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.
The doctors had said Mavity might be bad-tempered until her contusion healed, and she was. The four-inch gash in the back of her head was not the result of the car accident; she had been hit on the head from behind several hours before her car was wrecked- very likely she had been knocked out, loaded into the backseat of the VW, driven to Salinas, and her car deliberately wrecked against the lamppost where it was found. Harper had no intention of allowing Mavity to sustain another attack. Besides the twenty-four-hour guard, patrol units were all over the area.
Now, entering Wilma's pastel bedroom, Max Harper's uniform and solemn, leathery face contrasted in an interesting way with the feminine room, with the flowered chintz and white wicker furniture, putting Wilma in mind of a weathered soldier wandering among the petunias. As she poured coffee for him from the tray on Mavity's bed table, Mavity sat against the pillows, pleased at being fussed over, at being the center of attention. The facts she gave Max, as he questioned her, were the same she had given Wilma. Slowly the jigsaw pieces of her memory were slipping into place.
On the bed beside Mavity, Dulcie lay pretending to sleep as she fitted together Mavity's scenario with what she and Joe already knew.
Winthrop Jergen had left his apartment at about two, telling Mavity and Pearl Ann that he had an appointment up the coast. Charlie arrived at three and left again a few minutes later, headed for the Blackburn house. Pearl Ann was already upstairs in his rooms repairing the towel rack. As Charlie left, Mavity carried her cleaning things up to his apartment.
"When I came in, Pearl Ann said she was nearly out of shower caulking-that good, plastic kind that she likes. She said if I'd go down to the village for some, she'd start on the refrigerator for me, put the ice trays and shelves in a dishpan to soak. She don't mind working up there when Mr. Jergen's not home…" Mavity jerked her hand, sloshing coffee on the white sheet.
Grabbing a handful of tissues, she tried to mop up the spill. "I can't get used to it-that he's dead. His throat-the blood…"
Wilma took Mavity's cup and wiped the sheets. She handed her more tissues, wiped off the cup, and poured fresh coffee for her. Dulcie rose up from her nest of blankets to rub against Mavity's cheek. Mavity put her arm around the little cat and drew her close.
"Driving back up from the village, I passed Mr. Jergen's car parked three blocks from the apartments, and I thought that was strange. He'd said he was going up the coast. Oh, it was his car, I'd know that Mercedes anywhere, with its two antennas and those fancy hubcaps.
"Well, I thought he must have met his client there and taken their car. Though that did seem odd, that he would park three blocks away. Or maybe he'd had car trouble. I never heard of a Mercedes having car trouble, but I guess they can.
"I parked and hurried in through the patio because Pearl Ann would be waiting for the caulking. Mr. Jergen's windows were open, and I heard him and another man shouting at each other, real angry. It was a strange voice but-something about it seemed familiar.
"And then I heard banging and thuds like furniture being knocked over, and then a gasp. Then silence.
"I ran up the stairs, but I was scared. I was ready to run down again. I listened but I couldn't hear nothing, so I pushed open the door."
She stared into her coffee cup as if seeing a replay of Jergen's murder. When she looked up at Harper, her voice was hardly a whisper.
"He was on the floor. Lying on the floor beside his desk. The blood… And Pearl Ann-Pearl Ann kneeling over him stabbing and stabbing… Swinging her arm and stabbing into his throat with that terrible ice tray thing."
Mavity sat hugging herself. "I backed away real quiet, out the door. Pulled it closed, praying she didn't hear me, that she hadn't seen me.
"I didn't know where the other man was. I kept looking around for him. I felt weak as jelly. I took off my shoes so she wouldn't hear me going down the steps. I ran down in my socks, to my car. I never stopped for nothing. Kept seeing Pearl Ann kneeling over him stabbing and stabbing…
"I dug my keys out of my purse. I was trying to jam the key in the door…"
She looked up at Harper. "That's all I remember. Then the red neon sign at night glaring in my eyes, and I was in the backseat lying on my shoes, my face against a dirty shoe. There was a McDonald's wrapper on the floor-it smelled of mustard.
"And then being dragged or something, that's all fuzzy and dark. Then I was in bed in that hospital and you were there, Captain Harper, sitting slumped in the chair." Mavity pulled the quilt up, careful not to disturb Dulcie.
"When you first entered the apartment," Harper said, "before you went out again for the caulking, do you remember anything strange, at that time, anything out of order in the room?"
"No. The room was neat, the way he keeps it. His desk was clean and neat, nothing on it except a few files lying in a neat pile on the blotter. Well, I guess you could say that was unusual. Mr. Jergen always put everything away, always left his desk with nothing but the blotter and the pens, the regular desk things, no papers."