The Cat Sitter’s Pajamas

5

I said, “Okay, I’ll buy the reason you were in Cupcake’s house. Now tell me about the woman.”

She leaned closer to me. “I swear to you I don’t know who she was. I’m telling the truth about finding her dead on the floor when I came back from the bedroom.”

“And you just bolted and ran?”

She hesitated. “I took time to restore the security system after I was away from the back door.” Her voice had risen an octave.

With great deliberation, I took my tartlet from its little clear box and took a bite. I studied her face while I chewed. Her face went pink while I washed the tartlet bite down with coffee.

I said, “You’re lying.”

“I swear it’s the truth.”

“Considering your track record when it comes to truth, I’m not moved.”

I couldn’t see her eyes, but I knew they were fixed on me, waiting for me to dissect her lie. Only problem was, I didn’t know what her lie had been. Growing up with an alcoholic mother whose lies had slid all over the place, I’d learned early to detect the presence of an untruth in the midst of candor, but it was like a whiff of something gone bad in a refrigerator full of good food. You know something in there is spoiled, but you don’t know what it is. I still believed somebody else had killed the woman in Cupcake’s house, but either Briana had lied about not recognizing the woman or she had lied about when and how she’d run away from the house.

I said, “If you didn’t kill the woman, then somebody else was in the house while you were there.”

She shook her head too emphatically. “I was alone.”

“You think the woman slit her own throat? Disposed of the knife before she fell dead? Damned clever of her.”

She took a deep breath and exhaled in jerky bursts of air. “I meant I didn’t have a companion. Somebody else must have broken in while I was there, and I didn’t know about it.”

“If that had happened, the security company would have got an alarm and sent somebody to investigate. Nobody came.”

“I’m telling the truth.”

I finished my fruit tartlet and considered what to do next. I had to call Sergeant Owens. I had to call Cupcake and Jancey. I had to tell them that I’d talked to Briana without anybody’s permission. I fervently wished I’d never done it. In probing Briana’s story, I’d found out things about Cupcake that he probably didn’t want known. Even worse, I’d provided a dress rehearsal for the interrogation she’d get from the sheriff’s department. My questions had given Briana a heads-up on what the homicide detective—whoever that was going to be—would ask her. Because I had felt empathy for a woman I’d thought was deranged, I might have skewed a murder investigation.

She said, “Are you going to betray me?”

The question was so stark and direct that it took me by surprise. That may be one of the differences between people who have the drive and determination to be internationally famous and the rest of us. Along with the drive comes a loss of social subterfuge.

I said, “I’m not the only person who’s seen you. It’s inevitable that somebody will recognize you. But they won’t call the cops, they’ll call USA Today or Katie Couric. And when they do, you’ll be stuck knowing that somebody used you for their own gain, and it’ll make you even less willing to trust people.”

“Psychology so early in the morning. And from a pet sitter, no less.”

“Most people believe fashion models have the brains of a flea. Those same people belittle the intelligence of pet sitters.”

She colored. “I’m sorry. And you’re right. Every time I’m hurt I grow more paranoid.”

I said, “Do you have a lawyer?”

“Just one who handles contracts.”

“Do you know a defense lawyer?”

She shook her head, and even her hands turned paler. “Do you know one?”

I thought of Ethan Crane, and just the thought of him made me feel lighter. Suddenly moving with quick efficiency, I whipped out my cell phone and dialed Ethan’s number.

When his receptionist answered, I said, “Tell Mr. Crane that Dixie Hemingway has an emergency and will be at his office in five minutes.”

Doubtfully, she said, “I’ll tell him, but I’m not sure—”

All I’d wanted to know was whether Ethan was in, so I clicked her off and crammed our cups and sandwich leavings—Briana had barely touched her sandwich, and she didn’t even open her tartlet box—into the cardboard tray. Briana watched me get up and toss the tray into a trash bin, watched me walk back to our table.

I said, “I’m going to drive to the office of an attorney I know. If you choose to, you can follow me and go in with me and tell your story. If you choose not to, we’re done.”

I spun around and did a fast clip out of the pavilion and down the steps to the parking lot. I got in my Bronco while Briana made a white blur behind me charging to her Jaguar. The woman could move fast when she wanted to. I peeled out, and the Jag kept up. I was both glad and disappointed that she was sticking to me. It would go a lot better for her if she got a lawyer and turned herself in. It would go a lot better for me if she ditched me and ran.

I should be ashamed to admit it, but the reason my blood tingled on the way to Ethan Crane’s office wasn’t solely from guilty excitement at being on the sidelines of a murder investigation. My blood always tingled like that when I thought of Ethan. I hadn’t seen him for a good while, and then just briefly in the parking lot of the Village Diner, but Ethan and I had always set off lust sparks in each other. There had been a time when I’d had to make a decision about pursuing romantic possibilities with Ethan, but I had wanted Guidry’s slightly dangerous company more than Ethan’s reliable solidness.

Ethan’s office occupies one of the old sand-softened stucco buildings in the village. He inherited the building and the law practice from his grandfather and has never seen fit to modernize any of it. The entrance door from the sidewalk has a glass top with flaked gilt lettering reading ETHAN CRANE, ESQ. A cramped foyer is mostly taken up by a wide staircase leading to the second floor. The dark wooden steps are thinner and paler at their centers from generations of feet stepping on them. At the top of the stairs, a wide lobby separates a receptionist’s office from a library and conference room. Ethan’s office is at the back of the lobby. If his door is open, he can see anybody who climbs the stairs.

His door was open. An old oaken hat rack with a rung for umbrellas stands in the corner of his office. When Ethan works at his desk, he removes his suit jacket and hangs it neatly on a wooden hanger from the rack. But as reassuring evidence that his receptionist had given him warning that I was coming and that he welcomed my visit, his dark pinstripe jacket sat nattily on his broad shoulders, his silk rep tie was neatly in place, and the edges of his white shirt cuffs made thin rims at the end of his sleeves. I was sure he wore tasteful cufflinks.

He stood when he saw me, then lifted a dark eyebrow when Briana chugged up the stairs behind me.

By any standard, Ethan is one of the handsomest men on the planet. A fraction of Seminole blood gives him bronze skin, dark, deep-set eyes, straight black hair cut to brush his shirt collar, a proud nose, prominent cheekbones, and lips made for kissing. His smile is white and even, his voice sounds like the velvet male speaker on credit card commercials, and I can attest from personal experience that his kisses make you lose any sense you ever had.

From her side office, the receptionist bleated some words I ignored. I was too intent on the pleasure on Ethan’s face at seeing me. All the old emotions whirled and tugged at me, including my sense of unfamiliarity with all the tradition and history in the shelves of law books and the old butt-worn wooden chairs in front of the grandfather’s huge mahogany desk. Ethan moved out from behind his desk and met me halfway in his office.

Not for the first time, I noticed that he had beautiful ears, and that they were gently cupped to hear every word that fell from my lips. I had an almost irresistible urge to rise up on tiptoe and run my tongue around the rim of one. Not to start anything, just to lick it the way babies lick things that appeal to them. It’s downright disgusting what some of my body parts do in their imagination.

My face must have shown something of how I felt, because one corner of his very fine lips lifted and little smile lines appeared at the side as if they were etched there by habit. Dang, I had to get my mind on why I was there.

He took both my hands in his. “Dixie. It’s good to see you.”

To my utter surprise, I felt tears sting my eyelids, and for a second I couldn’t get my tongue to work.

He said, “I hear you have an emergency. What can I do for you?”

Oh, yeah. I was there for Briana, not to rekindle an old lust.

I nodded toward Briana, who had removed her big hat so her red hair tumbled over her shoulders. She had removed her dark glasses, too. Her eyes were tawny, like a lion’s.

“The emergency is actually hers. She’s a prime suspect in a murder. I know it will be better if she has an attorney when she turns herself in.”

“I’m not a criminal lawyer.”

As if she’d heard a musical cue, Briana stepped forward with her hand out, elegant and assured as all hell. “Thank you so much for seeing me, Ethan. I’m Briana.”

Ethan quirked an eyebrow again.

I said, “Briana only uses the one name, like Cher. She’s a famous model.”

In Briana’s aura, I felt dumpy and used up, like the mother of a homecoming queen.

Ethan took a deep breath, and I knew he was feeling that I only thought of him as someone to solve a problem or provide sensible direction. That wasn’t true. I thought of him in plenty of other ways that I didn’t want him to guess, but I understood why he’d think that.

He gestured toward the chairs facing his desk. “Tell me the situation.”

Briana and I took seats, but it was Briana’s situation, and I waited for her to talk.

She said, “This is difficult.”

Neither Ethan nor I said anything to make it easier, so she straightened her back and tilted herself slightly forward toward Ethan as if to make her words more intimate.

“The truth is that I went into a house without the owner’s permission. I knew he and his wife were away, and I went in and walked around inside his house. I should not have done that, but I did not steal anything, and I had no motive except to be in the home of a man I’d known when I was very young. While I was there, Dixie came into the house.”

She turned and looked at me with those yellow-brown eyes. “I suppose Dixie has a key.” The inflection said she wasn’t at all sure I had a key, and that perhaps I’d broken in the same way she had.

I spoke to Ethan. “I’m taking care of the cats in the house. The house, by the way, belongs to Cupcake Trillin. He’s an—”

Ethan completed my sentence, as if everybody in the world, not just sports fans, knew who Cupcake was. “Inside linebacker for the Bucs.”

He digested that bit of information and nodded for Briana to continue.

“Dixie left, and I knew she would call the police, so I ran to the bedroom and got dressed.” She allowed herself a faint smile. “I was more or less nude when Dixie came in.” The invitation to Ethan was almost spoken: Imagine me naked!

Ethan’s face didn’t change. His dark eyes were flat. Briana looked down at her twisted hands as if she were unaccustomed to getting no response from a man.

In a rush, she said, “When I went back to the living room, a woman was on the floor. Her throat had been cut and blood was gushing out. Blood was all over her, all over the floor, it was terrible. I was terrified. I ran. I didn’t see anybody else, but somebody else had to be there. I ran out of the house. I ran to my car. I waited out of sight until I saw Dixie’s car leave the gate into the neighborhood, then I followed her. I knew I would be a suspect. I didn’t know what to do. Reporters will want to talk to me, photographers, everything I’ve been trying to escape. Dixie stopped at a light, and I got out and ran to her car and begged her to help me. She was an angel. She met me and I told her my story and she believed me.”

Ethan’s eyes flicked to me, and my face went hot.

“She left out a good bit of the story, but I believed enough of it to advise her to get a lawyer and turn herself in.”

He said, “Good advice.”

Briana said, “Can you keep this out of the press? It will be hell if it hits the news!”

Ethan raised that eyebrow. “A murder in the home of a famous athlete?”

She said, “I meant about me.”

Ethan leaned toward her, but not in the intimate way she’d tilted herself toward him. His was more like a ship’s prow aiming at a curl of froth thrown up by a sea wave.

“I’m afraid you lost any right to anonymity the moment you broke into the Trillins’ house. You might as well get prepared to give some straight answers to solid questions. And you can begin by providing your last name.”

“I didn’t kill that woman! I swear to God I didn’t kill that woman!”

“And your last name is?”

Briana’s lips squeezed together so tightly that her cheeks took on the creases she might have in half a century. Ethan studied her the way he would study a law book.

He said, “Here’s the way the district attorney is going to see this case: You’re a celebrity whose fame comes solely from modeling designer clothes. You don’t have any other talents, but you think your fame gives you special privileges. You broke into a house while the owners were away. Someone authorized to be there came in the house, found you, and pulled out her phone to call the police. You hit her over the head and knocked her out. You knew she would wake up and the world would know what you’d done, so you slit her throat. Then you ran.”

He leaned back in his chair. “Refusing to give your last name is not only a silly bit of celebrity branding, it means you’re so certain of your privileged status that you expect to smile prettily, flirt a little bit, and skip back to your glamorous world. But Briana, my dear, it’s not going to be that way. You’re in for the fight of your life, and if you’re planning on playing it cute and coy, you’ll lose.”

I felt as if a boxcar filled with ice had just been dumped on me. Ethan’s description of what might have happened seemed so plausible that I was amazed I hadn’t seen it like that myself. I had been so focused on the idea of a killer cutting the woman’s throat from behind that I hadn’t realized she could have been unconscious and stretched on the floor. Briana was certainly big enough and strong enough to have squatted beside her and slit her throat.

Briana’s hands gripped the mahogany arms of her chair so tightly her knuckles gleamed like white bone. With visible effort, she parted her lips and said, “Weiland.”

Ethan said, “Spelling?”

She spelled it with a sound of weariness. “W-E-I-L-A-N-D.”

Ethan said, “And you’re from?”

I felt like raising my hand and saying, “I know! I know!” because I knew she came from the same little swampy Louisiana town that Cupcake was from.

She said, “Switzerland. My parents were killed when I was a child. I was adopted by Americans from Minnesota. They’re also dead.”

She didn’t look at me. She was cool as a Popsicle. She sounded as if she absolutely believed every word she said, the same way she had sounded when she’d told me she was Cupcake’s wife. The woman was either so crazy she believed every lie she told, or she was an Oscar-level actor. Or both.

Ethan took a slim leather directory from his desk drawer and flipped through it looking for a number. When he found it, he punched it into his phone. While the call went through, he got up and walked out of the office. We couldn’t hear his conversation, but I knew he was calling a defense attorney.

Briana’s head was high, and she still hadn’t looked at me.

She said, “When you talk to Cupcake, please tell him I’m very, very sorry.”