Cat In A Neon Nightmare Part 26

Chapter 35.

. . . Roadrunner Ouch! There is nothing out here but cat-claw cactus and it is digging directly between my toes on every step.

It was no big decision what to do when Mr. Max played spin-the-bottle with the motorcycle and won, brakes down.

As he bailed out of the car to check on the damage, I bailed out right behind him.

I stare down at the dried-out wash, gazing at one red taillight.

It is not the motorcyclist I fret about. I knew who it was and I am not sorry to see Mr. Max decide to leave, and no doubt find an anonymous phone upon which to report this fatal accident so long overdue. I know how this dude thinks: like I do, were anyone human ever to realize that I do think.

Right now I am thinking that if Miss Kitty O'Connor has truly clawed her last, I am not about to let any tears soak into my best black lace jabot. She was not exactly a friend to me and mine.

However, I have one nagging worry. Let us just say that I have a nagging nagger nowadays. The last thing I did indelegating power this evening was to tell my junior partner to tail Miss Kitty O'Connor. I do not doubt my order was heeded.

Ergo, Miss Midnight Louise was likely on the motorcycle when it made its Evel Knievel leap to fame and future forensics examination.

Well, one cannot have an a.s.sociate gasping out her last on the sere desert sands. Since nothing I would or could manage to do with a cell phone can offer an iota of good at the accident scene, I hurl myself down the crotchety incline, avoiding cacti all the way.

Such a path is hard on the unprotected pads, let me tell you. I had never expected to be an upside-down pincushion, but it is in that condition in which I finally catapult to the bottom.

My nose tells me my first worry is well placed. Raw gasoline is one of the strongest odors on the planet, and it hangs in a nasal miasma over the crash scene.

One spark and everything in the vicinity is instant barbecue.

So I pause before approaching nearer to observe the scene.

The motorcycle is on its side, a spray of broken-off accessories pluming over the sand. Broken gla.s.s sparkles from the moon-glow high above.

The rider lies fifteen feet away, limbs turned at angles even the most agile alley cat could not manage while in a living, breathing condition. The helmet has rolled like an obsidian pumpkin to the foot of a huge Joshua tree cactus a couple yards away.

"Louise," I call plaintively.

Something in the distance answers me with an arpeggio of yips ending in a howl. Coyotes. I wonder if Mr. Max will return to the accident scene, or if he will only lurk at a distance, as I would, to see the ambulance come and go.

Probably. I pause by the fallen figure's head. The skin looks dead in the moonlight and snaky threads of black hair cross the forehead and cheek. Some of them, I sniff on closer examination, are tendrils of blood.

I paw delicately at the motionless mouth, my shortest hairs unstirred by any breath or breeze.

It is a still night in the desert, in more ways than one. I do not hear any feline complaints either.

Nervous as I am, I must approach the fallen vehicle. If Louise had hitchhiked a ride with Kitty the Cutter, she would have needed to do what I have done before: ride in a saddlebag.

One of these handy black-leather pockets faces up at the star-pocked night sky. I examine it with mitt and nose and even tongue. Its exterior buckles are closed. I doubt the dead woman would have overlooked Miss Midnight Louise inside and buckled her in.

Next I bend down and explore the side of the bike crushed against the ground. The scent of oozing cactus juice is even stronger than spilled gasoline at this level.

I find another saddlebag, a twin to the first, crushed flat under the motorcycle's metal side. I sniff for blood, but can't overcome the gasoline reek. It is like trying to smell lilies of the valley when gardenias bloom next door.

There is a sudden sc.r.a.pe behind me and the sand shifts under my feet as I leap two feet into the air, execute a 180-turn like Mr. Max's car, and face the wilderness.

I make out a silhouette cresting the dry wash.

Oh, Great-grandmother Graymalkin! It is a lone coyote.

Now, eating nightly is a serious matter to this breed, which has been hunted to hoped-for extinction by humans and yet still manages to scrounge a living from the few uncivilized acres of desert left to its kind.

Actually, my money is on the coyote in this primal battle, but in these circ.u.mstances I cannot afford to let my finer feelings stand in the way of my survival skills.

And a coyote is at least twice my size with teeth at least six times the size of mine.

I know from many street brawls that it is not size but att.i.tude that determines who comes out on top. However,an opponent who is perpetually starving to death and who can only look on one as fresh meat is an extreme case it would be better to avoid than get physical with.

So I prance sideways, my back up and fur fluffed to porcupine fullness.

The coyote tilts his feral head in the universal canine gesture of puzzlement. I am sure that the hint of quills is not welcome to a desert-living breed who must grow up on regular snoutfuls of cactus spines.

Either cowed or simply shocked by my performance, he edges down into the wash a good ten yards away from me and soon is nosing at the rec.u.mbent form of the former Kathleen O'Connor.

Much as I would like to tell Miss Temple (could I tell Miss Temple anything) that I had witnessed Kitty the Cutter being eaten by coyotes for the sin of persecuting Mr. Matt and Mr. Max, I cannot allow the death scene and the corpus delecti to be tampered with before the ambulance comes.

"Ah, Mr. Coyote, that is not prey for you. The body is several rungs up the evolutionary ladder from you. It is always bad policy to eat your betters. They tend to retaliate. Not that I speak from personal experience, mind you."

He does not even lift his head at my whimpered protests, but paws at Miss Kitty's dead hand. There is no doubt that it is dead, for if it were not, no way would it sit still for playing patty-cakes with a coyote.

Mr. Coyote snuffles disgustingly at the corpse, then lifts his head to sniff the scents emanating from me.

There is no way to turn off my natural perfume, any more than I could deactivate the hypersensitive nostrils on a canine creature.

So it is time to let this bozo get a big whiff of my att.i.tude.

"You do not want to mix it up with me," I warn him in a low growl. "I am not your usual lost domestic feline. I am big-time muscle in Las Vegas, and I am out here on a case. Mess with me and you will lose a major sense."

His hackles bristle in response and there we are facing off.

It is in the silence that holds while we bluff each other with our badness that a thin, watery wail pierces the darkness like a cactus needle.

First I think siren, but this time the dog is ahead of me. Its ears p.r.i.c.k, its head lifts and off it goes bounding along the meandering trail of the dry wash.

I bound after. Ouch! The ground is littered with Christmas tree needles if a Christmas tree was ever a saguaro cactus. Some are the length of knitting needles!

I limp after, Mr. Coyote being a speedball who can use years of canny desert experience to avoid the p.r.i.c.kliest pear plants.

I arrive to see him rubbing his nose in the sand and pawing at it with both front feet.

There is a puddle of shadow on the ground that the moonbeams do not deign to illuminate and every raised hair on my shoulder blades tells me that it is Miss Midnight Louise and that she is dazed or injured, or else she would be standing upright and spitting like a kettle at 4:00 P.M. high tea.

Chapter 36.

. . . Neo-Neon Nightmare A high, thin keening ripped through the darkness.

Max had run the car off the road, turned off the lights and the engine, and waited.

The siren grew louder and shriller until it sounded like an alley cat in heat. The flashing red and blue lights of the squad car leading the ambulance slowed at a distant mile marker, then spurted ahead.

Max grew impatient when the squad car stopped, a pale blot gleaming like a beached whale carca.s.s on the desert darkness.

"There, you idiots," he whispered. Trained by both his apparent and his secret vocations to precise observation, his eye had already detected and pinpointed the darker patterns at the bottom of the wash that were a motorcycle and a body.

Soon, though, the officers and ambulance attendants were stumbling alongside the rim of the dry riverbed, their high-power flashlights illuminating mesquite bushes and p.r.i.c.kly pears.

Finally the lights danced over the high-gloss sheen of a motorcycle flank. They converged in a clot, one man going back along the highway to direct the ambulance driver forward . . . for more efficient pickup of the victim, the body.

Everyone was scrambling down the incline now. One of the cops held them back while a pair of EMTs rushed to the blot that was Kathleen's body. They bent over her, applying tests and remedies. The gurney was half carried, half rolled over the rugged terrain.

Max grunted soft appraisal. The major activity on the scene would obscure any traces he might have left, and with his unmarked soles they would be few.

The tire tracks his car laid on the asphalt as he had spun around wouldn't erase. Come daylight, when an accident investigation team hit the scene, they'd implicate a car and driver in the outcome. His Maxima was history. He'd leave it at one of the designated drop sites, and walk away. One call, and it would be picked up minutes after he left it. Within hours, it would be in another part of the country getting crushed in an auto graveyard.

Max ran a hand over the pa.s.senger's seat. He'd had this car longer than any for a long while. Temple had ridden in it several times. He'd miss it. Then his palm stroked several superficial slashes in the leather. On the other hand, the hitchhiking critter ... Midnight Louie, maybe? . . . had scarred the upholstery beyond repair anyway.

Chapter 37.

. . . Death Trip "Get away!" I howl at the coyote.

He interrupts his pawing at the shadow of Midnight Louise to gaze at me, puzzled. Puzzlement is a canine characteristic we felines never descend to.

"This is not human carrion," he half whimpers, half growls, "as you warned me away from before. This was a four-foot."

I do not know if the word "carrion" or the verb "was" irritates me in Big Cat proportions.

Either way, I go screeching sideways at him, bouncing on my toes like Bruce Lee on hot coals, my coat hairs all at attention.

That is enough to back him off two steps. "Take it easy, little guy."

And that is another incentive. I leap straight up, shivs out, and come down at an angle, extremities thrashing. I nick the nose.

"Hey!" The bozo buries his injured snout in the sand, his forefeet pawing at the sting.

While he is on his knees, I rocket past and kick sand in his eyes.

"No fair!" he whines.

While he is still on his knees and now blind, I leap again and land on his back, taking a good toothy grip on his hackles.

Now he springs straight up.

"Ow-ow-wow-wow-ow," he cries.

He tries to buck me off like he was a bronco and I was an old cowhand, but this galoot has spurs on every limb and I use 'em, digging in. I am going for a very big silver belt buckle here.

He is turning in tight rabid circles now, and I must admit my own head is getting quite a workout, but I hang on for dear life.

Suddenly Mr. Coyote comes panting to a dead stop.

His head hangs so low I am in danger of using it for a ski slope were I not hanging on tooth and nail, literally. "If you let go," he offers. "I will."

'There is nothing you have ahold of, except stupidity."

"I will go off, leaving you and this cursed spot alone," he growls between gritted teeth.

"Sounds like a good idea. If you try to pull anything silly while retreating, I will really get nasty."

"Wolf's honor," he says, invoking his bigger, stronger brother in absentia.

"Lion's honor," I say, loosening first one shiv, then another.

Finally I drop off, still on all fours and ready to rumble.

Mr. Coyote's appet.i.te has lost its edge, even if my shivs have not. (Nothing better for sharpening than a little raking and clawing.) He is backing away, head and tail lowered. "What did you say your name was?" he asks just before he turns tall and runs.

"Louie," I answer. "Midnight Louie. And I like my opponents shaken, not stirred."

With those words the coyote turns so fast it could eat itstail like a certain worm Ouroboros I have heard discussed around the Circle Ritz .. . and disappears.

I do not take long to stand there and congratulate myself.

An unpleasant task awaits at my unguarded rear: somehow I must conceal Miss Midnight Louise from the oncoming human retrieval team so that she can be interred later among her own kind, with appropriate honors.

Had I not a.s.signed her instead of me to tail Kitty the Cutter, I would be lying there dead in the dust . . . sand, rather.