Кэрол Дуглас - Cat In A White Tie And Tails

“What about the news reports of resurfacing violence in Northern Ireland?” Matt asked.

Max waved a dismissive hand. “That’s the corpse having postmortem involuntary muscle tics.”

“You didn’t have money for the IRA as an idealistic teenager,” Matt pointed out.

“I had ideals. Look. What drove Kathleen, especially given her state of pariahdom from birth, was tricking or seducing people—men—into feeling the same self-loathing she herself did.”

“Luring them into genuine states of sin?”

“You could—and would—put it that way, ex-Father Matt. She just wanted her victims to feel as low-down and guilty as she could. I don’t think she toted up Sean and I competing for her affections as a duel of pride, lust, and betrayal. We didn’t think that way. If either one of us had scored with a girl after our sheltered upbringing, we would have been shocked to our jockey shorts and more about bragging to our mates back home than running to confession. The better ‘man’ would win.”

“And you were it, as usual,” Matt said.

“No, I was the one who … fell in love with her,” Max said in a tone of dumbstruck self-revelation, shocking Temple to her Daisy Fuentes undies, speaking of undergarment shock.

Matt looked pretty astounded too.

“Sorry.” Max shook his head as if finding the “reset” for his memory. “Some of my bits of recovered memory hit like sledgehammer strokes. And it’s all the distant, teen-drama ones, God help me. At that age, guys try to pretend they’re heartless to other guys and sincere to girls in such alternating impulses, they get whiplash. My gut knows I loved my cousin like a brother. I guess I didn’t have a brother. I don’t remember. At that age, you don’t have the maturity to admit family feeling, you’re trying so hard to break away. So. I encountered first love and first loss in a stunning double-bill.”

“Do you think,” Temple asked, “Kathleen had real feelings for you too? That your fury at your cousin dying in that IRA pub bombing wiped out her chance of any further relationship with you, and that really put her over the edge?”

“I don’t remember.” Max shook his head. “I don’t even remember the details of our assignation. I suppose that says something. Yes, I could think of nothing else but revenge on the IRA bombers, because I thought it was my fault I wasn’t there to save Sean, or to lose my own life too.”

“As much as it’d be fascinating to psychoanalyze Kathleen O’Connor in light of her roots,” Matt said, “you run a close second, Kinsella.”

“You’re not exactly Mr. Average yourself.”

Temple was not willing to probe into dueling guy adolescences. “So you’re both saying to know our greatest enemy is to outwit her. Why did she become a slut—?”

“That’s harsh,” Matt said.

“That’s written in her history,” Max said. “She was living up to what her mother was reviled for supposedly being, and she was herself labeled as from birth.”

“Let me finish,” Temple said. “Why did she whore for a noble cause? For religious and ethnic freedom, for equality and tolerance? Did she have a sinner-saint complex? Excuse me for asking. We UUs don’t much go in for extreme moral judgments.”

“UUs?” Max asked Matt.

Matt laughed. “You may have never known, or forgot. When pushed for her religious upbringing, Temple will be amusing and claim to be a ‘fallen-away’ UU. Universalist Unitarians reject age-old intolerances, like warring religious identities and condemning classes of sinners outright. No burning at the stake. With charity for all and malice toward none.”

“It sounds a bit wishy-washy,” Max said wickedly.

“You and I came up in moral boot camp,” Matt agreed.

Max nodded at him. “Like Kathleen. No wonder she’s targeted us both.”

“No wonder we’ve both survived her.” Matt waited for Max’s reaction.

He grinned. “So far, my lad. So far.”

Temple huffed out a loud, theatrical sigh. “I’m so happy seeing the two of you make common cause, but this woman is a walking war zone and you both bear her scars, visible or not. I may be ex-UU, but I’m not feeling at all tolerant about Kitty the Cutter. She’s obviously been lurking on the fringes of lives, shifting personas, pulling strings on her patsy associates, taunting us with her mysterious ‘gifts’ and ‘thefts.’ Was she Shangri-La? How can she have apparently died twice and still be around to haunt us? What’s the bottom line on her messing with us here in Las Vegas as if it’s the last stand before the end of the world?”

Matt was the first to answer. “She may be unconsciously searching for someone incorruptible, but she isn’t equipped to recognize such a person even if she found him. Or her. And doing that would so shake her negative world-view—”

“She’d implode,” Max finished. “And the fallout would be lethal.”

Temple tapped her Table of Crime Elements. “When I look at this, I’m struck by how many of these unsolved deaths involve falling. I’m a press release writer, not a logician, but it’s got to mean something. Maybe it’s an unconscious metaphor.”

“Falling from grace,” Matt intoned slowly. “Falling from a ‘state of grace,’ as the Church calls it. Kathleen’s mother was a ‘fallen’ woman. She was expected to live down to that. So she did.”

“Satan,” Max said, “tried to tempt Jesus to step from the top of the temple.”

Matt spun the crime table to face him and scanned the rows. “That could mean Kathleen O’Connor is responsible for almost all these deaths.”

“That would make her a serial killer.” Max said. “And that may not be her only method. Someone tipped the warring IRA remnants off to Garry and my movements in Belfast.”

Temple grabbed back her death list to study it again. “Then we’d better organize and ‘out’ her before she can do us all in.”

Chapter 34

Fur Flies

Miss Midnight Louise and I are enjoying an extended eavesdropping session beyond the flimsy French doors on the corner patio that borders both Mr. Matt’s and Miss Temple’s Circle Ritz digs, a floor apart.

“Well, this is awkward,” I comment.

“Yes, human breeding behavior is prefaced by many long and tortuous episodes and deep and lasting emotions.”

“I mean, Louise, that our human amateur sleuths are divvying up the list of murderous events and victims and locations into three separate investigations, and we are but two.”

I think for a millisecond, and then continue. “Of course, I am up to performing the work of at least two, but I am not able to be in two places at the same time. Yet.”

“Pshaw,” Louise spits, nailing me in the eye. “Who do you think has been Johnny-on-the-spot at Mr. Max’s residence and elsewhere for all these suspicious comings and goings ever since the Neon Nightmare impact?”

“Unfortunately, the investigations from now on focus on multiple major Vegas sites, such as hotel-casinos, the Neon Nightmare nightclub, and even the singular institution of learning in our midst, the University of Nevada at Las Vegas. Few know that Vegas is a center of learning as well as—”

“Lechery?” Miss Midnight Louise suggests archly. In other words, her whole back makes like a croquet hoop. She is such a felinazi.

I ignore what is patently a personal swipe, and she had the paw to do that with. Oops, now she has me ending my thoughts with prepositions. I am feeling very Mr. Maxlike as my little gray cells go MIA.

Quickly, I point out, “That adds up to at least three, if not seven scenes of the crime or crimes.” I have always been better at math than the female of my species.