“This site is dead,” Miss Midnight Louise declares when I come to inspect her work. “All the juice has been squeezed out of it. We should be back on Aloe Vera Drive where the cat action is.”

“I am thinking that it is always good to keep an eye on Mister Max. Were you not hot to do that from the moment the Phantom Mage hit the wall at the Neon Nightmare? I am giving you your dream assignment.”

“That is what will be going on here tonight. Mister Max’s dreams. Now that I know he is all right—or at least alive and back where he belongs—I can concentrate on Miss Temple’s first case along with you.”

Phtchooey, I say.

“Dudes always give dames the ‘scat’ work.”

“What is ‘scat’ work?” I ask, much amazed by the term.

“Where we are forced to hang around and twiddle our dewclaws and are finally shooed away by irritable humans yelling ‘Scat!’”

“I trust you to keep a very low profile, Louise, and the reputation of Midnight Investigations, Inc., discreet.”

“Besides,” she says with a sly sideways look, “you would think the senior citizen of the firm would want the snooze detail.”

Actually, I have been losing some sleep lately over Miss Temple’s suddenly overpopulated private life.

To be honest, I do not have much expectation of anything worth a squib in the Las Vegas Review-Journal happening here, but I am keeping my personal private eye on Miss Violet’s house with all those residents of the female feline sort and do not want a chaperone on my tail.

So I leave Miss Midnight Louise there, on discontented duty, feeling a bit smug in the knowledge that the lovely ladies on Aloe Vera Drive will certainly not be growling “Scat!” at their devoted protector.

What could happen here in one night?

Really.