Manhattan Mayhem (38 page)

That night, after they had taken her away, I sank down on the sofa. Unable to think. Unable to cry. All I could think about was how she had died alone. Despite all my efforts, all my promises to be there for her, in the end I had left her to die alone. And I kept seeing her, clasping that picture, an image of her in her rocking chair, smiling, holding two plump cats, Dizzy and Gillespie, one under each arm. I had taken pictures of her and pictures of the cats, but none together.

Finally, I dragged myself to bed. I closed my eyes, but I couldn’t fall asleep. After about an hour, I got up and went down the hall to Mama’s room.

The door was closed. I paused, took a deep breath, then gripped the doorknob and went in. I don’t know what I expected—or what I feared—but whatever it was, it didn’t happen. I didn’t break down. I didn’t shed a tear. I was too wound up for it, and maybe too afraid to let go.

Mama’s pills were there, on her dresser, lined up like little soldiers. All of them, except the sedatives. I checked each bottle, checked them again. Where were they? They should’ve been there. I had just filled her prescription the other day. Everything else was there, but the sleeping pills.

Then I knew. I understood where all those pills had gone.

Mama’s heart hadn’t simply given out. She had decided she was tired of living … and knowing she planned to go, she had sent Dizzy and Gillespie along ahead of her.
It was my fault,
she’d said,
my fault they died.
It was crazy, but in a crazy kind of way, it made sense.

That’s when the tears came, when the realization hit. I had failed her so completely, to help her, to restore her hope, to get her out of there. I had failed her utterly.

The death certificate issued by the powers that be simply listed heart failure. It did not mention sleeping pills. Maybe they hadn’t bothered to check. Maybe they had just seen a very old woman and assumed she had died of natural causes.

It was a simple funeral, just the way Mama had said she wanted it. Despite her belief that she was all alone, she still had quite a few friends in the neighborhood. They showed up, many of them as frail as she was. They were all kind and supportive, and I thanked them for the love they’d shown her.

That evening, one of them stopped by. It was Mr. Edgar. He lived two floors up, and although he was in his eighties, he was often out and about. I suspected he was sweet on Mama.

“I just wanted to return this.” He held up one of Mama’s pie plates.

“Oh, thank you, but when did she—”

“The other day. She asked me to go to the store for her. I said I would if she would make me a pie.”

“Really?”

“You mean, you didn’t know? She didn’t make you one? ’Cause I bought enough for two.”

Slowly, I shook my head. The fact that my mother found the energy to make it down to the kitchen and bake two pies surprised me no less than the fact that she had asked Mr. Reese to buy the ingredients instead of asking me.

I thanked him and started to close the door, but he stopped me.

“Just one more thing,” he said. “Some cops came by to see me. Asked some strange questions.”

“About what?”

He shrugged. “It’s probably nothing for you to worry about. But they might stop by here.”

I thought it strange that he was so vague, but I didn’t push the matter. He turned around to go, but then caught himself and came back.

“I can’t believe I nearly forgot this.” He reached into his jacket pocket and brought out a small bottle. It was Mama’s missing sleeping pills.

“Your mother gave me these the other day. I happened to mention that I wasn’t sleeping well, and she told me to take them. I said I didn’t need all of them, but she insisted.”

I accepted them in a daze and closed the door. Mama’s sleeping pills. She hadn’t committed suicide. She really had died of heart failure. I started down the hall but found myself standing outside Mama’s door instead. I thought about Dizzy and Gillespie, and how much she loved them.

Then I thought of that picture.

I had buried it with her. I wished I hadn’t. Partly because it would’ve been good to have: a reminder of all-too-brief happy days.

And partly because I wondered who had taken it. I knew I hadn’t.

I tried to picture it, study it.

I remembered my surprise at finding it. Surprise because I didn’t know she had it. Because I didn’t even know it existed. And because … well, it was a
Polaroid.

Who in the world still uses Polaroids?

The doorbell rang again.

I thought it was Mr. Edgar or another of Mama’s neighbors. Instead, it was two detectives. They held up their badges and introduced themselves as Jacobi and Reiner.

“Yes?”

They asked about Milford, about what kind of relationship I’d had
with him.

“None. I barely knew him.”

“You didn’t get along, right?” That was Jacobi. His gaze slid up and down the hallway, then returned to me.

“What’s this all about?”

“Where are your cats?” Reiner asked.

“My cats?” I looked from one to the other. “They’re both dead. Why?”

“You like to cook, to bake?”

That was Jacobi. He made a move to step around me, to walk down the hall. I stepped in front of him.

“Not really, no.”

He brought his eyes back down to me and I planted my feet, refusing to budge. He didn’t like that. He gave Reiner a nod, as if to say that some suspicion had been confirmed.

Reiner asked, “How did your cats die?”

I didn’t answer.

“We heard that you suspected poisoning,” he went on.

“And that you thought Milford did it,” Jacobi added.

Actually, that thought hadn’t occurred to me. Maybe it would have, if I hadn’t been so quick to assume that I’d done it by accident, or if Mama hadn’t indicated that she’d done it by intent.

“Why exactly are you here? It couldn’t possibly be to investigate the death of two cats.”

“Depends,” Jacobi said.

“On what?”

“On whether it was a motive for murder,” Reiner said.

“Murder?”

“Turns out Milford died from strychnine poison.”

“Really?” I said, keeping my voice calm.

“Yeah, really.” Jacobi studied me. “Turns out it was in a sweet potato pie.”

“And you think I baked it?”

“Did you?” Jacobi asked.

“No.”

“You sure about that?”

“Very.”

“What about your mother?”

“What about her?”

“We heard that she’s famous for her sweet potato pie.”

“Then you must’ve also heard that she died.”

That took the wind out of their sails. A bit.

“When—”

“The same day Milford died. While the paramedics were downstairs trying to save him, my mother was up here, dying.”

“Why didn’t you call for help?” Reiner asked.

“I wasn’t here. I had gone out. When I got back, there was that mess downstairs, that circus about … him. And your cops wouldn’t let me through. By the time I got upstairs, she was gone.”

They didn’t have an answer for that. They asked me if they could look through the place, and I said no. They warned me they’d be back. I didn’t care. They couldn’t pin Milford’s death on me, and they knew it.

I went back to Mama’s room. I had remembered one more detail. One more reason why that photograph bothered me: the date stamp in the lower right-hand corner.

It was for the day Dizzy died.

Who still uses Polaroids?

Photographers. That’s who. They use them for test shots.

Milford. He must’ve been in our apartment.

“It was my fault,”
she said,
“my fault they died.”

Something inside me twisted in pain. How could I have gotten it so wrong? She hadn’t killed those cats, but she
had
let the devil in the door. She had wanted to be the good neighbor, so she had given Milford another chance, and he’d used it to poison Dizzy and Gillespie.

In killing them, he’d killed her, too. Losing those cats had pushed
her over the edge. Sure, the doctor had said it was heart failure that killed her, but he might as well have written
heartbreak.

“I can’t bring them back,”
she’d said,
“but I will make it right.”

And she had.

She would’ve still been alive if Milford hadn’t killed those cats—and he would have been, too.

Two months later, I got a good job, and four months after that I’d saved enough to move out. The neighborhood was changing. Columbia University was building a new campus nearby, and everyone was saying how the rents were going to rise. All my friends were telling me how lucky I was to have Mama’s apartment, how I shouldn’t give it up. That the landlord would have to fix it up or buy me out. But I couldn’t take being there. I couldn’t stand it.

It took me days to clean the place out, to empty it of forty years of papers. While doing so, I found an old picture that, from the looks of it, dated back to the 1940s. It was of Mama, all done up. She was seated in a garden, nuzzling two small cats. I was surprised. She’d said she always hated cats. I turned the picture over and found a note on the back:
Me, with Cab and Calloway. Just before they died in March of ’45.
Cab and Calloway?

“This is twice this has happened to me,”
she’d said. So, Mama had had cats before, and they had died mysteriously, too.

I felt a new welling of sadness, of loss, bittersweet.

I set that picture aside. I saved it and, that evening, I took it with me to my new place. It got a special spot on my dresser top, right next to a picture of Dizzy and Gillespie, and a picture of Mama and me.

I miss you so much,
I thought. But then I took a step back and looked around and it hit me once again. I did miss her, but I sure didn’t miss that old apartment.

I sat down and took it all in.
My new place. My new place. My very own, new place.
I said those words out loud, repeated them over and
over. I had finally done it. I had moved into one of those townhouse apartments on Convent Avenue, and it was all I’d imagined it to be.

I gazed out my window and sighed.

It was good, so very good, to finally live “over there.”

PERSIA WALKER
is a diplomat, former journalist, and the author of acclaimed crime fiction. Her three historical mystery novels, all set in 1920s New York, are
Harlem Redux, Darkness and the Devil behind Me,
and
Black Orchid Blues.
She is a native New Yorker, speaks several languages, and has lived in South America and Europe.