Cat in a White Tie and Tails

by Carole Nelson Douglas

  Matt felt so much pride in his mother. She was wearing the blue topaz earrings and Virgin Mary–blue silk blouse he’d bought her that matched her eyes. The few silver filaments in her softly styled blond hair made her seem to glow, like the actresses who had glitter strands woven into their hair. His mom had earned every silver thread. She’d borne him at eighteen, but still looked more like an older sister of forty.

  “You’re beautiful,” Temple blurted, despite her tactful nature.

  “Not me,” Mira answered. “I’m supposed to say that to you and it’s true.”

  Krys edged beside Matt as his mother escorted Temple from the archway of the small foyer into the modest apartment’s living room. Matt lingered to let them get acquainted.

  “Going for miniatures in your old age, huh, Cuz?” Krys murmured under her breath.

  “Don’t do that cynical routine, Krys. Own what you are; Temple does. I remember you had a bleak time in junior high when the other kids called you ‘Mrs. Ed.’”

  It was hard to see highly rouged cheeks flush but Matt detected a sideways shamed glance.

  “You’re a shrink, sort of,” Krys said. “What’s with the girlfriend’s overcompensating heavy-metal heels?”

  “You noticed them, didn’t you? Consider it akin to a gang insignia.”

  “You warned her about me?” Krys sounded cheerier. “You don’t need a bodyguard.”

  She pushed closer as Matt swung Louie’s carrier around from behind his hip. Krys was staring into a dark feline face with slitted eyes and flattened ears that looked mighty like a black panther.

  “Time to let the ‘famous cat’ out on his razor-bearing paws.” Matt lowered the leopard-skin bag to the entry hall’s ceramic tiles and unzipped the front flap.

  Midnight Louie strutted right out. No peeking and peering and pussyfooting by lingering inside.

  Krys jumped back. “Is that just a domestic cat? I mean, it’s not one of those Bengal crosses with a big cat?”

  Louie was so pumped by her reaction, he immediately twined around the sinister leather ankle cuffs of her footwear and rubbed his big black nose on them in turn. Matt kept quiet, only a wry smile showing his amusement. Cats love to sniff and bite leather, and Krys’s rock-band look was providing enough of it to upholster a couch.

  “Man,” she complained, mincing backwards, “that big ole boy acts like he’s ready to eat me alive.”

  “He won’t hurt you … if you’re not a crook or a murderer. Temple has a knack for running across crime in her profession and this guy is her guard dog in disguise.”

  “I believe it.” Krys smiled at him, flirting again. “Much as I like having you … to myself, we should join the others.”

  Matt put a hand on her chain-draped forearm, some kind of uber-bracelet for the would-be motorcycle set, to hold Krys back a moment for a whispered update. “Why is Mom still acting so unnerved?”

  “You’d be unnerved if you’d developed a romantic relationship with the brother of the man who knocked you up thirty-five years ago, a man she’d thought was dead in a foreign war all these years, thanks to his snobby, interfering lying family.”

  Midnight Louie’s royal tour had made it into the living room and they could hear the two women bonding in rapture over the big rascal.

  “That’s awkward,” Matt told Krys, “but it’s happened before, especially on soap operas. Believe me, my birth father is no threat to her current relationship, even if it’s with his brother.”

  “Why?”

  “He’s married and Catholic. He might as well be dead.”

  “That’s cold,” she whispered.

  “That’s a fact,” Matt said. “Jonathan Winslow might be in an unhappy marriage, as I suspect. Maybe he might contemplate divorce, but he could never remarry in the Church, and Mom would never marry outside the Church. She even married that abusive rat, Cliff Effinger, in an eternally binding Church ceremony, private as it was.”

  “It still blows my mind she’d do that, marry someone so … icky.”

  “He probably snowed her. She wasn’t reared to rebel or to be at all independent, like your Internet generation, who escaped the guilt and shame rap. They’ve lost all soul. Look at Internet bullying.”

  “Hey, I’m in my first year of college now and doing okay. Our high school class didn’t go that far.”

  “They didn’t yet have the option of being anonymous but ubiquitous.” Matt shook his head. “Mom was desperate to get the label ‘bastard’ off me. She thought no one in her circle would marry her … after me. She was so pretty … and so low on self-esteem. Effinger just waltzed into a paid-for two-flat and an easy life living off and cowing her.” He realized his hands had become fists. “You don’t want to go there, Krys. I’ve done the time and it’s not worth stirring up. I just hope she hasn’t regressed to deny herself happiness again. This … insanely inconvenient brother, he’s not dumping her?”

  “Your uncle Philip, you mean.” Krys produced a wicked smile. “No way. The guy’s been frantic, calling the apartment continuously. She won’t speak or meet with him alone; she won’t listen to me. I had to talk myself indigo blue just to get her to meet alone with you and the Red Menace and that damn cat. She wanted to interact with your significant others in the crowded safety of the family free-for-all tomorrow.”

  “You accomplished tonight?” Matt was so pleased, he hugged her.

  “I had ulterior motives,” Kris said way too slowly, not pushing off. “I guess you’re ‘Catholic and almost married and as good as dead’ too, Cuz.”

  Matt welcomed that diagnosis with a grin. “Get on with your own thing, Krys. Don’t get hung up on the past, like Mom.”

  * * *

  Temple had been making cheerful chitchat, watching Louie explore the room so he didn’t do anything untoward with the rug, smiling and nodding at Matt’s mother while straining her ears to overhear the whispered dialogue in the entry hall. That twentyish mired-in-teen-adoration sex bomb of a cousin had it bad for Matt.

  Temple was expert at listening to two conversations at once, including one of her own, and breathed audible relief at the “married and Catholic and as good as dead” exchange. Right on, Toot-tootsie-good-bye, Krys. You are out of luck with Matt. And if you don’t back down, I’ll download Zoe Chloe Ozone to give you a run for what you think is your honey.

  “What did your family say when you left Minneapolis for Las Vegas?” Matt’s mom was asking.

  “Pretty much what you did, Mira, when Matt left Chicago.” Temple had graduated fast to first names. She knew Mira had picked the last name Devine for Matt out of some subconscious bin so his young life wasn’t tarred with Effinger’s last name, or her family’s. He’d had a ready-made stage name, Devine, thanks to Mira’s girlish fantasies. Once she and Matt were married she would be Temple Barr Devine, not Effinger and not Zabinski. TBD. Cool.

  “I’m the only girl,” Temple explained to keep the conversation going while she was still eavesdropping, “and the youngest child, with four older brothers. My parents worried about their little girl in big, bad Sin City, but I’ve done fine. I have my own PR business, a great place to live, and now a fabulous fiancé.”

  “And this cat here earns his own way?”

  “Sometimes,” Temple said cautiously.

  “He was in TV commercials.”

  “Oh, that. Yes.”

  “So you have two media men around the place?”

  Startled, Temple said, “Yes.” Then she realized what Mira was getting at. She wasn’t used to strict religious concerns shading every word and act. “Matt’s apartment is a floor above my condo in the Circle Ritz apartment building. Louie’s my resident male. So far.”

  “Dear, I wouldn’t be shocked to know you were living together.”

  “Great. But we’re not. Quite.”

  “You’ll have to watch it around my family tomorrow, but not me.” Mira lowered her eyes. “It’s easier to advise a younger generation than to make my own s
tand for independence from family.”

  “Hey. You’re living here with a member of the younger generation. Mondo hip, mama.” Eeek! Zoe Chloe had surfaced. Must be nerves.

  Mira laughed. “You’re so clever and funny. Matt told me you were.”

  “What else did he tell you?” She really, really wanted to know.

  Mira looked past Temple, her smile staying too long, until it looked glazed and forced.

  Temple’s confidence crashed. She’d hoped she was making a connection with Matt’s mother, but the woman was clearly putting on her emotions like a mask.

  “Come in, sit down, you two,” Mira invited Matt and his cousin with as much summoned warmth as if she’d been playing the hostess in a restaurant by rote. “Or … wait. Krys, can you get some glasses and that bottle of sherry from Christmas? We should toast the engaged couple.”

  Matt sat on an upholstered chair as Krys stood still, her expression a blend of distaste … and reluctance to leave the room for even a moment. The girl’s territorial fixation on Matt would have amused Temple if she hadn’t been involved.

  Then Krys whirled and left, her short-short skirt hem flouncing. Bursts of hurrying steps and banging cupboards in the kitchen revealed Krys’s rebellious mood, while Mira smiled apologetically at their guests.

  Krys was back, openly annoyed. “I can’t find that sherry bottle. Any sherry bottle. Any frickin’ dessert wine bottle.”

  “Oh.” Mira puzzled for a moment. “Maybe we took that bottle to family dinner two weeks ago.”

  “I don’t remember that, Mira.”

  “I’m sure that’s what happened to it.” Mira’s appealing glance flicked from Matt to Temple. “Things have been so … busy. Krys, would you mind running to Woz´niak’s and getting another bottle?”

  “Uh, Mira.” Krys pulled a cell phone from the tiny steel-spiked bag on her low-slung black leather belt, worn over that white tutu of a short skirt. “They close in less than half an hour.”

  “Then you’ll have to hurry, won’t you?”

  “Uh, sure.” Krys backed out of the room, and turned fast. Temple heard the scrape of car keys against a metal surface, likely a dish, then the apartment door opening and closing.

  Mira sat back and closed her eyes just as Matt sat forward, his dark brown ones focused on her. “A Woz´niak’s run will take Krys at least half an hour, Mom. Where’s the wine bottle, really?”

  Her blue eyes opened, looking haunted. “Empty. In my bottom dresser drawer.”

  Struck again by the dramatic difference in mother and son’s eye color, Temple wondered what Matt’s father would look like as she met his shocked gaze. She knew what he was thinking: Had his mom become a secret drinker?

  Mira continued speaking, but her eyes didn’t focus on them, only elsewhere in the room as if her own inner turmoil were lurking somewhere in the domestic landscape and she hoped to keep it at bay.

  “Matt, I don’t want your lovely fiancée dragged headfirst into family business, but I don’t think I can stand the pretense anymore.”

  “You’ve been under a lot of strain lately.” Matt was trying to remain neutral and supportive.

  She laughed bitterly. “That’s nothing new for me, Matt. My whole life’s been ‘a lot of strain.’”

  “True.” He took her hands. “And I haven’t been here for you lately, but that can change right now. I can be here to see you through.”

  “You can’t help.”

  “Sure I can. It’s my job.”

  “Not this.” She put white, cold fingers to her visibly flushed cheeks and shut her eyes.

  Matt exchanged another glance with Temple. “Is it the … wretched coincidence?” he asked his mother.

  “Of my possibly having your father for a brother-in-law? Your uncle-in-law? Things that cuckoo have happened in the Bible. No, that was just icing on the arsenic cake,” his mother said.

  “What is it that you think I can’t help you with?” Matt tightened his grip. “I know you want to download the problem to someone who can help. That’s great. You’ve started to…”

  “Confess?” She laughed again. “No. I know you’re not taking confessions anymore.”

  “Then why bring up something you won’t let me help with?” Matt checked his costly watch from the producers. “Krys will be back and our privacy will be nil.”

  She took a deep breath and fixed her gaze for the first time. On Temple. “Actually, from what you’ve said, I’m thinking she can help.”

  “Temple?” Matt sounded unflatteringly astounded, realized that, and started to backpedal. “Temple would be happy to help but you don’t even know her yet.”

  “You said she was so smart and clever, had even beaten the police to the solution of crime only recently.”

  Temple beamed as Midnight Louie came to sit at her feet and soak up the praise. “So you need a gumshoe?” she asked.

  Gumshoes were the silent gum rubber-soled “tennis” shoes of their day. All eyes fixed on Temple’s highly elevating but decidedly impractical and clattering gladiator sandals.

  Apparently embarrassed, Louie hiked a rear leg over one shoulder like a shotgun and began grooming the hairs between his back legs. Talk about being embarrassing, Temple thought, in the bare-butt sense of the word.

  Mira was too upset to take in the byplay. “I just don’t want you fretting, Matt.” She withdrew her hands and fisted them at her sides on the sofa. “I’ve been getting these messages.”

  “Messages?” Temple and Matt had questioned the word at the same time. It was so … old-fashioned. Did she mean e-mails? Phone calls?

  “Notes.” The word spat out of Mira’s mouth like a dead fly found in her coffee, along with a shudder of sheer revulsion.

  “In the mail?” Matt asked.

  “No. In person. Wherever I happen to be.”

  Temple sat forward, her sudden move almost overturning the delicately balanced cat at her ankles. “Notes. Not mash notes?”

  Mira shrugged. “They could be taken for that, showing up under my reservation book at the restaurant, under my napkin during dinners out. In my umbrella when it rains. In my purse.”

  “Good God!” Matt’s expletive didn’t merit notice from his mother, much less a reproof. “You’re being stalked. Why haven’t you informed the police? Why are you making such a secret of it? Is it because of your new … romance? Is some disgruntled ex-girlfriend shadowing you? Is that really why you ended the relationship?”

  “Yes, Matt. Stalked. No, I don’t think it has to do with Philip.” She put her hand to Matt’s face. “Oh, dear one. I really didn’t want to trouble you with it, not after the childhood I gave you.”

  “The childhood you gave me was fine,” Matt said firmly, taking her hands again.

  She avoided his gaze and looked at Temple. “I’m so sorry. I didn’t mean to ruin your trip to Chicago.”

  “Ruin it? No way. Your son proved himself an ace skip tracer in Vegas and my nose may be as short as I am, but it’s long on sniffing out liars, cheaters, and crooks. You have to in the PR game.”

  “Speaking of liars, cheaters, and crooks, Mom,” Matt said. “What about the empty bottle in the bottom of your drawer? You’re not a newly converted dipsomaniac?”

  “Just the occasional drink before or after dinner. Truly, Matt.”

  Temple glanced at him, seeing the tension softening in his face and shoulders.

  “That’s a relief,” Matt said, adopting radio shrink mode and a low, nonjudgmental tone. “Then what just happened here?”

  The answer arrived in a rush of confessional frankness, just like on the air. “I poured the wine down the sink and hid the bottle so Krys would leave.”

  Matt registered her answer and then grinned. “Pretty sly move for a parochial school girl.”

  “Thank you,” she said. “I just couldn’t go through another Charade Sunday at Uncle Stach’s house. They already think I’m half-crazy for calling off the engagement with Philip. They don’t
know who his brother is and I’m not going to tell him.” She paused. “Are you seeing … him? This trip?”

  “Yes, Mom. Temple’s coming too.”

  Mira winced. “That’s fine. You should have a relationship with your father. My … going forward with my unfortunate … encounter with his brother would have been so awkward anyway.”

  “Doesn’t mean we let somebody scare you out of it.” Matt was firm. “What does this anonymous coward seem to want, anyway?”

  Mira bit her lip, hard. “That’s why I tried not to mention this. He wants something he thinks Cliff Effinger left behind.”

  “My lousy stepfather?” Matt asked. “Where are these notes?”

  “In…” Mira looked apologetic. “In my dresser drawer.”

  “With the emptied bottle.” Matt shook his head. “Temple’s scarf drawer is another forbidden zone of explosive secrets. Let’s see these threats.”

  When they stood in front of the drawer, it looked so innocuous. Just a small bottom drawer.

  “What a wonderful dresser,” Temple couldn’t help but exclaim. “It’s a reproduction of those 1930s-style ones.” She ran her hands over the round frame holding the mirror.

  “I got it years ago,” Mira said, “at a St. Vincent de Paul’s shop. It was cheap.”

  “I’ve always thought,” Temple said, “of these big round mirrors as the moon, setting behind the two pillars of drawers on either side.”

  “Goodness.” Mira examined the piece with new eyes. “You’re right, but it’ll always be the harbor of old poison to me now.”

  Matt had squatted to pull out the narrow bottom drawer. A battered manila folder was curved to fit into the space. He pulled it out. A sheaf of stiff, folded white typing paper lay inside. The front one opened like a book, showing signs of yellow glue around newspaper headline-size letters.

  “We probably shouldn’t handle them,” Temple cautioned, leaning over to look. “The fewer fingerprints for the police, the better.”

  “No police.” Mira hung over Matt and the drawer too, wringing her hands.