Carole Douglas - Cat in an Alphabet Soup

Even as he spoke the police were converging on him. He offered no resistance, and stood to be handcuffed. In a moment an officer was mumbling the ritual Miranda warning, a grimmer sort of rite for the Lover’s Knot Wedding Chapel.

“Chester ended up with quite a lively wake. I wouldn’t have missed it for the world.” Claudia Esterbrook rose to smooth the wrinkles in her scarlet skirt. “I assume the rest of us can go now?”

Molina nodded. Temple watched people stand, looking lost and a bit ashamed. Not Claudia. She swaggered up the aisle ahead of Avenour and his still-anonymous lady friend, and Earnest Jaspar. No one else left, and no one met Owen Tharp’s eyes except Temple.

“Even though you tried to kill me, I... regretted giving you away.”

Tharp shook his head bitterly. “After Royal, I really didn’t have it in me to kill again. It was reflex; a murderer is supposed to care about his own skin, his freedom. I found out I don’t.” He turned on Lanyard Hunter. “But I do care about my writing. And if you lay one incompetent finger on my story, I’ll sue the pseudonym right off you!”

“You should have time to write now,” Rowena Novak noted thoughtfully. “I’d be happy to be interviewed for your book.”

“That did it?” Lorna Fennick asked Temple in some awe. “You figured out that his pseudonym was the key?”

“Every creative person wants to make his or her work known in some unique way,” Temple said. “ ‘Gilhooley’ had never been a good candidate for a book cover—too long, too vaudevillian, too bitter to Owen Gilhooley. So he used Michaels. He was Michael’s son, wasn’t he? And he used the more recognizable Welsh version of his baptismal name as a last name; and then as a first name. Tharp contains the word ‘harp’—a metaphor for the Irish storytelling bard. Through the years he made word-games of his pseudonyms, and they eventually led back to his past.”

Temple turned to Lanyard Hunter. “You said it yourself when we had dinner. The best kind of lie is the truth that nobody takes seriously. It will never catch the teller and will seriously mislead everybody else. Owen Tharp’s choice of pseudonyms both veiled and memorialized his past. Chester Royal never tumbled.

“He’d donned many personages during his journey through genre fiction. But the true personality, the one that had never changed over the years, was the young man who’d seen his mother needlessly taken away. That was the person who killed Chester Royal.”

“Close enough,” said Tharp to Temple’s diagnosis, his head turned away. He wasn’t about to share the mystery of his own actions, the history of his mania. Maybe he was saving it for the book—and probably the motion picture, too.

“What about the catnapper?” Lieutenant Molina was still waiting, arms folded, looking unimpressed.

“As you suggested, Lieutenant, the kidnapping of Baker and Taylor was a diversion Tharp engineered to distract the ABA and the media from Royal’s death. Except Emily Adcock and I failed to cooperate. We didn’t publicize it. So he left a ransom note on my desk hoping to force me to go public, but Emily whipped out her American Express Gold Card and paid the ransom, further frustrating his purposes. Then he promised the return of the cats to trick me onto the convention floor for his halfhearted attempt at mayhem. I’d like to think he was out to confuse matters rather than kill me. as he claims now. I may be wrong.”

Tharp said nothing.

“What about the woman who picked up the ransom money?” Molina persisted. “That’s a lesser crime, but she’s still out there. Who is she and where’s the money?”

Temple shrugged uneasily. “I don’t know everything, Lieutenant. Got to leave something for the proper authorities. She’s probably a mere hiree, like my Mr. O’Rourke. I wish you luck in finding her, Lieutenant, if Tharp won’t tell you.”

Molina was about to say more, but Temple turned quickly to Owen Tharp. “But there’s one thing I do deserve to know, Mr. Tharp. Those cats are the innocent victims of all this. Where are they?”

Owen Tharp looked truly shamefaced for the first time. “I had to lose them as soon as I could. They’re... at the pound.”

“How long have they been there?”

“Since Friday,” Tharp muttered.

“Good Lord! They’re goners by now,” Temple said with a lump in her throat and a glance at Midnight Louie reclining on the organ bench next to Matt.

“Oh, poor Emily!” Lorna Fennick came over to commiserate.

“Thanks for Tharp,” Molina said curtly as she and her troops led the man out.

Lorna hugged Temple’s shoulders. “Don’t listen to that sourpuss. This was a tour de force, Temple. Better than Murder, She Wrote . I hope you get the credit you have coming for this.”

“Well, it’s been exciting, and risky, and I’m glad the ABA doesn’t have an unsolved murder hanging over it. But addictive as puzzle-solving is, I’m just realizing that this one ends with a man facing years in jail. I kind of liked Owen Tharp, even if he did try to knit and purl my tote bag, and he certainly had his reasons—in triplicate. And—poor Emily!—I’m just sick about Baker and Taylor being killed at the pound. I really blew that. Look—Louie’s come to rub on my legs and comfort me, haven’t you, Louie? I can’t bear to tell Emily.”

“You’ll have to,” Lorna said warily. “Here she comes now.”

Emily was barging through the double doors, her purse over one shoulder, a huge shopping bag over the other and a cat carrier dangling from either hand, and jammed herself helplessly in the doors. “Temple—thank God I caught you. I’m on my way to the airport, but look—”

Temple and Lorna ran to free her.

“Your darling stuffed Baker and Taylor are in the shopping bag,” Emily said breathlessly. “We don’t need them anymore.” She lifted the carriers. “Look! The right one’s Baker, and the left, Taylor. Thought you deserved to see them in person.”

“You got them back! Oh, Emily, how?”

“The woman who owns the local mystery bookshop bought them from the pound, can you imagine? This weekend. She was tickled to get such good ‘look-alikes’ for her shop. When she compared them to the posters she realized she’d somehow bought the real McCoys. Well, she came to B & T at the convention center when we were clearing out.

“I’m afraid I borrowed your cat carrier for Baker. Maeveleen, the bookstore owner, gave me one of hers, so we three are outa here in a limo to McCarran and a plane to—don’t ask me where; it’s hush-hush. Gotta go. See you at the next ABA in Vegas!”

Emily backed up and barged out the doors as Lorna and Temple braced them open.

“Forget the carrier,” Temple shouted at Emily’s back, as she raced for the white limo hugging the curb. Corporate kitties traveled in style. She glanced at Midnight Louie, who had trotted over to nose Baker and Taylor through their carrier grilles. “I don’t need it anymore.” She dropped her voice. “But what about your five thousand dollars!”

Baker’s and Taylor’s carriers were disappearing into the limo’s back seat on disembodied hands. Emily Adcock dived in after them, pausing only to flash Temple an ecstatic smile. “Don’t worry! The company will reimburse me—or the librarians will raise the money. I don’t even care. I’m just so happy to have them back. ’Bye.”

The remaining ex-suspects trickled out the chapel doors into the glaring midday heat.

Lanyard Hunter donned dark glasses and drew Lorna Fennick’s arm through his. “This has been an eventful ABA, thanks partly to you, Temple. I’ll have to dedicate a book to you.”

“I’ve enjoyed working with you,” Lorna said with a farewell handshake. “Sort of. I’ve got to get out of town, too.”