Douglas Nelson - Cat On A Blue Monday

"We think Blandina Tyler was murdered," Lieutenant Molina said. "Her murderer has not confessed, but this was a simple case, in that respect. Whether the suspect is sane or not, a jury will have to decide."

"Who?" Temple asked, brushing a frivolity of red curls back from her forehead. "If the case is that clear-cut, we deserve to know who."

Molina's sad, forbearing smile said that she knew, as a priest does, that clear-cut answers are always the most ambiguous at heart.

"I told you all last night," she went on, "that we held someone you knew and trusted, someone whose name would shock you. Perhaps I shouldn't even be telling you this."

"Telling us what?" someone asked from the doorway, someone who had arrived unnoticed.

Sister Seraphina stood. "Father Hernandez! You're not--"

"I'm not what?" he asked rather testily. "What is everyone else doing here? And why was I waylaid by Sister Saint Rose of Lima as soon as I returned to the rectory and sent here?"

"You weren't at the rectory last night," Matt said, dismayed by his unintended, but unmistakably accusing tone.

Father Hernandez turned to him, then ran a hand through his sleek silver hair. He wore full priestly garb: black slacks and the white notch of a Roman collar at the neck of his black, short-sleeved shirt. Add a black suitcoat and he could play the organ for any memorial service Electra might want to hold, just as Matt had once. Father Hernandez did not look like a murderer. He looked gaunt and weary, but otherwise elegant.

His brief descent into the hell of a tequila bottle had not harmed him beyond the obvious. The real hell had come through the mail in the neat, damning lines of laser-printed lies. Or were they lies? Denial was the bottom line of most serious human failings. Did Lieutenant Molina even know of the blackmail? Did she know of Matt's concealed knowledge of it?

"No, I wasn't at the rectory," the priest said, his tone sharp. "Am I supposed to always be at the rectory? I was... in the church."

"The church, at that time of night?" Sister Seraphina inquired. "All night?"

"The church is for every time--night or day--though we are forced to keep it locked against vandals at night in these terrible times. Didn't any of you even look there? Can't a priest be in a church? What is the matter with you people?"

Molina smiled. "Are you on the wagon, Father Rafe?"

He flashed her a look full of thunder that swiftly became a nervous throat clearing. "I hope so."

His glance crossed Matt's; they smiled, briefly brothers, no matter what.

Matt felt momentarily absolved. Absolved of the recent confidence he had borne so unwillingly, absolved of his ambiguous status: ex-priest. He never escaped the word and what it meant. Priest. There are no ex-priests, just as They say there are no ex-Catholics. The Force is always with you, Luke Skywalker, even when you walk--run--away. So are They. So Father Hernandez was not guilty of Blandina Tyler's death at least. Who was?

Molina finally took mercy on them and ended the suspense.

"The person who killed Miss Tyler was apprehended last night, Father Hernandez. Yes, sit down; you'll need to.

We have in custody Peter Burns, church attorney. I understand your shock. I've shared a pew with him at Our Lady of Guadalupe more than once myself."

Gasps greeted this announcement.

"He has been a member of the parish for . . . over ten years," Father Hernandez objected even as he sank down obediently on an empty chair. "He has volunteered his services in the church's behalf. There must be a mistake--"

"Indeed," said Lieutenant Molina. "The matter of Blandina Tyler's will is foremost among these 'mistakes.' We have found, after searching the Tyler house, which, thanks to

Miss Barr did not burn down"--Temple nearly fainted at this fulsome praise--"seventeen wills dated at various times.

That's why Burns continued to haunt the house, as it were, after Miss Tyler's death; he knew she stockpiled everything, and other wills might surface to cloud the legitimacy of his quite illegitimate will. That's why he finally decided to burn the house down. Now we have the wills he feared. The will Mr. Burns presented to Father Hernandez as the latest is clearly a forgery based on the previous wills and no doubt commissioned by Miss Tyler, but altered in its terms, particularly as to the disinheriting of the cats. Mr. Burns had a vendetta against cats, among other things."

"Then he shaved my Minuet!" Peggy Wilhelm said. "But why? I was miles away from my aunt's house, at the Cashman Center."

"Maybe--" Temple, thinking hard, hit bingo "--that was the idea."

"Not bad," Lieutenant Molina noted. "With her show cat attacked, Miss Wilhelm would spend the weekend at the Cashman Center guarding against further mischief, rather than visiting her aunt's house twice a day to help out with the cats."

They all mulled that over.

"He wanted Miss Tyler alone for the weekend?" Temple asked.

Despite her protests that Lieutenant Molina intimidated her, Matt noticed that Temple was the only one willing to speculate in the face of what Molina might know. Matt wondered if that was because she was the one with the least to hide.

"Miss Tyler and her cats." Lieutenant Molina savored those factors. "He did not count on his action at the cat show ensuring that the terminally curious Miss Barr would be sent to the house to feed the cats instead, or that Sister Seraphina--disturbed by the accelerating obscene phone calls to Sister Mary Monica, and finding Father Hernandez. . . removed from parish affairs--would call on her ex-student Matt Devine for aid. Instead of getting rid of one inconvenient niece, Burns ensured the presence of two peripherally involved strangers." Lieutenant Molina regarded Matt and Temple in turn. "I have always found peripherally

involved strangers to be a pain in the neck. I believe that Mr. Burns is now of the same opinion. Shaving the Burmese cat was his first mistake, although he was not detected at the time."

"Birman," Temple put in scrupulously. "The cat was a Birman."

Peggy Wilhelm, in a sort of daze, gratefully nodded her curly head. "They were sacred temple cats in Burma hundreds of years ago. Most . . . prescient, intelligent animals, Birmans, and very sensitive."

"Burmese, Birman," Lieutenant Molina went on with a trace of annoyance. "The point was not the breed, but the threat. Some of you should have seen from the beginning the significance of the shaved pattern."

Everyone looked politely mystified.

"Down the back and around the middle," Matt heard himself saying. "A cross. Father Hernandez had commented on that."

"A cross." Lieutenant Molina beamed approval at Matt as if he were a prize pupil.

He felt himself flush at the attention--or perhaps at the approval--and dropped his eyes. This wasn't a classroom exercise. The harassment had turned a number of lives upside down, least of which, his. He didn't want good grades, he wanted an answer, the answer. He had always wanted the one, true answer that was never quite clear. Mea culpa, mea culpa, mea maxima culpa .

"Under interrogation, Mr. Burns proved to be somewhat obsessive about the topic of religion," Molina said. "Also about old ladies and cats. There's no doubt that he intended to crucify another animal. The black cat, Midnight Louie, would have been found nailed to the church door before Miss Tyler's funeral."

"Ahhh!" Temple clasped her fists to her chest and looked appalled. "Did he mean to imply satanism?"

"Possibly. Certainly he meant to abuse an animal. Was your cat on the Tyler premises for some reason, or did Mr. Burns take him from your apartment?"

Temple obviously had not considered this question. "I don't know. How would this guy even know I had a cat? He didn't know me from Adam Ant. No, Louie . . . Louie's just