Cat In A White Tie And Tails

Chapter 55

Twisted Tight

It was over.

Matt moved aimlessly through his apartment at the Circle Ritz, not that it was a very big space. Mom married. The wedding banquet at the Crystal Phoenix had been festive … and underwritten by Nicky and Van. Temple had been amazing, as usual.

They’d kissed the happy couple good-bye and come home to change finery and chill out. Matt relished this time alone. He’d come to Sin City hunting the ghost of his mother’s almost willfully unhappy marriage and, now, thirty years later, had watched that misery dissolve into a midlife renewal with a good man.

He himself had been remade by coming to terms with the past.

Matt loosened his tie, kicked off the fancy black patent leather loafers, sat on his red suede vintage couch. So many of the people he’d met here in Vegas had helped him make a deep personal transition.… The staff at the ConTact phone help line where he’d first worked. Janice Flanders, the police sketch artist. Danny Dove, choreographer and friend extraordinaire. Letitia Brown at WCOO. Carmen Molina, always tough and resilient. Even the Mystifying Max Kinsella.

And Temple. He could never do for his mother what she had done, taken Mira in hand and out of her self-imposed isolation. Temple was always the warm, steady heartbeat of everyone around her. Especially him. His love for her was an inner island of calm … easily ruffled by waves of shore-shaking excitement.

Now would be time for Temple and himself, solely and exclusively, and their own wedding plans could commence without any baggage from his past. At last.

As he sat there, enjoying the silence, the thoughts of the future, he noticed a nagging background sound. Something tap, tap, tapping somewhere.

Matt shut his eyes. Breathed deep. Relaxed.

Still that annoying rapping, like Poe’s darn raven.

He stood up. Listened. Was it a water pipe? They could make that noise in an old building like the Circle Ritz.

He made the brief rounds, but the kitchen and bathroom taps were twisted tight.

Back in the main living area, he sighed. No clocks that ticked. Maybe something on the patio. He rarely went there, had never furnished or used it. He wasn’t used to providing for himself. He’d called rectories home for too long, had been spoiled by the parish housekeepers for too long. He’d have to watch that self-centered domestic side of himself when he and Temple were married.

He wandered to the dark row of French doors. Danny had insisted on installing shadow-box blinds over them for “privacy.”

Matt flipped the lock and opened one door. The pecking sound was louder.

Not a bird. A bird would fly away at this human approach.

Was it a lizard or insect of some sort making a maddening mating call to some rhythmic internal clock ticking?

No. The sound came from above. Something was spinning, something attached to the roof overhang above one French door.

A … mobile? A wind chime?

Certainly a shadow against the darker shadow of night.

Matt moved into the glow of the tall parking lot lights to reach up, touch, stop the spinning object.

A shoe.

A light, glinting shoe strung up like a wind chime. A petite silver satin pump with a glitter of gold crystals buttoning the ankle straps.

Temple’s shoe. He’d remembered her fussing about not finding a mate to the “real” shoes she’d chosen.

That had gone missing before the wedding.

That someone had gotten into Temple’s unit to make it go missing and had kept to call her very own and had broken into his place, again, to display it here like a prize, like a serial killer’s ritual object.

The hairs on the back of Matt’s neck rose. A chill of murderous rage crawled up the back of his head. He knew the threat was deadly, and he knew who, but he didn’t know where.

Luckily, he knew just how to change that last condition. Right now.