The Cat Sitter and the Canary

12

I always tell people I’ve never been across the Florida state line, but it’s a lie.

My mother took us on a surprise out-of-state trip when I was six years old and Michael was only eight. It was Christmas season, our father was working the overnight shift at the firehouse, and she had woken us up just as the sun was rising. Her face was flushed and there was a giggling exuberance about her that meant she’d already been drinking, either that or she’d been up all night and had never stopped. While she stuffed some of our clothes into a suitcase, she told us we were going on a “secret adventure,” which we both instinctively knew meant our dad didn’t know a thing about it.

The real adventure began about thirteen hours later, when she sobered up and found herself stranded on a train platform in a little town in Georgia, with two hungry, exhausted kids in tow and not a single quarter to call home. I remember rummaging through her purse because she couldn’t find her sunglasses, and I remember being afraid to ask why she needed them since the sun had long gone down. I finally found them in one of the interior pockets, hiding under a collection of little glass bottles and a crumpled receipt from Maas Brothers department store.

I can still see them. They were the big round kind with dark lenses—the ones you see on trendy models in vintage magazines from the sixties—with a tortoiseshell frame and two parallel rows of sparkling rhinestones arching across the top. As I handed them up to her, I noticed her eyes were bloodshot and glassy.

It was at that point that Michael took control. He marched over to a Salvation Army Santa that was standing just outside the ticket office and, with his eight-year-old face set in solemn, grave lines, said, “My little sister and I need help. Our mother is sick and we have to take her home.”

I think right then, at that exact moment, Michael came to the realization that his childhood had ended, that when our father wasn’t around to make sure we were safe, he was in charge. It was also the moment I knew that I could always depend on him.

Today, there are a growing number of silver hairs sprinkled throughout his blond locks, and I’m sorry to report that I’m probably responsible for most if not all of them. He inherited our father’s quiet stoicism, but he also got a good dose of our mother’s nervous anxiety, so whenever there’s even the tiniest bit of trouble, he takes it hard. The entire time I was talking, he kept his face buried in his hands, propped up on the table with his elbows.

I recounted the whole sordid story, beginning with my arrival at Caroline’s house two days earlier, how Mr. Scotland had been on Caroline’s porch with his big suitcase, and how Charlie had raced through the house and scratched up the living room door trying to get to the front foyer. I told them how after I’d cleaned Gigi’s cage, we’d all gone out to the lanai and fallen asleep on one of the lounge chairs, and how the young man from next door had woken us up.

Paco’s disposition is calm and quiet, the opposite of Michael’s, so he’s better at keeping his cards close. Until then he’d sat quietly and listened, but now he interrupted me.

“He broke into the house?”

“No, no, no. Nothing like that. He works for the woman next door. She has a bird—a reticulated yellow something or other. I was supposed to meet with her after I stopped at Caroline’s but … that never happened.”

Paco said, “Wait a minute. Are we talking about who I think we’re talking about?”

Michael said, “Who?”

Paco’s eyes narrowed. “Elba Kramer?”

I nodded.

Michael said, “The Elba Kramer?”

“Yep. The very one. She lives next door.”

Paco said, “I thought so. She and her husband run a shop downtown—jewelry and perfume and stuff—and she always has her bird with her. She treats it like her own child.”

Michael frowned. “Since when are you hanging around in jewelry shops?”

Paco ignored him. “It seems like trouble follows that woman around like a shadow. Did you meet her yet?”

I shook my head solemnly. “No. I never got the chance.”

“Why?”

“Because when I opened Caroline’s front door, there was a woman lying on her back in the middle of the front hall.”

Paco frowned. “Huh?”

“Yeah. At first I thought it was a man. She had a suit and tie on, with a scarf over her face.”

“What was she doing there?”

“Nothing.” I paused for a moment. “She was dead.”

Paco’s fork fell to the table and Michael’s eyes widened with alarm.

I nodded solemnly. “I knew right away. And I could tell she’d been there for a while. She was stone cold.”

Michael said, “Wait. Are you sure?”

Paco glanced at Michael and then back at me.

I said, “Am I sure…?”

Michael shook his head. “Sorry. Stupid question.”

Paco laid his hand on Michael’s back and patted him softly. He said, “Okay, the important thing is Dixie’s fine, right?”

At that point, I could have told them how I went sneaking around outside Caroline’s house and nearly got blown away at close range by Deputy Morgan, but I was pretty sure that kind of detail might send Michael into a full-on freak-out. I said, “I’m fine. A little frazzled around the edges, but fine.”

Paco said, “Was she a friend of Caroline’s?”

“I don’t know. Caroline’s on a boat somewhere with her new boyfriend and she’s not answering her phone. But one thing I know for sure: she would have told me if anybody else was going to be in that house while she was away.”

“And when is she coming back?”

“She said she’d be gone about a week and that she’d let me know.”

Michael said, “So … you have no idea who this girl is?”

I sighed. “After the police got there, the detective took me back inside the house to see if I could identify her. I recognized her right away. She works at the snack bar down at the pavilion on Siesta Beach. Her name is Sara.”

Paco closed his eyes and shook his head slowly. “Yeah. I know her.”

Michael said, “Wait, the blond girl? The one with the pierced eyebrow?”

“That’s her. Sara Potts. Except she was wearing a wig. And she had a mustache and sideburns drawn on her face with a black makeup pencil.”

They both just stared at me, speechless. I could tell Michael was still searching my expression for something that might indicate I was making the whole thing up, but I just shook my head.

Paco said, “How was she killed?”

“I don’t know. I’m not sure anybody does, or if they do they didn’t tell me. They’re probably waiting for the coroner’s report, but … there was blood on the floor around her.”

Paco sat back in his chair and folded his arms over his chest. “Wow.”

“I know.”

Michael’s voice was soft. “She was such a sweet girl. I mean, we just talked to her like a month ago.” He turned to Paco. “Remember? We saw her on the beach at the sand-sculpture contest. She was about to start grad school at Florida State. She was all excited about it.”

I laid my head down on the table with a sigh.

Michael was right, she was a sweet girl, and always ready with a smile for everybody. I couldn’t even count the number of times she’d waited on me at the snack bar, always more cheerful than any of the other kids that worked there, offering free soda refills and piling the french fry baskets to overflowing. Such trivial things, but they said a lot about the kind of person she was.

I looked up at Paco, noting how quiet he’d gotten, and felt a lump form at the base of my throat. Paco is smart … like, scary smart. He can usually read me like a book, and I could tell he was beginning to suspect I was leaving something out. Meanwhile, Michael looked like he was launching into full denial mode. I knew he was already hoping we’d change the subject.

After a few moments, Paco said, “So, anything else? Do they know how she got in the house?”

“Not yet. It was locked when I got there, so unless she had a key, or somebody locked it after…”

Paco fixed me with his dark brown eyes. “I still don’t quite understand. Why do we have a sheriff’s deputy guarding the house?”

“Well … there is one more thing…”

Michael closed his eyes and tilted his head back. “Please make it stop.”

I said, “It’s not that big a deal. Well, okay, it’s pretty weird, but I don’t want you guys to get all upset about it.”

Michael’s eyes widened. “You mean, weirder than a dead woman in a wig and a man’s suit with a mustache and sideburns painted on her face?”

I gulped. “Maybe. I’m only telling you because you should probably know … just in case … but you can’t tell a soul. Detective McKenzie doesn’t want any of the details getting out before she’s had time to thoroughly investigate the whole thing.”

Michael groaned. “Then don’t tell us.”

Paco said, “What is it?”

I took a deep breath. “There was a card, like a calling card. It was pinned to her lapel. And the thing is … my name was on it.”

Paco frowned. “What do you mean?”

“It said, ‘See you in hell, Dixie.’”

I don’t know what I was expecting their reaction would be. At the very least, I thought Michael might jump up from the table or Paco would laugh, assuming I was playing some kind of sick practical joke on them, but they both just sat there in stunned silence. Finally, Michael reached over, picked up Paco’s fork, and let it fall to the table again with a clatter.

Paco said, “So, that explains our friend in the driveway.”

Just then, Ethan appeared on the balcony with Ella cradled in his arms, both of them sleepy-eyed and blinking in the sunlight. Ethan had a slightly puzzled look on his face, which made sense given he’d been sound asleep when I got home the night before and I hadn’t woken him up.

He said, “Umm, there’s a rabbit on the nightstand.”

I nodded. “Yeah.”

“I mean, like … a real, live rabbit.”

I motioned him to join us. “Yeah, I know. And there’s more. Come eat and I’ll explain everything.”

He hesitated, glancing first at Paco and then at Michael.

Michael closed his eyes. He was drawing slow circles on his temples with the tips of his index fingers.

He said, “If I were you, I’d go back to bed.”

* * *

As I drove away from the house, with the wild parakeets chirping and twittering in the treetops, I prepared myself for the worst. If history was any indication, I knew the moment I saw Deputy Morgan staked out at the top of the driveway, everything that had happened in the past twenty-four hours would suddenly become real and I’d dissolve into a panicked mess … but I was wrong.

Morgan’s car was parked on the side of the road, facing north and completely blocking the entrance. His deputy hat was pulled down low on his forehead, his eyes hidden behind silver-mirrored sunglasses. When he heard my approach, he gave a quick, somewhat apologetic wave and then backed out of the way. I saw him clear a collection of paper coffee cups off the front dash as I rolled by, and then when I turned toward the center of town, he pulled in behind and followed at a discreet distance.

To my utter surprise, I wasn’t a mess. In fact, I didn’t feel the slightest bit upset. More than anything, I was annoyed.

What a giant, colossal waste of department resources.

The fact that McKenzie had tagged me with a twenty-four-hour surveillance detail felt like a joke. Or, better yet, a slap in the face. Just because I was a material witness to a crime, she’d decided a uniformed doofus with a shiny brass badge on his chest was the answer to all my problems, as if I couldn’t possibly take care of myself. As if the existence of my name on that card meant I was in some kind of immediate mortal danger. As if there was some kind of homicidal lunatic with a grotesque sense of humor, roaming the streets and waiting to pounce on me.

I rolled my eyes and shook my head again, this time with an added sarcastic chuckle.

“As if…”