Cat in an Alphabet Endgame: A Midnight Louie Mystery (The Midnight Louie Mysteries Book 28)

by Carole Nelson Douglas

  “Hey, bride,” a guy shouts, “stop fussing with that bouquet. You throw it at any of us when we get close up, we will not be trying to catch it, and you will be left at the altar, dead.”

  That threat echoes in the silence. I can sense the stunned humans around me, frozen in horror. Maybe it is Dracula under that altar.

  The growl low in my throat merits another toe-kick, but there is not a Fontana brother in the world who can shut up Midnight Louie when he is on the warpath. Besides, the people have moved too far aside to do anything. Me, I am not going anywhere.

  “Temple,” a thundering voice from above shouts, “You cannot do this. Thank God, I have reclaimed my memory. I have come to rescue you. Marry me!”

  A caped human figure in black comes flying from the top of the nave like a huge raven on a bungee-cord pendulum, getting bigger. A rustling wind swishes, ruffling my already bristled coat, as the figure reaches the floor, dipping low enough to sweep my roommate and her trailing white train up, up and away to the other side of the nave.

  “What or who the hell is up there?” a balaclava-masked guy shouts. “A vampire Tarzan bride-napper? Shoot!”

  So there I am, struggling in the carrier, cursing the zipper tab that is resisting my insistent right incisor, a.k.a. fang, a.k.a. lock pick. I am basically Houdini doing an underwater escape from a locked shroud, losing-air-as-the-seconds-tick-by trick. Only without water.

  Finally! Front fang connects with zipper tag hole and pulls down. I push my shoulders free. At last I shuffle off the hated portable immortal coil of my zebra-pattern carrier bag and leap out. Of course the exposure is dangerous, but I have been operating blind until now.

  I see Miss Temple’s beloved train ebbing away to my left as she disappears somewhere high and out of the action. The wedding party seems as stupefied as the invaders and guests in their pews. I bristle everything I have and run to center ground before the gaping hole in the floor to defend what is left of the wedding party.

  “And somebody kick the cat with the stupid bow tie under his puss offstage while you are at it.”

  I can no longer contain the primeval feline warning that has rippled fear along human spines for millennia. It starts low in my belly, like a sports car engine, and escalates into a deep vibrating howl in my rib cage until it explodes from my throat in an ultra high-C shriek.

  In perfect time, my personally auditioned Our Lady of Guadalupe cat choir pounces down from behind the red-velvet curtains in the organ loft hanging high behind everyone like a plague of the Red Death. Paws and claws pound down three sets of ivory keyboard, each key a gleaming “step” of sound, cats all the while howling a cappella. The resulting dissonance would wake the dead and promptly have even Dracula jumping back, cowering, into his coffin.

  The human adrenaline high such unholy sound unleashes makes every heartbeat discernible, each throb a punch on a panicked jungle drum.

  Hah! The wild shots into the distant ceiling have stopped. The ghost-faced interlopers are crouching, clamping hands to ears, with their weapons dropped against their legs.

  The bridal party, however, leaps into frenzied action.

  The missing, ahem, new bridal couple are swooping back down, a symphony in swinging black and white. Mr. Max sets the bride down on the altar steps and draws fire as he continues the swinging arc to vanish into the nave’s blackest, highest shadows.

  As soon as her white satin pumps touch tile, Miss Temple, with the piercing stare of a Medusa, her hair all crimson snakes lifted around her face by rapid motion, has slewed her precious train around to trip a falling intruder. Beside her, Mr. Matt has felled another man and knees him in the back as he bends to apply handcuffs to his wrists.

  Who knew there were such kinky bridal accessories these days?

  Father Hernandez raises his hands, but not for a blessing.

  As I watch, he tosses the cape of his ceremonial satin chasuble over his shoulders and waves twin Glocks in his hands, covering faltering attackers, and ordering, “FBI, kiss floor and surrender.”

  The shifted altar stands askew, revealing a dark vault beneath the polished stone with its carved serpentine symbol.

  I look for where more members of the wedding party might be, but the front pews are occupied by stoic onlookers, unmoved and oddly…inert. Has a poison gas been emitted? I gasp. Just the wrong move to make, if so.

  Uniformed officers swarm from the side aisles to gather the confused thugs into custody.

  Glancing up to the choir loft, I see Miss Lieutenant C. R. Molina bracing her Glock-full hands on the railing, wincing while my wonderful a cappella choir finishes running riot over the organ keys.

  My improvised Katzenklavier diversion has worked wonders, but what the heck is really going on?

  “Louie, Louie, Louie,” my Miss Temple cries, rocketing out from the back of the church as the vanilla Balaclava Gang are marched out a side parking lot exit.

  “They almost killed you. I was told you would be a stuffed cat in the Zebra carrier,” she says, stroking me.

  Well, I was “stuffed” in.

  “So sorry, Miss Barr,” this hovering FBI guy says. “He was sleeping so hard in this carrier at the Circle Ritz, we thought he was, well, stuffed.”

  “Louie naps in the hated carrier?”

  I hang my head with shame. It does hold in body heat pretty well.

  “So,” she accuses, “he was grabbed and stowed right up here, by the altar. Forgotten,” she says. “Released into the hail of gunfire. Would you like a bullet up your left nostril? I am so tempted.”

  “Ah, Agent Bucek,” the guy says. “Come here, please. Um, civilian and cat coming unglued.”

  I am treated to the sight of silken priest’s garb under an ex-priest FBI face. “Mea culpa,” Agent Bucek mutters, “mea maxima culpa, Miss Barr.”

  “Okay, so long as he apologizes,” my Miss Temple says.

  “We wanted to make it look authentic,” Mr. Frank Bucek says. “The planted gossip item in Crawford Buchanan’s column said that a cat in a zebra-print carrier wearing a white bow-tie collar would be the Ring Bearer.”

  True, but I do not want these humiliating details bandied about. If I could get sleazy gossip-columnist Crawford Buchanan into my paws and claws, I would be giving his epidermis a custom tattoo. However, I have bigger guppies to fry right now.

  Now that I am not looking at the world through black nylon mesh, I feel like Dorothy waking up back in Kansas again.

  I can see clearly now that all the people at the front of the church are properly attired…imposters. Pews are filled with soft sculpture wedding guests imported from Miss Electra Lark’s charming Lover’s Knot wedding chapel. (“Every couple has a full house.”) I wink at Elvis in his wedding-white jumpsuit, but he does not wink back.

  Mr. Matt, I now see, sports a pale blond mustache, like an officer at our neighborhood substation that is such a reliable food source for Ma Barker and her Cat Pack. The best man is not Frank Bucek, but Molina’s favorite detective, Morrie Alch.

  And “Father Hernandez”, now expertly divesting himself of the many layers of an officiating Catholic priest’s robes, is really Mr. Matt’s mentor from seminary days, now an FBI guy. A two-gun-toting FBI guy, Frank Bucek.

  Then the bride all dressed in white and a mangled train pulls off her veil and red wig and turns out to be petite detective Merry Su, holstering the gun hidden in her bridal bouquet.

  “And they rolled away the stone,” intones an authoritative voice. The real Father Hernandez steps out from the sacristy and shakes his head to see the deep dark vault below the shifted altar.

  The only person not unmasked and not now present is the bride-napping bungee cord jumper, Mr. Max Kinsella. I search the shadowy heights again. No trace.

  Looking up at the choir loft, I see that any real civilians present are all now crowding to the safety rail, secure behind Molina and two uniformed officers. Mr. Matt, Miss Electra, Danny Dove, assorted Fontana Brothers…

&
nbsp; Except for my Miss Temple, who is still embracing me…wait for it…the image of her racing down the red carpet toward me in slow motion, as if she could not be restrained from rushing to my side…perfect for our first commercial. Only she needs to be wearing her wedding gown and I am the dude in white tie and tails awaiting her at the altar.

  It is a good thing I had my suspicions and employed the convent cats, Peter and Paul, to recruit local cats for me to train. They faithfully reported for duty at first sniff of any serious wedding action going down. Now they have run like rats from Hamlin down the two loft side staircases to the main floor and are even now vanishing into the neighborhood and back home.

  Alas, I am caught alone in the limelight and a compromising position. Again.

  As a final indignity, Miss Temple frees my bow-tie collar from the burden of the ring box and opens it.

  Out pops the handful of Free-to-Be-Feline pellets the uniformed officer stuck inside.

  She looks up at the guy in charge of my transport.

  He shrugs. “I thought a little weight would give the ring box some verisimilitude.”

  “Are you an aspiring actor, Officer?” she asks.

  He shrugs modestly. “I did do a couple of walk-ons for CSI: Las Vegas.”

  Honestly. Amateurs.

  22

  There Goes the Groom

  The “real” cast of Wedding Rehearsal, the Continuing Serial, packed the choir loft, laughing and hugging and milling.

  Midnight Louie, back in his carrier and sporting a hang-dog look, had the organ bench for a pedestal. Fontana brothers were slipping him fishy-scented treats the agent assigned to bring him had purchased to lure him into the carrier, which had proved unnecessary.

  “At least,” Temple said, clinging to Matt, “we got a feel of how a real rehearsal would have gone. We’ll have to do it cold tomorrow for the real thing.”

  “Naw.” Danny Dove waved a phone over his angelic blond curls as if tipping a top hat in a some jazzy tap dance. “Got it all recorded on my cell phone. Plus the choir loft was already wired and set up for filming weddings, so the police will have more than one bird’s-eye view to study. Their evidence team will be up all night emptying the hidden vault, but that altar should slip back into place with no problem.”

  “And, Danny,” Electra added, “some of your chorus line dancers need to waltz my thirty soft-sculpture ‘guests’ back to their places in my wedding chapel.”

  “Enchanted,” he said, with a bow. “We have the LeBron James edition extra-stretch limo for that.”

  “Electra,” Matt asked, “will you be a real doll—” he winked and everyone laughed, “—and give Temple a ride back to the Circle Ritz? The groom-to-be must do a trifling but vital errand.”

  He answered Temple’s inquiring look with a raised hand. “Top secret. Not for the bride-to-be’s ears, eyes, or marvelously nosy nose.”

  Temple pulled him aside. “Now I understand what you’ve been secretly working on. Our wedding as a thief trap. I can’t believe everyone was in on this, even Frank Bucek.”

  “Everyone except Louie.”

  “Apparently, he had a scheme of his own, but no, how could he have done anything? He was at home unaware an officer of the law would be coming to fetch him here to play his usual walk-on part.”

  “What about the cat oratorio?” Matt wondered.

  “I’ve heard somewhere about that phenomenon. The area must be crawling with cats because many of the late Blandina Tyler’s hoarded cats found new neighborhood homes. The church is always open, and the area behind the red velvet curtains must be a favorite hidden snoozing spot when the church isn’t in use.”

  “It sure was this evening.”

  “You heard Louie yowl when the ‘supposed me’ was whisked away into thin air. That must have roused the sleeping cats. Homeless and feral cats are way more bonded than most people know.”

  Father Hernandez put a hand on each of their shoulders to join their tête-à-tête. “We have not one mouse or rat in the church or schools, thanks to Peter and Paul and the neighborhood cats. And you must remember, Miss Barr, that you brought your black cat to the Blessing of the Animals I performed. I must be a very effective priest.”

  “So you are,” Matt said. “There might be some reclamation money due the church for the Binion stash.”

  “And that notorious, long-dead gangster is the source of the gold bullion I glimpsed?”

  Matt nodded. “It should be the last of the millions he hid around Las Vegas. About four were missing.”

  “We remodeled the lower church in the mid-eighties,” Father Hernandez said, “when the gangsters were supposed to have been banished. It’s amazing some have remained to this day.”

  “Binion was still alive then,” Matt pointed out.

  “We created meeting rooms and a small chapel to St. Jude in the lower church, just below the main altar here.”

  “The Saint of the Impossible,” Matt explained to Temple. “St. Jude sure came through for you, Father, and us today.”

  “The drive had raised extra funds, amazing for a poor parish, to commission a grand stone altar with the symbolic turquoise central image of Quetzalcoatl from the ancient Aztec tradition and the carnelian insets of the fish from the ancient Christian community on either side.”

  “The turquoise serpent portrays the endless coils of eternity,” Temple said, “and the carnelian fish the enduring faith of the present worshipers.”

  “Not a bad interpretation for a UU,” Matt said.

  Once Father Hernandez had laughed, patted their shoulders, and advised rest until the “real” ceremony twenty-four hours hence, Temple returned to her cross-examination of Matt.

  “One last thing you have to tell me right now. You okayed Max’s special appearance?”

  “Reluctantly, believe me. I didn’t know he was going to say anything. Bucek and Molina needed something to distract the intruders’ attention upwards and away from the bridal party hostages on the ground as their peripheral armed forces slipped in through the side aisles to get behind the action. The Graduate film’s iconic wedding crasher scene with Dustin Hoffman running off with the bride came to mind.”

  “Max is hardly Dustin Hoffman, and he’s communing with Molina these days?”

  “Who doesn’t?” he said good-naturedly. “It was all I could do to get Molina to let you and me and a few others into the choir loft behind police bodyguards.”

  “I nearly had a heart attack. Detective Su could have been killed.”

  “Or Max,” Matt said. “It’s not every bride who gets another marriage proposal at the altar,” he noted shrewdly. “How does that feel? Do you think that it’s true?”

  “What?”

  “That Max has regained his memories.”

  “I hope so,” Temple said, “but I have more to make, with you. Golly, this was close. You’re going to have a lot more to explain to me.”

  “I do, I do,” he promised. “But my work here is not done. My last task won’t take long. And then you’ll know all.”

  Matt galloped down the loft steps.

  He clicked off the alarm on the Jag at a run. Nobody was going to do an “intervention” on him this time.

  The main parking lot held cop cars and evidence vans, but the bush-shrouded side parking area that concealed the wedding participants’ and stagers’ vehicles had been church-lot peaceful until his “blip” disturbed the evening air. Taking his low-profile old car from the Circle Ritz would be better for where he was going, but Matt didn’t want to lose time.

  As he’d expected, when all those creepy white balaclavas were stripped off, the heads beneath them were white, gray or bald. The masks were camouflage, not a quaint bow to the wedding rehearsal the wearers disrupted.

  Matt was missing the only two persons he’d expected to be among the treasure-hunting thugs from the long-dead past, and one he’d be deeply glad to see among the guilty.

  The Jag made the trip smooth and fast
. Matt parked three houses down from his target. A low-rider with throbbing exhaust pipes gargled its way past as Matt got out and thumbed on the alarm, the driver rubber-necking backward. If it weren’t not quite dark yet…

  But it was, though Matt didn’t have time for worrying about his wheels’ security.

  He loped down the uneven sidewalk toward the familiar sagging front porch, passing a curbside mattress wearing a map of tears and blood that sagged even more than the porch, waiting for a garbage pick up or a passing dog to piss it deader.

  No car was parked in front of Woodrow Wetherly’s house or in its crumbling driveway.

  Matt eyed the front door. Closed like an indifferent eye.

  He peered down the cluttered five feet holding litter and one ancient lawn mower between the house and the freestanding garage, unusual in Vegas, where carports had been king until the housing booms, and busts, of recent decades.

  He bent to grab the garage door’s hot metal handle, jerking upward fast and hard, so he could pull back before his palm burned.

  The rattling mechanism could have been announcing a train outward bound at high speed.

  In the quiet, derelict neighborhood, it was as loud as a five-alarm alert.

  Yet nothing happened, nobody reacted.

  Matt felt the heat wetting the underarms of his borrowed blazer, suitable for church, for a wedding rehearsal.

  He should have borrowed a Beretta from a passing Fontana brother, maybe Julio, back at the church instead of a jacket. Not even Molina would have called them on their firearms there and then. Maybe especially not Molina. The brothers were the only civilians who had risked their skins to be on call during that charade. Temple’s aunt had married one of them. Matt smiled. Maybe the “Iron Maiden of the Metro Police” would be the next to do so.

  The whisper of that smile lasted until Matt jimmied the feeble wire fastening on the old Chevy’s trunk open for the second time. Empty except for an oil-stained piece of canvas and several dented and spent Dos Equis cans.

  Matt walked around the car and found a side door garage entrance. A skinny door on painted-out hinges. He pushed it ajar, saw some broken-down steps and a side door to the house. Tight. Getting between the garage and the house felt like squeezing through a mystery pipe. You didn’t know where it began, or ended. He heard the faint whine of a power tool.