Cat In A Flamingo Fedora

Chapter37

Postmortems

"I'm happy to go with you to the vet's, Temple, but what's your real reason?"

Matt wouldn't take his eyes off her, so she couldn't dismiss his question, though she'd hoped to answer it after all her uncertainties about Louie were answered.

She kept her eyes on the route she was driving, and told him about them all: Savannah, Molina's inconclusive conclusions and finally Domingo.

Matt was shocked into silence.

"He appreciated my help? After wrestling on the phone with me like an antagonistic angel from the Old Testament? I can't tell you how much that man made me doubt myself, my current role, my history. And . . . he's all right now?"

"He believes so. And he admits that the side you saw--or heard, rather--was his demonic other half. You had to do battle with the worst of him in order for the best of him to come out.

But it worked, Matt. You're a good counselor. And so am I, by example, of course."

"Take off that halo, Temple. It clashes with your fiery hair."

"I'm just so pleased. Domingo really feels rather fatherly toward me, can you imagine? I remind him of what he hopes his daughter will be one day, if that makes sense. That's so...

sweet. That's so much better for the self-esteem than being hit on by older men, honest."

"I guess men can't know what that feels like."

"Maybe you can." Temple shot him a look, but Matt was gazing out the window, lost in his own reflections. "All's well that ends well," she said, quoting cliched Shakespeare and so happy she didn't care.

"And Louie has been vasectomized? What does that mean?"

"I'm hoping Dr. Doolittle will tell us."

****************

"Yes, now that I examine the area --Louie, stay still!--I can feel the snipped ends.

Remarkable."

Dr. Doolittle shook her head over Louie's involuntarily prone form. "Marge, you can take him back to his cage."

"Cats can be vasectomized," the vet explained to Matt and Temple. "Though their equipment is smaller than human anatomy, we have the instruments and skill to do it. We just don't, because vasectomy only prevents reproduction. It doesn't end any of the tomcat behavior that pet owners find hard to take."

"What is that, Doctor? I haven't had any problems with Louie."

"Apparently he goes out on his own enough that he doesn't feel the need to mark your living quarters as territory. If he did, the stench would send you to me pronto. And, of course, he'll still pursue females and fight males for the privilege. You'd be better off completely neutering him and confining him indoors."

Temple sighed. Did questions of animal behavior never end, especially among humans? "I'd hate to traumatize him again, after what he's been through. If he can't create unwanted kitties, that's the most important part."

"No, the most important part to Louie is he's still a fully functional male." Dr. Doolittle shook her head. "He has always been the most unusual cat, and now he's truly atypical. Well, we'll watch and see. If he comes home with too many claw slashes on his handsome face, you may want to do the more advanced procedure. I really don't approve of cats roaming."

"Louie doesn't actually roam," Temple tried to explain. "He goes places to do things. And he's a media cat now. We don't want to change his personality now that he's a star."

"Maybe not. You can pick him up for good later this afternoon."

As they left the veterinarian's office, Matt frowned.

"Seems you're advocating a double standard here, Temple."

"How?"

"You're allowing the cat to have his cake and eat it too, but we poor human males aren't allowed the same options."

"When you're all fixed like Louie," she said sternly, "and can't leave unwanted children like Alison Darby littered about, we'll see."

*******************

Temple dropped Matt off at the Circle Ritz and decided to run one last errand. She smiled en route to the Crystal Phoenix. This was the first time Matt had spoken in defense of the virile male. Maybe he was beginning to feel the advantages of the noncelibate lifestyle.

She didn't know if Michelle would still be in residence, but she called up and heard the familiar " 'Alio?"

Temple felt she owed Michelle an explanation of how her card had been erroneously marked, and by whom. She wanted to clear herself with Darren Cooke's widow, remove any last vestige of doubt. This was an innocent errand, and she thought Michelle should know what demons were on her late husband's back: the letters from the unknown child, who may not even be his child. It would help her understand his suicide. God, Temple thought, putting herself in his shoes. Maybe he had sinned, but the punishment he faced in his last hours of life was more than sufficient payment.

Room 711 was the same, except that signs of packing lay strewn on the living-room furniture and Padgett could be heard gurgling from the bedroom.

"I'm glad I caught you," Temple said. "You should know some things."

"Yes?" Michelle kept fussing with the baby's things, folding and packing frilly dresses in exquisitely embroidered pastel fabric.

Darling things. A baby would be like doll I can carry. Maybe not so bad. Maybe like a cat, without fur.

"Can I help? Apparently your nanny is busy with Padgett."

"No. She's gone. She was only a temporary."

"Really? It'll be hard, to take a baby on the long flight back to Paris, alone."

"The stewardesses are wonderful. They love babies."

Temple nodded. She had noticed that stewardesses were partial to young flyers. "Adults must be such a pain."

"Adults, yes. A pain."

Temple sat on the arm of a sofa. Michelle struck her as tense. Her long, thin figure moved jerkily, like a puppet, and her eyes never settled on one place, and certainly not on Temple.

"Listen, Michelle. You've been most gracious to me, considering what you had reason to think of me. I. . . wanted you to know that there is proof that my card was tampered with. I am what I said."

"Proof?" Michelle kept moving, folding, packing delicate baby things. The child had a lot of them.

"I've found--the police have questioned--your husband's personal assistant."

"I've met her, yes. Alison. A bit wild in the fashion area, but overall a sensible young woman."

"Not really," Temple said gently. "You see, Darren had been getting letters from a young woman claiming to be his natural daughter--"

"Natural. I do not know that word in this relationship."

"His illegitimate daughter."

Michelle stopped moving, her stork like body bent over one open case. She wore a rosy pink jumpsuit in a metallic fabric, very space-age and unkind to less than ultrathin figures. She reminded Temple of one of Domingo's flamingos, a plastic ornament of sorts, frozen forever in a certain, graceful attitude.

"Daughter."

"Yes. She's an adult now ... if she really is his daughter, and there's no evidence in her background that she is. She may be simply a demented adoptee who longed for a famous father, and fastened on your husband, because of his womanizing reputation."

"Reputation."

"She'd been sending him letters. Harassing, ugly, hateful letters. That's why he consulted me in the bedroom, for privacy. He was brooding about this situation, hating himself for having abandoned someone he never knew about. I suppose, now that he had a baby daughter, he pictured himself abandoning her, and couldn't bear it."

"No, he wouldn't have been able to bear it." Michelle finally straightened from her interrupted task and looked directly at Temple. "That was the one thing I thought I could count on, no matter how much he failed me and our marriage. His love, his protective love for his daughter."

Temple nodded. "The one, truly sincere feeling in his life, which is why the existence of this bitter, vengeful adult daughter tormented him. You must believe that."

"Must I?"

"Yes, because that's why he killed himself. She came to him that night. The one unseduceable female in his entourage. She was willing, and he was hurting and--I'm sorry--I'd turned him down and even told him that he'd be getting more of that in future." Temple bit her lip. "I did contribute to his death. I know that now. I thought I was being assertive. But I was being insensitive too."

"No!--"

"I was there. I know. It wasn't really me, but I was another feather on the scale that was weighing ever heavier against him. Because his so-called daughter's revenge was truly demonic.

She went to bed with him, and then she told him who she was. He freaked, naturally. She wanted his money too, but I don't think that made him suicidal. I think it suddenly came home to him that any girl could be anybody to somebody--daughter, sister, mother--that these were young lives he played with and that he had a lot to account for. He was feeling low already, so--"

Michelle nodded violently, an expression in her eyes darker than despair. "Yes. He would have killed himself. He was so close." She looked at Temple. "But he didn't."

"How can you know? I doubt Alison Darby did it; she was so shocked by his death. Her plans hadn't included that. And of course she lost the chance to extort money from him, and she wanted it all. Nothing left for you and Padgett."

"So I preserved for Padgett what was perhaps hers, and perhaps not hers."

" You didn't. Darren did, by dying."

Michelle turned on her like a furious animal.

"Oh, but I did. I was there, you see. I had come because I had learned he was, had been . . .

with Dana, our nanny. With our daughter's nanny! I knew he was not perfect, but that. . .

frightened me. If he would cross that boundary, were there not others?"

"When were you there? Before Alison came?"

"No, cherie. After."

"But--"

"Yes! I was there when he berated himself. When I unfolded my horror over Dana, he just nodded. The gun was in his hand, in his lap. I had never seen him so passive. He took my anger like rain on dry earth, as if he needed it. When I accused him, revealed my fear that even Padgett might not be safe from him, he had not stomach to defend himself. Now I see why. I knew he loved our daughter, but I knew he could not help himself, could not keep from the sad comfort he got from his endless seductions. And what is child abuse but an unpardonable seduction? Other women I could allow, but our nanny, a girl. . . our daughter, a girl someday.

"He did not shoot the gun. He had it to his head. His temple, the classic target. I could not have stood it had it been in his mouth. But it was at his head, his mind. I touched it to take it from him. He was devastated by what I had said. Now I know why he took it so seriously. If only I had known what she had done then! I intended to stop him. Once my hand had covered his on the weapon, I seemed powerless to withdraw it. Instead I found myself pressing my forefinger over his forefinger, pulling the trigger."

"There's no evidence! Only his fingerprints on the weapon."

Michelle held up long arms thin and pale as flamingo legs. "I wear gloves. It is my fashion trademark. I wear them everywhere when I go outside, because I wear them in my perfume ads.

I destroyed the gloves. Burned them. I cannot excuse myself. Another self pulled the trigger back. It was hard to do. He must have sensed me doing it, but he didn't move. He just waited. In a sense, it felt like a mercy killing."

Her eyes, haunted, met Temple's for the last time.

"What you have told me eases nothing. No wonder he did not fight my accusations! That girl killed him despite herself, through me. What should I do? Whatever I do, Padgett will have to live with it all her life."

"So will you," Temple said. "If only I hadn't come. You wouldn't know, and I wouldn't know I can't say what you should do. I don't know what I should do."

"We could tell, each or both of us."

Temple kept silent.

Michelle eyed her aslant. "It will make for an interesting tension. Wondering if one or the other will tell, and when."

"I would have to think about it for a long time."

"A lifetime, perhaps."

Temple stood. In the other room, Padgett was giggling to herself. The tension was already awful, and it would only get worse.

"Good-bye," Michelle said.

Only she said it in French. 'Au revoir."

Temple left without another word, because no words were sufficient.

Au revoir. She remembered from college French class that it was an uneasy good-bye. The direct translation was closer to "until we meet again."

Temple finally had found a secret too awful to tell another living soul.