Douglas, Nelson - Cat with an Emerald Eye

"Want some more coffee?"

When she nodded, he headed for the kitchen. She followed, sticking her feet into the oversize burgundy velour mukluks by the bed, which did nothing to enhance the caftan's sophistication. She was relieved to be out of the bedroom. Midnight Louie, in turn, fol-lowed her out like a feline chaperon.

Max was waiting for the microwave to ping , so she had a chance to compare his unguarded rear to Oscar Grant's. Not for Max the other man's styled, flowing shoulder-length locks. That's what they were: locks, not mere hair. Max's new long hair was sleeked into a ponytail that blended with his turtleneck to the point of disappearing. The black garb was the same gunfighter uniform, but the effect was less theatrical. Max was much taller, though as lean; his turtle-neck and slacks had the same silky ease that cried out "expensive designer togs," but Max's fabrics suffered no touch of sheen. He wore the more effacing matte black, as if he wished to make himself into the invisible sable background curtain on a theater stage.

Matt black. He wore Matt black, Temple found herself thinking. Ex-Father Matt-black.

Comparing Max Kinsella with a priest made her smile, then made her think again. Magicians onstage assumed a ceremonial, priestly role, didn't they, albeit of a priest from some exotic, alien culture? Say, some ancient Eastern culture. She wondered, out of the blue (or maybe out of the black) what it would be like to make love with a man who had long hair, and immediately censored her unconscious: yikes, she was thinking like one of those supposedly love-starved females who gawk at romance-novel cover hunks and stockpile their calendars!

The microwave oven ping 'd politely. Shortly after, Max turned with two hot mugs of coffee and a penetrating glance. "You don't look too spooked today, despite the ... death."

Temple took her mug before the handle got too hot for him to hold. She moved quickly into the living room to set it down on the sofa table.

"I'm not spooked. Maybe I'm jaded. But... Gandolph didn't die brutally. Just slipped away.

One of the other women swooned, so I wasn't surprised to see 'her' slumped over after the Houdini routine. It took everyone there a while to realize he was dead."

She sat on one end of the couch, Max coming toward her. Midnight Louie jumped up to stretch out full-length on mid-couch. Max paused, then sat on the opposite end.

"I'm not much for house pets."

"Louie is not a pet."

"What is he, then?"

"An old friend who wanders in and out. He had his haunts, excuse the expression, before I ever brought him home, and he likes to visit them."

"Not the haunted house, though?"

"I don't know. He could have shown up there before."

"Does he always follow you somehow?"

"No, sometimes he asks to ride along. Other times he's there before me."

"He 'asks' to ride along?"

She sipped and nodded. "Cats ask for things, just like dogs. Only they don't bark."

"That's an advantage," Max admitted. He leaned back into the sofa. "This would feel like Sunday morning if we had the funny papers."

Temple nodded, not trusting herself to deliver the next line and afraid what it might lead to.

Aw, heck, why not find out what it might lead to? They both admitted that they were still monogamous. The morality police had other crimes of the libido to pursue. ...

The doorbell rang. Max jumped up. Louie didn't.

Max was in the bedroom before Temple could say, "Three, four, open the door."

In that many seconds, she did, still carrying her mug.

Matt stood there.

Saved by the bell and Devine intervention, Temple thought with a rueful smile.

Chapter 19

Double-talk

"You look surprisingly chipper," Matt said, meaning it and trying not to stare at the gauzy grass-green robe that underlined Temple's rusty coloring. "After hearing Electra's harrowing version of your Halloween seance in the laundry room, I thought I'd better rush up to see if you required spiritual counseling."

I'm fine." Temple stepped back to admit him. "I'm just hung over from a reversed sleep pattern. Just got up. You know how that is."

"And Midnight Louie was there too?" Matt eyed the lounging cat with respect, but then, he always had.

"In the fur. He was the least of our apparitions."

Matt sat in the only spot on the sofa Louie left him, the corner opposite Temple. She regarded him a bit edgily, as if she saw a ghost of someone else sitting there.

"I was on my way to ConTact," he added, feeling a sudden need to justify his presence.

"Do you have time for coffee?" She lifted her own mug. Matt's glance fixed on the steaming, full mug on the coffee table right in front of his place.

"Oh!" Temple looked flustered. "I had my cup in the bedroom when you rang. I must have been so dopey I'd made another one, set it down out here and forgot about it. You like it? Its yours."

"Thanks."

He picked up the pottery handle. Still too hot to hold for long. Temple, he noticed, had quickly set down her own mug for the same reason, obviously. Why would an abandoned and forgotten extra mug still be so piping hot? Matt dismissed that line of thought. He was starting to think like a detective.

Or a jealous lover.

"Want to tell me about the seance?" he asked.

"Where to begin?"

She actually paused to gather her impressions, unlikely behavior in rush-ahead Temple. The green gown madly complemented her raucous red hair, an attractive collision of curls. Even without the light makeup she used, Temple would never give morning a bad name.

"You must be on my hours today," he remarked.

She nodded. "Without being used to them. But, back to the skullduggery at the Hell-o-ween Haunted Homestead."

"I still can't believe they named the place that."

"Indeed. In a nutshell, the woman next to me--who was really a man, but who, I'm told on good authority, was not normally a cross-dresser, or abnormally a cross-dresser--fainted after the last apparition. No one thought anything of it until we noticed her picture hat had slipped and he had a bald head."

Matt laughed at Temple's patented rat-a-tat delivery of the facts, which always sounded jumbled but also always added up to exactly what had happened. He could see why the methodical Carmen Molina had no patience with Temple's communication style.

"Still, death next door is traumatic," he said sympathetically.

"It was more traumatic to find out the motherly woman who'd been squeezing my hand all night was really a man."

"Why the disguise, if not for dysfunctional reasons?"

"Well, not everyone is sure transvestites are dysfunctional. Most are otherwise straight-arrow heterosexuals. I have found a hint, however. The dead man is ... was ... a retired stage magician named Gandolph."

Matt nodded.

"You don't find that name strange? Don't tell me you've read The Lord of the Rings! "

"Several times, why?"

"I haven't. Am I way out of the loop! Can you loan it to me?"

"Sure, in paperback. But it's really three books, three long books." I'm up for it. Anyway, the dead man was not named after that Gandalf, at least overtly. He spelled it G-a-n-d-o-l-p-h, as in Rudolph et cetera, and his hobby was exposing false mediums."

"Uh-oh. Then any false medium present would have motive to kill him."

"Don't you mean 'every false medium present'?"

"I'm trying to keep an open mind, but you keep slamming the door shut on me. So the night's special effects were disappointing."

"More like puzzling, I'd say. The fellow who turned up before we actually saw an image of Houdini was more interesting. At least he went though some ghostly metamorphoses."

"Such as?"