Cat on a Blue Monday

by Douglas, Carole Nelson

  Actually, the occasion that brought them all together here, wondering, was not exactly the reading of the will, although the terms of that will would come to public light here. The meeting's real purpose, and the only reason she was included, along with Matt Devine, was the disposition of the late Miss Tyler's cats rather than her money.

  How convenient, Temple thought, that Father Hernandez's office came with just the right number of chairs for such a group. Sister Seraphina sat on the edge of her cushy seat, uncomfortable on the visitor's chair, her sensibly shod foot tapping oh-so-subtly. A woman of action, she barely kept herself from fidgeting at the ahems and haws that proceeded from the church attorney at regular intervals. For a relatively young man, he was uncommonly fussy.

  Peggy Wilhelm let her half-glasses lie docilely on her ample chest, suspended by their leash of silver beads. She had no expectations of anything in the will, and was not even ready to cast a cursory eye over its terms.

  Peter Burns sat forward, the mahogany-colored calfskin briefcase on his knees serving as a table for his voluminous papers. Oddly, he seemed nervous and expectant, glancing from the priest to the nun, then to Matt and Temple, whom he regarded with obvious disfavor and a look behind his round glasses that said: What are you two doing here? He never even glanced once at Peggy Wilhelm, which spoke to how utterly she had been left out of the will, and out of everyone's consideration, except as convenient cat-tender.

  Temple felt a flash of anger at the way Peggy had been overlooked. She was the Cinderella figure in the tale: overworked and over willing, asking for nothing but her fireside ashes and an unshaven cat.

  Father Hernandez remained the cipher. Handsomely harried, his features seemed to sink deeper into his skull on every occasion, along with the maroon circles cast by his dark eyes, until the man himself was likely to disappear behind his own hidden worry. Max revisited.

  Worry. Matt worried her. Temple glanced at him, his calm as evident as Father Hernandez's incipient hysteria. Ice or instability. Temple couldn't decide which facade was the least healthy.

  But she had nothing to worry about. She was mere witness to other people's follies on this occasion, included only because she had shamelessly begged Matt to let her know if anything of the sort should transpire. Besides, somebody had to add a touch of flagrant footwear to this occasion: Matt wore rubber-soled Hush Puppies, as effacing as his everyday manner; Sister Seraphina, her habitual Red Cross battleship-gray model; Peggy, a battered pair of Famolare sandals; and the attorney, brown wing-tip oxfords--in a Las Vegas September!

  Temple discreetly turned an ankle to refresh herself with a glimpse of an artfully curved vamp. Shoes were such a comfort, except when they were walked in! Perhaps the spiritual should never be expected to turn physical.

  As Burns cleared his throat for the thirteenth time, Temple swept her feet together and demurely touched toes to the floor beneath her chair.

  "I presume," Burns said, "that you all know that Miss Tyler did indeed keep and remember Our Lady of Guadalupe in her latest will."

  Sober nods all around.

  "When was this will dated?" Sister Seraphina asked out of the blue, a vertical line etched between her eyes just above the pale, amber-plastic glasses frame.

  He consulted the document itself to make sure, although he obviously knew the date by heart. "August twelfth."

  "And she wanted to omit the cats?" "Apparently they had palled."

  Peggy Wilhelm frowned in her turn. Mr. Burns was obviously no cat person. Cats were like Cleopatra; age could not stale nor custom wither their infinite variety.

  "I knew about her nineteen-ninety-two will," she put in. "The cats were definitely left a bequest."

  "For how much?" Father Hernandez asked.

  "Twenty-five thousand."

  "Perhaps I should allow that sum toward their . . . keep or disposition," he said. "She surely wouldn't have wanted them put to sleep."

  "No," Peggy agreed with a shudder.

  "Before you commit funds to the cats, Father," Burns offered in an apologetic tone, "I should warn you that Miss Tyler's assets were not as ample as everyone, including Miss Tyler, imagined. She kept her funds in CDs; you know what the interest rates on those have been like in the past few years."

  Father Hernandez sighed as heavily as anyone in the room at this comment, reminding Temple of Matt's comment that parish priests were often harried administrators more than they were ministers.

  Peggy Wilhelm frowned again. "She was getting forgetful, but Aunt Blandina hinted that she had plenty of money to take care of the cats and the parish, too--at least before she got annoyed with the parish."

  "Old people lose touch," Burns said flatly. "Lawyers see this all the time. I still may uncover some unexpected resources; she had notes and unexplained keys tucked into drawers all over the house, as many as cats." He granted Father Hernandez a cautioning glance. "But I wouldn't count my chickens, financially speaking, before I counted my cats.

  And I wouldn't count on having much bounty to share with those cats."

  "What about the harassment?" Matt asked. "Did that cease with Miss Tyler's murder?"

  A thrill ran visibly through the people in the room at this reminder of unexplained events.

  "Lieutenant Molina suspects murder," the lawyer said precisely, "but the harassment may have been mostly in Miss Tyler's elderly imagination."

  "Not Peter," Seraphina said stoutly. "Not Sister Mary Monica's phone pal."

  "Does he still call?" Temple asked.

  Sister Seraphina shook her head abruptly. "No. And that worries me more than if he did."

  But no one bothered to ask why. Seraphina was another old woman, an unreliable or even insignificant reporter of phenomena. Temple found her fingernails digging into the tapestry-upholstered arms of her fat chair. Why would the caller stop now? Seraphina was on to something. A glance at Matt's still--too still--face told her that he thought so, too.

  Scary, she was beginning to read his lack of expression better than any expressiveness.

  She was also beginning to guess where he had learned such patient stoicism--in the seminary, where young men were expected to listen and learn and not to challenge authority.

  'It's so odd," Peggy said. "Her finally ignoring the cats after all this time, I feel cheated for taking care of them so much if she didn't care--"

  "But you, did," Seraphina put in quickly, with a smile.

  "You cared."

  Peggy Wilhelm's face remained leaden, lost. She nodded without conviction. "Aunt Blandina used to mean what she said. It was the one thing I respected about her."

  The young lawyer's pale, manicured hands hit the arms of his chair with a thump of emphasis. "It's too soon to do anything. The police have made no determination. I have possibly not tracked down all the estate assets. Be of good cheer," he urged with a hopeful smile that showed the dull silver flash of metal wire on his front teeth. "Perhaps Providence will find some answer for the cats. Certainly the story in the Review-Journal may help."

  "Story?" Peggy wailed in concert with Temple.

  Burns looked blank and a little hurt. "A reporter heard about the police report on all the cats, and a rumor that they might be legatees. I didn't see any harm in explaining their possible plight--"

  "Oh!" Sister Seraphina seldom sounded disgusted, but she did now. "Mr. Burns. Don't you see? You've brought all the forces of animal control and flaky animal advocacy down on us before we're ready to deal with it."

  Father Hernandez swiveled his bulky leather chair away from them all, putting his--and its--back to the desk.

  The conference was officially over, with little resolved.

  Nobody knew for sure that Miss Tyler had been murdered, except maybe Molina, and she wasn't talking.

  Nobody knew how much money was coming to the church, not even the operative attorney.

  Nobody knew what to do with all the cats, except the deluge of cat-lovers and cat-haters who would be sure to make t
heir opinions known far and wide once the story hit the street.

  Temple looked at Matt, to find Matt looking at her.

  They needed to nail down something, and the obvious place to start--curses!--was with Molina and the issue of murder.

  "I'd rather you called her," Matt said when she drove them back to the Circle Ritz.

  "Why? She hates me."

  "She doesn't hate you. Police lieutenants aren't allowed to hate. Bad public image. I don't want her to waste her time digging into me."

  "Why? Are you a good suspect?"

  "I'm a diversion, when the real case needs to be solved."

  "Funny, I always thought you were a diversion, too."

  He shrugged off her smart comment and opened the car door to a slow seep of Las Vegas heat. "I've got to work tonight. I'll see if any calls have come in from other old ladies. Miss Tyler's death may have forced her harasser to move on."

  "Or to stop," Temple said.

  "You think it was part o{ the whole . . . scenario?"

  "Scenario. Very good, Mr. Devine. Yes, I do. And so was Sister Mary Monica. And Peter."

  "But what was the scenario? Or more important, the point?"

  "I don't know." Temple glanced up at the Circle Ritz's round, black-marble-encased exterior, her eye pausing on the third floor. "I hope my new kitty hasn't been too lonesome this morning. On the other hand, I hope Louie hasn't come in, discovered her and raised holy hell."

  "Louie with a rival?" Matt cocked a blond eyebrow. "I don't think it will fly."

  "Caviar's not a rival; she's a little sister."

  "I don't think Louie is into little sisters, either."

  "He must not be a Catholic cat," Temple said demurely.

  Matt bit back a reply and vanished into the building at a trot, ahead of her.

  Temple took her time getting her tote bag out of the Storm and walking into the air-conditioned lobby. Her thoughts were as sharp and as aimless as the blows of her heels on the sidewalk, and later, on lobby marble.

  She took the elevator upstairs--Matt had probably used the stairs, but her high heels demanded more civilized methods of transport.

  She turned the key in her door lock, eager to greet her new baby--and scared semi gloss white that Louie would be there and in no mood to discuss new roommates of the feline kind.

  What had she done? Louie was a loner, an individualist, a me-only cat. How could she have thought he would welcome this dainty little pussycat simply because it desperately needed a home and was his favorite color, jet-black? What had Temple done? What would she say to Louie? Oh, Louie, Louie. . . .

  Louie was nowhere about the apartment, Temple discovered after she tiptoed into the cool depths of her empty rooms. Caviar was curled atop the Cosmopolitan magazines in their Plexiglas rack, polishing a paw to shining ebony.

  Temple sighed in relief and ran to check the two bowls of Free-to-be-Feline in the kitchen. One was mounded high, wide and handsome. One sported a dainty dip in the middle.

  Obviously, Louie had not been in, or he had left in disgust.

  Temple went back to kneel by her new acquisition. Caviar tilted her sleek head so Temple's long nails could scratch her chin. She purred, stretched and displayed a long, lithe torso, quite different from Louie's well-upholstered midsection.

  Then the tender interlude was over. Duty called. Or rather, Temple must call to do her duty.

  She looked up the Las Vegas police number, dialed it and waited through the super-smooth and polite, Star Ship Enterprise female computer voice, expecting it to purr "Captain Kirk" at any minute. After rejecting pressing a series of numbers that would connect her to a dozen unneeded departments, Temple stayed on the line and asked meekly for "Lieutenant Molina, please."

  She got her on the first throw.

  'This is Temple Barr. I--"

  "Fine. Are you at home?"

  "Er, yes."

  "Good. I'll be by in twenty minutes. Think you can stay put?"

  "Yes, Lieutenant."

  "I've got something I want you to see."

  "Er, don't you want to know what I called about?"

  "No. Be there."

  Another gracious conversation with the Amy Vanderbilt of the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department. Temple hung up with a sigh. She wasn't any good at interfacing with police personnel. Why did she have to keep doing it?

  She changed her clothes and ditched the pantyhose, but she kept the businesslike pumps on, with footlets, just because. She wasn't about to sit back and let Molina catch her napping at five-foot-zero.

  She dangled her key chain in front of Caviar and was rewarded with several spirited boxing motions. "That's it, girl, you show that Midnight Louie what a tough cookie you are!"

  She paced to the window and looked at the empty pool. No Matt waiting by his namesake mats, no Louie glaring resentfully up at her. She was glad not to confront Louie's reaction to her impulse purchase, but what if he had already come, seen and decamped?

  Her doorbell rang, a lovely ding-dong sound straight out of the fifties and "Father Knows Best."

  She skittered to the door and opened it to face Lieutenant Molina, looking her most official and towering.

  Temple ebbed before the law, into her living room. "Is it about Miss Tyler's . . . death? Has the cause been determined?"

  "No--and no."

  Surprised to hear it put so plainly, and so cavalierly, Temple sat down on her shapeless sofa.

  Molina stood there, glancing at Caviar. "Shrunk your cat?"

  "This is Caviar. She was going to be sent back to the Humane Society."

  "Your Midnight Louie may shrink her head--and then send her back to the Humane Society, from what I've seen of that black devil. You do rush in--"

  "If you're not here about the Tyler case--"

  "Why would I bother you about the Tyler case?"

  "I was ... a witness."

  "Not to the murder. But you may have been a witness to this."

  Molina flashed a card from the depths of one of her ever useful jacket pockets. A flash card, Temple thought, like I'm in school and I have to get some equation right.

  Molina's eyes shone with brilliant blue triumph as she slapped the card faceup on the sofa's broad, canvas arm.

  Also face up was Max Kinsella, in profile and full-front views, looking about--oh, eighteen, his Adam's apple prominent in the profile shot. A lot of type supported the double images, and some bigger type ran across the top, Letters. Initials. I-n-t-e-r-p-o-1.

  M-i-c-k-e-y M-o-u-s-e.

  And Molina was the cat who had caught the canary.

  "Interpol--?" Temple queried.

  "That's why I couldn't find anything on him," Molina announced with the glee of Lieutenant Gerard pouncing on Dr. Richard Kimball. "Look at the name. Look at it."

  "Michael," Temple repeated dully. "Michael. Aloysius. Xavier."

  "Kinsella!" Molina finished. "Michael Aloysius Xavier Kinsella. That's why I couldn't trace him

  "Max," Temple pronounced slowly. "He didn't lie. What's this about the IRA?"

  Molina began to pace. "He was suspected of being a member. Of course it was a while back. According to that card, he was sixteen. Still . . . that's an international terrorist organization. I knew he had a record somewhere!" She paused, as if her euphoria had let her down with a bang.

  "This doesn't explain the dead man at the Goliath, or his supposed career as a magician, but I knew he was more than he appeared to be."

  "I always knew that, Lieutenant," Temple said quietly.

  "Not this!"

  Temple looked at the card again. She had never pictured Max that young, that raw, that unfinished, but even here she saw the magician half-hidden behind the flat, unflattering black and white. Michael. Mike--? No, Max.

  "Look at the description," Molina prodded.

  Temple knew Max's statistics by heart, and the damning card confirmed them, only the height off. Height: six feet (and three inches yet to come). Hair: black; eye
s: blue. . . .

  She gaped up into the icy aquamarine of Molina's waiting eyes, which glittered with true-blue triumph.

  "Max's eyes aren't blue!" Temple said. "They got that wrong." Maybe they got everything else wrong too. . . .

  "Did they? I always wondered why a man with green eyes--a performer used to projecting a well-groomed stage image--kept a beige-and-blue sweater. I assume you're as sentimental as ever and it still hangs in your closet."

  Temple flushed to remember an intent Molina taking Max's sweater to the French doors a few weeks before. "I'm just lazy, not sentimental, Lieutenant; no time to house clean.

  And I never saw Max wear that sweater."

  "Exactly. Why did he have it?"

  "Most men are careless about color-coordinated clothes."

  "He wouldn't be." Molina almost sounded as if she spoke from intimate knowledge. "Don't you get it? Contact lenses.

  We know he was a wanted man at least once in his life. Who knows what he's been up to since he was sixteen?"

  "I do!" Temple stood up, her voice and hand shaking, the Interpol card quivering. "I never saw any contact lens equipment; I never saw Max take them in or out, and I lived with him."

  "Long-wear lenses. And he was a magician, after all. You only saw what he wanted you to."

  That allegation hurt worse than anything Interpol might have had on Max. Temple lowered her eyes to the familiar stranger captured in cold type. "What did they say he did wrong?"

  "Not enough," Molina admitted. "Enough to be suspected, to sit on some search roster for a while and be forgotten. The IRA is dirty, brutal business. I wouldn't get my hopes up, if he started there that young."

  Temple rubbed her nose, which itched and maybe wanted to do something else undignified, like sniffle. "It's politics," she said. "Politics is always dirty if you're the underdog."