Unknown - Cat_In_A_Hot_Pink_Pursuit

Soon I am huddled under the lounge chair again, picking up tidbits of information from the girls.

“Our mistress is so unheeding,” Yvette complains. “She likes to swelter in the UVs, so she assumes we would like it. With our luxuriant fur coats, of course, we prefer cool dark places.”

“Me too,” I say.

The paired purrs from the carriers nearly drive me crazy. “So what is happening with your mistress? She must surely be uneasy that a contest advisor has been offed.”

“Mais oui.“Only it sounds like “meow” to the uninitiated, i.e., humans. Solange presses her piquant face to the mesh so that several of her long curled vibrissae protrude and tickle my own whiskers. “She has been uneasy for some time. Someone has been lurking around, and it has gotten worse now that we are here at the Teen Queen Castle.”

“Hmmm,” I purr. I would normally think Miss Savannah was imagining this stalker or making it up for publicity purposes. Yet I glimpsed a dark figure in her room with my own night-vigilant eyes. ‘What will the death of one of the advisors mean to the show, once the police free the murder scene and shooting can begin again?”

“Shooting?” The Divine Yvette bats her black mascaraed lashes as a prelude to a swoon. “You think there will be shooting?”

“I meant cameras.” But of course shooting is not impossible with a murderer among us.

And I recall Miss Temple telling her Aunt Kit about a notorious shooting death in this very house many years ago. I have not led Miss Louise astray. Eavesdropping is the low-key operative’s biggest asset, and you cannot get a lower operative than me.

I glance back to where I left the young sourpuss, my partner. The spot is vacant. I cannot understand why she did not wait around like a good girl for me to return and make my report, but frankly, I am glad not to have her cramping my style with the sisters Ashleigh, now that I have them to myself.

She might blow my cover and refer to me by some demeaning nickname like “Snooze” or “Geezer” or, heaven forbid, “Daddy-O.”

Chapter 41

Wolfram and Heart

Matt wore a Carl Sandburg T-shirt, baggy khakis, loafers without socks, and a Chicago Cubs cap on backwards.

He’d arrived at eight A.M. and spent the day lurking in the halls and emergency stairwells of the building that housed Brandon, Oakes, and McCall. Just an ordinary guy, staking out who came and went through the doors of the prestigious law office.

He’d wanted to look like a guy who’d gotten lost in the lobby and was still trying to find his way out. Nobody questioned him.

Around two P.M., after he’d watched the noontime exodus return to the law firm, he bought lunch at the lobby coffee shop and pumped the waitress.

Even in his instant scruffies, his looks won smiles and chitchat and information. The coffee shop provided latte, yeah, they had a machine for every variety of espresso.

Lots of very big people went up there. So what was he doing here?

Waiting to connect with a contact. He was in the record business.

Realllly! Her cousin Stevie had a fab basement band. Radical but not too, you know? Ready for a big-time commercial break. He didn’t look like a DJ. They were usually such losers in the looks department. He should be on MTV.

Yeah.

Matt finished the dregs of his caramel–whipped cream latte, just a dozen calorie counts shy of a hot fudge sundae, and went back up to the forty-fifth floor.

To lurk.

Krys, who had okayed his outfit this morning, would be amazed to know how dull subterfuge was. He was amazed to know how dull it was. He thought about Carmen Molina, back in Vegas. Had she ever done this detail? Maybe. Maybe not.

What were the chances? The law office staff seemed to recognize him. So how likely was it that some relative of his lost father would breeze up in the elevator and into Brandon, Oakes, and McCall? Today or any other day.

Infinitesimal. Matt bet that DJs didn’t often use that word.

Ex-priests did, though, having been conditioned to think in terms of infinity.

In terms of infinity, what were the chances that he would find any trace or trail that led to the man who’d fathered him?

Almost zero. He didn’t care. He’d learned long ago not to care. He’d tried to tell his mother that. Trouble was, she did.

What had been the high point in her life had been the nadir in his.

Nadir. Speak of the Devil. Rafi Nadir. Another unwanted father. Carmen Molina had made it clear that Nadir hadn’t deserved to know he was the father of a child she would bear and rear without him.

The usual rap was men were unreliable. Men skated out from under fatherhood and its obligations. They were louts. Rats. Immature. They seduced and abandoned. They made Matt sorry he was one.

Except …

He didn’t believe it. He’d seen it during the Sacrament of Reconciliation, formerly known as Confession. Men were scared. They thought they had to be the whole enchilada, 24/7: strong, sole supporting, macho men. It was too much.

He considered his mother at nineteen—her critical condition. Pregnant, with him. Catholic. Young. Damned. Despised. No support of any kind. Hard not to hate the guy who put her there. Except that she hadn’t. And he’d gone off to a foreign war and died. No chance to prove his mettle on the domestic front.

The elevator made all the grunts and groans of being about to open again. Matt peeked through the stairway door like a kid playing hide and seek.

Another “briefcase” walking into Brandon, Oakes, and McCall.

Except … this guy didn’t carry a briefcase. He wore an expensively pale suit. His ash-blond hair was silver at the temples. Same height, same build, thickened a little around the middle.

Matt gaped, as if he’d seen a ghost walking through a wall, as the form vanished into the dark wood door of Brandon, Oaks, and McCall.

The proof of the pudding was what this man would look like from the front, when he walked out.

Matt stuck the toe of his new sports tennies against theheavy metal door. This he had to see, no matter how long it took.

It took forty-eight minutes by his stainless-steel watch.

Several people came and went. Matt began to worry about a discreet exit door farther down the hall … but, still, the elevator had to be taken, unless someone wanted to walk down forty-some flights. And then that someone would come face-to-face with Matt lurking in the hidden echoing concrete spine that ran up the length of every skyscraper.

The lawyers’ office door didn’t so much squeak as rumble a little when it opened and shut.

It was opening now, spitting out the front view of the man Matt had glimpsed from behind. He managed to eel out of the stairway to meet the man at the bank of elevators.

To meet himself.

Related, no doubt.

How to mention it?

The guy did the usual big-city elevator shuffle: push the DOWN button, stare at the computerized numbers of floors and cars above. Pace. Glance at his watch. Glance askance at the guy who’d joined him in waiting, trying not to stare at strangers, of course.

Matt’s throat was so dry he couldn’t have received Communion to save his soul.

Alex Haley’d had Kunta Kinte. Now Matt had his own Roots. Someone who looked like him. Someone he looked like besides his mother. It didn’t matter, he’d always said. It mattered.

The man slipped a look at him again. He seemed nervous.

Matt took off the stupid baseball cap, stuffing it in the pocket of his baggy Dockers. He regretted the carefully casual clothes, regretted not looking like himself. Not looking like this impeccably dressed man three elevator doors down the hall.

The man, maybe—forty-five. A cousin? Not a brother, his real father had been too young. Matt had to be an only child. The mystery man cleared his throat. Looked away.