"She did care about you, even after it was all over," Temple forged on. "Look, Peggy, this will is dated after you said all of this happened. You were her sole heir then. She did care. Only, like Sister Seraphina said, she got old and . . . queer."
Peggy folded the will against her breast, like a baby. "Can I . . . keep this?"
"Sure. But let me copy it first. I guess we've got to keep a record. I'll get it back to you."
Peggy's troubled face threatened rebellion, and then subsided as Temple gently tugged the will from her grasp.
"Don't tell Sister Seraphina," Peggy begged her. "Don't tell anyone."
"No," Temple promised. "I won't."
But she was almost as troubled as Peggy. Somehow, she was sure, this discovery of the old, forgotten will altered every assumption anyone had made about Blandina Tyler's death, including those of Lieutenant C.R. Molina.
Chapter 31
Curious Confession
Louie still wasn't home when Temple checked in again, but Caviar was reclining on the sofa looking especially pleased with herself.
Temple untied and kicked off her metallic sneakers and settled beside the cat, stroking its silky head. Caviar had longer, finer hair than Louie, but her wise silence made her as good a thinking companion as the larger cat.
"Louie isn't boycotting us, is he?" Temple ruminated aloud. "I hope I didn't send him over the edge by bringing you home."
Caviar's purr was soft and steady, unlike Louie's sometimes rough and rowdy one. It made an ideal background of "black noise" for Temple's darkening thoughts.
What a quandary! Should she inform Lieutenant Molina of the newly found will, which was far too old to affect the current will, but which might point a suspicious finger at Peggy? It proved, at the least, that at one time Peggy had been the principal heir. Despite Peggy's gratified and even touching surprise at the discovery, it did not escape Temple that Peggy could have playacted that reaction, that she could have known years ago that she was an heir. That would mean that she might not have accepted her aunt's new resolve to endow the cats--at least not with the equanimity she apparently displayed.
Then there was the matter of Peggy's forgotten past. Temple twirled her finger into a lock of Caviar's ruff and frowned. Unwed motherhood still was not something to shout from the rooftops, but such young women today had many more options: they could keep their child and finish school. They could have an abortion, depending on where they lived and if parental consent was required, and if required, was given. They could bear the child and give it up to adoption.
In Peggy Wilhelm's day--the end of the fifties--unwed pregnancy was such a scandal, particularly in religious families, that she'd had only one choice: bear the child in shame and as much secrecy as possible, then give it up and forget it as quickly as possible.
Temple kicked her sock-clad foot against the sofa base, startling the droning Caviar, who flattened her ears back and moved down the sofa.
No avoiding it, Temple thought. Peggy Wilhelm could have been nursing a thirty-year-plus grudge against the aunt who helped her parents stage-manage the situation. Did she resent being forced to give up and give away the child? What about an aunt who now felt no responsibility to anyone or anything but her stray cats? Had Peggy come to resent her so bitterly, along with her devotion to the cats, that she attacked her own Birman to divert suspicion and eventually caused her aunt's "accidental" death? She was in the house that night. Motive and opportunity, as they say on TV.
Temple sighed again, driving Caviar a few inches farther down the sofa seat.
She had promised Peggy not to tell Sister Seraphina but not Lieutenant Molina. Yet the suspicion was so farfetched, and Blandina Tyler's death could be so innocuous. Old people are prone to debilitating, even fatal, falls.
The phone calls to Miss Tyler and Sister Mary Monica showed the workings of a sick mind, but anonymous callers were the least likely to act out their fantasies, whatever they were.
Or was Peggy Wilhelm shredding slowly through the years? Did she blame the church and her aunt for her disgrace and loss of self-esteem, especially now that attitudes were becoming more enlightened and less censorious?
The last question Temple confronted was the thorniest. She had been confided in. She had, in a sense, received a confession. She had promised not to tell one specific person; did that bar her from telling others?
Temple hashed the matter over until it was so shopworn she could hardly tell one end of the argument from the other.
One thing was clear: Blandina Tyler's intentions were not as cut-and-dried as everyone assumed. Another unavoidable clarity also tugged at Temple's mind and conscience for attention after the day's cleaning expedition: Blandina Tyler collected more than unwanted animals--string, stamps, stockings, maybe even . . . wills.
At four in the afternoon, Temple rattled around the apartment one last aimless time in search of Louie. Nothing. She put on her shiny sneakers and decided that since she had snooped in a dead woman's house, she might as well compound her sin and go snoop in a live man's apartment.
She slipped up the steps in rubber-soled silence and down the curving, dim corridor one floor above until she came to the short hall that led to Matt's door.
She had never been here--had never been invited--but she knew from the number of his unit, Eleven, where it had to be. Right above hers. The carriage lamps beside the doors were kept on day and night, not only for a homey touch, but because there was no daylight in this cul-de-sac.
For the first time, it struck Temple that the Circle Ritz's design, besides being forty years old and quaint, reflected the confidence of a simpler, crime-free time. These private entrances were isolated, and possibly more dangerous than desirable for that reason.
Temple recognized the beige cardboard in the brass frame beside the doorbell as the back of a ConTact card. "MATT DEVINE" was printed on it in ballpoint in the measured block letters of someone who has been carefully taught to be legible in matters of public record.
She rang the bell, surprised to hear the muffled yet mellow ding-dong from within; she had never heard another resident's bell, except Electra's, which was different, being in the penthouse.
Matt answered it, looking rumpled in a beige T-shirt, Bermuda shorts and bare feet.
"Were you sleeping?" Temple asked guiltily.
"No, but I, ah, didn't get to bed until seven this morning."
He glanced at his watch. "Did we have an appointment for a lesson? I don't doubt I forgot--"
"No, no. I'm not up to making like Sue Jujitsu today Anyway, but I wondered--"
He stepped back, opening the door and looking reluctant. "Come in. It isn't much, or rather, I haven't done much with it." .
Temple stepped over the threshold, feeling the move was momentous. A person's rooms could tell you a lot about the resident.
She glanced around, trying to look as if she was not. Bareness hit her like a heat wave: bare wood floors, bare French doors and windows, a secondhand sofa bare of pillows. Bracket-mounted bookshelves mostly bare of books and knickknacks. Boxes serving as tables, or simply clumped here and there as if clinging together for company.
"I'm not used to providing my own decor," Matt admitted with a shrug, ruefully eyeing his warehouse landscape. "And then, I'm not sure how long I'll stay in Vegas."
Temple tried not to look startled. Of course Matt would stay; she was far too interested for him to just fade away on her and move on. And of course her feelings and wishes had nothing to do with what he wanted to do, and would do.
So her sudden pall of disappointment as she stepped into the room so exactly like her own, but so much emptier, was not because of the blank slate of his surroundings, but due to the General Unpredictability of Anyone, which led her back to her conundrum.