“No,” I said, “they get hysterical. They’ll just make me worse. I’ll be all right. I’ll take a cab to the hospital and get checked out. Don’t worry about it.”
“Yeah, right,” he said.
McCracken drove me to the Civic Hospital Emergency, to have my head examined. I leaned sideways with fatigue. Leaning back was out of the question. My stomach lurched and I closed my eyes.
“I’ll make sure your car gets home,” McCracken said, as he pulled into the Emergency area and parked. “You want to give me your keys?”
I wrestled my car keys off the key ring. All I wanted to do was sleep. But something else was bothering me.
“Blast,” I said, “the cats. Somebody’s got to feed the goddam cats.”
“Okay,” McCracken said, “if they keep you in, I guess I could let your sister know. I’m sure she’ll do it.”
McCracken took the upper hand with the nurse in charge in emergency.
“Police,” he said, flashing his badge at her. “Head injury.” When my medical information had been given, I was whisked into an examining room. McCracken, to my surprise, came with me.
“Just in case,” he said. “I’m not taking any chances. Your sister might hold me responsible.”
My sister. I remembered I was mad at her. It seemed very long ago and unimportant.
I didn’t much feel like talking, and after about two minutes McCracken went off for a cigarette. Who could blame him?
I lay there on my belly, head resting on crossed arms, thinking about what had happened. Who had killed Sammy Dash and why? Why hadn’t they killed me? Why had they moved Sammy’s body? Had any of it really happened?
My eyes popped open as the door squeaked. The resident who entered had not gotten to the lesson where they teach you to smile at the patients.
“I’m Dr. Granger. What seems to be the problem?”
“Someone whacked me on the head with something. I don’t know what.”
“When was this?”
I had to think. Nearly eighteen hours earlier.
“Is that a long time to be unconscious after a blow?” I asked.
“It happens,” he said, touching my head. “Does this hurt?”
I gasped and gripped the sides of the examining table.
“I think we need an X-Ray here.”
McCracken knocked on the door and entered. He and the doctor exchanged looks, both used to being in charge. I’m used to being in charge too, but I lacked the energy at that moment.
It was all I could do to hang on to my self-control until I got through the X-Ray. This didn’t get any easier when Alexa came scuttling around the corner of the Radiology waiting room, her face glowing with anxiety.
She stopped in mid-step the second she spotted McCracken. Her hand shot up to fix her perfect hair. A reflex, I guess. Once she glanced at me, the anxiety was back.
“Oh, Camilla,” she said.
“I’m fine. You should see the other guy.” It was a well-worn joke in our family. This time, it happened to be true.
A smile fluttered around Alexa’s mouth. “Are you sure?” she said, hugging me.
“Yes.”
“Well, we’ll see what the radiologist has to say.”
I took a look at her. She wasn’t wearing lipstick, or even any makeup. Her hair was caught back in a pony tail, a style which was probably invented for her. If she still had her hangover, it didn’t show. She must have been in the garden when McCracken called, because she was wearing faded jeans and one of her late husband’s shirts.
McCracken was staring. For some reason, his collar seemed to be tight.
Alexa gave me a little pat on the arm, before she turned to him.
“Hello, Conn,” she said.
I hated sitting there waiting for X-Rays while the two of them pretended to engage in normal conversation. But every now and then Alexa would turn her attention to me.
“Maybe they’ll have to keep you in, as a precaution. You could have a concussion, dear. Do you feel sleepy? Nauseated?
Let me see your pupils.”
McCracken gazed at her with admiration.
“I can’t stay in,” I said. “I have to get home and look after the goddam cats.”
* * *
It was only after McCracken was gone and Alexa had squeezed every drop of information possible out of the radiologist and we were in Alexa’s car driving home that I remembered to give her hell.
“You used me as bait to call up McCracken. You didn’t have the guts to just call him. The man dragged me off to a café and gave me a lecture about sticking my nose in this investigation.”
Alexa kept her eyes on the road. “Looks like that was good advice. Which you didn’t take, and now look at you.”
She had a point.
“Anyway,” she added, “I’m glad I called him. So there.”
My apartment is a five minute drive from the Civic, and we pulled into the driveway before I could badger her any more. Good thing. I didn’t want to hear any romantic drivel about McCracken.
Alexa fussed all the way through the foyer and up to the sixteenth floor in the elevator.
“I’m all right,” I said as we walked down the hallway toward my apartment. But I almost toppled over as I went to insert my keys in my apartment door and found it unlocked.
Images of dead cats flashed through my mind, and I felt a wave of nausea.
Alexa grabbed my arm. “I knew you weren’t ready to come home from the hospital.”
“The door,” I whispered, “the door is unlocked. Did you leave it unlocked?”
“Don’t be ridiculous. Let’s get out of here,” she said.
“No way. You take off and call the police. I’m going to stay here and catch the cat-killer.”
“You can’t stay here.” Her voice took on the familiar desperate edge.
“Never mind, go call the police.”
We heard a clumping noise just as the door swung open.
Mrs. Parnell stood there, leaning against her walker. Cats flanked her ankles. They rubbed up against her as she inhaled on her cigarette and blew a great deal of smoke in our direction.
“Well, it’s about time you turned up. I thought these damn cats were going to starve, they howled so much. First you create a noise nuisance bringing them here, and then you neglect them. Not a great track record.”
Alexa rallied, once she recovered from the shock of seeing someone in my doorway
“Camilla has been in the hospital having a head wound attended to. She was injured in an attack last night.”
I liked Alexa’s approach. It had the nose-in-the-air-and-you’d-better-remember-just-who-you’re-talking-to technique that had always worked so well for the MacPhee sisters.
Alexa propelled me past Mrs. Parnell and into the living room, where I slumped on the sofa.
“And as for you, Miss,” Alexa snapped, “what were you going to do to the cat-killer when he came out of your apartment? Hit him with your purse?”
She had a point.