Unknown - Cat_In_A_Hot_Pink_Pursuit

In using the scene of the worst moment of her life for her revenge, poor Beth was unaware that her ex-husband had also been drawn back to the bloody battlefield. He had always known who she really was.

So he put himself into the TV show as a bizarre judge, and finally found Beth in his power again. Once she had stepped outside of the bounds of civility by killing her daughter’s misguided therapist, he killed her, hoping to end forever the quest for vengeance that had forced him underground.

However—and this I heard direct from the lipsticked lips of Miss Lieutenant C. R. Molina as she explained it to a Mr. Paddock of her recent acquaintance, unaware of my collaboration at their foot level. Anyway, she told him (and thus me) that the body of the young girl in the mall parking lot was the suspect’s step-granddaughter.

The police surmised that the poor girl had recognized “Beth Marble” on the TV previews as her grandmother, and had come to the mall to confront her and perhaps urge her to give up the quest for revenge.

Fate stepped, in to demand a dance, as it so often does. A car nearly hit her in the parking lot. When the driver stepped out to see to her, young Tiffany recognized him from the old newspaper clippings she had been weaned on. Her surprise revealed her knowledge. Arthur Dickson, so long anonymous, grabbed a screwdriver from the back seat of his vehicle and ensured his continuing anonymity by killing his step-granddaughter, just as his violent actions twenty years before had wounded and ultimately destroyed his stepdaughter.

Whew. I am beginning to seriously re-examine myrelationships with my, er, esteemed long-lost maybe-daughter Midnight Louise. Like who wants a fang through the heart?

Before I can digest my ill-gotten information, I am surrounded by a congratulatory frill of Persians. Much thrumming and purring and swishing.

Miss Louise also shows up, returning from a successful expedition to scare Crawfish back into the pool a second time. It is certain he will never cross paths with a black cat again.

“Louie,” cries Yvette in her sweet soft voice. “You have singlemittedly revealed a villain and also dunked the lowlife who was always after zee dirt on my mistress.”

“Well, yes,” I admit. Then I glance at Miss Midnight Louise, who is a trifle damp but no less triumphant. “However, my associate was on the Crawfish Pukecannon case.”

“Your associate?” The Divine Yvette lifts a perfectly groomed eyebrow.

“Actually,” I say, “she is my partner. In business, that is. And my … possible offspring.”

“Louie! You have admitted offspring?”

“Well, just one. One small insignificant one. Maybe.”

“You are an admitted single father?”

“Maybe. These things happen to a guy. Like they have been known to happen to a girl. It could be worse. It could be a whole litter. Or a few dozen.”

The Divine One shows me the underside of her tail, which is not too tacky, as she leaves. “I do not date secondhand goods.”

I am left alone with Miss Midnight Louise, who is not looking any too happy at my recent description of her.

But she holds her tongue for once, and sniffs, as I have been doing much of lately.

“Good capture,” she notes. “Small loss.”

That is for her to say and me to gnash my fangs over.

Chapter 57

The Past Is Prologue

Supposedly Matt had people skills.

Sixteen years as a parish priest and one as a hotline and radio counselor should qualify him for anything.

He sat at a table in the Drake Hotel bar, all wood paneling and leather. His hotel would be the neutral ground. He felt like an anxious diplomat arranging for a secret meeting between Bush and Osama bin Ladin. The situation was explosive. So much could go wrong.

His mother arrived first, as arranged. She was wearing the Virgin Mary blue blouse and blue topaz earrings he’d bought her for Christmas with a gauzy black and silver skirt that had the Krys influence all over it.

She was a knockout.

She scanned the room expertly. Confidently. Serving as hostess at a popular tourist restaurant had given her a new social poise. Dating again must have helped. Matt remembered the distinguished man in the camel-hair coatshe’d seated so graciously when he’d dined alone in “her” restaurant last Christmas.

Finding him, her dark eyes sparkled with greeting. She rushed over on her low-heeled pumps. Another symptom of the hostess job. Easy Spirit shoes for tired feet: neat, attractive, but not showy. The phrase could describe his mother’s overall impact.

He stood to seat her. Bars always had such heavy chairs that women found hard to sling around. Maybe to promote male chivalry. Maybe to anchor tipsy customers for another round or two.

“Matt.” Her lips brushed his cheek before she sat.

No one would call this woman beaten down but that would have described her just months ago, before she moved out of the old two-flat filled with bad memories in the Polish section of Chicago and into a new apartment, job, and the strange cross-generational alliance with her punkish art student niece Krystyna.

Somehow, they were good for each other, so good they sometimes scared the heck out of him, between Krys’s obvious interest in him and his mother’s simultaneous emotional unthawing after years of repression and guilt.

She knew that she was to meet someone important to her quest to find out about the man who’d fathered him, the boy who’d gone off to combat after meeting her in the St. Stan’s church the night before Christmas.

“I can’t believe you’ve found something out,” she told him, ignoring the waitress who hovered behind her. Matt had been out of the priesthood long enough to know that cocktail waitresses at your table side were a boon in most bars, a boon that might not be repeated for too long.

“Have something, Mom.”

She glanced at the lowball glass in front of him. “A .. . scotch on the rocks.”

“House brand okay?”

She expertly eyed the bottles behind the bar, another new talent. “No. Johnny Walker Black.”

Go, Mom, go! You’ll need it.

“Who is this? One of the lawyers who offered me the deal back then?”

“I met him at the lawyers’ offices.” Temporizing. “Thank you for doing this. I know they just would have blown me off.”

Blown me off? Krys again.

She sat back as the drink was wafted onto a napkin before her.

“I can’t believe you got somewhere. Cheers.” She lifted the glass. Their rims clicked. She seemed excited and happy.

“It wasn’t easy. They blew me off too on the first visit. So I came back and hung around the floor, watched who came and went.”

“Just like a detective. Like that young lady friend of yours you say isn’t a serious girlfriend. Tamara, was it?”

“Temple.”

“Odd name for a girl.” She sipped again, and sighed. “But they’re doing that these days.”

“It suits her.”

“That’s just because you’re used to it. Because you like her. A lot. Don’t try to duck that. A mother knows. Maybe you can bring her up here for next Christmas.”

“Maybe. Mother—”

“I thought we’d gotten past that formal stuff. Krys doesn’t even call me ‘aunt’ anymore. In fact, we were out shopping and someone mistook us for sisters. Can you imagine?”

“Yeah. You look … really great, Mom. Someone would probably mistake us for siblings too.”

“I’d be honored to have such a handsome brother. Your uncles have all let beer bellies have their way with them. Don’t you do that.”

“No chance. Uh, Mom, this person we’re going to meet, he didn’t know anything about what the lawyers arranged.”

“You mean he was taken in the way I was?”