Carole Douglas - Cat in a Zebra Zoot Suit

Temple looked up the dark street. Maeveleen had been right. Navigating the empty lot in heels would require a flashlight. Thank you, Hardy Boys . Luckily, she knew the terrain from daylight. She needed more than the Hardy Boys, though.

One call she knew would be answered. “Nicky! Hi. I’m worried about Electra. No. nothing concrete enough to call the police. I think she’s in the abandoned building she inherited, and the female owner of the Thrill ‘n’ Quill bookshop near the Circle Ritz is alone in her shop nearby. Got some spare brothers for Maeveleen? Discreet backup would be welcome. Thanks.”

Temple disconnected on his agreement and found herself in an unfamiliar state. Indecisive. Should she wait here for a flock of Fontanas to surround the Thrill ‘n’ Quill and the building just down the street with their black Tesla sport cars? Go inside with Maeveleen until she was sure the storekeeper had a bodyguard? There could be nothing good about where Electra was last seen going and her not answering her cell phone. Her muumuus all had pockets.

The sound of flip-flops hitting sidewalk made Temple turn to see the newcomer, a college-age girl in a hurry. “This place still open? I need some books for my creative writing class.”

Books, plural. Good news for Maeveleen.

“Open until nine,” Temple said.

“Great.” The young woman blasted through the door, setting off the funeral bells.

She looked over her shoulder at Temple. “Cool effect. Thanks.”

Temple wasn’t so sure. Funeral bells could be an omen. She turned again to the bit of the empty lot she could glimpse ahead. Yikes. Dark came on fast in the desert and it seemed to be breaking records tonight. The Fontanas were en route. Meanwhile, anything could be happening to Electra, or nothing.

Temple saw movement near the lot, and took in a breath. Just a black cat, legs going as fast a centipede’s, silently running out of view. More of a blur than a moving body.

Louie had been out before she left the condo. Apparently he’d been en route here too.

Temple trotted after him, her heels making a racket with no one around to hear them. That she noticed.

40

You Will Find Him

Max paused before taking the stairs up into that last step into the Irish air. “Kathleen?”

“We thank you for bringing her home again.”

“You should know, she’s—”

“We know what she is. For years her female fury made her the Cause’s most profitable fundraiser.”

Liam stood waiting, almost politely, for Max to leave. Max was getting an uneasy feeling. “That sounds like a testimonial.”

Liam nodded.

“Like an obituary almost,” Max added.

“Go on, man, you’ve got what you came for.”

“She’s worse now that the money-raising is done. She burned down my house.”

“’Tis a shame, but ’tis none of your business now.”

“I might not be done with her.”

“We are not either.”

Max sighed and turned back to face the room. “That woman tried to kill me more than once, the house fire being the latest attempt, which you’d no doubt applaud. She also threatened and stalked my innocent friends and acquaintances. Because of her, more than one of her hired associates has died. She seduces men because she hates them almost as much as she hates herself. She survived abuse from a childhood in a Magdalene institution that most men in this room would not. I brought her here to find Sean and Garry Randolph and rid my life of Kathleen O’Connor.”

“Mission accomplished.” Liam remained tip-lipped.

“But, ass that I am and you know me for, I can’t abandon her to a situation that stinks to high heaven. What’s going on?”

“At least you admit your serious assery. For an Irishman you certainly talk like a Spaniard.” Liam sounded amused, rather than the expected angry.

“Spaniard?”

“Don Quixote, tilting at windmills, only something is in the wind here, you’re right. This is a kangaroo court, but it’s not for you. It’s for Kathleen O’Connor.”

Max swore. “There goes my Catholic conscience complicating my life again.”

“If you want to sit yourself and your friend there at the bar and stay a while, you can have the satisfaction of witnessing it.”

Pints were poured all around. Max couldn’t decide if being handed one was a good or a bad omen. A last glass, or a last gasp. He couldn’t drink here, and think as fast as he guessed he needed to.

Lingering in this place where every wall and table and face stirred memories of what would become his final adventure and moments with Gandolph was a kind of torture, and every man here knew and relished that. Add the smell of damp footwear and wool and yeasty beers…and he felt sick.

The men turned their heads as the door to the back room opened. Max slid the full pint glass to the back of the bar.

Kathleen came in, with the two men who’d escorted her inside. One dragged a chair from a nearby table, and took her arm to seat her at it. No beer or ale for her.

Her pale face looked even paler, eyes black with fear stared defiantly at Max, as if he were the only man in the room. Then she looked around, a bit wildly.

“What’s this about? Don’t I win a round of applause? I’ve brought you the traitor, haven’t I?”

Max winced, not because she’d admitted her underlying motive all along, but because it wasn’t sufficient.

“He was a rogue outlander, no doubt,” Liam said, “and plagued us mightily back in the day, but he was never pledged to our cause, as you were.”

“I’ve worked to aid the cause for almost twenty years,” she answered. “Is it my fault you all ended it with a peace treaty?”

“We do, that,” Liam said. “We do have a peace treaty. But you, my dear Kathleen, have a huge piece of the very lucrative booty pledged by all the faithful homeland exiles in South America. We’ve never seen so much as a peso of that. You yourself promised a ‘mother lode’.”

As Kathleen’s interrogator spoke, the other men rose and came to take seats or stand in a circle around her.

Max recognized he’d been reduced to a mere witness to what looked like a witch hunt. He realized the accounting that could have been taken out of his hide, had he not been forgiven…had turned, with far more patriotic fury, on Kathleen.

His throat had gone so dry, he stretched out a long arm and reclaimed the pint glass for several swallows. Kathleen had mounted a vengeful crusade against him and his associates for more than a year. Were the IRA remnants showing him how they dealt with turncoats? Did they think he deserved, or even wanted to see their kangaroo court in action?

Kathleen crossed her legs, smartly clad in the blue-green pantsuit, and tossed her long black hair. “Sure, and is this recess on the playground, the boys ganging up on the girl?”

“For years you promised us the stockpiled results of your South American operations. That money is ours, donated to us. We’ll use it for reparations for the families of soldiers who perished in our wars.”

“A noble cause still,” Kathleen said. Max noticed she had exaggerated the amount of Irish lilt in her voice. “The takings were in a…diffuse state, over time and distance. Some was left in wills to myself personally, or came from die-hards who wanted to stir the pot of resistance anew,” she said. “Some had been collected earlier and…stored until it was easier to smuggle out of the various countries.”

“And is some of it still there?”

“In South America? No.”