The Cat Sitter's Cradle

16

The next morning, I woke at 4:00 A.M. to the sound of my radio alarm playing “Walk Like an Egyptian.” My thoughts bopped along to the beat of it for a few short but blissful moments.

Slide your feet up the streets, bend your back.

Shift your arm then you pull it back.

Then everything that had happened the day before came rushing into my brain like a hangover headache. My right shoulder ached as if I’d competed in a one-armed weight-lifting competition, and I realized with a jolt that it was from pulling Mr. Harwick’s heavy, water-sodden body up to the edge of the pool. I switched on the bedside lamp and sat up. If it weren’t for the fact that there were half a dozen animals depending on me for breakfast, I would’ve pulled the plug on the alarm clock and slept the rest of the day with the blinds closed.

I dragged my legs off the bed and walked zombielike into the bathroom and splashed myself with cold water. I looked at my bleary eyes and puffy morning face in the mirror as I brushed my teeth. From the back of my head I heard a tiny voice say sarcastically, Oh, you’re gonna look great for Ethan tonight!

I pulled my hair into a ponytail, grabbed clean shorts, a bra, and a tee from the closet, and slid my bare feet into a pair of white Keds.

It was still pitch dark outside, but I could see glittering reflections of the moon off the waves rolling in on the beach. I leaned on the porch railing and let the cool salty air fill my lungs. Along the edge of the horizon was a sliver of coral pink light edging the night sky out of its way.

Like I always do in the morning, I checked out the situation in the carport. My Bronco was sitting there all by its lonesome except for a couple of pelicans dozing on the hood. Paco’s Harley was parked in the corner, but his truck was gone, which meant he was still out somewhere on an undercover job, hunting down a drug kingpin or infiltrating a street gang. The Special Investigative Bureau isn’t exactly a nine-to-five job, so no one ever knows what Paco’s schedule is, and Michael and I both worry about him when he’s not home.

I breathed a sigh of relief when I remembered that Michael’s shift at the firehouse would be ending tonight. With everything that had happened in the last twenty-four hours, I’d be happy to have a big strong man around.

My brain felt like it was repeatedly shuffling a deck of cards, except instead of clubs and spades and diamonds and hearts, the cards were all images of everything that had happened in the last several days: Mrs. Harwick sprinkling fish food across the surface of the tank, Becca rolled up in a sobbing mess on the bathroom floor, Mr. Harwick’s stupefied face staring up at me on the side of the pool. I was suddenly filled with the most profound feeling of dread, and then all the cards in my head scattered, leaving behind one lonely image: Ethan Crane.

Sweet Ethan Crane. He was a good man, and he cared for me, but I was stupid to have agreed to go on a date with him. It would never work. For one, I was still reeling from my parting with Guidry, and … and what? It just didn’t feel right. If I was being honest with myself, it was impossible to know if what I was feeling for him was love, and not loneliness or lust or fatigue looking for a resting place.

Anyway, if a woman decides it is love she feels, how can she ever be sure the man she loves is the right one? Then I pictured myself in that ridiculous purple dress and laughed out loud. I must have been a fool to think I could pull that off.

Alright. Clearly I had fallen into a funk.

I knew it had mostly to do with Mr. Harwick, and I tried to give myself a break. Apparently, failing to save a man’s life can put a real damper on your mood. I sighed and looked up at the starlit sky. Somehow without even trying I had yet again gotten myself mixed up in a whole mess of trouble, and yet again I had no idea why it kept happening. One day I’m minding my own business, brushing out cat hair and picking up dog poop, and the next I’m locking lips with a dead man on the side of a pool. I needed to try to keep my mind on my own problems and my own life. I’m a pet sitter, damn it, not a social worker, not a marriage counselor, not an emergency medical technician, and not a homicide detective.

I told myself that Mrs. Harwick was no shrinking violet. She was a smart, capable woman. She didn’t need me to help her with the death of her husband, and no matter how much experience I had in that department and no matter how strong the bond I had felt with her, there was nothing I could do to make what she was about to go through any easier.

Furthermore, Becca had a loving mother and a loving brother. She could depend on them for any support she might need, and it was completely egotistical and frankly a little crazy for me to think that I could help her through her stepfather’s death or the mess she and Kenny had gotten themselves into. No matter how much I could relate to what they were going through, there wasn’t a single thing I could do to make it easier on any of them. The only thing that was going to help was the passage of time.

I didn’t know what to think about Kenny, but I decided he was none of my business either. I’d spent too much time and energy defending him and trying to help him out, and now I was beginning to see that Michael and Paco had been smart to be suspicious of him. Perhaps Paco was right and I had been swayed by Kenny’s scruffy good looks, or maybe somewhere hidden deep inside him was a genuinely good person, but he was clearly making some very bad choices.

And if he’d had anything to do with Mr. Harwick’s drowning, I knew it wouldn’t take Detective McKenzie very long to figure it out. She didn’t need my help either.

I told myself that if there was anybody that needed me right now, it was Corina, and there was plenty I could do for her. She might have made some bad choices, too, but at least she was trying her best to do better and make a better life for herself and her baby, and she wasn’t hurting anybody in the process or acting out of pure selfishness or greed. All she needed was a little push in the right direction and she’d be fine.

As for Ethan, I’d have to figure out a way to let him down easy. I needed to take things a little slower and with a little more thought.

I remembered how I hadn’t been filled with so much angst and doubt when I first met Todd. I didn’t believe in love at first sight, but Todd changed that. There was never even the slightest doubt that he was the right man for me. When I held him in my arms, it literally felt as if our hearts beat at the same exact rate. Sometimes I wonder if my heart will ever find that particular rhythm again.

I decided that I’d been through too much bullshit in my life to complicate things now, and losing Guidry to New Orleans was no bed of roses either. If Ethan didn’t understand that, then he wasn’t the right man for me in the first place.

Feeling emboldened, I clattered down the stairs and hopped into the Bronco. The two pelicans on the hood sullenly unfolded themselves and flapped off toward the water as I backed out of the carport. I rolled down the driveway and turned onto Midnight Pass Road, determined to have a nice, normal, boring day.

Rufus was as happy as usual to see me. As soon as I opened the front door he came clicking across the hardwood floor, hopping up and down on his back legs and pawing the air excitedly. Then he ran barking into the living room and grabbed his chew toy. He shook it with all his might and then came racing back and dropped it at my feet as a welcome gift.

Whenever I spend the night with any of my dogs, which I usually do if their humans are going to be out of town, I always take their collars off before bed. I figure they don’t want to sleep in their day clothes any more than I do, and I think they actually sleep better that way. Now almost all of my clients do the same thing. Rufus scampered around my feet while I got his collar out of the drawer in the hall desk. He stood as still as he could, or at least as still as his eagerly wagging rump would allow, while I fastened his collar around his neck.

Rufus isn’t a power-walking type of dog. Most schnauzers would rather sniff and hunt when they’re outside, and Rufus is no exception. He’s always on the lookout for lizards and squirrels and snakes. I don’t think he’d have the slightest idea what to do with one if he ever caught it, but he thoroughly enjoys the chase. I brought along my handy thirty-foot retractable leash so Rufus could skitter here and there while we walked.

I hooked the end of the leash to his collar and snapped a couple of clip weights to the handle and headed out the door. While Rufus did his business and scampered about, I did some arm raises and bicep curls. I wanted to keep myself occupied. From now on I was going to start being a little more disciplined with myself, and that included getting a good workout every day. I must have looked like a deranged person flapping my arms up and down at the end of Rufus’s leash, but I didn’t care.

After a perfectly uneventful walk around the block and a good long brushing session, I gave Rufus a kiss on the nose and a little hug. The Graysons were taking him to visit their son in North Carolina later in the afternoon, so I knew I wasn’t going to see him for a few days.

At the Kitty Haven, Marge was on the phone talking to a rescue center in Jacksonville about two older cats they had brought in but couldn’t afford to keep. If Marge didn’t take them, they’d have to be put down. She was arranging for Jaz to make the four-hour drive to pick up the cats and bring them back to the Haven. Marge waved and pointed me to the back, where I found Charlotte in one of the private cubicles.

She was her usual snarky self. With all the food and love she was getting from Marge and Jaz, I wasn’t too worried about her, but I knew she’d probably be a lot happier once she was back in her own home. I didn’t allow myself to think about what her life was going to be like without Mr. Harwick, or whether she knew that he was gone. It was too much to bear.

She hissed dismissively at me as I sat down on the floor next to her, but I knew she didn’t really mean it. Stroking her from head to tail while she arched her back and pushed herself against my hand, I told her it wouldn’t be much longer before she was back home, and I did my best to form a mental picture of her curled up among the pillows in the Harwicks’ big canopy bed. I like to do that just in case cats can read minds. Of course it’s crazy, but I do it anyway.

Tom Hale was out of town at a convention and had taken Billy Elliot with him, so I was pretty much done for the morning. I figured by now the news was probably out about Mr. Harwick, and since one of the reporters had seemed to recognize me, I didn’t feel like making an appearance at the diner. I knew everyone would be full of questions, and I was trying my best to forget about yesterday’s events. Also I imagined Judy would want to know all about my D-word with Ethan, and if she found out I was planning on canceling it she’d probably want to give me a good beating.

At the intersection of Beach Road and Midnight Pass, I turned left and followed Higel’s dogleg over the north bridge. Another left and I followed Tamiami Trail around the bay, where tall-masted ships rode at anchor, their masts sparkling in the bright sunshine. A quick zag off course, a quick swing through Whole Foods for some soup and some other goodies and a bouquet of daisies, and then I was back on Tamiami Trail to the Bayfront Village, a posh retirement condo and one of the worst architectural disasters ever to blight Sarasota.

Bayfront is home to several hundred well-to-do seniors who either don’t notice the folly of mixing Ionic, Gothic, Elizabethan, and Colonial architecture all in one building or are too busy having fun to care. The interior design is as bad as the exterior, with murals of foxhunting scenes keeping company with paintings of circus clowns, the Mahabharata, and bucolic fields of sunflowers and bluebonnets. But happy, energetic seniors bounce past the bizarre decor on their way to tennis or golf or theater, and not one of them seems to mind living in an interior decorator’s living version of hell. These are what I call “don’t-give-a-damn” seniors. They’re more active than most people half their age, they’re having more fun than most people half their age, and, well, basically they don’t give a damn.

The concierge waved to me from her sleek French Provincial desk and gestured for me to go on up. As soon as I got in the elevator, the knot I had felt in my chest ever since I’d discovered Mr. Harwick’s body loosened a bit. Just knowing that Cora Mathers was waiting for me on the sixth floor made everything feel a little lighter.

Cora is eighty-something years old, and I am lucky to know her, although the way we met is not the prettiest story in history. Her granddaughter, Marilee, had been a friend and a client, and to make a long story short, Marilee was murdered by a crazed neighbor. Marilee had already set her grandmother up in Bayfront Village with enough money to live comfortably for the rest of her life. The remainder of her estate, which was sizable to put it mildly, was willed to her cat, a blue Abysinnian named Ghost. She made me the executor of Ghost’s estate.

Once I found a good home for Ghost, I put the estate in Tom Hale’s hands and have pretty much avoided thinking about it ever since. After Marilee’s funeral, I continued to stop in now and then to make sure that Ghost was being well cared for, and I also visited Cora at least once a week. At first I’d done it out of a feeling of misplaced guilt and responsibility, but that had changed, and Cora and I had become genuine friends. I don’t think there’s any topic that we haven’t thoroughly discussed, some of which would be a surprise to most people. Women my age and women Cora’s age aren’t assumed to have much in common, especially when it comes to romance and sex and love, but that’s a lot of hooey. The only difference between Cora and me is that she has more wrinkles and more experience. Otherwise, inside our skins we’re both the same.

I smelled Cora’s apartment as soon as the elevator doors opened. About once a week, she makes bread in an ancient bread-making machine. At some point in the kneading process, which Cora keeps a secret, she throws in a cup of frozen semisweet chocolate chips. The result is a chewy bread with a crunchy crust filled with little lakes of oozy chocolate. Cora insists that the bread be torn into hunks rather than sliced, and when those hunks are slathered with butter, I guarantee that strong women will swoon and muscled men will whimper with weak-kneed delight.

The concierge had alerted Cora that I was on the way up, so she was outside her door waiting for me when I stepped out of the elevator and went down the hall towards her apartment. Cora is the size of a malnourished sixth grader, with knobby little knees and freckled arms. Her hair is thin and fine as goose down and floats above her scalp in a cottony cloud. She whooped when she saw me, rising up and down on her toes in a semblance of jumping for joy.

I said, “Do I smell chocolate bread?”

“It’s still cooling! What’s that you’ve got?” As greedy as a child, she grabbed the Whole Foods bag and peered inside. “Oh, goody goody! I just love their soup!”

“There’s some beautiful blood oranges, too, and a slice of apple pie.”

“I’ll have the pie for supper and the soup for dessert.”

I followed her into the apartment, practically stepping in place at times because she moved so slowly. Her condo was lovely, with glass doors opening to a long sun porch facing the Gulf. I knew that if Marilee were alive today, she’d be happy to see how Cora has turned her little apartment into such a lovely and comfortable place to live. It was all pink marble and turquoise linen and shafts of sunlight.

She stopped at a bar separating a minuscule kitchen from the rest of the room. While she lifted the sweating container of frozen soup from the bag, I went around her to the kitchen, where a fresh round loaf of chocolate bread was steaming on a wooden board on the counter. Cora always keeps her kettle warm, just in case company comes, so it only took a minute to put tea bags in a Brown Betty pot and pour hot water on them. While I got down cups and saucers, Cora took a chair at a skirted ice cream table by the windows.

She said, “Now, don’t slice that bread. It’s better if you tear off pieces.”

She always says that.

I rummaged in the refrigerator for butter to add to the tea tray. “I know.”

I always say that.

I put the daisies in a little pink vase by the sink and brought the bread and the tea tray out to the table.

Cora cleared her throat, carefully sliding her saucer and cup closer. “Was it you that found that drowned man?”

I sighed. “How did you know about that?”

In the sunlight from the glass doors, her face seemed to fracture into millions of tiny, fine lines. “Well, Dixie, the news said the man was found by his pet sitter, and it was on Siesta Key. Who else could it be?”

I sat down and poured the tea. “It was awful.”

“I imagine so.” She pushed the bread toward me with a smile. “This should help.”

I broke off a small chunk and buttered it. It was so warm there were little curls of steam rising up and the butter melted right into it. I put it in my mouth and allowed myself a tiny moment of sheer bliss.

“Oh my God,” I moaned. “I needed that.”

Cora took a piece herself, and we sat in silence for a while, luxuriating in the simple joy of it. Occasionally Cora hummed a little tune to herself. I loved that we could sit in perfect silence and feel completely comfortable doing it. That’s a sign of real friendship.

After a while she said, “So what do you hear from that fellow of yours?”

She meant Guidry. “He’s not my fellow anymore, remember? He ran away to New Orleans.”

She nodded. I could tell she was disappointed, but Cora wasn’t one to cry over spilt milk, and I think she understood why I couldn’t follow Guidry to New Orleans, even if she didn’t completely approve of it.

I smiled coyly. “But I am having dinner with someone tonight.”

Her eyes brightened. “Oh? Do tell!”

“Don’t get too excited. It’s not that big a deal.”

“It’s with that Ethan Crane fellow, I can tell by the look in your eyes.”

“Oh, stop it, no you can’t.”

“Really? So who’s your date with tonight?”

I laughed. “It’s not a date.”

She clapped her hands. “I knew it! You’ve had your eye on him for a long time. I knew his grandfather, you know. He was a lovely man, too.”

“Well, don’t have a cow, it’s just dinner. It’s not like we’re going to live happily ever after. In fact, I’m seriously thinking about canceling it completely. I’m not ready for anything serious, and it’s not right to lead him on.”

Cora’s smile fell away, and she set her cup down with a little clinking sound against the saucer. “Dixie, you think those people chose to leave you?”

“Huh?”

She reached out and laid her hand on top of mine. “You think love can’t last, is that what it is? That anybody that loves you will eventually leave?”

“Cora…” I couldn’t finish. Tears instantly sprang to my eyes. I knew exactly what she was getting at.

“Dixie, sometimes our minds believe things our hearts know aren’t true. You’ve had a rough go of it, so I can’t blame you, but it’s time to put all that behind you.”

I dabbed at my eyes with my napkin and tried to compose myself while she tore off another piece of bread and smoothed some butter on it. She was right. I think there was a part of me that was beginning to wonder if I would ever be able to hang on to anything that I loved. First my father, then my mother, then my daughter and my husband, and then Guidry …

“You can’t go on being mad at everyone that’s ever hurt you. At some point you just have to forgive them.”

I said, “I’m not mad at anyone.”

“Oh, sweetheart, of course you are. For years I was mad at my own granddaughter for leaving me. And she was murdered! Certainly wasn’t her fault. But that doesn’t make any difference. It’s just natural human feelings, but you can’t live the rest of your life all swaddled up and protected. Sooner or later you have to forgive. You have to let that anger go or your heart will just dry right up.”

I nodded silently. I knew she was right, but I wasn’t sure how I could just let all of it go. We watched the boats out on the ocean sail by, and after a little while I said, “I think maybe I’m just a little scared, too.”

“Well, let’s talk about that. What are you scared of?”

“You know, you have to make such big sacrifices to be in love, and I like my life the way it is. I have all my friends and my family and my pets to take care of. But when you’re with someone, you have to do all kinds of things to make it work. You have to compromise and share and change.”

Cora fixed me with her clear blue eyes. “Dixie, those are all good things.” She smiled mischievously. “And as I recall, that Ethan Crane fellow is about as delicious as…” She waved a piece of chocolate bread in the air and popped it in her mouth.