CHAPTER 1
Working for the Cat
Doing PR—public relations—for a cat isn’t easy. Working in any capacity for a very famous cartoon cat might sound like a dream job, but it’s not. The Furry Caped Avenger, Catmmando Tom, may be a superhero, but his megalomaniacal creator is an altogether different kind of character. Maximilian Marley loves animals. People, not so much, even though they’re the lifeblood of Marley’s pastoral theme park, Arcadia. It’s the two-legged visitors that pay the $100 admission fee for adults and $50 for children under twelve.
On occasion, their pets are welcome, too. All the enchantment produced by other divisions of Marvelous Marley World Enterprises relies on hard-earned cash people dole out. That includes visits to the Marvelous Marley World Resorts, as well as purchases of videos, movies, and merchandise featuring Marvelous Marley World characters.
As I reviewed our current PR agenda, I straightened my posture to shoulder the burden. Super cat cartoons, movies, and merchandise had made Max Marley very wealthy. A host of animated animal characters had followed on the furry heels of Catmmando Tom’s acclaim. A few human characters, often cast in supporting roles, were included in the projects produced at Marvelous Max Studios. The theme parks and resorts were next. The first Arcadia was built here in Orange County, California, near our World Headquarters. Each iconic character has a special place in Arcadia Park, a fantasyland of dreams and adventures, built around relationships between super pets and their owners. In Max Marley’s imagination, it wasn’t always clear who owned whom, however. Most of the time his stories involved super pets rescuing their beloved humans and endangered animals from ne’er-do-wells of one species or another.
Uncle Max, as he prefers we call him, demands that his theme parks and resorts be kept in perfect order. Nevertheless, a surprising number of “faux paws,” as we refer to them around here, require attention day in and day out. Inadvertent offenses to park guests, like when the beloved Sir Dartmouth the Lion-Hearted Lion bumped into a toddler, knocking him to the ground. Characters stepped on toes, whacked guests with an unguarded tail, or otherwise offended them. Birthday parties didn’t always measure up to expectations. Guests panicked about stolen items that turned out not to be missing at all, or to have been lost, not stolen. Food that was too hot, too cold, or too something, required rapid intervention by park rangers. In their spiffy Legion of Purrfect Park Rescue Ranger outfits, they roamed Arcadia Park assisting guests. They were on the front lines when it came to catching problems, or when called into action by another Marvelous Marley World “family” member who spotted a problem.
Occasionally, a dysfunctional member of the Marvelous Marley World family caused a problem deliberately. Pirate Pete, a smart-mouthed parrot, had become too mouthy several times before management replaced the guy wearing the brightly colored feathered suit. The use of profanity by “associates” or “family members,” as Marvelous Marley World’s corporate handbook refers to employees, is forbidden in the park and resorts. A drunken Poacher Pierre, perhaps too much into the role of the bad guy character he portrayed in animated films, had gone on a bottom-pinching spree one day. It had taken a whole squad of park rangers to escort the cackling character out of the park. That had been a mess to clean up, although many of the women had been more amused than angered by the incident.
What on earth had I been thinking when I gave up my job in the Food and Beverage Division at Marvelous Marley World? All things food-related had been my first love, and I’d started working in the park as a chef, straight out of culinary school. Despite the increasing number of women training as chefs, a decidedly male-oriented culture had prevailed in the theme park and hotel kitchens. One of the worst insults meted out was, “You do that like a housewife.” The statement was typically delivered by a European chef while slashing the air with a French knife for emphasis.
I loved being a chef and succeeded in working my way up to Sous Chef quickly. It’s at that point I completed a degree in business administration, with a minor in communications, and made the leap from the kitchen to Food and Beverage Management. The move into management gave me the opportunity to influence the overall quality of food in the park, to oversee hiring, training, and professional development of kitchen staff, and do what I could to find creative ways to provide excellent food to the guests while heeding the constant drumbeat to cut costs.
After more than twenty-five years at the “Cat Factory,” our insiders' term for the corporation founded on Catmmando Tom’s success, I made another leap. The decision to move out of the Food and Beverage Division into Public Relations wasn’t an easy one. What had I been thinking? For one thing: that I wasn’t getting any younger. The likelihood of obtaining the senior position in the Food and Beverage Division before I retired had dimmed when I was passed over for promotion by Max Marley’s daughter. Mallory Marley-Marston, in my book, bore a resemblance to Cruella de Vil, alluding to a figure from another well-known distributor of animated tales. Maybe that resemblance was because the woman hated animals and people.
Her anorectic thinness and aversion to food made it difficult to understand how she had chosen the Food and Beverage Division as her bailiwick. She spouted a lot of hooey about bringing healthy eating to the parks and resorts while claiming to have a background in nutrition. According to gossip, that “background in nutrition” came directly from lectures in rehab where she ended up after her eating disorder and pill-popping got the better of her.
More than once I’d seen the pill-popping for myself. “Vitamins,” she’d said as she knocked back a couple of pills during a meeting. “Allergies,” she’d told us at another event. At one point, during the first year of her rule, she’d taken an unexpected absence. Twenty-eight days to be exact, as in rehab. It was supposed to be hush-hush, of course. But people still speculated on the timing. While the cat’s away, the mice will play, so the adage goes. Those were 28 glorious days, despite the challenge of having to step in to fill her shoes without notice. Too soon, though, she was back at the helm, waving a finger in my face and speaking to me in a shrill voice. I can’t remember what accompanied the finger-pointing, since all I heard was that line from the Wizard of Oz: “And your little dog too!”
I was considering early retirement when a position opened, here, in PR. Because of my minor in communications, I’d been more engaged in PR than most execs in the Food and Beverage Division. For years, I’d worked with key people in PR and knew what went on in the division very well. The director, Doug Addams, invited me to apply when his second-in-command made a sudden mid-career move to a “real PR firm.” Doug was not unaware of my plight having dealt with Mallory-the-Worm-Hearted, as he called her, many times. He was more than happy to facilitate my move.
PR is a smaller division than Food and Beverage. The move had been a lateral one rather than a move up, but the Hallelujah Chorus had gone off in my head the day that position was offered to me. Despite the constant troubleshooting my new job involves, I am still inclined to do a little mambo whenever Doug and I leave a meeting in which Mallory is present. The absolute worst meetings are those in which her daddy was also in attendance. She affects a slight Southern drawl in his presence and a giggly, demure demeanor, with her claws and fangs retracted. The Southern accent is inexplicable, given she was brought up in Los Angeles.
“Southern California,” Doug once offered with a shrug of his shoulders and a shake of his head. Even the Southern accent is easier to take than that obsequious little-girl routine.
I’d just finished perusing my email, checking for any new hot spots on the “faux paws” radar, when all the trouble broke loose. My office phone rang, my smartphone pinged, an alert popped up on my desktop computer, and Doug Addams burst through my office door. He did not even knock—a breach of protocol for the oh-so-proper Director of PR.
“We’ve got to get to Catmmando Mountain, now! They’ve found a body.” With that, he was gone. I grabbed my smartphone, made sure I was wearing my corporate nametag and set off in hot pursuit.
“A body—as in a human one—a real dead person?” I ran to catch up with Doug as he reached the elevator and hit the down button.
“Yes, a body. One of our maintenance guys found it and called it in. The police are on their way. Security has already shut down Catmmando Mountain Conquest and cordoned off the area. I’ve also sent a team from Crowd Control to set up a perimeter and redirect guests away from the scene.”
CHAPTER 2
Purrfect Murder
In my quarter of a century working for the Cat, a lot of things had gone wrong. Despite the perfectly created setting with flowers always in bloom, birds chirping, butterflies flitting, manicured green grass, bubbling streams, waterfalls—life happens. People stumble and fall or have some other accident. Sometimes, those accidents involved a malfunction of the Raptor Rail, the cars on the Otterbaun, the Swan Boats or Pup Wagons—any one of a dozen Arcadia Park vehicles used to transport people. Even low-tech, horse-drawn carriages aren’t always safe. Live horses are unpredictable in a crowded park filled with squealing children, piped in music, toots and whistles. Accidents can happen any day with tens of thousands of people coursing through the park.
Our guests become sick, too. Folks sometimes arrive at the park sick and get sicker. Not surprising, since no one wants to disappoint kids counting on a trip to Arcadia. There have even been deaths in the park or at the resorts, typically a heart attack or stroke. This incident was the first time since I’d stepped into the PR role a year ago that I was dealing with a death in Arcadia Park.
I stood next to Doug, in silence, as we rode the elevator down to the basement. He bowed his shoulders, like Atlas. A few years older than me, the sprinkle of gray in Doug’s hair was usually the only obvious sign of aging. Today a cloud hovered, making the lines on his face stand out. A dead body in the magical land of Arcadia was an enormous burden—a PR nightmare, for sure.
We could have stopped at ground level. In a lovely complex of modern buildings located outside the theme park, our office building is surrounded by gardens and topiaries cultivated into the shape of our corporate cartoon characters. Other animals not yet turned into media darlings, danced and pranced among the famous Marley World figures along palm-lined streets and around fantasy fountains that adorn the World Headquarters campus. At night, the whole setting sparkles with twinkle lights, and the fountains cast off a colorful display.
From ground level, we could have walked to a tram station, then hopped on the Raptor Rail and ridden to the park. The sleek monorail, embellished with the likeness of the Golden Eagle, was swift and could have taken us to the main gate in minutes. At this hour, that could be a mob scene. Instead, we opted to go underground. A golf cart would allow us to make our way through a network of underground tunnels, on a more direct route to Catmmando Mountain.
Yes, there are tunnels beneath Arcadia Park and the surrounding corporate buildings—just like that other well-known theme park located in Florida. We didn’t use the “D-word” often. Mention of Disney was about as upsetting to Max Marley as the use of profanity. Not that he always avoided the use of four-letter words himself. Given his paternalistic managerial style, it was a “do as I say, not as I do” kind of rule.
That applied as well to references to Disney. If Uncle Max drew a comparison to Disney films, parks or resorts—usually a negative one—it was okay for him, though not for us.
Doug drove as quickly as he dared through the maze of tunnels, without endangering associates headed to or from locker rooms where they changed into their park “outfits,” as we called the ensembles they wore. “Outfits, not uniforms,” Marvelous Marley World’s Associates’ Handbook read, “because here at Marvelous Marley World, we’re all outfitted with all we need to provide the best service and assistance to our cherished guests.”
My unusually taciturn boss slowed down and honked when he came to a blind corner. As he made a right turn, he was forced to come to a complete stop. A shepherdess, with her pantaloons exposed, had hiked up the hoop on her skirt. She finished whatever adjustment she was making and scrambled to retrieve the lovely shepherd’s crook that had fallen to the ground before we could run it over. That was fortunate because that shepherd’s crook is a technological wonder, with the capacity to deliver special effects.
“Oh my, I’m so sorry,” she said, in a sweet voice indicating that she was already "in character." The Heidi-like shepherdesses were a favorite among the park guests. This one was near perfect. Not only in voice but in her make-up and a wig of ringlets she straightened just a tad as she smoothed her skirt.
The tunnels and other areas “backstage” are used to do just what Giselle, as her nametag noted, was doing—making sure her appearance was perfect, so nothing detracted from the role she played once she was in the park. When she rode up the elevator, she would emerge from a hidden doorway ready to mingle with adoring fans. Giselle, not her real name, of course, would smile and swish and twirl through the crowd until she took her mark at a predetermined spot. There she would sing one of several Marvelous Marley chart-topping hits from the shepherdess series of movies featuring not just Giselle, but Arielle and Laurielle, too. The shepherdesses were among the human characters who worked alongside all the animate and inanimate animals embodying interspecies friendship, stewardship, rescue, and protection themes evident everywhere you went in Arcadia Park.
There’s nothing natural about Max Marley’s coloring book version of nature. Unblemished by weeds or dirt, the surroundings have a “Land of Oz” ambiance. Arcadia is colorful, with Hobbit-like habitats in lush gardens, treehouses filled with audio-animatronic birds, idyllic small-town storefronts, fantasy cottages, hedgerows, and lollypop trees. The lines blur between the real and the fanciful. Because of the underground tunnels, guests never see any delivery trucks in the park. No garbage trucks or dumpsters, either. Associates whisk garbage away via an automated vacuum collection system, part of the underground city of utility corridors. A horde of groundskeepers and maintenance workers tend to paradise before and after the park closes, sometimes working under bright lights to do that at night.
The Wild Kingdom eat-or-be-eaten theme that pops up on nature shows does not appear anywhere in Arcadia Park, although burgers are on menus throughout the park. As critics have pointed out—Arcadia connotes domestication—nature subjugated and controlled, rather than wilderness preserved. That’s another issue guaranteed to set off Uncle Max. I take Arcadia for what it is—a fun, almost corny, tribute to pets and other animals, not nature writ large. “Mad Max,” as we sometimes called him, has bigger dreams—delusions of grandeur manifested by his efforts to preserve a pastoral vision that has never existed anywhere in the real world. Needless to say, nowhere in that vision is there a place for death.
“Thanks,” I hollered to Giselle, as we took off again. Doug had said nothing since we left my office.
He had a grim look on his face. “Doug, are you okay?”
“Yes, yes. I just hate it when the rumor mill gets out ahead of us after an event like this one. Park Associates found the body and should have gone into ‘circle the wagons’ mode immediately. That means mum’s the word until we have the facts.”
“That hasn’t happened?”
“No,” he said, as he displayed his phone. “I’m already getting emails with rumors that are going around—asking me if they’re true.”
“Like what?”
“Like this was no accident. The woman found at the base of Catmmando Mountain was murdered.”
“Geez Louise,” I said. “How could they know that if they weren’t at the scene?”
“My point exactly—unless there’s a leak.”
My mind began to race, and I felt a pit open up in my stomach. The only thing I could imagine that was worse than death in the park was a murder. No wonder Doug was white-knuckled as he drove the golf cart.
“I suppose someone could have overheard the team members talking among themselves. News like that would travel like wildfire,” I muttered.
“Yes, Murder at Catmmando Mountain is a perfect sound bite, isn’t it? On Valentine’s Day, no less! Not good. Let’s hope it doesn’t turn out to be some crime of the heart—a lover’s quarrel taken to the extreme.”
“Yikes! The media would have a field day with it, given all the promotion we’ve done for our ‘Love is Purrfect in Arcadia Park’ holiday theme.” I tried to think of something reassuring to say. Murder resulting from a lover’s quarrel was bad, that's true. Would it be any better if this turned out to be a mugging or a random murder committed by a psycho killer on the loose in Arcadia Park?
“Doug, I don’t think we should get ahead of the facts. Whatever’s going on, we’ll deal with it. Once we’ve determined guests in Arcadia park are safe, we’ll handle the PR fallout. You know how short the news cycle is, no matter what’s happened. We’ll come up with counter-measures. There are always so many good things going on at Arcadia Park that we'll be able to shift the focus to those.”
Rolling out the hearts and flowers stories from Arcadia Park was our forte in the PR Department. Not just on Valentine’s Day. Stories of people and their pets are a mainstay of Arcadia Park’s positive message. A portion of the proceeds from admissions goes to no-kill shelters. Twice a year the park sponsors free pet care days where mobile vet hospitals offer essential services for free—like spaying or neutering, immunizations, and tagging pets. Arcadia Park hosts an annual pet show, too.
Several romance-focused messages were in the works today. Those stories were part of an ongoing campaign to portray the park as a lovely setting for guests with more in mind than fun for kids. A “Bring your Valentine” Couples Rate was in effect for the day—two admissions for the price of one. Roving reporters would snap photos of lovers strolling hand-in-hand, buying roses for each other, or having their picture taken in front of a giant heart-shaped garland of flowers at Swan Lake. More than once, that spot had been chosen for a proposal of marriage—borrowing a moment from one of the more romantic movies, The Swan Prince’s Bride, in Marvelous Max Studios film archives. The swan boats glide through a modern-day tunnel of love, where the story of the sad Swan Prince who finds his soulmate plays out in a series of stunning tableaus that inspire proposals. After a death in the park, especially if it turned out to be murder, all those soft, sentimental stories would seem insensitive.
“Maybe I should put a hold on the distribution of Valentine’s Day Love Notes from the Park—just until we know more,” I suggested.
“Yeah, that’s a good idea. Send a message to Kelly, if you don’t mind.”
“Will do.” I texted Kelly Larson, Doug’s executive assistant, and asked her to have all Valentine Notes held until after lunch. Next, I sent a text to my administrative assistant, Carol Ripley. “I’ve got Carol pulling together a crisis team meeting for us this afternoon, Doug.” I searched Twitter and saw tweets, dang it, featuring hashtag #Arcadiatroubles. Fortunately, there was no word yet about a dead body, and not so many tweets that the news about Arcadia Park was trending.
“Glad you’re thinking! Clearly, I’m not at the top of my game.”
“I’m sorry you’re taking this so hard, Doug. None of this is your fault—even if there has been a leak or the guys haven’t done a stellar job at containment. The timing stinks, given it’s a holiday.”
“There is another rumor, Georgie.” My name is Georgina—a last minute choice because my parents had gone to the delivery room believing they were having another boy. Everyone calls me Georgie and that’s fine with me. When I was growing up, the name got me unwanted attention at times, but I liked the balance it brought to my sense of self. Georgina was rather regal and very girlish while Georgie seemed more down-home and made me feel more like one of the guys. I had lots of male friends, in addition to three older brothers. That has come in handy more times than I can count. Being able to hang around men without always feeling the need to defer or flirt has proved critical as I climb the ranks in management.
“So, Doug, are you going to tell me the other rumor?”
Doug pulled into a parking spot beside another golf cart, shut it off and looked straight at me. “The woman is someone we know.” Without another word, we hopped from the vehicle and headed to a nearby elevator. In less than a minute, the elevator delivered us to Catmmando Square, with Catmmando Mountain and Fortress Friendship looming. The doors shut behind us. The doors painted to blend into the building’s façade were no longer visible to passersby once they closed.
“No more rumors, Doug. Let’s find out for ourselves.”
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