The odds of Louie being inside, no matter how widely he got around, were nil. And this house had been the focus of unsettling phone calls and prowlers. However much Blandina
Tyler's elderly and lonely imagination may have amplified these incidents, someone of ill will lurked at the edges of the events that had brought both Temple Barr and Matt Devine to Our Lady of Guadalupe.
Matt would consider her a bit looney if he knew she was standing here planning to enter a deserted house on the evidence of a disarranged newspaper and her own instincts.
Temple hitched up the tote-bag straps, straightened her shoulders and started up the walk. What did she have to lose? Still, she kept her weight on the balls of her feet, so her snappy red high heels wouldn't slap the sidewalk and alert someone who would question her right to be here--or alert someone else, who had no right to be here either.
Out of nowhere, the dark loomed up and ambushed her with a crushing sense of personal peril. A fist of fear squeezed her heart, making her pause to heed its wild pounding. The cooler night air chilled the goose bumps of sweat that had blossomed all over her body. She was alone in the dark in front of a house where someone had died a possibly premeditated, violent death. Suddenly the empty street and its distant lamps reminded her of a deserted parking ramp.
She dared not turn back to the curb to verify that her car stood there, alone, that she was not once again in that dangerous parking ramp, that two men were not even now behind her waiting to pounce and pound. . . .
No safety beckoned ahead, only the mute, dark house. The exterior entry light had long since burned out. She forced herself to walk to the doorway, every loud footstep a declaration of defiance. She couldn't let her recent beating turn her into a mouse. Temple's key scraped at the lock mechanism for many seconds, making surreptitious noises that she figured would attract at least a brace of Dobermans. On the other hand, a dog attack would be something different.
Nothing moved but a warm tease of breeze through the bushes. Sweat prickled Temple's scalp, and her heart still hammered.
Then the lock snicked and the door opened.
She slipped inside and quickly closed the door behind her to mask her presence, and to commit herself to the deeper dark before her. She stood there listening to the silence and the inner thunder of her circulatory system, then envisioned the day-lit house in her mind and groped for the light switch beside the door.
Evidently Peggy, or Sister Seraphina, had lowered the air conditioning now that only cats were in residence. The interior air was lukewarm, and thicker than ever with the smell of fur, fishy food and litter boxes.
Temple heard a thump deep within the house. A stirring cat, alerted to her presence, perhaps. She fumbled over the rough interior stucco wall for the switch and finally touched the plate's smooth, plastic surface.
Flick. Nothing.
That had happened somewhere else recently. Where? Ah, in Electra's entry hall.
Maybe this entry-hall light had burned out, too.
Temple kept her palm against the rough wall and moved forward by baby steps, wary of the many rag rugs waiting to trip the visitor in dark or daylight.
Her foot kicked something soft that scrabbled away. Not a rug, a sleeping cat.
" Sorry, kitty," she whispered.
Immediately her active imagination painted a room full of mortally insulted cats, schooling in the dark to wash over her until she tripped and fell among them. Then they would swarm her, their barbed tongues preparing the way for hundreds of feral, piranha-like teeth.
In the dark, even pussycats took on a sinister presence, especially if they were unseen.
Some light did penetrate the rooms as her eyes adjusted, but the dim, vaguely recognizable forms she saw only confused her more. Was that the edge of the refrigerator glimpsed through the dining-room archway--or the archway itself?
She tottered into the living room, leaving the safety of the perimeter. Her foot kicked something again, something heavy and inanimate that lay unmoving and didn't roll away when gently prodded. A dead cat?
Temple bent like a blind woman to pat the lump at her feet, not knowing what she would find, what she would touch.
A rag rug rolled into a cat-sized mass. She sighed and pushed it out of her way, starting at a shrill, hollow sound. Oh, an empty tinfoil roaster pan, driven over the hard floor by the moved rug.
Maybe the cats did need more food; maybe that was the inexplicable instinct that had brought her here: a psychic cat chorus chanting for Yummy Tum-tum-tummy.
She edged into what she hoped was the kitchen, her arms nailing ahead of her, although it was her high-heeled feet that were in the most imminent danger of encountering obstacles.
Cats must have eeled away from her in the well-populated dark. She never felt another brush with anything animate or inanimate. When her shoes hit the kitchen's ceramic tiles, her tension eased. Surely a light would work in here, at Commissary Central. Peggy must come over for an evening feeding. She would instantly miss a burned-out light. Now, where was the switch?
Temple cruised the room's perimeter, moving her feet in a soft shuffle now and then accented by the ting of a kicked tinfoil pan. Step, step, step, kick. Step, step, step, kick.
Her first circuit was hard on her shins and revealed no light switch at the expected level. Was the central overhead light operated by a dangling cord? Temple couldn't remember that either. Amazing what you don't look at in an unfamiliar house.
So she shuffled her way to the presumed middle of the room and began swinging her right arm to and fro above her head, trolling for any dangling strings. Of course she could be too short to reach it, and her hand might be missing it by inches.
Frustrated, she edged around the room's perimeter again, checking under cupboards, behind the countertop microwave oven and the breadbox, which both smelled strongly of tuna fish.
Inspired, she clasped the refrigerator, working her way around the predictable bulk for the wall behind it that she remembered. Halfway around the behemoth, she became aware of something that told her it didn't matter if she found a light switch or not, something that chilled her blood.
The refrigerator did not vibrate with a low, throaty hum, although it could be temporarily at the off cycle. Still, every working refrigerator she knew exuded a clammy exterior chill. This one was as warm as hour-old dishwater. Her questioning hand found the handle, slightly sticky with--sniff--halibut halitosis, and cracked the door, her eyes reflexively squinting shut against the expected glare of the interior refrigerator light.
Nothing. When she finished her shuffle at the hoped-for wall behind it and patted her hand up and down in the dark, she was not even mildly exhilarated to finally find a light switch under her fingers. The button stood at attention: up in the "On" position, but no light prevailed. Electrically speaking, the house was dead.
Temple clutched her tote bag to her side for company fully loaded, it was almost that big--and thought. Had the electric company jumped the gun and turned off the service? Had Miss Tyler's bill payments been delayed by her death and her power turned off? What about the cats? When had the power gone out? After Peggy Wilhelm's last feeding, but Temple wasn't sure when Peggy made her nighttime visits. Obviously, before it got as late and dark as this. Peggy would not want to be caught in a deserted house too late. Smart woman.
Well, Temple would just have to feel her way back to the front door and consult with Sister Seraphina next door on what to do now that the house was without power. Or she could feel her way forward in the opposite direction, deeper into the house, where she now heard scuffling sounds that didn't sound like cats. Noises that sounded like feet, moving in the distance.
Sure.
Blandina Tyler was worried about her cats and had come back to take care of them.
Sure.
Temple tried to ignore the anxiety that sent prickles rushing down her arms, the numb disbelief reaching out to paralyze her mind.