Douglas Nelson - Cat On A Blue Monday

"She's nearly deaf," Sister Seraphina pointed out.

That seemed to shock him, the notion that someone he had persecuted was unreachable because of a physical failing. While his face was slack and surprised, Molina pounced.

"Why were the canes such a trigger? You hated Blandina's, even broke it after her death. And you called the only nun in the convent who used a cane."

"Canes." His face hardened with an old, hurtful memory. "There was a grandmother in my adopted family. She used to jab her rotten cane at me, easier than saying my name. 'You, there.' And they used to hit me with it when I'd been bad. I was bad a lot--but I made something of myself anyway. Good grades in school, law school on my own; I even had to fix my rotten teeth myself. I may look good, but I'm still bad, only now other people are paying for it."

"No." Sister Seraphina shook her head. "You're paying for it, only you don't see it."

"What about--" Temple had been thinking again"--what about the hissing phone calls to Peggy and Miss Tyler? I thought he did it, because I realized he had the right equipment. Did he?"

Molina's melancholy face lit up like a contestant's on a game show. "That was ingenious. Yes, Mr. Burns made those calls, and here's how." She pulled a manila envelope across the desk. "We had to confiscate this; prisoners are allowed very little in the county jail; anything might be turned into a weapon."

Molina pulled a piece of pale, translucent plastic from the envelope and exhibited it on the palm of her hand like a shell. A thin silver wire glinted at its front.

"He had braces," Temple remembered, "and I realized they would make it easier to whistle when he talked, if he wasn't careful."

"You only met him--?"

"A couple of times," Temple said.

"Very observant, Watson." Molina's smile was almost mischievous. "But not braces. What you saw was the front portion of a dental appliance used to keep teeth that have had braces in line after the procedure." She eyed the sculpted hump of plastic shell sitting on her hand. "It's familiarly known as a 'turtle' because it's made from a mold of the wearer's upper palate, which is shell-shaped. If Mr. Burns let his turtle slip slightly out of position and spoke, he produced strange whistling, hissing sounds. A perfect way to disguise a voice. I know about turtles because

I have a preteen daughter who may soon require such costly objects."

Molina returned her exhibit to the envelope. "Anything else you wish to say, Mr. Burns?"

"Your murder case is built on a shell of circumstantial evidence, Lieutenant." He relished his own taunts. "The prosecutor will have a cat when he finds the evidence so thin. Who is to say she didn't fall, even if I was on the premises that night? Only God, and He isn't talking. I plan to defend myself, and I will blow your case to smithereens!"

"Maybe." Molina nodded to the officer, who assisted Burns to his feet. "But the prosecutor is used to winning her cases."

As the handcuffed man left, Peggy Wilhelm spoke with some wonder. "He's an angry stranger. I don't know him. What happened all those years ago hurt me, and him, but separately. Sometimes I'm angry about it, but not that angry."

"You need to heal," Sister Seraphina urged. "What was done to you was wrong, but it was done by people who meant to do the best they could, according to their lights.

You need to resolve the fact that good people can do terrible things to those they purport to love."

"You need to go to group," Temple said briskly. "I do, too. We can go to group together."

Peggy blinked at Temple. "What do you need to go to group for?"

"Oh, this and that." She leaned forward with mock confixdentiality. "You'd be surprised who in this room needs to go to group."

Peggy bit. "Who?"

"Everybody," Temple pronounced triumphantly, and had the last, and only uncontested, word of the afternoon.

After leaving police headquarters, they all returned, by unspoken agreement and in separate cars, to Our Lady of Guadalupe.

They disembarked together in front of the convent and stared at Blandina Tyler's house, seeing it for the prison it had been almost forty years ago for a frightened, confused young girl. In a sense, the happenings at the house had kept several people prisoner for much too long.

"I wonder if Sister Rose has any more bishop's tea?" Sister Seraphina inquired.

"Regular tea will do fine," Father Hernandez said sternly. "There are no bishops in this parish."

Peggy Wilhelm hardly heard them. She regarded the house as if hypnotized. "Aunt Blandina remembered me in that old will. Do you think she was sorry?"

"I'm sure of it," Sister Seraphina reassured her with a quick hug. "Why don't I go see to that tea and you can all come in and have some."

"Better yet--" Temple nourished a key from the morass in her tote bag "--I still have a key to the house. I wouldn't give you two centivas for Lieutenant Molina and crew's search tactics. What say we hunt through the house for the latest version of the will?"

"I'll go," Peggy said quickly. "I want to check on the cats anyway."

Matt smiled to watch Temple entice Peggy into a treasure hunt for her own past. She was a pied piper of sorts, Temple, luring people from their heartsick ruts into a brave new world of her own imaginative construction. Who said Max Kinsella was the only magician around?

Sister Seraphina headed for the convent kitchen, where she would no doubt keep a sharp eye on Sister Rose's tea preparations.

That left himself and Father Hernandez standing together on the sidewalk, basking in the hot, healing sun, feeling freeof a terrible revelation. Almost.

"I would guess," Matt said slowly, "that Peter Burns was the author of those threatening letters."

"That's likely, but you can't trust Lieutenant Molina," Father Hernandez said abruptly. "She could have found some evidence among Burns' things."

"Would she quash an investigation?"

"No."

"Then he covered his tracks. You're safe."

"A priest is never safe."

"Unless you are guilty of the crimes accused."

Father Hernandez's black, Spanish-olive eyes met Matt's cautious glance head-on, sharp and salty. "I swear to God, no."

Matt looked away. "I swore to God once."

"You did not swear; you promised church authorities to abide by certain behaviors--poverty, chastity and obedience. If the church finds the circumstances under which you made these promises questionable, who am I to feel superior because I have so far managed to honor them? The older I get, the less prone I am to judge, even Peter Burns. For all the ill he's done, he was a victim of an unforgiving time."

The sun was already swelling and heading for the western horizon. It baked down upon the church tower, turning it into a blazing white finger pointing at heaven. It painted false fire on the red-tile roof of Blandina Tyler's house. Matt squinted against the late-afternoon glare.

"If you are deceiving yourself, Father," he said carefully, "if you are a victim of denial so deep that it disguises itself as innocence even to you, I am carrying a terrible burden and taking a worse risk."

Father Hernandez nodded. "I can only swear by all I believe in that I am not the man those letters accused."

"It's not only your problem now."

"You're a good priest, Matthias." Father Hernandez put his hand on Matt's shoulder. "I will not let you down."

Chapter 38

Slow Dance on the Hands of Time

"I owe you dinner," Matt said over the phone.

"For what?" Temple returned quickly, pooh-poohing any sense of obligation.

"For the chauffeur service to Our Lady of Guadalupe, for the risk to life and limb."

"You already taught me how to preserve life and limb pretty well. I owe you dinner."