause in Maurice's contract, as there should be unless sexism is at work here and another suit is in order, he should be liable for losing his job too."

  "He was not the one pictured in the Las Vegas Scoop with the unsanctioned offspring," Janos said. "And the photo was reprinted in Vegas Voyeur, then went national in the Animal Inkquirer and National Noses. When it hit the human tabloids, the kitties were really snoot-deep in some pretty unpalatable litter."

  Savannah sunk lower and lower into a despondent pose with every journal cited. "Those are all gossip-mill rags!"

  "What about the photograph
ic evidence?"

  "A rotten paparazzo broke into my private Malibu grounds and used a long-range lens to photograph Yvette in famille while I was busy sunbathing in the nude. Who could imagine that some pervert was photographing her at such a time?"

  While male eyes glazed at the scene Savannah portrayed, Temple thought it was time to remind them of her own clothed presence. And Louie's advantages.

  "Obviously, Midnight Louie is free of any tabloid taint," she said. "He could not have sired the kittens in question. I am willing to have all and any DNA tests recommended, and, in fact, due to a false and premature accusation of fatherhood, Midnight Louie is not quite a tomcat any more. He was forcibly altered at the behest of Miss Ashleigh."

  "No!" Men all up and down the conference table blanched in synchronization.

  "Yes!" Temple stood as if making a speech, as indeed she was. "But... thanks to a small confusion on Miss Ashleigh's part in spiriting Louie to a plastic surgeon, he is now the proud possessor of a vasectomy. In case you gentlemen don't know the results of such a procedure on a cat, this means that he has lost none of his masculine charm--and dare I say swagger--but may exercise it with responsibility to all and malice toward none. Except, perhaps, toward Miss Savannah Ashleigh, the mastermind of back-alley neuterings."

  Damp brows the table over were dabbed by Bill Blass silk squares.

  "Then Midnight Louie is. . . intact as a male, but politically correct as a progenitor?" Tony Renaldi asked, one fine Italian hand smoothing the wings of dove-gray at his temples.

  "Exactly."

  "Interesting. Might it start a trend?"

  "I don't think so." Maurice's handler stood away from the fabric walls, erect for battle. "Maurice has been fixed the old-fashioned way since this unfortunate incident. Had Miss Ashleigh kept her cat kenneled as professional animal trainers recommend in the high-tension circumstances of a commercial film shoot, no doubt Yvette would still be as pure as the driven Dreft today. But she didn't, and all the world saw the result."