Douglas Nelson - Cat On A Blue Monday

"I'm sure something can be worked out--" he glanced uneasily at Seraphina, than back to Temple "--Sister, Ma'am."

"Oooh!" Temple protested as he walked away. "Do I look like a nun?" she demanded of Sister Seraphina.

"You look like a slightly scorched madonna-and-cat right now," Sister Seraphina said with a chuckle. "Come on.

We'll get you some nice hot tea."

"I could use a nice hot toddy," Temple corrected.

Waiting in a convent visitors' room for Lieutenant Molina was not her idea of how to recover from severe physical and emotional stress. Carrying Midnight Louie wasn't an antidote, either.

She started to slog along the sidewalk with Sister Seraphina, her curiosity temporarily stanched and her stamina quashed. Another vehicle with a light on the top cruised to a stop by her car--a Whittlesea Blue cab.

Matt Devine took one look at her car and began running toward the Tyler house. The uniform stepped into his path; for an instant, it looked like a confrontation brewed.

"Matt, over here!" Sister Seraphina caroled. "We're all right."

He glanced at the Tyler house's ashen facade, which radiated red emergency lights, then started for them at a trot.

"Temple?" He anxiously searched her face, which was probably pale and smoke-smudged. "No one said you were here. And Midnight Louie! Are you okay? Really?"

"Well, I may have broken a nail or two--and Louie a claw, too."

"Let me take him."

Temple sighed relief when the nineteen-pound burden was lifted from her arms, which were shaking with strain for some reason possibly having to do with fighting off an arsonist--and maybe a murderer--only half an hour earlier.

Matt wasn't too enamored of Louie's bulk, either. He set the cat down as soon as the party was inside the convent door.

A yellow cat came to investigate--Peter or Paul--and the pair suspiciously sniffed noses, but no fireworks threatened.

"Come sit down, dear," Sister Rose urged in the kindly tones of a great-aunt, escorting Temple as if she were Belleek china.

Sister Seraphina was soon on their heels, but not Matt. At Temple's questioning look, she leaned near.

"I sent him to the rectory to see about Father Hernandez."

Temple let herself be shepherded into the overbearing visitor's chair. Sister Rose even scooted a needlepoint-covered stool under her feet, which naturally failed to reach the floor, then darted out of the room.

"Sister Seraphina," Temple beseeched, protesting as a needlepoint pillow--this one a tasteful scene of Christ in the Garden of Gethsemane--was inserted behind her back. She shrugged off the smothering blanket. "I'm fine."

"No, you are not. You've had a dreadful shock. As much as Matt might be reassured by your offhand remark about only breaking a fingernail, I can see that you've been through a good deal more than that."

"Well, yes, actually," Temple admitted, intimidated by Sister Seraphina' s air of stern concern. "The awful man inside the house had Louie chloroformed and in a sack-- God knows what he intended to do with him--and he had set the bedroom dresser on fire and I tried to stop the fire, and stop him, and I really put some good moves on him. I'm new at this, but I think I had him cold before the firemen came."

"So that's what Mary Monica saw," Sister Seraphina said with a sigh of relief, sitting heavily on a nearby chair. "I was a bit afraid for her sanity. She said she saw the Devil dancing with an imp in Blandina Tyler's bedroom while the fires of Hell burned around them."

"I was the . . . the imp?" Temple demanded.

"Apparently. Her eyesight is not the best, and you do look a bit disheveled. When Rose and I looked out the window, we saw only the fire, but we called nine-eleven from Monica's room-phone right then. Poor Mary Monica. She has been sorely tried these last few weeks." The nun's softened glance sharpened again. "Did you see the intruder?"

"Yes, but not without a burlap mask. The firemen are sure it's a he, though. I wasn't, not even when we 'danced.' I thought of Peggy--"

"

"Peggy? Rummaging through her aunt's house in the dark, in disguise? Why?"

"Well . . . the will we found. She might have been looking for another version, a later one that left her everything, too."

Sister Seraphina shook her head. "Not Peggy."

"You don't know Peggy like I know Peggy."

"What do you mean?"

"I can't say, but I had good reason to suspect her."

"Apparently good reason to suspect Father Hernandez as well."

"If the intruder was a man, he wore black."

"Lots of men wear black, not just priests. And would a priest up to no good wear the clothes of his calling?"

"He would if he were a little . . . demented."

Before Sister Seraphina could answer--and her face was full of doubt, even outrage, at Temple's suggestion--Sister Rose tiptoed back into the room with a small silver tray upon which sat a tall glass of iced tea.

Temple's heart sank. What she definitely didn't need now was iced tea. Sister Rose's watery eyes were too solicitous to refuse, however, and she braced herself to take a swallow of the dreaded, cold beverage while bravely repressing the shivers of aftershock that were threatening her composure.

She took a ladylike sip, then her eyes widened. This iced tea packed quite a kick.

Sister Rose leaned near. "We keep a little something in the brandy line for the bishop in case he might call."

"How much of a little something?" Temple whispered back in a raw voice.

"Well, I didn't know how much for tea, so I put in a juice-glassful."

"Oh," said Temple, who began to think that she might make it through this night, no matter how long and dreadful, after all, thanks to Sister Rose's heavy hand with the bishop's brandy. At least it wasn't the pastor's tequila. Temple couldn't stand tequila outside of a margarita.

"I thought Matt would be along by now," Sister Seraphina commented to the room at large. She glanced at the schoolroom clock mounted on the wall.

Temple was startled to see that it read only ten-fifteen. She felt as if midnight was long since past.

Sister Rose settled on a side chair and they all regarded one another nervously.

"Those are . . . wonderful robes," Temple said, for lack of anything else to offer.

She was pretty sure that Father Hernandez wasn't coming, for the simple reason that he was under police custody in the house next door. But . . . why? The church had received the Tyler estate, lock, stock and barrel of cats. Yet the pastor had seemed little pleased and not at all relieved by that fact. Whoever had done whatever had been done--and Temple was not at all sure of the extent or intent of it--would have interesting reasons.

Sister Seraphina picked at the satin rope tie of her robe, looking chagrined.

"A gift from a Well-to-do woman in my last parish. She insisted that we old nuns must need something, and when I told her robes, she was ecstatic. She purchased twelve."

"Twelve." Temple was impressed by the parishioner's generosity. In lamplight, she was even more impressed by the robes' sober but lush quality.

Sister Seraphina shrugged. "She got them on sale. At Neiman Marcus."

Temple frowned, then started to laugh.

Sister Seraphina began chuckling. "They are very useful and quite durable, and probably cost the moon originally."

"What's Neiman Marcus?" Sister St. Rose of Lima inquired brightly.

"Just a department store," Seraphina said.

"Like Mott's Five and Dime?"

"Exactly," Temple said, shaking her head. She took a stiff sip of her tea and let her toes wiggle. Her pantyhose toes, she saw, were sprouting runs like weeds. "My shoes!" she wailed. "I forgot about my Italian-leather shoes. They're over there, too. The firemen probably soaked everything with water."