Cat In An Alphabet Soup (Catnap)

“Oh, I heard something awful today from one of the ABA authors. This very out-of-it middle-aged lady writes novels about murderous nurses—medical horror, they call it. Anyway, she just told me her mother died from a botched illegal abortion back in the fifties.”

Matt winced. “Ugly. But it happened.”

“The fallout is that the people who reared Mavis—she was only a little kid—were Catholic, so Mavis feels she must morally condemn her own mother, who was probably just a terrified twenty-something with her hands full already. No wonder her novels depict berserk nurses—women who should nurture but who kill instead—even babies. We sit here smiling at tacky Las Vegas ministers, but so-called ‘respectable’ religion can be a lot more lethal, if you ask me. And if Mavis’s mother hadn’t been so ashamed of being pregnant, maybe she wouldn’t have tried an illegal abortion.”

Matt nodded soberly. “I take it you’re not Catholic?”

“Me? I’m not even a good atheist. Whatever you believe about abortion, that’s... politics. What’s really sad is to see a grown woman who believes that her mother was a monster rather than a victim. And now Mavis is another victim, but she doesn’t see it, probably because she has such low self-esteem as the daughter of a “bad” woman.”

“How is Mavis a victim?”

“That murdered editor at the convention center was the Rasputin type. He convinced his authors that their writing success depended on him. Mavis was his biggest patsy from what I can tell. He exploited her shamelessly; even now that he’s dead, she’s so sure that she needs him that she may never write again!”

“That’s not religion gone wrong,” Matt said. “That’s ego.”

“But the shame Mavis was made to feel for how her mother died makes her a perfect victim for everyday, secular exploitation. Do you see what I’m saying? Chester Royal manipulated her like Silly Putty. And if Mavis ever really saw how she’s been used—all her life—well, that’s when people get murdered, isn’t it? When someone near them sees for the first time what’s really been going on.”

“Most victims don’t turn victimizer,” Matt argued. “They strike out at themselves, if anybody.”

“Somebody struck out at Chester Royal with a number five knitting needle.”

“And you think it could be this Mavis—?”

“Davis,” Temple put in glumly.

Matt looked confused.

“Mavis Davis. That’s her name.” Matt was right. Temple did think that Mavis was capable of killing Chester Royal, and a knitting needle was the kind of flaky, genteel weapon a genteelly flaky person like Mavis would use. “And this Big-Girl-Lost routine of hers could be an act.”

“Whoa—if you’re going to play detective, you can’t get depressed every time you discover that someone is a good candidate for the role of killer.”

“I was trying to play detective,” Temple admitted, “and I’m too involved for it. One last reprise. You make a good shrink. Are you?”

He laughed hard enough to break Temple’s gloomy mood.

“I mean it,” she prodded. “I’ll bet you majored in psychology in college, right?”

Matt’s laughing face smoothed to neutrality. Temple felt like she’d stepped off the edge of a pool and only then noticed there was no water in it.

“More like sociology,” he said cautiously.

“Close.” Temple knew she’d been prying again. “Sorry. PR people are naturally curious.”

“Like cats.”

“Yeah.” She scraped a high heel across the hot cracked concrete rimming the pool. Louie was another reason for her flagging spirits. Matt’s toffee-brown eyes were watching her, warily. Temple wondered if he’d resurrected the subject of Louie’s loss to distract her from himself—from talk of college majors. Could that be? Maybe he hadn’t gone to college and was sensitive. Time to leash her curiosity and back off before Matt got spooked.

“What exactly do you do at your job?” she heard her irrepressible public self ask, even as her sensible private self urged restraint.

Matt produced a rueful smile that Temple liked very much. “I’m a telephone hot-line counselor.”

“Aha! Shrink!”

“Not really. I’m not... degreed.”

“But you’re a great listener. Sorry I was religion-bashing. You must’ve had some church exposure in your wild-and-woolly formative years, as the sociologists say,” Temple speculated. “You play a mean organ. That was a wonderful wedding march you did for Electra. I peeked in. What was it?”

His smile tiptoed around a mouthful of tart lemonade. “It’s not a march, and it’s not normally played at weddings.”

“But it was perfect! Slow and dignified and tender. I’d love to get it on CD.”

The smile had expanded into a grin. “Ask for Bob Dylan at the audio store.”

“Old Gravel-larynx? You’re kidding!”

“Swear to God. It was ‘Love Minus Zero—No Limit.’ Listen to it. Even the lyrics are hymeneal.”

“Huh?”

“An old Greek word for ‘marital.’ ”

“Oh, as in the Greek god of marriage.” Temple felt a flush coming on as she connected the god Hymen with the adjective made from his name and certain gynecological terminology also derived therefrom.