Cat in an Indigo Mood

Chapter 53

Our Flag is Still There...

Temple had never been so humiliated in her life.

First the entire population of the Circle Ritz had been rousted and forced outside, until it was all too clear where a certain white Maltese dog resided for the time being.

Even the police had retreated at this revelation.

Then bullhorns had blared forth for everybody left in the apartment to come out, their hands empty.

That meant leaving the cats and Nose E. behind.

She and Matt faced the audience of ousted residents, including an Electra Lark whose face had gone as white as her pixie hairdo. While uniformed officers corralled them near a squad car, bomb squad experts in what looked like beekeepers' outfits rushed past to storm the empty building.

Temple and Matt were not searched, but they were asked pressing questions about Nose E.

and how he had come "into their possession."

Why was Matt unwilling to give his address and phone number to the dog's rightful owner?

"The dog's rightful owner had sounded a little odd on the phone. Asked if I was smoking dope."

And were you?

Matt shook his head. "Never in my life."

"He used to be a Catholic priest," Temple explained in rapid-fire PR-person-ese. "Until very recently.

Then had she been smoking dope?

"No! Why would this weird guy who owned Nose E. even suspect such a thing? He sure couldn't tell it over the phone."

"Nose E. is not just any dog," the young policeman said solemnly.

They waited.

"He is a drug-and-bomb-sniffing ace, if he wandered off, he was probably on the trail of either illegal drugs or incendiary devices."

"He was on the trail with my cat, who is still up there," Temple said. "Cats do use catnip.

Perhaps Nose E. has been suckered by a perfectly legal odor."

This caused the first frowns to develop on the mustached officers' young and tender faces.

The frowns deepened when the guys in the jumpsuits, gloves and face-masks came down to pronounce the building all clear, except for two black cats and a white dog in 3B.

Officer A was uneasy. "I don't know what to do," he admitted. Temple decided that strong, even odious, measures were called for. "Get in touch with Lieutenant Molina in Crimes Against Persons."

"These are two cats and a dog, ma'am."

Temple hated it when men, especially young men in their twenties, called her "ma'am." She was only thirty-and-a-half herself. She drew herself up to full, three-inch-heel-implemented height.

"I am thinking of crimes against persons, particularly against police persons, that haven't happened yet. Like wrongful detention lawsuits."

What a difference twenty minutes makes.

The unmarked car drove up; Molina got out and walked past the assembled, currently evicted residents, past the beekeepers' apprentices, past the boys in the uniform, past Temple and Matt. She spit one word in her wake: "Follow."

Obviously, she had been briefed.

Temple scampered after her, Matt coming along more deliberately.

The building was eerily quiet. Not even an aging faucet squeaked somewhere while someone ran water for the dinner vegetables.

They saw or heard no trace of Molina ahead of them as they "followed," not even the flicker of the third-floor elevator light.

"Why did you have them call Molina?" Matt asked as they rode up in the empty elevator.

"Because l think this is relevant to her cases."

"To Strawberry Lady and Church Parking Lot Lady?"

"And maybe Stripper Lady."

"So it's a trio!"

Temple nodded grimly. "Three women strangled to death within a week of each other. The stripper hadn't been stripped of her ID, but the other two sure seem like mirror slayings."

"But . . . the cats, the dog. Surely, no one would take anything they did seriously."

By then they were outside his open door.

Inside, they could see Molina squatting in front of Nose E. She wore latex gloves and was pulling a short muzzle hair from the dog's perky little face.

He whimpered and jumped back.

Molina deposited a few hairs in a plastic Baggie, straightened, stuffed it into her pocket, and turned. "Good. Round up the cats. I need samples from them too."

"Couldn't this be considered invasive?" Temple asked. "Don't you need permission to take hairs for DNA testing?"

"DNA l don't need. Just the species will do fine."

"You don't have to pluck the cat hairs. Just pet a cat, your hand will come up with several loose specimens."

"You contemplating a police brutality suit?"

"Among other things," Temple said.

While the women were word-sparring, Matt had done sensible things like shutting the door and picking up Louise.

He offered the pretty, semi-long-haired cat to Molina. "I think a couple loose ones are already hovering." Like bombs bursting in air?

Her pale-gloved fingers pincered onto a couple of likely specimens. 'With perfect gravity, she put them into their own plastic

Baggie, labeled it, then glanced at Midnight Louie, who was under the sofa, "His Majesty next."

His Majesty was not so sure of that.

He had chosen well. The sofa was just wide enough that no human arm could quite reach in far enough to capture a furry body. Oh, a fingertip could flirt with search and seizure. A hand might brush a soft swath of fur. But curl around and extract a feline extremity? Never!

Temple felt like Nose E. (who had again attached himself to Matt and his pant leg) as she crawled from sofa front to back to side. Each time Louie impeccably adjusted his position so that he was utterly out of reach.

"Louie! This is the end! No more Free-To-Be-Feline for you if you don't come out this instant!" she bellowed.

Underneath the couch, Louie seemed to smile like the all-but disappeared Cheshire Cat.

Ooooh!

"I'll trick him out," Temple swore, rising to study the landscape of Matt's apartment like a sneak thief. "I need a tassel, a cord, a tape measure, a ribbon, a . . ." She leaped upon Nose E.

and undid his collar.

Moments later, she was shivering the short length along the sofa edge.

Louie wouldn't budge.

"Smarty-pants! You're in trouble," Temple threatened, quite emptily.

"That does it." Molina spoke in the voice of authority. "Devine." She nodded at Matt, who came to stand at the sofa's opposite end. They lifted, Molina swung the bulk sideways, and Temple dove onto the stranded cat.

Matt had to help her upright, since holding twenty pounds of cat didn't leave a hand free to lever herself up.

Temple shut her eyes. "Please be quick."

A moment later Molina announced, "Bagged."

Temple opened her eyes to see a third plastic bag vanishing into Molina's bottomless jacket pocket, along with the latex gloves.

Matt waited patiently by his post at one sofa end, Nose E. happily gnawing his pant leg, for Molina to pick up her end and swing the sofa hack into place.

All three humans collapsed on it, having at length defeated the three nonhumans.

"Do you mind explaining the hair scavenger hunt?" Temple asked.

"I do mind," Molina admitted, "but l see no help for it. I've had my best investigative team on the Blue Dahlia strangulation case, and there is no question that the victim's house contained long, white hairs, and black hairs, both long and short. I would like to thing that she was done in by a salt-and-pepper haired killer, but the inescapable conclusion, given eyewitness testimony in the neighborhood, is that two black cats were in the house, certainly after the time of death.

Miss Orth's cat had also died, or more likely was killed. The evidence indicates that someone dragged the cat corpse out of the house and buried it in the yard. Marks in the disturbed soil and sand show the tracks of four nails, either a human with his or her thumbs folded under into an exceedingly awkward position, or of quadrupeds definitely larger than a squirrel but smaller than a coyote. Unfortunately, whatever body was there has been removed. Maybe by coyotes.

"I have been forced, much against my better judgement, based on all the evidence, to conclude that these black cats, specifically, were in the death scene area, and that later they were possibly joined by an animal of white coat. And that a human, whose hair was also white or gray, was recently in the Vicinity.

"Therefore--" Molina pushed her hands into her jacket pockets, gazed at the magical undulating Circle Ritz arched ceiling. "I am forced to examine the animal behavior here tonight in the light of evidence. Apparently the white dog was Nose E, who is known to me both in his capacity as professional snitch and record store dog, and apparently his activities on the death scene have spurred his recent fetish for Matt Devine's pant leg. So. I have to ask you, sir; where has your pant leg been in the past few days?"

Temple sat upright, alert as an attorney working on a contingency fee. "Lieutenant, you have gone too far. A man is not responsible for where his pant leg has gone."

"When and where did I last wear these pants?" Matt looked bemused. "I don't have that many pairs." He glanced down at the damp bottom of one leg, still clutched in Nose E. 's face.

"And will have fewer soon. I don't pay any attention to what I wear when or where! I've only been here, or at ConTact briefly. Or at the radio station."

"The radio station." Molina digested that. "You come into contact with any people with white hair there?"

"Uh, no. Most of the people at a radio station are pretty hip and therefore pretty young.

Unless they bleach their hair." He glanced at Temple, the germ of an idea leaping between them like Ebola.

"Nance!" Temple said. "She was right here. And those were the pants you wore for the photo shoot, weren't they?"

"Yeah. I guess. I hadn't worn them since, come to think of it."

"Nance?" Molina inquired.

"The photographer," Matt explained. "I don't know if it was natural or not, but her hair was snow-white."

"In one of those buzz-cuts," Temple put in. "Kind of like that Aussie actor who used to sell batteries a few years ago. Jacko, or Jocko."

Molina's expression grew analytical. "Then this 'Nance' must have been a bit--"

"Butch to the bone," Temple said promptly, precluding any hemming and hawing on Matt's part. "Even had a really pumped tattoo on her left bicep. I mean, this was one barbed-wire babe.

She also seemed like a hell of a photographer."

"How old, would you say?"

"Hard to tell with that hacked-off Harlowe hair . . . pretty old. Even forties, maybe."

"Even forties. Hmm." Molina was looking intrigued. "I hadn't considered a female perp, but gay relationships can get as abusive as straight ones." She was beginning to buy into the theory.

"In fact, gay sexual violence can he particularly vicious. The knotted ligature could be some fetish object. 'She left.' It fits."

Matt was frowning. "Yeah, but . . . the victim you described, an ex-nun librarian in her fifties.

I don't see--"

"It fits," Molina interrupted. "You and I both know that there were a lot of unadmitted gays among the clergy."

"Not a lot. . . ."

"Didn't you say forty percent, once ?" Temple reminded him.

"Forty percent of new recruits to the priesthood, they think, but there wasn't anything like that number in the old days. Then, years ago, most people never guessed they might be gay, much less dreamed of leading the lifestyle. You don't know the environment: a vocation was a blessing and an honor, and the celibate life was held up as a higher form of behavior."

"Besides," Molina added, "getting married and having fourteen kids didn't look like a picnic to everyone. Girls with intellectual ambitions had no choice but to look to the convent. Those days are dead. And good riddance."

"I still can't see this woman even hanging out with someone as upfront as Nance." Matt said. "And just because Nance's looks seem to announce her sexual preference, that doesn't make her abusive, or a murderer. You're stereotyping, both of you. People with in-your-face facades are often the most insecure of all about themselves."

"Thank you. Mr. Midnight," Molina said caustically. "When I want a profiler, I'll call Quantico. How can we get in touch with this Nance?"

"Ambrosia would know. That's my broadcast partner. Her off-air name is Leticia Brown. You can teach her at W/COO."

"Oh, we will." Molina stood, gazing down on the three animals with fond wonder.

"Amateurs," she muttered.

Whether she was referring to the four-footed or the two-footed of that dreaded species was up to the hearers to decide.

"You going to take Nose E. back to Earl E.?" she asked Matt.

"Sure. I mean, he must be worried that the little fella has been in the hands of international terrorists or something."

"Good. I don't want to get dog hairs in my car. Might mess up the evidence. Thanks." She glanced at Temple, but didn't say anything, and then . . . she left.

"How weird!" Temple declared when she and Matt were finally alone, except for the three animals, who regarded them with the rapt attention of those requiring feeding shortly.

"Which part of weird are you talking about?"

"Hey, I had to be honest! You're kind of upset about that Nance angle, aren't you?"

"I hate to see the dead libeled, and the living too. We don't know that Nance is gay, and we certainly don't know that she's dangerous. Besides, none of these victims was sexually assaulted. Or Molina isn't saying so, and l don't see her holding that back with us. We know too much about the fringes of this case."

"Strippers can be lesbians too, like hookers. You know, women who've been abused by men often go the other way in their personal lives."

"I've heard that too. All this makes committing to a life of religious celibacy sound like a real sensible course, doesn't it?"

"For the first time l understand it," Temple admitted. "Maybe you had the right idea in the first place." She grinned.

"Maybe I had the right idea at the time, but now--" He shook his head.

"l hope I'm not totally disillusioning you."

"You are, but it needed to be done. In fact, I'm meeting with an ex-priests' group that has an openly gay member. It's been like the military decided up to now: don't ask; don't tell, but--

Omigod!"

"What?"

"I just realized. You want white hairs, come to my ex-priests' group."

"I don't think I'd be welcome." Temple glanced at the furred triumvirate on the floor. "But maybe this Earl E. would let you take Nose E. if we both asked him very, very nicely. And explained what we had in mind."

"It would be a scummy thing to do."

"It's what Nose E. does all the time: go undercover for the greater good."

"I'm surprised you didn't hold Max up as an example of same."

She wagged her head from side to side. "I didn't think you'd appreciate the reminder."

"I don't."

"But . . .Nose E. Who can resist that furry little two-faced face?"

"Louie won't like being aced out by a dog."

"I kinda think Louie has resigned himself to it, who do you think sprung Nose F. from downtown?"

"Lou E.?"

"Man, you are getting into the undercover lingo. Now all you have to do is get into the spirit."