Cat In An Alphabet Soup (Catnap)

The booth contact person was a sleek, reassuringly friendly woman Temple’s age wearing—since Baker and Taylor’s absence had been discovered early yesterday morning before Chester Royal’s removal—a now-constant frown of anxiety.

“Miss Barr! Have you heard anything?”

“No”—Temple swiftly consulted the name tag depending from the lapel of a teal silk blazer—“Miss Adcock, I haven’t. To be quite honest, I’ve been caught up in the other crime.”

“Other crime? Oh, the murder.” Emily Adcock absently jabbed the ballpoint pen behind her ear more firmly in place. “But what about the cats! I’ve had a chance to ask everyone who was on duty when we were setting up the booths. Nobody took the cats home for the night, as I’d hoped some misguided animal lover had done. Good grief—this cat palace is equipped with every comfort known to exhibit engineers. Baker and Taylor are library cats. They’re used to mingling with the public. They like the attention. They wouldn’t run away!”

“How did they become corporate cover cats?” Temple asked.

“The sponsoring library got Baker on its own, and wrote the company, which gave them a grant a couple months later to purchase Taylor. These cats are famous among librarians and libraries everywhere. If anything’s happened to them... who could have taken them?”

“Have you talked to Cyrus Bent?”

“The convention hall security chief? Yes, he was most cooperative. He agreed that the cats couldn’t have escaped without human aid. The display area is secure. It might be malicious mischief. He’s sparing what staff he can to search the facility, including the air vents. But who would hear a ‘meow’ in this mess?”

“It’s terribly distressful, but if you don’t want to involve the police—”

Emily Adcock shuddered in her lightweight blazer. “Lordy, no! Not... yet. Not when it could be an accident or a prank. Did you see the Review-Journal with that cat story on the second front? Think what the press could do with this! ‘Double Trouble: Cats out of Bag at ABA.’ ‘Major Book Distributor Loses Catty Corporate Mascots.’ No, thank you.”

One PR woman’s publicity coup could be another’s coup de grȃce Temple mused. “I don’t see what I can do.” Emily Adcock wrung her hands despite sizable diamond solitaires on the third fingers of each hand. “Just make sure that your security personnel takes this matter seriously. I’m just a PR free-lancer like you. My goose will be chopped liver if Baker and Taylor loses its namesake cats, not to mention that everyone’s grown terribly fond of them. Such good-natured creatures. I never would have suggested that they appear in person if I’d suspected—”

“Mr. Bent will find them if they’re hiding out in the building. And if their absence has a more sinister cause—”

“What do you mean?”

“Catnapping. Surely you’ve considered that?”

“No! Who would do such a thing?”

Temple extended a forefinger and began ticking off possibilities down a descending ladder of digits: “A business rival, to embarrass the company. An animal rights fanatic, to protest using animals to sell products and services. An off-beat criminal who wants a ransom. A cat hater who’ll send them to an experimental laboratory.” Temple was about to start on her other hand when Emily Adcock clutched it.

“Stop, Miss Barr! You have such... an active imagination. No more, please. Those possibilities alone are sufficient to cause a sleepless night.”

“Those are just off the top of my head, of course.” Temple sighed. “My immediate problems with the Royal death are almost over. I promise that Baker and Taylor— cats and company—will be my next priority.”

Next, after a previous priority was settled.

Temple raced for the interview area green room, checking her wristwatch. The show-and-tell act was over for the day. If she was lucky, she’d have Mavis Davis all to herself.

“This is so kind of you, Miss Barr.” Mavis Davis gazed around the cocktail lounge of the Las Vegas Hilton.

Like most Vegas hostelries, the Hilton flooded its restaurants and bars with air-conditioning and dim nocturnal elegance from dawn to dusk to dawn again. Despite the crowd and the noise, the place felt cozy, dark and intimate, perfect for breaking off a love affair or confessing to murder.

“Think nothing of it, Miss Davis. And call me Temple, please. Lorna was sick at having to desert you, but the signing was scheduled and then the police lieutenant wanted to interrogate Lanyard Hunter afterward—”

“Oh, dear.” Mavis Davis shivered, but Temple doubted she felt the frosty air-conditioning. Although the Hilton was next to the convention center, the walk here had been long, hot and dry. No walk in Vegas is brief, simply because its buildings are so sprawling.

“You haven’t been... interrogated yet?” Temple asked.

“Me! No. Why should I be?” Mavis Davis looked truly appalled.

“You might have some notion or unsuspected information about the murder.”