Carole Douglas - Cat in a Zebra Zoot Suit

“Yes. Look at that black dyed hair.”

“What would Lindy Lukas be doing here?”

“Visualize her in tight jeggings and boots,” Temple urged.

“My Lord.”

“Yes,” Temple said, “Diane, meet Cathy Zevon, a.k.a. Katt Zydeco, strip club manager.”

“Actually,” Diane said, “I would like to meet her. Sounds like you and Electra can do the honors.”

“No…” Electra began, but Diane was willful for a willowy blonde and apparently still felt a sense of possession about Jay.

Temple and Electra could only follow Diane as she marched forward to meet and greet the lady in black.

“I’m a former Mrs. Dyson. I understand you were the next Mrs. Dyson-in-training. A little young for a man in his seventies, weren’t you?”

“Jay had a youthful spirit.”

“How’d you meet?”

Temple watched Diane’s interrogation with growing amazement. She’d never have had the nerve to confront a woman who’d paid for the visitation and burial even if she’d come out of the woodwork.

So Temple ventured a question of her own. “You met here in Vegas, didn’t you?”

Cathy Zevon/Katt Zydeco’s eye makeup had been in deep mourning even before Temple had heard of Jay Edgar Dyson or met him. Her “smoky eye” could have survived a five-alarm fire. Her dark pupils were inky black as she fixed Temple with a cold stare.

“You’re the Miss Nosey from the Lust ‘n’ Lace site. It’s none of your business, but we’ve been inseparable since Jaysy came to Vegas.”

“And I’m sure Leon Nemo made the introduction,” Temple said.

“It’s Nemo’s job to make introductions, but it isn’t your job to question our actions.”

“She’s only acting for us,” Diane said. “We widows. You’re not claiming to be another one.”

“Maybe I’m not, and maybe I will turn out to be one. You never know in Vegas, with its instant marriage industry. Now I’m going to pay my respects to the dear departed.”

Every eye upon her, she cat-walked to the casket—one spike-clad foot crossing in front of the other—to place a black-gloved hand on the brass rail and gaze and sigh as if performing in a high school Shakespearian tragedy.

“Oh, Jay,” Diane wailed as the trio walked away and out of the reception room, “did you go off the rails with one bad mama!”

“Maybe not,” Temple said, noticing that Merry Su had snapped some shots of Ms. Zevon/Zydeco with her cell phone. “Maybe one bad mama pushed him off the rails.”

29

To The War Has Gone

The solid green door required a knock. Max’s fist produced three knuckle-tingling blows. Three was a fairytale number. Good things, and bad, came in three.

“A moment,” a voice inside said. Male. Tinged with an Irish accent, so engaging and easy to pick up.

Max stepped back, almost into Kathleen behind him, Kathleen poised to impress this outdated Kodak moment on her vengeful brain.

“I’ll get it,” a woman’s voice trilled, pure Irish to the vocal sway on the word “get”.

The door opened immediately, slamming Max with the vision of a wide smile, a pale but freckled face, hair as crazy red-gold as Temple’s, only curdled with curls haloing her head and shoulders. He couldn’t even register what she wore, just that vivid, welcoming presence.

“May I help you?” she asked. “We’re between engagements, but not for long.”

Between engagements? Was this a show business couple? Here? How?

“I’ve…we’ve come from America,” Max said inanely.

“Don’t you all?” the woman remarked in good humor. “And it’s happy we are to have you here. Come in to see the place.”

Well, yeah. As Max stepped over the threshold, he heard rattling in another room.

“Is it just the two of you, then, sir?” the woman inquired, stretching her neck to see past Max’s six-feet-four to the short woman in his wake. “You and your…lady.”

How adroitly she’d avoided “marrying” them. Max was deeply grateful for her tact.

He was still too taken aback to register anything but shards of the room. Wide wood plank flooring, wavy white stone walls and a tall brick chimney with a rough beam mantelpiece. Age-blackened vertical wooden beams here and there.

The woman was perhaps forty, bare of makeup, her pale brows arched and her mouth humorous. Her nose was straight, but meant business. Cheery confidence would describe her. “I’m Deirdre,” she said.

Yes, you are a dear woman, aren’t you? The last thing Max had expected behind the green door was a warm welcome.

“And are you Irish-American, too?” Deirdre asked Kathleen.

Kathleen just nodded. Max chanced a deeper look at her. No, this was not the scene she had planned to stage-manage.

“Well,” Deirdre said, “we can have tea, but as long as you’re standing, would you like to look at the upstairs first?”

“Yes, indeed,” Max said. “I’m Max. The architecture is…charming.” He could sense Kathleen seething with frustrated expectations behind him. Max added to the civil social ritual unfolding. “The cottage looks so traditional, Deirdre, but the skylights are a perfect modern touch for this cloudy climate.”

Deirdre led the way up a narrow set of stairs, a tall woman as solid as the front door. “The place is an old barn we’ve converted to a bed and breakfast. We’ve redone the upstairs to offer a bathroom and four guest bedrooms, one with an en suite, simple but comfortable.”

She opened a door onto a spacious bedroom dominated by a large, elegant iron bedstead against a curtained window, flanked by tables. Above it, a slanted ceiling rose to meet two old beams in a ceiling pierced by a skylight and pocked by modern can lights.

A smaller, much older window on the side wall was flanked by a chair and a huge wall mirror.

“Wonderful,” Max said, knowing the sheer social normality of every word and gesture of his interaction with Deirdre was driving Kathleen crazy. Crazier. “How long have you run the bed and breakfast?”

“Fourteen years. We’d been daft to stay in the city any longer than that, and the Troubles were still bubbling along back then.”

“In Antrim and Down counties?” Max asked.

She nodded. “In Belfast, the worst of it.” Her lips hardened into a taut line. “Now that is mostly under control,” she added briskly, the accommodating hostess again. “You Americans have no idea of the hard-hearted hatred that seared both sides during that time. Belfast requires ‘peace walls’ between sides and still seethes. Yet here we are delighted to provide stress-ridden vacationers with a piece of Irish peace, so to say, not only in the country, but in our rare bit of countryside.”

Max was juggling two scenarios for his cousin. He was Deirdre’s husband and a lucky man. Or, perhaps, a hired man. She’d need someone handy about the place. A head wound, Kathleen had said, if she could be trusted. The fact that Sean, if truly alive, had never gone home could mean severe brain damage, long medical stays, relearning to walk, talk, think.

But if he were here—Max wandered to the window behind the bed and gazed out on the serene countryside all rumpled in shades of green to the horizon. Green, the color of hope. If he was here, Sean had cornered a piece of heaven. Then why hadn’t he ever gone home to his grieving family?

He turned to see Kathleen watching him intently. She knew why.

“The reason,” Deirdre said, perhaps afraid Max was too enchanted by this cozy, modernized cottage, “we’re vacant now is because of a cancellation. I can only offer you the one night.”