"Goodness," she mouths through the glass. "The neighborhood cats are getting very vulgar."
In another ten minutes she begins to worry about her precious Fanny.
In five more she opens the door, only to find us serenading the dickens out of her postal box.
"Go away, you alley cats!" she cries. "Fanny! Come home."
But Fanny does not come home, having strict instructions not to.
| jump off the stoop, run toward the neighboring house, then stop, fix the meter maid with my best please-I-have-to-park-here eye, and wait.
"Go away, that is right!" she admonishes me. "You do not belong in this neighborhood." She has got that right.
I race to the next door house and begin gouging track marks in the stucco under the window.
Belatedly, Louise runs over and does likewise.
"Why, you crazy cats. It is as if you are trying to tell me something."
Yes, Timmy's mother. You did this a thousand times on Lassie and that was only a dumb dog. Come on, lady; you are old enough to have seen Lassie on TV. Just call me Classie, because l am a cat.
"Oh, my," she says. "I hope my little Fanny hasn't got caught under that house."
Her fanny is not little, but I refrain from commenting on that fact. Ever the gentleman.
Before you know it, she is knocking on the front door, next door.
"Monica. Monica, are you home?"
Soon the knocking has her knuckles red. I yowl as if facing a firing squad, and, after a withering look, Louise unleashes a howl that could raise the dead.
"Oh, dear. Something must be terribly wrong. They say animals can sense earthquakes."
Her hands wring, then try the from door latch.
Lo and behold, it opens as it a friendly Zephyr has blown through.
"Oh, Monica! You left your door open. How careless. My Fanny must have pushed it open, then shut, and became trapped in your house while you were out."
Miss Meter Maid is one of those people who live alone and talk to their cats and themselves. I am grateful for this; it allows me to learn much about the situation.
"You were always too trusting, Monica. Fan-nee! Fan-nee!"
I brush by her, Louise hard behind me.
My nostrils have told me what poor Miss Meter Maid is incapable of discerning. Something has died in this house, and recently. I fear that it is bigger than a mouse.
Miss Midnight Louise brushes past me, eyes narrowed in a very ungirlish way. "Death on the premises. Do not let her see. I will check out the bedrooms."
I resent this supplanting of my natural leadership role, but have no chance to object.
Midnight Louise is a shadow disappearing down the hallway.
"Oh. Where is my lovely Fanny? Monica? Say you are here, please. And that my cat is all right."
I spring after my renegade partner. I do not want the crime scene disturbed.
But I need not have worried.
Midnight Louise has stopped dead at the bedroom door, staring at something out of my sight.
"We have to let the human 'discover this," she mutters, "though it will be too much for her.
You were right, Pops. There is one very dead homicide victim in here. I was convinced it was a member of the other species, but no such luck."
I stare past her shoulder into the room. The floor is old-fashioned wood planking, but a rag rug lies rumpled beside the bed.
On it, dead center, and definitely dead to the world, lies a handsome tiger cat.
Louise and I mew piteously, and brace ourselves for human hysteria.
We are not disappointed.
Although she is discreetly hidden outside, in very short order Miss Fanny Furbelow will discover that her widowhood is now a fact, not a fear.
Chapter 14
Brothers Keepers
Henderson, Nevada, was one of the fastest-growing communities in the Sunbelt.
Although it seemed only a stone's throw from the Goliath and other behemoth hotels hunkering along the Las Vegas Strip, it felt like another world.
Matt cruised the Vampire along these clean streets bracketed by upscale two-story homes, the next generation of Sunbelt building after decades of single-story ranch houses. Even the widest-open spaces focused on reducing suburban sprawl now. Imposing as these homes were, they sat on stingy lots, almost seeming to rub stucco shoulders with each other.
He didn't have a clue to what these posh-looking places would cost. More than he could imagine, he figured, and they were probably far less fancy than he thought.
The ex-priests were meeting at a major intersection on the fringe of this human ant farm, at a church, of course. Catholic, of course. Maternity of Mary.
Despite reasonably warm weather, no children played on the weedless front lawns, no garage door gaped open to display cars or clutter.
Mart reached the right address: a boxy brick and glass building whose purpose was suggested by a prow of sharply angled glass. A stained-glass cross was inlaid into the sun-repelling bronze film that overlay the window-wall like technological-age gilt.
What struck him most, though, about this new-built church with the unlived-in look was its relative smallness compared to the looming cliffs of stone and brick that still anchored the old Chicago neighborhoods. Even Our Lady of Guadalupe's desert-architecture modesty in the Hispanic neighborhood dwarfed this neat, pristine, and somehow shrunken house of worship.
Matt felt no urge to visit the church proper. It would be open, bright and soaring like the mandatory "great room" in the houses that surrounded it. He preferred a more serious interior, a sense of history, not histrionics.
He was, he realized, probably becoming an old fogey, a hide-hound conservative. So he let the Vampire swoop into the parking lot, toward a low wing attached to the church that was far too small to be a rectory or a convent or a school.
At eight o'clock at night only a few cars populated the parking lot. Saturday evening mass attendees were long gone, heading to the parties they expected to keep them up so late that Sunday morning mass would be unthinkable. All that remained on the cooling asphalt were a couple minivans, teal and forest green, an aging Volvo station wagon, a blue Cavalier, a couple of Honda Civics.
Matt eased the Vampire between the two minivans, hoping to shelter it from potential thieves. Henderson's obsessive-compulsive newness didn't rule out old failings like petty crime.
Matt glanced back as he walked away to make sure a street light would discourage lock-pickers. The Vampire's sleek silver hindquarters were just visible, making it look like a thoroughbred parked among plow horses.
Matt had left his helmet hanging from the handlebar, risking theft. If you couldn't trust a Catholic church parking lot, what could you trust? Besides, he didn't want to walk into a meeting of ex-priests looking like an escapee from The Wild Bunch.
He walked into a room like a thousand he had walked into before.
Bare vinyl tile floors. Large collapsible tables usable for anything from a conference to buffet. Metal folding chairs in that peculiar unnameable brown-gray color that were made to numb rears in record time. Serviceable beige blinds were already hanging slightly askew on the big horizontal windows. Decor by lnstitutions Anonymous.
No wonder it felt like he had crashed an Alcoholics Anonymous meeting. Especially when he spotted the big aluminum coffee um on a table by the wall, flanked by stacks of Styrofoam cups, plastic stir-sticks and packets of non-calorie sweetener.
The coffee would be oily and black; everything you put in it would have chemical identification chains longer than your own DNA. The fluorescent overhead lights would make everybody resemble most-wanted criminals, and the chance of something significant being said was zero to none.
Even the men in the room fell into weary stereotypes. Were priests so predictable? He hadn't thought so, but he recognized types from seminary, only aged twenty years beyond his peers.