Ugh. Painted wooden treads, with those nasty black-rubber safety covers tacked on. Nothing says "dirty, dank, possibly haunted basement" to me like that shifty stairway to the lower depths.
My eyes adjust slowly to the eternal twilight here. Contrary to legend, my kind's sight is not keenest in the dark. My ears and super-sensitive whiskers serve me better. I hear a clink and a scrape in the farthest, darkest corner.
I slink in that direction, waiting for my fabled night vision to adjust and let me detect a scintilla of difference between darkness and shadow. Apparently my fabled night vision is waiting for another legend, the Robert E. Lee.
Before I reach the corner, I hear a single, grinding step.
A full moon of light beams into my bedazzled pupils, which slit tighter than the eye of a needle unreceptive to camels and rich men like the late, great Aristotle Onassis. Even as my vision adapts to the blinding glare, a pair of dark, shapeless human mitts looms toward me, bearing something white like a wadded up, wet diaper.
"A black cat! Perfect for the church door on Friday," intones a voice more distant than the announcer in a bus station. I see nothing but my approaching doom in the form of a wet, white cloud.
The revolting material is slapped across my kisser. At first I think I smell Pampers, but the odor is heavier. I struggle, claws boxing the air. I snag something--cloth, and then I am swaddled like an infant in a tough outer fabric that my flailing limbs tear at but cannot escape.
As I involuntarily slip into Lull-a-bye Land, I recognize the means of my capture: the storied cloth soaked in sleep-inducing chloroform that P.I. Katz is always encountering--and the equally fabled, and feared, burlap bag. Could it be that Louie is going for a Midnight swim?
Chapter 33
The Fur Flies
Temple, still despondent and now feeling guilty, in addition, entered her foyer without enjoying the usual glow her smart accommodations gave her.
Worse, Caviar had acted agitated from the moment Temple had returned from Matt's apartment, as if the cat knew that her fate--not to mention her reproductive future--had been decided.
She had been pacing the living room when Temple had peeked in, and she'd resisted all attempts to be picked up and calmed, despite her earlier docile behavior. Now she was yowling, regarding Temple with piercing owl-gold eyes and regaling her with even more piercing cries.
Temple just couldn't ship her off to the vet's, but she had to isolate her in case Louie returned. She wrestled Louie's cat carrier from the front storage closet, then struggled to push Caviar inside, feeling like a monster. Caviar complained in a soprano shriek en route, and even more loudly once locked inside.
Temple showered Caviar with soothing chirrups as she left the carrier in the kitchen, feeling like she was waving a cheery toodle-oo to Sidney Carton on the way to the guillotine.
Temple frowned. The cat's reversal of behavior was most odd, almost as if she were . . . well, upset about something. Had Louie come home?
In a lather of guilt and urgency, Temple began to search the premises. Perhaps now that Caviar was corralled, Midnight Louie would deign to show himself. She looked under the bed, in the darkest reaches of the bedroom closet, behind the bathroom doors, atop the office bookcases, under the desk, behind the green plant, on the dining-chair seats in one corner of the living room. No Louie anywhere.
Finally, she went back into the kitchen and opened every cupboard. The only track of a cat she found was an overturned Finny Frosties box. Caviar's yowls reached operatic heights. Glumly, Temple righted it and turned back to the room.
Her eyes fixed on the feeding bowls as her mind mused on the tale of two kitties: Caviar's Free-to-be-Feline was nibbled down to the bowl's bare bottom. Louie's was . . . what was Louie's? Temple certainly couldn't see the untouched mound of food beneath the newspaper tented over it.
She snatched up the newsprint like a magician expecting to reveal . . . missing Free-to-be-Feline, proving Louie had been here, and even recanted. All was forgiven, he was just hiding--
The Free-to-be-Feline rose to its customary heights. But, Temple realized, that didn't prove that Louie had not been here. Unless the newspaper. . . .
She looked at the open pages and saw for the first time the fine print of the Classified Ads section. Was this a mute message from Louie? For instance, was it opened to the "Pets" section, implying that he was off in search of a new home?
No, the top page was the first page of the Classified section. All that was on it were strange self-help group and service ads that sounded vaguely illegal--such as for piercing parlors--and, of course, the obituaries.
Of course, Temple skimmed the entries, horrified to read of a thirty-six-year-old man who had succumbed to a heart attack and a twenty-nine-year-old woman who had perished from an unspecified long illness. Good thing that she didn't peruse these things daily. It was a lot less safe out there than one realized.
Yup. Blandina Tyler had an entry, sans photograph, a scant two-inch listing of name, address, birthplace, former occupation--nurse--date and place of funeraclass="underline" 10:00 a.m. Friday at Our Lady of Guadalupe. Suggested charities: Our Lady o{ Guadalupe and the Humane Society.
What did this obituary say, if it had been left as a message, which was ridiculous, because Louie couldn't read, no matter how smart he was. Yet Caviar had been so agitated . . . and now she was strangely silent. Temple glanced at the carrier to see a sober feline face following her every move with unblinking intensity. The words came into her mind as if seeded there by some supernatural agency and now bursting into full, logical bloom: Blandina Tyler. Funeral. Tomorrow. At the church so conveniently close to Blandina's own door, just down the street. Address.
Temple folded the paper. This was silly. She just had a feeling, and it had nothing to do with finding the Free-to-be-Feline under an Obituary section, as if the absent cat had meant to imply the stuff should be buried. Louie still couldn't read, not even to make a macabre joke. Yet only a cat could have batted the paper so neatly over the bowl. Caviar? Temple eyed the eerily quiet carrier again. Really, she couldn't read either.
Temple decided to check on the Tyler cats anyway. Peggy had given her a key. What good was a key if she couldn't use it?
First, Temple investigated her tote bag to make sure the Tyler house key was there--it was. She grabbed the big brass ring of her own keys, moved along the apartment's French doors to make sure they were latched, and went into the guest bathroom to be certain that Louie's high transom window was open so he could get in if--when--he came back.
Satisfied that the apartment was both secure against human invaders and still offered sufficient feline access, Temple went out the front door and locked it behind her.
If anyone saw her at the Tyler house and questioned her presence, she would say she was worried about the cats, plural. Mostly though, she was worried about the cat, singular. Very singular.
Temple had not counted on how creepy a house in which a person had died could look at night in a seedy neighborhood.
She stood beside the parked Storm, its cheerful aqua color now a flat charcoal gray under the faintly coral glow of the distant sodium iodide streetlights.
She knew that only cats moved in the dark, empty house in front of her, yet she remained reluctant to enter.
No rectangles of light checker boarded the convent next door. Its windows at the side and rear were obscured by tall oleander bushes, except for Sister Mary Monica's second story observation post, and she was probably abed by nine.
Temple jingled her huge key ring for the companionship of its familiar chime, then regretted the noise. Although she could claim that she was concerned about the cats, she couldn't explain her presence here in any really rational way.