Douglas Nelson - Cat On A Blue Monday

"Look at the description," Molina prodded.

Temple knew Max's statistics by heart, and the damning card confirmed them, only the height off. Height: six feet (and three inches yet to come). Hair: black; eyes: blue. . . .

She gaped up into the icy aquamarine of Molina's waiting eyes, which glittered with true-blue triumph.

"Max's eyes aren't blue!" Temple said. "They got that wrong." Maybe they got everything else wrong too. . . .

"Did they? I always wondered why a man with green eyes--a performer used to projecting a well-groomed stage image--kept a beige-and-blue sweater. I assume you're as sentimental as ever and it still hangs in your closet."

Temple flushed to remember an intent Molina taking Max's sweater to the French doors a few weeks before. "I'm just lazy, not sentimental, Lieutenant; no time to house clean.

And I never saw Max wear that sweater."

"Exactly. Why did he have it?"

"Most men are careless about color-coordinated clothes."

"He wouldn't be." Molina almost sounded as if she spoke from intimate knowledge. "Don't you get it? Contact lenses.

We know he was a wanted man at least once in his life. Who knows what he's been up to since he was sixteen?"

"I do!" Temple stood up, her voice and hand shaking, the Interpol card quivering. "I never saw any contact lens equipment; I never saw Max take them in or out, and I lived with him."

"Long-wear lenses. And he was a magician, after all. You only saw what he wanted you to."

That allegation hurt worse than anything Interpol might have had on Max. Temple lowered her eyes to the familiar stranger captured in cold type. "What did they say he did wrong?"

"Not enough," Molina admitted. "Enough to be suspected, to sit on some search roster for a while and be forgotten. The IRA is dirty, brutal business. I wouldn't get my hopes up, if he started there that young."

Temple rubbed her nose, which itched and maybe wanted to do something else undignified, like sniffle. "It's politics," she said. "Politics is always dirty if you're the underdog."

"I imagine he was, Mr. Michael Aloysius Xavier Kinsella."

"If you're the underdog, you're used to surviving."

"What would you know about it?" The question was personal.

"I knew Max, and you didn't."

The lieutenant reared back, then blew out a breath like a winded horse. "You didn't know enough."

"Neither," Temple said evenly, "do you."

"It's my job to find out."

"Thanks for the tip."

"You're not disillusioned, are you?"

"It's hard to disillusion a magician's assistant."

"You were more than that."

"Was I? I wonder. What are you going to do about the cats?"

"Cats?"

Temple told her about the will and the forthcoming article and the furor likely to arise over their collective welfare.

"Oh, rats," said Molina, her good mood ruined by the coming storm. "All I need is a raft of animal extremists all over the scene of the crime."

She snatched up her card like it was the ace of hearts.

"You do admit that this is the same man?"

"This is the man," Temple said, echoing Miss Tyler, who had echoed a classic scene of betrayal with a kiss in the Garden where Peter had betrayed yet again--and had been betrayed. Temple betrayed nothing but the facts, Ma'am, just the facts.

Molina read that in her eyes and had another reason to lower her triumph a notch.

"I thought you'd like to know."

"No, but I'm better off knowing. I'm not sure that you are."

"Why?"

"Politics, Lieutenant, are a lot less clear-cut than crime.

You should know that by now."

Molina tapped the card on her palm, then pocketed it. She was gone as fast and furiously as she had come, not with a magician's smoothness, but with sound and fury signifying nothing.

Temple went to the dormant cat. "Michael Aloysius Xaviar. Kind of rhymes with Caviar at the end, doesn't it, kitty? I just hope Midnight Louie hasn't done a disappearing act, too."

Chapter 28

A Clerical Error

"You look beat," Sheila said when Matt walked into Con-Tact at six-forty-five Wednesday evening.

He didn't argue, but slipped into his donated office chair and let it swivel him outward to face the sparsely furnished room instead of into the instant isolation of his phone niche.

"Lines been busy?" he asked.

"Quiet so far. They're all waiting until the weekend to explode." Sheila regarded him curiously. "Want some coffee?"

"Yeah, thanks." He was surprised. Everybody took care of their own needs around ConTact, but Sheila was a social worker and she sensed his mental fatigue.

She brought him a Save-the-Whales mug steaming with a full shot of coffee from the big aluminum urn in the corner.

"What's going on?"

"Oh, some friends of mine have problems. Thanks." He toasted her with the cup before taking a careful sip of the scalding brew.

"Don't you encounter enough problems here?"

"Sure, but old friends are old friends."

"They aren't tourists--?"

"No!" He laughed at the idea of Seraphina and company as tourists, then realized that Sheila had finessed him into explaining why the idea was so absurd.

"An old teacher of mine ended up retiring here. I help her out with the odd problem now and again."

"Mr. Goodwrench," Sheila said with a joking smile.

"Kind to old ladies and dogs." She looked relieved that an obviously old lady was the object of his attentions.

"Cats," he corrected without saying more, turning his chair to face the dead-end white walls of soundproofing.

"So you're tuckered out from playing handyman," Sheila pressed.

"Yeah," Matt answered, wondering what category of household task taking down crucified cats would come under.

He didn't want to talk about it, even think about it. So he jumped on the phone when one of the lines lit up, jamming on his headphones. He sensed Sheila standing behind him, hovering over him.

"ConTact," he announced to the caller. Whoever it was, that person would not stand breathing above him, brimming over with questions.

The voice began, a man's, sounding wired. Matt felt his pulse speed up for the crisis, beat to the rhythms of agitated speech, as his mind began sketching a mental picture of the speaker. He was plugged into the anonymous, distant night again. The presence hovering behind him lingered, then whispered away, defeated.

Matt breathed a sigh of relief that the caller was talking too fast and too hard to hear the ebbing presence. Then Matt heard only the caller, his troubles, his fears, his gravelly, desperation-edged voice. Connected again to someone who needed help and would demand nothing more than that, Matt breathed deeper, steadier, like an athlete, and entered his listening, concentrating, problem-solving mode. Nothing was as soothing to the psyche as other people's problems.

To his relief, the lines kept ringing and he kept jumping to answer them. That kept Sheila from offering any more favors and expecting any more answers. He was already obligated to answer to more than enough women. Lieutenant Molina, Temple, Sister Seraphina.

Still, at the back of his mind, the problems of Our Lady of Guadalupe swirled like leaves caught in an eddy.

His watch showed 2:30 a.m., when the first line rang again and he punched the button.

"ConTact. Can I help?"

' 'If you can help an old lady who has mysterious disturbances around her house," came a now-familiar voice.

"Sister Seraphina, what's the matter?"

She sighed. 'Tm sorry to call you, Matthias, but the police won't do and I know your number now, so you're stuck."

"You can call anytime," he assured her. "What's the problem?"

"First, Sister Mary Monica heard some disturbance from Miss Tyler's house."

"Sister Mary Monica heard?"

"Exactly," Seraphina's normally booming, cheerful voice grew grim. "I looked out her window and glimpsed a light in the second story, and then it went out. So I settled Monica down and watched. I never saw another light in the house, but several minutes later a flashlight bobbed along the side of the house to the garden. Mind you, Matt, I saw only a few firefly-fast glimmers; maybe I was staring into the dark too hard for too long. But I remembered poor Peter and got worried, so I called Father Hernandez at the rectory."