"I understood that humans became merry and bright at such a time, but admit that either quality is in short supply around Miss Kit Carlson's domicile this Yuletide. I should report my progress in investigating murder most foul, in the high-rise atmosphere of a Madison Avenue advertising agency, the very place where I am a VIP (Very Important Pussycat). A man playing Santa Claus (he of the red long Johns and white curly whiskers) became entangled in a length of golden chain while exiting the traditional chimney at the company Christmas party It turns out the Santa who was hung by the chimney with care was an actor-type acquaintance of Miss Kit Carlson.
"So she has decided to move her Christmas Eve party to the day after the holiday in deference to Rudy's death, as he was known to most of her acquaintanceship as well. The festivity will instead be a farewell party for Miss Temple -- for myself and Miss Temple, I might point out, were there anybody sensible to point it out to. By then, Miss Kit says, there may be something to really celebrate, such as Miss Temple's and my elevation to feline spokespersons. Or the solution to Rudy's bizarre death.
"Still, Christmas cannot go unheralded. Food is casual but in ample supply, and often left out on the countertop for a little Midnight noshing. Miss Kit has installed a small fir tree atop a living room table and twined it with fairy lights and other glittery folderol. Certain packages wrapped in gaudy paper and ribbon lie beneath it. I even detect an odor of exotic catnip beneath the pervasive stench of pine tree, but try to ignore it, as surprise seems to be a highly valued commodity at these Christmas festivities. (Although the suspense of Santa never emerging from the chimney was not one of those valued surprises.)
"Needless to say, the spokescat search at said advertising agency has ground to a halt, not only for the holiday itself, but until your old man . . . I mean your elder maybe-relative . . . solves the manner, motive and mastermind of Rudy's death, which of course is murder in the first degree. So there is no rest for the hunter of wickedness, not even on Christmas Eve. I suspect I will join my ladies in lounging around and sighing, although I will not be joining them on their Christmas Day outing to St. Patrick's Cathedral, where something known as high mass is to be celebrated.
"I am not even Catholic,'" hear Miss Temple protest lukewarmly.
"'You never know,' Miss Kit responds with that mock severity she is so good at. 'And it never hurts to be well rounded, just in case. Besides, sectarian religious concerns aside, it is glorious theater, and the music makes the latest Andrew Lloyd Webber Broadway smash seem modest.'
"So I will be alone by the phone on Christmas Day, at least for a while, twiddling my shivs while waiting impatiently for my gift weed to cure for a few days longer. It seems present-opening is to be delayed by Rudy's death as well. I do not think the dead dude would begrudge me a little holiday nip, given his own lifelong proclivities, but must abide by others' sense of propriety, which is never as liberal as my own. Since I do not drink... wine, I have plenty of time to leave the ladies to their holiday blues and French reds in the living room and retreat to the computer.
"I find myself in a contemplative mood as I face great changes in my lifestyle and the specter of future fame and fortune (though my fortune will be tied up with the affairs of others and certainly cannot be lavished willy-nilly on remote relatives). Perhaps it is time to let bygones be bygones. I see now that my job as house detective at the Crystal Phoenix hotel was a mere stepping stone to greater things, so it is your world now, and welcome to it.
"Now that I have been altered beyond my wildest dreams (and also have seen dozens of human offspring in mass holiday revelry at the advertising agency), I must admit that your headstrong hieing to the veterinarian for spaying was perhaps not a bad decision for a career woman like yourself. From what I hear, you are doing a good job at keeping the ruder elements in line at the Crystal Phoenix. All in all, you are not a bad kit--though by no means mine beyond a shadow of a doubt; I am no deadbeat dad, only cautious -- and in the spirit of this season that seems to mean so much to humans, I offer you an olive branch (or even some of my imported nip, should I ever get it).
"And you could do worse than to consult now and again with your esteemed grand -- er, grand friend, Three O'Clock Louie, who has traveled widely and seen much of the world that even I might be a tad ignorant of.
"So let us hope that Bastet blesses all of catkind this season, every one, and even a few deserving humans.
"I am sending this whole E-mail file to Miss Van Von Rhine's office, trusting that she will see it gets to the proper party. She is pretty smart for a human. I am in such a mood of reconciliation that I even send Chinese New Year greetings to Chef Song, and fond wishes that his koi remain in the best of health until I get back."
Yours in news, nip and nostalgia,
Midnight Louie, Esq.
Chapter 33
"O Night Devine . . ."
Two in the morning was a strange time of day to be out with your mother.
At 2 A.M., mothers were usually safe and warm at home, waiting for delinquent kids to show up.
Matt's mother sat beside him in the frosty car interior, waiting for the car to warm up enough to drive. Their ears still rang with the magnificent choir music that had filled St. Stan's to the top of the stained-glass windows. The holiday mass been long and taxing in its way, but inspiring as well. And fighting the cold to get there and back added an element of value that Matt knew he would never find in a Las Vegas church or a warm climate.
Clouds of auto exhaust bounced against the frost-etched windows, while the cold motor throbbed as if its combustible heart would break from the strain of starting in below-zero weather.
Mart grabbed the windshield scraper, left the warm spot his body heat had thawed onto the driver's seal and got out.
Snow squeaked under his shoes as he circled the Civic, scraping portholes of view into all the windows. Matt only remembered now that he hated that particular squeak more than anything; even more than chalk squealing across a blackboard. At least he'd never be near a blackboard again.
Cold chased him back into the car, then made itself at home. Matt's teeth were chattering, but he didn't dare turn on the fan yet. It would still waft in the arctic cold.
The car ties squeaked on the snow too, as they fought free of the side ruts and spun onto the glazed central skating rink of hard-packed snow called a street.
For the first couple of minutes, neither one spoke. Too cold to take large gulps of air into your mouth. The house was only ten minutes away, at normal speed.
Finally his mother broke the silence.
"We can have some hot cocoa when we get home."
After the rich mix of foods at the Belofsky buffet table in the suburbs, something sticky-sweet, milky and marshmallow-topped was the last thing Matt craved. But he didn't say that.
"Sounds good," he said instead.
Silence.
"The choir was lovely tonight."
"Everything was perfect."
Another silence, the silence of socially exhausted people. His mother apparently felt obligated to make small talk.
"I don't know what Bo's middle girl is thinking of."
"Krys?"
"Those clothes! So short and dark and strange. Purple nails and mouth. And those awful earrings, if you can call them that. She looks as if a porcupine had thrown its quills at her. Wearing a cross, of all things."
"All the young girls wear that stuff. And worse."
"Not in my day. I don't understand why you encourage it."
"I don't encourage it. I tolerate it. There's a difference."
"You tolerate too much."
"Are we still talking about Krys, or about something else?"
His mother sighed. Sighs were potent maternal weapons, mute accusations of offspring misbehavior.
"The girl obviously has a crush on you, and you seem to encourage it. You may have left the priesthood, but it's still scandalizing. To the others, I mean.
"Mom, girls got crushes on
me when I was in the priesthood. It goes with the territory. Only now I know how to handle it. I used to take it too seriously, like you do. Most teenage girls develop crushes on older unattainable men. To Krys, I'm still pretty unattainable. I used to blame the phenomenon on my looks, but this time I realized that something more serious and less shallow was going on. Krys wants to be an artist; she wants to do something different from the rest of her family, maybe go to college out of town. Heresy for a Belofsky. She is desperately seeking a role model, someone in the family who did something different, and then I showed up, the prodigal ex-priest. Maybe a crush on me far away in Las Vegas will keep her safe from the all-too-attainable guys who can short-circuit her plans to become somebody."
"There are lots of women she could use as a role model."
"In the family? Who?"
"I work."
"At something you love?"
"I work for money, not love. I always have. Even that was looked down on, that I wasn't home all the time. For you."
"Who was to look down on you? Your family? If you hadn't worked, we wouldn't have eaten. Not with Cliff spending all his money on gambling."
Bars of light from the overhead lamps rhythmically rolled up the hood and across the windshield, bathing them in fleeting stripes of light. In one of those rolling lightning slices, Matt saw his mother's expression. Bitter.
By criticizing Krys's blithe immaturity, she castigated herself by proxy. She'd been Krys's age when she'd become pregnant. She'd had one crush, a lightning strike that had been both quick and fatal to those involved.
"I used to draw," she said finally. "In school. I won some prizes."
Matt realized then that he had pasted her bitter expression on his own preconceptions. Krys's burgeoning sexuality didn't bother his mother as much as the younger woman's possibilities, her independence, her choice.
"Sounds like artistic talent runs in the family," Matt said casually. Except for me. I just doodle when I'm on the phone."
"A man in Cincinnati is famous for his doodles. Makes good money for them."
"No, that's not going to be my line, I'm afraid. You'll have to take it up again if you want an artist in the family."
"Do you... really 'blame' things on your looks?"
"Why?"
"I did too."
Matt was silent, navigating the narrow and rutted alley that ran behind his mother's house, passing wooden garages with double sets of sagging single doors that looked exactly like hers, looking for a landmark that would say they had arrived.
He finally spotted the bare snowball bush by the garbage can and turned into the short driveway. The headlights dramatized a blank pale yellow canvas of peeling paint.
Matt got out to pull the door open. Snowflakes falling again danced in the headlights. Like celestial dandruff, it punctuated his coat sleeves with dozens of white periods.
For the next few minutes they emptied the car of presents and leftovers, then navigated the foot-wide path through two feet of piled snow to the back door.
Inside, the house was dark and silent, except for the occasional ping of a radiator. Then the glaring kitchen light snapped on, and by the time the food was put away, the idea of making or consuming anything else had died.
"You know," Matt said as they moved into the living room, his mother going ahead to turn lights on, he following to turn them off behind them, "I've never seen any photos of you when you were young."
"There aren't many." She paused to jerk on the front doorknob to make sure the door was locked, then headed for the back hall to the bedrooms.
"But there are some."
She looked back over one shoulder, the earrings he had given her glistening like her eye whites. The overhead hall light made her face a black-and-white patchwork of planes and angles.
"Some. I can look them up in the morning, if you like."
He nodded and followed her down the hall.
Chapter 34
Back to Base Camp
By Thursday, the day after Christmas, Temple had developed a battle plan.
It was based on hidden suspicions, deception and treachery, but it fit the situation pretty well.
First, she called Colby, Janos and Renaldi and got Kendall on the phone.
"Temple! I'm so glad you called." Kendall sounded feverish.
"There was such a blowup after you left before Christmas. The partners were going at it hammer and tong. They were even throwing their awards at each other.
"But I have a new theory. This is a second-generation scheme. It's Carl. Carlo. My rat ex-husband. He needs money. Daddy hasn't got it. Or ... is that my daddy? No! I'm getting confused. It's so awful here. Everybody hates everybody else. I guess they always did. Can you come over, Temple? It's a real dogfight."
Tempe was not surprised.
Kit watched her bundle up with suspicion, especially when Temple hitched on Louie and his CatAboard with the grim intent of an Old West gunslinger tying Oil the double holster of Colt revolvers.
"Temple, first you go to the library, which almost no one in New York does at Christmastime, except kids, and now you're going back to the weird advertising agency on Madison Avenue. I feel terrible that I've got an appointment and can't go with you. Do you need my Mace spray?"
"I need a flak jacket, Kit. Or maybe that should be 'flack' jacket, since I am one. But I have finally seen the light, and it isn't pretty."
"Temple." Kit hurled herself again the front door, like a protester. "Is this about poor Rudy?"
"It was never about poor Rudy. It was about rich man, poor man, beggarman, thief."
"You need backup," Kit said, squinting without her glasses.
"I have Midnight Louie."
"He's no protection."
"His absence is, for your computer. With you gone, and me gone, think what he might get up to."
"I can't be sure the little devil deleted half of my new novel. Thank God I have a backup on diskette."
"You can't be sure he didn't. Besides, the Shadow knows."
"The Shadow. He's black all right, but what can a cat know?"
"What the nose God gave him can smell. You can call Lieutenant Hansen, if you want."
"I'll call the paramedics--for myself!--if you keep me in the dark like this."
"I don't think anyone's dangerous any more, Kit. Rudy's death was a . . . flashback. The whole thing's falling apart anyway. I just want to be there when a very sad person learns the bitter truth."
"Cut the cliches, okay? Truth is always bitter. Listen. Rudy wouldn't want anyone else hurt, honest. Don't take this further than Rudy would."
"Kit." Temple encased her aunt's hands in her nylon-and-down mittens. "Rudy wouldn't be dead if he had been willing to take this as far as it would go. He died because he really didn't mean any harm. And that's such a dangerous position to take, with the guilty."
Kit put her head in her hands. "What will I tell your mother if anything horrible happens?"
"Tell her I had a good time in New York."
Temple yanked the door open and headed for the elevator.
Louie sneezed once, then growled.
"Keep that sniffer in prime working order," Temple instructed him. "I saw what you did at Rudy's place, and I'm counting on you, and on old habits dying hard."
Temple hailed and got the first cab that she spotted. Kit was right. It was all attitude. She'd found that out when she had tried to out-macho Victor Janos.
She got to Madison Avenue in mid-afternoon. No cat people were scheduled. That whole matter would be settled with phone calls, telegrams and letters after the New Year. Would she and Louie win the endorsement sweepstakes? Temple could not care less. She was really angry. They were lying about Vietnam before she was born, and they were lying about it right now at Colby, Janos and Renaldi.
A few snowflakes were flying, but not enough to cling. The street people huddled over heating grates, trying to be invisible when the police were forced to come and kick them away from th
e only outside warmth the city of New York offered.
Temple paid the cabbie and walked into the bustling lobby, heading straight for the correct elevator bank. She couldn't believe she had been so ignorant just a week ago.
The elevators were as handsome as ever, but reminded her of escorts whose true selves have shown through the facades, who pale by comparison with reality, who show the skull beneath the skin.
She could see the entire steel spine of the building as the elevator shot her up its empty shaft to the thirty-second floor. Another skeleton was ghosting down the hall on clattering anklebones. Just out of sight.
Louie lifted his nose in the empty hall, and sniffed, nostrils and whiskers trembling.
"Good boy."
The outer office was deserted, the receptionist surprised to see her. "We're about to close; we normally close early all through the holidays, " she said, her jet-black braids glossed into the sheen of India ink. Her nails were shiny, and painted the color of ripe pomegranate.
Temple wondered if they celebrated the Asian New Year of Tet
"You must he here to see Miss Kendall Renaldi--"
"No, I'm here to see Mister Brent Colby."
The receptionist's kamikaze nails hit buttons. Temple was instructed to sit for a while, but was finally buzzed in.
She and Louie passed the almost-closed door of Kendall's office. They headed straight for the corner office, where Brent Colby worked.
You could think Colby, Janos and Renaldi's name was decided according to alphabetical order. Or you could wonder about just what was the underlying order.
"Miss Barr."
He stood when she entered the room, as a gentleman should, but he seemed oddly detached.
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