The Cat Sitter and the Canary

18

Detective Carthage had asked me to meet him at the Siesta Pavilion, a little covered courtyard at the edge of the beach where there’s a collection of long picnic tables, a tiny gift shop that sells beach toys and cheap souvenirs, and a snack bar. I knew it was no coincidence—it was the very same snack bar where Sara Potts had worked until two days ago.

The place was filled to the brim with kids in board shorts and bikinis, all running around in the sun, wet, barefoot, and chattering like wild monkeys. If it hadn’t been that Carthage was dressed in his regulation faded jeans and white oxford button-down, I might not have been able to tell him apart from all the other fresh-faced teenagers.

I spotted him on the far side closest to the beach. As I wound my way through the tables with the smell of fast food wafting up around me, I realized with a groan I’d barely eaten a thing all day long. I wondered what Detective Carthage would think if I grabbed a hot dog and a couple baskets of curly fries to wolf down during our meeting, but I managed to control myself.

As I slid into the bench opposite him, he pulled out two file folders from his briefcase and laid them on the table in front of me.

He said, “Hi, Mrs. Hemingway.”

“You can call me Dixie.”

There was an awkward pause, and for some stupid reason I felt compelled to keep on talking. “Being called Mrs. Hemingway just makes me feel like an old lady…”

I added a lighthearted laugh, but the noise that came out of me sounded more like the bleat of a guinea pig (or an old lady). I cleared my throat and told myself to shut the hell up. Why in the world I was so nervous in the presence of a kid almost young enough to be my own son was beyond me.

Just then, two teenage girls, one blond and one brunette, walked by in bikini bottoms and matching tie-dyed T-shirts. One was carrying a plastic tray from the snack bar, piled high with fries and onion rings, and the other had a giant candy-striped beach umbrella balanced on one shoulder.

“Matt?”

Both girls stopped in their tracks.

Detective Carthage looked up and immediately blushed. “Oh, hey.”

The blond said, “OMG Matthew Carthage? What are you doing here? Didn’t you move to Harvard or something?”

He nodded. “Princeton, yeah, but I’m back now.”

She glanced briefly at me and then frowned. “You dropped out?”

“Uh. No, I graduated already.”

She flashed him a goofy grin and rolled her eyes. “Yeah, right. Wanna come hang out with us?”

Carthage turned to me and said, “Well, we’re kind of in the middle of something here…”

The brunette, the one with the umbrella, held up one hand and waved it at me, kind of like a beauty pageant princess on a parade float. “Hi. Sorry to interrupt. I’m Alison and this is Kerry. We went to high school with Matt, but for some reason they wouldn’t let us go to Harvard.”

The blond girl giggled. “Yeah, I can’t imagine why, but I guess we can’t all be geniuses. We’re juniors at Florida State.”

I said, “Oh, cool. Nice to meet you both.”

She said, “Yeah, must be nice to have Matt home for the summer, huh?”

I gulped. “Yeah, it sure is…”

She gave me a polite, pitying smile that teenagers reserve for their elders and then turned her attention back to Matthew.

“Well, we’ll be down by the volleyball courts if you change your mind and wanna come hang out with the dumb kids for a change.”

She wrinkled her nose and gave him a wink.

He stammered, “Okay, yeah, sure.”

As they made their way, the brunette twirled her umbrella at me. “Nice to meet you, Mrs. Carthage!”

I gave her a thumbs-up and said, “You bet!”

Inside my head, I’m not much older than seventeen, so it’s always a bit of a shock to the system whenever I’m reminded of the ugly truth. In fact, it was all I could do to keep from leaping off my seat and attacking the child with her own umbrella, but given the fact that a homicide detective was sitting right across the table from me, I figured I’d better keep my mouth shut and my butt in the seat.

Detective Carthage’s face had turned bright pink. “Sorry about that.”

I said, “OMG it’s totally fine.”

He blushed. “Maybe we better move somewhere more private…”

“Good idea,” I said. “You gather up your files and I’ll get my walker.”

We moved over to a bench just a little ways up the beach but more deserted, and as soon as we sat down, Carthage said, “Before I forget, we found Caroline Greaver.”

I gasped. “You did?”

“This morning. She’s in Key West. She’s apparently having a wonderful vacation. And you were right about her phone, it died and she didn’t have a charger with her.”

I must have looked like I’d just been hit over the head with a sledgehammer. “So … she’s okay?”

He nodded. “I explained everything that’s happened, so she was a little shocked, of course. She asked me to thank you for taking care of her pets, and that she’ll call as soon as she can get her phone charged up.”

A feeling of relief washed over my body. I realized this entire time I’d feared the worst … that somehow Caroline had gotten mixed up in all of this … that she’d found herself in the path of the killer.

I said, “Wait … if her phone is still dead, how in the world did you find her?”

“I’m a detective. That’s what I do.”

A small smile appeared on his lips as he laid a file on the bench between us. Clipped to the top was a photocopy of a driver’s license. I recognized the woman in the photo right away. It was Edith Reed.

Carthage said, “This is the woman who visited your house that morning with her husband, right?”

I sighed. “Yeah. That’s her.”

“We found her license in the bushes about twenty feet from the car. Her purse was nearby. Apparently, she decided to stop by your house again, alone, to see if anybody was home. She took a walk down your driveway, and that’s when someone stabbed her.” He glanced at me. “The same as Sara Potts.”

I closed my eyes. “Until now, I had no idea how Sara Potts had died.”

“If it’s any consolation. Neither of them would have seen it coming. They probably both died quickly.”

“And what about the man across the street?”

He frowned. “What man?”

“Rupert Wolff. The man I saw on Caroline’s front porch.”

He shook his head dismissively. “No. We looked into that. He’s just visiting, but there’s something else I need to tell you. It’s about Edith Reed.”

Almost immediately I pictured her, lying in my driveway surrounded with magnolia petals. I felt my jaw tighten. “It’s about the other note, isn’t it?”

“Yeah…”

“Did it have my name on it too?”

“No.”

His gaze was fixed on the group of teenagers playing volleyball down by the water’s edge. I couldn’t tell from this far away, but I figured his two high school friends were probably among them. Just before Carthage answered, I heard one of the kids call out, “Nice shot!”

Detective Carthage looked down at his hands.

“It said, ‘Third time’s a charm.’”