Cat In A Leopard Spot

Chapter 30

Ringed In

Matt’s ringing phone dredged him up from the first deep sleep he had fallen into for a week.

His bedside clock read 2:00 A.M.

At first he heard only the blare of music and a vague party sort of clatter and chatter. It sounded like a TV movie frat-house scene.

“Did you get my present?” a husky voice asked on a tone of unwelcome intimacy.

“The worm.” He tried to make it sound like what he’d call her face to face if he had a chance.

“For I am a worm,” she said, laughing, repeating the Good Friday antiphon.

“No, just a very sick woman.”

“Oh? Then you’ll do as I say. Let me ask you, what are you wearing?”

He also recognized the obscene phone-call ploy so often used by men against women that it had become a cliché.

“I guess I’ll hang up, or just whistle into the phone.”

“Oh, don’t hang up. Whistle, just whistle, and I’ll come to you, my lad.”

It was the second time tonight someone he had reason to loathe had called Matt their lad, and he was getting sick of it.

“Listen, there’s a point where you push someone too far.”

A pause. “Shall I tell you what Miss Temple Barr is wearing tonight?”

A chill climbed his spine like ghostly fingers with long nails. Another thing to tell Kinsella: don’t drop in on Temple without expecting to be seen by your worst enemy. Kinsella wouldn’t like that, Matt warning him away from Temple. Matt didn’t mind.

“Not necessary,” Matt said as coolly as he could manage. “I’ll wear your hellish ring, but not the way you think.”

“Oh, really? Now you’re making this interesting. I will check up on you. Somewhere, sometime, some way. Thanks for making it interesting. But, then, you always do.”

She hung up.

He wiped a thin dew of sweat from his upper lip and remembered—tasted—a fresh burst of the corroding hatred he had once felt for his former stepfather.

Matt had thought himself over such negative emotions.

He had been wrong. Dead wrong. He should ask God for forgiveness, but he didn’t want to drag God into this. It might cramp his style.