Curiosity Killed The Cat Sitter

Thirty-Three

The photographs seemed almost commonplace now, all of naked men made hopelessly vulnerable by lust and stupidity. Some of the faces looked faintly familiar, and I assumed they were in the public eye in one way or another. Each of them had been paying Marilee between five and ten thousand dollars a month for years. Even splitting the take with Shuga, she would have been raking in a considerable amount of money. With the quarter million she got every year from Harrison Frazier’s family, she surely had never worried about paying the rent.

The vulnerable fifteen-year-old girl who had been tricked into giving her baby to Harrison Frazier’s sister had grown up to be a woman who extorted money from a lot of men for the sheer pleasure of it. The money the Fraziers had given her had been more than enough for her and Cora to have a good life. It had been enough to live well in the present and also invest for the future. But it hadn’t been enough to fill the need Marilee had nurtured, the need to have control over men and to make them pay. And she had been aided and abetted by her friend Shuga, the poor girl who wouldn’t have had enough to eat if Marilee’s grandmother hadn’t fed her. I wondered if all the money they’d taken had ever made up for what they thought they’d missed out on.

Now I knew what Shuga had come to get, and why she had been so frightened. If Marilee had the only copy of the photographs, Shuga’s blackmail income was now up shit creek. From what Cora had said, Marilee had always been the cleverer of the two, the one who had led the way. It made sense that she would have controlled not only the money but the photographs. I wondered if Marilee and Shuga had had a dispute that made Marilee change her locks to keep Shuga out. If Marilee had decided to cut Shuga out of her share of the blackmail income, Shuga might have come for the photographs, gotten into a fight with Marilee, and killed her. But where did Harrison Frazier fit into that scenario? Had he simply stumbled into a situation by accident and been killed because he knew who killed Marilee?

I spilled out another photograph and my heart jumped crazily. I should have known he would be included, but I was still shocked. It was Carl Winnick, apparently photographed so recently that there were no payments listed yet.

There were still some unopened envelopes, but I had a question that interested me more than seeing the rest of them. Who had been taking the pictures? Who was the third party to this blackmail ring? I shuffled through another collection, this time searching for clues to the place where they’d been taken. In every photo, the camera had been positioned so nothing was visible inside the frame except the sheets on the mattress, the two women, and the victim. Such consistency suggested a tripod holding the camera, but surely none of these wealthy men would have cavorted in front of a camera he could see.

I left the photos on the bar and went down the hall to Marilee’s bedroom, flipping lights on as I went. It was past midnight now, and I should have been in bed two hours ago, but I was wide-awake and curious. When I flipped the switch in Marilee’s bedroom, the bedside lamp on the far side of the bed lighted up, and Ghost lifted his sleepy head from his spot in the middle of the bed and gave me an annoyed look.

The armoire faced the foot of the bed, and I supposed they could have left the doors ajar and positioned a camera on one of its shelves. I opened both doors and looked for a spot where a camera might have been placed, but the shelves were filled with a large-screen TV, a VCR, a DVD and a CD player, not to mention speakers, along with filed videos and CDs neatly organized according to musical category and artist. Somehow, the idea of Marilee disturbing the neat order of her entertainment center for a smut-capturing camera didn’t fit. And even if she’d been willing to lower her neatness standards to accommodate her lack of moral standards, it would have been too risky. Even with all their blood pooled in their penises, the men would have noticed the open doors to the armoire and gotten suspicious.

I looked toward the top of the armoire. It was a perfect place to hide a camera, using one of the remote controls in Marilee’s night table to turn it on. I dragged a high-backed Spanish Colonial armchair from the corner of the room over to the armoire and climbed on it. From that height, I could see a camera mounted behind a perfectly round lens-size hole drilled in the carved cornice. I felt a tug of reluctant admiration for the way Marilee had gone about the business of blackmail. She had been resourceful, efficient, and organized, all marks of the true professional.

Ghost suddenly sat upright with his ears and whiskers pointed toward the door. At the same moment, I smelled the reek of alcohol behind me and whirled to see Olga Winnick in the doorway, her eyes blood-red with fury and despair, her mouth a rectangular gash of malicious rage. She held a butcher knife in her raised hand, with an unmistakable intention to kill me with it.

Suddenly, it seemed inevitable that she was the one. I said, “I should have known it was you.”

She swallowed with a convulsive movement of her neck, which made me think of pythons swallowing mice. “I will do anything to protect my family. Anything!”

“Let me guess. You thought Marilee Doerring was after your husband, so you killed her.”

“Don’t be stupid! I would not dirty my hands on that woman.”

For a woman who must have consumed a lot of alcohol before she came, she spoke with amazing control and clarity. The only thing that betrayed how much she’d had to drink were her red eyes and the odor she radiated.

She took a step forward and Ghost sailed over my head to the top of the armoire. She flinched and looked up at him, interrupted for the moment. Ghost crouched at the edge of the armoire and peered down at her, his mouth making the peculiar little smile of a cat smelling something highly offensive, every muscle in his body quivering, his whiskers pointed forward and his ears on alert. With all the chemical odors in the house, the alcohol she radiated was too much for him to stand.

My mind was scrambling, screaming at my body to do something, but I was paralyzed. My gun and phone lay on the kitchen counter with the photographs, and she had me cornered. Marilee’s big bed blocked me on one side and the bedroom wall was at my right. The only possible weapon was the nearest lamp. The lamps were tall and made of what appeared to be heavy cast iron. If I could grab the closest one and unplug it before Olga Winnick stabbed me, I might be able to stun her with it and run.

As I edged a half step toward the table, she looked back at me.

In that split second, I understood why she was there. I said, “You’re protecting your family right now, aren’t you? You’re here to stop me from telling the truth about who killed Marilee Doerring and Harrison Frazier. It wasn’t you, it was your husband.”

Tears filled her eyes and spilled unheeded down her cheeks. “She lured him into her perversions! She was an evil, evil woman.”

I thought of the photographs on the kitchen counter. “She did lure him and trick him and use him. How did you find out?”

She wiped at her eyes with her free hand. “A wife always knows. He would leave our bed and come here, he was obsessed. Night after night, I saw him go through her lanai to her. She was here waiting for him, here with all her filthy practices.”

Her voice broke and she shut her eyes for a second to compose herself. I took the opportunity to scoot a few steps closer to the lamp. If I could keep her talking, I had a chance.

She opened her eyes and looked at me with renewed determination.

I said, “He came here Thursday night, didn’t he? And found Harrison Frazier with Marilee. That must have been a shock to him.”

She shook her head, quick to support her husband’s intelligence. “He already knew. He saw him when he arrived. He kept watching the house, pacing back and forth, acting as if I wasn’t even there, didn’t see, didn’t understand. Men can be so blind where predatory women are concerned.”

I nodded sympathetically, thought about saying “Ain’t it the truth,” then decided against it. Instead, I said, “Did you know when he came here Thursday night?”

“Oh yes, I knew. Carl didn’t know I was awake, but I knew when he got out of bed and left the house. I stood in my kitchen window and watched him go to her lanai just as he always did, saw him disappear into her house just as I’d watched him many times before. He carried a weapon in his hand, a piece of pipe he must have had in the garage. My heart was breaking, but I could not stop him, you see, because it would have led to a scene that might have wakened Phillip. I did not want him to know what his father was doing. A boy should look up to his father as a role model.”

“So you stood at the window and waited and watched.”

Her breath shuddered, sending out more intense waves of alcohol. “Yes.”

“And what did you see, Mrs. Winnick?”

“I saw my husband come out of this house with something in his arms. He carried it across the backyard and walked along the fence beside the woods, and then he disappeared from my view. I didn’t know what it was that he carried. Then he came back here to the house again. In a little while, he went out to the driveway and got into that man’s car and drove away.”

I pushed my foot a few inches to the left and said, “What time was this?”

Wearily, she said, “It was exactly five minutes past one. I know because I looked at the clock on the microwave after he left.”

I pulled my right foot alongside the left one, trying to make it look as if I were just adjusting my posture, and said, “You must have been extremely concerned. I mean, it didn’t look good for your family, did it?”

“I had to do something. A woman like you can’t understand what it is to be a good wife and mother. You can’t know how a real woman will go to any length to save her family.”

For a minute there, I’d been feeling sorry for her, but that brought me back to reality. “What did you do, Mrs. Winnick? How did you save your family?”

“I came over here and saw what had happened. Saw the mess here. The shower was still running, that naked man hanging out of the tub and blood on the floor. That piece of pipe next to him. It was awful. I turned off the shower and put the man on the floor while I cleaned everything. I went out the side door and put the pipe in the garbage can at the street. Then I went back home.”

Above her head, Ghost had gone into a stalking crouch on the armoire, neck stretched forward and down, legs bent and quivering, tail swishing side to side. I had seen cats go into that pose just before sinking their fangs into a snake’s body and flinging it side to side until it died. Olga Winnick and her alcohol fumes had become an enemy, prey to be pounced upon and crushed.

The shrill beep-beep-beep of my cell phone sounded from the kitchen, and all three of us went rigid. Distracted, Ghost’s head twisted nervously toward the sound.

I said, “I really should answer that.”

She grimaced. “You underestimate my intelligence, Miss Hemingway.”

“Not true, Mrs. Winnick. I think you’ve been brilliant. I’m really impressed. But you left out the part about dressing the man and taping his head to the cat’s water bowl.”

She sighed again and gave me an irritated glare. “That wasn’t until later. Carl was home when I got back. He had driven the man’s car to the Landings and parked it there, then he took a taxi to the Sea Breeze and walked home. He was shaken and humble. We had a long talk. He begged me for forgiveness and I forgave him for what he’d done. It was one of the best talks we’ve ever had.”

“How nice for you.”

“Yes. Then he told me he thought there were photographs the police might find, and I came back to look for them. While I was looking, the man made a sound. He wasn’t dead after all, you see. I knew he could identify Carl, so I dressed him and dragged him into the kitchen and taped his head to the water bowl. I would have put him in the tub, but he was too heavy and I didn’t want to ask Carl to help. He was far too upset by then to be of much use anyway.”

“It was a little after four o’clock when you left here, wasn’t it?”

Her eyes narrowed into suspicious slits. “How did you know that?”

“Because Phillip saw you. I guess he’s more like you than I realized, because he made up a big lie to save you.”

“That’s not true! Phillip was asleep.”

“Phillip had been playing piano at the Crab House, Mrs. Winnick. He had just climbed back in his window when he saw you leave Marilee’s lanai.”

A tremor played over her face, as if her nerve endings were readjusting themselves, and the hand with the knife raised an inch.

Okay, if I was dead anyway, I might as well say what would hurt her the most.

“Phillip knew what you did. He loved you so much that he didn’t tell, but he knew. He killed himself keeping your terrible secret.”

“I don’t want to hear any more!”

She charged toward me with the knife held high, enveloped in a miasma of alcohol and revenge. I lunged for the lamp and jerked it forward, pulling the cord out of the wall and plunging the room into darkness. But the thing was incredibly heavy and too thick to wrap my hand around. In the darkness, I could see her silhouette flying toward me.

I did the only thing that seemed halfway logical. I dived for her legs, hoping to knock her down before her knife plunged into my back.

As I hit her, she screamed and flailed the air. I scrabbled behind her and straightened up, ready to grab her knife hand. Something soft brushed across my face, and she screamed again. I realized it was a scream of pain and that it was Ghost’s tail I had felt. Ghost was on her head, raking his claws across her face and shoulders.

I sprinted to the kitchen and grabbed my gun. I was halfway down the hall with it when I doubled back to get my cell phone. As I left the kitchen, I heard the thud of footsteps running down the hall toward the bedroom. I knew who it was. I also knew Ghost would be killed if I didn’t get to him in time.

With my gun held in both hands, I rounded the bedroom door. The overhead light was on, and Olga was on her knees, thrashing her head and howling in agony. Ghost was still on her head with his claws embedded in her skull. Her face was shredded, with so much blood spilling from it that her features had disappeared. Carl Winnick stood beside her with a gun trained on Ghost, probably the same gun Phillip had used to shoot himself.

“Be still!” he shouted to Olga. “Stop moving!”

I yelled, “Drop the gun, Winnick!”

He turned his head toward me, wide-eyed and ashen, then swung the gun in my direction.

A shot rang out and his throat burst in a flare of red blood. Ghost screamed and jumped from Olga’s head and streaked from the room. Winnick crumpled to the floor beside Olga, and a geyser of blood shot toward the ceiling. Covered with her own blood and his, Olga leaned over him and shrieked a sound so full of grief and rage that it will live in my head forever.

Suddenly, the room was filled with people running past me. In a daze, I turned toward the doorway where Guidry was holstering his Sig Sauer.

“Your brother called us,” he said. “When you didn’t answer your cell, he knew you were in trouble.”

His gray eyes were calm, watching me closely.

“I had it under control,” I said, but my voice warbled.

“You had it under superb control, Dixie.”

The next thing I knew, my face was buried in his chest, and his arms were holding me close. Except for Michael and Paco, I hadn’t felt a man’s arms around me since Todd died. I hadn’t thought I wanted a man’s arms around me, but this felt very familiar and comforting.