Curiosity Killed The Cat Sitter

Twelve

Sarasota has a slew of retirement communities and assisted-living facilities, and Bayfront Village is one of the most exclusive. Its main building is a pink brick monstrosity constructed in a vague mix of Gothic spires, Mediterranean arches, red tile roof, and Art Deco turquoise trim. I drove up a fake cobblestone drive and pulled under a portico, where a uniformed valet courteously opened the door for me. As he drove off to park my Bronco in some secret spot, wide glass doors automatically sighed open when they felt my presence. Inside, the cavernous lobby appeared to have been decorated by a committee of feverish designers who saw an opportunity to unload all the mistakes former clients had refused. Overstuffed sofas upholstered in fox-hunting scenes kept company with Hindu statues and gilded rococo. Plaster cherubs with fat cheeks mingled with sleek Danish modern and ruffled chintz.

Silver-haired men and women were moving around, some going outside to cars drawing up under the portico. A lot of them pushed little three-wheeled canvas walking aids that looked like empty doll carriages. I wasn’t surprised. The decor alone was enough to give them vertigo. Most of them wore sweaters, in spite of the fact that it was sizzling outside.

Feeling obscenely young and fit, I passed an easel supporting a large cardboard sign giving the week’s activities. The sign was outlined in flashing lights, a tacky way of attracting attention, in my opinion, but I read it as I went by. One of the events being announced was a talk by Dr. Gerald Coffey, entitled “Help for the Heart.”

I went up to the front desk and told a calm young woman in a tailored black suit that I was there to see Cora Mathers.

“Is she expecting you?”

“No, I should have called, but I just took a chance and came over.”

“I’ll call her. What’s your name?”

“Dixie Hemingway, but she doesn’t know me. Tell her I’m her granddaughter’s cat-sitter.”

“Her granddaughter’s cat-sitter?”

“I take care of her granddaughter’s cat when she’s out of town. She left without giving me a number where she could be reached, and I’m hoping Mrs. Mathers knows how to contact her.”

She nodded and punched numbers into a phone pad. I could hear buzzes on the other end of the line, and after nine or ten of them, I was ready to turn away. The young woman didn’t seem fazed, however, so I waited. After what must have been thirty rings, a voice answered. The young woman explained my reason for coming and then listened intently while the person gave a lengthy response. She said, “Okay, Mrs. Mathers, I’ll tell her,” and put the phone down.

“She says to go on up,” she said. “She’s on the sixth floor. Turn right when you get off the elevator, her apartment is number six thirteen.”

The elevator was mirrored, so on the ride up I smoothed my hair and tried to brush some wrinkles out of my shorts. At the sixth floor, I stepped out and turned right, and saw a tiny woman with wispy white hair planted in the middle of the hall waving a heavily freckled arm side to side like a highway construction worker. She wore a pair of wide-legged shorts in an exotic parrot print, with a bright red blouse that fell loosely over her thin hips. Her pale legs were as scrawny as a child’s, and she would have had to get on tiptoe to be five feet tall.

“Here I am,” she called. “Come on.” She was beaming at me with such a sweet face that I felt a stab of yearning for my own grandmother.

When I got close, I said, “Thank you for seeing me, Mrs. Mathers. My name is Dixie Hemingway.”

She turned into her doorway and crooked her finger at me to follow. “I know,” she said. “Debby told me when she called. Are you related to Ernest Hemingway?”

“No, afraid not.”

Taking tiny steps that moved her along in minuscule increments, she said, “I wouldn’t regret it if I were you, he wasn’t a man with a strong character. Oh, he was strong enough when he was young, all that swagger and boasting, but when the going got tough, he couldn’t take it. Shot himself, you know. Got old and shot himself. Being young is easy, you know, anybody can do that, but it takes guts to be old.”

We had now made it through a small foyer lined with framed botanical prints. Her apartment smelled like chocolate chip cookies.

I said, “Oh, this is lovely.”

I wasn’t just being polite, it really was. To my left was a bar in front of a small galley kitchen, and I could see a spacious bedroom to the right. Directly in front was an airy living room with a glassed wall across the back. The floor was pale pink tile and the walls were a deeper shade of pink. A pale green linen Tuxedo sofa sat in front of a glass-topped coffee table, and a couple of armchairs in a muted green and pink chintz faced the sofa. Between the kitchen and the sofa was a skirted round table with two pale green ice-cream chairs. The effect was graceful and serene, enhanced by white wicker and greenery on a narrow sunporch that ran across the back of the living room and bedroom.

“It is nice, isn’t it? I’m so blessed to have it. Marilee bought it for me, you know. Sit down and I’ll make us some tea. You’re in luck, I just finished making chocolate bread.”

I took a seat at the round table and said, “I never ate chocolate bread.”

“Well, it’s my own invention. Marilee gave me a bread-making machine, oh, it must have been fifteen years ago now, and I use it every week. I start it and then at just the right time I throw in some chocolate chips. I won’t tell anybody when I throw them in, that’s my secret.”

She mini-stepped around the bar to the kitchen, where she clattered down two mugs from a rack and poured boiling water into a fat brown teapot. “I keep water simmering all the time,” she said. “You never can tell when somebody may drop by for a cup of tea.”

“You must have a lot of friends here.”

“Well, not a lot, but a sufficient amount. You don’t want too many people coming and going, but enough so you don’t feel alone. Of course, Marilee stops by pretty often, too, and that’s nice.”

She put the tea things on a tray and added a plate of fist-size hunks of brown bread studded with dark bits of oozing chocolate. Next to freshly fried bacon, the scent of hot melted chocolate may be the most tantalizing smell in the world. I got up and carried the tray to the table.

“It’s Marilee I wanted to talk to you about, Mrs. Mathers.” I said.

“Call me Cora.”

“Do you happen to know where she’s gone? She forgot to leave me a number when she left.”

She pulled out a chair and sat down across from me. “This is about that Frazier fellow, isn’t it?”

“Sort of. I’d like to let her know about it before she comes home.”

Pouring tea into our cups, she said, “Well, dear, I expect she knows by now, don’t you? I’m sure it’s been on all the news. Here, butter some bread while it’s hot. I don’t slice it, I just rip off chunks of it. I don’t know why, but it seems better that way.”

While Cora watched intently, I smeared butter on a hunk and took a bite. I closed my eyes and moaned. “Oh God, that’s good.”

“Better than sex, isn’t it? Of course it’s been a long time since I had sex, so I may not remember it clearly. I’ll bet you have plenty of sex, pretty young woman like you.”

I sipped some tea and avoided her eyes. “Cora, have you heard from Marilee?”

She swallowed a bite of bread and took a sip of tea before she answered. “I don’t imagine she’ll be wanting to talk to me right now. Not with that Frazier fellow dead in her house.”

“You knew him?”

“I never met the man.”

My head felt like it had been twisted like a doorknob and allowed to spin back into place. I buttered another bite of bread and chewed it slowly while I studied Cora’s face. Her eyes were overhung by crepey eyelids, but they were bright and alert. I said, “Why don’t you think Marilee will want to talk to you?”

Her lips tightened and she slapped a pat of butter on a bit of bread. “Well, Frazier’s the man who ruined my granddaughter’s life, isn’t he? Don’t think I’m saying Marilee hasn’t made the best of it, because she has. But that’s all water over the dam now, isn’t it?”

The words lay on the table along with the bread and butter and tea. I could pick them up and learn something very personal about Marilee that she probably didn’t want known, or I could mind my own business and stay ignorant.

I said, “I don’t know about that, Cora. To tell the truth, I never understood what that meant, water over the dam, under the bridge, whatever.”

“Well, it’s just too late, isn’t it? What’s done is done, and you can’t go back and undo it, can you?”

“I guess not. Uh, Cora, would you mind telling me how Marilee knew Harrison Frazier?”

“Well, yes, I would mind, dear. That’s personal and private business of Marilee’s, and I don’t go around telling my granddaughter’s personal and private business, now do I? Have some more tea.”

“No thanks. Can you tell me where she is? I really think I should contact her.”

“No, can’t tell you that, either. But here’s what I’ll do: If she calls me—and she usually does call when she’s off on one of these trips—I’ll tell her you want to talk to her. How’s that?”

“Cora, the Sheriff’s Department would like to know where she is. It isn’t just me.”

“Well, I’ll tell them the same thing I told you. I don’t know, and even if I did, I wouldn’t say, because that’s Marilee’s private business.”

“But you’re not worried about her?”

“Oh my, no. Marilee can take care of herself. I’ll say that for her, she can take care of herself.” She waved her arm toward the glass wall as she said that, presumably to indicate the vastness of the visible blue sky as a symbol of how well Marilee could take care of herself.

I said, “Marilee left the number of Shuga Reasnor to call in case of an emergency. Do you know Ms. Reasnor?”

“Oh my, yes, I’ve known her since she was a little bitty thing, only her name wasn’t Shuga then, it was Peggy Lee. Her mother was a fool for Peggy Lee, so that’s what she named her little girl. Poor little thing, that’s about the only thing her mother ever gave her. Her daddy wasn’t much better. Drunks, both of them. If I hadn’t fed Peggy, I think she might have flat starved to death. She’s done all right for herself, though. Last time I saw her, she looked like Miss Gotrocks herself.”

“You saw her lately?”

“No, it was several months ago. Marilee had picked up my heart pills at the drugstore and forgot to bring them to me before she left town, so Peggy Lee brought them to me. I told her she looked like a movie star. Between you and me, though, I don’t think that’s her own hair.”

“So she had a key to Marilee’s house?”

“Oh my, yes. Those two have always been in and out of each other’s house like it was their own.”

“Cora, did you know Marilee had her locks changed? I had to stop by and pick up a new key before she left.”

“Is that a fact? Well, no, I didn’t know that. But then, I wouldn’t, because I don’t have a key myself. The only time I go over there is when Marilee comes and gets me, so why would I?”

I was stumped. So far as I knew, Marilee hadn’t broken any laws or done anything wrong. If her grandmother didn’t want to say where she’d gone, she wasn’t obligated to do so. Furthermore, I was a pet-sitter, not a criminal investigator. I had already stepped over a line by coming here, and if I went any further, I would be getting into serious unethical territory.

I stood up. “I’d better go,” I said. “If Marilee calls, I’d appreciate it if you’d ask her to contact me. I’ve put her cat in a day-care center until the house is released, and I’d like to discuss that with her.”

“I’m sure whatever you’ve done is just fine.”

“Would you like me to put the tea things away before I go?”

“Well, if you don’t mind, dear, yes, I would. Things get heavier when you’re old.”

I set the teapot and mugs and plates on the tray and carried them around to the kitchen counter. The refrigerator door had notes attached by magnets, and there were several snapshots of a pretty dark-haired young woman.

I called, “Are these photos of Marilee when she was young?”

Through the open space above the bar, I saw Cora’s face close like a flower pulling its petals inward. She looked much older, and infinitely sadder.

“No, dear, those are not of Marilee.”

Her voice held such finality that I knew I had violated some unspoken rule by asking.

“I’m sorry,” I said. “I didn’t mean to pry.”

“Oh, of course you did, but it’s all right. I’m not angry. I just can’t discuss what it isn’t my business to discuss, now can I?”

I reminded myself that I had no right to ask questions, and said my goodbyes, leaving her hunched over the little round table.

Downstairs in the lobby, I veered behind a couple of elegantly dressed women standing in front of the blinking activities display.

“Excuse me,” I said, “my grandmother is thinking about buying an apartment here. Could you tell me how you like living here?”

They turned and started talking at once, the gist of which was that the chef in the dining room put out a fabulous Sunday brunch, that there were always classes and workshops and outings planned, and that everybody who lived there was interesting. They could have done commercials for the place.

I nodded toward the blinking display. “I noticed that Dr. Coffey is going to do a talk about bypass surgery. Does he do that often?”

They sobered and nodded. “Yes, he does,” said one. “I suppose he’s operated on so many of the people living here that he needs to let us know that it’s available for us.”

I looked toward a tanned silver-haired couple striding out the door carrying tennis rackets. “Everybody looks awfully healthy. He can’t do that many bypasses.”

One woman fingered a string of cultured pearls at her throat and said, “Looks can be deceiving. Several people have been active one day and in the hospital the next. It’s really alarming.”

The other woman said, “Like Mary Kane. She had a big party for Sunday brunch, and that night she went into a diabetic coma. She just insisted on eating those cherry blintzes, and why not? She was eighty-five years old and she’d lived with diabetes for years and years. She knew what she could do and what she couldn’t do, but I guess that time she overdid it. Two days later Dr. Coffey did a triple bypass on her.”

I waited for the end of the story, and when neither of them volunteered it, I said, “And was it a success?”

“She never woke up. They had to transfer her to a hospital in St. Pete, and she was there for three months before she finally died. Dr. Coffey said she was just too frail to survive. Poor thing, and she never even knew she had anything wrong with her heart. All she knew about was her diabetes.”

“Almost the same thing happened to Mr. Folsom, remember? He seemed fine too, just complained of emphysema from smoking before he knew better. And then, boom, Dr. Coffey found four of his arteries blocked and had to do bypass surgery on him. He didn’t wake up, either, but he didn’t suffer as long as Mary did. He passed away just a few days after the surgery.”

They both fixed me with eyes frightened and resigned, while little warning bells went off in my head.