Cat in a hot pink Pursuit

personal experience. A black wig.
    Elvis’s sideburned headpiece.
    Everyone eyed the bald man in the glittering jumpsuit now flailing his arms at phantoms.
    For Louie was gone.
    Only the naked head was left.
    The center of all regard.
    The bull’s eye that Alch and Su and a waiter and a man in the audience converged on.
    Dexter Manship leaped up, snatched the score sheet from under the captive as he was rushed away, and leaped onstage to push Xoe Chloe away from the mike.
    “Forget the fuss, dear hearts. We have our winners.”
    All the candidates rushed onstage to hear the verdict, pushing Temple to the back.
    A hand was in hers, squeezing hard. Mariah’s.
    Manship’s voice carried over everything, including the scuffle as Elvis was led away.
    By the fringe of the pool, a rapt Crawford Buchanan was blabbing into his ever-present mike, unaware of a black stalking form closing in on him at foot level.
    The black cat pounced, leaping, claws out.
    Backpeddling, Crawford and his mike took a plunge into chlorinated water. No one even heard the splash. The night had an unhappy ending. He didn’t drown.



As Blind as Bast

    Naturally, having masterminded the revelation of the criminal, I am thereafter ignored.
    As soon as the police personnel present swarm the faux Elvis, they compare notes and conclude he bears a decided resemblance to a computer-aged image of... ta-dah !... Arthur Dickson.
    The whole tawdry scheme is immediately clear to all and sundry, as it has been to me. (Naturally, I eavesdrop shamelessly, and unnoticed, as they gather to exchange notes.)
    When ailing Crystal Cumming, aka Beth Marble, brought her scheme for the reality show to the producers, one of the silent partners was Arthur Dickson, forced underground by his narrow escape from prosecution for the first atrocity at his signature mansion.
    Beth Marble, who no doubt took her false last name from the sad monument to the life and death of her shattered daughter and her own imminent fate, knew the mansion had passed through many hands. She envisioned it as a court of justice for the woman who had, perhaps inadvertently yet concretely, contributed to the final downward spiral of her unfortunate daughter.
    In using the scene of the worst moment of her life for her revenge, poor Beth was unaware that her ex-husband had also been drawn back to the bloody battlefield. He had always known who she really was.
    So he put himself into the TV show as a bizarre judge, and finally found Beth in his power again. Once she had stepped outside of the bounds of civility by killing her daughter’s misguided therapist, he killed her, hoping to end forever the quest for vengeance that had forced him underground.
    However—and this I heard direct from the lipsticked lips of Miss Lieutenant C. R. Molina as she explained it to a Mr. Paddock of her recent acquaintance, unaware of my collaboration at their foot level. Anyway, she told him (and thus me) that the body of the young girl in the mall parking lot was the suspect’s step-granddaughter.
    The police surmised that the poor girl had recognized “Beth Marble” on the TV previews as her grandmother, and had come to the mall to confront her and perhaps urge her to give up the quest for revenge.
    Fate stepped in to demand a dance, as it so often does. A car nearly hit her in the parking lot. When the driver stepped out to see to her, young Tiffany recognized him from the old newspaper clippings she had been weaned on. Her surprise revealed her knowledge. Arthur Dickson, so long anonymous, grabbed a screwdriver from the back seat of his vehicle and ensured his continuing anonymity by killing his step-granddaughter, just as his violent actions twenty years before had wounded and ultimately destroyed his stepdaughter.
    Whew. I am beginning to seriously re-examine my relationships with my, er, esteemed long-lost maybe-daughter Midnight Louise. Like who wants a fang through the heart?
    Before I can digest my ill-gotten information, I am surrounded by a congratulatory frill of Persians. Much thrumming and purring and swishing.
    Miss Louise also shows up, returning from a successful expedition to scare Crawfish back into the pool a second time. It is certain he will never cross paths with a black cat again.
    “Louie,” cries Yvette in her sweet soft voice. “You have singlemittedly revealed a villain and also dunked the lowlife who was always after zee dirt on my mistress.”
    “Well, yes,” I admit. Then I glance