Unknown - 16_Cat_In_An_Orange_Twist

Brocaded Louis XVI furniture groups dotted the dark green rug like oases of tapestry. The room was sparsely populated so far, but some people gathered at the fringes. The open casket of solid copper at the room’s far end blared like the final trumpet on Judgment Day.

Temple looked for the living first. Danny was … over there, next to Amelia Wong, of all people.

The Wong entourage clustered in one furniture oasis, mostly standing and looking uncomfortable. Especially the muscle in polyester suits and, even here, sunglasses.

Temple headed for Danny.

As she neared, she saw he looked utterly pale and dessicated, as if all the life had been kiln-dried out of him. Even his curly hair looked brittle, like wood shavings on the head of a puppet who longed to be a real boy.

“Munchkin,” he said in a tragic voice when he saw her.

His fingers curled around and crushed hers. “Thank you for coming.”

She couldn’t muster anything to say, and he added, “Not only here, but before, with the awful news.”

N o w s h e c o u l d n ‘ tdrummed up-“So tragic, so senseless, so sorry.” s a y a n y t h i n g i n a

He bowed his forehead toward hers, and they said nothing. Someone else was edging near Danny; Temple found herself off to the side, facing Amelia Wong.

“What a waste,” Ms. Wong said. “He was young, but yet a very old soul. I sensed it.”

“It’s … kind that you came.”

“I was called. I offered my services for the ceremonials, that all should be harmonious. Mr. Dove is a great artist of his day, and Simon would have been recognized in his own right in time. I had agreed to tutor him in my methods.” “Tutor Simon?”

“I am setting up a network of … emissaries.”

“A franchise.”

Wong’s black eyes glittered with annoyance. “If one would be so crass.”

Pardon her! Temple didn’t usually let crass commercial words pass her lips at a funeral parlor. She was, however, intrigued to know that Wong had been mentoring Simon. Another reason for some competitive Maylords drudge to hate him.

Temple braced herself to approach the coffin. Who liked funerals? Never having lost anyone close to her, other than elderly relatives presumably relieved to escape their last illnesses, she never knew whether she preferred to see the dead person glorified by the undertaker’s art into a Glamour Photo effigy or just represented by a discreet photograph.

Each method was cold, intolerably cold, in its own way. Two kneelers, empty, were paired before a handsome casket surrounded by its sophisticated floral arrangements. The hard part was edging close enough to look into the coffin. Oh, my. Simon, beautiful in life, gorgeous in death. She felt a presence beside her. Danny.

” ‘Mine eyes dazzle; he died young,’ ” she murmured through the tears. She evoked one of the most striking lines in three thousand years of dramatic literature. Danny, showman that he always was, recognized the paraphrase immediately.

The line was from The Duchess of Malfi, John Webster’s dark seventeenth-century drama. Those six words had lived as a paean of utter grief into the twenty-first century, a tribute to premature death, to murderous death, to the death of the beloved.

Danny’s hand stole into hers. “He would have adored your eulogy. I’m sorry you had just met him.” “No, I hadn’t.”

Danny’s red-rimmed eyes met hers with surprise.

“I knew you, so I had always known Simon.”

He squeezed her hand, ebbed away in a haze of her own eyes’ making.

And through that haze, she made the same mistake that so many people at Maylords had: she saw Matt lying there like the noble young knight slain by monsters.

She turned away, as if she saw a ghost.

The ghost of her own emotions, and the ghost of her own ever-analyzing brain.

The pattern blurred and came into too-brief focus again. The reason for murder just eluded her, but it was there, thumping like a heartbeat under her skin.

If only she could cut loose from her own fears and expectations, she might make some headway.

The only way to guarantee that was to push her nosy way forward, searching for answers.

Finding the murderer wouldn’t help Simon, but it might console Danny and it sure as heck would overcome her own unreasonable, itchy fears for Matt’s safety, now and forever and ever. Amen.

Chapter 38

Pillow Talk

Once my Miss Temple is safely en route to her date with death, I head back to Maylords and my new undercover role as a stuffed toy. So I am once again lying there, hoping for enlightenment, but observing pretty much nothing, when I hear a shrill, lamentably human voice. It again appears to be directed at yours truly.

“Oh, my goodness! Look at that. Look at that, will you?” Well, I would, except that I am playing Statue.

“That is fabulous! That is so amazing. That is the best, absolutely best, soft-sculpture cat that I have ever seen. Do not you think so, Irma?”

Not again. Is there no end to my charisma? Yes, Irma, you do think so. You are not alone. But I am a rock, get it? I am an island. Get

off my naval chart! You will blow my cover!

“Where is a salesman? I must have a salesman. Look at this.”

Probing nails finger my ruff. My well-groomed, handsome ruff, I might add.

“Where is the tag? There is no tag.”

“Maybe,” Irma suggests in an uncertain voice, “it is on the rear.” No! Not again! Nothing is on the rear but the … er, rear.

“I cannot believe they would not tag such a perfect specimen.”

That is exactly what I felt during my serial unhappy interactions with the so-called animal shelter in this town, a.k.a. the city pound.

The name must have something to do with the disposability of a pound of flesh, and fur.

“I must have it.”

You are not the first female to feel that way, lady. “Where is the salesman?”

“Uh, Patsy. This lady here seems to want to help you.”

“Can you sell me this fabulous fake cat?”

“I cannot ‘sell’ you anything, madam. Maylords does not sell. Selling is vulgar. We ‘place’ exquisite objects with appreciative acquisitors.”

“Huh?”

I am with Irma. Huh indeed.

“There is no tag on this animal,” she says, quite accurately.

“Even I haven’t seen it out before. Probably some … inventive person slipped it into place without the proper paperwork.” “Can you fix it?’

“Of course. I will simply look this item up in the computer.” This item!?

“Thank you, Miss-?”

“Blanchard. Beth Blanchard.”

“Well, I must have it. Look at the quality of the faux fur. The expression! So utterly feline. So utterly … out of it. I cannot imagine why Maylords would not tag such an exquisite item.”

Exquisite item. Okay, that is more like it.

“You have to understand the Maylords way,” Beth Blanchard says. “Everything we have is exquisite. We have no need to ‘push’ product at a gullible public. We seek a clientele, like yourself, who has the taste to discover the superb palette of perfection we offer.”

Wow A superb palette of perfection. In midnight black. That is me. Especially when / am playing dead. Superbly.

“If you ladies will wait in the caf� I’ll look up this item’s SKU number and have the full particulars to you in a few minutes.”

They duly depart, leaving Miss Beth Blanchard staring at me. I have to keep my eyes open and motionless, of course, like taxidermy eyes.

“A cat-shaped pillow!” she mutters. “What bozo bought this tacky piece of junk?”

I brace for a fist pounding into me, which is what people like her do to furniture accessories they do not like. Luckily, Miss Beth Blanchard takes out her frustrations elsewhere. She enters the Art Deco vignette and moves Mr. Simon’s Ert� prints back the way they were before she rearranged them this morning.