Cat In A White Tie And Tails

Chapter 21

Past Tax Due

“Louie,” Temple intoned mournfully.

And stared in a daze at the checkered tablecloth.

They’d all sunk onto the kitchen table chairs as Matt had replayed the message, twice, stopping before the tail part. No one needed to hear that again.

“The airport,” Temple said. “I wasn’t mistaken for a rich witch. It wasn’t an attempted jewel robbery. They were after Louie as a hostage. It’s all my fault. I didn’t think beyond what the security guard thought.”

“Who did?” Matt’s warm hands squeezed her cold fists. “How would these creeps even know Midnight Louie was along?”

“It’s my fault,” Mira said firmly. “It’s just that I was … am … so easily bulled when it comes to Clifford. I’ve wished so much for so long he had never existed, which is a sin, I know, Matt.” Her anxious glance skittered off his concerned expression.

“It’s human, Mom. I wished the same. I was even in a position to end his existence.”

“Matt!”

“It’s not what we think. It’s what we do.”

“Cliff said he’d found you,” Mira answered, confused. “Snickered about it. That made me so angry.”

“No. I tracked him. I found him. He was a petty criminal around Vegas. And when he died, it was a lot worse than anything I could have contemplated doing.”

She put her hands to her ears. “I don’t want to hear anything more about that miserable creature. I never wanted to see him again. And when he came here—”

“He came here?”

Temple was starting to think beyond the blame game, but she didn’t dare interject anything into the mother–son dialogue.

“Months ago.” Mira pushed her hands into her freshly done hair, ruining it. “He wanted to know where I’d stored things from the two-flat when I’d sold it and moved out. There was one of those fireproof file boxes. I’d looked through, and it was mostly tax forms. He did all that, probably lied, probably got tax refunds I didn’t know about. I always let him have the money because he’d leave for a while then, and leave us alone.”

Temple closed her eyes and wished she could close her ears. It ached to hear so much ingrained misery. She could only imagine how Matt felt to revisit his mother’s awful marriage through adult eyes. No wonder he’d gone into the priesthood straight from high school. He would probably have murdered Effinger otherwise.

“Mom, what about the file safe?”

“The tax returns? I was afraid the IRS … I kept it. It’s stored in the basement.”

“So Effinger took it a few months ago?”

“No. He just wanted to make sure I had it. He said not to touch it.” She winced bitterly. “I didn’t want to. He said to keep it … warm … for him,” she spat out. “I had a big knife in the kitchen block.”

Temple’s eyes went to the countertop, as did Matt. Sure enough, a knife block.

“I thought…,” Mira said. “But I didn’t want him to have the satisfaction of knowing he’d driven me to do wrong. Now do you see, Matt, why I can’t marry anyone? I thought I could, but I have too much to hide, too much to hate about myself.”

During the extended pause, Temple saw Matt taking a long look at his mother. “Yeah. You’re right. You can’t love anyone if you hate yourself. You can’t forgive anyone if you don’t forgive yourself.”

Tough love.

“Anyone?” Her voice trembled.

“Anyone.” He was adamant.

Mira swallowed, digesting the back draft of her emotional meltdown, finally listening. “That can’t come overnight.”

“No. But it can start right here, right now. It has to, Mom. We can’t go on otherwise.”

She sighed, her shoulders straightening. “If someone wants what’s in that file safe, I can give it up.”

“First,” Matt said, “we’ll look at what’s in it. Temple and I.”

Mira’s look of panicked appeal at Temple made it hard to insist she really had to see the contents. But it was her cat, her case. She did.

“Possibly fraudulent tax returns might seem scary,” Temple said. “So is what those thugs called to say about my cat. If someone wants what Cliff Effinger had, considering he was probably killed by the mob, we’ll all be a lot better off knowing where and what it is.”