Carole douglas: Cat in an Indigo Mood

"I suppose you believe everything that bleached blond has told you."

"Her coloring is perfectly natural."

"Yeah. sure!" Louise jeers. "If you call people selling your parents into enforced breeding

'natural.' Okay. I bet you believe everything that albino babe has told you."

"It seems pretty cut and dried. Her boyfriend is missing and his house is deserted. Certainly the case is worthy of investigation; he may have been left behind in an empty house. He may be starving to death even as we speak."

"You hope! I have seen you eyeing Miss Furbelow's furbelows.

And why are you so anxious to take anybody's 'case'? I thought you were retired."

"Nonsense. l was simply assisting Miss Temple Barr with her cases."

"Which are mostly under the covers now, l understand." Miss Midnight Louise notes with a leer.

For one whose romantic life has been surgically truncated she certainly feels empowered to comment on the habits of those not so restricted. I tell her so.

"You are just burned up," she sniffs, "because your precious roommate is rooming with a dude of her own species instead of you."

"How do you know this?"

"You are out of touch, Pare Louis. I am the one with my nose and ears to the ground nowadays. Which is why you will need me it you intend to actually investigate this missing purrson report."

"I see no need to involve you--"

"Do not worry. I will not interfere with your so-called romantic life. Though I doubt this dolly is about to take up with an out-of-practice gumshoe when the love of her life is missing, if you believe her story, that is."

Our discussion is interrupted by a plaintive "Mister Midnight?" from my distraught client.

I return to her side. "It is nothing, dear lady. Just a consultation with my gal Friday about office protocol," I whisper in her ear.

"Clerical workers take so much direction these days."

"I know," she says mournfully. "It is so hard to get good help."

"I will need your address."

"Nothing more?" Her limpid blue... gold... eyes... eye gaze into mine.

"Ah, a retainer fee will not be necessary. You are obviously good for it." I decide to stop while I am ahead, and while Midnight Louise is still out of hearing range. "Now, there is nothing to worry about. Midnight Louie is on the case."

A soft rake along my spine spurs me to add, "And Miss Louise will assist. Do not expect to hear from . . . er, us, for a day or two while we investigate."

"But Wilfrid--"

"He will be fine. I suspect his irresponsible employer has taken an unscheduled trip and neglected to inform her neighbors of the event. People can be so thoughtless. No doubt she never thought of you keeping vigil in your window."

"That is what I do now. I am a window widow."

"Tut-tut. No tears." I escort her out with an avuncular lick on the ear.

"Tears!" Louise is waiting by the canna lilies when I return.

"More like eye-stain! Those white hussies are prone to running mascara."

"It is possible there is something in it."

"It is always possible that there is villainy afoot," she concedes, "but you are too quick to believe every sob-sister with a sad story."

"Someone has to."

Chapter 6

Radio Magic

Matt managed to wait until almost noon to call Temple the next day.

"And aren't you up bright and early for a night owl!" She greeted him cheerfully enough, but sounded a bit groggier than an early-bird robin should at high noon.

"I wanted to catch you before you went out, in case you have something scheduled this afternoon?" His explanation had turned into a question.

His careful reluctance to assume nothing about her schedule, to pre-deny all interest in its specifics, warred with an overriding compulsion to know what she was doing, with whom, every moment. Matt wasn't used to being bounced between the wildly conflicting extremes of rationality and romance. He realized that he'd best serve himself by appearing calmly normal when he was the opposite. Did everyone go through this charade?

"I'm not going out for a while," Temple said. "What's up?"

"Um, I've got this . . . letter from my mother that's rather interesting. About my real father.

And l could use your tape machine. I've got a tape I should hear."

"Oooh, news from the Chicago past? Come on down!"

Matt's relief exited on a sigh as he hung up. He'd been right to use the mystery of his parenthood as the primary lure. Temple couldn't resist speculating any more than she could resist dispensing advice. He certainly knew her, if he didn't quite recognize himself these days.

He picked up the tape and the letters from the table, keys to contact with Temple. He'd known her for almost a year now, and he'd known for most of that year that he found her attractive.

He hadn't known that he was in love with her until just after New Year's, only days after she'd resumed her interrupted relationship with Max Kinsella, "the mystifying Max." The magician's stage name was a remnant of the past now, but it lingered like a haunting refrain, which was probably a line he had heard in one of Carmen Molina's vintage torch songs.

At least Kinsella hadn't moved back into Temple's place at the Circle Ritz; there would be no way for Matt to slate his thirst for Temple's company if he had.

He hurried downstairs to her floor; no telling how much time they had. In the short hallway outside her door, he paused. He put his palm on the coffered mahogany, sensed her presence inside like an actor preparing for his first entrance onstage.

Then he knocked.

The door opened almost instantly, and yes, Temple looked the same: loose red curls too adult for Shirley Temple, a petite cyclone of energy and warmth with very honest eyes at the center of that engaging storm.

She was in her usual rush to do three things at once: finish getting ready to go out, deal with him, and feed the newly arrived Midnight Louie his umpteenth snack of the day.

"Here." She handed him a tin of smoked oysters. "Spoon this over Louie's Free-To-Be-Feline.

There's coffee in the carafe. I'll sit down with my mug and check out your letter, if that's okay."

"Sure," Matt found himself lying.

He'd hoped for a quiet tete-a-tete, not being drafted into dishing a noxious dollop of seafood over the cat's dry health-food pellets.

Louie, a massive black cat hunched over the shallow glass bowl, eyed Matt soulfully.

"Short shrift. I agree with you, my lad. And a little bribe on top doesn't do much to make up for it."

"Wow!" Temple, reading, was commenting from the living room.

Matt poured himself a mug of black coffee and followed his letters in there.

"Your mother has undergone a huge change of attitude. Now she wants you to look into your real father's background?"

"And now I don't want to do it." Matt sat on the side chair at right angles to Temple.

Temple was always to he found either in full career gear or out of it. Now her bare feet were tucked under her. She wore a loose aqua knit top over closefitting tights or leggings or something.

Her red hair was comfortably tousled and she looked about fifteen years old.

She hardly seemed like a woman he couldn't get out of his mind, night and day. Day and night.

Then she glanced up at him, and the clarity, perception, and humor in her Civil War eyes--

Confederate gray sometimes, and sometimes Union blue--nailed him to his chair.

"First she didn't and you did; now she does and you don't. I told you; life is all timing. Or the lack of it."

She could have been describing their own ill-timed relationship, except with them it was first she did and he didn't and now he would and she couldn't.

If none of it made much sense, he was beginning to discover that this was more often the case than not in the real world.