Douglas Nelson - Cat On A Blue Monday

"Cats don't drink tea, Rose," Sister Seraphina advised her.

Louie stopped his compulsive licking and tapped a paw in the dark amber liquid. He jerked his paw back and licked it experimentally. He cleaned his long, white whiskers of every last trace. Then he lowered his head and trailed his long, red tongue in the substance. He slowly settled into his haunches and began lapping rapidly at the tea, glancing up once at Temple but never pausing in his imbibing.

Everyone laughed, even Molina. In fact, Molina was looking a lot more mellow. Then she flipped her notebook shut and regarded them.

"This comedy of errors will prove to be more terror than error by tomorrow, I think. You all should know that the person I have in custody is someone who is intimately connected with this parish and has been for some time. You all will be shocked by the suspect's identity. I can't say exactly what's been going on here--I have a feeling some of you could say more, but won't. I can say I know the suspect's identity only because I am a member of this parish. Perhaps I suffer from conflict of interest on this case, but so do the entire lot of you."

She stood up. "I've got work to do. I suggest you all go home and examine your collective consciences. I'll be in touch. Count on it."

After Molina left the room, they were silent for a few seconds, staring at the floor and clinging to their damp-sided glasses of brandy-laced tea.

"Sister," Seraphina ordered, her voice grim but stalwart. "Get some more tea."

Sister Rose leaped up, ever ready to serve.

"No!" Temple's voice croaked like a thirsty frog's. "No more . . . tea."

"Don't worry," Sister Rose chirped. "I would never waste the bishop's tea."

With that, she poured the rest of her almost-empty glass into Midnight Louie's ashtray, which he eagerly emptied to the last, strong, delicious drop.

Chapter 35

White Elephant

"Do you think Molina would arrest us if you drove me home?" Temple asked.

She stood by the Storm, barefoot--or rather, in tattered hose. Her reclaimed tote bag and shoes drooped from her right hand, her key ring hung over her left wrist. Matt stood beside her, Midnight Louie drooping over his right arm.

"I think she'd arrest us if I didn't drive you home," Matt said. "You had a lot more of the bishop's tea than I did."

"So did Molina. She's much nicer when she's high."

"She was not high, and neither are you, really. You're just exhausted."

"I'm certainly not as high I used to be," Temple said, swaying into Matt and Louie, her head coming only to his armpit--Matt's, that is.

He straightened her, put the tote bag and the limp Louie into the Storm's backseat and baby-walked Temple around to the passenger side.

When she was installed in the seat, Temple stared through the windshield and counted stars. Actually, she couldn't see stars, just dusty water drops, but they glimmered almost like stars as the streetlights swept overhead in a soothing rhythm of light and dark. Sometimes it was nice not to have to drive.

"Speaking of Lieutenant Molina again," Temple finally said, "do you suppose that mean woman is ever going to tell us what really happened?"

"I think she's going to ask us what happened when our tea has had time to wear off."

"It's too bad that you weren't able to find Father Hernandez in time for our little powwow with the police," Temple added uneasily. She didn't want to say what she thought--what everyone undoubtedly thought. Father Hernandez had finally gone around the bend. But why? What had driven him to such sick extremes? And why wasn't Molina flaunting her shocking suspect? Was there more to the story, more that she wanted to tease out of some of them?

"Yes, it is too bad that I couldn't find him." Matt frowned as he thought about the priest. "Father Rafe is facing a lot of pressure." Matt shrugged off an invisible blanket of worry.

"Maybe he was called out on an emergency anointing. I can't believe that he would do what happened tonight."

Temple wasn't buying it. "You know more about these people than you're saying, just like Molina said."

"So do you."

"Yes."

"Lieutenant Molina is not as dumb as you'd like to think."

"Not dumb . . . just different. I can't figure her out."

Temple counted Stardust drops in the windshield. She really was rather tired, and more than a little scared, in retrospect.

"She found some minor information about Max and acted like she had the Holy Grail."

"What information?"

But that was about Max, and this was Matt. "Nothing important." One had to keep one's loyalties separate, sacred. All one's loyalties. Hadn't Sister Seraphina been trying to do just that? And maybe Father Hernandez, too, if the truth be known; the truth that Matt knew and would not tell, because he couldn't. And where were Peggy's loyalties now?

"I'm tired," Temple said.

"You should be."

"Will you put me to bed?"

"Electra will."

"What about Louie?"

"I'll put him to bed."

Temple awoke to the sun inserting needles of bright white pain under the nails of her mini-blinds, hurting everywhere, but especially in her head.

She lay there, lazy and darn well entitled to be, contemplating the ragged Aruba Red ends of three broken fingernails.

If Temple had good anything, it was fingernails. They practically had to be chopped off with a hedge-trimmer, and only the strongest metal files could dent their tenacious surface.

She did not look forward to repairing the damage to her handsome, homemade manicure.

So she lay there running the previous night's events through her mind, distressed to find that she was somewhat fuzzy on the details. Was it stress--or Sister Rose's tea?

She hadn't even looked at the bedside clock yet, although the level of light through the blinds suggested that it was later than she thought.

She still didn't move, lost in that delicious stage of waking when thoughts play ring-around-the-rosie and sleep is a fluffy, pure-white cloud just waiting to sink down and waft her away again.

A sudden, sharp hissing from the living room had Temple upright in bed in an instant, her head throbbing just above the nape of her neck.

Hissing! She hissed back in irritation as she jumped out of bed faster than she wanted to. A cat fight was in progress, and it was up to her to bust up the combatants. Matt must have let Caviar out of quarantine last night--oh, no! She froze for a second, suddenly grateful for the feuding felines. Holy cats! Now she knew who was the obscene phone-caller, and maybe the parish trick-player and amateur arsonist, and probably the cat crucifier. Meanwhile, she had animal husbandry duties to perform and scrambled into the other room.

Two black cats in such full, furry bristle that their tails resembled radiator brushes faced off on the sofa. Louie looked as large as a Chow Chow, but Caviar had managed to puff her smaller self up to the size of a blow-dried Pomeranian with a static-electricity problem. Obviously, no feline mating rituals were likely to transpire here.

Temple clapped her hands. "Now, now, kitties. Polite fur persons get along."

Neither spared her a glance. Temple sped over to clasp Caviar gingerly around the middle and lift her down to the floor.

Caviar stalked away in a sideways, hunched posture, keeping her eyes on Louie and her awesomely amplified tail presented.

Louie yawned, stretched out so he occupied most of the sofa length, and regarded Temple with a smug expression. My sofa, it seemed to say; my place; my person.

Temple fixed herself a cup of instant coffee in the kitchen, checked the time told inside the pink-neon ring of the wall clock and scurried back into the bedroom.

High noon. Electra should be up.

In fifteen minutes Temple was two floors higher, at the landlady's door, ringing the doorbell that may not work.