The Cat Sitter's Cradle

11

The scene of a murder is like the inside of a beehive. Everyone has a job to do, a job for which they are specifically trained. The body lies at the center, enshrouded in perfect stillness, while all the crime specialists buzz around it in ever-widening circles, performing their one particular skill with single-minded concentration, seemingly oblivious to everything and everyone around them. Together they operate as one efficient organism, all in service of answering a deceptively simple question: What happened here?

Sergeant Owens had asked me to wait in the living room, and even though I’d been in this kind of situation before, I felt about as out of place as if I actually was inside a beehive. I was sitting on the couch, wrapped in towels with a blanket over my legs, trying to stay warm. My hair was still damp, and my clothes reeked of chlorine.

I had a partial view of the proceedings out on the lanai. The paramedics had moved Mr. Harwick’s body onto a blue plastic tarp and were huddled over it. A photographer was circling around the edge of the pool, taking pictures from every angle. Beyond the lanai, deputies were stringing up a line of yellow police tape to seal off the entire property and more than likely the adjoining properties as well.

Sergeant Owens was talking to somebody I didn’t recognize, a rangy, long-boned woman in her midforties, with sorrel hair and skin threatening to freckle. She wore a knee-length skirt approximately the same reddish brown color as her hair, with a beige blouse that was ruffled down the front and a dull gray scarf tied in a knot around her neck. The next thing I knew she and Owens were walking up to me.

With a firm handshake, she said, “Samantha McKenzie, homicide.”

“Dixie Hemingway. I’m the pet sitter. You’re Guidry’s replacement?”

A defensive blush rose in her cheeks. “So they tell me.”

“I’m sorry. I’ll bet you get that a lot.”

“I’m used to it. Miss Hemingway, I was wondering if you wouldn’t mind answering a few questions?”

“Sure, except it’s almost nine, and I have other pets waiting for me.”

She nodded. “We won’t be long. I understand you have the owner’s cat in your car?”

“Yes, I took her with me after I tried to revive Mr. Harwick.”

“And why is that?”

I looked at the scene outside on the lanai. “I didn’t want to leave her here alone with…”

McKenzie nodded. “And how long have you known August?”

“You mean Mr. Harwick’s son? I only just met him this morning.”

She looked down at a clipboard and read from the police report.

“That’s right, he arrived when you were waiting in your car with the cat.”

“No, he came home before I found the body.”

She looked up at me. “Oh? You just told me you didn’t want to leave the cat alone in the house after you revived the body. Where was August when that happened?”

My mind was beginning to feel buttery. Detective McKenzie was frumpy and plain on the outside, but she was sharp as a razor on the inside. She was testing me. Deputy Morgan had obviously told her everything I’d said when he arrived, and now she was deliberately trying to trip me up, looking for any inconsistencies in my story. I could feel my entire body getting warm, and my armpits felt slippery.

I took a deep breath. “I didn’t want to be alone after I discovered Mr. Harwick, so I took Charlotte with me. August was asleep upstairs.”

“Why do you say that?”

“He said he was going to bed. I think he’d been out all night.”

The corners of her mouth rose slightly in a smile. “No, I mean why do you say you didn’t want to be alone? August was here, wasn’t he? Why didn’t you go up and get him when you saw a body in the bottom of the pool?”

I said, “Detective McKenzie, I’m an ex-cop…”

I paused to see if that got a reaction, but it didn’t. Either she’d already been briefed on my sordid past or she didn’t care. Either way, she didn’t even blink.

“I’m trained in CPR, so at that moment I wasn’t thinking about August or anybody else. I was thinking I needed to get the body out of the water, and I needed to get it out fast, so that’s what I did. I tried to revive him, and when that didn’t work I just needed to get out of the house. I took Charlotte with me because I’ve been hired to take care of her.”

Her expression didn’t change. She stared at me with milk-paint gray eyes and waited. She knew I was leaving something out, even before I knew it myself.

I went on, “When I first got here, I had a strong feeling something was wrong, like somebody was in the house or something. That’s when I called Sergeant Owens. And then August came home, and before he went inside he pulled something out of his glove compartment. I think it was a gun.”

She nodded. “You were afraid to be in the house alone with August.”

“I don’t know. Possibly.”

“Were you aware that the Harwicks’ Cadillac was in the garage?”

I said, “I didn’t even know there was a garage.”

“Yes, it’s off the service driveway at the far end of the house.”

“No, I didn’t think to look there, but Mr. Harwick did say that they were driving to Tampa.”

“Okay. And how long was August inside the house while you waited in your car?”

I said, “Less than five minutes, I think.”

“And how would you describe his mood?”

“His mood?”

“Yes. Was he happy, sad, nervous, angry?”

I was starting to wish I hadn’t said anything. I should have known the minute I revealed that August had a gun she’d latch onto him as a key suspect.

“I would say drunk and horny.”

She suppressed a smile and made a note on her clipboard. “Sounds like a typical teenager.”

“Yes.”

She paused for a moment and then looked me squarely in the eye. She said, “I was with the FBI for twenty-five years. Dallas office. My husband was murdered nine years ago. I have a sixteen-year-old daughter. Her name is Eva.”

I didn’t have to wonder anymore if Owens had told her about me. I figured he’d also told her I’d lost my husband and my child and been dismissed from the force for “mental instability.” It wasn’t that she probably thought I was a nutcase that made me want to melt into a puddle at her feet right then and there. It was hearing her daughter’s name that broke me open. Hearing her name made me want to lay my life out for this detective, tell her about my own daughter, whose name was Christy and who had died when she was three, about my husband, Todd, who’d died at the same time, tell her how my life had ended that day and how I’d built a new life from scraps and shards I’d clawed from the rubble of the old. I wanted to ask her if it had been that way for her, too.

But before I could say anything, my cell phone rang. It must have fallen out of my pocket down into the cushions of the couch. I fished it out and flipped it open, realizing before I could stop myself that it wasn’t my phone at all—it just had the same ringtone as mine.

Awkwardly, I said, “Uh, hello?”

A woman’s voice said indignantly, “Who is this?”

“Uh, this is Dixie.”

“Dixie? Dixie Hemingway?”

I said, “I’m sorry, I thought this was my phone.”

The woman cleared her throat. “This is Tina Harwick. I just woke up, and my husband isn’t here. What the hell is going on?”

My mouth fell open, and Detective McKenzie looked up from her clipboard. I stammered, trying to think of the right thing to say.

“Mrs. Harwick, I’m in your house right now…”

Detective McKenzie immediately snapped on a pair of blue rubber gloves and thrust her hand out in front of me. I laid the phone down in her open palm. I could hear Mrs. Harwick’s voice rising, “Dixie, what the hell are you doing with Roy’s phone?”

Sergeant Owens led me out of the living room. As we passed the two Roman statues flanking the archway, I heard Detective McKenzie say, “Mrs. Harwick, my name is Samantha McKenzie. I’m with the Sarasota Police Department. Is there someone there with you?”

I felt a stab in my chest, as if an arrow had hit me full force in the back and plunged all the way to my heart. Mrs. Harwick had called her husband’s cell phone only to find herself talking to a homicide detective. Of all the tricks that fate can play on a person, that had to be one of the dirtiest.

I felt a little weak in the knees, and I think Sergeant Owens knew it. He walked me all the way down the driveway to my car and even opened the door for me. Charlotte peered through one of the holes in her cardboard penitentiary with one accusing eye.

I said, “I’ll see that their cat is taken care of until the crime units are done with the house, but if Mrs. Harwick is still in Tampa tonight, I’ll need to come back to feed the fish.”

“Not a problem,” Owens said, his words thick as syrup. “I’ll let the deputy on watch know you’re authorized to enter the premises whenever you need to.”

There was a note in his voice that caught my attention. He cocked his head to one side and squinted at me. “Anything else?”

I said, “I know what you’re thinking.”

“I’m not thinking anything, Dixie, except for some reason you seem to have a remarkable talent for stumbling upon dead people.”

I sat down in the driver’s seat and sighed. “That’s what I thought you were thinking, and I would not call it a talent.”

“You did a good job back there, Dixie. You did the best anybody could’ve done.”

I stared down at my hands folded in my lap. “If I had looked out on the lanai in the very beginning, it might not have been too late to save him.”

“You don’t know that, and you can’t blame yourself.”

I nodded mutely. I could feel my cheeks getting hot. Sometimes it felt like Sergeant Owens had a twenty-four-hour security camera aimed right at the center of my brain.

He smiled and knocked on the hood a couple of times. “Alright, go home and get some dry clothes. Detective McKenzie will probably want to see you down at the station later.”

I pulled out onto the road, flashing him a pained grimace at the thought of having to spend another moment under Detective McKenzie’s magnifying glass, but in truth I didn’t want him to see the tears that were forcing their way out of my eye sockets. At the very core of any cop’s heart, any cop worth a grain of salt, is a burning desire to help people. I guess that’s true for ex-cops, too, because I felt like I had failed Mr. Harwick.

As for Detective McKenzie, I knew Owens was right. There was a lot more she would want to know, and there was a lot I hadn’t told her.