Cat On A Blue Monday

Matt felt momentarily absolved. Absolved of the recent confidence he had borne so unwillingly, absolved of his ambiguous status: ex-priest. He never escaped the word and what it meant. Priest. There are no ex-priests, just as They say there are no ex-Catholics. The Force is always with you, Luke Skywalker, even when you walk--run--away. So are They. So Father Hernandez was not guilty of Blandina Tyler's death at least. Who was?

Molina finally took mercy on them and ended the suspense.

"The person who killed Miss Tyler was apprehended last night, Father Hernandez. Yes, sit down; you'll need to.

We have in custody Peter Burns, church attorney. I understand your shock. I've shared a pew with him at Our Lady of Guadalupe more than once myself."

Gasps greeted this announcement.

"He has been a member of the parish for . . . over ten years," Father Hernandez objected even as he sank down obediently on an empty chair. "He has volunteered his services in the church's behalf. There must be a mistake--"

"Indeed," said Lieutenant Molina. "The matter of Blandina Tyler's will is foremost among these 'mistakes.' We have found, after searching the Tyler house, which, thanks to

Miss Barr did not burn down"--Temple nearly fainted at this fulsome praise--"seventeen wills dated at various times.

That's why Burns continued to haunt the house, as it were, after Miss Tyler's death; he knew she stockpiled everything, and other wills might surface to cloud the legitimacy of his quite illegitimate will. That's why he finally decided to burn the house down. Now we have the wills he feared. The will Mr. Burns presented to Father Hernandez as the latest is clearly a forgery based on the previous wills and no doubt commissioned by Miss Tyler, but altered in its terms, particularly as to the disinheriting of the cats. Mr. Burns had a vendetta against cats, among other things."

"Then he shaved my Minuet!" Peggy Wilhelm said. "But why? I was miles away from my aunt's house, at the Cashman Center."

"Maybe--" Temple, thinking hard, hit bingo "--that was the idea."

"Not bad," Lieutenant Molina noted. "With her show cat attacked, Miss Wilhelm would spend the weekend at the Cashman Center guarding against further mischief, rather than visiting her aunt's house twice a day to help out with the cats."

They all mulled that over.

"He wanted Miss Tyler alone for the weekend?" Temple asked.

Despite her protests that Lieutenant Molina intimidated her, Matt noticed that Temple was the only one willing to speculate in the face of what Molina might know. Matt wondered if that was because she was the one with the least to hide.

"Miss Tyler and her cats." Lieutenant Molina savored those factors. "He did not count on his action at the cat show ensuring that the terminally curious Miss Barr would be sent to the house to feed the cats instead, or that Sister Seraphina--disturbed by the accelerating obscene phone calls to Sister Mary Monica, and finding Father Hernandez. . . removed from parish affairs--would call on her ex-student Matt Devine for aid. Instead of getting rid of one inconvenient niece, Burns ensured the presence of two peripherally involved strangers." Lieutenant Molina regarded Matt and Temple in turn. "I have always found peripherally

involved strangers to be a pain in the neck. I believe that Mr. Burns is now of the same opinion. Shaving the Burmese cat was his first mistake, although he was not detected at the time."

"Birman," Temple put in scrupulously. "The cat was a Birman."

Peggy Wilhelm, in a sort of daze, gratefully nodded her curly head. "They were sacred temple cats in Burma hundreds of years ago. Most . . . prescient, intelligent animals, Birmans, and very sensitive."

"Burmese, Birman," Lieutenant Molina went on with a trace of annoyance. "The point was not the breed, but the threat. Some of you should have seen from the beginning the significance of the shaved pattern."

Everyone looked politely mystified.

"Down the back and around the middle," Matt heard himself saying. "A cross. Father Hernandez had commented on that."

"A cross." Lieutenant Molina beamed approval at Matt as if he were a prize pupil.

He felt himself flush at the attention--or perhaps at the approval--and dropped his eyes. This wasn't a classroom exercise. The harassment had turned a number of lives upside down, least of which, his. He didn't want good grades, he wanted an answer, the answer. He had always wanted the one, true answer that was never quite clear. Mea culpa, mea culpa, mea maxima culpa.

"Under interrogation, Mr. Burns proved to be somewhat obsessive about the topic of religion," Molina said. "Also about old ladies and cats. There's no doubt that he intended to crucify another animal. The black cat, Midnight Louie, would have been found nailed to the church door before Miss Tyler's funeral."

"Ahhh!" Temple clasped her fists to her chest and looked appalled. "Did he mean to imply satanism?"

"Possibly. Certainly he meant to abuse an animal. Was your cat on the Tyler premises for some reason, or did Mr. Burns take him from your apartment?"

Temple obviously had not considered this question. "I don't know. How would this guy even know I had a cat? He didn't know me from Adam Ant. No, Louie . . . Louie's just

a man-about-town. He's always wandered, and he must have stumbled into this guy's path."

"Hmm." Molina was not impressed. "I don't buy it, but since the alternative is that your Louie put himself into Mr. Burns's path for some reason, I'll go along with it. Let's say that Midnight Louie happened to be visiting lady friends in Miss Tyler's house when Mr. Burns came looking for a big, juicy cat that no one could miss seeing stapled to Our Lady of Guadalupe's doors."

"Mr. Burns is Catholic," Sister Seraphina piped up.

"On the surface, yes. Why do you mention it?" the lieutenant wanted to know.

'Tacking a cat to the church doors--it's a sacrilegious version of Martin Luther nailing his 'Ninety-five Theses' to the Wittenberg Cathedral door and starting the whole Reformation."

"Perhaps, Mr. Burns's attitude toward Catholicism seems to be highly antagonistic, given the statement we have recorded."

"But why?" Father Hernandez demanded. "This young man has been a member of the parish for over ten years. He has volunteered his legal services, both to the church and Miss Tyler. Why would he pose as a loyal parish member for so long? Why?"

"Four hundred and fifty-seven thousand dollars," Lieutenant Molina announced briskly. "The will was fraudulent.

The monies he represented as comprising Miss Tyler's estate are grossly underestimated. The church would have gotten its pittance; the cats would have been homeless, and Peter

Burns would have been immeasurably richer. Our fraud unit is still tracing accounts. He handled her financial affairs for the past decade, you see. She was a typical, modest, closemouthed old lady. No one would suspect how much her money had appreciated with shrewd investments, not even Miss Tyler."

"Except--" Sister Seraphina stopped speaking suddenly.

All eyes turned to Peggy Wilhelm, who was shaking her moplike head.

"No, not me. Aunt Blandina was of a generation that believed that her age, her financial position and the state of her soul were equally sacred. She said nothing about any of them to me. I was still a child to her. Her forever-childish niece; useful, but untrustworthy, except with the cats. I was good enough to take care of her cats, but not her financial affairs, not anything else."

Temple winced at the self-disgust buried in Peggy Wilhelm's bitter words. Matt wondered again who had cast Temple in the role of confidante. Like Molina, he had his suspect.

"Mr. Devine."

The lieutenant's voice made Matt jump as if he had been fingered in a crime. He liked being the observer, the judge, the confessor. He didn't like being the subject, the focus.

"You were the wild card," she said. "Sister Seraphina drew you from the deck; you were a student of hers in Chicago--" he nodded "--and you came onto the scene with a kind of unholy innocence. What forced her to turn to you? The obscene phone calls?"

He nodded again.

"Why not Father Hernandez? The drinking?"

He nodded yet again, not looking at anyone.

Molina smiled grimly, satisfied. "So we have Sister Seraphina and Mr. Devine trying to protect Sister Mary Monica, and Father Hernandez by default."

Father Hernandez pressed his lips together, tempted to defend himself and his sudden alcoholic turn. No, Matt willed him. The rest of it may not have to be revealed. Let her suppose, and we will dispose . . . we priests, who serve the greater good, which sometimes is not served by full disclosure. Their glances clashed and slid away.

"And we have Miss Temple Barr," Molina said, "who is trying to protect cats."

Temple, too, controlled herself, remaining silent while

Lieutenant Molina went on.

"Mr. Peter Burns had not planned on these interlopers. He had planned on Miss Wilhelm being absent. The crucified cat was meant to distress Miss Tyler, and did. It was not meant to have other witnesses than she. Essentially, we believe, and Burns has indicated, he intended to weaken and harass Miss Tyler into a grave illness. He was tired of waiting; he wanted her dead. He wanted her money. He wanted the cats killed, one way or another--by his own hand, or by being cast out undefended in an unwelcoming world."

They listened to Molina and shook their heads. Peter Burns, whom they had hardly known, seemed mindlessly demented.

"But why?" Sister Seraphina's astute eyes were unsatisfied.

"Money doesn't motivate the acts of mischief and terror he performed."

"He had a motive beyond greed," Molina conceded. "Retribution. Mr. Devine?"

Matt looked up again. He was beginning to resent being called "Mr. Devine." Was Molina taunting him for the absence of the old honorific, "Father?" Father Devine. Father

Matt.

"You suggested that I investigate the background of everyone in the case," Molina went on. "You knew how thorough I could be, from your own experience."

He nodded.

"I did as you said. And I found ..." Molina sighed as if exhausted. "Miss Wilhelm, would you care to tell us about it?"

"About what?" Her voice was stiff, ungiving.

"About what happened at Our Lady of Guadalupe thirty six years ago."

Peggy Wilhelm's eyes stabbed toward Temple.

"No," Temple said. "I never did. Honestly."

Peggy Wilhelm's hands became helpless fists on her knees, her stubby, middle-aged knees covered by cotton culottes.

Finally, Peggy Wilhelm spoke.

"Thirty-six years ago. You think I'd forget? You'd think everyone else would forget--why can't they? I lived here for a while, in this parish. At my aunt's house. None of you were here then. None of you would know. Lieutenant . . .!"

"It's the key." Molina's tone was not uncompassionate.

"You must know, and they must know."

"Why? It's been such a secret all these years!"

"Because he knows."

"He?" Peggy Wilhelm seemed utterly confused. "But he never knew, the father. That was the whole point. We all . . . conspired to make sure that he never knew. It was our

business. Family business. My fault. My sin. Not his. He was irrelevant. But not me. My heart magnified the Lord, and so did my body. They kept telling us what the Virgin Mary was like, so young, so pure. I was fifteen and I hardly knew how it happened.

"They told us so little then, it was still the fifties! Do you know how long ago that was? I used to read the New Testament, after the angel told Mary she would bear the Christ child, when she visited her cousin Elizabeth, who knew already and said, 'Hail, Mary, full of grace. Blessed art thou among women and blessed is the fruit of thy womb.' I used to have to say the rosary over and over, those 'Hail, Mary' words, but the fruit of my womb was sin. They kept using those words in church on Sunday, they even gave them a name, the Magnificat, Mary's rejoicing in her miraculous motherhood--'My soul magnifies the Lord, and my spirit rejoices in God my savior."

"She said 'His mercy is from generation unto generation,' but I read the words and heard the words and felt only shame. There was no mercy for me and my child--not from the church or my family or any of you now who will be so quick to judge."

Peggy Wilhelm's troubled face searched their features and then lowered. She wiped her fingers across the corners of her eyes, which were dry. Her voice as she continued was even dryer, almost dead of expression.

"I was sent to stay with Aunt Blandina until it was over. Not even to a 'home.' Too public. A midwife was more discreet than a doctor, and whatever came, would be whisked away. I hardly remember. I wasn't supposed to. Nobody was unkind, they were just so shamed. We never spoke of it in the family afterward. Never. I was sent out of state to finish high school, and then to college. I grew up, I tried to forget, like I was ordered to.

"When my parents died, of broken hearts, I suppose, I moved to Las Vegas, I don't know why. To be near my only living relative. My aunt. She had started keeping cats by

then, and I did, too. Beautiful, loving cats, who could not know. That's what I wanted, cats. I didn't want . . . men. I didn't want . . . children. And I didn't want strays. I wanted planned, beautiful purebred cats, all my own. I fed Aunt Blandina's creatures. No room, no time, no memory for me and mine. But cats everywhere. I love them, and sometimes I hate them."

"What about the money?" Molina prodded.

"Money? I don't need their money. They paid money to him to go away. Money to the midwife. Money to the people who took my baby. They never gave money to me." Peggy eyed Father Hernandez and Sister Seraphina with dull, judging eyes. "The church said money should go only to the good. I was bad. The church would get all the money, from my parents, from my aunt." Peggy frowned and rubbed her chunky hands over her forehead. "Except, the old will that

Temple found. Once upon a time, my aunt remembered me, and that was written after . . . everything. I don't understand."

Everyone looked on, appalled and speechless. Except Molina.

"We're still trying to trace the last, legitimate will. From the versions we've found so far, we believe that your aunt left her estate equally: to the church, to the cats and to you."

Peggy Wilhelm started sobbing into the hands that covered her face. Defiantly, Temple rose and went to stand behind her, her hands on her shoulders.

Sister Seraphina glanced from Lieutenant Molina to Father Hernandez, then crouched beside the sobbing woman to take hold of her hands.

Matt found himself staring at Molina, demanding silent justification for this public revelation.

"Did you ever try to find that lost child?" Molina asked.

"No!" Peggy almost retched between sobs. "It had to be forgotten. Everyone wanted it forgotten. I had to forget it. I couldn't, but I had to."

"And no one tried to contact you?" Molina was cool, an interrogative machine.

Even distraught, Peggy Wilhelm responded to that authority as she had always responded to authority throughout her fifty-one years.

"No," she said. "Who would? The family was Catholic, infertile and delighted to take my . . . sin."

"What about your son?"

"Son?" Peggy looked up from her hands. She had never even known the sex.

"He looked for you when he grew up," Molina said. "He went to college and got a degree. He did very well for himself. And then he did a birth-parent search. Of course no one would contact you without your consent. And no one did, because he withdrew his request, but not before he had used his special knowledge to get the information he craved: your location. He was a lawyer by now, he knew who you were, and he knew you had lived with Blandina Tyler during your pregnancy. He discovered how rich Blandina Tyler was, and he came to hate her church and her cats and her money that wasn't coming to him. He deserved it, and he came to the parish years ago, intending to get it."

"He . . . never wanted to see me?" Peggy asked through her tears.

Molina shook her head. "He was obsessed with his own losses, not yours."

"That's why he called Sister Mary Monica!" Temple said. "She reminded him of his great-aunt, her age and her cane! That also clouded the harassment of his aunt. And he attacked the cats because they had usurped his inheritance, and because they made everything seem madness without a method. But he honestly would have cheated his own mother out of her aunt's money?"

"From what I can determine," Molina said, "he was roughly reared. His adoptive parents always reminded him that he was the product of sin. He found only obligation, not love, in his new family. He found them and the church harsh and unforgiving, and he became so himself. In a way," she added, eyeing Father Hernandez, "I agree with him.

"We've traced what records there are; we've found his parent search request. But it wasn't a parent he wanted; it was revenge and restitution. He is responsible for every bit of harassment that has plagued this parish, and he spent ten years worming himself into everybody's trust to do it.

`"I'm sorry," she told Peggy Wilhelm. "It will all have to come out at the trial. I believe that your aunt's friends at Our Lady of Guadalupe can help you to deal with it. Truth is cleansing, at least I think so. If you have any questions, or need to know anything more, just call me."

Peggy nodded, her head still bowed.

"Would you like to see him?" Molina asked.

"I don't know. In all those years, I never met him. I no longer went to church; I certainly didn't attend Our Lady of Guadalupe."

"After today, you will be seeing his picture and reading about him in the newspapers. After today, the news circus will put him in the center ring." Molina was silent for a few seconds. "You could do worse than to confront the past with friends present; everyone here was his target, in a sense, because they stood between him and his deepest desire."

Peggy looked around at those who had met her son; some had known him--or thought they did--for years. Some, like Temple and Matt, had just met him, and thought nothing of him at all. She nodded and lowered her head again as Sister Seraphina rose on stiff knees and resumed her chair.

The office was crowded now, Matt thought; could it absorb the added force of such an explosively angry personality?

Molina used an intercom to instruct that "the prisoner" be brought in.

He came in handcuffs, wearing a set of City Jail Clark County jailhouse baggies and escorted by a blue-uniformed corrections officer. His round, plastic-framed glasses and short yuppie haircut gave him the look of a vintage prisoner-- an escapee from a forties' crime movie.

Molina indicated the last empty chair. "Sit down."

He did so awkwardly, perching forward on the seat so that his manacled hands weren't jammed against the back of the chair.

Peggy peeked at him like a shy child, from between the fingers fanned over her eyes. He regarded her impassively.

"I ... I don't see a resemblance," she said. "Do you know who I am?"

"Good!" he answered. "I don't want any relatives. They sent me away. And, yeah, I looked you up when I got to town. I know where you live. I know you coddle those stupid, fancy cats, just like your aunt was looney over her army of lousy strays. You people should have had cats instead of children."

Peggy winced at his derisive tone. "Maybe we were trying to make up for our loss, in some way."

"You would have made up for it in spades if I had managed to have my way."

"Peter." Sister Seraphina spoke soberly but not unkindly. "You did much good for the church. You helped the elderly widows with their financial affairs, you donated all your legal work for the church . . . was that all a sham?"

"Yes." His eyes narrowed. "You sent me away to that horrible house. It probably was no worse than what I would have had if I hadn't been bundled off like dirty laundry.

Always the same lousy litany, 'the church says this' and 'the church says that,' and my mother was a whore and my father worthless."

"I wasn't here at the time," Sister Seraphina reminded him.

"You were. Or someone like you. You were all alike, you holier-than-thou types, whether you wore black habits and white collars or sat at home under paintings of the Sacred Heart and mumbled endless rosaries."

"That was a long time ago," Father Hernandez said. "I was reared under the same strict standards. Yes, they were intolerant and unforgiving, but the times and the church and the people in the church have changed, Peter. Why can't you change, too?"

"Because I don't want to, Father." He spat out the honorary address like an obscenity. "I don't have a father. I don't have one listed on any birth certificate and I don't have a Holy Father in Rome and I don't have you. You're just a freak, a freakin' drunk, and you think I didn't enjoy watching you all flounder and fall to pieces? I was in control. I pulled strings and you danced, even the old bag in the convent. I know what hypocrites you all are; she didn't hurry to hang up on my naughty phone calls, did she?"

"She's nearly deaf," Sister Seraphina pointed out.

That seemed to shock him, the notion that someone he had persecuted was unreachable because of a physical failing. While his face was slack and surprised, Molina pounced.

"Why were the canes such a trigger? You hated Blandina's, even broke it after her death. And you called the only nun in the convent who used a cane."

"Canes." His face hardened with an old, hurtful memory. "There was a grandmother in my adopted family. She used to jab her rotten cane at me, easier than saying my name. 'You, there.' And they used to hit me with it when I'd been bad. I was bad a lot--but I made something of myself anyway. Good grades in school, law school on my own; I even had to fix my rotten teeth myself. I may look good, but I'm still bad, only now other people are paying for it."

"No." Sister Seraphina shook her head. "You're paying for it, only you don't see it."

"What about--" Temple had been thinking again"--what about the hissing phone calls to Peggy and Miss Tyler? I thought he did it, because I realized he had the right equipment. Did he?"

Molina's melancholy face lit up like a contestant's on a game show. "That was ingenious. Yes, Mr. Burns made those calls, and here's how." She pulled a manila envelope across the desk. "We had to confiscate this; prisoners are allowed very little in the county jail; anything might be turned into a weapon."

Molina pulled a piece of pale, translucent plastic from the envelope and exhibited it on the palm of her hand like a shell. A thin silver wire glinted at its front.

"He had braces," Temple remembered, "and I realized they would make it easier to whistle when he talked, if he wasn't careful."

"You only met him--?"

"A couple of times," Temple said.

"Very observant, Watson." Molina's smile was almost mischievous. "But not braces. What you saw was the front portion of a dental appliance used to keep teeth that have had braces in line after the procedure." She eyed the sculpted hump of plastic shell sitting on her hand. "It's familiarly known as a 'turtle' because it's made from a mold of the wearer's upper palate, which is shell-shaped. If Mr. Burns let his turtle slip slightly out of position and spoke, he produced strange whistling, hissing sounds. A perfect way to disguise a voice. I know about turtles because

I have a preteen daughter who may soon require such costly objects."

Molina returned her exhibit to the envelope. "Anything else you wish to say, Mr. Burns?"

"Your murder case is built on a shell of circumstantial evidence, Lieutenant." He relished his own taunts. "The prosecutor will have a cat when he finds the evidence so thin. Who is to say she didn't fall, even if I was on the premises that night? Only God, and He isn't talking. I plan to defend myself, and I will blow your case to smithereens!"

"Maybe." Molina nodded to the officer, who assisted Burns to his feet. "But the prosecutor is used to winning her cases."

As the handcuffed man left, Peggy Wilhelm spoke with some wonder. "He's an angry stranger. I don't know him. What happened all those years ago hurt me, and him, but separately. Sometimes I'm angry about it, but not that angry."

"You need to heal," Sister Seraphina urged. "What was done to you was wrong, but it was done by people who meant to do the best they could, according to their lights.

You need to resolve the fact that good people can do terrible things to those they purport to love."

"You need to go to group," Temple said briskly. "I do, too. We can go to group together."

Peggy blinked at Temple. "What do you need to go to group for?"

"Oh, this and that." She leaned forward with mock confixdentiality. "You'd be surprised who in this room needs to go to group."

Peggy bit. "Who?"

"Everybody," Temple pronounced triumphantly, and had the last, and only uncontested, word of the afternoon.

After leaving police headquarters, they all returned, by unspoken agreement and in separate cars, to Our Lady of Guadalupe.

They disembarked together in front of the convent and stared at Blandina Tyler's house, seeing it for the prison it had been almost forty years ago for a frightened, confused young girl. In a sense, the happenings at the house had kept several people prisoner for much too long.

"I wonder if Sister Rose has any more bishop's tea?" Sister Seraphina inquired.

"Regular tea will do fine," Father Hernandez said sternly. "There are no bishops in this parish."

Peggy Wilhelm hardly heard them. She regarded the house as if hypnotized. "Aunt Blandina remembered me in that old will. Do you think she was sorry?"

"I'm sure of it," Sister Seraphina reassured her with a quick hug. "Why don't I go see to that tea and you can all come in and have some."

"Better yet--" Temple nourished a key from the morass in her tote bag "--I still have a key to the house. I wouldn't give you two centivas for Lieutenant Molina and crew's search tactics. What say we hunt through the house for the latest version of the will?"

"I'll go," Peggy said quickly. "I want to check on the cats anyway."

Matt smiled to watch Temple entice Peggy into a treasure hunt for her own past. She was a pied piper of sorts, Temple, luring people from their heartsick ruts into a brave new world of her own imaginative construction. Who said Max Kinsella was the only magician around?

Sister Seraphina headed for the convent kitchen, where she would no doubt keep a sharp eye on Sister Rose's tea preparations.

That left himself and Father Hernandez standing together on the sidewalk, basking in the hot, healing sun, feeling freeof a terrible revelation. Almost.

"I would guess," Matt said slowly, "that Peter Burns was the author of those threatening letters."

"That's likely, but you can't trust Lieutenant Molina," Father Hernandez said abruptly. "She could have found some evidence among Burns' things."

"Would she quash an investigation?"

"No."

"Then he covered his tracks. You're safe."

"A priest is never safe."

"Unless you are guilty of the crimes accused."

Father Hernandez's black, Spanish-olive eyes met Matt's cautious glance head-on, sharp and salty. "I swear to God, no."

Matt looked away. "I swore to God once."

"You did not swear; you promised church authorities to abide by certain behaviors--poverty, chastity and obedience. If the church finds the circumstances under which you made these promises questionable, who am I to feel superior because I have so far managed to honor them? The older I get, the less prone I am to judge, even Peter Burns. For all the ill he's done, he was a victim of an unforgiving time."

The sun was already swelling and heading for the western horizon. It baked down upon the church tower, turning it into a blazing white finger pointing at heaven. It painted false fire on the red-tile roof of Blandina Tyler's house. Matt squinted against the late-afternoon glare.

"If you are deceiving yourself, Father," he said carefully, "if you are a victim of denial so deep that it disguises itself as innocence even to you, I am carrying a terrible burden and taking a worse risk."

Father Hernandez nodded. "I can only swear by all I believe in that I am not the man those letters accused."

"It's not only your problem now."

"You're a good priest, Matthias." Father Hernandez put his hand on Matt's shoulder. "I will not let you down."

Chapter 38

Slow Dance on the Hands of Time

"I owe you dinner," Matt said over the phone.

"For what?" Temple returned quickly, pooh-poohing any sense of obligation.

"For the chauffeur service to Our Lady of Guadalupe, for the risk to life and limb."

"You already taught me how to preserve life and limb pretty well. I owe you dinner."

"Let me make the first move in this mutual-obligation society. Dinner. My treat. Someplace really nice."

"You can't go to dinner, you work those hours."

"Not tomorrow night. I'm off."

"Tomorrow! That's awfully soon."

"Why, do you have to fast three days before dinner out?"

"Well, I should ... but okay, it's a date. What time?"

"Why not seven? I'm used to going to work then anyway."

"Fine. I'll meet you at the Storm in the parking lot."

Temple hung up with a smile. Matt was so serious about his obligations. Wait'll he found out what her idea of dinner out was beginning to be. Still, he hadn't given her much time.

Daylight was still rampant at seven o'clock of a Las Vegas September evening. Temple couldn't disguise her entrance under dark of night.

Matt was already by the car when she sashayed up--and she did sashay up in her purple-taffeta cocktail dress, a silver crocodile-pattern tote bag hung over her shoulder. He saw her from a distance--how could he miss?--and looked instantly worried.

Temple had never been one to let how she looked to someone else bother her. "Hi!" she greeted him in approved P.R. perky style.

Matt smiled uneasily. "I didn't wear a tie."

"Great!" she said, surveying his beige slacks and sport coat, the white shirt open at the neck.

"You look . . . great," he replied, unconsciously echoing her.

Temple smiled. She had checked herself out in the mirror, and concurred. Her dress was a halter-style purple-taffeta number that was modest around the Victorian-high collar, but that bared shoulders and back and clung to her torso to the hips, where it blossomed into a full, gathered skirt that ended above the knees. Matching strappy purple-satin high heels had been bought at a madly cheap Wild Pair shoe store in the local mall.

"Thanks," she said modestly.

Matt flashed a plastic card at her, as if eager to direct attention to other matters. "I got my Nevada driver's license in the mail today."

She took and studied it, even reading the statistics.

"Height: 5' 10". Weight: 170. Eyes: brn. Hair: bld." Uh huh.

"Good! Gosh, you even take a gorgeous driver's license photo! Remind me not to show you mine." She returned the license and dug in her tote bag for her key ring, then tossed the keys in a jingling arc over the Storm's low, aqua roof. "You drive."

Matt caught the keys to his chest, looking surprised and surreptitiously pleased. He came around to open the passenger door. Temple waltzed in, settling into the purple petals of her crackling skirt.

Matt went around and slipped into the driver's seat.

Temple slung the silver tote bag onto the backseat and smiled dazzlingly. "Drive," she ordered. "Drive me someplace dark."

"It's not dark yet."

"It will be."

"I've got reservations."

"You always have reservations. Luckily, I don't. Drive me someplace dark," she instructed in a Lauren Bacall contralto that came quite naturally when she was feeling playful, "and you won't be sorry."

He drove, looking worried.

Las Vegas spun by, the Strip beginning to light up for the night against a sky still tinted dusky purple and gold and scarlet.

The mountains and clouds came closer; the lights skimmed into the distance. Traffic thinned as the Storm followed Highway 95 north to nowhere.

Temple sat contentedly in the passenger seat, enjoying the rush of motion, letting the city sink behind her and the night open up like a Purple-Passion-colored peony of desert and sky and sunset and mountain and distance.

She began to delve in her tote bag while speaking huskily, like a voice on the car radio, which was not turned on. Yet.

Matt watched the road, not knowing quite where he was going.

She watched his unrevealing profile, knowing exactly where she wanted to go.

"This," she said, "is my prom dress. I never throw out a good dress. It's also a time machine of sorts. Tonight is June third in nineteen seventy-eight and we are going to the senior prom. I bought this dress especially, and you have brought me a lovely gardenia corsage."

She pulled a white florist's box from the tote bag. "Oh, how great, I can pin it anywhere. It won't work on my dress--" she eyed the halter top that bared her shoulders "--but it'll pin perfectly to my headband."

Temple plucked off the purple and silver satin band and affixed the gardenia blooms to its right side. "There." She re-donned the band and tilted her head at Matt, who glanced over and nodded dazed agreement.

"You are wearing," she said, staring forward into the distance that was darkening on cue, "a simple white evening jacket, so appropriate. Here's your boutonniere. Nothing garish. I hate tastelessly tinted flowers and so do you."

She leaned across the bucket seat to pin a red carnation to Matt's lapel. He was beginning to look alarmed as well as mystified.

Temple sighed happily and settled back into her seat. "I cannot tell you how wonderful it is to be going to the prom in a decent car. With a decent driver."

"Isn't this prom a little deserted?" he asked tentatively.

She smiled at the expression. Empty desert stretched on each side of the car, with a far, faint twinkle of Las Vegas lights in the rear-view mirror the only civilization. Darkness rang down on the desert with the speed of a black-velvet stage curtain.

"How far do I go?" he asked.

We shall see, thought Temple. "Stop wherever meets my specifications: dark and private."

Despite the emptiness of the land, it was all claimed and every off-road ended in a visible glitter of ownership. Matt finally pulled the Storm up a dirt road, then drove a few feet onto the desert floor before he stopped.

"Temple--"

She held up an imperious hand, like a conductor. This was her Lost Symphony and this time it would be played right.

"They usually hold senior proms nowadays in fancy downtown hotels, where it costs a fortune and everybody is trying to act so cool and so sophisticated. But we attend this tiny high school in a small town and we only have the school gym, all strung with crepe paper and a corny silver-mirrored ball--look, there it is!"

She ducked her head and leaned into the windshield. Matt did too. A full moon obligingly swung into view, tinted blue by the shaded top of the windshield. Bluooo moo-oon. Temple had checked in the paper that morning. Perfect timing. O sole mio.

Temple pulled a tape cassette from the bottomless maw of her tote bag and popped it into the tape player without pushing it all the way in. " Maybe we should check out the auditorium."

Matt got the cue and came around to open the passenger door.

'Thank you," Temple simpered in sixteen-year-old bliss. Such a polite young lady.

She brought the tote bag with her as she got out and went around to the driver's side of the car. She opened the driver's door so the interior car light came on, then pulled on the headlights Matt had extinguished.

"Oh, the decorating committee did a beautiful job," she raved, stretching her arms up to the star-sprinkled sky.

The sunset was a memory, a last welter of red haloing the mountains' jagged profile. The Storm was an oasis of light in the desert, its headlights beaming into the blue-velvet dark like those huge, sky-sweeping spotlights used at grand openings everywhere.

"Temple. The lights will wear the battery down."

"Not as much as the tape player." She plopped into the Storm's front seat to lean over and push in the tape. She turned up the volume, and music began filling the empty desert air.

When she exited the car, she picked up the tote bag, set it atop the Storm's hood and pulled out a thermos bottle.

"Of course we've got that tacky prom-committee magenta-colored punch that's far too sweet, probably made with Hawaiian Punch, but between you and me, that awful punk Boots Battista spiked it with vodka, so it tastes a little better."

Temple poured the punch--it was indeed a lurid, red-pink shade--into two plastic cups and offered Matt one.

"Temple," he said, "you're creative and wonderfully crazy, but--"

"Shhh. This is our prom night. The one you never had, and the one I had but shouldn't have. We don't get many second chances. Listen to that music."

"I don't recognize it."

"You will. I specially recorded my all-time favorites.

Maybe some of them are a little chronologically off, but, hey, they're classics."

Bob Seger's "We've Got Tonight" was unwinding slowly.

Temple held out her arms. "Let's dance."

Matt stood paralyzed, an untasted cup of Teen Time punch in his hand. "I ... I don't dance."

"Right. You do martial arts. And the martial arts are designed to keep people at a distance. Dancing isn't." Temple stepped closer, took his plastic cup and put it on the car hood. "Do you . . . shuffle?"

He looked down at their feet, at a dimly visible desert floor hard and sandy, just like a hardwood floor sprinkled with cornmeal for no-slip dancing. Perfect, Temple thought. If only I can bring it off. She put her left hand on his right shoulder. Then you do the hokey-pokey and you turn yourself about. She extended her right hand, elbow crooked, wrist cocked, palm up, like a magician or an emcee presenting something. Voila!

"It isn't hard if you try," she softly quoted her current martial-arts instructor.

"Temple--"

We've got tonight, the Bob Seger classic promised, who needs tomorrow? Matt took her hand. The center of his palm was only slightly damp. Better than dweeby Curtis Dixstrom already.

Temple led. For a man who could dance over a poolside mat in dazzling defensive moves, he was a statue on the dance floor, or the desert floor. She had expected herself to lead all the way.

She made sure her shiny purple shoes carefully bracketed his shuffling feet without puncturing toes and listened to the music, moved to the music.

The beat quickened into John Mellencamp's rhythmic teenage anthem. All right, hold tight. Who ever knows if they're doing it right? Amen. Forever and ever amen, as in a country song. No country music unwound on Temple's tape, just soft-rock classics, just distilled teenage angst and ecstasy, just hope pure and simple.

" Stand by Me" segued into ''Sometimes When We Touch," with all of its impassioned lyrics and instrumentalzation. Temple loved her setting, her lights, action, camera, but she was beginning to feel a teensy bit foolish, despite her determined intention not to. Here she was, dancing with a handsome cigar-store Indian, playing with fire and ice, interfering in something she hardly understood. . . .

Matt's hand suddenly moved to the back of her waist, which he had avoided so far.

Temple held her breath.

He caught her to him, crushed her to him. As embraces went, it was convulsive and awkward, and it took her breath away.

She dared not move. The singer sang, the tape ran on, the moon shone at the same steady rate, her heart beat well above her aerobic target zone, her face was forced sideways into his shoulder, her fragile gardenias were getting bruised by his chin; she could smell their battered fragrance flying free to perfume the whole damn desert ....

He stepped back, away from her. She felt like a fool. A failure. Tears stung her eyes. You can't go back, and you can't take anyone with you, not even for their own good. Other people's "own good" often destroyed them, and you as well. She was sorry, so sorry. . . .

Matt looked down at her, as if he had never seen her before. He wasn't touching her anywhere at all now, and the gulf between them was more than a few years and different sexes and different parts of the country and different cultures, different backgrounds ... it was endless, depthless.

He looked down at her, the moon burnished his blond head, he leaned down

And Temple saw, realized

Temple was back there where innocence began

He was going to kiss her

She knew it

It was probably his first kiss

It was hers

And the moment was perfectly innocent and scary and sweet and she had forgotten everything adult she ever knew; she was just amazed and grateful

And it happened

It went on forever and for not long enough

Their lips touched and that was all

And nobody expected anything beyond the instant

And it was magic.

Again,

Chapter 39

Aftermatt

"Dinner was great," Temple said primly in front of her apartment door. "The restaurant was very understanding about our car breaking down in the desert, and we weren't that late."

Matt nodded agreement, still disoriented by the unexpected evening and trying not to show it. He had been trying not to show anything all night, though the moment of the kiss had slid almost naturally into another song, another shuffle, and then Temple had gathered up her memory-lane props and suggested they try the restaurant.

"I had a wonderful time."

She was saying the stock teenage line as if she meant it, smiling up at him with the gardenias moon-white against her flagrant hair. He would never forget the scent of those gardenias against his chin, storming his nostrils with their heady, honeyed scent. Had she planned even that when she pinned them to her headband? He was beginning to recognize that Temple was a peerless organizer of special events, from public-relations campaigns and murder investigations to ambushed emotions.

"It was the Perfect Prom, Matt. Trust me; I'm an expert on imperfect proms. Perfect. And they almost never are."

"It was a little late."

She shrugged. "I'd better get in, or my folks will be blinking the porch light. They do that kind of thing."

He glanced at the eternally lit carriage lamp beside the door, wondering if he should kiss her again, kiss her goodnight.

He didn't want to, not on the brink of this threshold so identical to his own, in these familiar surroundings, under the glaring light. . . .

Matt took her shoulders--bare, a foreign surface, an intimacy-- and bent down and kissed the top of her head. It was his Perfect Prom, too.

Temple smiled that smile women have sometimes, the one that is accepting and undemanding, and slipped inside her already unlocked door.

He was surprised a few moments later to find himself standing by the elevator, dumbly waiting. Usually he walked a single flight; tonight he moved in a numb cocoon. Father

Hernandez flashed into his mind. He would have to keep in touch with him; he was responsible now for the secrets that he knew and kept, not only for Father Rafe's sobriety, but for his innocence.

He walked off the elevator without remembering being on it and let himself into his unit.

"What the--?"

An island of items sat in the middle of his bare floor, as if a visiting child had piled some toys there: an ivory plastic tray filled with grayish sand and a slotted spatula. A set of stainless-steel dishes, one filled with water, one with a mound of noxious-looking green pellets. A plastic jug with a label reading "Pretty Paws." A box labeled "Free-to-be-Feline." He looked around.

A lean little black cat reclined on his Goodwill sofa like a pagan idol, front paws stretched long before it, golden eyes regarding him with the aloof interest typical of the breed.

Matt bent to retrieve the white envelope atop the Free-to-be-Feline and read the note inside.

"Electra managed the transfer while we were out dancing. Give this nice kitty a chance! Cats are quiet and clean, cheap, and make great companions--and Louie is major miffed about another set of paws around the place. Her name is Caviar, but you can call her anything you like. Pretty please! Temple."

Matt looked back at the cat, who suddenly leaped off the couch and approached him with mincing, silent steps. She walked like a runway fashion model, each long leg slightly crossing the other with every step.

The envelope also contained a coupon for spaying at the "veterinarian of your choice."

Matt sighed as the animal massaged his calves, leaving short black hairs on his slacks. He gave it a cursory pet and it began purring. It had spent some time with Temple, all right.

He checked his watch--almost eleven. He wasn't used to winding down at this early hour, but the television in the bedroom didn't attract him. Maybe getting the cat settled would distract him, not that it meant that he would keep it. Her.

She followed him into the kitchen as he moved the food, and leaped atop the countertop with a happy chirrup.

"I hope you're not a spy, Caviar," he told her. "I don't need any turncoats reporting back to Temple; she's nosy enough already."

His voice echoed strangely in the rooms bare of rugs and furniture. He realized that he never had anybody visit him here, that he was always utterly alone in his home and as

silent as a monk in his cell.

Matt wasn't sure that having a cat to talk to was much improvement in his private life. He went into the bedroom, where the futon was perpetually unrolled on the floor, where the small color TV sat on a secondhand brass stand, where two cheap particle-board bookcases formed the biggest solid front of furniture in the place.

He turned on the television without checking the channel or the program schedule from the Sunday paper. Was this room that much different from the cell Peter Burns was occupying at this moment? Was he himself as imprisoned by his lifelong past with the church as poor, crazed Peter, whose obsession with what he hated about the church had directed his entire life?

Matt sat on the lone kitchen chair that served as an informal clothes tree and took off his shoes--black wing-tips left over from parish priest days and still so suitable for more formal civilian occasions. And socks, also black.

He threw them across the room. They silently hit the wall and fell to the floor, looking like dead bats.

Temple was crazy! Out of her mind to mess with his life that had already been messed up so thoroughly by other people. By family, such as it was. She didn't know, even with her investigative instincts, what she was getting involved in. He had wanted to hit her with the ugly reality, to shout it out. The church's dirty laundry was coming out in the wash with a vengeance these days, and the statistics, although vague guesstimates shrouded in secrecy, weren't pretty, given the traditional noble concept of the priesthood: up to fifty percent of priests were not celibate; as many as thirty-five to forty percent were gay. Most priests, however sincere their vocation and their spirituality, had found a home in the church precisely because their families had failed them in some way. Some families had failed so spectacularly that young seminarians were unconscious of the hidden booby traps in their own psyches. Now, in public, idols were falling on all sides, all answering to the name of ' 'Father."

Not him. Not anymore. And he had made none of the traditional missteps, had nothing sinful to hide. Perhaps that was his biggest failing. He had been too successfully inhuman.

Matt shut his eyes in the bright room. He knew his own history like a long-term shrink. He knew the whens, the whats, the whys. The only thing he didn't know was how to escape it, overcome it, resolve it, integrate--in psychobabble jargon--the past with present and future.

His sexual future was the least of his worries, and now Temple had confronted that in her own inimitable way. He was surprised to find himself smiling in the middle of his sober thoughts. He knew no one--no woman--who could have confronted the issue in that innovative, intuitive way and pulled it off.

She had literally taken him back in time to a point from which he could now consider a different path. And she'd done it with such a brilliant, whimsical and determined piece of role-playing that to disappoint her and not play along would be like taking a Baby Ruth bar from Shirley Temple. Despite her small size, her youth, her fey good looks that she always felt held her back, Temple was implacably supportive and a very wise old soul in her way.

For the first time, Matt's eternal, invisible force field of restraint, of distance, of sexual repression, had cracked all at the same instant, and the breakthrough had seemed so natural, so innocent for the fractured seconds of the high-school kiss.

After Eden came the flaming sword. He winced as he metaphorically peered into the closet in his soul and the emotions Temple had triggered that night peeked out. Some surprised him. Fear, and pride. Fear of acting like a fool, of being bad at something any man his age knew inside and out. Fondness and begrudging gratitude. But no guilt. It was a Perfect Prom for him, too, like the music she had provided that was neither too fast nor too slow, too little or too much, too cold or too hot--a swift trip to the past, with no more pressure than he could handle at the moment.

Emotions he could control; he had been doing it all hislife. Where emotion and instinct and hormones intersect, though, is a true battleground. He still had hormones, Matt was discovering now that he was alone, despite his long and mostly successful attempts to disown them. The instant they raised their imperative heads, he summoned conscience to beat them back.

Temple had recently been deserted by a man who had meant a great deal to her, he reminded himself. She was vulnerable; perhaps she was attracted to him precisely because he was certain not to rush her into more than she could handle now. And there was the challenge: women couldn't resist the kind of challenge he represented. And the more they tested him, the more he resisted, as if his life depended on remaining unmanipulated, uncontrolled.

And then there was that teenage self of his, who longed for love and understanding, who had sacrificed sex in order to be something better than he thought he was and who now, disillusioned to his sensitive, randy soul, was perfectly capable of being just what Temple wanted, because the closet door could burst open now that Father Matt was no longer there to guard it and so much time had been lost, and she was a sweet, mostly safe human being and he could think about taking advantage of her, using her to ease his own way into the real world he had never been part of.

That realization made him understand the priests who had failed, made him understand that he could still very easily become one of them, despite having left the priesthood.

Matt opened his eyes to the empty, dazzling-white walls, then went to the bathroom. He knew what he should do now: the seminary cold-shower trick that they all had joked about. "The needles of death.''

He stripped off his clothes quickly, as if disowning them, but he was not quick enough to avoid glimpsing his bare body in the long slit of mirror on the bathroom door. He avoided seeing himself in mirrors, dressed or undressed. Being a stranger to himself was part of being a mentor to everybody else. But for a split second, he saw himself as someone else, a true stranger, and he glimpsed for the first time what others might find attractive in his face and body, what a woman might be drawn to.

The insight scalded him with unwanted intimacy with himself. He was used to thinking of himself as the edited outline of a man, like the male figure sent into space by NASA, genitals diplomatically erased like evidence of an unfortunate malformation, as in so many images of modern men. Today's vaunted sexual frankness built its bawdyhouse on the same foundation of nineteenth-century prudery and shame upon which the church had erected its sexual orthodoxy.

He stepped into the deep white bathtub and reached for the shower knob, an old-fashioned porcelain ship's-wheel shape with the word "COLD" printed at its center--cold water like a dash of reality, shriveling, almost painful. But he wasn't in the seminary anymore. He reached instead for the knob marked "HOT" and turned it slowly.

It came out cold at first anyway. As it warmed, he fed in some cold until hot, flaming swords of water flogged him and steam rose and hissed all around him, fogging the long mirror on the door and the square mirror on the medicine chest.

When he picked up the bar of soap from the built-in holder, he could have sworn that for a moment he smelled gardenias.

Chapter 40

Louie Dines on Crow

At last I have the old place to myself again, and can look forward to having my delightful roommate to myself, too. A gentleman needs the presence of a person of the female persuasion, especially if she is unrelated to him.

Miss Temple Barr has been gadding about a bit of late with Mr. Matt Devine, and although I am pleased at the absence of the troublesome Caviar, I am more than somewhat miffed when Miss Temple Barr comes home wearing a particularly sumptuous gown, whose full skirt would make a most pleasing bed, and rushes right past me without a word.

She does not even check the Free-to-be-Feline bowl, and I have been gracious enough to show my approval of my exclusive residency by actually gumming a few of the pellets down!

I repair to the bedroom to find her sitting on the bed. I would leap joyfully into that inviting lap, but Miss Temple Barr has her hands on her lap, which normally would not stop me--she can move them--but they are holding some sort of hair collar and affixed to it are two pale floral blooms that broadcast the most revolting odor I have ever encountered.

Miss Temple Barr shows no inclination to change her position or throw away the reeking growths. In fact, her olfactory faculties must have hit a down day, for she sits there smiling and actually raises the abominations to her nose.

I do understand that persons of her species are sadly lacking in nasal abilities, but this is ridiculous. To further add to my impression that she has become completely unhinged, she then gets up and goes into the kitchen.

I follow quickly, expecting some tender treat from the meat drawer in the refrigerator.

Apparently her eyes have also been affected by this strange malady, for she opens the refrigerator and puts the foul flowers inside. Then she closes it without selecting a tidbit for me.

I have not witnessed such irresponsible behavior in years. I am forced to express myself, at which she looks down at me with a fond smile.

"Louie," she says, as if seeing me for the first time, as if I have not always been there but jumped out of the refrigerator or something. "Are you happy now with Caviar gone?"

I would be happier with some caviar in front of me.

Miss Temple moves to the opposite counter and fusses with something. My hopes perk up.

She turns while emptying a thermos container into a tumbler. A dark, bloodlike liquid crests in the glass before she stops. Then she picks up the small box that plays music and returns to the bedroom--all the while without feeding me anything.

After a slow, shocked start, I race after her.

Miss Temple Barr is bending over the bedroom stereo machine, which she has not used since my arrival, although I see a dusty stack of Vangelis cassettes piled beside it that I suspect are among the last traces of the vanished Mystifying Max.

Instantly a blast of loud, rhythmic so-called music is pouring into the room. I am not against music, but I lean to improvisational jazz in an outdoor setting; indoors, I prefer something smooth and classic that aids the digestion, like harp solos.

This is not either. How is a dude to sleep with such a racket going on?

I can see that this is not Miss Temple Barr's worry. She is busy removing her garments, without bothering to remove herself from my presence, which is once again forgotten.

I turn my back, which courtesy she overlooks.

When I next see her, she is not wearing the usual Garfield T-shirt, which I abhor (that could be my kisser on every chest in America!). Perhaps she wishes to make amends, and I must say that this filmy garment will go far to accomplishing exactly that, and I am not of the same species even.

Miss Temple Barr sings along to the tape while she performs her evening ablutions in the bathroom. I never like to witness humans at the act of cleaning themselves. They make such a mess of it and use so many unnecessary implements when a good, long lick would do as well and is always available in every circumstance.

On occasion I attempt to demonstrate my methods to Miss Temple Barr, but she mistakes my grooming lesson for affection.

She turns off the lights and occupies the bed.

Under the cover of darkness, I leap up and decide to investigate what might have driven her slightly mad. Cautiously, I sniff along her arm and discern the lingering scent of the awful flowers.

I am not against greenery, being a connoisseur of the catnip variety, but these stinky pale flowers are dangerous.

I had hoped to hear a word or two dropped about the case, but will obviously hear no more than these lovesick wailings on the stereo. I am beginning to think that my, er, purported relative is right in the belief that a simple operation can remove many of the compulsions of the single life.

So I am left to muse on my own affairs, which recently included a visit and report to the landlady's companion, Karma.

I tell Her Sacredness that her predictions do not have much relevance. When I tell her the name and profession of the criminal, she interrupts me with an imperious mew.

"A lawyer, you say? It was in the Tarot."

"You mentioned all sorts of high-toned occupations: Empress, and this here Hierophant, but no lawyers."

"But I told you that Libra was a key. Do you not see? Libra's symbol is the scales."

"I like fish myself."

"No, that is Pisces, you fool."

"I thought the Fool was one of your fancy cards."

"It is. The scales that represent Libra is that metal instrument used to weigh goods--"

"Aw, why did you not say so in the first place? I have seen the like in several meat shops."

"And," she adds with a triumphant little tail shake that I do not find at all alluring, but

then, she is not my type, which is unusual as I am a pretty liberal dude usually in such matters. "And . . . the scales are used as the symbol of justice. So there is your lawyer predicted by the cards, if you were intelligent enough to see it."

"Your cards always predict what has already happened," I grumble. "What else do you claim?"

"Your account is full of Father Hernandez. I told you the Hierophant would be a key figure."

"He did not do that much, except hide out a lot and indulge in unpriestly behaviors, like drinking."

"Also the card of Temperance showed up. It is astonishing how much the cards tried to tell. They cannot be blamed if the recipient is deficient. Or simply deaf to the spiritual."

"The Tarot cards did not mention anything about me being bagged by a dude who wanted to turn me into a decorative wall hanging."

"The cards spoke. You did not listen."

Apparently, Karma is not too strong in the listening department, either.

I shake my head and slink off. I must admit, however, that I have been instrumental in resolving the fate of dozens of cats, as duly predicted. Had I not been sniffing around Mr. Matt Devine and the Tyler house, had I not been nabbed, who is to say that the murderer of Miss Tyler might have gone undetected and the money might not have finally come to its rightful inheritors--cats and Catholics?

As I work my way down two floors to my own abode, where I anticipate a fond reunion with Miss Temple Barr, I reflect on some disturbing words from my departing, er, alleged offspring.

Although I am much relieved to see the industrious Miss Electra Lark gathering Caviar's belongings into a pile preparatory to moving out the whole kit and kaboodle, my joy is short-lived.

Just before she is swooped up by Miss Electra Lark and borne elsewhere, I care not where, she manages to whisper a parting phrase in my shell-like inner ear.

"It is a good thing," she says, "that I left a message about your whereabouts for Miss Temple Barr while you were being detained by a burlap bag."

"You? You left a message? How?"

"Some sleight of paw with a newspaper and the Free-to-be- Feline. You really should eat that stuff. Not only is it excellent nutritionally speaking, but it literally saved your hide."

"Naw," I say. "You have not got the street smarts to start manipulating people in this shameless manner. It takes years to develop the skill."

"Maybe," she says in an ignorantly cruel parting shot, "it runs in the feline family."

Happy as I am to see the last of her tail, I am equally morose to remain alone to await Miss Temple, while I contemplate the fact that the lady sometimes known as Midnight Louise may be righter than she knows. She might indeed be kin.

Even now as I lie on my own bed and relive my humiliating recent conversations of the cat kind, I am jerked out of my reverie when Miss Temple Barr rolls over on me like a petite ton of bricks. She is exceedingly restless tonight.

Her hand clutches my belly fur, then tickles me.

"Perfect," she murmurs in a sleepy, sappy voice.

At least she has finally given me my due. I am at last able to slip off to Lullabye Land, where it is no surprise to find myself dreaming of carp, caviar, catnip and crime.

Tailpiece

Midnight Louie Objects

I am nit one to complane, since I am well aware that this iz knot a becoming posture. But I have knot been treeted in a flattering manner in this pease of outwright fixshun.

Number one, I waz left languizhing in the literal bag at the clymaxx, when I actually had

the situashun well under control and waz about to spring a surprize exit on the perpatraitor and leed a lejion of catz to Miss Temple's resque. If she had not taken matterz into her own pretty little feet and made like Nansi Ninja, I cud have performed my custamary rezcue operashun with my usual elan, instead of being depicted as gooffy and foggy and in kneed of artifishial oxygen. This iz the true fixshun!

Franklee, I have been ill-treeted by the females of all speeshees in this book.

First, Miss Temple Barr showz unpressadented indifferens to my wants, kneeds and even my whereabowts until the very end. I do not thing that her obsesshun with Mr. Matt Devine bodes well for eether of them, or for my well-being.

Second, I am subjeckted to the metafizzical mewlings of the know-it-a!! (espesheally after eventz have unwownd) Karma, Miss Electra Lark's undercover psykkic lady Birman.

Third, I am confronted with the pateete but hostil Caviar, aka Midnight Louise, tresspessing on my own turff and on my own name, which has a sertin cashay in thiz town and a sertin fame (well-dezerved) far beyond it.

Besidez espousing some noxsheous notions, this Midnight Louise individual showz dizturbing signz of hanging arownd. Do I sniff spin-off here? I can only hope that she will distrackt Mr. Matt Devine long enuff to keep him aweigh from Miss Temple, or vice versa, but I am not sangwine (espesialee after my forced blood-doner duty).

Even my blue-ribban performance at the cat show has been made lite of!

I am az mad az he!! and I will not fa'ke' take it anymore.

Midnight Louie, his mark

(not made in ink this time! You figure it out}

Carole Nelson

Douglas Rejects

Louie, Louie, Louie ....

Often, in the heat of finishing a book, I inadvertently leave the computer on overnight.

When I do, I return in the morning expecting the pleasure of printing out my full opus, only to find that Midnight Louie has lived up to his name and has left what an acerbic friend of mine calls a ''love note."

It pains me to reveal that Louie uses a somewhat heavy paw when tripping over the keyboard. I usually "clean up" his typographical errors, not to mention his many misspellings.

Despite his innate intelligence and formidable vocabulary (even his grammatical airs, I could say), his education was strictly on the street. This time, given the nature of his complaints, I have reproduced his endeavors uncensored.

You can see why I am named as sole author of these exercises: printed unedited, Louie's portions would be incomprehensible except to fanatical cipher-solvers.

As for the throng of his complaints, only one deserves comment: at one time--in fact, at most times in the history of the world--the male of every species won applause for propagational performance. But times have changed. Not only are modern minds aware of the horrors of overpopulation, but modern female minds are all too aware that their assigned role in this scheme of things was exploitive of them.

The mathematical chances of a gentleman of the old school--like Louie--encountering one of his many unacknowledged offspring are staggering, as are the numbers of offspring one tomcat can sire in even a short lifetime. We are talking thousands here.

So he is lucky that his encounter with Midnight Louise, or the like, did not occur years earlier. Perhaps he has heard of the phrase, "sins of the fathers"? Nor should he be surprised that a female of any species is less likely in these enlightened days to be seduced into the former view of her place in the world: prone.

In fact, Louie should be proud that at least one of his offspring has demonstrated the ability to adapt to a modern world where responsibility for one's actions and offspring--and indeed, for the good of the species--is more prized than the old swaggering machismo of promiscuous propagation.

I don't like to stand on soapboxes, but Louie has aggravated me one time too many. He had better watch out, or I might find the keyboard taking steps of a neutering nature toward him at some future time.

It is nit nice to make fun ov the mannue!!y challenged.

Wait till next tome! Lllouie

Oops, left it on again!