"No."

"Did you hear anything more?"

"No. Just an open line. And . . . a kind of cackling, cracking on it."

"Like a person?"

"No!"

"Like what?"

"Like nothing, that's all. We were cut off."

"That's what you came to tell me? She didn't hang up. You were cut off?"

"No. I came to tell you that you converted Va.s.sar. Sorry, I have a Southern Baptist mentality when I'm not reverting to my Quaker sojourn. She was out of that life. Born again. She was going to talk to me some more. You did it. That's what I came to tell you. I didn't know who or what youwere, or why you bothered to talk to her, given the situation, but she said enough that I knew I ought to tell you. It's not every day a person does a good deed. I'd been trying to good-deed that woman into her senses, and somehow you just cruised along like any ole customer and did it, all by your lonesome. I thought you'd like to know, ought to know, that she'd been a new woman when she died. 'Cuz she must have died not long after that, accordin' to the newspaper, if you can believe the newspaper."

He nodded. Va.s.sar must have been standing in the hall, near the railing. He remembered leaving her there, insisting she didn't want to go down in the elevator. She wanted to think.

So instead she'd gone down on an invisible downdraft of air.

Apparently.

Converted, she had floated like a b.u.t.terfly, an angel, to her death twenty-one stories below. Called her counselor and then dived.

It didn't make sense.

Deborah Walker had come forward because she wanted to make sense of it all.

But everything was only more confused. Nothing was clear.

Except ...

Va.s.sar had left him happy. In a good mood. Not suicidal.

And she had been cut off.

Not only in her life, but on a cell phone.

Something had happened.

What?

Or had . . . someone . . . happened?

Kitty. Kathleen O'Connor.

Did she watch? See Matt leave, an undefeated Matt? See Va.s.sar euphoric, dialing what pa.s.sed for a girlfriend, crowing about what had not happened?

Had Kitty then pushed Va.s.sar over the literal edge?

Happiness would madden a killjoy personality like hers. Anyone's happiness.

So Matt had managed to kill Va.s.sar with kindness. One way or the other.

Chapter 43.

Crime Seen We have returned to the twentieth floor.

Miss Midnight Louise and myself, that is. (She insisted, though she still limps, and I objected.) But we have returned.

Midnight, Inc.

Tonight, call us Murder, Inc., for we are determined to lay all questions to rest, and any spare call girls too. "I am convinced," Miss Louise says, "that we have missed a key point in this case."

"We?"

"Well, I do not know where your brain has been on leave, but mine has been very unhappy with our conclusions thus far. Are you not concerned about the testimony of the parakeet?"

"Parakeets are not exactly Supreme Court judges."

"But they talk, and they listen. Consider the last words heard by the bird on the scene addressed to the victim. 'Pretty bird.' "

"So? That may say something else to me than it does to thee. You, that is. I mean, that 'keet had a bird brain. It was used to hearing certain phrases. Nothing more natural that it should eavesdrop on humans and hear its own lingo."

"Or a human lingo as characteristic as its own."

"Like, for instance?"

"Like, for instance, 'Pretty bird.' I recall that 'bird' is a pet name for a nubile human female in the British Isles."

"We are not in the British Isles here, in case you did not notice!"

"But someone else, the perpetrator, might be from the British Isles. After all, what are the British Isles but England and-?"

Miss Louise nods encouragingly at me, as if I am a dull student in need of encouragement. I know my geography, and take pleasure in reciting it for the uppity chit.

"And Scotland, where they favor sheep in plaid clothing," I grudgingly admit.

"And-?"

"And Wales, which they let maritally unfaithful princes take their lad-in-waiting names from."

"And-?"

I hate the unremitting logic of the female inquisitor. Thank Bast the Inquisition was more p.r.o.ne to interrogating rogue females than incorporating them. Imagine Joan of Arc as a prosecuting attorney! Miss Louise does a pretty good imitation, and she is only a feline and not at all saintly, not to mention singed around the edges.

"And . . . northern Ireland," I concede.

"Exactly! And where does Kitty O'Connor hail from?"

"Northern Ireland. But you cannot believe-"

"I can believe whatever I discern. Who else would be standing here at the balcony edge but Kitty O'Connor, crooning 'Pretty bird' to the lovely American call girl whot 'ad just made Mr. Matt 'istory for the foiled purpose of said Kitty the Cutter."

"Whew. You females play hardball. Which is what I gratefully still have, thank Bast!"

"I am not interested in the intactness of your anatomy,old dude. I am making a point that if Miss Kitty was around and about that night, and annoyed that Mr. Matt was stealing a march on her plot to disgrace him by disgracing himself first, she might take it out on the poor call girl he called upon: the 'Pretty bird' she hated more than even herself, or she would have never fixated on undoing a mere male, who are undone by the very nature of their gender to begin with."

Well, these are fighting words, but I do not know where to begin. So I decide to build my case. It does not take much, simply calling a few witnesses who are already hanging about the place.

I could say I just put my lips together and whistled, but the fact is we hep cats are never much good at the wolf whistle game. It takes a certain canine swagger to pull off.

So instead I merow to the ether and hope that a thing with feathers will answer my call.

I am answered in spades: one turtledove, two French hens, three Budgerigars, four calling birds, five c.o.c.katiels, etcetera, ad nauseam. You would not think so many feathered friends inhabited the twentieth floor of the Goliath Hotel, but then you would not think, would you? Best to leave that to experts, like myself.

I call my first witness. Literally.

"Did you see a tall young lady on stilted heels pausing by the balcony?" I inquire.

"Tweet."

"Please repeat that response in English for the jury."

My jury is a twelve-part-harmony team of various feathered friends.

"Yes. Pretty bird," says Blues Brother on cue.

I flash a triumphant glance at Miss Midnight Louise.

"So the phrase, 'Pretty bird,' is pretty common to the avian world," I follow up like the sharp legal wit I am.

"Yes, sir, Mr. Bird-biter," the little 'keet answers.

I pace impressively before it. "So it was indeed a bird that called Miss Va.s.sar to her death?"

"No, sir," says the 'keet.

"What do you mean, 'No, sir'?"

He fluffs his feathers and bites his toenails and works on various unmentionable portions of his underlayment, and then he sings again.

"It was a cat, sir. A feline person of the pet persuasion. I saw it."

"A cat, sir?"

"Indeed, sir."

"Would you repeat that for the jury?"

"Indeed, sir, repeating is my business, my only business."

By now I have gone farther than any defense attorney would, save for 0. J. Simpson. If only there were a dog in the case to lay all the blame upon. Kato, my Akita friend, wherefore art thou?

"What cat?" I demand.

"Pale-colored, with a little dark feathering. Very attractive for a fur-body. Seated. Upon the balcony. The human lady in question was on her cell phone, but then she noticed the balancing act occurring not five feet away from her. She was most distressed."

"How distressed?"

"She abruptly terminated her conversation, 'Pretty bird,' and reached out to extract the cat from the railing. Well, you sir, being a cat, can understand how unfortunate that misguided good Samaritan gesture was."

I say nothing, for to do so is to incriminate my breed and my brethren of the court. And mostly myself.

"Pretty bird," mourns Blues Brother. "She reached so far and then farther. The fickle feline jumped down to the floor. The poor human female leaned over the railing and fell down to the gla.s.s ceiling far below. Pretty bird. Bye-bye."

I stand astounded. And corrected. No one killed the little doll known as Va.s.sar except her own soft heart.

She died trying to rescue one of my kind, albeit a pampered, perfumed kind.

Joan of Arc indeed. The name Hyacinth comes to mind. At least Mr. Matt is set free by my kind's obligation. This was an accidental death. The only Kitty involved was the unknown feline fatale balanced on the balcony. Ah, my anonymous Juliet, how fatal thou art.

Chapter 44.

Wake Matt thought he must be dreaming, but he had thought that a lot lately.

There came a tapping, as of someone gently rapping .. . not on his or Poe's chamber door, but on the gla.s.s of the French doors to Matt's patio.

He ignored it as an audible hallucination.

He was two stories up. His patio was a pathetic thing compared to the other units' outdoor areas. It remained as he had found it: furnished by one dusty white plastic lawn chair. Temple's patio was a whimsical mini-Disneyland of potted plants and creative seating. His was a wasteland. His private garden was miles away at the Ethel M chocolate factory, filled with sere, th.o.r.n.y cacti.

Tap, tap, tap.

There wasn't even a tall tree nearby to scratch a branch over his door gla.s.s. The venerable palm in the parking lot ended by just tickling the underside of his balcony.