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  Louie hunkered down on Temple's lap, and hid his face in his tucked paws. Was he guilty about something? she wondered. But he didn't accost Yvette. He liked her, all right, but theirs was a platonic relationship, wasn't it? At least none of the contested kittens had come out with a spot of black on it, and were, in fact, all long-haired yellow stripes.

  "So Maurice is neutered now, as he was not before?" Victor Janos looked as stern as a Salem judge.

  "As he should have been all along, but it was overlooked," the handler answered. "Most trainers don't spend their time examining rear ends. And he came from a shelter, so we assumed--"

  Savannah also had risen to plead her case. "As a matter of fact, I had Maurice's early history investigated by a private detective in my employ. My private dick found the original intake papers on this so-called Maurice, and they were very revealing."

  "How so?"

  "He was accepted into the shelter as one 'Maurine, a fixed female. This revelation caused another stir up and down the conference table. Being a Hollywoodite, Savannah clearly did not realize the sensation that any suggestion of a sex change might have on Middle America. She plunged on as carelessly as her cleavage.

  "Clearly, the shelter made an error."

  Now she was playing a lady lawyer on TV Carrie Mason. Wonder if she carries a hatchet in her briefcase? Temple thought.

  "An error that those who acquired Maurice, and turned him loose as a media cat, never adequately looked into. Did you?" Savannah asked the handler. "You admit that you never looked. How could you be sure?"

  "Despite the intake error," the handler returned, "we were assured that Maurine was now a fixed 'he,' but we didn't know until the unfortunate birth that he had a small congenital defect. An undescended testicle. The busy shelter vet noted a testicular anomaly, but must have assumed that what was only hidden, was actually missing in action. And since animal training does not involve that kind of probing touchy-feely--"

  "Too bad that rape does!" Savannah was furious.

  Brent Colby, Jr., was not amused. "Lady, Gentleman. This discussion is becoming, ah, heated. Perhaps we should adjourn for the day, since all parties have met and made their cases on this unfortunate matter. Colby, Janos and Renaldi invites all of you, cats included whatever their state of, er, gender, to attend our annual Christmas party here tomorrow night. No gifts required, save that of your presence. Santa Claus will be the usual guest of honor, with tokens for employees and guests. Thank you all so very much for coming. Now, my children. Take up thy cats, and walk."

  "What a smooth brush-off, huh, Louie?" Temple asked as she stroked him awake. "Makes you feel as slick as satin when you've really been handed the back of a boar-bristle brush. Santa and sacks of presents tomorrow night. Tomorrow, more cat spats."

  Louie yawned hugely, then stared unblinking at the departing admen and women.

  "Come on." Kendall had materialized at Temple's shoulder. "I'll get you two swathed and swaddled for the cold. I hope you can get out, Temple, for some New York fun tonight."

  Temple smiled at the departing executives, then skedaddled before she'd have to acknowledge Savannah Ashleigh, who was still arguing with Maurice's handler.

  "What do you think?" Temple asked Kendall under her breath as they hurried down the narrow maze to her office.

  "Louie is a hunk and you've got that breathy-voiced witch beat by an Epsom Downs mile."

  Temple appreciated Kendall being such a quick study. "Any advice for tomorrow?"

  "Same time, same act, only with the client present. Just be yourselves and let us figure out the packaging."

  "Speaking of packaging, what's with the Christmas party? Surely that's a company affair; we visiting cat people aren't needed."

  "Ah, don't tell anybody, but the boss man loves to play Santa, and the bigger the audience, the better. Plus, he believes that people show their true colors under pressure. Maybe animals, too."

  "Great! Another 'test' in Santa guise. Will Louie get a lump of coal in his cat-sack if he's not good? And is something solid really going to come out of this? It seems so . . . hasty."

  "That's when advertising really gets cooking--on the run. Yeah, we're gonna snag that account, by hook or by crook, and we'll do it best by coming up with the most attractive package of cat and human. I kind of doubt it'll be Savannah Ashleigh and Midnight Louie, or Temple Barr and Maurice."

  "But... if it is?"

  "Everybody had better learn to live with it, and each other. Or the deal dies right there in front of us all."

  Chapter 11

  Red, Red, Whine

  "And then she said--"

  Temple perched on the rolled rim of Kit's leather couch and crossed her legs somewhere near the hip. Her diction was the over articulated prattle of the amateur actor. "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!"

  Temple's laughter after delivering this line almost tumbled her sideways into Midnight Louie, who was disguising himself by sprawling on the camouflaging black leather upholstery as if to the Naugahyde born.

  Kit finally finished laughing. "Do you think the Tramp of Savannahhas a prayer at getting your spokesperson job?"

  "Thanks for the loyalty of that 'your' but advertising is just theater in a multimedia guise. Anything's fair, and anything's possible. Savannah's self-parodying ways may be just the shtick the client and the agency settle on."

  "I can't believe they'd want that floozie, as we used to say before World War Two, to flog their products."

  Temple dug in her tote bag. "Want to see a family portrait of my new maybe-bosses? They put together this jazzy booklet on the company."

  Kit's burnt-auburn eyebrows rose as she fanned through the heavy glossy pages. "Spent a fortune. Looks like an annual stockholders' report for a two -hundred- dollar-a- share company."

  "I wouldn't know, Auntie, the only 'stock' I've got is Louie, but I do know that this brochure showcases their graphic capabilities as well as the staff."

  "Smart. An uptown audition book. What's this in the back? A family tree?"

  "That's their real angle. Three generations of advertising-industry excitement.' They're so family-oriented that with that Italian name in their letterhead I should be reporting them to the FBI."

  "Snitch, huh? Remind me not to trust you with my cannoli recipe." Kit flipped to a new page and frowned. "Looks like the family of man is running the place, though. I haven't seen such a collection of prosperous middle-aged white men since I attended an audition for the revival of How to Succeed in Business without Really Trying. Talk about an aging script showing its sexism . . . These guys could really go for a Central Casting bimbo like Savannah Ashleigh. Better tease your hair tomorrow and wear violet lipstick."

  "Well, yeah, it does look like the typical middle-aged WASP operation, but then look at the firm's melting-pot names, and that family tree listing all the women, and the intermarriages. Even divorced in-laws seem to stick with the company."

  "Profit is thicker than blood?"

  Temple reclaimed the brochure, fanned through it again, then tucked it back into her tote bag. "Don't want to forget this. Might need to do a quick review in the ladies' room tomorrow. And I have to bring along a change of clothes for the Christmas party tomorrow night. No way am I going to tote Midnight Louie and all his stuff back and forth during rush hour."

  Temple absently stroked Louie's solid girth. "Umph. Between toting His Majesty all over Manhattan and the tension of filming those mock interviews all afternoon, my shoulders feel like Atlas is standing on them, with the world only a little blue bonbon on the top."

  "Poor baby! I forgot bow rough improvising can be. If you were trying out for a real play, you wouldn't have to make up your own lines over and over again. Try this."

  Kit, attired in one of her elegant floor-length at-home caftans that were the antithesis of Electra Lark's blowsy muumuus that only reached the most unflattering
ly wide part of the calf, bent over to fiddle with something under the couch.

  A moment later she straightened, a weird small appliance in her hands.

  Temple ducked defensively. "Don't tell me. You're an alien spy, and all that's left of my brain waves has been sucked into that demonic machine for E-mailing to Rigel Three. Good luck, traitor! All that's on my mind now is natural nutrition and the ash content of cat food."

  Relax. It's just a Shiatsu machine. Put it behind your head like a pillow, turn it on and your sore muscles are being kneaded by the twin bouncing balls."

  "Ooh. Weird feeling!"

  "Hang in there. It'll feel good in a second. And you can reverse the action."

  "First we rub the left brain, then we rub the right brain . . . Yeah, that does feel better. Maybe Louie would like to try it."

  "He's as relaxed as a rubber glove. Cats don't sweat the small stuff."

  "Cats don't sweat, period. No sweat glands. That's why dogs and cats pant in severe heat; they release all the poisonous stuff via their tongues."

  "And don't people, my dear? Especially nasty critics. You are an animal expert! Bet Savannah Ashleigh doesn't know that. Here's an ottoman for your feet. We might as well stay in for a deli dinner. I want to hear all about what's been happening in your life since I saw you. I'll get a bottle of wine to start us off."

  "On dinner? Or on catching up?"

  Kit was already invisible around the corner. "I hope you don't mind a decent screw top, Temple. These small, arthritic hands can't manage impediments like corks."

  "I know what you mean about impossible corks." Temple raised her voice to carry around the corner. Kit's apartment, like her own, encouraged shouting from room to room. "That's one thing I miss since Max has been gone."

  Her aunt's head popped around the corner like a disembodied talking mop. "That's all?"

  "I was speaking of minor advantages."

  "Here." Kit scurried into the main room, two wine glasses filled within an inch of their brims. "I know, full glasses are gauche, but I loathe hopping up and down to refill glasses that could have held a decent amount to begin with."

  Kit curled into the couch's tapestry pillows that turned a corner into a comfy curve, her slippered feet tucked under the hem of her caftan.

  Temple suddenly noticed the soft brittle rhythm of a CD echoing off the hard windowpanes like insect wings beating a mass retreat. Temple recognized swing music from the forties, the mellow, jazzy jounce of the Big Bands.

  "If only you had a fireplace." Temple sighed, rolling her head so the machine's circling cue balls massaged a different hot spot.

  Kit gestured to the illuminated city panorama. "Consider it cold fire."

  "I do love this place. I could write here. I mean, write something wonderful, maybe even fiction, gazing out the windows on Manhattan, it's great, unseen engine churning industrious cogs beneath the city's imposing architectural mantle . . ."

  "Maybe I overfilled our glasses, after all. The wine is supposed to be red, but not florid. Don't glamorize cosmopolitan life. I pay a mortgage like everyone else. The super's never there when you need him or her, a self-protective woman needs to wear running shoes on the subway and sometimes we have garbage strikes, which in a city like this means it piles up on the curbs."

  "No alleys with little cans for everybody, huh?"

  "No alleys. And writing fiction for a living sometimes feels like you're in a dead-end alley and there's a garbage strike on all around you. The publishing business is addicted to turmoil and the outlook is always bleaker than last year somehow."

  "Still, you can't say you haven't achieved something."

  Kit nodded and sipped. "But I'm not what I came here for."

  "An actress?"

  "That game is even worse than writing. At least nobody can 'can' me because I gain ten pounds.

  And that hasn't been easy, even with the edge of good genes. The years have a way of turning on you and all your dietary sins, and ticking out a tongue. Before you know it, you've gained ten pounds, and then another, if you're not careful."

  "That's what I was afraid of. I'm seeing the weight issue front and center at the advertising agency. They're even looking a little askance at Louie."

  "Of course, looking askance is the only way you can see all of him." Kit, hands held up like a moving frame, mimed a camera pan of the cat in question. "What a lug! A full yard stretched out from claw to shining claw, with his front feet flopping over the couch edge. Such a gigolo at heart!"

  "Careful what you say. If anyone heard, the agency might invoke Louie's morals clause."

  "Morals clause! For a cat? Claws I can buy. Morals? No."

  Temple nodded soberly, quite an achievement considering that her glass was half empty already. She hadn't realized that she had been stressed out enough to chugalug a fine vintage screw-top like this.

  "Same clause actors and athletes have to sign when they become national spokespersons, Auntie. If even a cat gets bad press, it could terminate the contract."

  "If you sign up with these people, will there be a morals clause in your contract too?"

  "I suppose so, although I'm not famous enough to be pilloried in public." Temple smiled wickedly. "But Savannah Ashleigh is. Her cat Yvette's already in hot water for an unplanned pregnancy."

  "By a cat?"

  "The father of the quadruplets is rumored to be Yvette's last leading man, previous to Louie."

  "No! Stop the presses. Cats Shack Up in Las Vegas Love Nest. I can see the headline now."

  After they stopped laughing, and Temple restrained the sleeping Louie from sliding right off the sofa, Kit retreated to the kitchen, returning with the wine bottle and a coaster.

  "I'm beat too. Baby-sitting Rudy last night wasn't a piece of cake."

  "The guy who played Santa needed baby-sitting?"

  "Not exactly. But not too long ago he was a street person. It's easy to slide back into that life. That's why me and a few old acting friends try to keep him gainfully employed."

  "Boy, acting must be worse than publishing, if you've got out-of-work thespians panhandling."

  "It's not just that. Rudy's a Vietnam vet, and sometimes the nightmares come back. I mean, he won't hurt anybody, and never kids, but we have to keep him focused, especially around the holidays. Playing Santa seems therapeutic. I guess that's what Rudy did with the kids in Vietnam. Looking after them helped him forget the horrors of war. My pal Mitch got him an elf gig at a kids' party, and he's got more for the holidays."

  "Vietnam! Kit, that was ages ago. I'm surprised he's not in retirement."

  She looked amused. "Temple, darling, Vietnam was still going strong when you were in diapers. Just because you don't remember it doesn't mean it happened before your lifetime."

  "No, but it seems like such ancient history. International terrorism has become the preferred conflict of the eighties and nineties."

  Temple held her glass with both hands as Kit leaned forward to refill it.

  "You seem so hip," she explained to her aunt, "compared to Mom. I guess it's hard to realize how old you are."

  "Thank you. I think. I'm several years younger than your mom, and I'd like to believe that living in a cosmopolitan city has polished off some of the hayseed hulls."

  "Kit, I didn't mean to insult you. I was actually thinking about international terrorists."

  "Commendable."

  "Fighting them isn't such a bad thing, is it? "

  "No, but how do we do it?"

  "Not us. Someone. Maybe someone who has to do it clandestinely."

  "Speaking of clandestine, let's forget terrorists and focus closer to home. You're edgier than when I saw you in Las Vegas, and when I last saw you in Las Vegas, you were almost the second victim of a murderer."

  "Ooh, yeah. And then Max himself almost strangled me for getting into that onstage pas de deux with a murderer."

  "Max is it now.'"

  "Sometimes."

  "Hmm. That what'
s making you edgier?"

  "I'm not edgier. I'm . . . just burned out from my last case."

  "Your last case."

  "The Darren Cooke murder."

  "I saw the Times obituary, but the death was ruled a suicide."

  Temple shook her head mournfully.

  "The official version is suicide," Kit tried again, "but murder is still suspected?"

  Temple's solemn head shook again.

  "Temple, for heaven's sake! I'll think you have palsy soon. Well?"

  "The official version is suicide. The case is closed. That's all there is."

  "But--?"

  Temple shrugged gingerly. The shiatsu machine had done its work well. It still buzzed off target, slipping down the couch back.

  "But the officials don't know what I know," Temple admitted.

  "Which is?"

  "Cherchez la femme."

  "Your French accent gets comedic when you drink."

  "Don't laugh. La femme could be cherchez-ing me now, because I know too much."

  "So. You're looking over your shoulder for a female killer. And that's why you're edgy."

  "Maybe. If I am edgy. I'm not sure I endorse your diagnosis."

  "What about the divine Mr. Devine?"

  "Matt? He's not edgy. Au contraire. Although he did sound a bit hyper for him when he called me after I got in."

  "He called you. I've been wondering about that. Are you two--?"

  "Oh, stop making that matchmaker wiggle with your hand, as if my love life could go either way with either guy. It's all at a standstill. Them, me, it. We are all stuck in the mud. Up to our fenders in snowdrifts or sand dunes or self-delusion. Mired."