Cat in a hot pink Pursuit

Temple asked, raising her voice into Xoe Chloe’s more hyper range. This would put the Xoe Chloe makeover to the acid test. Both Savannah and Rafi were acquainted with Temple though they’d never expect to see her here, in this guise.
    “That’s what I want to know,” Nadir said, still staring accusingly at Savannah. “I turn on the light and get one hysterical female and three pretty raggedy cats, all ready to chew my ass.”
    “I glimpsed him,” Savannah shrieked like a wind-up doll that, having been set for one mode, can’t escape it. “He wore black.”
    “I’m your bodyguard,” Rafi said. “I just got here. I came when I heard the caterwauling. Are you saying some guy in black came in here and attacked you?”
    “In black like you, yes.”
    “Bodyguards wear black. Especially at night. It’s useful if people don’t notice us. I came as soon as I could. Did you maybe glimpse the cat? He’s all in black.”
    That directed Temple’s attention to Midnight Louie. Again. He was sure dogging her footsteps on this one.
    Savannah’s eyes dilated even more. ‘That cat!!! That devil! He’s been the ruination of Yvette and now he’s come to get me. That’s Midnight Louie, I know it!”
    Rafi’s dark eyes narrowed as he assessed Savannah. “You superstitious about cats? Is that it? Ma’am?”
    The address of respect had been added way too late. “Just that one. I’m sure that’s the one that ruined my darling Yvette and he’s here to ruin me.”
    Temple actually felt a twinge of pity for the woman. Obviously something had occurred to frighten her, and she was all alone in this suite, unlike Temple and Mariah. Temple suspected that Louie had come running, just like her and Rafi. Temple had tried to ignore Louie’s skulking presence around the place but now she understood it. He’d always been sweet on the luscious Yvette, who now sat shaking and licking her pretty little front paws by turns.
    Time for Temple’s new persona to sink or swim. This was Zoe’s second run-in with Rafi. Brash Xoe Chloe’s extreme looks and attitude would either fool these two close-up. Or not.
    “Hey, lady!” Temple kept her naturally foggy voice high and a bit nasal. “This is just a black stray cat. Chill. I don’t know who this ‘Louie’ is. Your bookie? But this ole cat here is just some innocent stray. I mean, could those big green eyes lie?”
    Here Xoe Chloe turned to eye Rafi Nadir up and down much more thoroughly than Temple would ever do. His eyes were in no way green.
    “And this man can’t have been here earlier,” she decreed. “Look! Those cats have lost a lot of nail sheaths engaging someone in this room tonight.” A few pearly scythes still glinted from the navy carpeting. “Some would have clung to that denim and cotton-knit and showed up like dandruff on all that black. Someone else walked out of here dripping nail sheaths. But not your bodyguard. Look again! There’s another one by the door.”
    “Oh.” Savannah looked from Rafi to the carpet to the door, but not at Xoe. She pressed a hand to her bony chest and sank into seated posture on the end of her bed. “Then I did see someone in black. Just not this man.”
    “Maybe.” Nadir bent to the rug, glanced at Temple with no great favor, then followed the trail of nail sheaths to the door. Opening it, he encountered a herd of pink-shirt-clad contestants, looking like agitated sorority sisters.
    He quickly shut the door. “What happened?” he asked Savannah, his voice brusque with urgency. “How exactly were you attacked?”
    “It was dark. I heard the door open. When I got up, someone or something pushed me back onto the bed. Then there was this shrieking, like bats or banshees or something.”
    “Cats,” Xoe said. “It sounded like a cat fight from forty feet down the hall.”
    “My cats were fighting something big,” Savannah insisted, pushing herself upright on the bed. “I glimpsed a man’s figure, just as the lights went on. And off again. And on again.”
    Rafi rubbed his forehead. “I came in and hit the lights.”
    “No. No, he must have been gone by then. You had to have passed him in the hall.”
    “I didn’t. Nothing to run into, not even a current of disturbed air. Nobody went out of here.”
    Temple swaggered to the door in Xoe’s motorcycle boot gait, which is hard to do in bunny slippers.
    From Rafi Nadir’s expression, he’d come to the same conclusion as Savannah.
    “Hey.” Xoe Chloe blew a