His long tail dangled over the counter side, swinging back and forth, untouched by anything but his grooming tongue when he occasionally swung it up as if to reassure that it was all there, every last black hair.
Temple clutched the old-fashioned kitchen wall-phone receiver in both hands, backpedaling while her audience eavesdropped on a desperate monologue.
“No, it was not a kidnapping. Well, technically, yes. I mean, no! No, it was not a ‘catnapping.’ The cat is back and is fine. A neighbor lady returned him. It was a prank call. Not mine to the police! The call to us about the cat being kidnapped was a prank call.
“Yes, ‘malicious mischief’ would describe the incident.” Temple nodded and sent a relieved glance at her audience.
“Is the cat … licensed, by the way? Ah, not here. He’s visiting from out of town. What kind of cat visits? He’s, ah, he’s worked as a commercial cat. TV commercials. Yes, you could say he is valuable and that is why I, we, were so concerned. Yes, I do understand that legally a pet is considered property and can only be worth a small amount of money. Oh. I might get something in civil court.
“But that’s not necessary now, Officer. He’s back and all right.
“No, sir, there’s no way to identify what kids may have called. They were older kids. They sounded very serious. We’re all mostly visitors here, and we’re most impressed by the Chicago PD’s sharp response to small cases as well as large ones. I’m sorry we’ve been a bother, but this is Chicago. I’m sure another call for a crime—or three—in progress has already come in that is right on the dispatched officer’s way.
“Oh.”
Temple eyed the others and nodded, gratefully, at the phone. “Thank you. No, he’s not the yellow-striped one. No, not the fancy fluffy white one. Black hair, green eyes, as my first call mentioned.”
Temple finally hung up and stared back at Louie. “We’re off the hook with the cops, but how’d you escape the crooks?”
Louie wasn’t talking. He jumped off the counter, flourishing his untampered-with tail behind him.
“Not a hair out of place,” Matt commented. “We might succumb to mass apoplexy but Midnight Louie rocks on.”
That made his mother laugh ruefully. “I hope his opinion of Chicago after this incident doesn’t change your mind about considering moving back.”
Temple rejoined them at the table, which was covered with old papers of no apparent value from the fireproof file box.
“Where’s Krys been since Louie got back?” she asked.
“In her room.” Mira watched Matt rise, retrieve the wine bottle Krys had gone out to buy the previous night, and take the dry glasses from the dish drainer. He handed them around, filled again.
Mira shrugged. “Krys is always on some ‘device’ or other, cruising the Internet, working on her Web site. She’s a mature girl in some ways and in some ways—”
“Not,” Temple said. She sipped from her wineglass. “I suppose we’ll never know what happened to Louie, or his carrier.”
“Adios, carrier,” Matt said with a toasting gesture. “Small loss, unlike Louie. I wonder if it’s a good idea to call the police off. Those phone threats meant business.”
“It’s especially disturbing that the creeps knew we and Louie were here,” Temple agreed. “There must be something explosive in these papers.”
“That would be silly.” Mira flicked her nails at the yellowed array of paper. “Except for the first manila folder with official documents in it—Cliff’s grade school report cards, high school graduation certificate, and driver’s test results, things his late mother must have kept, poor woman—it’s all tax returns, as I feared.”
“What about the high school yearbook?” Temple flipped through the worn booklet, attracted to the vintage hair and clothes on the cover. Dorky. Compared to now, teens dressed like forty-year-olds.
Yellowed newspaper clippings thrust between the pages memorialized meaningless athletic games and the usual horrific teen-driver car crash that seemed to plague every graduating class, even today.
Matt pulled the book toward him. “Somebody who died, maybe? Could that have been significant to Effinger?” He pulled out a couple tattered pages covered with crude doodles and cartoons.
“That’s nothing extreme,” Temple noted. “Just the usual superhero comic sketches along with endless outlines of cars guys in my high school class drew. What did you draw?” she asked Matt.
“I don’t know. Jet planes and angel wings.”
“Escape,” his mother said, pretty perceptively.
Mira was threatening to get teary, so Temple jumped in with a comment. “Technological and spiritual. That’s our media guy, Mr. Midnight.” She shuffled through the high school yearbook again. “These sketches aren’t bad. Captain Marvel fighting off the octopus is pretty anatomically correct. I mean muscle-wise.”
“Why would Captain Marvel fight off an octopus? That would be Aquaman.”
Temple was amused to see Matt grabbing the page and turning it his way to study the raw pencil sketches. She exchanged a knowing “boys will be boys” look with Mira.
Matt was frowning even more once he had the sketch right side up.
“This is … this is traced. It’s a copy of that classical sculpture in the Vatican collection.”
Mira was astounded to the point of laughter. “Clifford? Drawing a classical sculpture in high school? Matt, maybe he was just a regular boy once, but he got caught up in the gangs once he got out. He concentrated on dressing sharp and getting jobs he could hang out on street corners to do.”
“You married him graduation summer,” Matt reminded her, and himself. “Maybe you saw the boy who drew.”
“I was one of ‘those girls’ who graduated with whispers, not hope and celebration. Clifford didn’t seem so bad at first. No one else would have me.”
Temple looked down, finding her fingers smoothing the slick cover of the old yearbook. The same whispers haunted her high school graduating class. This girl. That condition. And then she vanished. It never ended. Odd about the Vatican preserving all those old Greek and Roman statues, most naked and anatomically correct, and all revived in the age of Michelangelo. Comic book supermen were modeled on those muscular ancient gods and heroes.…
Temple grabbed the sketch Matt was regarding with an expression half puzzled and half repulsed.
“I know what statue you’re thinking of,” she told him. “It was the man who angered the gods and they sent a sea serpent to kill him and his sons. It’s an amazing evocation of sheer human struggle and agony … and it’s also—wait for it—very similar to the man fighting a serpent constellation that was just in the news recently.”
“Serpent. Constellation?” Mira was confused. “Isn’t Constellation a jet plane name, like those you drew when you were a kid, Matt?”
“Not in this case,” Temple said. “I mean the constellations of stars in the sky the ancient Greeks named, just as they sculpted the ‘man versus sea monster’ statue. Matt.” She eyed him in triumph. “This is not the star map, but the full, founding image of the constellation called Ophiuchus.”
“Oh-fee-you-cuss?” Mira was seriously confused. “Or ‘Oh, fie! You cuss?’”
“The accent is on the ‘you’ part,” Matt said. “And nobody cusses.”
“It’s ancient Greek,” Temple explained.
“It certainly is to me.” Mira’s smile was bemused.
Temple spelled it out for her. “Just think of it rhyming with ‘mucous.’”
“I’d rather not. You kids.” Mira was chuckling now. “Krys, and now you two. I think the younger generations speak in code.”