Douglas, Nelson - Cat with an Emerald Eye

"I'm sorry, dear." Electra followed her into the elevator compartment. I've been frantic since Agatha called. She's known for accuracy, and this 'dark, dangerous man' prediction is disturbing."

"Electra, all predictions are disturbing, or else why bother predicting anything?"

"Maybe." Electra watched the brass hand above the door jerk toward the number 2.

"Perhaps I'm skittish because of the new seance tonight."

"What new seance?"

"It's Professor Mangel's idea. All the mediums are meeting again in the haunted house. This time they're going to concentrate on raising the ghost of Gandolph the Great."

"Great." Temple leaned against the elevator's varnished mahogany walls.

"Can you come? Professor Mangel says everything must be as it was before."

"Oh, I can come, if I get my beauty sleep between now and then. Otherwise I'd be mistaken for a ravaged revenant. Note that I said 'ravaged' not 'ravished' Electra. But has Professor Mangel considered that re-creating the circumstances of the first seance could set the scene for another death?"

"Another death? Why?"

The elevator door slid open. Temple managed to pause dramatically on the threshold before anything snapped shut on her.

"Because no one knows the reason for the first one yet."

Electra disappeared as the elevator door closed, her face slack with shocked contemplation.

Temple trudged down the hall, feeling the effects of a night lost in computer contemplation.

Or maybe just the effects of a night lost. She yawned as she headed down her entry cul-de-sac, which was dusk-dim in the wan light from the door side sconce.

Matt Devine looked pretty wan too, sitting in the corner under that tepid night-light, his legs folded like a yogi's.

Temple almost dropped her forty-pound tote bag when she saw him. Darn, if she would have thought of it, she could have waved her sixteen tons of printout at Electra to prove her night out had been spent in virtuous academic toil.

"Matt--?"

His limbs unfolded as he jumped up at her approach.

"Matt, what are you doing here?"

"Waiting, obviously. Electra called me at four this morning."

"Why?"

He hesitated. "She wondered if you were at my place."

"Electra--!"

"Don't get mad at her. By the time she called me she was frantic." Matt rubbed the back of his neck. "Apparently our dear landlady takes this fortune-telling stuff seriously. She was sure you had fallen into the hands of this dark, dangerous man."

"Dark, dangerous short man," Temple corrected, more for Matt's sake than Electra's. "It's a good thing she overlooked that last adjective, or the police would have been rousting Crawford Buchanan out of bed, instead of her bothering you. Have you been waiting here since four?"

"Once we discovered that you were still out, she was in an even bigger tizzy, so I promised to wait here and let her know as soon as you showed up." He checked his wristwatch. "Seven-forty. I'd better tell her."

Temple put a hand up to stop him. "Don't bother. She descended on me in the lobby. She must have been watching from her balcony for my car to arrive, so a lot of good you did playing night watch-man on my doorstep. You better come in for some decaffeinated coffee. I know I need some."

He reached to take her tote bag.

"Thanks, but watch out," she warned.

"What have you got in here, a dead body?"

"Just Louie. And just kidding. Research. I found a source with access to all the computer files on Gandolph the Great's unpublished book."

"That's the guy who died, right?"

"Right." Temple threatened the aging tumbler with her key until it rolled over and played open. "Now my own lock doesn't recognize my facile touch. I guess I've been up a while too long. Just set the tote on the kitchen floor by the wall, will you, please? I've skimmed the stuff and don't want to see it again until I've had a nap and can focus."

Matt followed instructions while Temple tottered into the kitchen and dragged a couple mugs down from a cupboard. The decaffeinated coffee was in retreat in a lower cupboard, pushed way to the back behind every instant product her shelves possessed. While she was digging her way back, hoping to encounter no survivors from her insect version of the Bates Motel, something fell from an upper cupboard. An ungodly loud thump on the counter-top was followed by something big flashing past her to land on the floor like a sack of solid-lead potatoes.

Temple shrieked a little, her nerves being somewhat ragged from lack of sleep and for other reasons also often related to lack of sleep but far more interesting.

Matt was right there like a lifeguard, but not fast enough for Midnight Louie, who stretched his forelegs up the open cupboard door, his weight shutting it on Temple barely before she could whisk her fingers out of the way.

"Merooowwwl." Louie gave the demanding plaint she knew well.

"He must want to know where you've been all night too," Matt commented, not entirely in jest.

Temple sighed. Vary from routine one teeny, tiny bit and everyone you knew was an interrogator.

"You obviously don't know cats," she answered Matt. "He wants to know where I've been, all right, but only because he didn't get his dinner."

"There's plenty of green pellets in this bowl here."

"That's not dinner, that's... bowl-dressing. Do you mind?" Her last comment was addressed to Midnight Louie as she opened the cupboard again to pull out a couple of small, low cans.

She glanced up at Matt, hoping she looked appealing at this hour of the morning, begging on jackknifed knees that were about to simply snap from this permanent squat position.

"Do you mind," she asked a lot more nicely, "opening these cans and smearing the contents over all those green pellets for Louie?"

"Nope." He vanished, Louie on his heels like a bloodhound. "Pretty pungent stuff," Matt noted shortly after the "pop" of lids. "And he gets both cans? Okay, Louie, get ready to chow down."

Temple got what felt like the right jar by the throat and pulled it into the light of day.

Creaking in the knees, she dragged herself up in time to watch Louie make his morning obeisance to his bowl of Free-to-be-Feline. Usually the level of F-t-b-F didn't Recline much, but the gravy atop it did.

"Smoked oysters? Baby shrimp in clam sauce?" Matt sounded unsure. "Isn't that a bit rich for him?"

"Oh, probably. But I can't get him to eat anything else. I've tried everything."

"Let him wait until he's hungry enough."

"If he's hungry enough, he just won't come home, but he will move on down the line to the nearest Dumpster, and the menu in there will be even worse for him."

"Maybe he shouldn't be out on the streets."

"No, none of us should, but Louie's a street cat, and if I pen him up hell go nuts. Freedom is vital to some of us."

Matt shook his head but didn't comment; freedom had never been much of a factor in his life.

Temple had finally wrenched open the Postum jar (purchased a year ago when she had prematurely decided to quit drinking coffee for a day) and now had rooted a table knife from a drawer to repeatedly stab the rock-hard, granular mess the contents had become.

"Let me," Matt suggested, taking the jar, closing it and shaking loose the dried powder by rapping the bottom hard on the countertop.

Temple nearly jumped out of her skin.

He eyed her curiously. "Go sit down. I'll fix this."

"But you've been sitting up all night. I'm so sorry, Matt; Electra shouldn't have involved you."

"I actually got some sleep. I'm used to crises. I haven't been sleeping that well the last couple nights anyway."

Temple was afraid to inquire into the cause, so wordlessly foot-dragged her way past the oyster-gobbling Louie into the living room. There she fell onto the sofa, kicked off her high heels and tucked her feet under her rear.