Cat In A Quicksilver Caper

Squeaker has overcome her timidity to reach out even farther and sting Hyacinth’s long, lean dangling form with a spurful of shivs. Getting her own back, in a way, prodding the other cat to a life-affirming leap onto the already hefty mass of rope I am anchoring.

Louise and Squeaker have started clambering up, making the whole rope quiver like a bowlful of Santa Claus belly. This is not helping me maintain my grasp. And Hyacinth is still playing the swooning southern belle. In moments, the whole kit and caboodle will plummet down, unstoppable, and I will be the sole survivor. Or the counterweight.

It is not in my code to let the women and children sink with the ship.

Belle. Hmmm. Bell!

I embrace my rope and swing out over the abyss.

Whomp!

I descend like a dude who has been presented with custom-fit concrete booties.

My move works like a charm. The Medusa-mass of entwined rope and feline hitchhikers snaps right up to the ceiling pulley, allowing Louise and Squeaker and Hyacinth to drop off on a secure platform and lay there preening their nails.

It does, however, also leave me swinging out over the abyss like that ugly bell-ringer guy from France. Not my favorite position in front of the ladies.

“Louie!” Miss Squeaker cries in heart-rending fashion.

Miss Midnight Louise is mum, and I can see that Miss Hyacinth is still comatose and that she is the only one not licking her ravaged nails, which might give some credence to that curare-nail-polish boast, which means my Miss Temple’s Mr. Max is in dire danger of blood poisoning.

But it does not behoove me to reflect on the imminent danger other dudes may be facing. I have done my survival of the species thing and saved the ladies.

Who will save Midnight Louie?

You can bet it is not going to be the ASPCA.

I take a deep breath and suck in my gut.

Someone has to reach for the falling star; I guess it is up to me.

First I go limp. Second, I let go.

A chorus of wailing disbelief from above cannot stop me.

I swing down onto the platform that Hyacinth claimed and snap my shivs out so I slide down it. It gives under my flailing weight and sinks like an elevator. As the momentum gets suicidal, I release every shiv, and catch hold of the thin bungee cord that Shangri-La fell from before Mr. Max made a superhuman effort and caught her by one wrist.

I am hanging by two nail sheaths, but the bungee cord has enough elastic left to stretch gently under my slighter feline weight. I am still downward bound and can see only the furtive glimmer of security lamps on the geography below.

The bungee cord is getting tired of the down escalator and is tensing its fibers to rebound up again.

I let go and close my eyes, calling on Bast.

I see a transparent pyramid coming up at me fast, planning to transfix a very tender part of my anatomy on its sharp, onion-dome tip. I execute a Greg Louganis triple-twist-and-turn dive to make a one-point landing—stomach down—oooof! There goes my Salmon Supreme with Smoked Oyster Sauce—and I am sliding down the steep smooth invisible roof, searching in vain for the 365-carat diamond on the Czar Alexander scepter to wink at me. It is gone for good and I may be a goner for good too.

I have engraved four lines into the pyramid side before I slide off onto the viewing platform surrounding the scepter area. I land on all four feet—whew, that stings!—my head unbloody and unbowed, but my pads burning like Hades and my head aching like Zeus’s before that upstart Athena burst out from his brain.

“Way to go, Daddy-o,” a voice calls from high, high above. Midnight Louise, of course. “I never knew that you had won a Purple Heart in Olympic air skiing.”

My heart is not all that is gonna be purple from this little stunt.

Deadhead Curtain

Raiser

“Sorry,” Detective Alch told Temple way too bright and early the next morning, “but I’ve asked around this entire end of the hotel, and you’re the only one who’d seen Shangri-La without makeup. And that includes her performing partner, the Cloaked Conjuror. So, you’ll have to do ID duty.”

“She was right down here with me the other day, on the main exhibition floor. Dozens of people could have seen her.”

“But they didn’t. You say you did.”

“I thought I did.”

Alch scratched his thatch of salt-and-pepper hair, more from habit than necessity. “At least we’ll know if the Asian woman you talked with was the dead woman, or not.”

Temple sighed. Deeply. “You mean I have to go the coroner’s facility.”

“Not a formal autopsy. They have a viewing chamber.”

“I’ve heard of it,” Temple said quickly, recalling Matt’s description of IDing his dead stepfather.

“Ordinarily we could use a photo,” Alch said, “but this is a pretty critical ID since the victim was anonymous, in a way. Can’t take any chances. Sorry.”

Everyone was telling her he was sorry these days. Except Matt, for a change. A big change. But now she was sorry. She hadn’t told him about Max’s latest gig as Suspect of the Week.