Cat on a Blue Monday

by Douglas, Carole Nelson

  Chapter 35

  White Elephant

  "Do you think Molina would arrest us if you drove me home?" Temple asked.

  She stood by the Storm, barefoot--or rather, in tattered hose. Her reclaimed tote bag and shoes drooped from her right hand, her key ring hung over her left wrist. Matt stood beside her, Midnight Louie drooping over his right arm.

  "I think she'd arrest us if I didn't drive you home," Matt said. "You had a lot more of the bishop's tea than I did."

  "So did Molina. She's much nicer when she's high."

  "She was not high, and neither are you, really. You're just exhausted."

  "I'm certainly not as high I used to be," Temple said, swaying into Matt and Louie, her head coming only to his armpit--Matt's, that is.

  He straightened her, put the tote bag and the limp Louie into the Storm's backseat and baby-walked Temple around to the passenger side.

  When she was installed in the seat, Temple stared through the windshield and counted stars. Actually, she couldn't see stars, just dusty water drops, but they glimmered almost like stars as the streetlights swept overhead in a soothing rhythm of light and dark. Sometimes it was nice not to have to drive.

  "Speaking of Lieutenant Molina again," Temple finally said, "do you suppose that mean woman is ever going to tell us what really happened?"

  "I think she's going to ask us what happened when our tea has had time to wear off."

  "It's too bad that you weren't able to find Father Hernandez in time for our little powwow with the police," Temple added uneasily. She didn't want to say what she thought--what everyone undoubtedly thought. Father Hernandez had finally gone around the bend. But why? What had driven him to such sick extremes? And why wasn't Molina flaunting her shocking suspect? Was there more to the story, more that she wanted to tease out of some of them?

  "Yes, it is too bad that I couldn't find him." Matt frowned as he thought about the priest. "Father Rafe is facing a lot of pressure." Matt shrugged off an invisible blanket of worry.

  "Maybe he was called out on an emergency anointing. I can't believe that he would do what happened tonight."

  Temple wasn't buying it. "You know more about these people than you're saying, just like Molina said."

  "So do you."

  "Yes."

  "Lieutenant Molina is not as dumb as you'd like to think."

  "Not dumb . . . just different. I can't figure her out."

  Temple counted Stardust drops in the windshield. She really was rather tired, and more than a little scared, in retrospect.

  "She found some minor information about Max and acted like she had the Holy Grail."

  "What information?"

  But that was about Max, and this was Matt. "Nothing important." One had to keep one's loyalties separate, sacred. All one's loyalties. Hadn't Sister Seraphina been trying to do just that? And maybe Father Hernandez, too, if the truth be known; the truth that Matt knew and would not tell, because he couldn't. And where were Peggy's loyalties now?

  "I'm tired," Temple said.

  "You should be."

  "Will you put me to bed?"

  "Electra will."

  "What about Louie?"

  "I'll put him to bed."

  Temple awoke to the sun inserting needles of bright white pain under the nails of her mini-blinds, hurting everywhere, but especially in her head.

  She lay there, lazy and darn well entitled to be, contemplating the ragged Aruba Red ends of three broken fingernails.

  If Temple had good anything, it was fingernails. They practically had to be chopped off with a hedge-trimmer, and only the strongest metal files could dent their tenacious surface.

  She did not look forward to repairing the damage to her handsome, homemade manicure.

  So she lay there running the previous night's events through her mind, distressed to find that she was somewhat fuzzy on the details. Was it stress--or Sister Rose's tea?

  She hadn't even looked at the bedside clock yet, although the level of light through the blinds suggested that it was later than she thought.

  She still didn't move, lost in that delicious stage of waking when thoughts play ring-around-the-rosie and sleep is a fluffy, pure-white cloud just waiting to sink down and waft her away again.

  A sudden, sharp hissing from the living room had Temple upright in bed in an instant, her head throbbing just above the nape of her neck.

  Hissing! She hissed back in irritation as she jumped out of bed faster than she wanted to. A cat fight was in progress, and it was up to her to bust up the combatants. Matt must have let Caviar out of quarantine last night--oh, no! She froze for a second, suddenly grateful for the feuding felines. Holy cats! Now she knew who was the obscene phone-caller, and maybe the parish trick-player and amateur arsonist, and probably the cat crucifier. Meanwhile, she had animal husbandry duties to perform and scrambled into the other room.

  Two black cats in such full, furry bristle that their tails resembled radiator brushes faced off on the sofa. Louie looked as large as a Chow Chow, but Caviar had managed to puff her smaller self up to the size of a blow-dried Pomeranian with a static-electricity problem. Obviously, no feline mating rituals were likely to transpire here.

  Temple clapped her hands. "Now, now, kitties. Polite fur persons get along."

  Neither spared her a glance. Temple sped over to clasp Caviar gingerly around the middle and lift her down to the floor.

  Caviar stalked away in a sideways, hunched posture, keeping her eyes on Louie and her awesomely amplified tail presented.

  Louie yawned, stretched out so he occupied most of the sofa length, and regarded Temple with a smug expression. My sofa, it seemed to say; my place; my person.

  Temple fixed herself a cup of instant coffee in the kitchen, checked the time told inside the pink-neon ring of the wall clock and scurried back into the bedroom.

  High noon. Electra should be up.

  In fifteen minutes Temple was two floors higher, at the landlady's door, ringing the doorbell that may not work.

  "Hi, hon," Electra greeted her when the penthouse door opened.

  Temple winced. Electra was wearing neon-lime legging stopped by a glitzy neon oversized T-shirt. Her white hair was accented with lime-green spray.

  "Matt told me you'd had another unfortunate encounter with a felon, only he said that this time you won. But you look a bit bedraggled, if you don't mind my saying so."

  Temple glanced down at her well-bruised bare legs, and winced.

  "I would say you should see the other guy, but none of us has seen him. Molina is being mum about the identity of the cat-hating, nun-baiting creep who tried to burn down Blandina Tyler's house."

  "I'm lost," Electra confessed, "not having been in on the case. I still say you look as if someone frazzled your fringes."

  "Actually, most of the damage done to me last night was accomplished by a little old nun."

  "You've got to watch us senior citizens," Electra agreed with a chortle.

  "Listen, Electra, can you do me a big favor?"

  "Anything, dear girl--what is it? Another undercover gig? Maybe as a nun this time? With a habit and everything?"

  Electra was getting enthused. "That would be a piquant change of pace from stripper Moll Philander. I could be . . . Sister Merry Maybelline."

  "No, Electra, nothing like that. I need a home for a sweet, lovely little cat who was headed for the gas chamber. Her name is Caviar and she's--"

  "Oh, no, dear. I absolutely could not."

  "But she's wonderful. I'll pay for her spaying. Louie doesn't seem too fond of interlopers, and--"

  "No, cats generally aren't."

  "Have you been talking to Matt about that, too?" Temple asked suspiciously.

  "No. This I know. I can't take your cat. Absolutely not." Electra's tones indicated that the sky would fall in such a circumstance. "I don't care if you have two, but no, I can't have it."

  "Louie cares, apparently. And why not, Electra? You've go
t room. You like Louie."

  "I'm, um, allergic to cats." Electra did not quite look Temple in the eye. "Can't breathe around them too long."

  Sorry, Temple, but it's out of the question."

  Temple had superb instincts. She could tell when she was being subjected to a verbal song-and-dance, and this was one of those tap-dancing occasions. Whatever Electra's real reasons for changing from the world's most accommodating landlady into a firm non-cat fancier, Temple knew she had not heard them.

  Temple pondered. "Maybe Matt--"

  "Yes. Ask Matt." Electra hushed her huge door shut, leaving Temple staring at the coffered mahogany panels.

  Noon. The poor man should be up by now. At least he hadn't had to go back to work. Temple trudged down the back stairs to the lower floor, regretting that she'd worn her sequined tennis shoes. She didn't relish feeling short today, but was too tired yet to get up on her usual high horse.

  Matt opened the door to her ring, wearing his gi, and broke into a sunny-day grin. "Here she is, Taekwondo Tessie.

  You look as if you could use some caffeine straight up." Temple nodded, encouraged by his greeting. "Given all the job and sleep disruption you've had lately--mostly my fault--I'm surprised that you're mobile."

  "No mea culpa's," he said. When Temple looked puzzled, he beat a loose fist thrice on his chest. "'Mea culpa, mea culpa, mea maxima culpa.' Catholic talk. Latin for 'my fault, my fault, my most grievous fault.' We used to get guilt in great big gulps in the church, but it's eased up lately. No sense in your clinging to the same outmoded behavior."

  "Guilt has no denomination," Temple said, sitting on a seat of piled boxes and accepting the mug Matt offered her. "And it never goes out of style."

  She sipped, then lifted her eyebrows with the coy surprise of a lady in a coffee commercial. "This is good."

  "The real stuff. I had some before I went down to the pool and did my tai chi. Figure that: Western wired and Eastern tranquilized."

  "Contradiction doesn't go out of style, either." Temple smiled. "Say, Matt, I've been thinking. Your place could use a few homey touches."

  "Amen. Do you decorate, too?"

  "No . . . but I match-make."

  This time he sipped and raised noncommittal blond eye-brows at her, like a man in a coffee commercial. My, they were good at being arch.

  "How would you like an undemanding companion?"

  He looked leery. "How undemanding, and what kind of companion?"

  "Caviar," she said sheepishly.

  "Louie isn't having any of it, huh?"

  "She's so much smaller; it's not fair to leave her to duke it out with that big lug."

  Matt, smiling, shook his head. "Didn't you get proof positive last night that size doesn't always matter in a set-to? It's spirit--and, in a way, say the Eastern masters, spirituality."

  "With cats, its claws out, and spirituality is just so much spit and hiss. Besides, I don't know the actual size of my attacker. Lieutenant C.R.--Can't Relate--Molina wouldn't tell us who he was."

  "We have no official need to know." Matt also looked like he didn't want to know.

  "I do!" Temple said. "Louie was nearly turned into a tacked-up poster boy by that creep. Not to mention that he set fire to a truly fine, vintage dressing table."

  "I don't think Molina has a reasonable motive yet--and she doesn't know if Miss Tyler was murdered or not, and if so, by her suspect, who may be . . . insane and unprosecutable."

  "Despite this grim scenario, and our unspoken suspicions, you seem fairly cheerful this morning."

  His answering smile was warm. "Why not? My prize--and only--pupil has come through a field test with flying colors." Matt glanced at her fingers wrapped around the mug. "Except for some nicks in her manicure. And . . . the mission that Sister Seraphina called me to is over, no matter how unhappily. I doubt that Sister Mary Monica will get any more unintelligible, obscene phone calls."

  "Well, then," said Temple, "if everything is hunky-dory except for the usual human tragedies, how about celebrating by taking a nice new friend into your life?"

  "I've already got a nice new friend in my life."

  The import of that statement almost derailed Temple from her mission to place a homeless cat. She smiled over her coffee mug and said nothing for a full five seconds.

  "You should share your good fortune with the less fortunate," she said gently.

  "Guilt again?"

  "Always." Temple shrugged. "It works."

  But they still smiled at each other.

  The phone rang, and they jumped, guiltily.

  Matt went to pick up the white receiver from the kitchen counter.

  Temple let her eyes inventory the apartment. No color scheme yet. Caviar would fit in elegantly no matter what Matt did.

  Matt turned with the phone pressed against his face like a compress, his expression serious.

  "Two o'clock," he said. "Downtown."

  Temple assumed a questioning expression.

  "No . . . she's here."

  Another pause. Who was calling? Electra?

  "I'm sure she'll come." A pause. "Right. Good-bye."

  He hung up, then eyed Temple.

  "Two o'clock. Downtown. The police station. I think Lieutenant Molina is going to spill her guts, or at least try to get us to."

  "Downtown!" Temple was thrilled. It sounded so official.

  "You? And me? Why us?"

  "I doubt it's only us. I suspect it's the whole Our Lady of Guadalupe crew. Molina was very cryptic, very Charlie Chan. I think this is 'the suspects gathered in the parlor' routine."

  "But we're not suspects. She's got the perp."

  "Maybe."

  Temple sipped the last of her truly well-brewed coffee and stood up. "What did Molina say when you told her I was here?"

  "Nothing, for about ten seconds." Matt grinned. "Now that she knows about my past, I can hear her wheels turning.

  You're right; it's kind of fun to mystify Lieutenant Molina. Especially when she's wrong."

  "Well, I better get ready for my official grilling. We might as well go together. Can I drop a cat off here on my way out?"

  "I'll pick you up on the way down," he said firmly. "And why don't you give Midnight Louie a chance to warm up to Caviar?"

  "I'm all in favor of warming up," Temple said, slipping out the door and kicking up a sequined foot as a parting gesture in the true burlesque style. All she was missing was the drum roll.

  Chapter 36

  Louie Dodges the Bullet

  I owe a lot to this little dish of Caviar.

  She provides a quiet and admiring audience when I make my triumphant return from the House of Wax and Wayward Kitties, although she has a mysterious, smug expression painted on her piquant little mug that much reminds me of the officious Karma.

  I tell her that she shows promise.

  "And one thing I do promise," says she, as fast as you can say Jackie Robinson. "Nobody has any say over where I go, what I do, or what condition I am in."

  "All right, all right," I say. "I will let your foul bowl of Free-to-be-Feline rest beside mine in perpetuity in honor of your acts on my behalf, but that is the end of it. This place is mine, from the pink marabou slippers in the bedroom closet to the French doors and patio to the disgusting litter box in the second bathroom to the escape hatch at the top of said bathroom, and I lay down the rules."

  "You lay down about twenty pounds," says she with the agile stretch of a cool cat, "but face it, your time has come and gone, Fatso. You are outdated. You are not with it. You are a dinosaur."

  "Listen," say I, "dinosaurs are a very hot item nowadays."

  "Jurassic jitterbug," she jeers. "I admit," she goes on, "that I do not like old dudes in any condition being nailed up anywhere--with the exception of my unesteemed, absconding father,

  may his whiskers rot wherever he is--but do not get the impression that I have any sympathy for such benighted dudes as you. You are an anachronism."

  "L
isten," I hiss back, stung to defending my tom-hood, "I am not now and never have been a relative to an arachnid."

  "I mean that you are out of time and place, seriously out of date. The only way I would give you the time of day was if I were a water-clock!"

  "Now, now Caviar," I say. "Such a nice, genteel name for a little dame. Surely your esteemed mother reared you to be more of a lady."

  "Ladies get stomped. And, speaking of names, what is yours?"

  Here I hesitate. "I have been called a lot of things."

  "I do not doubt it," says she with a dainty sniff.

  "Friday, once. Sergeant Friday."

  "You do look like an unlucky dude, not to mention passe."

  "And . . . Blackie."

  "Boston Blackie, no doubt," this little doll sneers.

  She is arrogant, uppity, ignorant and downright insulting, but she is kin. I hold my temper, which is getting most temperamental at such restraint.

  "And . . . Thirteen."

  "Must be your age."

  "Not . . . quite," I say, quashing a desire to cuff her halfway to the French doors.

  I am always the gentleman, except when it occurs to me that the parents of this little doll could have exercised a tad of tough love. Since I am one of the said parents, it is sad to realize that she has passed beyond the reins of paternal discipline. No doubt my intervention now would be termed abuse. So I return to territorial rights.

  "This is my place. I was here first. Miss Temple Barr is my person. No matter who you are, or what you did in the preservation department, which I admit showed promise, I am not giving up my present circumstances to make up for your past."

  "We shall see," says Miss Caviar with admirable cool.

  But she has forgotten entirely the issue of my given name. I was not born yesterday, and sometimes that is a strategic advantage.