Cat In An Alphabet Soup (Catnap)

“Miss Barr—Temple. I write about murder. I don’t think about it in real life. I’m a nurse.” Mavis Davis sipped her Rob Roy, which Temple had never seen ordered before.

“I’m a PR person, but I’ve sure got murder on the brain now. Doesn’t it intrigue a writer to have the real thing fall on her doorstep?”

“No! My books are stories, that’s all. I know my hospitals, and I’ve seen death. It’s not dramatic, and it’s always so disappointing. We always hope that we won’t lose.”

“Except for your homicidal nurses.”

“Yes, but they’re—well, a few in real life have been so deranged—but mine are made-up.”

“You aren’t basing your novels on true crime cases? How refreshing. These days truth is more shocking than fiction.”

“I did try using actual cases for inspiration, but Mr. Royal discouraged me from doing that, I don’t know why. But I always listened to him—oh, dear! Who’ll tell me what to do now? My next book is due in only ten months!”

“You’ll have to carry on as best you can without him. How did you happen to start writing, anyway?”

“Goodness, that was something I always did, from the time I was little—I’d write and nurse baby-dolls. My foster parents still have all my dolls with their bandages and slings and—oh, my, so much slapdash Mercurochrome on them they look like Indian chiefs!” Mavis smiled maternally. “And my ‘scribblings’ drawer was full of doggerel and notebooks.”

“So why’d you become a nurse first?”

Mavis sipped her romantically named drink, her lips pursing at a taste more tolerated than savored. “Practical. Girls like me were terminally practical in the sixties, my dear. Teachers or nurses, those were our career choices, and only if we couldn’t catch a husband first. Obviously, I ‘caught’ a nursing degree and—later, the writing bug.”

“And you lived with foster parents, so you don’t even know why you gravitated toward nursing and writing?”

Mavis Davis lowered her unfortunate voice. “Maybe that’s why I did. Mother and Father Forbes would never talk about my parents. Adopted or fostered children in those days weren’t encouraged to wonder about their origins—and it was probably for the best. But some Forbes cousins used to giggle about it in front of me when I was a teenager. My mother died having an illegal abortion when I was three, you see. Nobody would talk openly about it, but everybody knew, even me eventually. That’s why I never knew anything about my father. And why I went into nursing, I think.”

“To make sure that women would never have to undergo the trauma of abortion without a caring attendant?”

Mavis Davis regarded Temple as if she were mad. “Heavens, no! The Forbeses were Roman Catholic, and that’s the way I was raised. My mother may have been young and desperate, but she was also desperately wrong! The Supreme Court decision legalizing abortion coincided with my first nursing assignment, but I only worked in hospitals that resisted abortions—or at least gave staff a choice. Mostly I worked in maternity wards, and those are such happy places.” The joy on Mavis’s face reflected hundreds of unclouded, socially sanctioned births.

“Isn’t it hard, then,” Temple asked delicately, “to write about made-up medical horrors?”

“No. It’s make-believe. A scary story. I feel so... free when I’m writing one of my naughty nurse thrillers. Because I know it’s not real. Readers love them. I cherish this secret fantasy that someday my real father or someone who knew him will read one of my books and recognize some family trait in my photograph and write the publisher... an awful lot of people read these things, you know. Maybe a million.”

Mavis laughed with harsh suddenness at her million foolish readers—and her own poignant little fantasy. “I honestly don’t know why my books fascinate the public. I don’t even know why Mr. Royal bought my first book.”

“How long was he your editor?”

“Twelve years.”

“And you still called him ‘Mr. Royal’?”

“He was older,” she began.

Temple studied the woman’s plain but unlined features. “Considerably older than you—sixty-six, the bio said.”

Mavis pursed her lips over a sip of tricked-up scotch. “Young people in my day and place were trained to respect their elders. I may be an adult now, but Mr. Royal seemed so much older—and he was the head of Pennyroyal Press. I never would have felt right about calling him Chester. Nor, I think, would he.”

“What did he call you?”

She looked down at the soggy napkin on which she was restlessly turning her glass. “Mavis.”

“I wish I’d known him. You know, I don’t even know if he was married.”

“Oh, yes.”

“Really. To whom?”

Mavis Davis looked confused. “Well, I don’t know to whom at present. I’d heard he had several wives.”

“Several? A sorry little weasel like him?” Temple suddenly realized she had somehow identified the late Mr. Royal with the very live and loathsome Crawford Buchanan.

Mavis blinked.