The house is old by human standards, but I am a veteran at finding my way in and out of forbidden places. Some crumbled stucco near the rear leads to an under-porch crawl space. If there is anything I am into faster than a flesh-hungry flea, it is a crawl space.
I box aside spider webs and occasional spiders the size of a well-fed mouse. I range over broken boards and rats' nests and a whole subcontinent of creepy-crawlies, including scorpions. I finally find an opening and push my way through into what people call a utility room via the dryer vent pipe, which is not only loose, but just the size of my circumference.
After sneezing my way past a colony of dust bunnies the size of chihuahuas, I shimmy between the shiny white walls of washer and dryer and am home free. Actually, I am free to take measure of this home, which is now entirely occupied by my own kind.
A thousand rich scents sprinkle the air with fur, dander, and perfumes mostly neuter. Quelle disappointment! This is a house of eunuchs! At least I know that no physical force will be called for with either sex. I am torn between triumph at finding so many of my kind safe and sound and consternation that the price of safety is censorship in the ultimate degree.
Oh, well, we cannot all be tough, swaggering, fearless examples of our species.
I wade into this wilderness of my kind, swimming like Jacques Cousteau amongst an exotic cornucopia of creatures--cats striped and spotted, shaded and solid, black- and white- and zebra-striped; caramel-colored and brown; white and cream; calico and rum-tum-tiger; long-haired and short; tailed and tailless; big and small, tall and squat; male and female, and most often, neither.
I am struck by the vast variety and the noble sense of community among my kind. On the street, it is one for one's self. Never have so many coexisted so peacefully. The house, with its two stories and many rooms, is a sort of rookery, a shared territory both crowded and oddly orderly. I am humbled by this refugee community, this coagulation of every kind and kin until survival and mutual dependence have overcome the more territorial urges of instinct. Young voices mew while older ones purr caution.
I am greeted by open meows showing sharp teeth and line-fine whiskers.
No one heeds my progress. I am the ultimate outsider. The inspector-general. The cop. The Lone Ranger. I am recognized, but not claimed, so finally I must get down to business and start taking testimony.
No one has bothered to interview these key witnesses to many crimes. I hear tales of telephone calls, closely observed. Of an old woman growing older and more tremulous with each cowardly attack by ring and by wire.
I hear of her rushing to the closed windows and doors, watching, Her anxious cane occasionally impinging on an innocent extremity. Of long night vigils, of lights teasing the edges of the house.
I hear of the coming of the Chubby Lady With Birman Breath, distracted and worried, and oddly resentful of the cats coming to stroke her legs. Of the Sister Ladies, who are cheerful and loving with each other as well as with those of our species, who pet and coo and feed, whether it is the dear old Keeper or the numerous Kept they tend.
I hear, with some pride, of the sweet efficiency of my current roommate, who is known as Delicate Heels, and who has never spiked an inconvenient extremity to a floorboard and whose litter-box dredging abilities are second to none.
Speaking of none, none of these residents has been confronted with Free-to-be-Feline. Luckily, Delicate Heels has left the cooking to other, more experienced hands--such as Friskies and Yummy Tum-tum-tummy--during her tenure.
And I hear voices of worry, telling of having heard hissing over the telephone with their sensitive ears.
What kind of hissing, I ask. Like a snake's?
No, not like a snake's.
Like a fellow or sister feline's?
No, most definitely not.
Like a machine's?
They pause to consider that, and I recall the hiss of a television set that is not properly tuned to a channel.
Not like that, Mr. Midnight, they cry in chorus.
Then what is it like? I demand.
Like nothing, they say in cat concert. Like nothing on earth.
Perhaps that dratted Karma is right. We are not dealing with natural disasters here, not even with ordinary murder--for I trust the testimony of my kind's ears above their eyes and mouths--but with unearthly chaos.
This murderous snake may hail from beyond Eden to Gehenna itself.
Chapter 27
A Face Card from the Past
It was a scene from an English mystery: the principals gathered for the all-important Reading of the Will.
Temple wriggled her skimpy, tender derriere deep into the well-upholstered behemoth of a chair just like the other chairs gathered around Father Hernandez's now-familiar desktop.
Her dangling toes brushed the floor as she swung them all the better to kill time and to admire neat, Charles Jourdan navy pumps piped in red, so smart for the unexpected country-house killing, even though they required--ugh--pale gray pantyhose on a hot day. Miss Barr with a humid spike heel in the rectory. Ooh.
Actually, the occasion that brought them all together here, wondering, was not exactly the reading of the will, although the terms of that will would come to public light here. The meeting's real purpose, and the only reason she was included, along with Matt Devine, was the disposition of the late Miss Tyler's cats rather than her money.
How convenient, Temple thought, that Father Hernandez's office came with just the right number of chairs for such a group. Sister Seraphina sat on the edge of her cushy seat, uncomfortable on the visitor's chair, her sensibly shod foot tapping oh-so-subtly. A woman of action, she barely kept herself from fidgeting at the ahems and haws that proceeded from the church attorney at regular intervals. For a relatively young man, he was uncommonly fussy.
Peggy Wilhelm let her half-glasses lie docilely on her ample chest, suspended by their leash of silver beads. She had no expectations of anything in the will, and was not even ready to cast a cursory eye over its terms.
Peter Burns sat forward, the mahogany-colored calfskin briefcase on his knees serving as a table for his voluminous papers. Oddly, he seemed nervous and expectant, glancing from the priest to the nun, then to Matt and Temple, whom he regarded with obvious disfavor and a look behind his round glasses that said: What are you two doing here? He never even glanced once at Peggy Wilhelm, which spoke to how utterly she had been left out of the will, and out of everyone's consideration, except as convenient cat-tender.
Temple felt a flash of anger at the way Peggy had been overlooked. She was the Cinderella figure in the tale: overworked and over willing, asking for nothing but her fireside ashes and an unshaven cat.
Father Hernandez remained the cipher. Handsomely harried, his features seemed to sink deeper into his skull on every occasion, along with the maroon circles cast by his dark eyes, until the man himself was likely to disappear behind his own hidden worry. Max revisited.
Worry. Matt worried her. Temple glanced at him, his calm as evident as Father Hernandez's incipient hysteria. Ice or instability. Temple couldn't decide which facade was the least healthy.
But she had nothing to worry about. She was mere witness to other people's follies on this occasion, included only because she had shamelessly begged Matt to let her know if anything of the sort should transpire. Besides, somebody had to add a touch of flagrant footwear to this occasion: Matt wore rubber-soled Hush Puppies, as effacing as his everyday manner; Sister Seraphina, her habitual Red Cross battleship-gray model; Peggy, a battered pair of Famolare sandals; and the attorney, brown wing-tip oxfords--in a Las Vegas September!
Temple discreetly turned an ankle to refresh herself with a glimpse of an artfully curved vamp. Shoes were such a comfort, except when they were walked in! Perhaps the spiritual should never be expected to turn physical.
As Burns cleared his throat for the thirteenth time, Temple swept her feet together and demurely touched toes to the floor beneath her chair.