Douglas Nelson - Cat On A Blue Monday

Miss Tyler did nothing foolish with her will, like leaving her money to all those cats, instead of to Our Lady of Guadalupe."

"Lately she'd been saying that she would, hadn't she?"

Pilar eyed Temple with skepticism. "Old ladies are tyrants around the parish priest. They want attention like a small child, and they use the promise of their money to get it. Father Hernandez was foolish to anger Miss Tyler."

"What could he say?" Temple asked. "Apparently a cat in heaven is not a kosher Catholic concept."

"He could have talked around the matter, without lying. Instead, he told her no, no cats in heaven. Now there may be no dollars in the development fund. In my day, a priest did not have to scramble for money; the Sunday baskets were full. We were all poor, but we all gave what we could. Today churches must rely on the rich, like any other beggar. Are you done?"

The question came so sharply it sounded like an accusation. Temple studied her empty plate with its free-form design of syrup contrails.

"Yes," she admitted, only to have the plate whisked away.

"And you, Mr. Devine, do you want more?"

Temple frowned. She had not been offered more.

"This was plenty," he said, looking up at Pilar with that six-million-dollar-man smile. "The toast was wonderful."

"More coffee?" Pilar coaxed.

"Perhaps a bit more coffee, if it's not too much trouble."

"No trouble," Pilar said, clumping to the stove in her lace-up shoes.

When she returned to refill Matt's cup, she gave Temple a cursory glance. "I do not suppose that you want anymore."

"No," Temple said, too amazed by the byplay to consume anything at the moment.

She analyzed the situation. Pilar treated Matt like a favorite pupil, but Temple like some unwanted playmate dragged home from school unannounced.

And Matt Devine just sat there, soaking up this female consideration like he was born to it. Maybe Pilar could smell a priest; certainly Matt knew exactly how to handle a devout woman who lived to cater to the clergy, particularly the male clergy.

Temple sipped the last bitter drop of coffee in her cup. She had pictured priests as totally isolated from women, but in a parish setting, she saw, they were surrounded by them, utterly off-bounds, of course, but interacting daily, and even in the most intimate domestic setting with a housekeeper.

She had assumed that celibacy went hand in hand with innocence, with perhaps a secret and noble struggle underneath. She would expect a priest's ignorance to render him slightly gauche and awkward, despite the education of the confessional. Matt Devine was neither gauche nor awkward in this setting. He knew his way around these women like a master thief knows the layout of the Metropolitan Museum of Art. He knew how to handle them without seeming to, without their noticing it any more than they should. He was forever "Father"; they relied upon him and deferred to him and considered him their own.

Pilar didn't think about all this, of course; she just reacted from instinct, as did Matt.

Temple's own instincts grew uneasy at this insight. Matt's background made him a smoother customer than she had thought, smoother than maybe he realized himself. He was a performer of sorts- after all. A spiritual prestidigitator.

He was beginning to remind her a lot of a missing magician named Max Kinsella.

Chapter 22

Hissturbing Questionsss

The door to the kitchen snapped open and a wizened face peered around the dark walnut doorjamb.

"Psst!" Sister St. Rose of Lima hailed Matt and Temple loudly enough to pass for a screaming steam kettle.

Pilar's stolid back remained turned to the room as water ran and her elbows cranked in and out over the sink. Apparently no dirty dishes lasted longer than an angelus bell in a Catholic kitchen. Temple mourned the last sweet licks of syrup on her plate that were disappearing under a baptism of sudsy water, leaving a plate that would now be squeaky-clean and innocent, unlike the rest of them, except maybe for Sister St. Rose of Lima, whose ancient, baby-doll face was wrinkled with unconcealed conspiracy . . .

Temple and Matt rose quietly and went to the door, where a whispered conference revealed that Sister Seraphina wished to meet them in the rectory while the lady lieutenant--that is the way Sister Rose put it with an awed precision--was interviewing Miss Wilhelm in the convent.

Temple and Matt exchanged one mystified glance and went out, not speaking until the warm light of day was bestowing hot haloes of amber sunlight on their heads.

"Sister Seraphina is showing signs of giving Lieutenant Molina as much trouble as I do." Temple mused. "I thought nuns were sworn to respect authority."

"Authority isn't as obvious as it once was," Matt said, "neither religious nor civil. I'm sorry to learn that Lieutenant Molina is a member of this parish. It could prejudice her."

"In pursuing the case?"

"In pursuing my past."

"Why do you think she'll bother to do that?"

"In her own way, she's as curious as you are and she has all the official means of prying at her fingertips. I suppose the crucified cat points to a religiously troubled killer, Why not me?"

"Listen, Devine, you are trouble, you are not troubled."

"I thought I was the self-defense teacher."

"In matters of physical prowess, in criminal matters, I'm the expert. Why do I feel that 'prowess' is something that has to do with 'lady lions' on the African savannahs and not me?"

"You've got plenty of prowess," he assured her, "in unexpected areas."

Matt paused at the rectory door, then pulled the wrought-iron hinges open with a mighty tug, as if he expected the door's weight and was ready for it.

They submerged themselves in another passage through cool interior shade, in a peace perfumed with lemon oil and candle wax and a faint odor of old incense.

Voices drifted into the silence like swimmers floating onto a deserted shoal, striving voices, one male, and one female.

Matt's pace quickened as he made for Father Hernandez's office door. Once there, he paused and turned to Temple with an expression of firm regret.

"I'd better go in alone."

"She summoned both of us."

"Yes, but--"

Beyond the door, Father Hernandez's voice rose to an angry rail, reminding Temple of the keening associated with an Irish wake. There was nothing Irish about this place, this time, this cast of characters, although the wake notion was all too apt with Blandina Tyler soon to become the centerpiece of her own.

Matt slipped through the door without seeming to open it.

Magician! Temple's resentful thoughts hissed after him. Subtle and self-concealing, discreet. The bitter words surged back and forth in her mind like angry surf. Max had confided nothing, revealed nothing unnecessarily, had shut and locked doors behind him that he never came again to open, and too many of them bordered Temple's emotional premises.

She waited outside this new closed door, unable to keep from overheating snatches of dialogue; unable to avoid dissecting and interpreting it.

Father Hernandez's voice came louder, deep and uncontrolled, a berserk organ rambling in a minor key. It ebbed and flowed in time to her softer mental surf. Temple could picture him pacing, his dramatic cassock skirt straining against his long, lean strides, his figure erect despite its distress. He did not look like a bendable man in any respect. Yet the voice was unkempt and slurred, touched with the tequila's thick, tart tongue.

Seraphina's mission was obvious to Temple whether she was invited in or not: to restore reason, if not sobriety, to Father Hernandez before Lieutenant Molina sat him down and peeled his mind like a Muscat grape fat with foreign intoxicants.

"I have failed," he raged in a three-penny-opera voice, rich and sonorous for sermons and now directed at himself like an accusing Greek chorus that would be heard through closed doors no matter what. "A serpent is loose in our little Garden of Eden, of Gethsemane."