Curiosity Killed The Cat Sitter

Twenty

My mouth went dry. I didn’t need him to spell out his real question. He was asking me if I had anything to do with Marilee’s murder.

“I got curious when I saw a strand of hair caught on a tree. I’ve always thought it was odd that she didn’t take her hair dryer with her, and when I saw that hair, it reminded me of the hair in her brush. I just had a feeling I should look farther back in the woods.”

“You didn’t already know she was there?”

“Of course I didn’t!”

“But you see how it could look, don’t you? You had keys to the house where both murders were probably committed. You found Harrison Frazier’s body, and then you went straight to where Marilee Doerring’s body had been dumped in the woods, even though she hadn’t been declared missing. You talked to Phillip Winnick and he tells you that he walks home before dawn every morning, and that he saw a woman leave the Doerring woman’s house the night Frazier was killed. The next morning, he’s found badly beaten, possibly with the same blunt instrument used to kill both Harrison Frazier and Marilee Doerring.”

I felt dazed and confused, and at the same time intensely aware. The dark blue of Guidry’s shirt seemed to brighten, and I could detect the musky fragrance of his aftershave. Guidry seemed on high alert, too. His gray eyes were wide and watchful as a hunting cat’s. If he’d had cat whiskers, they would have been pointed forward and his ears would have been up.

My fingers were gripping my Styrofoam cup so tightly, the coffee was shivering. Just the thought of being a suspect caused a slick of hot guilt to coat my throat.

“Guidry, I never laid eyes on Harrison Frazier before I found him dead.”

“I believe you, Dixie, but you have to admit that logic would put you at the top of the list of suspects.”

“Why do you believe me?”

“Motive, Dixie. You had opportunity, but I don’t think you had reason to kill anybody.”

He sounded like a professor lecturing a class of would-be homicide detectives. Or like somebody giving me a friendly hint of an effective defense to use in case I was arrested for murder.

Stiffly, I said, “This has been very interesting, Lieutenant, but I have to get back to work.”

When I got to the elevator, Guidry caught up with me.

“Can I ask you a favor? Would you tell Cora Mathers that Marilee is dead?”

I stared at him, ready to tell him that I was a pet-sitter, dammit, not a member of the Sheriff’s Department. But I knew why he wanted me to notify Cora. I had already made a connection with her, and she was more likely to give me information that might help the investigation.

“You owe me,” I said.

“Big time. And you’ll talk to her about Frazier’s relationship with Marilee?”

“Sure, Guidry. I’ll go tell a sweet old woman that her granddaughter’s body has been lying in the woods with animals eating her, and then I’ll ask her a lot of questions. Are you nuts?”

“I didn’t mean it that way, Dixie.”

The elevator doors opened and I stepped in. “I’ll go see Cora,” I said. “That’s all I’m promising.”

He put his hands in his pockets and stood silently watching me until the elevator doors closed.

At the Sarasota Bayfront Village, the woman at the front desk called Cora’s apartment and told me to go on up. In the elevator, I tried to find the right words to say what had to be said, but there is no right way to tell somebody about death.

Cora was standing outside her door again, waving at me like a little girl excited to have company. “Did you come back for some more of my chocolate bread? I don’t have any fresh today, but yesterday’s is still good. It doesn’t have to be hot, you know. It’s good cold, too. I keep it in the refrigerator and just heat it up in the toaster oven. Sometimes I don’t even heat it, I just eat it cold.”

“I have something to tell you, Cora.”

“Well, come on in. You can tell me while we have some tea.”

She scuttled ahead of me, talking a mile a minute. “I don’t think there’s anything that don’t go down better with tea, do you? A lot of people here are drinking green tea. I never saw any green tea, did you? I just drink plain old brown tea. I don’t think I’d like to drink something green. Would be like drinking hot lime Jell-O. Yuk. Here, you sit down while I make us some brown tea. I’ve always got the kettle on, you know.”

I edged into one of the ice-cream chairs at her round table and watched her totter into the kitchen area. She turned up the heat under a steaming kettle and put teabags into a teapot, then clattered down cups and saucers while she continued to talk.

“A lot of people say they can’t sleep at night if they drink tea after noon, but it never hurt me none. I drink tea all day long and I sleep just fine. If I don’t, I get up and watch TV. Some of them shows are dirty, got people doing it right there in front of your face. You ask me, there’s some things people ought not do in front of other people, and that’s one of them. You ever see any of them dirty shows?”

I got up to get the tea tray and said, “I’ve seen some of them, but just for a few minutes. I don’t much like watching other people having sex.”

“Well, that’s how I feel, too. What good does it do you to watch? If I’m not going to do it, I sure don’t want to watch somebody else doing it. What did you want to tell me?”

She had caught me off guard, and when I looked at her, I realized she had been babbling because she was scared. I probably wore the same face that Sergeant Owens and Todd’s lieutenant had been wearing three years ago when they came to tell me about Todd and Christy. They didn’t have to say a word for me to know that my life was over.

I said, “I think you’d better sit down, Cora.”

I’ve seen greyhounds who have been pulled from the track to be destroyed, and their eyes had the same defeated look as Cora’s.

“Is it about Marilee?”

“Yes.”

“Has something happened to her?”

“I’m afraid so.”

“She’s dead, isn’t she?”

“I’m sorry, Cora. Yes, she is.”

Her face imperceptibly crumpled, its thin skin suddenly cracking into an infinity of tiny lines. But her blue eyes remained blazingly dry, and she straightened up in her chair.

“How did he kill her?”

“I don’t know, Cora. Her body was found this morning, but I don’t know how she died. She was in the woods behind her house. I suppose she was killed about the same time Harrison Frazier was killed.”

She closed her eyes at the image I had conjured, but mercifully didn’t ask who had found Marilee’s body or its condition. She was a sharp old lady, she probably knew the things that would happen to a body left lying in the woods for several days.

“I always knew he would be the end of her. I knew it from the first day.”

“They don’t know who killed her, Cora.”

“I know. It was Harrison Frazier. I knew he would.”

“Harrison Frazier was killed, too, Cora.”

“I know that, and I’m glad. That’s a terrible thing to say, isn’t it, to be glad that another human being is dead, but I am. The world’s a better place without him, if you ask me. But it’s not a better place without Marilee.”

The tears came now, spilling down her ravaged face. She didn’t bow her head and she didn’t wipe the tears away. She cried defiantly, as if her weeping were an accusation.

I reached across the table and took both her hands. “Cora, I’m so sorry.”

“Oh, don’t think this is the first time I’ve cried over what Harrison Frazier did to Marilee. This isn’t the first time, and it won’t be the last.”

“What did Frazier do, Cora?”

“Turned chicken, that’s what. His family thought Marilee wasn’t good enough for him, and he didn’t have the balls to stand up to them. That’s what hurt her the most. The way he let them drag her through the mud.”

“When did this happen, Cora?”

“Marilee was fifteen. I guess Harrison was just fifteen, too. Lord knows they weren’t either of them old enough to take on a baby. I don’t fault Harrison for that. But the way he acted later, that was the thing that just killed Marilee.”

“Are you talking about Marilee’s daughter?”

She sighed. “I’m not supposed to talk about her, but now I don’t guess it matters. It wasn’t right, what they did. I don’t care how much money they paid Marilee, it wasn’t right.”

“What who did?”

“The Fraziers. They wanted Marilee to put the baby out for adoption, and that was all right with me. I didn’t want Marilee to be tied down with a baby to raise and her just fifteen years old. I’d already been through that with her mother. If my daughter had given Marilee to some nice folks, Marilee might have been better off. I did the best I could for her, but I had all I could do to keep food on the table for us. If I had it to do over again, I’d have tried to get my daughter to let Marilee be adopted, and she wouldn’t have ended up hanging herself, God rest her sweet soul.”

My heart did a little slide. Cora Mathers had lost more than any woman should have to endure.

“So Marilee’s baby was adopted?”

“Bought is more like it. The Fraziers came up with the idea of their daughter taking the baby, and Harrison talked Marilee into it. His sister had been married a good while and I guess she couldn’t have one of her own. You know how that goes. Them that wants them can’t get pregnant, and them that can’t handle them get pregnant if a man so much as looks at them. Anyway, Harrison told Marilee if she let his sister have the baby, they would always know she was being taken care of, and that after they married, they could get her back.”

“He said they’d get married?”

“That’s what he claimed. He said they’d finish school and then they’d get married. His family probably told him to say that, and Marilee believed him. She was just fifteen years old, she didn’t know how men lie to you.”

“You don’t think he ever planned to marry her?”

“Not for a minute. They had Marilee sign a bunch of papers. She had to promise to stay away from the baby and never let on she was hers. They paid her to do that. If you’re rich enough, you can pay somebody to do just about anything.”

I poured her a cup of tea and waited while she took a shaky sip. I said, “The photograph on the refrigerator—”

“That’s Lily. That’s what they named her. She’s nineteen now, and she got in touch with one of them places that find your real mother for you. I don’t know for sure how it works, but they called Marilee and then she and Lily talked on the phone. Marilee thought since Lily had found her, it wasn’t like she was breaking her promise to the Fraziers. They’ve been writing, and Lily sent her that picture. She looks exactly like Marilee. Marilee was so excited about meeting Lily. Now she never will.”

“How old was Lily when Harrison’s sister took her?”

“Oh, just hours. When the baby came, the Fraziers were right there with a lawyer and she signed papers and they took her.”

“And Marilee thought one day she would get her back?”

“That’s what Harrison told her. And he said it didn’t make any difference what his folks said, he wasn’t going to let Marilee go.”

“But he did.”

“Well, he did and he didn’t. He didn’t marry her, if that’s what you mean, but he never let her alone, neither. He was a fool for her, was what he was. Went crazy mean if she got mixed up with any other man. He told her one time he would kill her if he ever caught her with another man, and that’s what he’s done. Killed her.”

“Wasn’t he married?”

“Married and with kids. Marilee was just the woman he had on the side. He thought it was enough that he paid her. How do you think that made her feel? I tell you, all the money in the world won’t make up for a man treating you like a whore. He ruined her life, and then he killed her.”

“Did Harrison Frazier know that Marilee and Lily had found each other?”

“Oh my, no. She had promised, you know, and they’d paid her all that money. No, she couldn’t let Harrison know.”

Cora looked up at me and gave me a wry smile. “If I keep talking, this won’t be true, you know? It’ll all turn out to be just a bad dream.”

“I know. Talking helps to let bad news settle in slowly instead of all at once.”

“Well, I’ll just tell you this, and you can pass it on to whoever it is that’s looking into this. Harrison Frazier was the one who killed Marilee. Now I think I’d like you to leave me alone.”

I understood. I had been like that, too, wanting to burrow into a hole and suffer by myself. I thought briefly about alerting somebody, but then decided to honor Cora’s request to be left alone.

“Do you mind if I come by tomorrow?”

“That would be nice of you, Dixie. If it’s not too much trouble, I’d like it if you’d stop by.”

“Just one more thing, Cora. When the investigators are finished at Marilee’s house, it will have to be cleaned. I need your permission to call the special cleaning people.” I couldn’t think of any other way to describe the professionals who clean and sterilize a house where blood and body fluids have been spilled.

She flinched a bit and then rallied. “You do whatever you need to do, hon.”

I made fresh tea for Cora and left her sitting at the table warming her hands on a steaming cup.

Before I drove away, I called Guidry on my cell phone. He answered on the second ring with a clipped “Guidry here.”

“Marilee had a baby when she was fifteen. Harrison Frazier was the father. His older sister adopted the baby, and his family paid Marilee to stay away and keep it a secret. But Frazier kept seeing her on the sly, and he told her he would kill her if she ever had another man. Her grandmother thinks he murdered her.”

For a moment, the line was silent, and then he took a deep breath. “Does the grandmother have any ideas about who killed Frazier?”

“No, but there’s something else. The daughter is nineteen now, and she found Marilee. They’ve been corresponding and they were going to meet.”

Okay, now I’d told him everything I knew. Well, almost everything.