Curiosity Killed the Cat Sitter

Twenty-One

I said, “If Frazier was insanely jealous like Cora says he was, maybe he killed Marilee when he caught her with another man.”

“And what was the other man doing while Frazier was killing Marilee, standing by watching?”

“Frazier could have knocked him out first.”

“And who took Marilee’s body to the woods? Do you think Frazier did that while the second guy was unconscious and then went back to get himself killed? Damned cooperative of him if he did.”

“Well, I don’t know, Guidry. I’m just passing on what Cora told me, so don’t give me attitude.”

“I appreciate the information, Dixie. Like I said, you get around.”

“Yeah. Now, when can I get a haz-mat crew in Marilee’s house so I can bring Ghost home?”

“Who?”

“Marilee Doerring’s cat. We talked about him, remember?”

“Dixie, the Doerring woman is dead. You can’t bring a cat back to her house.”

“What’s the difference in her being dead and off on a trip?”

“A pulse, for starters.”

“No, I mean what’s the difference to a cat? The contract I had with Marilee Doerring gives me temporary custody of her cat, with the obligation to do whatever is necessary for his welfare in an emergency. This is an emergency. There’s no reason why he can’t stay in familiar surroundings while I look for a new home for him. He’d be a lot happier.”

“That’s what I live for, Dixie, to make a cat happy.”

I batted away a floating cat hair and said, “Okay, that was snide, because I really do live to make a cat happy.”

“Crime-scene tape should come down some time tomorrow. It’s all yours after that.”

“Just until I can find a home for Ghost. Would you and your wife like a nice cat? Absyssinians are usually good with kids. If you have some, that is.”

There was another pause while my face got hot. I couldn’t believe I’d just said what I’d said. He was going to think I was trying to find out if he was single, which was ridiculous. When he spoke, I could hear the grin in his voice. “I don’t happen to have any kids, Dixie, never have. Don’t have a wife, either, although I did once.”

My lips were tingling like I’d had a shot of niacin. It was really stupid. I didn’t care whether he was married or not. I said, “A cat would be good company for you, Guidry. Cats don’t have to be taken for walks, and they don’t bark and disturb the neighbors. They’re really ideal pets. Research shows that people who have pets are healthier than people who don’t. Did you know that?”

This time, he outright laughed. “I’ll think about it, Dixie, but don’t get your hopes up.”

He clicked off and left me holding an empty phone.

I muttered, “Fuck you very much, Lieutenant,” and started the Bronco.

Talking about Ghost had helped me get my priorities straight. I had to find a new home for Ghost, and I had to do it quickly. He was not only cramped in his private room at Marge’s, but it was costing me forty dollars a day to leave him there.

I didn’t want to leave him with just anybody, either. Pets are like surrogate children. Now that I knew how Marilee had been denied her own daughter, I understood a little better why she had lavished so much love and attention on Ghost. Unable to choose the most nutritious food for her child, she chose it for her cat. Forbidden to buy pretty clothes and toys and baubles for her daughter, she bought them for her cat. Even Ghost’s collar with its silver hearts and keys was like a charm bracelet she might have given her daughter. I felt a new affinity for Marilee, a kind of mother-to-mother rapport. Marilee had entrusted me with her substitute child, and I wanted to carry out her wishes.

I was already late making my afternoon pet visits, but I turned the Bronco toward Roberts Point Road and Shuga Reasnor’s house. I pulled up in front of Shuga’s glass doors and slammed out of the car into the suspended heat peculiar to late afternoon on Siesta Key.

Shuga was home. I could see her through the glass doors. She was sitting on one of her rose linen sofas with a phone stuck to her ear and one long bronzed leg swinging like a nervous pendulum. She saw me when I got to the top step, and even that far away I could see her eyes widen. She got up and started toward the door, still talking on the phone. I put my fists on my hips and stood without ringing the bell while she ended her conversation and flipped the phone shut.

She pulled the door open and stood looking at me. At first, I thought she had two black eyes, but it was smeared mascara. She said, “I know she’s dead. The detective called me.”

“Can I come in?”

“What do you want?”

“You’re the person Marilee authorized to make decisions about her cat.”

“Oh, for God’s sake!”

Rolling her eyes, Shuga stepped out of the way and pulled the door shut behind me. We walked silently to the living room and sat down across from each other.

“I just have a few minutes,” she said. “I have to take care of things a lot more important than a damned cat.”

“Things like calling Marilee’s daughter and telling her that her mother’s dead?”

Her leg stopped swinging, and she gave me a level look.

“Yeah, things like that.”

“That’s who you called, isn’t it? That’s where you thought Marilee was going when she left here.”

“Okay. Is that a crime?”

“Why didn’t you tell Lieutenant Guidry that you’d talked to her daughter? Why didn’t you tell him you knew Harrison Frazier?”

Her head snapped up then, and she jumped to her feet. “Get the hell out of my house, lady. My best friend just died, and I don’t have time for this shit.”

“Your best friend didn’t die, she was murdered. Did you kill Marilee, Shuga? Were you involved with Frazier and got jealous because he had the hots for Marilee?”

She barked a loud laugh, then sat down and took a cigarette from the crystal holder on the coffee table. She stuck it in her mouth and talked around it while she lit it from the silver lighter on the table. “That’s rich. Me involved with Harrison Frazier? I don’t think so.”

She sucked smoke deep into her chest and slumped back on the couch, looking at me the way a cobra looks at the man playing the flute, wondering whether to be nice or lunge for my throat.

I said, “Let me make it easier for you. I know that Harrison Frazier was the father of Marilee’s daughter, and I know he’s been seeing her for years. Did he come here to Siesta Key to see her?”

Through a fog of exhaled smoke, she said, “Oh, God no. Too close to Orlando. No, they met in other places. Every month or so, she would fly off and spend a few days with him. They always went to some out-of-the-way place where nobody would recognize them. Harrison would rent a cabin in some godforsaken spot in Louisiana or get a room in a mom-and-pop motel in Bumfuck, Nebraska, places like that. He could have taken her to the penthouse suite at the finest hotel in the world, but he took Marilee to dumb places like that. She was so crazy about him, she thought she had a good time. I think they spent all their time fucking, so I guess maybe she did.”

“If they always met someplace else, what was he doing here when he was killed?”

“I don’t know. That’s why I got scared that something had happened to Marilee when you found him in her house.”

“Marilee’s grandmother thinks Harrison killed Marilee. Cora says he was crazy jealous and that he threatened to kill her if she got involved with another man.”

“He was jealous. Marilee thought jealous meant he loved her, the dumb cluck. But he couldn’t have killed her, he was dead. Somebody killed both of them.”

“You said Dr. Coffey wouldn’t kill her himself but that he might hire somebody to do it. Who else had reason to kill Marilee?”

“I don’t know anybody who would kill her. I’m telling you the truth.”

I wasn’t sure I believed her, but I let it go. “How did Marilee get involved with somebody like Harrison Frazier, anyway?”

“Cora was a cook at the grade-school cafeteria in Orlando. She barely made enough to scrape by, so she was always looking for ways to make money. The summer Marilee and I were fourteen, Cora got a job cooking at a ritzy camp for rich Baptist families outside Orlando. It was more of a resort than a camp, but it was supposed to be a way for families to have a clean, wholesome vacation with their kids and still give them a chance to swim and hike and hang out like normal kids. They let Cora bring Marilee and me with her, and we waited tables in the dining room. The rest of the time we were free to walk around the camp. If we were at the lake and one of the rich boys decided to come down and sit with us, we couldn’t do anything to stop them.”

“Harrison was one of those boys?”

“So far as Marilee was concerned, he was the only boy. She was nuts about him. If he’d asked her to drown herself in the lake, she would have jumped right in. She thought he was in love with her, the dumb dope, but I think he was more excited about the idea of easy sex. He was just fifteen, and she was probably his first. With all the things going on, it was easy for him to slip off to meet her, and neither of them knew jack shit about condoms or had any way to get any. By the time camp ended, Marilee was pregnant.”

She shook her head and stared at the floor for a moment, lost in the memory. “Harrison hadn’t even given her his address, but Cora tracked down his family and contacted them. She was smart enough to know they would pay for Marilee to go someplace and have the baby, but I don’t think she ever expected them to want it. Poor dumb Marilee thought Harrison would marry her.” She wiped away sudden moisture on her cheek and said, “What an idiot!”

“Did Harrison know how she felt?”

“Oh sure. Marilee never was good at keeping her feelings hidden, at least when it came to Harrison. She kept thinking one day he would leave his wife and marry her. Then their daughter turned eighteen, and Marilee got a letter from Harrison’s attorney saying there wouldn’t be any more money. It was like somebody had dropped a bomb on her.”

“How much had they been paying her?”

She gave me a tight grin, exhaling a cloud of smoke and curling the tip of her tongue to touch her upper lip like a smirking dragon. “A quarter mil a year.”

“Wow.”

“Yeah, wow is right. They got her used to that kind of lifestyle, and then they expected her to go back to living in a trailer park?”

I had to agree that the idea of Marilee Doerring in a double-wide was a stretch of the imagination.

“She called Harrison when she got that letter. He said she’d had a free ride for eighteen years and now it was time she grew up.”

I could almost hear Harrison Frazier’s bitter voice speaking the words, the voice of a man who had been caught fooling around with trailer-park trash when he was fifteen and had been paying the price ever since, literally and figuratively.

“I heard she got some money from Dr. Coffey, too.”

“Yeah, but every cent went to buying that place for Cora and setting up a fund that will take care of her if she ever needs a nursing home. Cora worked her ass off raising Marilee, and Marilee never forgot it.”

“So when Frazier cut her off—”

“She went totally bonkers.”

“Is that when she got in touch with her daughter?”

Shuga leaned forward and jabbed her cigarette out in the ashtray.

“She had a plan to get close to the girl and make the Fraziers squirm. Harrison has other kids, he wouldn’t want them to know he had raped Marilee when she was fifteen and got her pregnant.”

So much for the story Marilee had told Cora about her daughter finding her through an agency.

“She was going to say she was raped?”

Shuga nodded, her eyes bright with grim shrewdness. She wasn’t disappointed in Marilee the way I was. She understood how Marilee’s mind worked. She had pulled herself out of the same environment, told the same lies, created the same illusions, made the same place for herself in the world of money and possessions. She and Marilee had both played the hand nature had dealt them, the same way I had and everybody else does.

I stood up to go. “I have to find a home for Marilee’s cat, and I need your approval of whatever I do.”

“Hell, I don’t care what you do. If you’re thinking about sticking me with it, forget it.”

Shuga didn’t get up, and I didn’t say goodbye. I felt her eyes boring into my back as I went out the glass doors and got in the Bronco.

I drove down Roberts Point Road, pulled into a driveway, and dialed Guidry again. This time when he snapped “Guidry,” I said, “Dixie Hemingway” just as crisply.

“What have you got, Dixie?”

“Shuga Reasnor says Marilee and Harrison Frazier went away for a few days almost every month for eighteen years. Marilee was in love with him and thought he loved her. Then she got a letter from his attorney saying the quarter of a million she had been getting every year was over. The lady was pissed. She got in touch with her daughter, whose name is Lily. She was going to pressure Frazier to keep paying. Her plan was to claim he raped her when she was fifteen.”

“Interesting. Have the reporters got to you yet?”

“Reporters?”

“You know, the people who shove microphones in your face and yell questions at you.”

“You think they’ll do that?”

“Come on, they’ve already figured out that Marilee and Frazier had something going, and nothing sells like sex. Now that Marilee’s dead, they’ll really be licking their chops. You found both bodies and you take care of her cat. Hell, the Today show will probably want to interview you.”

My throat closed up and for a moment I couldn’t breathe.

“Dixie?”

I clicked off without saying goodbye. I knew Guidry was right. Just the fact that I was a pet-sitter who’d found the dead body of one of Florida’s first families was enough to make me fodder for reporters, and somebody was bound to do a story about Marilee and her orphaned cat. While they were setting up that story, they’d probably dig up footage of me going crazy wild three years ago while cameras rolled. And the worst of it was that I wasn’t sure I wouldn’t do it again. Put me under enough stress and I could blow like Vesuvius.