Shirley Murphy - Cat in the Dark

"Mavity?"

"If it was his day, I cleaned for him," she snapped. "Why wouldn't I?" She looked around the room, puzzled. "I was fixing supper for Greeley-sauerkraut and hot dogs." She reached to touch her bandage and the IV tube swung, startling her. She tried to snatch it, but Wilma held her hand. "Leave it, Mavity. It will make you feel better."

Mavity sighed. "We had a terrible argument, Dora and Ralph and me. And the hardware store-I was in the hardware store just a minute ago. I don't understand. How did I get in a hospital?"

"You hit your head," Wilma told her.

Mavity went quiet. "Someone said I wrecked my car." She gave Wilma an angry glare. "I've never in my life had a wreck. I would remember if I wrecked my little car."

"When did you make sauerkraut for Greeley?"

"I-I don't know," she said crossly, as if Wilma was being very rude with her questions.

"When did you and Dora and Ralph argue?" Wilma persisted.

But Mavity turned over, jerking the blankets higher and nearly dislodging the IV, and soon she dropped into sleep. They sat in a tight little group waiting for her to wake.

When she did wake, she jerked up suddenly, trying to sit up. "Caulking," she told Wilma. "Caulking for the shower. Did I buy the caulking? Pearl Ann is waiting for it."

Wilma straightened the bedding and smoothed the sheet. "Pearl Ann sent you to buy caulking? When was this?"

But already she had forgotten. Again she scowled at Wilma, puzzled and disoriented, not remembering anything in its proper order. Perhaps not remembering, at all, Winthrop Jergen's ugly death?

IF WILMA GETZ hadn't spent thirty years working with federal criminals, Max Harper would not have placed Mavity Flowers in her custody. Two days after Mavity entered Salinas Medical, she was released to Wilma's care. Wilma drove her home, tucked her up in her own bed and moved a cot into the room for herself. Her official duties, besides helping Mavity, were a perfect excuse to evict Bernine Sage from the guest room, to make room for the twenty-four-hour police guard that Max Harper had assigned. The county attorney agreed that Mavity's care by an old friend might ease her fears and help her remember the circumstances of Winthrop Jergen's death; the case was growing in breadth as law enforcement agencies began to uncover links between Jergen/Cumming, Troy Hoke, and several unsolved crimes in Tennessee and Alabama.

No one knew how much of Mavity's memory loss was due to the cerebral contusion and how much resulted from the shock of what she had witnessed. Under Wilma's gentle questioning, she was beginning to recall more details, to put together the scattered scenes.

But Dulcie's information about Troy Hoke alias Pearl Ann Jamison, which Dulcie passed on to Max Harper during an early-morning phone call, had been-so far as Dulcie and Joe could surmise-totally ignored. Harper felt certain that Troy Hoke had come here to Molena Point to find Warren Cumming; he'd told Clyde that much. So why did he ignore their important and dearly gathered information that Pearl Ann was Troy Hoke?

Mavity could remember returning from the hardware store with Pearl Ann's caulking. She could remember crossing the patio and hearing angry shouts from Jergen's apartment. "Two men shouting, and thuds," she had told Wilma. "Then seems like I was at the top of the stairs standing in the open door." But always, at this point, she went silent. "I don't remember any more. I can't remember."

"Did you see the other man?" Wilma would ask. "Did you know him?"

"I can't remember. When I think about it I feel scared and sort of sick."

Now Wilma glanced out toward the living room where the police guard sat reading the paper. "You were standing in the doorway," she said gently, "and the two men were shouting. And then…?"

"A red neon sign, that's what I remember next. Red light shining in my face. It was night. I could hear people talking and cars passing."

"And nothing in between?"

"No. Nothing."

"The red neon-you were walking somewhere?"

"I was in my car. The lights-the lights hurt. I had to close my eyes."

"In your own car?"

"In the back, with the mops and buckets." Mavity looked at her, puzzled, her short gray hair a tangle of kinks, her face drawn into lines of bewilderment. "Why would I be in the back of my own car? I was lying on my extra pair of work shoes. The lights hurt my eyes. Then someone pulling me, dragging me. It was dark. Then a real bright light, and a nurse. I'm in that hospital bed, and my head hurting so bad. I couldn't hear nothing but the pounding in my head."

Wilma was careful not to prompt Mavity. She wanted her to remember the alley where the Salinas Police had found her and to remember wrecking her car, without being led by her suggestions.

"Greeley…" Mavity said, "I have to get home-Greeley's waiting. Dora and Ralph…They'll be worried. They won't know where I am. I left the meat thawing on the sink, and that cat will…"

"The meat's all right-they put the meat away. And they're not worried, they know where you are," Wilma lied. But maybe Dora and Ralph did know, from wherever they were beyond the pale. Who was she to say?

Mavity dozed again, her hand relaxed across Dulcie's shoulder where the cat lay curled on the quilt against her. But then in sleep Mavity's hand went rigid and she woke startled. "I have to get up. They won't know…"

"It's all right, Mavity," Wilma reassured her. "Everything's taken care of. Greeley will be along later."

"But Dora and…"

Suddenly Mavity stopped speaking.

Her eyes widened. She raised up in bed, staring at Wilma, then her face crumpled. "They're dead," she whispered. She looked terrified. "Dora and Ralph are dead."

Wilma sat down on the bed beside her, put her arm around Mavity. They sat quietly until Mavity said, "Greeley-I need Greeley." She looked nakedly at Wilma. "Is he all right?"

"Greeley's just fine, I promise." Rolling drunk, Wilma thought. But he's all in one piece.

"I need him." Mavity looked at her helplessly. "How can I ever tell him? Tell him that Dora's gone?"

"He'll be here soon. You won't need to tell him. Greeley knows about Dora. He knows about Dora and Ralph, and he's taking it very well. He'll be along soon, to be with you."

The police had picked Greeley up at the Davidson Building and had held him until he sobered up enough for questioning regarding Dora and Ralph's deaths. When they released him, Max Harper said, he went directly back to the Davidson Building-to the companionship of several more cases of rum. Wilma had no intention of bringing him to see Mavity until he was sober and had cleaned himself up. Dulcie said he smelled like a drunk possum, and Harper said much the same.

The police now knew that Dora and Ralph had died of a drug overdose. The forensics report made it clear that, in Harper's words, Dora and Ralph Sleuder were loaded with enough morphine to put down a pair of cart horses.

"The coroner thinks they ingested the drug during dinner. They'd had a big meal, steak, potatoes, salad with French dressing, chocolate pie and coffee," Max had told them. "We don't know yet who they had dinner with, or where. That was the night after they met for dinner with Bernine."

Harper had learned about the dinner at Pander's from his mysterious informant during the same phone call in which she identified Pearl Ann as Troy Hoke. Checking with Pander's, Harper had learned that the threesome arrived at seven-thirty and were seated at a table on the terrace. Their waiter remembered what each of the three guests had ordered for dinner, what they had had to drink, what time they departed, and that Bernine paid the bill by credit card.