Curiosity Killed The Cat Sitter

Six

Before I left, I ducked into the ladies’ room, where two very large black women were at the sinks. One of them I recognized as Tanisha, a cook in the diner, but I didn’t know the other one. I whipped into a stall, and they went dead silent, the way women in a rest room do when they’ve been interrupted mid-conversation. When I flushed, the sound seemed to release them.

“So I says to him, I says, ‘You can kiss my big fat black ass.’”

“Uh-huh, that’s good.”

“I told him, ‘You can start in the middle and kiss your way thirty-six inches to the right, and then you can go back to the middle and kiss your way thirty-six inches to the left. You can just kiss my big fat ass.’”

I went out to wash my hands, and they went silent again. I kept my gaze directed toward my hands, but I could feel them watching me. I pulled a paper towel from the holder and turned around and leaned my butt on the counter.

I said, “I absolutely cannot leave here without knowing what happened next. What’d he say?”

They both laughed. Tanisha said, “Girl, he didn’t say nothing. He just stood there with his mouth hanging open, and I walked. I don’t take that shit from nobody.”

I grinned and tossed my wadded-up paper towel in the bin. “I wish I could have seen that.”

I left them giggling and punched the door open with my knuckles—I’m squeamish about putting the flat of my hand on a bathroom door because half the women who go in there don’t wash their hands—and headed for the parking lot.

The temperature had climbed and the Bronco was like a pizza oven. I started the car and let the AC run while I pulled out my cell phone and client book and flipped to Marilee’s page. I read Shuga Reasnor’s number while I dialed it.

The voice that answered had the husky, half-choked sound of somebody blowing out cigarette smoke and talking at the same time. “Hello, this is Shuga,” she said.

I had been pronouncing the name “Shooga,” but when she said it I realized the name was “Sugar,” with an exaggerated southern accent. Probably a lot of people would think that was cute.

“This is Dixie Hemingway, Miss Reasnor. I take care of Marilee Doerring’s cat, and she gave me your number to call in case of an emergency. Has Detective Guidry been in touch with you yet?”

“Noooo.” She drew out the word while she registered all the implications of what I’d said.

Damn. I should have checked with Guidry before I phoned. Now I’d given her a heads-up that a detective would be calling her.

“The reason I’m calling is that Marilee’s out of town, and I’ve taken Ghost to a day-care center. I expect he’ll be there for a day or two, and I just wanted to make sure that was okay with you.”

“You’ve left who?”

“Ghost. Her cat.”

“Hell, I don’t care. I don’t know why she left my number.”

“You don’t happen to know where she went, do you?”

She laughed uneasily. “I didn’t even know she was gone. What did you say your name was?”

“Dixie Hemingway. If you should hear from Marilee, I’d appreciate it if you would have her call me.” Before she could ask any more questions, I gave her my number and thanked her, then punched the disconnect button.

“That was really dumb,” I muttered to myself. “Really, really dumb.”

Before I backed the Bronco out, I slid Ghost’s velvet collar off my wrist and put it in my backpack. It was 11:55. I should have been at Kristin Lord’s house an hour ago. A murder really screws up a work schedule.

When I got to the traffic light at Beach Road, I automatically turned my head to look at the fire station. I’ve done that all my life. Once when I was about seven years old, my father was in the driveway with some other fire-fighters polishing the fire truck when my mother and Michael and I drove by. My mother honked at him, and he gave us a big grin and waved. It’s one of my favorite memories.

Kristin and Jim Lord were the kind of people who prove the theory of karma and reincarnation—they had less sense than a pair of sand fleas but were filthy rich, so they must have been really, really good in a former life. I’d known them since high school, but we’d never been friends. They’d run with the kids who knew the difference between Polo and Izod—and cared—and I’d run with the kids whose idea of making a fashion statement was not wearing yesterday’s T. Kristin had a huge crush on my brother for a while, and I don’t think she ever forgave him for rejecting her.

Kristin met me at the door of their multimillion-dollar mansion with a smile frosty at the corners. “You’re a little late, aren’t you?”

Kristin was slim, with glossy brown hair cut to curve around her square jaw, and heavy dark eyebrows that made straight slashes above beautiful hazel eyes. Her nose was out of a plastic surgeon’s catalog, but her lips were naturally full and wide. Her upper lip was thicker in the middle, giving her a slightly rabbity look. If she were so inclined, she probably gave her husband great blow jobs—further proof of a previous life of good deeds, at least for him. She was wearing a pair of wrinkled white cotton capris and a free-hanging pink-and-white-striped shirt that covered her newly bulging tummy.

“I got tied up,” I said. “Sorry.”

She made a little snuffing sound with her perfect nose to show her displeasure, and spun around to walk ahead of me, her raffia flip-flops making sucking noises on the cool Italian tile.

Kristin was four months pregnant and she had developed an acute case of Fear-Of-Cat-Poop. Specifically, she was afraid of catching toxoplasmosis from her cat’s litter box. Cats can only get toxoplasmosis from eating a diseased rodent, and a pregnant woman can only get it if she touches the diseased cat’s feces and then eats something without first washing her hands. Kristin’s cat had probably never even seen a rodent, much less eaten one, and what woman doesn’t wash her hands after changing a litter box? But it was Kristin’s fear and her cat and her money, so I allowed her to pay me twenty dollars a day to groom her cat and change its litter box.

The cat was an American Shorthair named Fred. Shorthairs are low-maintenance cats, so it was almost a crime to take money for what little I did. Fred’s litter box was in a guest bathroom, and I kept the door closed because Kristin was so spooked about it. A litter box shouldn’t have more than a quarter inch of sand in it, and flushing it away took a nanosecond. I spritzed it inside and out with my all-purpose water and Clorox mix, rinsed the hell out of it with hot water, dried it with paper towels, and spread another quarter inch of sand on the bottom. I replaced the bag of litter under the counter, and washed my hands and dried them. The whole procedure had taken two minutes, tops.

When I went out to the lanai for Fred’s grooming, he and Kristin were both pretending not to be excited that I was there. Fred was doing a jug imitation, sitting tall with his long tail curled around his toes the way some executives curl a long line back under their signatures. Kristin was sitting in a cushioned redwood chair, eager to gossip. Dishing dirt was Kristin’s favorite pastime. She had done it when we were in high school, and she was still doing it. She had never been fastidious about facts, and if somebody’s reputation was hurt because she’d passed on malicious gossip, it never seemed to bother her.

Kristin said, “It was on the news this morning about that dead man in Marilee Doerring’s house. They said you found him, but they weren’t giving his name until his next of kin is notified. Who was he?”

My heart did a somersault at hearing that anything about me was on the news, but I kept my face still and lifted Fred to the table.

“They gave my name?”

“They just said a pet-sitter, but I knew it was you.”

As if he sensed that a dark cloud had lowered around me, Fred looked over his shoulder with sad eyes.

Fred was large and muscular, brown, with a white muzzle and throat and white paws. Like all American Shorthairs, he was sweet and affectionate. When I ran my hands lightly over his body, telling him by touch where I was getting ready to brush, he arched his back and began to purr. I dipped a hand into my grooming kit for my small slicker brush and pulled it through the hair on the back of Fred’s neck, careful to keep the brush flat so the bristles wouldn’t dig into his skin.

“I don’t know who the man is,” I said. “Like they said, they have to notify his family before they announce his name.”

Fred tilted his head back so I could get under his chin, and I made short strokes on his snowy throat and chest. He stretched his head up higher. If he could have spoken, he would have said, “Yes! Yes! Now a little to the right! Oooh, that’s good!” Since he couldn’t talk, he purred louder.

Kristin said, “The Sheriff’s Department won’t say how he was killed until they do an autopsy. Isn’t that odd?”

I shrugged. “They always do an autopsy whenever a person dies in mysterious circumstances.”

Kristin did a disappointed pout with her bunny mouth. “I know Marilee Doerring from the yacht club. People don’t like her much. Well, men like her, but women don’t.”

I put a protective finger over Fred’s sensitive spine and combed in short parallel strokes on each side. Fred gave a warning flick of his tail, and I went back to his neck and throat, making sure I was keeping the teeth of the brush comfortably pointed straight at his skin and not tilted to the side.

“I think it’s because Marilee’s so flashy,” said Kristin. “Lately she’s been wearing an enormous square-cut diamond that’s soooo ostentatious. The thing just screams zircon!”

My experience with diamonds being limited to the small kind that nobody would mistake for a zircon, I continued combing Fred and stayed quiet.

Kristin gave a little self-deprecating laugh. “God, I sound catty, don’t I?”

I don’t know why people say they’re being “catty” when they make unkind remarks about other people. Cats are never like that.

Kristin shifted in her chair and said, “It’s not because she’s pretty that I don’t like her. I’m not afraid of pretty women. And it’s certainly not because she has money! It’s that you always get the feeling Marilee’s trolling for men. If a man’s anywhere in her vicinity, you can almost hear the music from Jaws playing.”

I thought of Olga Winnick and said, “Predatory music?”

“Exactly! Marilee is a predatory woman.”

I was imagining Kristin and Olga Winnick together talking about how predatory Marilee was, when Kristin’s eyes settled on my wedding band.

“You’re a widow. Why do you still wear a wedding ring?”

The question caught me off guard, causing my hand to jerk so the bristles of my slicker brush bit into Fred’s skin. He growled a warning and waved his tail, and I quickly went back to his throat to placate him. I’ve never thought of myself as a widow. Widows are old women with blue hair and a lifetime of memories. I don’t belong in that group, I’m just a formerly loved.

Kristin looked up at me as if she’d suddenly had an attack of sensitivity. “I hope you don’t mind my asking.”

I didn’t answer, but just to scare her, I turned Fred so that his anus faced her while I brushed the hair around it. She watched with pale dread, so hyperalert for bits of cat poop that she forgot her question. Fred whipped his tail back and forth to let me know his patience was wearing thin. To reward him for not jumping down, I combed his neck and throat again.

He pushed his head up against my hand and purred his thanks. I picked him up and set him on the floor, packed my slicker brush away, spritzed the table with my handy-dandy water–Clorox mix, and wiped it dry with paper towels.

“I’ll let myself out,” I said. I had been there only about five minutes.

Kristin looked disappointed. She would have paid me another twenty dollars just to stick around and dish dirt about Marilee. Fred stuck his left back leg into the air and curved around to enthusiastically lick the inside of it. He didn’t even say goodbye.