Douglas Nelson - Cat On A Blue Monday

"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 warned. 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?"

Temple nodded.

"And the last?"

She eyed Matt, "Not . . . no."

"We came over here early the following morning," he said, stressing the "we."

Molina was too busy frowning down at her notebook to see Temple's relieved smile.

"Sister Seraphina indicated that she called on you two for help. Why, I can't imagine."

Temple was sure that Molina had never spoken truer words.

"Sister Seraphina seemed reticent to discuss that predawn expedition," Lieutenant Molina went on. "Nothing makes a cop more suspicious than reticent nuns, especially this cop. Nuns are used to cooperating with authority, and when they go wish washy on me, I get very nervous."

"'We' didn't come over here," Matt volunteered into the ominous silence. "I did. Temple drove me."

"Now why was that, Mr. Devine?" Molina asked, folding her arms.

He smiled at her with serene understanding. "I think you know why, After all, you Yourself told Temple why I couldn't drive. No license."

"You woke up your neighbor at--what was it?"

"Four o'clock."

"At four o'clock in the morning, because you're such a law-abiding Soul that when Sister Seraphina called, you knew you needed a driver."

Now Matt squirmed on his slick, plastic chair seat, "No, I knew I needed a car. Temple reminded me of my illegal status."

"So Miss Barr is the rigorous upholder of the law. How interesting."

The lieutenant's bright baby-blue eyes consulted Temple with exaggerated wonder. Was Molina attempting to be sarcastic?

"It was an emergency," Temple said flatly. "We both did what we had to do: get there as fast as the law would allow."

"Not a little faster?"

Temple swallowed. She had been driving, "Maybe a little."

"Did you know the nature of the emergency?"

"Only that it involved Miss Tyler and there was no time to be lost."

"Why? According to the ambulance report, she was agitated but generally well. The hospital didn't keep her."

"Sister Seraphina said--" Temple began.

"Sister Seraphina said a lot to a lot of people in the past couple of days," Molina observed. "Too bad she won't say much to me. In fact, she wouldn't say anything until you arrived." Here the sapphire gaze as sharp as broken glass landed--and stayed--on Matt.

"Maybe I should leave," Temple offered. She had already seen Matt forced to explain his background once in the past forty-eight hours. She didn't need a repeat performance, and he probably didn't relish witnesses to his recital.

"Stay." Molina pointed to Temple's chair like someone disciplining a dog. "You witnessed the first night's disruption. If I'd needed to question you separately, I'd have done it. Now, Mr. Devine, the floor is yours, just tell me what happened, in sequence."

Matt thrust his hands in his pants pockets and stared at the tabletop alongside Molina. "Sister Seraphina called."

"How did you know her?"

He didn't shift position at Molina's interruption, probably realizing that there would be many such intrusions. "She was a teacher at my grade school in Chicago."

"Chicago?" Molina purred like a puma at this crumb from Matt's mysterious past, "Catholic school?"