Cat in a Hot Pink Pursuit (41 page)

“
Meanwhile, let's hit your hotel. I could use a drink or three.”

How many bars in how many hotels the world over
hosted lost relatives who sat and stared at each other over
drinks they were reluctant to touch?

Matt supposed there must be at least eight.

He ran his fingers through his hair that the unaccustomed baseball cap had tamped down, like the wire ring of a kindergarten-play halo.

“You're blonder than I remember your mother being.”

It was Matt's turn to feel put on the spot. "You remem
ber right. The . . . my radio station had some stylist do
my hair for the latest publicity photos. I'm told it'll wash out. Can't be too soon for me."

“Media." Winslow laughed a little, for the first time. "Image. Reality is never enough, is it?"

“No. Not in this day and age."

“So, you've been a priest."

“Until eighteen months ago."

“Why'd you leave?"

“Better question would be 'Why'd you enter?' I was looking to become the perfect father I'd never had."

“I'm sorry. I didn't know. I did not know. I looked for your mother after I got back from my tour of duty and couldn't find her. We only knew first names. I didn't dare
probe further. My family would have had my head if
they'd known about . . . what happened. I had no ideathey already knew and had resorted to lawyers. I suppose they thought they were protecting me."

“They were. From unwanted consequences. Me."

“
I'm sorry. I could say it a thousand times and it'd
never change the past. You look . . . like you turned out fine."

“
It could have been worse," Matt conceded, "although
I could have done without the abusive stepfather.”

Winslow's contrite expression was startled into shock. "My God! How did that happen?"

“
She had no options. She was a pariah, an unwed
mother in a deeply Catholic community. Oh, they 'supported' her but not without instilling this bone-deep sense
of shame. She helped hurt herself, her upbringing helped.
So strict. She took such a chance on you."

“It didn't feel like that. If felt like a miracle, like the inside of a snow globe when you shake it up and all the magical snow comes floating down on everything, making it . . . beautiful. What does she want now?"

“Not money. The two-flat kept us afloat. It was worth that much. But she's figured out someone had a stake in buying us off. She's gotten to be a lot tougher lady." Matt
smiled. "It's been good for her, actually. She just wants to
know who and why."

“That's a lot."

“She has no idea you didn't die. Neither did I, until today."

“
Big day for us both," he noted, sipping from his
scotch on the rocks, then setting the drink aside as if he was rejecting far more than an easy glow at a moment of truth. "I wouldn't have abandoned either of you if they'd
have let me know. I'm not a naive kid anymore. I promise
you, there will be hell to pay."

“I . . . we don't want to hurt anyone else. Just tell me what to tell her now that I know the truth. The kind lie? I
didn't want to know this. I didn't need to know you. I wanted to find some crooked lawyers protecting an insulated, snobby family. Maybe I wanted to see someone sweat if I'm deep-down honest about it. But I didn't want to find you. I don't need you now. She doesn't need you now. You're irrelevant. Maybe you can make whoever in your family did this pay a little. Maybe that'll make me feel better for seeing my mother lied to and let down a second time.”

Winslow folded his cocktail napkin into accordion
pleats. "The Winslows do go back to the
Mayflower,"
he noted wryly. "Not the Washington hotel, the ship." His face sobered again. "It would have been my father. He's dead now. No one can make him suffer. My mother's in a nursing home. She probably was an accessory. She has Alzheimer's."

“
Your father. Your mother."

“Your grandparents."

“They're gone, then, both of them. What were they thinking?"

“What all parents do: don't let my kids make any foolish life-altering choices."

“I guess you didn't, really, then."

“I did. Because I've never forgotten her."

“Is that what I tell her?”

He pulled the drink back over and took a long hard swallow.

“No. That's what I tell her."

Chapter 46

Closet Encounter

of the Third Kind

Since this place is crawling with camera operators and
just plain operators, I sic Midnight Louise on tailing
Crawford Buchanan. (They deserve each other, in my
opinion.)
I leave my Miss Temple poring over old newspaper
clippings and preparing to take her rest on a pussycat
pillowcase.

I decide to do what I do best: prowl by night. I have
resolved to find and explore all the secret passages in
the house.

One would assume that after my namesake hour,
the house would quiet down. One can assume nothing when it comes to crime or hordes of teenage girls.

My midnight ramble will need some unwitting acces
sory work from someone human, and I am betting that
enough humans are sneaking around unauthorized
here to populate a small city.

Naturally, I am forced to head first to Miss Savannah
Ashleigh's chamber. Some crass folk, including Miss
Midnight Louise, were she here to know my plans, might
imply that I am more interested in brushing whiskers with the Ashleigh sisters than in exploring secret pas
sages. Quite the contrary. The one entrance to a secret passage I know of at this point is in the Ashleigh suite.

A dude must start somewhere.

So I amble down the deserted hall, rehearsing my
speech to induce the Ashleigh sisters to let me in, when my first unlawfully wandering human comes shuffling down the same corridor.

I flatten myself against a baseboard and hope the
shadows will hide me.

Not to worry. The sleepwalker is a blonde in pink paja
mas, closely followed by a ... a blonde in pink pajamas.

The first blonde, Miss Silver by name, carries a sinis
ter canister. It resembles a harmless can of shaving
cream but those have been suspect since the foamy
graffiti-on-the-exercise-mats incident.

“
Shhh!"
Second Blonde urges First Blonde.

“
Shhh,
yourself. All we have to do is leave this in her
bathroom and her hair will be history."

“Are you sure that phony label will stick on?"

“
I printed it out on my laptop on glossy adhesive pa
per. Looks like the real thing.”

Sure enough. I crane my neck up and can read the
name of a popular brand of hairspray. Makes one won
der what is really in it. Of course I have to follow them, and that involves backtracking to . . . Miss Temple and
Miss Mariah's room!

The pair of evil blondes turn the knob about as
slowly as they can think, which is very slowly indeed
and quite impressive for sneak thieves. Only they are
leaving something rather than taking it.

I
tail them past the sleeping innocents. The kitty pil
low is cast away on the floor, I am happy to say, both
for my Miss Temple's taste's sake and because I will
come in and squash it with my own body after my nightly rounds are made.

They sneak into the bathroom and leave the can on
the sink ledge, among a skyline of similar products. It is
called "Hair Today.”

Right. As soon as they sneak out again I drag in the
massive pillow from the bedroom (no easy task, even
for a muscular chap like myself), then position it under
the sink.

Then I leap atop the sink rim, balancing precariously,
and bat the suspect can off its perch.

What a stunt director dude I would have made! It
lands, soft and soundless, on a particularly cloying im
age of a striped kitten dead center on the pillow.

I roll the can to the floor under the sink, where I can direct Miss Temple's attention to it in the morning.

Then I take the pillowcase in my mouth again (wet
flannel, ugh!) and wrestle it back to its original position
beside the bed.

Now I can begin my true task of the night. I retrace
my steps to the Ashleigh bedroom but draw back when
I hear voices inside.

It must be one
A.m.
Who would be yammering at this hour?

I press an ear to the door.

“Can you believe it?" Miss Savannah Ashleigh is
wailing into her cell phone. "We are cooped up in here
all the time with nothing but Teen Queens and a bunch
of middle-aged judges and consultants and camera
people. I am dying for a Rodeo Drive South Beach latte. Also a decent lay.”

And the Persian sisters have to hear this sort of talk!

“
Indecent would do," she agrees with the friend on
the receiving end of her conversation.

Luckily, Miss Savannah is as careless with her door
locking as her conversation, so I am able to ankle through the slightly ajar door.

The Persian sisters are languidly polishing their nails with their tongues when I arrive, and both perk up im
mediately.

“
Want to go exploring down those dark and mean
streets?" I inquire with a couple struts past their empty
canvas carriers.

“
Oh, no, Louie," Yvette replies. "We are ready for our
beauty sleep. But we will distract our mistress for you, if
you wish.”

This was not quite the scenario I had in mind. Since
their mistress is not in Dreamland but lusting after latte,
I shrug and go to the mirrored wall panel.

The girls loft themselves onto the bed like the
plumes de ma tante, which must have been pretty soft
stuff, and start rubbing back and forth on Miss Savan
nah's phone-holding hand, waving their full-furred tails
in her face and generally blinding her to anything that
is going on in the room. Long fur can be useful as well
as beautiful.

I leap up, hitting the secret panel right where it bows
to pressure. I am through the slight opening before I
can say, "Hey, there is no light in here!”

There is no light back there, either, as an obliging
Persian girl, perhaps the over-thoughtful Solange, has
run over to cast her weight at the door and shut it.
Tight. It does not give to my exploratory nudge.

Not that I wish to return to light and softness and
Persian girls when dark and hardness and danger call.

So I look from left to right, which is equally and ut
terly dark, and plunge ahead until my whiskers hit wall
and I can follow the tunnel.