Cat on a Blue Monday

by Douglas, Carole Nelson

  Louie's ears had perked up at the mention of food. Temple feared that her battle to convert him to Free-to-be-Feline pellets had encountered another setback, this time on doctor's orders.

  She pushed her tote-bag straps as far up on her shoulder as possible and then lugged Louie out to the car. She had to put him down to open the door. He stood twitching his back on the asphalt, looking groggy. She was afraid that he might take off in sheer disgust, but when she opened the passenger door, he hopped up on the front seat in the disconcertingly doglike way he exhibited at times.

  "Well, Louie," she told him as she put the Storm in gear and backed out of her parking spot, "you missed a lot of exciting developments yesterday while you were at home lounging and today while you were taking a rest cure at the Veterinarian's. Now you'll have to stay put for a while longer. I think I'll shut your escape hatch until you've had a chance to recover your strength."

  Louie blinked and curled up on the seat in a big, black ball. He really was such an intelligent, docile cat, Temple thought as she patted his ears.

  Chapter 20

  Blood Brothers

  Granted I am weak in the knees from my involuntary blood- Letting at the House of Dr. Death. This does not mean that I cannot lift my head a little and do some brain work. Contrary to Miss Temple Barr's notions, when I am laying about is when I do my most intense cogitating.

  As for the charge of "lounging" about yesterday, she is, of course, utterly unaware of my unofficial outing to the cat show. In addition, the mysterious blue ribbon she puzzles over when she brings me home is no mystery. The perceptive Electra Lark brought both me and it home, and by then I was in a mood to be transported, although I usually prefer my transports to be made in the company of a female of my own species, if have any say in the matter.

  Nonetheless, people will believe what they will of me and my kind, and it suits me to be underestimated. I get a lot more done that way.

  While I am sequestered behind the innocent facade of the veterinarian clinic, in what I can only describe as a kennel, redolent as that word is of my least favorite species, the canine kind, I do a little mild sleuthing.

  How, you may ask, can Midnight Louie, flat on his side--well, not exactly flat; I do have a generous amount of muscle around my midsection---accomplish what Mr. Matt Devine and Miss Temple Barr have not achieved in running from pillar to post in a car all day'?

  For one thing, thing I have reached an age where I know how to produce the most results with the least effort. This is an art, like myself, that is much underestimated in these hectic modern times. For another, I speak the lingo of the chief witness to the mayhem.

  Poor old Pete is a little jaundiced around the gills, and he was yellow to begin with. He lies on his side, looking quite flat and pathetic, a tastelessly cheery lime-green bandage on his foreleg holding a thin, transparent tube in place. Through this elongated straw can be seen the slow, rich trickle of a ruby-red substance: yours truly's life blood.

  Despite public opinion, I abhor unnecessary roughness, especially when it is directed toward me. And although I have drawn my share of blood in my day, I do not resort to fancy technology to do it. Yet I cannot begrudge the poor schmuck in the adjoining cage 'a second chance at life, especially when he is the prime witness to the bizarre goings-on in the shadow of the convent. So I interrogate him gently.

  "Say," begin I in a growling undertone that the attendants are likely to overlook, it am a past master at passing for an innocent bystander in stir.) "Who did your nails?"

  My breezy relerence has all tour oi his limbs twitching, al- though only two were assaulted. Sometimes shock is the best incentive.

  He spits weakly, and then asks, "Who wants to know?"

  "Your blood brother in the cell next door; Midnight Louie is the name; crime is the game. What is the name of your attacker?"

  "I am a pacifist," he says after a moment's silence.

  "You are a pincushion," I point out brutally, "and unless you come clean and tell me the truth, who is to say that your pal Paul or some other neighborhood dudes might not get the same treatment or worse?"

  "What can you do about it?" he demands in a thin, yet derisive voice.

  "More than you can," I inform him. "Now talk."

  So he does, oft and on, between visits from attendants. The story i squeeze out of him is not much help, it seems he was not accosted, but snatched. Only he says "abducted." These pacifist cats are somewhat unnatural. but everybody has a right to his political position.

  This I find interesting. It betokens a crime of premeditation rather than of opportunity. Many a dude or doll of my type has been rudely run over--or more intentionally rubbed out--just for being in the wrong place at the wrong time: i.e., on the public street when a wacko of the human sort is feeling mean. Few have been the victims of premeditated mayhem. I will not speak of the unspeakable---of the attraction my species holds for the murderous actions of satanists and so-called scientists then and now. But there are less nefarious reasons that we might become victims of crime. The corporate cats, Baker and Taylor, were of the unspeakable---of the attraction my species holds for the murderous actions of satanists and so-called scientists then and now. But there are less nefarious reasons that we might become victims of crime. The corporate cats, Baker and Taylor, were kidnapped from a bookseller's convention to confuse a murderer's trail. I wonder if a scheme of the same sort is in play here and now.

  The unforthcoming Peter, with prodding, reveals more: a damp cloth was slapped over his kisser, he recalls, that smelled "sweet" and "heavy, like a baby diaper."

  I diagnose a dose of chloroform, and Peter also admits that he was not conscious during the distasteful deed of hammering his extremities to the door.

  Was the perpetrator infected by mercy--or by a desire for quietude and swift action? I favor the latter, not finding much mercy in the method of Peter's suspension.

  After I pull what I can from the poor dude, I lean back to mull over the few pathetic facts I have obtained. One, Peter was plucked unwilling to be the object of this experiment in suspended animation; he did not stumble into the perpetrators hands. Two, the perpetrator was prepared to execute just this act; it was not a spur-of-the-moment impulse. Three, the perp is either one sick puppy, or he---or she--had some unsuspected hidden motive in mind, beyond terrorizing Miss Tyler and any inadvertent passersby, which happened to include my good friend Miss Temple Barr and her good friend (and getting better) Mr. Matt Devine. There is nothing like shared shock to bring persons of the opposite sex closer.

  It is a pity that the shock of awakening to be whisked off to a vet's office to have blood drained does not do much to endear the feline sort to the aforesaid whisker-offers.

  Chapter 21

  Mortal Complications

  When the phone rang, Temple awoke, aware that stilettos of moming light were stabbing through the mini-blinds on the French doors to impale themselves in the bare wooden floor.

  She wanted to lurch upright to answer the phone, but King Kong was sitting on her chest. Her mildly nearsighted eyes strained to focus. Holy cats make that Kitty Kong! And make that her entire torso, not just her chest. Midnight

  Louie was arranged thereon, tail end pointedly trned to her face, front paws kneading her abdomen in alternating rhythm.

  "Ooof." Temple struggled up. "Off!" She caught the phone on the fourth ring, before her answering machine could kick in, but she was panting.

  "Hello?"

  "Miss Barr?" By then, Temple had felt for her glasses on the nightstand and clapped them to her face. The clock read seven.

  "Yes."

  "Sister Seraphina O'Donnell," the voice cut in, using such an eflicient tone that Temple unconsciously sat up ramrod-straight in bed.

  Beside her, Louie remained lying on his side, where he had rolled when she had risen, licking his disheveled fur and casting dirty green looks over his shoulder at his ex-mattress.

  Too bad that wasn't his ex-mistress, Te
mple thought in irritation. She never did wake up well, God and the Mystifying Max knew for very different reasons.

  "How did you get my number?" she asked.

  "The yellow pages, you are listed under public relations, you know."

  "Oh, and Matt mentioned my profession yesterday," Temple remembered. "You don't forget a thing."

  "I hope not." Sister Seraphina sounded grim. "I shall have to remember a great deal shortly. And you as well." She sighed. "I'm sorry to call so early--"

  "And I'm sorry I forgot to call last night," Temple interrupted. "Sister." She found the title awkward. Using it as an afterthought separated from the preceding sentence didn't help hide that. "Peter is going to be fine?"

  "Good." The nun's tone was strangely flat.

  Before Temple could react to this odd disinterest, the nun's voice was crackling over the phone with brisk sentence after sentence, each one more shocking than the next.

  "I'm afraid that you'll have to come to the convent again. Miss Tyler was dead when Rose stopped by to collect her for six-o'clock Mass. It could be a . . . suspicious death. We called the authorities. Lieutenant Molina wants to question you as well." There was a pause. Temple could hear a rustling sound as Sister Seraphina covered the phone receiver with her hand to listen to someone else at the other end of the line. "Actually," her voice amended when it returned, "Lieutenant Molina doesn't want to question you, but fears that she must." the nun reported dryly.

  "That's me, the obligatory interviewee. What about Matt?" Sister Seraphina paused for a long moment. "I haven't told him yet. He'll be upset. It would be better for you to tell him when you collect him. Lieutenant Molina wants to see him, too."

  Temple noticed that statement required no amending, and she couldn't blame Molina. If the lieutenant had to interview people about a murder at seven in the morning, beginning with Matt Devine was as pleasant a prospect as any.

  As soon as Temple clicked down the interrupt button to end the call, she lifted a forefinger and punched in Matt's number, which she was beginning to know by heart, Beginning? She had memorized it the first time she saw it.

  When the phone stopped in mid-ring as it lifted off the hook, Temple winced. This time Matt had had only three hours of sleep. He sounded like it.

  "Yes?"

  "Temple."

  "Temple--?"

  "I know this is the middle of the night for you, but we're wanted by the authorities."

  "What are you talking about?"

  "Your favorite long arm of the law, Lieutenant Molina."

  "Temple, what's going on?"

  "Miss Tyler died during the night. Make that passive tense: was probably killed."

  Now he was strangely quiet, so Temple went on.

  "Apparently Molina is conducting interrogations at the convent. As some of the parties who were the last to see the victim alive, I imagine our testimony will be of high interest to her."

  "She'll be highly interested in our testimony, period."

  Matt sounded chagrined. "My cover's really blown now, isn't it?"

  "Well, yes," Temple admitted, "but l won't tell anyone about your ax-murdering days, l promise."

  "Thanks- Did Sister Seraphina say how Miss Tyler died?"

  "No. Maybe we're supposed to be surprised."

  "I bet we are," Matt said. "Give me three minutes and I'll be ready--or at least dressed."

  "Too bad," Temple muttered as she hung up. Things were all backwards lately; she and Matt were always getting each other out of bed instead of into it. Given the recent revelations, that was probably for the best.

  "Another golden dream pounded to glitter dust," she told Midnight Louie as she swooped her legs over his grooming bulk and to the floor.

  He favored her with a glance implying that anyone so cavalier about his comfort deserved some discomfort of her own. Then he resumed stroking his glossy side, red tongue raking along black fur under a flare of white whiskers.

  Temple shivered in the tepid air conditioning. However groggy, she was not too dazed to realize that an old woman was dead. She had just met Blandina Tyler, but somehow she had spiraled deep into the old lady's life--and now death. She wondered what Molina would make of that. She wondered even more what Molina would make of Matt now.

  They were both too sleepy and too stunned to say much in the car.

  Matt turned to her when they were halfway there and announced, "I applied for my driver's license yesterday. I figured I didn't need one until I got a car, but now I see that it could come in handy in an emergency."

  "You mean every other day."

  He smiled at her. "Looks like it." Then he sobered.

  "Much as l . . . blamed Seraphina for overreacting the other night, it's a good thing I did the anointing. That turned out to be Blandina Tyler's last rite."

  "So it was worth coming out of the closet for?"

  His glance was grim. "We'll see. Now Lieutenant Molina will be on my case."

  "Yeah!" Temple wiggled her toes in her high-heeled sandals and grinned. "Maybe not mine, for once."

  By the time the Storm crept along the curb in front of the convent and stopped, terminal sobriety had set in again. She and Matt sat in the car for a few seconds after she'd killed the motor.

  "I wonder who will take care of the cats," Temple said.

  He shook himself out of a reverie. "Miss Tyler must have made some provision. Whatever, they'll be well-to-do; Seraphina told me that she had inherited family money."

  "Maybe she left a bequest to Peggy Wilhelm to look after them. You've never met Miss Tyler's niece?"

  He shook his head, then cracked the door and got out.

  The morning sun hadn't reached enough height to sizzle yet. The air was balmy, pleasant. Birds sang in the bushes, invisible but enthusiastic.

  Sister St. Rose of Lima opened the door, a wizened, bespectacled elf now wide-eyed in dismay. Spry, she led them along the hall to the visitors' room, then scurried away as if what was inside was too painful to confront.

  Temple saw why when she stepped over the threshold. The plain room was crowded with people ill at ease with each other. Peggy Wilhelm sat on the carved wooden chair, her eyes as raw as uncooked eggs, biting her lip while Sister Seraphina bent over her, murmuring.

  Father Hernandez paced impatiently by the window in a long black cassock topped by a white, choirboy smock edged with lace along the hem and the sleeves. Obviously, he'd come straight from early morning Mass.

  Paul, the cat, perched in the ajar window, watching the priest's trapped-mouse movements with sharp, certain feline eyes.

  Molina's brunette razor-cut hair was bent over a notebook in which she was making some cryptic memo. She looked up when Temple and Matt entered, her intense blue eyes registering a tricky blend of disbelief, suspicion, curiosity and relief.

  "And there isn't even a convention involved this time," she noted to Temple. Almost everybody else looked perplexed.

  "Wrong, Lieutenant," Temple retorted in cheerful contradiction. "A cat show closes tomorrow at the Cashman Convention Center."

  "Cat show?" Molina's wrinkled nose indicated she'd had enough of cats in Chez Blandina to last her for some time.

  "Step across the hall for a moment. I've got some questions." She eyed Matt, "For you both."

  Molina brushed past them in her bell-bottom navy pant suit while Temple reflected that she hadn't seen bell-bottoms or a pantsuit on anyone since her grade-school days. Molina was showing an alarming new tendency to be trendy. Was it Matt, or Memorex?

  The room across the hall was plainer and smaller than the visitors' room, furnished with a hard blond table and several cafeteria-style wooden chairs with forest-green and chartreuse vinyl seats. A heavy, Spanish-style wooden crucifix clung to the pale wall like a large, eavesdropping fly.

  "Looks like an interrogation room, doesn't it?" Molina suggested in a satisfied voice. "Father Hernandez hears the nuns' confessions in here."

  "Don't expect any from us," Temple w
arned. Matt flashed her a cautioning glance. He wasn't aware of her long-standing, and tart, verbal fencing-match with Molina. He wasn't used to being under suspicion, and he certainly wasn't used to having something to hide.

  "How did you get involved in this one?" Molina asked Temple, nodding to the chairs and perching on a corner of the uncompromising table.

  "Electra Lark, my . . . our landlady, thought I could do the cat show some good." Temple sat down and crossed her knees.

  "Did you?"

  Temple felt herself flush. "Not really. I haven't had time and there wasn't much left to do to promote it. Electra really thought I could help Peggy Wilhelm."

  Molina flipped through her notebook pages, but Temple suspected it was a gesture meant to hide the fact that Molina didn't need to look up anything. "This Peggy Wilhelm is Miss Tyler's niece?" Temple nodded. "What kind of help would she need from you?"

  Here's where it got uncomfortable. Temple squirmed on her unattractive and utterly rear-numbing chair and crossed her ankles.

  "Peggy had been getting weird telephone calls."

  "So I heard. That doesn't answer my question."

  "Electra thought I might be able to . . . find out what was going on."

  "Since when do you work for the phone company?"

  "It wasn't just the calls," Temple said, well aware that she hadn't made any progress on that problem at all. "The first day of the cat show, Peggy's prize Birman was sheared like a sheep."

  "So what has that to do with what happened next door last night?" Lieutenant Molina could not have sounded any more weary, bored and disgusted.

  "Maybe nothing, but it certainly made Peggy frantic about staying with her cats at Cashman Center, so l volunteered to come over here and help Miss Tyler feed her cats, which I did, Thursday morning."

  "That was the first time you met her?"