Carole Douglas - Cat in an Alphabet Soup

The cat thumped down from the countertop.

“You’re trouble,” she told him in mock disgust. “Not only are your whereabouts usually unknown, when you are visible, you muck up everything in sight. Think you can manage to spend a quiet night at home for a change?”

Louie accompanied Temple to the front door, where she noticed a brassy new chain lock and spent two minutes trying to make the end piece slide into the groove. Then she gave up and stumbled to the bedroom.

She slept like a kitten, waking briefly now and then to make sure she was warm and limp and somewhere safe. She sensed Midnight Louie as a lump at her feet, then at her side, then gone, then back again.

She started up once—thought she saw a man standing in the filtered night light of her bedroom. Her heart pounded as her mind juxtaposed two unrelated but wrenching events. He might be a still-stalking murderer... or the ghost of Max Kinsella. The lighter blurs that were her windows absorbed the illusion. She slept even harder after that.

She awoke again, unsure whether it was late or early. Notions and images floated in her mind, multicolored motes in a golden eye, darting away just as they became detectable. An alphabet soup of words, type, letters, and even sounds, images made a revolving ABA exhibition in her head; through it all threaded a stethoscope and a knitting needle. Butterflies of the brain. And ladybugs. Ladybug, Ladybug . The lady is bugged and Pennyroyal presses grapes... bee’s knees and Kankakee and number five knitting needles and Tweedledee and Tweedledum, two of a kind and who’s behind?—Temple netted a few, then a few more butterflies from the brainstorm swirling around her, then some more... and then she knew.

Temple switched on the bedside lamp. Louie stared accusingly from the foot of her bed, his emerald-green eyes bisected by black vertical slits. Temple blinked at the sudden brightness as she paged through the phone book, dialed the number, told the man who answered what she wanted.

It took a long time, but C. R. Molina was finally on the line, sounding as if she were speaking from Alpha Centauri.

“It’s Temple Barr.”

“Do you know what time it is? I sleep, too.”

“No, but it doesn’t matter. You said you wanted to know—immediately. I know what I know now.”

“You know what you know....”

“Louie told me. He’s back and he’s okay. Boy, is he okay. Come to the memorial service for Chester Royal at the Lover’s Knot Wedding Chapel at ten a.m. tomorrow, and I’ll show you.”

"You mean today, damn it.”

“Okay; today, damn it. Just come.” Then Temple told the homicide lieutenant exactly what she wanted her to bring, besides a few policemen.

E lectra had outdoneherself.

The chapel’s latticework nuptial archway peeked through a cloud of somber crepe. The soft-sculpture people filling the back pews had been attired in tasteful touches of black—arm bands on the gentlemen; veils or hats on the ladies.

Massed sprays of gladioli and other fleshy blooms, courtesy of Sam’s Funeral Home, looked fresh from last night’s wake and broadcast a torpid, mournful odor.

Temple wore a black linen suit and her Beverly Feldman black leather spikes with furtive touches of jet. An onyx choker circled her neck to hide the beginnings of a bruise. She felt a bit like a heavy metal songstress, albeit tired to her toes.

On the other side of the chapel doors stood Lorna Fennick, a brown dress underlining her muddy coloring. Lorna’s face had thinned and tautened since Temple had first met the PR woman. Only her eyes moved when she nervously studied the assembled soft-sculpture forms, as if expecting them to do something inappropriate.

She came to sudden life, however, when Reynolds-Chapter-Deuce executive Raymond Avenour entered with an unknown woman on his arm. Lorna escorted them to the front with painful deference. They didn’t even acknowledge the forever-silent fellow mourners, as if used to captive audiences.

Temple observed the scene with an odd detachment. Mavis Davis arrived, her permed fleece of hair covered by a skimpy black lace mantilla, her eyes anxious above half-moons of dark maroon. The woman’s glance darted around the chapel and finally spotted the posed mute figures, finding nothing to linger upon even in their harmless if slightly loony presence.

Rowena Novak came in accompanied by Earnest Jaspar—that combination startled Temple. But then Rowena had been Chester Royal’s wife. Likely she’d met the friend that had outlasted all of Chester’s wives. Perhaps the reason for that longevity could be found in the shameful secrets of the Gilhooley trial. Guilt cements strange fellowships.

At ten minutes to ten, Matt Devine materialized from the breezeway to the Circle Ritz. He had procured a black suit somewhere and took his place at the organ with a properly subdued air. He looked gorgeous in black.

Temple was still contemplating Matt’s unexpected participation when Lanyard Hunter arrived, his patrician voice preceding him as Lorna went to meet him.

“A wedding chapel! Ironic—like holding Chester’s memorial service in a neighborhood bar he’d been kicked out of repeatedly.”

Hunter’s silver pompadour brushed the crepe swagging the top of the arch as he stepped under it and drew Lorna’s arm through his. She led him to the front.

The next arrival surprised Temple. Claudia Esterbrook, licking her lips nervously, wearing a blatant red suit and her usual mask of impatience. She nodded to those already assembled and sat sullenly, as though obligated to be here. Temple wondered why.

Owen Tharp came last. He briskly waved away the solicitous Lorna, nodded to Temple—the only one who did—then strode halfway down the short aisle. He deliberately sat next to one of Electra’s mute congregation, a well-stuffed matron whose wide-brimmed hat today trailed black satin roses and midnight veiling with bridal panache.

Temple consulted her watch. The little hand was on ten and the big hand was edging toward twelve. Where was Lieutenant Molina? Temple caught Electra’s eye at the front of the house... er, chapel. This was not a theater, after all, and Temple was no longer doing PR for the Guthrie. That didn’t mean she couldn’t stage-manage a bit. So she eyed Electra and tapped her wristwatch with a forefinger.

Stall , the gesture said, you know how .

Electra knew—not what was going to happen, but that something more than a memorial service and a morose scent was in the air. Still, she had all the relevant press releases stacked on her lectern and was prepared to ruminate long and loudly on Chester Royal’s life and death as well as the nature of things physical and spiritual.

Totally unexpected, the last guest ambled through the ever-open breezeway door... Midnight Louie, his coat freshly groomed to its fullest, most funereal glory, his white whiskers spanking clean after a morning repast of shrimp.

But where was Molina?

The long hand ticked the twelve and there was no postponing the moment of truth and consequences.

Electra nodded solemnly to Matt, who coaxed a series of doleful sounds from the Lowrey’s liquid throat. Louie deserted the vicinity of the organ for Temple’s ankles. Temple didn’t recognize the melody, probably some Michael Jackson ditty played at thirty-three-and-a-third speed, but it was ripe with ponderous chords.

She swallowed a smile. From the back of the house—the chapel, that is—the dummies’ showy black was reminiscent of a mob funeral.

The chapel had never held so many living spectators. Las Vegas weddings were famed for their lack of encumbrances—waiting periods, blood tests, expensive attendants and witnesses who might not forever hold their peace. The ceiling fans spun with syrupy laissez-faire. The room was warming up with the crowd and the day, or maybe Temple was just nervous about what she was about to do.