Douglas Nelson - Cat On A Blue Monday

Nobody knew for sure that Miss Tyler had been murdered, except maybe Molina, and she wasn't talking.

Nobody knew how much money was coming to the church, not even the operative attorney.

Nobody knew what to do with all the cats, except the deluge of cat-lovers and cat-haters who would be sure to make their opinions known far and wide once the story hit the street.

Temple looked at Matt, to find Matt looking at her.

They needed to nail down something, and the obvious place to start--curses!--was with Molina and the issue of murder.

"I'd rather you called her," Matt said when she drove them back to the Circle Ritz.

"Why? She hates me."

"She doesn't hate you. Police lieutenants aren't allowed to hate. Bad public image. I don't want her to waste her time digging into me."

"Why? Are you a good suspect?"

"I'm a diversion, when the real case needs to be solved."

"Funny, I always thought you were a diversion, too."

He shrugged off her smart comment and opened the car door to a slow seep of Las Vegas heat. "I've got to work tonight. I'll see if any calls have come in from other old ladies. Miss Tyler's death may have forced her harasser to move on."

"Or to stop," Temple said.

"You think it was part o{ the whole . . . scenario?"

"Scenario. Very good, Mr. Devine. Yes, I do. And so was Sister Mary Monica. And Peter."

"But what was the scenario? Or more important, the point?"

"I don't know." Temple glanced up at the Circle Ritz's round, black-marble-encased exterior, her eye pausing on the third floor. "I hope my new kitty hasn't been too lonesome this morning. On the other hand, I hope Louie hasn't come in, discovered her and raised holy hell."

"Louie with a rival?" Matt cocked a blond eyebrow. "I don't think it will fly."

"Caviar's not a rival; she's a little sister."

"I don't think Louie is into little sisters, either."

"He must not be a Catholic cat," Temple said demurely.

Matt bit back a reply and vanished into the building at a trot, ahead of her.

Temple took her time getting her tote bag out of the Storm and walking into the air-conditioned lobby. Her thoughts were as sharp and as aimless as the blows of her heels on the sidewalk, and later, on lobby marble.

She took the elevator upstairs--Matt had probably used the stairs, but her high heels demanded more civilized methods of transport.

She turned the key in her door lock, eager to greet her new baby--and scared semi gloss white that Louie would be there and in no mood to discuss new roommates of the feline kind.

What had she done? Louie was a loner, an individualist, a me-only cat. How could she have thought he would welcome this dainty little pussycat simply because it desperately needed a home and was his favorite color, jet-black? What had Temple done? What would she say to Louie? Oh, Louie, Louie. . . .

Louie was nowhere about the apartment, Temple discovered after she tiptoed into the cool depths of her empty rooms. Caviar was curled atop the Cosmopolitan magazines in their Plexiglas rack, polishing a paw to shining ebony.

Temple sighed in relief and ran to check the two bowls of Free-to-be-Feline in the kitchen. One was mounded high, wide and handsome. One sported a dainty dip in the middle.

Obviously, Louie had not been in, or he had left in disgust.

Temple went back to kneel by her new acquisition. Caviar tilted her sleek head so Temple's long nails could scratch her chin. She purred, stretched and displayed a long, lithe torso, quite different from Louie's well-upholstered midsection.

Then the tender interlude was over. Duty called. Or rather, Temple must call to do her duty.

She looked up the Las Vegas police number, dialed it and waited through the super-smooth and polite, Star Ship Enterprise female computer voice, expecting it to purr "Captain Kirk" at any minute. After rejecting pressing a series of numbers that would connect her to a dozen unneeded departments, Temple stayed on the line and asked meekly for "Lieutenant Molina, please."

She got her on the first throw.

'This is Temple Barr. I--"

"Fine. Are you at home?"

"Er, yes."

"Good. I'll be by in twenty minutes. Think you can stay put?"

"Yes, Lieutenant."

"I've got something I want you to see."

"Er, don't you want to know what I called about?"

"No. Be there."

Another gracious conversation with the Amy Vanderbilt of the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department. Temple hung up with a sigh. She wasn't any good at interfacing with police personnel. Why did she have to keep doing it?

She changed her clothes and ditched the pantyhose, but she kept the businesslike pumps on, with footlets, just because. She wasn't about to sit back and let Molina catch her napping at five-foot-zero.

She dangled her key chain in front of Caviar and was rewarded with several spirited boxing motions. "That's it, girl, you show that Midnight Louie what a tough cookie you are!"

She paced to the window and looked at the empty pool. No Matt waiting by his namesake mats, no Louie glaring resentfully up at her. She was glad not to confront Louie's reaction to her impulse purchase, but what if he had already come, seen and decamped?

Her doorbell rang, a lovely ding-dong sound straight out of the fifties and "Father Knows Best."

She skittered to the door and opened it to face Lieutenant Molina, looking her most official and towering.

Temple ebbed before the law, into her living room. "Is it about Miss Tyler's . . . death? Has the cause been determined?"

"No--and no."

Surprised to hear it put so plainly, and so cavalierly, Temple sat down on her shapeless sofa.

Molina stood there, glancing at Caviar. "Shrunk your cat?"

"This is Caviar. She was going to be sent back to the Humane Society."

"Your Midnight Louie may shrink her head--and then send her back to the Humane Society, from what I've seen of that black devil. You do rush in--"

"If you're not here about the Tyler case--"

"Why would I bother you about the Tyler case?"

"I was ... a witness."

"Not to the murder. But you may have been a witness to this."

Molina flashed a card from the depths of one of her ever useful jacket pockets. A flash card, Temple thought, like I'm in school and I have to get some equation right.

Molina's eyes shone with brilliant blue triumph as she slapped the card faceup on the sofa's broad, canvas arm.

Also face up was Max Kinsella, in profile and full-front views, looking about--oh, eighteen, his Adam's apple prominent in the profile shot. A lot of type supported the double images, and some bigger type ran across the top, Letters. Initials. I-n-t-e-r-p-o-1.

M-i-c-k-e-y M-o-u-s-e.

And Molina was the cat who had caught the canary.

"Interpol--?" Temple queried.

"That's why I couldn't find anything on him," Molina announced with the glee of Lieutenant Gerard pouncing on Dr. Richard Kimball. "Look at the name. Look at it."

"Michael," Temple repeated dully. "Michael. Aloysius. Xavier."

"Kinsella!" Molina finished. "Michael Aloysius Xavier Kinsella. That's why I couldn't trace him

"Max," Temple pronounced slowly. "He didn't lie. What's this about the IRA?"

Molina began to pace. "He was suspected of being a member. Of course it was a while back. According to that card, he was sixteen. Still . . . that's an international terrorist organization. I knew he had a record somewhere!" She paused, as if her euphoria had let her down with a bang.

"This doesn't explain the dead man at the Goliath, or his supposed career as a magician, but I knew he was more than he appeared to be."

"I always knew that, Lieutenant," Temple said quietly.

"Not this!"

Temple looked at the card again. She had never pictured Max that young, that raw, that unfinished, but even here she saw the magician half-hidden behind the flat, unflattering black and white. Michael. Mike--? No, Max.