Cat in a Zebra Zoot Suit

by Carole Nelson Douglas

  “That’s a fluke. That person is now out of the country and in the hands of the law.” Well, Matt thought, Max Kinsella was certainly a law unto himself.

  Roger nodded. “Then I don’t need to know anything else, except getting to know you better. And finding out what kind of folderol the women will be putting us through.”

  He dragged the trash bag through a door to the garage and then led Matt up the stairs, where Temple and Karen were back on the couch, curled up with their shoes off.

  Karen rose. “We’ll all need our rest for tomorrow with the entire crew, guys, and then you take off, too soon. Our master is thataway, but you’re going thisaway.” She pointed to a hall leading left off the living room. “Tom put your luggage in the foyer.”

  Temple and Matt nodded without comment.

  “We did somehow manage to have four boys and one girl,” Karen said, “so there are now three empty bedrooms and two baths in that part of the house. Take your pick of the accommodations.”

  Whew, Matt thought, diplomat Karen saved us all from the awkward moment of anyone declaring to sleep together or apart.

  “Maybe,” said Temple with a wicked eyebrow lift, “we’ll just do progressive bedrooms.”

  Of course, Matt knew, negotiating the sleeping arrangements at the old homestead with Karen’s daughter would be a lot trickier.

  19

  In Dublin’s Fair City

  It may have been a long way to Tipperary in the old Irish song, but Belfast was only a two-hour drive from “Dublin’s fair city, where girls are so pretty”. In terms of “the Troubles” time, it was a centuries-long journey of political and personal pain and suffering.

  Max hankered for the drive through tranquil green countryside to lull him, to make up for the sleep he’d lost while traveling with Kathleen. He must have learned his current self-hypnotic drone state during his counterterrorism work. With it, he could function automatically, yet snap out of it at the first sign of a threat.

  Kathleen’s toe nervously tapped the floorboard as their rented Honda maneuvered the city’s eternal gridlock and narrow streets. He knew where he was going and hoped to find a precious parking space. Then a jolt of adrenaline zinged his senses like an inhalation of Chinese mustard as he spotted a blot of familiar bright red ahead, near the river Liffey.

  At the same instant, Kathleen finally broke the silence. “So is a visitation to my daughter the first step in your Pilgrim’s Progress program?”

  “It would seem logical.”

  Kathleen burst into laughter. “You sounded like the late, great Mr. Spock just then. If you’re expecting me to provide you with a weepy reunion, you can forget it. I excised her and my abuser’s DNA from my life when she was an infant. This is pointless. You should book yourself a flight back to the U.S.”

  “And leave you ‘a lone wolf’ ticking time bomb out there somewhere?”

  “How are you going to ensure that I’ll not be that no matter what you do? Ah, such an unexpected sentimentalist you turned out to be. What convinces you that seeing my grown daughter will make me a changed woman?”

  “Nothing,” Max said, fully engaged now that they were quarreling and because he’d been driving through the Dublin streets with Garry Randolph’s ghost fighting for possession of the left passenger seat. He faced Kathleen square on for an instant. “I’m curious to see how she turned out.”

  “You seem to share that abnormal curiosity about other people with the Cinderella-footed Temple Barr, she of the whole wardrobe of tiny glass slippers. God, she wears a size five! Even I need a six. Was that what drew you to her?”

  “How do you know her shoe size?”

  “The Circle Ritz is easy to break into. Poor little Cinderella. I made a contribution to your rival’s mother’s wedding at that attached chapel weeks ago. You know the drill. Brides require something old, something new, something borrowed, something blue. ‘Something stolen’ was an amusing addition to the list. I “borrowed” the mate to one of tiny Miss Temple’s intended wedding shoes.”

  “I heard about the wedding, but really, Kathleen. Petite shoe-size envy? Women compete over the most trivial things.”

  “Like you?” She slid him a knowing glance. “No. I just let her know I’d been the culprit and gave that shoe back. I wasn’t as stupid as the wicked stepsisters, to maim myself over her shoes, or her. You haven’t answered what the attraction was.”

  “These things aren’t programmable, Kathleen. That’s why they’re natural wonders, unless we ruin it by too much analysis. Maybe, mostly her…energy and honesty.”

  “I’m energetic.”

  He laughed. “Yes, you are. Tireless, I’d say.”

  “I was born amid lies.”

  “Yes, you were.”

  “Do you think I can become honest, an ‘honest woman’?”

  “Only if you become honest with yourself.”

  “Bollocks!”

  “Then don’t ask me. I will note you’re wearing aqua today. That hardly matches the ‘honest’ color of your eyes, blue.”

  “Your color as well. A magician is the most dishonest creature on the planet.”

  “More of a juggler of the truth.”

  “You used colored contact lenses in your performances and posters. ‘The Mystifying Max’, green-eyed huckster selling illusion for more than a hundred dollars a ticket. Where were your blue eyes then?”

  “I was on the run too.” He pursed his lips. “If I gave you a hundred thousand dollars as a delayed donation to the IRA, would it be used for victim reparations?”

  “This victim would keep it as reparation. Besides, you never paid for our rendezvous in Sir Thomas and Lady Dixon Park.”

  His look was chiding. “You never asked. But I think I’ve paid plenty.”

  Driving on the left was an easy switch for Max. His brain had retained automatic reflexes, he noticed, better than memory of emotions.

  “We’re parking here?” Kathleen sounded a bit panicky. “What’s here?”

  He went around to the left side to let her out. “Tourist overload. We walk from here.” He took her arm, firmly, and guided her over the rough cobblestones until she jerked her arm away.

  And spied a bright red façade labeled in bold gold letters, crammed with patrons.

  “‘Temple Bar,’” she sneered. “You are so predictable. You fly in the face of irony. That’s where your local spy got the photos of Iris. It’s a tourist trap.”

  “She’s currently visiting Dublin.”

  “And drinks there like a tourist?”

  “It’s a world-famous pub. Your daughter takes advantage of the local watering holes.”

  “She’s a drunk.”

  He shook his head, laughing. “Come and see.”

  He took her arm in custody again, but she resisted. “She’s a barmaid.”

  He shook his head again. “Come see and then speculate.”

  They had to fight a constant flow of people coming and going. Soon Max, with his unusual height and a bit of maneuvering, had them standing by a just vacated table, being swabbed down for new customers.

  “Two Belfast Blonde pints,” Max ordered before the girl could whisk away. She nodded.

  “You didn’t consult me,” Kathleen complained.

  “All craft beers here are superb, and Belfast is where we’re headed.”

  “It’s back to the beginning, I see. Meanwhile, this place is so crowded, so noisy on the inside, so luridly red on the outside,” Kathleen groused.

  She looked prim and proper among the overwhelmingly young and casual crowd. And annoyed.

  “Your resemblance to your occasionally visiting daughter is less likely to be remarked on in a crowd,” Max pointed out. “Unless you want a public outing.”

  “Lord, no.”

  Their pint glasses landed like UFOs in their midst, and Max handed over a generous ransom to make for a quick exit, if necessary.

  “Thank you, sir.” The serving girl flashed a smile with
a brightness that made up for its brevity.

  “I hate ale.” Kathleen stared at the honey-dark brew with knitted eyebrows.

  “You’re here to look, not drink. So look.” He nodded to the stand-up bar.

  The girl’s blue-black hair among mostly ruddy and brown heads was hard to miss.

  Iris provided plenty of side and three-quarter glimpses of her face. She was standing sandwiched between two men also in their mid-twenties. Obviously just good mates, to Max’s trained eye. This was a post-work meet. Likely more men and women would join the party. Crumpled bills lay on the bartop, ready for a second round.

  Meanwhile, Iris tossed her head and hair and cracked jokes and smiled, delivering what the Irish call “good craick”—bar talk that creates fellowship and jolly exchanges…and alcoholics. In a green land under a gray sky and veils of rain and mist, indoor warmth of any kind was a necessary boon.

  “I hate ale,” Kathleen repeated, “and the little bitch may look like me, but I see traces of the bastard who fathered her.”

  Max wasn’t surprised. Remnants of paternal genes were bound to show in Iris’s face and body, even in a gesture or a certain angle of the head. Yet, to him or someone’s casual glance, she was a remarkable “twin” to Kathleen. Anyone who saw them together would think them sisters, rather than mother and daughter.

  He was surprised to realize that Kathleen’s right hand was curled into his forearm like a claw.

  “Who are those men with her?” she asked. “They are going nowhere. She’s not even flirting with them. She has nothing to gain there.”

  “I hope not,” Max said. “My sources say she’s seriously seeing a law student at Trinity College. She works as a copy editor for a small publishing house that specializes in poetry.”

  “Poetry!”

  “It’s a famous Irish export,” he said mildly. “Like politics.”

  “Not married at twenty-six,” she muttered.

  “Smart, no doubt,” he said.

  “I presume you researched her foster parents, spy that you are.”

  He nodded. “They are still ‘free-thinkers’ and still firmly atheist. Iris went through a rebellious stage when she investigated the Catholic Church because of a boyfriend—”

  “What—?”

  “The parents were upset, but Iris became more interested in hot yoga instead. Sensible child. Useful exercise, if hard to find in a chill climate like Ireland.”

  “She’ll marry this Trinity man?”

  “Looks like it. I can’t say if she’s contemplating having children.”

  “At least your intelligence gathering has limits.”

  “But…she’s filed an inquiry with her adopted parents for permission to find her Magdalene birth mother.”

  The nails of Kathleen’s hand cut through his tweed jacket like Freddy Kreuger’s razor gloves in a horror movie. “I’ll kill you if that succeeds.”

  “Fair warning,” he said, eyeing her untouched glass. “Drink up anyway. You wanted to leave. We’ve got a long way to go and a short time to get there.”

  Oddly, she did just as he said.

  The car CD player happened to hit a classic Irish folk song from ugly olden 18th-century times, that Max had played on both recent trips to Ireland, a favorite of his, and hadn’t songs like this heard young inflamed his and Sean’s desire to visit Northern Ireland?

  He and Sean could have been the “lone wolf” fanatics of an earlier day instead of just the romantic deceptive phenomenon’s victims.

  The minstrel boy to the war is gone

  In the ranks of death you’ll find him.

  His father’s sword he has girded on,

  And his wild harp slung behind him;

  “Land of Song!” said the warrior bard,

  “Though all the world betrays thee,

  One sword, at least, thy rights shall guard,

  One faithful harp shall praise thee!”

  The Minstrel fell! But the foeman’s chain

  Could not bring his proud soul under;

  The harp he loved ne’er spoke again,

  For he tore its chords asunder;

  And said “No chains shall sully thee,

  Thou soul of love and bravery!

  Thy songs were made for the pure and free

  They shall never sound in slavery!”

  20

  Driven to Murder

  Matt watched the luggage spit out from the carousal and snake past on the McCarran Airport conveyer belt.

  “That trip to Minnesota was easier than I thought,” he said, “but I’ll never come back for ‘ice fishing’ season.”

  Temple smiled. The yellow-and-magenta yarn she’d tied to their checked luggage handles certainly stood out among the lime green and orange pompons decorating the other bags.

  “An invitation to ice fishing is the highest compliment from my brothers,” she explained. “It’s the ultimate macho male tribute. That means you rank up there with the Greats, like Wayne Gretsky.”

  “Wayne who?”

  “Hockey star.”

  “I’m ready to swear off all things Minnesota until the next family visit up north. Tell me that will be a while.”

  “You sure were great with my nephews on Sunday, all sixteen of them.”

  “I was assigned to a parish with an attached grade school, remember? Mass quantities of ’tweens and teens don’t scare me.”

  “So that’s why you get along so well with Molina’s daughter, Mariah.”

  “Too well. I feel really awkward about taking her to the Dad-Daughter Dance she’s counting on. I understand a single mother’s dilemma with those type of events, but isn’t that Detective Alch closer to the family?”

  “He’s Molina’s go-to guy at work,” Temple said, “but he isn’t as cute as you are.”

  “Dads aren’t supposed to be ‘cute’. They’re supposed to be comfy and lived-in, like a recliner chair.” He didn’t want to mention he was no rooting for Rafi Nadir.

  “Like my dad?”

  Matt leaned forward to snag the biggest bag as it glided past. “Right.”

  “Oh, look, here’s mine.” Temple grabbed the end handle of the smaller bag and slung it off the conveyer belt before Matt could play Galahad and do it for her.

  “I could have gotten that,” he said.

  “I may be small, but I don’t want to lose my tote bag-toting muscles.”

  Matt shook his head. “You must carry twelve pounds in those things. Not good for your back.”

  “But they are my trademark.”

  “Along with the high heels.” Matt smiled down at her current pair, a relatively tame zebra-print pump. “I must admit they showcase your sexy ankles.”

  “Sexy. We better get home.”

  They pulled up their rolling handles and turned in tandem to head for ground transportation.

  Three Fontana brothers materialized as a pastel-suited wall in front of them. They were disturbingly developing Mystifying Max habits now that the original was off the Vegas scene and possibly out of Matt and Temple’s private lives forever.

  “We’ll take those.” Bracketing brothers snapped down the roller handles on Temple’s and Matt’s luggage and hefted the bags. Fontana brothers would never be seen dragging luggage behind them like dog-walkers.

  Bag-grabbing passengers paused to crane their necks to catch a glimpse of Temple, the one small woman at the center of a crowd of six-feet-tall hot guys. Cell phones lifted into action. She felt like a movie star…until she heard Matt’s name being whispered.

  He shrugged at the attention. “So much for sneaking back into town.”

  “The Ghost Limo awaits,” said the central brother. “It is a sedan repro of the custom convertible car created for the movie Topper, based on a 1936 Buick Series 80 Roadmaster, with Buck Rogers-style body and fins. It could be operated with no visible driver, because the young high-flying couple who died in it come back as ghosts.”

  Temple, the vintage film fan, wa
s knocked out. “No! Cary Grant was at the wheel of that amazing car.”

  “Alas, he is no longer with us. Julio will drive.”

  Temple felt like a pampered movie star anyway.

  Gangsters limo service was only one of the Fontana brothers’ businesses, and they created the most dreamy custom limo jobs around. If you visited Vegas and weren’t “taken for a ride” in a Gangsters’ limo, you hadn’t lived. If you stayed at the Fontana family hotels, the Crystal Phoenix or Gangsters, the airport rides were free. Otherwise Gangsters’ rides were costly, but always made a safe round trip, unlike the fabled bumpy rides with real mobsters.

  “Thank you…Ernesto,” Temple ventured.

  Tall, dark, handsome men may be a cliché, but in Las Vegas and with the Fontana Family, they were also a conundrum in triplicate. Temple was getting better at telling apart the remaining eight bachelors of the Fontana pack now that the eldest, Aldo, had married her aunt Kit. That made him her uncle-in-law, Temple guessed. Oh, my God! That made her feel old, to regard Vegas’s most eligible bachelors as all…in-laws, rather than out-laws.

  Travelers were turning to watch what seemed like a celebrity parade of some kind. Heads turned even more when the party reached the ground transportation curb and a long cream-colored car that had all the futuristic curves of a Dairy Queen top-fillip throbbed there in idle.

  “This is swell, boys,” Temple said, “but Electra said she’d pick us up in her old Probe. It’s roomier and more suitable for luggage-loading dings than my Miata or Matt’s Jaguar.”

  Ernesto fiddled with his rose-gold tie clip. “Miss Electra has encountered an unfortunate impediment to coming here to pick you up.”

  Meanwhile their three pieces of luggage were disappearing into a trunk so huge it made them look like Barbie doll accessories.