Peggy paused for a moment before shaking her head. "Why should it? I'm a cat breeder. That means I'm a little nuts about the species. I'm happy to see so many abandoned animals have a chance at a decent, protected life. As for the church, I really didn't have that much contact with my aunt. I didn't earn a place in her will; if she wanted the church to have everything, fine. I just hope the cats weren't left out entirely. But she wouldn't have done that, no matter what."
That was all Peggy knew, all they could know. When Sister Rose bustled in to tell them that an officer wanted to see Miss Wilhelm, they tensed in concert.
Their visitor was not Molina, but another detective, a wiry man with a luxurious mustache who identified himself as Detective Sanger. The crime-scene team was through. Miss Wilhelm could collect some clothes for her aunt's funeral, but otherwise the bedroom and stairs were still off-limits.
"What about the cats?" Temple asked indignantly.
Detective Sanger rolled his eyes. What about the cats?
"They need to be fed and watered twice a day."
"Do it then," he told her, "but stay downstairs."
"What about the upstairs cats?" Peggy wondered, the ones that preferred to stay on the second floor.
"They'll just have to walk down the stairs to eat," he said.
"They've been all over that place since forever. I guess they can't do any more to mess up the crime scene."
"It was a crime . . . then?" Sister Seraphina asked.
The detective eyed her sincere face. "We don't know for sure yet." His voice was the standard detective-issue gruff.
"Just do the essential business and get out."
They chirped agreement like doves in their little nests are reputed to agree, and then eyed each other after the detective had left. Maybe, Temple was thinking for them all, they would find some overlooked clue in the chaos.
Temple, Seraphina and Peggy decamped with a will for the Tyler house and their designated duties. Where Matt went next, he didn't say, but his face was a study in graceful abstraction when they left.
The trio was greeted at the Tyler door by a coven of milling cats--thirteen pairs of eyes the gold, copper and verdigris color of old coins gazing up to heaven and human faces for manna and Yummy Tum-tum-tummy.
It was messy, sometimes smelly, bend-and-twist work, but Temple was glad she could concentrate on feeding the multitudes while Peggy and Sister Seraphina went about unearthing funeral clothes upstairs. She counted their slow overhead steps in a series of loud creeks, then stopped with a can of
Finnyky Feast half-open and smelling to high heaven.
This old house made more sounds than the mews of its many feline residents, and Blandina had not been in the least deaf. Suppose she had heard a step in the hall and come out to investigate? Her cane could have been ripped from her hand and used to strike her until she fell down the stairs, the victim of an apparently nasty accident.
How could Molina prove or rule out murder in such murky circumstances, with such ambiguous clues as bruises, and stairs the murder weapons? Perhaps the cane . . . now broken and in police custody, was it the murder weapon?
Temple would have liked to see it again, for more than the dried dirt on its rubber tip.
A raucous meow reminded her that standing with an open cat-food can in hand and two dozen open, empty mouths at her feet was not a particularly safe occupation. Thump. A big brown-and-white tom had leaped atop the cabinet. Meroww, he said.
He was not as eloquent as Louie, but he made himself understood. Temple dropped a dollop of what looked like minced eel bellies into an empty pie tin. Boston Brownie was at it in a twinkling, and so were the lithe, lean cats that joined him atop the cabinet for a feast.
Now that their benefactress was dead, Temple wondered, would the authorities evict these cats from their overcrowded haven? Miss Tyler's death exacerbated everybody's problems. Lieutenant Molina was forced to investigate a suspicious death in her own back yard. Matt was confronting his past in great, stunning wallops. Father Hernandez, hiding from something past or future, now stood in an unavoidable spotlight. Sister Seraphina fended off obscene phone-callers and held everything together, while Peggy Wilhelm nursed a shaved cat and buried a well-to-do aunt whose cats and money were sure to be bones of contention for the framers of city statutes and decipherers of legal complexities equally.
A vibrating fur boa suddenly encompassed Temple's ankles. Cats curved around her calves, making her wobble on her usual high heels, turning her into an island of comfort and consideration, making her a prisoner of their endless needs.
Temple wondered if Blandina Tyler had ever felt that way.
Chapter 23
It's in the Cards
It is never possible tor the born overachiever to rest on his laurel.
Actually, what I normally rest upon is a tot more personal and less prickly than laurels, but that is another story.
I am recovering from my ordeal as Blood Bank Boy of the Year when a certain irritation, a rather noxious itch in my ears, a haunting restlessness, indicates that I am being summoned by the imperious, if not imperial, Karma. I must confess that I am sorry to have sniffed out this telepathic dame. Like all advocates of alternative realities. she is more than somewhat flaky. I am not referring here to the state of her skin, but to that of her mental capacities.
Now that she has got my number, I foresee that I will rue the day I ever investigated Miss Electra Lark's premises and discovered the resident prophetess. (This foreseeing is not restricted to psychic cats. you will observe, but is also accessible to the ordinary street dude it he is so foolish as to think he has anything to look forward to.)
Right now I am anticipating a hot climb in the dark to the filth-floor penthouse, where I will find the sublime Karma hiding behind something and teasing me with whatever it is she has to hide.
These telecats would be a pain in the neck it they were not already a pain in the previous life. I have a feeling that I have felt Karma's hooded claws riding my destiny in other places and at other times. I am no more amenable to that idea now than when I was a hot-blooded kit accepting worship and mummification at the hands of long-gone Egyptians. Why is it that those who are gods in one culture end up as garbage in another? I could go on about my noble origins and sadly fallen slate, but time is fleeting and I do not have too many lives left.
I bestir myself, which makes me feel like last week's stew, and slip through Miss Temple Barr's accommodatingly loose French doors. (These French are notoriously loose in every manifestation.) I naturally recall that my normal egress--the small, high, open bathroom window--has been closed for my own good. This means that I will have to put myself to considerable trouble to achieve another escape route. Which cannot be doing my own good much benefit, but those who determine one's own good do not worry about such trivialities.
So I am out on the patio and up in the blink of an eye, if it is a lizard's peeper and rather slow to blink. I stand on the penthouse patio, girding my loins for another encounter with the elusive Karma. This loin-girding is a figure of speech and somewhat obscure. It certainly is not the fun it should be.
I push my way back into the shadowy interior. All is still, which means that Miss Electra Lark is nowhere in the vicinity. I have nothing against Miss Electra Lark, other than her taste in household companions and furnishings, but I am not eager to be caught trespassing on her turf. She is a buxom lady who is quite capable of sweeping me out the door without so much as a by-your-leavings.I am in luck, as usual. Faint light flickers from the many prognosticating orbs--otherwise known as crystal balls stationed around the room. The light glows green, and I realize that I have once again stumbled upon the hypnotic eyes of the prescient Karma.
"You rang." say I in a bored, Maynard Krebs manner. (I am fond of vintage television reruns on the cable channels when I can get my mitts on a remote control.)