Louie was streaking out from under the judges’ table—all their heads bent to the score sheets—and … apparently panicked by Temple’s raucous routine, climbing up the judges with his claws.
Climbing up one judge’s sturdy sleeve in particular, which resulted in a dark hairy object flying up, up, and away, toward the pool.
“Louie!” Temple wailed into the mike.
The audience started singing “Louie, Louie” as if cued.
But the dark flying object, or DFO, was not Midnight Louie. It was someone … something else.
A thing Temple knew well from personal experience. A black wig.
Elvis’s sideburned headpiece.
Everyone eyed the bald man in the glittering jumpsuit, now flailing his arms at phantoms.
For Louie was gone.
Only the naked head was left.
The center of all regard.
The bull’s eye that Alch and Su and a waiter and a man in the audience converged on.
Dexter Manship leaped up, snatched the score sheet from under the captive as he was rushed away, and leaped onstage to push Xoe Chloe away from the mike.
“Forget the fuss, dear hearts. We have our winners.”
All the candidates rushed onstage to hear the verdict, pushing Temple to the back.
A hand was in hers, squeezing hard. Mariah’s.
Manship’s voice carried over everything, including the scuffle as Elvis was led away.
By the fringe of the pool, a rapt Crawford Buchanan was blabbing into his ever-present mike, unaware of a black stalking form closing in on him at foot level.
The black cat pounced, leaping, claws out.
Backpeddling, Crawford and his mike took a plunge into chlorinated water. No one even heard the splash. The night had an unhappy ending. He didn’t drown.
Chapter 56
As Blind as Bast
Naturally, having masterminded the revelation of the criminal, I am thereafter ignored.
As soon as the police personnel present swarm the faux Elvis, they compare notes and conclude he bears a decided resemblance to a computer-aged image of … ta-dah! … Arthur Dickson.
The whole tawdry scheme is immediately clear to all and sundry, as it has been to me. (Naturally, I eavesdrop shamelessly, and unnoticed, as they gather to exchange notes.)
When ailing Crystal Cumming, aka Beth Marble, brought her scheme for the reality show to the producers, one of the silent partners was Arthur Dickson, forced underground by his narrow escape from prosecution for the first atrocity at his signature mansion.
Beth Marble, who no doubt took her false last name from the sad monument to the life and death of her shattered daughter and her own imminent fate, knew the mansion had passed through many hands. She envisioned it as a court of justice for the woman who had, perhaps inadvertently yet concretely, contributed to the final downward spiral of her unfortunate daughter.
In using the scene of the worst moment of her life for her revenge, poor Beth was unaware that her ex-husband had also been drawn back to the bloody battlefield. He had always known who she really was.
So he put himself into the TV show as a bizarre judge, and finally found Beth in his power again. Once she had stepped outside of the bounds of civility by killing her daughter’s misguided therapist, he killed her, hoping to end forever the quest for vengeance that had forced him underground.
However—and this I heard direct from the lipsticked lips of Miss Lieutenant C. R. Molina as she explained it to a Mr. Paddock of her recent acquaintance, unaware of my collaboration at their foot level. Anyway, she told him (and thus me) that the body of the young girl in the mall parking lot was the suspect’s step-granddaughter.
The police surmised that the poor girl had recognized “Beth Marble” on the TV previews as her grandmother, and had come to the mall to confront her and perhaps urge her to give up the quest for revenge.
Fate stepped in to demand a dance, as it so often does. A car nearly hit her in the parking lot. When the driver stepped out to see to her, young Tiffany recognized him from the old newspaper clippings she had been weaned on. Her surprise revealed her knowledge. Arthur Dickson, so long anonymous, grabbed a screwdriver from the back seat of his vehicle and ensured his continuing anonymity by killing his step-granddaughter, just as his violent actions twenty years before had wounded and ultimately destroyed his stepdaughter.
Whew. I am beginning to seriously re-examine my relationships with my, er, esteemed long-lost maybe-daughter Midnight Louise. Like who wants a fang through the heart?
Before I can digest my ill-gotten information, I am surrounded by a congratulatory frill of Persians. Much thrumming and purring and swishing.
Miss Louise also shows up, returning from a successful expedition to scare Crawfish back into the pool a second time. It is certain he will never cross paths with a black cat again.
“Louie,” cries Yvette in her sweet soft voice. “You have singlemittedly revealed a villain and also dunked the lowlife who was always after zee dirt on my mistress.”
“Well, yes,” I admit. Then I glance at Miss Midnight Louise, who is a trifle damp but no less triumphant. “However, my associate was on the Crawfish Pukecannon case.”
“Your associate?” The Divine Yvette lifts a perfectly groomed eyebrow.
“Actually,” I say, “she is my partner. In business, that is. And my … possible offspring.”
“Louie! You have admitted offspring?”
“Well, just one. One small insignificant one. Maybe.”
“You are an admitted single father?”
“Maybe. These things happen to a guy. Like they have been known to happen to a girl. It could be worse. It could be a whole litter. Or a few dozen.”
The Divine One shows me the underside of her tail, which is not too tacky, as she leaves. “I do not date secondhand goods.”
I am left alone with Miss Midnight Louise, who is not looking any too happy at my recent description of her.
But she holds her tongue for once, and sniffs, as I have been doing much of lately.
“Good capture,” she notes. “Small loss.”
That is for her to say and me to gnash my fangs over.
Chapter 57
The Past Is Prologue
Supposedly Matt had people skills.
Sixteen years as a parish priest and one as a hotline and radio counselor should qualify him for anything.
He sat at a table in the Drake Hotel bar, all wood paneling and leather. His hotel would be the neutral ground. He felt like an anxious diplomat arranging for a secret meeting between Bush and Osama bin Ladin. The situation was explosive. So much could go wrong.
His mother arrived first, as arranged. She was wearing the Virgin Mary blue blouse and blue topaz earrings he’d bought her for Christmas with a gauzy black and silver skirt that had the Krys influence all over it.
She was a knockout.
She scanned the room expertly. Confidently. Serving as hostess at a popular tourist restaurant had given her a new social poise. Dating again must have helped. Matt remembered the distinguished man in the camel-hair coat she’d seated so graciously when he’d dined alone in “her” restaurant last Christmas.
Finding him, her dark eyes sparkled with greeting. She rushed over on her low-heeled pumps. Another symptom of the hostess job. Easy Spirit shoes for tired feet: neat, attractive, but not showy. The phrase could describe his mother’s overall impact.
He stood to seat her. Bars always had such heavy chairs that women found hard to sling around. Maybe to promote male chivalry. Maybe to anchor tipsy customers for another round or two.
“Matt.” Her lips brushed his cheek before she sat.
No one would call this woman beaten down but that would have described her just months ago, before she moved out of the old two-flat filled with bad memories in the Polish section of Chicago and into a new apartment, job, and the strange cross-generational alliance with her punkish art student niece Krystyna.
Somehow, they were good for each other; so good they sometimes scared the heck out of him, between Krys’s obvious interest in him and his mother’s simultaneous emotional unthawing after years of repression and guilt.
She knew that she was to meet someone important to her quest to find out about the man who’d fathered him, the boy who’d gone off to combat after meeting her in the St. Stan’s church the night before Christmas.
“I can’t believe you’ve found something out,” she told him, ignoring the waitress who hovered behind her. Matt had been out of the priesthood long enough to know that cocktail waitresses at your table side were a boon in most bars, a boon that might not be repeated for too long.
“Have something, Mom.”
She glanced at the lowball glass in front of him. “A … scotch on the rocks.”
“House brand okay?”
She expertly eyed the bottles behind the bar, another new talent. “No. Johnny Walker Black.”
Go, Mom, go! You’ll need it.
“Who is this? One of the lawyers who offered me the deal back then?”
“I met him at the lawyers’ offices.” Temporizing.
“Thank you for doing this. I know they just would have blown me off.”
Blown me off? Krys again.
She sat back as the drink was wafted onto a napkin before her.
“I can’t believe you got somewhere. Cheers.” She lifted the glass. Their rims clicked. She seemed excited and happy.
“It wasn’t easy. They blew me off too on the first visit. So I came back and hung around the floor, watched who came and went.”
“Just like a detective. Like that young lady friend of yours you say isn’t a serious girlfriend. Tamara, was it?”
“Temple.”
“Odd name for a girl.” She sipped again, and sighed. “But they’re doing that these days.”
“It suits her.”
“That’s just because you’re used to it. Because you like her. A lot. Don’t try to duck that. A mother knows. Maybe you can bring her up here for next Christmas.”
“Maybe. Mother—”
“I thought we’d gotten past that formal stuff. Krys doesn’t even call me ‘aunt’ anymore. In fact, we were out shopping and someone mistook us for sisters. Can you imagine?”
“Yeah. You look … really great, Mom. Someone would probably mistake us for siblings too.”
“I’d be honored to have such a handsome brother. Your uncles have all let beer bellies have their way with them. Don’t you do that.”
“No chance. Uh, Mom, this person we’re going to meet, he didn’t know anything about what the lawyers arranged.”
“You mean he was taken in the way I was?”
“Well, he was pretty young back then too. That’s how I connected to him; he had no idea that they’d offered you the two-flat as a bribe to keep me and you out of the family. He was pretty shocked. And angry.”
“Anyone decent would be. It’s not that I would have wanted anything more than some legitimate child support. The two-flat did help but it wasn’t a substitute for a simple acknowledgment. So how did you find this man with a conscience?”
“A paralegal dropped a name she shouldn’t have.”
“What would that have to do with it?”
“It was my father’s name.”
“Why would that mean anything to you?”
“Because I saw a man who had that name. And he looked like me.”
“Oh, Matt.” Her celebratory air crumbled. “That must have been so … shocking for you. I didn’t think that might happen. That any relatives would still be associated with that law firm. What … was he? To you.” She bit her lip, reached out a hand to his. “I’m so sorry, honey. I didn’t think what sending you there might mean. I was so selfish.”
The old apologizing-for-existing Mira was back. As much as her concern touched him, her regression chilled him. Maybe this was a very bad idea, even though it had been hers. He could still head this off.
“It was rough. I was way angrier than I thought I’d be. Then I found out that … members of the … other family had been duped too. It was the parents. Your parents. His parents. They took over and managed their errant kids, the hell with what the ones actually involved needed or wanted. Or what it would mean to me.”
“You shouldn’t swear,” old Mira said primly, falling back on the party line.
“I should do a lot more than that. I should dig up all those dead grandparents who decided what was best for my parents and hit them.”
She looked shocked, then smiled nervously. “Berating the dead is a waste of time. You know that. If they’d have known you, they’d have been proud of you. My parents couldn’t quite get past your … manner of birth but they didn’t dislike you.”
“Not a positive relationship, Mom. I was tolerated but I don’t remember them much.”
She sighed and sipped her drink.
“So,” he said, “given what a shock it was for me to meet a … relative, I’m thinking maybe you don’t need to go back like this. Maybe it’s enough to know not everybody in the family would have disowned us. That it was a Romeo and Juliet thing, where the older generation controlled the younger at a horrible cost.”
“Romeo and Juliet.” Her smile softened her features to a girl’s dewy promise. “That’s right. That was the way it was. Have you ever glimpsed that connection so right the whole world fades away?”
He wanted to temporize, as he always did on this one thorny subject but … his mother needed the truth, from everyone.
“Yes.”
Her eyebrows lifted. “Someday you’ll tell me more about that. Or maybe not. Someday maybe I’ll meet her.”
“Mom, I’ve met yours.”
“My what.”
“Your person who made the world fade.”
“You can’t have.”
“I did.”
“Someone close … a brother? Is that who we’re meeting here? I don’t know if I can stand to meet a brother.”
“Mom.” He stretched both his hands across the table to cover hers, which were fanning and fidgeting with panic. “I’ve met him.”
“He’s dead. Are you crazy?”
“He’s not dead. That was a lie.”
She stood, despite the heavy chair, pushing it back with her legs as if she didn’t feel the effort.
“What are you saying?”
“You know what I said. But it doesn’t have to go further. I have a cell phone number. He can go away and never see us again at all.”
Her hand covered her mouth as if choking off a terrible cry.
“Not … dead? But—”
“He was … is from a wealthy family. Mistakes weren’t welcome in it. That’s all. He was told you were impossible to find.”
“The lawyers found me fine! He believed them?”
“They were convincing. Private detectives reported that they could find no girl named Mira in St. Stanislaus’s parish.”
“There were three in my high school class!”
“No right girl named Mira.”
“He believed them.”
“He’d been wounded. He was tired, confused. I can’t blame him, and, believe me, I wanted to more than I knew.”
“So. You’ve sorted it out. You two. You men. And now it’s up to me if I want to see him again.”
“Yes.”
“Does he want to see me?”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
“Because he hates that he was deceived. He would have done the right thing.”
“But he doesn’t love me.”
“He’s married.”
“With children?”
“Yes.”
She folded her lips. “I’m sorry, Matt. You’re the real victim of this. I’m sorry you had to learn what cold people you came from, partly. I’m sorry, sorry, sorry I asked you to look into this. You have a very stupid mother.”
“I have a very stubborn moth
er and I’m not sorry.”
“Why the hell not?”
“Swearing, Mom?”
Her lips twisted into an unwilling smile, despite the tears in her eyes. “Sometimes it’s called for. Why aren’t you sorry?”
“I’d rather know my father was lied to as well. That he wouldn’t have turned his back on us.”
“So he says now, seeing you face to face.”
“I believe him.”
“Well, fine. Can we go now?”
“Let me pay the tab first.”
“Tab? You expected a long night of drinking and reminiscences maybe?”
“I don’t know what I expected. You’re the one. Whatever you want or need. We agreed on that.”
“You and your … father. Why do I feel it’s always a conspiracy of men?”
“There are so many of us? Really. Take your time. You can always change your mind.”
“No, Matt. I can’t. I haven’t been able to act according to my own mind since that night that changed everything. Let’s leave. Your cousin Krys gets moody when I monopolize you too much. That girl! All hormones. No shame. Wish I’d been like her. Nothing would have mattered as much.”
“You underestimate Krys. Everything matters too much with her. And I like you just the way you are.”
“You can’t fool me. That’s a Billy Joel song. ‘Just the Way You Are.’ The Muzak at the restaurant plays it all the time.”
He sighed, signed the credit card slip, and left a generous tip.
They walked out of the bar’s calculated dimness into the glaring brightness of the hotel lobby, all slick marble floors and walls and glittering oversize chandeliers.
At the bank of house phones, he saw Winslow and nodded imperceptibly.
He thought.
His mother wrenched her neck in that direction, stared for a long moment, then took his arm and drew him toward the rank of glass doors leading to the hotel porte cochere.
He saw her into a cab and sent her to work at Polandski’s Restaurant.
Then he turned and went back in to have a postmortem with his father.
“So how did it go?” Krys asked when he got back to his mother’s apartment way too late.
“You didn’t have to wait up for me.”
Cat in a Hot Pink Pursuit Page 32
