Curiosity Killed The Cat Sitter

Twenty-Nine

When I got home, I saw Michael’s car, but neither he nor Paco was outside, and their house was dark. It was close to nine o’clock and I’d been up seventeen hours. It seemed like a week since I’d eaten my turkey sandwich at the beach.

Forlornly, I went upstairs and cleaned up a bit, then went back down to go someplace for dinner. Paco called to me from the cypress deck, and I made a detour to where he was sitting in the waning light nursing a beer. He had removed his bushy beard and mop of unruly hair, and only a redness along his jawline betrayed the spirit gum that had held his beard firm. Nobody would dream this smooth-shaven guy with short-cropped hair and John Lennon eyeglasses was the same person as the scruffy beach bum he’d been at noon.

I went inside and got a beer and some cheese and crackers and joined him. We sat watching the light fading on the horizon while baby wavelets sucked at the shoreline.

Paco broke the silence. “Are you okay?”

I took a bite of cheese and chewed it morosely. I was way hungrier than cheese.

“I guess. I haven’t done anything too outrageous, so I guess I’m cool.”

“You want to talk about it?”

“Talk about what? The thing at the beach or the thing here?”

“The thing at the beach didn’t happen. The thing here did.”

“How did you catch him? Did you know he was coming here?”

“I noticed him watching you at the beach, and I thought I recognized him. After the thing that didn’t happen was over, I got the Harley and left. Later, when I was driving home, he pulled out of a parking lot in front of me. I followed him, and when he turned into our drive, I went on past and then doubled back and walked down the lane. He had pulled his car into the trees, but he was an easy mark. He’s not the brightest bulb in the string, believe me. He was looking around trying to figure out where to hide when I rushed him.”

“If you hadn’t come home when you did—”

“Dumb luck.”

“I don’t think so. I think somebody was watching over me.”

He gave me a searching look, knowing I meant Todd. “Okay.”

“What will happen to Bull Banks now?”

“Unless they can hold him on something more than beating up a gay kid, he’ll be out on bail in no time. With luck, he’ll get sent up as a three-time loser, but in the meantime he’ll be out, without a whole lot to lose. Which is why I want you to be extra careful, Dixie. Bull Banks wouldn’t be following you just because you’re a hot babe, somebody’s paying him.”

“You think I’m a hot babe?”

He gave me an exaggerated leer. “Hon, if I was straight, I’d jump your bones in a minute.”

“Do you think I should be scared?”

“You think I’m in danger of becoming straight?”

“No, I mean should I be scared of Bull Banks?”

“Damn right you should. Dixie, can you find someplace else to stay for a while? Until this whole thing is cleared up?”

I started to tell him about Marilee’s trust, then decided to wait and tell him and Michael at the same time.

“Paco, where is Michael?”

“In bed with a headache. Too much sun today. He’s sort of lobster-colored.”

“Tom Hale invited me to stay at his place for a while.”

“He’s the guy at the Sea Breeze? That’s a fairly secure place. Do it. I’m leaving in a little while and I don’t want you here alone. Especially with Michael out like a light.”

I got up and gathered our empty bottles. “I’ll get my things together.”

“Dixie? It’ll just be for a couple of days.”

I heard the concern in his voice and smiled back at him.

“I know. I’ll be fine.”

It took me less than fifteen minutes to throw some clothes in a duffel bag and copy Marilee’s Social Security number and birth date from her tax return. Then I drove straight to Marilee’s house. I used Marilee’s remote control to open the garage door, and pulled the Bronco inside. Funny how things have a way of working out the way you intended all along.

My heart was jumping like crazy against my ribs. If Guidry knew what I was doing, he would have my head on a platter. If Michael and Paco knew what I was doing, they would have my whole self on a platter. I intended to find Marilee’s new wall safe, and I intended to open it. Call it intuition, a hunch, or an informed guess, but I was convinced that whatever was in that safe was the reason Harrison Frazier and Marilee had been murdered.

A little voice sitting on my shoulder yelled that the killer had trashed Marilee’s bedroom, looking for whatever was in the safe, and might come back to try again. I could imagine newspaper headlines screaming “Curiosity Killed the Cat Sitter!” But I had been cowering from danger too long, protecting myself from ugly reality like I was a delicate flower that would wither at a breath of hot air. If I went on like that, I might never get back my courage or my ability to live in the real world. Besides, I kept seeing the words Marilee had written to her daughter, and imagining how awful it must have been to miss seeing her daughter grow up. This was something between Marilee and me—mothers banded together against everything and everybody who would take our children away from us.

My bet was that the code to open the safe would be one of the numbers I had copied, and that the safe would be hidden somewhere in Marilee’s closet. Women always keep valuables in places that feel intimate and inviolate to them, places like their underwear drawer or under their mattress. The killer had looked in those obvious places, but he—or she—hadn’t known about the wall safe. I, on the other hand, not only knew about the safe but was a pro. If a safe had been hidden behind a baseboard or in the floor or in a wall, I would find it.

Two hours later, hot and sweaty from crawling around Marilee’s closet, I gave up. I hadn’t found a thing. So much for being a pro.

I showered in Marilee’s guest bath and crawled into bed in her guest room, first sliding my.38 under the pillow. My stomach was gnawing on itself, my knees hurt from thumping around on the Mexican tile, and my head ached from hunger and anxiety. It was after midnight when I finally fell into exhausted sleep. It didn’t seem that I’d been asleep five minutes when a scream rang out in the darkness, and it took me a full minute to realize I had made it. I lay with my heart pounding, trying to get oriented.

Okay, I was at Marilee’s house, in Marilee’s bed, and something—a sound of somebody breaking in the house or a nightmare I couldn’t remember—had caused me to scream. The red numbers on the bedside clock read 3:34. I got my gun from under the pillow and slid out of bed. Holding the gun in the stiff-armed position and hugging the wall as much as possible, I moved to the open bedroom door. If somebody had broken in, my scream had already clued him that I was on the alert. It had also told him exactly where I was located. Arms stiffly extended, I flattened myself against the wall beside the door, ready to take out anybody who entered.

For a terrible second, I remembered an exercise at the Police Academy that tested our physical and emotional reflexes—not to mention our gag reflexes—by having us handle the aftermath of a mock terrorist attack. We had to pick up body parts and lead hysterical survivors away from the severed heads of their loved ones. Even though we all knew the body parts were plastic covered in fake blood, they felt and looked real enough to make us feel horrified sympathy for the actors who played their roles so convincingly. I had nightmares about that exercise for months, which was the whole point of it. Life is precious, and the obscenity of willful destruction of human bodies is an affront to the soul. We should never forget that, no matter who we are. People in law enforcement, with the legal obligation to blow people away if they’re a threat, need to have it indelibly seared on their brains.

I wasn’t a deputy anymore, so I didn’t have the sworn duty to kill a person threatening me. I could legally clip them in the leg or arm just to stop them. But my police training told me that doing that would almost surely get me killed. Criminals have a way of shooting back even when they’re wounded. They have a way of playing dead and then turning their guns on you when your guard is down. So would I shoot to kill, or would I shoot to maim?

The truth was that I didn’t know.

Minutes passed without a sound, and then the alarm sounded and made me jump a foot in the air. I flipped on the light and padded down the hall, holding the gun ready but now acutely conscious that I was naked except for underpants. Turning on lights as I went, I checked the entire house, feeling more foolish with every closet door I opened. All the doors and windows were secure, and I didn’t find any evidence of a break-in. I probably had just scared myself with a bad dream.

I finally went to the bathroom and got ready for the day. Now I would be late getting started because I’d let fear get in the way. I drove the short distance across Midnight Pass Road to Tom Hale’s condo, where Billy Elliot was pacing behind the door, waiting for me. We ran for about fifteen minutes and I took him back upstairs. He wanted more, but I didn’t have the stamina. All the cats on my schedule got the same short shrift. I was too wasted to give them what they deserved. I promised I would make it up to them in the afternoon, and as soon as time came for the diner to open, I sped there like a winter bird to a feeder.

The diner was moist with biscuit heat and coffee steam. I waved to Tanisha behind the cook’s window and took a stool at the bar. Judy raised her eyebrows at me from across the room and I nodded. She stopped at the cook’s window and put my order in before she came with a mug and the coffeepot.

She said, “Everything okay?”

I said it was, because that wasn’t the time or place to tell her everything that had happened since we last talked. Besides, if I told her about Phillip, I would probably break down and blubber all over the counter.

“The regular?”

“With two biscuits. And bacon.”

She said, “Baaay-connn,” as if I’d had some kind of epiphany, and went off to turn the order in.

I pulled my cell phone out of my backpack and looked at it. I knew I should use it to call Guidry and tell him where I was staying and why. Knew I should tell him about the safe, and about the trust. I put the cell phone back in my backpack and drank coffee instead. I couldn’t talk to Guidry until I’d had food.

When Judy plunked down my breakfast, I went about eating it with serious efficiency. Tanisha’s biscuits are like her piecrusts—light, flaky, and delicious. I ate one with my eggs and bacon and saved the other to eat with jelly, like a dessert. I was just about to eat the jelly one when a man slid onto the bar stool next to me and spread a Herald-Tribune on the space in front of him. His hands were pale and bloodless, with stiff black hairs between his knuckles. I saw Judy do a double take, and I looked sideways to see who it was. Dr. Gerald Coffey was so intent on an article he was reading that he didn’t notice who was beside him.

Judy did the same quick question-and-answer routine with him that she’d done with me, then brought him coffee and topped mine off. She gave me a hard look while she poured mine, like she would pound me into the floor if I caused him to leave again. She needn’t have worried. I wasn’t up for another confrontation with him. I just wanted to eat my biscuit and drink my third cup of coffee and go back to Marilee’s house.

I was eating the last crumb when Judy brought his scrambled whites and dry rye. I carefully kept my gaze straight ahead while she set it down, and shook my head when she asked if I wanted anything more.

For a minute or two, Coffey ate silently. Then he cleared his throat. “I think I owe you an apology, Miss Hemingway.”

I still didn’t look at him, and for a moment I couldn’t think of anything to say.

He said, “I don’t blame you for being angry. I was pretty unreasonable when you spoke to me before.”

I turned my head then. “Marilee’s dead, you know.”

His face reddened and for a second his eyes shone with unshed tears. “Look, could we go someplace more private and talk?”

I nodded and slid off the stool. He followed me, and we both left bills with the cashier and went out the front door. I pointed to the Bronco and said, “We can talk in my car.”

I beeped it unlocked and got in the driver’s seat. After a momentary hesitation, he opened the passenger door and got in. We both sat staring straight ahead at people going in and out of the diner. I was too wiped out to do anything except wait for whatever he planned to say.

“I loved Marilee,” he said softly. “You probably don’t believe that, but I did.”

“Why wouldn’t I believe it?”

“You’ve talked to Shuga Reasnor, haven’t you? I’m sure she’s told you that I hated Marilee. She’s told everybody that, but it isn’t true.”

“Dr. Coffey, I don’t really give a gnat’s ass whether you loved Marilee or not. What I’d like to know is how you knew I was talking about Marilee when I told you I was a pet-sitter. I didn’t mention her name, and nothing had been on the news yet about the murders. Not hers and not Frazier’s. So how did you know I was talking about Marilee’s cat?”

“You think I killed her, don’t you?”

“I think it’s a definite possibility.”

He gave a laugh that sounded more like a sob, and pounded his fist against his khaki knee several times to get himself under control.

“I think it was her skin that I loved most,” he said. “She has the most fantastic skin, so smooth, you just want to—”

He broke off and blushed, caught in the act of reliving how Marilee’s skin had felt under his hands. “I’m sure I seem pathetic to you,” he said. “Hell, I seem pathetic to myself. She was like a disease I’d caught, you know? I didn’t intend to start anything with her, it just happened.”

I said, “I’m not making any judgments.”

“Oh, of course you are. And I don’t blame you. I’ll tell you something I’ve never told another soul. I used to look in her windows at night to see if she was with somebody. I would actually hide in the bushes and spy on her.” He shook his head sadly, as if he were watching himself doing that shameful thing and couldn’t get over how dumb it was.

“Love makes people do crazy things,” I said.

“The craziest thing was that even when I saw other men go into her house, I’d still believe her when she told me they didn’t mean anything to her. That I was her only one.”

“Were you watching her when Harrison Frazier went in? Did you go in and bludgeon them both?”

He raised trembling hands in front of his face and looked at them. “Just telling about this makes me shake. But all this was two years ago. If I’d been going to kill her, I’d have done it then.”

“Maybe you waited so nobody would suspect you, and then hired somebody to do it for you.”

“No.”

“You still haven’t explained how you knew it was Marilee I was working for.”

“I recognized the cat’s collar on your wrist. I was with Marilee when she bought it. We got it in New Orleans from a silversmith. It’s one of a kind, I’d know it anywhere.”

“So why did you go apeshit just because you knew I was taking care of Marilee’s cat? You said, ‘I know nothing about this!’ What was it you knew nothing about?”

His Adam’s apple did a nervous bobble, and I got a whiff of sour breath. “Marilee and Shuga sometimes got involved in money-making schemes that turned out to be bogus. I guess I thought they were doing something shady again, and that you thought I was involved in it, too. Because I’d been involved with Marilee.”

I turned the key and started the Bronco. “Dr. Coffey, that’s about the lamest lie I’ve ever heard in my life. Now if you’ll excuse me, I have work to do.”

He gave me a long-searching look, then opened his door. “I didn’t kill her,” he said. “I really did love her.”

I didn’t answer, and he shut the door softly and walked across the parking lot. I watched carefully, but his car wasn’t black. It was a red Porsche that fairly screamed man with little dick. Dr. Coffey might have been telling the truth about being with Marilee when she bought Ghost’s collar. He might even have been telling the truth about recognizing it on my wrist. But he sure as hell wasn’t telling the truth about why he’d jumped up and threatened to call the police when I spoke to him. He’d had some other fear in mind.