Cat in a hot pink Pursuit

manicured hand tied behind her back, but que sera , sera. She was probably better off out of it. The potential PR headaches were as big as the payoff.
    The possibilities unscrolled in her mind.
    Number one, permissions. You don’t put underage kids on TV without parental permissions up the wazoo. Then, too, how do you run a peep show involving minors without getting hit with child endangerment or abuse charges? More parental permissions.
    Then there was the financial tangle of who would benefit from any resulting prizes or payments. Kids, or parents?
    Not to mention the ugly matter of stage parents who push their kids into this kind of media exposure for their own needs, otherwise known as JonBenet syndrome. One thing that ugly unresolved investigation had never made clear was where that offbeat name came from. That answer might explain a lot.
    Kids tote a heavy load of parental expectations, Temple mused. Cats too. Maybe Louie hadn’t really wanted to be a TV commercial spokescat.
    Nah. Louie had been born to attract attention, unless he was sneaking around, up to feline mischief, and then he was Mr. Invisible.



Mail Call

    Lieutenant C. R. Molina was doing a surprise inspection of her clothes closet and not liking what she saw. Not that any of her wearable troops were out of uniform and disorderly. Quite the contrary.
    A row of black, navy, and brown pantsuits in serviceable twill for winter alternated with a row of taupe, navy, and charcoal gray pantsuits in sturdy cotton for summer.
    They weren’t cheap, but they all came from conservative career clothing for women catalogs, where she could find styles long enough for her five-foot-eleven-inch frame.
    At the other end of the closet hung the limp folds of a few choice silk-velvet evening gowns culled from vintage stores in Los Angeles and Las Vegas over the past fifteen years.
    She looked from one end of the closet to the other. “Lieutenant Jekyll and Ms. Hyde,” she muttered. She moved down to flip through the vintage gowns representing her years as Carmen the chanteuse. The rich velvets seemed to echo the tones of her bluesy contralto voice: dark mossy forest green; shimmering black, ruby-burgundy, deep magenta, blue velvet.
    Her hand paused in pulling out that last gown. Couldn’t even remember buying it. Usually she knew the where and when of every costume... even, or especially, those found during her L.A./Rafi Nadir period. Her mind danced away from summoning those dread days beyond recall but her hand clung to the blue velvet. Was she losing it? She let the fabric fall away. No, just too much on her mind that was much more important nowadays, including Her Hormonal Highness, the periadolescent Mariah. Oh, for the pigtails and skinned knees and kid-dish enthusiasms of yesterday!
    But this inventory of her closet had nothing to do with Mariah. It had to do with one uppity narc. A date! Was he nuts? Was she nuts? Because here she was: single mother cop with teenage child, looking down the barrel of forty thinking she could go on a date. Just like that. When she didn’t have a thing to wear. Neither Jekyll nor Hyde was cut out for a dinner date. What the heck had she been thinking?
    For some reason the image of Matt’s friend, Janice Flanders, popped into her mind’s eye. Okay. Also a single mother and no kid herself. Tallish. One dignified lady. A wardrobe role model? No... those New Ageish artsy-drapey clothes with cryptic images weren’t her, whoever “her” was.
    She slid the closet doors shut and went to the living room. Caterina and Tabitha, the tiger-striped cats, were curled into yin-yang formation on the sofa, dreaming of electric mice. Mariah was off at another one of her extracurricular activities... band or chorus or just something way too girly for her tender thirteen years... at her new friend Melody’s house.
    Carmen heard the grinding gears of the mailman’s mini-Jeep outside and moved into the hot morning sunshine, hoping for a catalog with some outfit labeled “middle-aged single mother dating ensemble.”
    She got three catalogs, with cover images that made some hitherto untapped fashionista in her soul go “yuck.” And a letter. Addressed to Mariah.
    Carmen frowned, staring at the unthinkable type in the sunlight. What? Now they were trying to push credit cards on middle-schoolers? Were there no limits? No. It must be a magazine solicitation, going by the fancy type in the return address, which looked vaguely familiar.