Okay, sorry about the cliff hanger. I'll try to type fast so that I don't get kicked off and lose everything.

This is the part about the strip club:

We came up to a place called The Mill Stream which had a parking lot overflowing with cars at 4:00 in the afternoon. "Oh, wow, this place must have really good food to be this busy this early!" Cat Lady said....

"This is a strip club" I said matter-of-factly.

"Are you sure?" Cat Lady asked.

"Well, not 100%. But it says 'Gentelman's Club' on the door and that's what that usually means."

"Oh. Have you ever been in one of those places?"

"No. And I'm not going in one now." I said firmly.

"Well, okay, I respect that. Oh, look, there's a guy in the yard of that house...maybe we can talk to him! Sir! Sir! Can you help us? We're looking for a lost cat!"

"Does it dance?" he called back, jovially.

Oh God in heaven, get me off of this parking lot I prayed. Cat Lady seemed to think that I objected to going into the strip club because I didn't want to see naked women. It wasn't that. It was that I didn't want to see the kind of men who go into a place to look at naked women. And now he we were chatting one up on the parking lot!!

Turned out that the guy owned the house next to the place, where he said there was almost never any trouble and, as a matter of fact, the food WAS good. "But I don't go in there, because I really don't like to look at naked women. I mean I like to look at naked women, but those women are covered. I mean - what I mean is that I DO like to look at naked women, but just under different circumstances"

Call me "Corn Faced" all you want, but at this point it was Cat Lady who was being naive. She was in total "Lost Cat" mode, but she wasn't wearing her rings ( and why should she since her husband has taken off to somewhere for 4 months?). She's a very pretty woman in that "pale flower" sort of way and not that much younger than the man she was talking to. Clearly, he was focused on the idea that he had lucked into contact with a single, pretty, friendly local lady who was close to him in age. Meanwhile guys coming and going out of the place were looking curiously at two women in an SUV where a fellow in jeans and a denim jacket was leaning in the drivers window.

The fastest way out of this situation was to just go in and hand somebody the flyer. So I grabbed one and went. "Tell us what you see!" Cat Lady called after me.

I opened the door. It was pitch black. It was a wonder anybody could see anything in there! I sighed, walked past a pole, and made out the dim outline of a bar. The bar maid gave me an angry look. She clearly thought I was there in my buttoned up sweater, eyeglasses and hair-in-a-bun to start trouble. I smiled at her and held up the cat poster.

Her face softened about 30 seconds into my pitch. And, what do you know? She thought she might have seen the cat!! So the conversation went on and on, and she agreed to pass the flyer around although her boss wouldn't let her post one.

"...a cat and all....it would just, you know, get defaced."

"Sure. I'm hearing you. I really appreciate all your help. Thank you very much." and I turned to feel my way out to the door.

I don't know what was going on on the stage - probably nothing much - but I do know this. Every single man in that place turned to watch me leave. About 1/3 of them had a sort of "convicted" look, but the rest of them had a sort of glazed, avid expression that chilled me to the soles of my feet. Me, in my buttoned up, rolled up, almost 40 years old look.

"What did you see in there?" Cat Lady called out. To her credit, she was waiting right by the door.

"A pole." I answered truthfully.

"What took you so long? Did they offer you a job?" she teased.

"No. I don't know if I ought to be insulted or relieved." I joked.

"Oh, no, amatuar night is on Wednesday!" Neighborhood Guy put in.

"Cat Lady, we gotta go. We gotta put up a lot of flyers" I said firmly.

So we did. We drove for awhile putting up flyers at intersections til I came back to the SUV to find she had tears in her eyes.

"What's wrong?"

"Over there. That's where they found my brother's body." she said softly. "I'm so tired. Can you have supper with me? Let's get a bite to eat and then go home."

We did that. Cat Lady had a couple of beers with her supper, which was no big deal, but I guess she is taking a lot of medicine so, when I suggested that I drive, she handed the keys over readily. I got ready to help her unload the groceries we had picked up earlier in the day only to get to the back of the car to find her pointing, shocked silent, at a gelatenous red substance that was all over the back of the vehicle. It was dark in the driveway. My heart turned over.

Don't Panic I thought, drawing close to it. There was some other subtance in with the red...( fabric/hair/tissue?! my overactive imagination screamed)...tomatoes....and peppers.

"Cat Lady. Cat Lady! Calm down. It's salsa. See? Salsa!" I dabbed some on my finger and held it up for her to smell. "See? It's just tomato and...it's salsa."

"Oh, God! How in the hell did it GET there?!" she asked shakily.

"I guess somebody had a carry out at the restaurant we were in and they just spilled it. "

"Oh God! Just havingbeen past that place where my brother was and then...in the dark. The lights haven't been working on the front of the house for 2 days!"

"Did you check the fuse box?" I asked.

"Fuse box?"

Oh dear. We went into the house, I put the groceries away, made tea, located the fuse box and the blown fuse ( "Hey! you fixed it!") and gave a basic lesson on what the fuse panel is.

Another satisfied customer. All in a days work. Jeepers!