The Cat Sitter’s Pajamas

3

I made it to the living room just as a team of criminalists outfitted in paper booties and protective smocks came in the front door. They stopped and looked at me with question marks on their faces while I stood there with a cat carrier hanging from each hand like a statue of Cat Lady Justice.

Owens said, “This is Dixie Hemingway. She’s a pet sitter. She’s going to get the cats out of the way while we work.”

As if that cleared that up, they all nodded and pulled on latex gloves in preparation for measuring and photographing and probing and all the other things that criminalists do. They would take the temperature of the dead woman’s liver to establish how long she’d been dead. They would look for stray hairs or fibers on her skin, her clothing, and the floor. They would scan for footprints and fingerprints, trace the arc of blood spatters and blood flow. They would draw an outline of her body on the floor and photograph it from every angle before they bagged her hands, zipped her into a body bag, and took her to the morgue for a more thorough examination.

Acutely conscious of my unbootied Keds and my unlatexed hands, I mutely circled around them. The cats had gone silent, too. With their keen olfactory sense, they could smell blood through the cardboard of their carriers and had gone into defensive positions with their ears laid back and their backs arched.

At the door, Sergeant Owens caught up with me and spoke in a lowered voice. I didn’t know if he spoke quietly out of respect for the dead or because he didn’t want the others to hear what he said.

“Dixie, I don’t know which detective is going to be handling this, but he’ll want to talk to you. Where will you be after you get rid of the cats?”

“I’m not getting rid of them, I’m taking them to the Kitty Haven. That’s a boardinghouse for cats. After that I’ll be at other cats’ houses up and down the Key. You have my cell phone number. Call me when you need me.”

He considered that and nodded. Maybe I imagined it, but the look he gave me seemed to find my availability downright sad.

I maneuvered myself and the cat carriers through the foyer and out the front door. Deputies had strung yellow police tape around the perimeter of the house and placed a Contamination Sheet on the front door. Every person who entered or exited the house had to sign the sheet and enter the time, so I put the boxes down and signed. It seemed very important at the moment to make it clear that I might be just a pet sitter, but I knew how to conduct myself at a murder scene.

The moment lost some of its drama when I remembered the green-and-whites parked behind my Bronco in the driveway. By the time I’d sweet-talked deputies into moving them so I could leave the scene, I had pulled myself together and stopped feeling like people who solved crimes were more important than people who cleaned litter boxes.

On the way to the Kitty Haven, Elvis and Lucy found their voices and sang to me. Lucy was a coloratura soprano, Elvis was a countertenor. By the time we arrived at the Kitty Haven, I felt as if I’d listened to an entire kitty opera in which two captive royals told the world how maligned they were. Thinking about what was ahead for me and for Cupcake and Jancey made me want to join my own voice to their caterwauling.

I wished Guidry were the detective who was going to be investigating the murder, and not just because I missed him. A new homicide detective who didn’t know me would simply look at the fact that I’d been the last person to go into Cupcake’s house before the dead woman was found, so I would definitely be given some thought as a suspect. A homicide investigator who’d slept with me would have questioned me, but he’d be less likely to believe I’d had anything to do with the murder.

The thought of the media frenzy the murder would cause made me cringe. When I thought of how newspaper and television reporters would dredge up all the other times I’d been in the news, I felt like throwing up.

It would be even worse for Cupcake and Jancey. The time between reports that a woman had been murdered in their house while they were in Italy and the moment when somebody questioned if Cupcake or Jancey had hired the killer would be about three nanoseconds. The same media that fawns over a famous athlete or movie star will turn on him like rabid wolves if there’s a crime involving one of his friends or somebody in his family. Sweet adoration does a U-turn and becomes sour contempt, and all the voices once raised to cheer a star will shriek for that same star’s execution. It almost seems as if hidden blood lust is the fuel that creates the cult-worship of the famous. Life might very quickly become a nightmare for Cupcake and Jancey.

And for me.

Siesta Key is eight miles long, north to south. Midnight Pass Road runs end to end, with residential streets looping and winding away from it. Our so-called business district is near the north end of the key where the island bulges to allow greater density. We call that area “the village,” as if the restaurants, salons, boutiques, tourist gift shops, and real estate offices aren’t a part of the rest of the Key. Siesta Beach stretches along the southern perimeter of the village on Beach Road, and when you drive along there you have to watch for tourists wearing bikinis, straw hats, and bemused smiles crossing against traffic to get to the beach. I think the seaside ions get to them and make them a little loopy.

The Kitty Haven is on Avenida del Mare, about a block off Beach Road, in an old Florida-style frame house. With its sun yellow paint, shiny white hurricane shutters, and white wicker chairs on the deep front porch, it always makes me nostalgic for a time when people sat on porches and chatted over a glass of lemonade.

I parked in the driveway outlined by green and white liriope and lifted the cat carriers out. The cats were poking their noses against the holes in the carriers to sniff the air. I sniffed it a little bit, too. The Kitty Haven’s yard is filled with cedar chips interspersed with circles of palm clusters and palmettos, so it smells like the inside of a cedar chest. I carried both cat carriers to the front porch, opened the front door, quickly set one carrier inside, then maneuvered myself and the other carrier in while keeping a sharp eye out for a cat who might decide to streak out while the door was open.

All the guest cats at Kitty Haven have private apartments in the back, but the owner’s cats loll on windowsills and drape themselves on overstuffed chairs in the front room. All the furniture is wine red velvet, which always makes me feel as if I’ve stepped into a bordello in an Old West movie. The cat hair on the velvet gives it a kind of halo effect.

A bell over the door announced my arrival, and Marge Preston bustled from the back surrounded by the same halo. Like her velvet chairs, Marge is plump and soft, and her fine white hair stands out around her face like cat whiskers.

I said, “Marge, I have a bit of an emergency here. There was an incident in their house and the police are there, so I had to get them out fast.”

As if she was accustomed to people bringing cats to her because “an incident” had happened in their home, Marge didn’t bat an eye.

I said, “Their owners are in Italy, but they’re going to come home as soon as they can. Their names are Elvis and Lucy.”

“The owners?”

“No, the cats. You can use my name as the owner.”

That got a raised eyebrow. “So their owner is somebody famous?”

I grinned. “Somebody anonymous.”

Marge knelt to open Lucy’s case, and Lucy raised her head to sniff at Marge’s fingertips.

I said, “Lucy makes friends a little faster than Elvis, but they’re both very sweet cats.”

Marge lifted both cats out and cradled one in each arm. They both went limp with trust. Marge brings that out in a cat.

She said, “Any special needs?”

“No, they’re easy. I’ll let you know when the owners will be back.”

I was already backing toward the front door, ready to hightail it to my other clients.

Marge said, “Take the carriers with you.”

Chastened, I came back to collect the carriers. I didn’t take time to fold them, just carried them out and tossed them in the back of the Bronco to use when I brought the cats home. Elvis had left his scrap of paper in his carrier, and I grinned to myself when I thought how put out he would be when he remembered it.

The delay at Cupcake’s house had thrown me an hour late. On an ordinary day, I get up at 4:00 A.M. and see eight or nine pets, spending about thirty minutes at each house. With travel time and the occasional delay, my morning visits are usually over by nine or nine thirty, and by then I’m starved for breakfast and sleep. Now it was already close to eight o’clock, and I still had four pet visits to make, some with multiple pets in one house. On top of that, I would have to give an interview to a new homicide detective. It was going to be a long morning.

I didn’t realize I was being tailed until I left the second house of the four on my list. I had turned onto Midnight Pass Road, and a white Jaguar convertible I’d seen behind me earlier swung too close behind me. Convertibles aren’t good choices for tailing somebody. The woman driver was clearly visible. Her head was snugly wrapped in a printed scarf, and she wore huge dark shades, but she was definitely a woman. A pale woman with bright red lipstick. I couldn’t see her fingernails, but I would have bet good money that the hands with a death grip on the steering wheel had scarlet fingertips.

I said, “Oh, great! That’s just terrific!”

My first thought was that Briana had switched from stalking Cupcake to stalking me, which had a kind of sick glamour to it. My second thought was that Briana had just killed a woman in Cupcake’s house, which detracted a lot from the sick glamour.

Instinctively, my hand went to my cell phone to call Guidry and tell him the woman who’d murdered another woman in Cupcake Trillin’s house was following me. But then I remembered that Guidry had gone away. The murder wasn’t his problem, and neither was I.

The car in front of me stopped for a red light, and I oozed to a stop behind its bumper. The Jaguar jerked to a stop, and the driver threw open the door and ran toward the passenger door of the Bronco. I could have locked the door. To this day, I don’t know why I sat there like a dope and let Briana hurl herself into the seat beside me. She wore a thin white linen shirt hanging loose over slubby white linen pants, but she wasn’t naked under them. In fact, the lace bra under her shirt seemed designed to be seen. The bra probably had an Italian label and cost as much as my Bronco.

She seemed more afraid of me than I was of her.

“Please,” she said. “I need help. As Cupcake’s friend, I’m begging you.”

I said, “In the first place, you’re not Cupcake’s friend. You’re a stalker who broke into his house and killed somebody. In the second place, I’m a pet sitter, not somebody who can give you help.”

Her red lips pushed out in the way lips do when people are confused. “I meant you were Cupcake’s friend.”

“Well, that’s true. But I can’t help you.”

“You’re the only one who can help me! And I didn’t kill anybody! I know it looks that way, but I swear I didn’t do it!”

I am both blessed and cursed with an uncanny ability to tell when a person is lying. I don’t know if it’s some genetic trait or the fact that I had an alcoholic mother who lied as skillfully as she put on lipstick. Whatever the reason, I’m sort of a flesh-and-blood lie detector machine, and I didn’t think Briana was lying. I thought she was a complete kook, a neurotic bundle of fantasies, an immature woman crammed with silly dreams, but I didn’t believe she was a killer.

The light turned green, and cars behind me began to honk. Briana opened the Bronco’s door and got out, but turned back with a pleading look that would have melted a steel beam. My mind whirled with ideas, each of which I rejected before it was completed.

I said, “Look, I have to take care of some pets. I’ll be finished in about an hour and a half. Meet me at the pavilion at Siesta Beach.”

She half-sobbed, “Thank you!” and slammed the door shut.

As I drove on, I watched in the rearview mirror as she sprinted to the Jaguar. My hands were calm on the steering wheel, but my brain was in utter chaos. It screamed that I was the dumbest, weirdest, craziest person in the universe. It hollered that I should call Sergeant Owens and tell him where Briana was. It thundered that talking to Briana was a form of betrayal. A betrayal of the faith Sergeant Owens had in me, of the faith Cupcake and Jancey had in me, of the faith I had in me. Everything it said was true.

I told myself I should have nothing to do with the situation. The homicide detective handling the case might not have Guidry’s sharp intelligence, but my sole responsibility was to see that Elvis and Lucy were cared for. I should pick up the phone and call Sergeant Owens and not even think about keeping my promise to Briana to talk to her.

But the entire time I was telling myself all that, I was remembering a time in my own life when I had teetered on the edge of insanity. I had never been so crazy that I’d become delusional like Briana, but perhaps whatever had happened in Cupcake’s house had snapped her back to normal and she was scrambling to claw her way back to the real world. When I had been crazy, kind people had offered me the hand I needed to get back to myself. Briana had reached out to me, and it seemed to me that it would be hypocritical to turn her down since I had once been in such need of help myself.

While I had that internal debate with myself, I continued driving without calling Sergeant Owens. As if I was being moved by forces outside myself. As if it wasn’t my choice to cross a line from which there would be no return.

Funny how we can play games with ourselves like that.