Cat in a hot pink Pursuit

those feathers. You’ll knock ‘em dead.”
    “Speaking of which—”
    “The show’s over, right? That’s what my mom hauled you outa here to say. She always ruins it for me.”
    Temple grabbed Mariah’s plump little shoulders and refrained from shaking.
    “Mariah. She does not. She’s putting her shield on the line to keep the lid on the murders here, just so you can get up there and be shallow like all the other little ‘Tween Queen wannabes.”
    Mariah stared at Temple’s sudden stem turn. Then her eyes teared over. “I don’t know what happens. Sometimes it seems like everything’s so endlessly awful.”
    “Sometimes it is. Not now. You’re just feeling Wicked Witch of the Westly. The police aren’t going to close the show down. They want everybody bottled up here while they do some very complicated background checks. And they’ve imported some undercover pros to prevent any more violence, so expect to see a couple new crew members. Your mom is following some very interesting leads, thanks to... us. We have to keep it together and let the show go on until the police have enough evidence to name and charge the person behind all this. We are... undercover distractions. We gotta be good at it, right? That’s our real job. This stupid contest isn’t the point. I’m not Xoe Chloe, and you’re not Madonna, Jr. We’re us, underneath it all, and we have more important jobs than winning this thing, right?”
    I guess.
    “You guess right.”
    “But the talent show is tomorrow and then they judge and then it’s all over.”
    “Right. Then we judge and then it’s all over. Capische?”
    “That is so Sopranos."
    “And we are the contraltos, right? We are different.”
    “ You sure are.” Mariah grinned.
    “Dare to be... you and me,” Temple finished. “Defying gravity.”



Tailings

    The hour is once again my namesake one and I am stationed outside the Ashleigh suite trying to figure out how to get in.
    This is when Miss Midnight Louise happens along. Yeah. Like she is following me.
    “What ho, Romeo?” she inquires in the acid tones granted only to the female of the species, any species, and guaranteed to shrivel the cottontail off a bunny rabbit, not to mention other attachments of which I am unduly fond.
    “Stalking the Ashleigh girls again, I suppose,” she adds. “When are you going to get that those snooty purebreds are too good for you?”
    “When I lose my self-esteem, which will be never. So. You are emulating the Crawfish and descending to domestic snooping.”
    “Just wondering why you were slacking off on the job.”
    “I am not slacking anything, Louise. I need to get through the looking glass again.”
    ‘You and little girls named Alice.”
    “You recall that one of ours started her on that famous adventure. Holy Havana Browns! How am I going to get in there without Miss Savannah Ashleigh seeing me?”
    “I do not see why you cannot rely on your dubious inside connections. Of course, neither one of them would come if you came calling.”
    This gets my goat, and my llama too. I stick a mitt under the bottom of the door, shoot out my shivs, and make what pathetic scratching noises I can.
    Sure enough. In thirty seconds flat, I am playing pattycake with a set of soft, moist pads from the other side.
    Throwing Louise a superior gaze over my shoulder, I hunker down for a game of whisker teasing and whispering via the quarter-inch crack.
    In a minute, I have convinced the Ashleigh girls to make a heck of a commotion in the service of getting me into the secret passage. They are quite aware of this area, especially Yvette, as she is wont to play with her own image in the mirror for hours, Solange informs me. But she thinks she can tear Yvette away from herself long enough to do what is needed.
    Miss Louise and I retreat against the opposite wall and wait.
    Not for long.
    The shrieks, human and not-so, emanating from beyond the door result in an adjoining door slamming open against the hall wall, and Mr. Rafi Nadir, clad only in unzipped jeans and sneakers, charging down the hall and through the door like a cannonball.
    Louise and I exchange a look, then shoot through on his sneaker heels. Well, sneakers do not have heels, as such. Suffice it to say that we are in like dingleberries dangling from a shih tzu’s tail.
    There is a lot of fluffy pale hair flying in the room, part of it Persian and the other part of it Horst of Beverly Hills, and most of it eiderdown from