A writer's mystery

[vaneramos]

For danthered and Rabbit-Hole Day

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Last night I was halfway through the second last chapter of my latest murder mystery when I stopped mid-sentence and sat silent for a while, contemplating my glass of Merlot. It didn't take long to make my decision. I tore those five pages out of my spiral notebook, one by one, and tore them up. Ever since I left Jack my writing has sounded hollow. We had a bad marriage, but it fired my inspiration. My ex-husband is a private investigator, but I always irritated him by solving his cases before he did.

"It doesn't take a degree in forensic science," I told him, "just a good imagination and a knowledge of human character."

He never believed I could solve them faster than him, so I proved it once by writing down the name of the person who did it and how. I didn't show it to him then, but put the note in a sealed envelope and gave it to him to open later. Of course I was right. Jack didn't like that.

I used to turn his cases into raw material for my novels. I changed the details of course, but my story lines had enough ring of truth to make them bestsellers. When I started making more money than Jack, that made things even worse.

So there I was on a Sunday night with nobody to keep me company but Jazz, realizing that independence had come with a terrible price. The man I loved to hate had taken my muse with him. And I couldn't even solve the smallest household mystery, like where I left my house keys. It made me sick, but the truth is I'm making enough on royalties to keep me comfortable for a good while. I might as well call it quits before anybody realizes what a fraud I am. Not really a great writer, just the ex-wife of a second rate detective. I was ready to tear up the whole notebook in fact, have an old fashioned book burning, but something held me back. Instinct I guess.

"Well Jazz, here's to you and me and retirement," I said, draining my glass.

Jazz is my lard-assed tabby, the one possession left over intact after my marriage. Yes, I got sole custody. Jack wasn't happy about that, and I couldn't tell what Jazz thought of the arrangement. He kept silent about his feelings most of the time, just turned a perpetual grin on every predicament. If a cat can be said to grin, Jazz grins, though you really know he doesn't mean it sometimes.

His real name is Azure. That's the last remnant of my husband's role in bring up kitty: the name. I always thought it was stupid, and I could tell Jazz thought it was prissy. I mean for a white cat with blue eyes it might make sense. But this tabby has green eyes and a smug grin. Jack found him in an alley and brought him home one night, so I let him keep the stupid name. But Jazz took more readily to me, so I called him what I wanted.

"What should we do tomorrow?" I asked. "It's springtime. We could plant a garden. That sounds like a good way for a retired novelist to spend her twilight years."

Jazz had been perched, as usual, on the back of my chair while I wrote. But he stood up as if something had disturbed him. I guessed it was just the time; he always gets restless about that hour. He gave me a strange look, then spat and jumped down.

"Hey, what's that for?"

He darted to the dark door of the hallway and turned to stare at me a moment with that inscrutable smile, the last thing I saw before he disappeared.

"Fine," I said. "I guess this is not my lucky night."

Standing up, I tossed my writing notebook on the pile of Saturday's paper, destined for the trash. A rabbit's paw had figured critically in one of Jack's cases. You know, one of those horrid good luck charms. It belonged to the victim and turned up unexpectedly in the murderer's glove compartment. That sort of thing is too strange for fiction. I never wrote it into any of my books.

All night long I dreamt of a white rabbit pursuing me through alleys and the subway underground. He was missing one paw and held the misconception that I had severed it.

This morning waking slowly, I had the feeling at once that something was wrong. But I didn't know what. I had a shower, wandered into the kitchen in my white bathrobe and started to make coffee. I noticed Jazz wasn't there right away, rubbing against my ankles. That's when I realized he hadn't been in bed with me when I woke up. He always ended the night there, perched like a flowerpot near my feet or sometimes on my thigh. I opened my mouth to call him.

My mouth made a noise, but it barely sounded like, "Jazz!" In fact if I hadn't known what I was trying to say, I wouldn't have understood myself. It was as if I had just returned from the dentist with my mouth frozen. My tongue was useless.

My first thought was I had had a stroke or something. A feeling of dizziness came over me. Then I was frightened. What if I collapsed there on the kitchen floor. No one would find me until I was dead. I practically ran to the phone.

Then commonsense started to prevail. There was nothing wrong with my head. I forced myself to calm down and take some deep breaths. Once the dizziness disappeared I would feel fine, for sure. It took me a moment to collect myself. I knew enough about the ways people die to realize I wasn't in serious danger. I just had to see whether I could actually talk.

It might seem silly, but the first thing I tried to say was, "Testing, one to three--"

And that's as far as I got, because it wasn't coming out right. Next I went to the kitchen and drank a glass of water to see if that helped. At least I could swallow. But afterwards my efforts to speak were just as futile. The coffee maker started sputtering as it finished. Hurriedly I poured myself a mug and stood there blowing the hot surface, inhaling the aroma. Not that I expected it to improve matters, but I needed to stay focused and think about what to do next.

Going and sitting in a busy emergency room for three hours didn't hold much appeal. Besides, how would I explain my problem to the triage nurse. I suppose they're prepared to handle people who can't speak, but I didn't think I could face the situation alone among strangers. Maybe my own doctor would figure things out, without me telling her, but how could I call her office and make an appointment. I would just have to go in and hope for the best. But what if this was a serious medical condition with no immediate cure. I would rather not know. I could just became that crazy old mystery writer who started gardening one day and never wrote another novel, never spoke to anybody. If nobody knew, would that make it easier to bear?

Then I had a better idea. If there was one thing I liked about Jack, with all his faults, it was the fact that I knew so much about him: all his mistakes, the files he had never closed, the investigations he had botched. And while he had never been particularly good at solving his own mysteries, he had a better score when it came to mine. The case of the missing keys. That kind of thing. At the very least I would extort his assistance. Even if he couldn't help, I knew how to ensure his discretion.

I had already showered, so it didn't take long. An hour later I arrived at his office on the other side of town. He occupied a unit in an office park that had been added on as a second thought behind a rundown plaza. When I wandered casually through the door, no one else was there except his secretary, polishing her nails. Karyn knew better than to tangle with me. I strutted directly past her desk toward his office.

"Mr. O'Hare!" she called. "You have a visitor."

I loved seeing her tiny mind erupt into panic the moment I appeared.

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(Rabbit Hole Day to be continued in this journal tomorrow)