Cat In A White Tie And Tails

“I need no favors from my street-gang-running ex,” he answers. “Also, I am very picky about where and with whom I exert myself these days. Borrow one of Ma Barker’s young toughs for backup.”

“No time. I need a coconspirator fast to track a possible killer.”

“Really? Crime most.… er, criminal. Junior, you know, fancies himself as the expert at that.”

“Junior is off the map. I need a wise, sage partner I can rely on.”

“And where will you be doing this ‘relying on?’”

“At the Neon Nightmare.”

“That is six blocks off the Strip and twenty down the Boulevard.”

“Trust me, Granddaddy. You are not GoDaddy. We are not off to shoot elephants, but on a mission to preserve the wildlife in Vegas, as in four-footed. You can do the walk.”

“You really need backup?”

“I do.”

“And I will do for that?”

“You will.”

“You are not wishing Junior was here?”

“Absolutely not.”

“And we are after killers of the human sort?”

“Sneaky, treacherous killers of the human sort.”

“Give me five!”

I hit him with my best shot, a five-finger exercise, feline style, but with the razor tips only out a centimeter.

“Ouch! That is my girl.”

Chapter 4

Louie on the Fly

Leaving Las Vegas could be a hassle, but Temple hadn’t done it since visiting her aunt Kit Carlson in Manhattan for Christmas. A lot could change in five months, she mused while temporarily stalled in the McCarran Airport security line.

Temple had been the missing Max Kinsella’s girl back then and Kit had not yet met and married the eldest of the many eligible Fontana brothers, Vegas’s last surviving pack of gangsters, designer gangsters on the Gucci loafer hoof.

As Temple daydreamed, Matt Devine, a superior fiancé, although newly minted, used his superior height to peer ahead. Almost any adult’s height was superior to Temple’s, but Matt was a shade under six feet.

“We’ve lucked out for a Saturday,” he said. “I’ve seen lines four people wide snaking all the way over the bridge areas to the initial security checkpoints.”

Temple’s answer was a groan. Her carry-on was almost half her five-foot-zero size. Its chic leopard-skin-print exterior harbored twenty pounds of purse pussycat, Midnight Louie by name and furry anchor by weight and composition.

She’d insisted on toting the twenty-pound cat in his fancy new five-pound state-of-the art carrier. “Or what good are workout sessions at the gym?” she answered Matt when he attempted, repeatedly, to tote the load that was Louie.

And Temple had insisted Louie accompany them to see how he liked Chicago. Also, the Palmer House Hilton accepted pets under seventy-five pounds, so Louie was a lightweight when it came to hotel privileges.

“I can carry that.” Matt again reached to claim the carrier’s wide shoulder strap like the gentleman he was.

Temple shrugged his hand away. “You’ve got three bags to wrangle, and don’t forget we have to strip to go through the security point.”

“I do this routine three times a month. I’m not about to forget doing the gray rubber-tub tango.”

“I bet doffing wearing apparel for the security check is a real showstopper now that you’ve been on Dancing With the Celebs.”

“It was your idea for me to do that downright risky show, remember?”

“And look what it got you? A knife attack followed by a fast-track samba toward your own network TV talk show.”

“We’ll see what happens in Chicago.” Matt frowned at the large leopard-skin-print bag Temple wouldn’t surrender. “What about Louie going through security?” he asked. “Did you look into that?”

“Time crunch,” Temple said. “I know he can go through, I just don’t know how.”

A discontented yowl emerged from the bag.

They were shuffling through in a tight zigzag pattern of lanes that put every ear in its neighbor’s projection range.

“Is that a cat in there?” A woman several spaces ahead of them was momentarily their closest neighbor.