Curiosity Killed the Cat Sitter

Fourteen

Billy Elliot barreled along like he was back on the track with his greyhound buddies, and my muscles burned with the effort of keeping pace. We rounded the end of the parking lot and thundered around the central esplanade of palmettos and hibiscus. At the entrance, where Guidry waited, I pulled Billy Elliot to a halt but left him enough leash to explore a bit. I dragged my aching legs to Guidry’s window, panting like Billy Elliot but managing to keep my tongue from lolling out the sides of my mouth.

Guidry grinned at me. “Now I see how you can get away with eating all that bacon.”

I made a wheezing sound.

“I got a message you’d called,” he said.

“Yeah, I wanted to know when I can bring the cat home.”

He gave me a blank look for a moment and then remembered. “Oh, the cat. Well, the forensics people are finished at the house, but the crime-scene tape will have to stay up until I get the ME’s report.”

“When do you think that’ll be?”

He looked at his watch. “I’m on my way to the morgue now. It’ll just take a few minutes. Wanta come with me?”

I stared at him. Was he nuts?

“The time comes when you have to get back on the horse,” he said. “Maybe this is your time.”

“Maybe you’re way out of line, Lieutenant.”

“Could be. Or I could be right.”

“This conversation is over.”

I spun away from him and jerked Billy Elliot out of the esplanade. I pulled him short and opened the front door.

“You can’t hide out indefinitely,” yelled Guidry.

I pulled Billy Elliot into the elevator and leaned against the wall while it climbed to Tom Hale’s floor. My heart was pounding hard and a surge of adrenaline had made me start trembling. Guidry had no right to tell me what to do with my life. He had no right to tell me anything.

By the time I got Billy Elliot settled in his apartment, I was trembling not only with anger but also with embarrassment for letting Guidry get to me like that. I was the tough one, the one who kept her cool in an emergency. At least that’s who I used to be. Now I was quivering like a wuss because a detective had suggested that it was time for me to stop hiding from the world. My shaking continued all the way down in the elevator, so hard that my teeth were clamped hard together. The worst thing in the world is knowing that somebody else is right and you’re wrong. It was time for me to stop hiding. I just wasn’t sure I was strong enough.

When I went out the front door, I made a little involuntary groan. Guidry was still sitting there with the car idling.

He said, “You ready to go?”

I clomped down the steps and went around the back of the car to the passenger side and got in. Guidry looked straight ahead as I opened the door.

“We have to make this fast,” I said. “I have other pets to take care of.”

“Half an hour, tops,” he said, and put the car in gear.

Sarasota County doesn’t have its own morgue, they use Sarasota Memorial Hospital’s facilities. We were ten minutes away, and neither of us spoke a word the entire trip. I sat with my arms crossed across my chest and hoped Guidry believed I was trembling from the air-conditioning vents blowing on me. He kept his attention on the traffic, and if he noticed my shaking, he didn’t mention it. We parked in the back parking lot at the hospital and took the rear entrance into the maze of hallways that make big hospitals seem like cities. If I ever commit a major crime, I’m going to head straight for the nearest big hospital. You could spend an entire day in a waiting area pretending to be a relative keeping vigil on a loved one, every day moving to a different area. You’d have plenty of bathrooms, you could sleep on the couches, and if you had money to put in food-vending machines, you could hide out indefinitely.

Guidry and I still hadn’t spoken. It was as if we had a tacit agreement that we would do this thing without conversation. He led the way to the autopsy room and opened the door for me to go in first. There was a small square waiting room with scuffed beige linoleum floor and a few plastic molded chairs. A battered wooden coffee table heaped with dog-eared magazines with torn-off rectangles where addresses used to be, and a TV monitor mounted on the wall like in a hospital room. A half wall separated an attendant in green surgical scrubs from the waiting room. He stood on his side with his fists pushed against the counter and stared suspiciously at us. On the wall behind him, a filing cabinet held a coffeepot and some mugs and a jar of Cremora, but he didn’t seem inclined to offer refreshments.

Guidry gave his name, and the young man picked up a phone and spoke briefly. In a few seconds, the inner door opened and a tall Cuban-American woman came out carrying a manila envelope. She had warm almond eyes and white hair cropped tight against her skull.

She and Guidry shook hands, and Guidry said, “Dr. Corazon, this is Dixie Hemingway.”

We shook hands, and if she thought it strange that Guidry had brought along somebody in rumpled shorts and a T, she didn’t show it.