Unknown - 23_Cat_In_A_Vegas_Gold_Vendetta

“That’ll mean a lot to her,” he told Violet.

“Oh, you’re wonderful, too. I can only think that if you’d been on the air when I’d had my little spat with Alexandra you might have talked me past my … selfishness and anger. She died so tragically and so young. Could Ambrosia—?”

“She’ll dedicate a song to you and Alexandra tonight,” Matt said.

Temple was glad she’d told Matt Violet’s family history.

Meanwhile, Freddie had pushed herself into place behind Matt, so when he turned to give Violet breathing room, he was flat up against her formidable form, and trapped.

“Mister Midnight, wonderful to meet you. I’m a dear friend of Violet’s. Freddie LaCosta.” She drew him away from the bed and Violet’s hearing. “If you could publicize the All Creatures Arc, it’s a very worthy cause. ‘No Needy Creature Turned Away’ is our motto. And, of course, Violet’s leaving her estate to a cause instead of a person would be so wonderful. You might mention that on your show.”

“It’s not ‘my’ show, Miz LaCosta. The producers have all the say on that. I’m sure I can talk to them about your idea, though. It’s a hot-button topic, animals suffering on the home front when people are spiraling out of financial control.”

“I’ve done some talk radio myself,” Jayden said, extricating Matt from Freddie’s clutches into his own expert hands.

Temple took advantage of Matt’s celebrity and people skills to occupy everybody in the house—except for the cats—while she explored deeper into the terrain.

Furry feline sides massaged her ankles all the way into the kitchen, but they were fewer than during her last visit. Gleams of reflective irises from hidden cats led her through the dim dining room, as she sought to get a firmer sense of Violet, her house, the many cats, and what anyone would really want here beyond the opportunity to become an instant heir.

Older Sunbelt homes tended to be dim interior mazes that beat back the heat. She was glad when she finally found a light to follow, a flickering flame.

The source was a huge, fat, decorative candle, maybe nine inches tall, on a black wrought-iron stand.

Hearing the steady murmur of voices from the main room, Temple found a round plastic control on the nearby wall and turned up the rheostat until there was light enough to see by without alerting the residents. She stood in an octagonal hall between the public rooms and bedroom wing, where one wall was a “shrine” to Alexandra.

The exquisite custom candle was diagonally striped in soft pastel shades, with white butterflies drifting upward against the watercolor hues.

Its strong flame illuminated the life-size stylized color portrait above it of a young woman’s face and shoulders. She seemed to breathe in the flickering light, making Temple jump a bit, as if she were meeting a ghost.

As she examined the photo, she saw that Alexandra’s face was perfectly made up, the thin eyebrows and lips both sharply arched, eyeliner and eye shadow and lip gloss impeccably applied. This must be what a twentyish Savannah had looked like.

The expensive candle sat on a carved Asian chest. Behind the doors elaborately inset with mother-of-pearl, she found several photo albums. A quick flip-through showed childhood photos of Alexandra, tapering off in young adulthood. In many photos, Alex was dressed in glitzy dance-recital costumes, always an ultrafeminine child, although in a more wholesome way compared to today’s tweens, who emulated the ultrasexy Pussycat Dolls.

This “little doll” of a child and young woman reminded Temple of Savannah’s doted-upon “accessory” pets.

Oddly enough, there were no cats in any of young Alexandra’s photos, no pets of any kind.

If Violet and her daughter had become estranged, as the boyfriend, Rowdy, had said, Alex’s sudden death would have been doubly devastating. Hadn’t Savannah mentioned that Violet’s cat “collection” started when she took Alexandra’s cats after her death, that Violet even thought Alex could “come back as a cat,” and started taking in strays? Probably that conviction was the first sign of mental failing.

So now, facing her own death, Violet wanted the cats she believed might “forever” harbor her daughter’s spirit to be kept in this house for as long as they were alive, to the last one. She must hope something of the love mother and daughter had once shared would survive through them.

Temple shook her head at the futility of family feuds, between Violet and her siblings first, and then with her daughter. Now, the bereaved mother had made herself an easy target for the takers of the world.

Temple replaced the albums and lifted out a box, the kind of pretentious packaging that expensive stationery comes in. When she opened it, she saw newspaper clippings and two slim leather-bound diaries, items she needed to read, not skim.

Still crouching below Violet’s shrine to Alexandra, she followed an instinctive investigative urge. She stuffed the box into her tote bag to examine later, when she had time, and stood.

Violet’s mind had begun unraveling with Alexandra’s death. Someone had wanted Violet alone and isolated in her house and had likely pushed Pedro that night, intending at least to injure him and get him out of the way.

That could have been any man or woman. Maybe among these souvenirs Temple could find a motive more personal than grabbing a confused old woman’s estate.

Because she knew one thing: regardless of whoever among the current candidates Violet was persuaded to make her heir and executor, once Violet died, the cats would be the first to go.

Chapter 36

The French Resistance

Since some unknown person or persons has been making it easy for the inside cats to slip out, I am happy to find that it is just as easy for an outside cat to slip in.

So I am already the inside dude when my Miss Temple and Mr. Matt pay a visit to Miss Violet. I also witness my sweet and straightforward roommate making a surreptitious survey of the house’s nooks and crannies, specifically the hall leading to the closed doors of the bedroom wing.

I must say that I am shocked—shocked!—when I see her prying inside a chest of Asian design under the icon of some saint with a candle burning in front of her. You would think that an intimate associate of a former priest would not tamper with religious artifacts, but then she is an intimate associate of a former priest, and I am not sure if that is kosher. Great Bast never expressed herself on rules of personal conduct. She is a Rules of Prey sort of gal.

However, the search and abstraction of evidence is smoothly done, thanks to the fact that humans can tote objects by other means than their mouths. That gives them great versatility.

So, once she and Mr. Matt have made their adieus to the folks in the front room and are gone, I resume my mission.

First off, I look up my inside guy, Maverick.

Being shades of brown, he comes and goes in the dimly lit interior like a shadow.

“Psst!”

I nearly jump out of my best satin-lapelled suit down to my skin when he ambushes me in the kitchen.

“How goes it,” he asks, “with our exterior brethren?”

“And sisters,” I add. Or is that “sisthren”? One never knows when Miss Midnight Louise is listening, although I have her stationed outside.

Maverick shakes his head impatiently at the fine points. He would not be so rude were my own fine points at his throat.

“What do you want in here?” he demands. “There are no resident black cats. You will stick out like a sore dewclaw.”

“I need to get the Ashleigh sisters out now. It will be a delicate extraction. I have scouted a work-crew outbuilding near the flood channel where our homemade clowder can shelter until the evil afoot here is rooted out.”