Cat Sitter On A Hot Tin Roof

17

Idrove home in a fog of fatigue and fury. Even though I’d told Guidry about the other men who’d been irrationally drawn to Laura, I knew it was her husband who had killed her. The man had to be completely insane to think he could follow her to Siesta Key and kill her without anybody knowing. His colleagues would know he was gone, and everybody who knew him and Laura would suspect him the minute her murder became public knowledge. If he’d been a nobody, he might already be cooling his odious heels in a jail cell. Since he was famous and wealthy, he would have an attorney to forestall the moment when homicide detectives talked to him. Guidry was probably collecting irrefutable evidence before he moved.

Just the thought of Guidry investigating Laura’s murder sent a chill into my bones, because it was a reminder of Guidry’s job. Every day, he dealt with murder—the grisliest, ugliest, most sordid side of humanity.

Being involved with any law enforcement officer means being vicariously close to violence, at least to some degree, but being involved with a homicide detective means being close to the ultimate effects of brutal hatred. I wasn’t sure I was strong enough for that. I wasn’t sure I wanted to be strong enough for that. I wasn’t sure I could spend my nights in bed with a man who spent his days investigating murders.

Not that I’d been invited to spend any nights with Guidry. Not that he had ever even hinted that it was on his mind. But it must have been somewhere in my mind, and I wished it weren’t.

At home, I trudged up the stairs to my apartment and fell into bed. Before I went to sleep, I remembered the noise Laura and I had heard while we ate dinner. Could it have been her husband? Could he have been lurking outside, waiting to make sure Laura lived in that house? I wished I had gone outside and investigated. If I had, he might have been frightened away, and Laura might not have died.

I woke with a start from the remnants of a bad dream. In the dream, my father had hit me. The dream was true. I had been seven years old at the time, and my gentle, patient father had smacked my bottom for the first and only time in my life.

He had been about to leave for his shift at the firehouse, and I had sassed my mother one time too many. “You don’t speak to your mother like that,” he said. “It’s rude and it’s unkind, and it’s unfair.”

I’d been so shocked that I yelled, “I hate you! I wish you were dead!” and ran to my room. Within twenty-four hours, he had died saving a child in a burning house.

With a child’s belief in my own magical powers, I believed for a long time that I had killed him. Even now, I sometimes wonder about it. He hadn’t been the kind of man to hit little children, and maybe he had been so upset over my hateful words that night that he’d lost his concentration and got careless.

When Todd and Christy were killed, that childish belief in magical powers must have returned because I had the same kind of nagging guilt. I knew the things the religious fanatics said weren’t true—that God had not punished me for being a working mother. Even so, I’d grieved that I hadn’t remembered to buy Cheerios and orange juice when I went grocery shopping, because if I had, Todd and Christy wouldn’t have been in that Publix parking lot when the old man hit the gas instead of his brake.

Now, lying in the darkness before my alarm sounded, I wallowed for a few minutes in slimy remorse. Then I rolled out of bed and stomped to the bathroom, where I stood in front of the medicine cabinet and glared into my own eyes.

I said, “Don’t start that crap again! You didn’t cause your father to die, you didn’t cause Todd and Christy to die, and you sure as hell didn’t cause Laura Halston to be murdered!”

My eyes in the mirror gazed back at me with a secret knowing. The old irrational guilt was just a way to cover up what I was truly feeling. I hate it when I come up with insights that push me to be honest with myself, especially when the truth is something I don’t know what to do with.

The truth was that primal fear had its talons deep into my shoulders, deeper than I’d realized. No matter what, I had to do everything in my power to make sure Laura’s killer was found and convicted. Otherwise, the fear of being a vulnerable victim might be an unwelcome companion for the rest of my life.