Carole Douglas - Cat in an Alphabet Soup

“Have you always lived alone here?” The disingenuous tone to Matt’s voice in no way could be mistaken for a flattering personal interest in her answer.

“No,” Temple said.

“I’m not used to living alone, either.”

Curiosity killed the cat, she reminded herself, too downcast to inquire further into that intriguing confession.

“That’s why I like Mrs. Lar—Electra’s place here,” Matt said. “It feels like a community... I don’t know—like a campus dorm or something.”

Temple nodded. “Electra has a way of making her tenants feel at home, just like she makes the soft-sculpture people in her pews seem almost real. She even names them and accessorizes them down to their pinkie rings with estate-sale finds.”

“If only all congregations were so attentive.” Matt smiled wryly. “Just what are Electra’s ministerial credentials?”

“Frankly? The Church of Barely Respectable Mumbo-Jumbo. Some mail-order ministry that believes in assorted paranormal phenomena. Las Vegas boasts twenty-five wedding chapels, and half of the officiators are women, but they’re all nondenominational. Luckily, you don’t need establishment credentials to marry people in Las Vegas, just a state license.”

Matt shook his head and sipped lemonade.

“Churches can be... funny things,” Temple found herself musing out of the blue—out of her prolonged blue mood, rather. “Religion can be dangerous.”

Matt kept a blandly neutral face. “What do you mean?”

“Oh, I heard something awful today from one of the ABA authors. This very out-of-it middle-aged lady writes novels about murderous nurses—medical horror, they call it. Anyway, she just told me her mother died from a botched illegal abortion back in the fifties.”

Matt winced. “Ugly. But it happened.”

“The fallout is that the people who reared Mavis—she was only a little kid—were Catholic, so Mavis feels she must morally condemn her own mother, who was probably just a terrified twenty-something with her hands full already. No wonder her novels depict berserk nurses—women who should nurture but who kill instead—even babies. We sit here smiling at tacky Las Vegas ministers, but so-called ‘respectable’ religion can be a lot more lethal, if you ask me. And if Mavis’s mother hadn’t been so ashamed of being pregnant, maybe she wouldn’t have tried an illegal abortion.”

Matt nodded soberly. “I take it you’re not Catholic?”

“Me? I’m not even a good atheist. Whatever you believe about abortion, that’s... politics. What’s really sad is to see a grown woman who believes that her mother was a monster rather than a victim. And now Mavis is another victim, but she doesn’t see it, probably because she has such low self-esteem as the daughter of a “bad” woman.”

“How is Mavis a victim?”

“That murdered editor at the convention center was the Rasputin type. He convinced his authors that their writing success depended on him. Mavis was his biggest patsy from what I can tell. He exploited her shamelessly; even now that he’s dead, she’s so sure that she needs him that she may never write again!”

“That’s not religion gone wrong,” Matt said. “That’s ego.”

“But the shame Mavis was made to feel for how her mother died makes her a perfect victim for everyday, secular exploitation. Do you see what I’m saying? Chester Royal manipulated her like Silly Putty. And if Mavis ever really saw how she’s been used—all her life—well, that’s when people get murdered, isn’t it? When someone near them sees for the first time what’s really been going on.”

“Most victims don’t turn victimizer,” Matt argued. “They strike out at themselves, if anybody.”

“Somebody struck out at Chester Royal with a number five knitting needle.”

“And you think it could be this Mavis—?”

“Davis,” Temple put in glumly.

Matt looked confused.

“Mavis Davis. That’s her name.” Matt was right. Temple did think that Mavis was capable of killing Chester Royal, and a knitting needle was the kind of flaky, genteel weapon a genteelly flaky person like Mavis would use. “And this Big-Girl-Lost routine of hers could be an act.”

“Whoa—if you’re going to play detective, you can’t get depressed every time you discover that someone is a good candidate for the role of killer.”

“I was trying to play detective,” Temple admitted, “and I’m too involved for it. One last reprise. You make a good shrink. Are you?”

He laughed hard enough to break Temple’s gloomy mood.

“I mean it,” she prodded. “I’ll bet you majored in psychology in college, right?”

Matt’s laughing face smoothed to neutrality. Temple felt like she’d stepped off the edge of a pool and only then noticed there was no water in it.

“More like sociology,” he said cautiously.

“Close.” Temple knew she’d been prying again. “Sorry. PR people are naturally curious.”

“Like cats.”

“Yeah.” She scraped a high heel across the hot cracked concrete rimming the pool. Louie was another reason for her flagging spirits. Matt’s toffee-brown eyes were watching her, warily. Temple wondered if he’d resurrected the subject of Louie’s loss to distract her from himself—from talk of college majors. Could that be? Maybe he hadn’t gone to college and was sensitive. Time to leash her curiosity and back off before Matt got spooked.

“What exactly do you do at your job?” she heard her irrepressible public self ask, even as her sensible private self urged restraint.

Matt produced a rueful smile that Temple liked very much. “I’m a telephone hot-line counselor.”

“Aha! Shrink!”

“Not really. I’m not... degreed.”

“But you’re a great listener. Sorry I was religion-bashing. You must’ve had some church exposure in your wild-and-woolly formative years, as the sociologists say,” Temple speculated. “You play a mean organ. That was a wonderful wedding march you did for Electra. I peeked in. What was it?”

His smile tiptoed around a mouthful of tart lemonade. “It’s not a march, and it’s not normally played at weddings.”

“But it was perfect! Slow and dignified and tender. I’d love to get it on CD.”

The smile had expanded into a grin. “Ask for Bob Dylan at the audio store.”

“Old Gravel-larynx? You’re kidding!”

“Swear to God. It was ‘Love Minus Zero—No Limit.’ Listen to it. Even the lyrics are hymeneal.”

“Huh?”

“An old Greek word for ‘marital.’ ”

“Oh, as in the Greek god of marriage.” Temple felt a flush coming on as she connected the god Hymen with the adjective made from his name and certain gynecological terminology also derived therefrom.

“Were you a classics major?” Matt was asking innocently, as if his mind had eluded the natural but racier connotations.

At least he was interested. “Communications. I did some TV reporting, then ended up in public relations at a repertory theater company in Minneapolis. You tend to learn Greek gods’ names when the director favors five-hour revivals of Aeschylus. Generally in the form of ancient curses. But that melody is really Bob Dylan’s?”

“Really.” Matt pressed his hand to his heart.

Temple eyed the Devine physique. Talk about Greek gods.... Great-looking, good-counseling Matt. Honestly, this guy was too good to be true. Well, Max had seemed pretty spectacular at first. The trouble was that Max had seemed pretty spectacular at last, too. Damn Max. Damn runaway cats. Damn hope springing eternal....

“Thanks for the lemonade,” Temple said, standing. “I better see what that half-full open can of tuna is doing to my refrigerator.”

“Electra probably wouldn’t have wanted to set a precedent with pets, anyway.”