Douglas Nelson - Cat On A Blue Monday

Sister Seraphina smiled as she had used to when a pupil performed with stunning excellence. "That was splendid testimony, Sister, worthy of a witness for Perry Mason. Now you must rest."

Sister Mary Monica looked at Matt. He knew he made an excellent audience. She pursed her lips, reluctant to leave the witness box, this fine, carved chair so judicial-looking.

"Come along." No one resisted Sister Superfine at her most persuasive--and her most commanding.

Once again the snail-slow progress was made; once again

Matt cooled his heels. While Sister Seraphina escorted her charge back to her room, he mused on the silence and respected it, respected a place whose clock kept the time of its oldest and most frail resident. Outside, in the distance, the Strip was heating up for the four-o'clock traffic jam, when it turned into a slow-moving river of hot metal and hotter tempers, while neon by the mile and the million candle watt was warming up in the wings.

Here . . . here was a million miles away. He sipped his ice-cold, strong tea.

When Sister Seraphina returned, he almost started.

"She's lucky," he said.

"No," she returned, "Saintly, I think, in the old sense of true innocence. I wish I had it; I wouldn't know what you asked, or that these calls are indeed obscene."

"I'm surprised you do," he admitted.

She was too old to flush, but he sensed the impulse. "Oh, Matthias, you would be surprised at what old nuns know nowadays. At least the very oldest are spared. We are a dying breed, you know, an extinct species. I wonder that anyone would bother to harass us."

He frowned, "Perhaps another of a dying breed. What about changing the number?"

"We did. Three days ago."

"And--"

"The calls continue. And they're from someone who knows our routine. They invariably come after final prayer."

"Maybe someone in the neighborhood can see your lights go out."

"Not the way these old houses are constructed, to keep out the day's heat. They tend to be shadowed inside."

He glanced to the heavy wooden shutters at the window and nodded. Just then, a thump sounded outside the window. Seraphina leaped up from her chair, a grim look of teacherly discipline on her face. She had never resorted to the ruler, but her voice could be equally as sharp a weapon.

He moved quickly to the window and jerked the shutters wide. A pale yellow cat sat on the wide adobe sill, blinking sagely.

"Oh . . . Paul!" Seraphina bustled over to crank the window ajar enough to admit a fairly fat cat. "He is such a roamer, you know. Off on ecclesiastical missions, no doubt, to the mice and lizards instead of to the Romans and the

Ephesians,"

"Peter and Paul," Matt noted. "I don't suppose you allow Peter to go by 'Pete'."

She quashed a smile. They watched the cat loft to the floor with a soundless grace, then stalk over to the desk where the beverages reposed.

Matt saw Sister Seraphina crank the window tight again, and draw the shutters. Non-Catholics often envisioned convents as mysterious, cloistered, closed-up places. The reverse was true, but not here at Our Lady of Guadalupe lately. Sister Seraphina O'Donnell, that formidable teacher and now community organizer, was scared.

"I'm not the police," he said suddenly.

"We don't need the police," she said with swift repudiation. "We dare not have the police," she added more softly.

They stood by the sealed window like coconspirators, their voices softer than shadow.

"Is there a reason?"

She nodded, her face utterly grim, all business. "A good reason, Matthias." He didn't challenge her unconscious reversion to the old form. Besides, she was invoking the boy he used to be, or perhaps the man he had become, and had ceased to be.

"A very good reason," She repeated, real grief in her sharp eyes. "Father Hernandez, our pastor. There is nothing he can do."

"Of course the parish priest must be upset by this sort of thing, but surely' "

"Nothing, He is not . . . fully competent."

"What do you mean?"

"He does nothing lately but sit in his office at the rectory."

"How old is he?"

She laughed, a bit bitterly, "Oh, not so old. Not like us in the convent, Perhaps forty-seven. And he was fine, and functional, until two weeks ago."

"How could a man decline so completely in such a short space?"

"You ought to know, Matthias."

Her eyes probed deep, spoke volumes, chapter and verse, more than her mouth said. He felt as if he reared back from her words, but he had moved only mentally, into the past.

"I see," Matt said in a flat, nonjudgmental voice. "He drinks, a whiskey priest."

Black humor lit Sister Seraphina's pale green eyes.

"Tequila," she corrected primly. "He is, after all, a proper Hispanic."

Chapter 10

Cat Heaven

Temple sat in the Storm at the curb, gazing past its sleek aqua nose at the neighborhood.

This was one of the oldest parts of Las Vegas, so old that it had slowly ceded to becoming a Hispanic enclave. Most of the homes here didn't even have central air conditioning.

Ancient, wheezing, window models hung askew along the sides of the battered old houses, looking as abandoned as the cars stripped down to bare metal that lay marooned with empty fender sockets.

Temple sighed and gritted her teeth. Perhaps her Girl Scout tendency to volunteer had taken her too far this time.

"P.R." was not short for "Pet Reliever." What had she gotten herself into? The sun would soon be slinking behind the Spectre Mountains, and this neighborhood probably wasn't even safe for stray cats.

She studied the house again: a sprawling, distinctive, two-story Spanish place with a Hollywood twenties air, its pale stucco walls etched with the shadows of ancient bushes and pines planted when the only neighboring structures likely had been the church down the block and scattered houses on half-acre plots. The home had been expensive before all the ticky-tacky, ramshackle post-war housing had sprouted up just as Bugsy Siegel was doing gross things to the Strip, like opening a hotel as flashy as its name, the Flamingo.

A promise is nonreturnable goods, Temple reminded herself, fanning her Pink Panther sunscreen over the dashboard, gathering her tote bag from the passenger seat and springing open the driver's-side lock.

She emerged into still, searing heat, locked the door and slammed it. The street was quiet, almost too quiet. She began the long stroll up the flagstone walk outlined by a fringe of weeds that scratched her bare ankles.

"Merow."

The demanding voice belonged to a beige cat with a ringtail, who materialized beside her and began soothing her weed-whipped ankles with its furry sides as it wound past her calves.

"You must be one of my hungry customers," Temple speculated. "Come on down!"

It followed her, whether by invitation or inclination, one could never tell with a cat.

An overgrown courtyard--desert scrub--led to a shaded, coffered front door. No doorbell. Only a cracked wood sign warning: "No Solicitors."

Reluctant, she lifted the heavy black-iron knocker of vaguely Spanish design and let it fall on the metal back plate. She never knew how hard or how soft to bang a knocker, or if she could trust it to be heard, especially in these large, rambling houses. Now she had to decide how long she could wait in good conscience before trying again.

Waiting, something she was never good at, she changed her weight from foot to foot. At her ankles, the cat purred, drooling intermittently on her instep; luckily, the Claibornes had an indecently low vamp. At least Louie, no matter how hungry, didn't drool.

She finally gripped the knocker's smooth, warm metal--it was that hot on a Las Vegas September afternoon----again and had just lifted it when the door cracked preparatory to opening.