This is essentially an AU story. The idea was to integrate as many film noir elements as possible, hence the hardboiled detective, various femme fatales, an urban setting where organized crime is rife, many mysteries, secrets locked in the past, and indiscriminate smoking. There are also deaths, and there is one in this chapter already.

This story owes its birth to Crispy-Gypsy's brilliant art on DA which melded Lackadaisy with CATS. This story might be in a different period (the 40's-50's instead of the 20's), but her art was crucial to imagining the characters in their current form. :)

-----

Chapter 1: Ill-met by Moonlight

She walked briskly in front of him, her black mourning clothes clinging to her dark skin. As they strode down the sparsely lit corridor towards the morgue, her dark countenance gave her the illusion of disappearing and reappearing sporadically as she alternately blended with and stepped out of the darkness. Their conversation had been brief and terse, sparse on the details, and every attempt to query after her current emotional state was skillfully rebuffed, side-stepped, and thus evaded. Even throughout the taxi ride she had chosen to ride alongside of the driver, her head held stiffly, peering out into the dark streets as if afraid to turn around and look him in the eyes.

She finally stopped at a door, and turned to look at him, the mourning veil masking most of her features but failing to dull her piercing blue eyes. "He's here," she murmured, tenderly gripping the handle and pushing the door open.

He followed her wordlessly into the room, bracing himself for the worst. But the good people at the city morgue had had the prescience to shroud the body entirely with a white cloth. For a brief moment, he imagined, or perhaps, naively allowed himself to hope, that maybe it was an entirely different body beneath the shroud, that this was just a terrible mistake.

She gingerly lifted the two upper corners of the shroud and uncovered the body's face.

He felt his breath catch briefly in his throat as he inhaled in the momentary shock of seeing a familiar face. Yet there was something cold and hard, stiff and unnatural in the way the lips had been curled upwards and the eyebrows shaped into a vague verisimilitude of peaceful rest. He thought he had seen it all, and there was nothing that could shock him anymore, but this, his friend seemingly at rest and yet cold and plastic all at once, it unnerved him.

"Oh, Lonz…" he traced a paw along the black patch that encircled his friend's left eye. The fur was slightly powdery, masked by some makeup that had been carefully applied to hide the bruises that had marred his friend's face shortly before his death. He looked up at his friend's widow, trying to seek a sign that she felt the same horror, revulsion and pity that he felt but could not properly express. Yet she continued to evade eye contact, staring, transfixed at the face of his dead friend. When she next spoke, her voice was one of studied detachment.

"I told them to make it look like he had not felt very much pain."

Yet something broke on the word 'pain' and from underneath the shield of her mourning veil, a single tear slid down and shattered onto the cold metal table.

------

They headed back to the apartment she and Alonzo had shared. As she bustled around the kitchen making a pot of tea, he meditated on the facts of the case. Sparse as they were, they were a welcome diversion which enabled him to block out the image of his friend's body at the morgue.

"Do you know what Lonz had been up to, lately? No, thank you, I'm trying to quit." He said, refusing the offered cigarette. Cassandra raised an eyebrow, but shrugged and lit up her own cigarette. He barreled on, "Any enemies he could have made, or business partners that might have been primed to profit from his… passing?"

She sniffed. "You," she said pointedly, spooning out the tea leaves. "You of all people should know that the toms aren't allowed to tell us anything. In case we get catnapped and become liabilities and rat you out."

He bristled slightly. "That's skewing the truth, Cass. The rule was put in place to protect the queens and the kittens. The less you know, the less likely you'll be involved in any… business dealings we might have."

She turned sharply towards him and he felt the bright blue eyes bore into him through the veil. "Rules, rules, rules!" She tossed the tea towel in frustration. "Lonz used to mention the rules a lot too, every time I asked him questions. Munkustrap's good, honorable rules of engagement. He could quote them ad verbatim." Her body had gone stiff. "He thought he was being so honorable. Honorable! It's just another romantic word for 'naïve'. There's no honor among thieves. The thing about the rules is that they only work when everyone plays by them. Like that time with Electra—"

"Enough!" He snapped, feeling slight pleasure at the way she had jumped and recoiled slightly. "You don't go there, Cassandra. There are some wounds that have yet to heal with the Jellicle gang. I know you're hurting, but it doesn't give you the license to rub salt in other wounds. Especially," he breathed, speaking with clenched teeth. "That wound."

They stared down at each other in the cramped kitchen, glowering silently at the other. The kettle started whistling. Cassandra's head snapped towards the direction of the stove and she haughtily turned off the gas. Munkustrap buried his face in his paws, kneading his throbbing temples.

"I… apologise, Cassie. It's been a long night for both of us. I had no right to lose my temper like that." A short sniff issued from Cassandra was all the acknowledgment she gave that she had heard him. "Tell me, do you know at least who he was last known to be meeting with?"

There was an unexpected change in the mood of the room as Cassandra paused over serving the tea. "I don't know for sure," she murmured silkily. She strode to the living room where Alonzo's possessions lay strewn over the couch. She produced a piece of note paper from Alonzo's pocket and slid it across the kitchen table to Munkustrap. "Tell me," she said, once again, her voice low and dangerous. "Do you recognize the handwriting?"

Munkustrap didn't even need to scrutinize the note carefully, he knew immediately the only cat who crossed her 't's in that strange and slightly skitterish way.

"Demeter!?"

-----

Please review, and point out any anachronisms (like whistling kettles not existing in the 40s and 50s :P)