The Cat Sitter's Nine Lives

26

About ten feet outside Baldy’s room I started having second thoughts. Then in the elevator down to the lobby, I was quietly mumbling to myself while my fellow passengers pretended not to notice. Then by the time I made it through the lobby and outside into the fresh air, I didn’t care who saw me—I was straight-up talking out loud and giving myself a good, stern disquisition on the basic standards of reasonable behavior.

I’d gone too far. I should never have promised to deliver Baldy’s message to his wife. He was a grown man. He could do it himself. Don’t get me wrong—I knew without a doubt that what he and his wife had been through was unimaginably heartbreaking, but it just wasn’t my responsibility, and it was crazy of me to even consider delivering messages back and forth between two wanted criminals. Except …

I thought of Janet, all alone in that sprawling mansion, crying herself to sleep every night, isolated from the outside world, and with no earthly idea where her husband was or why he had disappeared. For all she knew he was dead, and now I understood why she always looked so exhausted and tortured—her life was a living hell, and all because she had tried to save her child.

Except, I thought, lots of people deal with sick children, and they don’t all go around robbing banks to pay their medical bills. Not to mention the fact that if I didn’t report Janet’s whereabouts to the authorities, I would essentially be committing a very serious crime.

As I unlocked the Bronco and jumped into the driver’s seat I mumbled to myself, “It’s called aiding and abetting, you dummy.”

No. I just couldn’t take that kind of risk, not even for Janet.

Except then I thought of the pain she must have been in—to lose her child like that, and now the only thing standing between her suffering and a little bit of relief was me. Except I knew without a doubt that if she turned herself in right away she’d have a much easier time in court … and it wasn’t like she and Baldy were murdering thieves. They were just small-time bank robbers, right?

Except how exactly had they robbed all those banks? Had Janet held a gun to the teller’s head while Baldy filled a bag with cash? I mean, robbing a bank is one thing, but robbing a bank with a deadly weapon could mean life in prison for both of them. Except they just didn’t seem capable of that kind of violent crime … except what did I know? They could just as easily have been cold-blooded killers, except …

Except, except, except!

In the car all the way home, I shook my head and sighed so many times I must have looked like a bobblehead doll. Yet again I’d managed to get myself tangled up in a seriously complicated mess, but there was no way out. I’d given my word to Baldy. I couldn’t very well change my mind now and turn his wife in to the police. That would have been wrong, no matter how hard I tried to justify it.

I told myself that if Baldy and his wife had fallen into a life of crime as a way of paying for their child’s medical bills, then that meant they’d been abandoned from the get-go, that society had turned its back on them. No parent should ever be put in that kind of situation, no matter who they are or where they come from or how they got here, and I knew I’d never be able to look myself in the eye again if I betrayed my promise to Baldy. My only choice was to deliver his message to her.

I just hoped I wouldn’t go to jail for it.

Meanwhile, the whole time I was engaged in that mental game of tug-of-war, there was a little voice in the back of my mind, repeating the same words over and over again: What you do with chocolate? What you do with chocolate? I shook my head like an Etch A Sketch that needs erasing. The man was on enough painkillers to down an elephant, that was all. Somehow he’d gotten chocolate on the brain, a condition I could completely understand, and with all those drugs, not to mention the head trauma, he had just hallucinated some crazy scene where he gave me chocolates … some chocolates that for some reason he didn’t want me to eat.

As I pulled into the driveway, I had to laugh at the absurdity of it all. I’m not exactly the most religious person in the world, but I do believe that we each have some kind of higher power—some presence that watches over us all, pulling the strings and keeping everything spinning. Whatever it is, I was beginning to think that my higher power had a very mischievous sense of humor. On top of all the craziness that had unfolded in the last few days, the moment I had decided to go on a diet it seemed like there was something tempting me to break it every five minutes. I was beginning to feel like a character in a book, where everywhere I turned the author put some chocolate in my path just to torture me.

* * *

As I came around the curve and saw the carport under my apartment, I breathed a huge sigh of relief. Michael’s car was in its regular spot, and so was Paco’s. As an undercover agent, Paco rubs elbows with all kinds of shady characters—corporate embezzlers, drug dealers, gang members—and as for Michael, fighting fires isn’t exactly the safest activity in the world, so a full carport always means one thing: I can rest a little bit easier. It’s like a big ball of tension in the pit of my stomach just starts melting away.

Of course, a full carport usually means I’m probably getting a gourmet meal for dinner, so that feeling in my stomach could just be hunger.

Either way, as I crunched across the driveway to the steps, the sight of Michael and Paco busily moving around in their kitchen helped take my mind off everything. I decided that, at least for tonight, I’d just let it all go and try to have a nice, relaxed evening with Ethan.

He was taking me to Yolanda, the Spanish restaurant where we’d had our very first official date, so I definitely didn’t want to spend the whole night thinking about Baldy and Janet and Mr. Hoskins and Cosmo. It helped that I didn’t have Mr. Silverthorn’s number; otherwise I would probably have been calling him every half hour to find out how his search was going. I didn’t even know if he owned a cell phone at all, but I had already decided that it wouldn’t hurt to sneak away at some point during our date and give Mrs. Silverthorn a quick call, just to see if there was any news.

Once inside, I dropped my backpack in the middle of the floor and sat down on the couch. There was just one more little thing I needed to take care of if I really wanted to have a nice night and focus all my attention on Ethan.

I reached down in the side pocket of my cargo shorts and pulled out my souvenir from the Silverthorn Mansion—the shredded remains of my book’s missing chapter.

I laid it down on my lap and whispered, “Okay. How in the world did you end up in that tree?”

Given the week I’d had, I half expected it to answer me, but of course it didn’t. It just sat there all shredded and mute—clearly it wasn’t giving up its secrets that easily—so I unfolded the loose covering of lavender fabric and drew out the pen-and-ink drawing.

“And who the hell are you?”

The woman peered back at me, tight-lipped and sly. I flipped it over. It wasn’t signed anywhere, but I knew it had to have been one of Mr. Hoskins’s drawings. The only difference was that it looked almost like a preliminary sketch. The style was the same, but it wasn’t as detailed and intricate as the other drawings.

I studied the woman’s face, hoping there might be something I recognized, some identifiable feature, like a mole or a tattoo, but there was nothing. She could have been any pretty young woman with long dark hair … but of course, I had my theories.

The top page was mostly intact. Even though the lower portion was nibbled a bit at the ends, and the paper was all buckled and water stained, I could still make out the chapter title. It was “Gardeners Beware.”

I read the first paragraph.

Now let the reader turn to Figure 9, where such a beauty as Abrus precatorius is depicted. If the reader wishes to preserve his muscle for other household chores, he may allow such a vine to o’ertake his fields, which it will do in short order, smothering all other plants in its path and establishing a garden that is, if not attractive, forever free of fret and fidget. We hasten to add, however, that the fruit from which this industrious vine gets its common name, rosary pea, is quite deadly. It is in fact considered the most poisonous seed of them all, so unless the gardener has less charitable uses in mind, he would do well to avoid the cheerily colored berry altogether.

I hadn’t even finished the last sentence when I grabbed my cell phone off the coffee table and punched in Detective McKenzie’s number.

“McKenzie here.”

I said, “Detective, this may sound crazy, but has the coroner determined Mr. Hoskins’s cause of death?”

She said, “Dixie, the cause of death is gun wounds. That was obvious from the beginning.”

I frowned. “I know he was shot, but did you run blood tests? Was there anything odd in his blood?”

“Dixie, what’s going on?”

“Remember when I told you about that book I bought in the bookstore that night? Remember I said it was missing a section? Well, get this—I was in the top of that big magnolia tree at the Silverthorn Mansion, and I found the missing section in a squirrel hole.”

There was a pause. “A squirrel hole.”

“Yes, a squirrel jumped out and it had a piece of paper in its mouth. They were using it as a nest.”

“The squirrels were using the hole for a nest…”

“No, no. The book. They were using the book, chewing it up and building a nest with it in the garden shed. At first I couldn’t figure out how it got there—”

“I’m trying to figure out how you got there, but go on.”

“It’s a long story. I didn’t have a chance to look at it until now, but listen—it’s all about poisons. The whole chapter is plants that gardeners should avoid if they have pets.”

She sighed. “Dixie, it sounds interesting, but I don’t see the connection.”

I said, “The very first paragraph is about rosary pea vine. It’s like the most poisonous seed in the world, and it’s growing all over the Silverthorn Mansion. It’s basically covering everything that doesn’t move.”

“Yes?”

“So, I mean, don’t you think that’s kind of weird? There’s a book in Mr. Hoskins’s store that’s missing the last chapter, and then the next thing you know Mr. Hoskins is dead and the missing section is all about poisons and it’s hidden in a tree surrounded by poisonous vines? I know it seems crazy, but you’re just going to have to trust me on this one. If you run those tests, you’ll find poison in his blood.”

“Dixie. We ran tests. His blood was clean. There were no foreign substances at all. No poisons. No drugs. Nothing. There was head trauma, so we think he was knocked unconscious first, and then he was dragged into the crawl space and shot once in the chest. We know how he died.”

I winced. I wished I’d been spared that detail. “Are you sure?”

“Dixie, I wish you were right, I really do. I’d love to have a lead on this case, but I just don’t see a connection. There was no poisoning.”

I nodded. “Okay, but there’s one more thing. Inside the book is one of Mr. Hoskins’s drawings. It’s a woman … and she’s nude.”

“Okay … go on.”

“Well, doesn’t that tell you something?”

“Dixie, what does it tell me?”

I sighed and shook my head, defeated. “I have no idea.”

She thought for a moment. “You’re sure it’s one of Mr. Hoskins’s drawings?”

“I’m not positive, but I think so. It’s not signed or anything, but the woman looks a lot like the woman in a couple of other drawings in the store.”

“Alright. Just to be on the safe side, I’ll send an officer over first thing in the morning to pick it up. For now, keep it someplace safe. Though I must say, it’s not exactly earth-shattering that you’ve got a book from Mr. Hoskins’s bookstore with a drawing by Mr. Hoskins in it. Even given the strange circumstances of where you found it, there are a lot of reasons why someone might hide a nude drawing.”

Half whispering, I said, “I know…”

I was thinking about Janet. If I was going to turn her in, now was the time. If I didn’t tell McKenzie what I knew right away, it would be pretty hard explaining why later … but I just couldn’t do it. I just couldn’t shake the notion that, even though what Janet had done was completely wrong, I knew with all my heart that in her mind she felt there was no other choice.

“Was there something else you wanted to tell me?”

McKenzie’s voice snapped me back to the present. I shook my head. “Um … no, that was it.”

“You’re sure?”

I could tell by the sound of her voice she knew there was something more, but I held firm. “Yep.”

After we hung up, I laid the phone down on the coffee table and just stared at it. I was beginning to wonder if maybe Detective McKenzie didn’t have a few psychically gifted ancestors of her own.

* * *

For the next half hour or so I managed to keep my mind off everything by straightening up the apartment. I got out some glass cleaner and my trusty bottle of bleach-and-water mix and cleaned the heck out of anything that was glass, porcelain, or chrome until all the accumulated grime was a distant memory. Then I took a long hot shower until all the accumulated grime in my head was a distant memory, too. Feeling completely renewed, I toweled myself off and padded naked into my closet to see if I could drum up a date-worthy outfit to wear.

I am not, by any stretch of the imagination, a fashionista. It’s not that I don’t like nice clothes, I do, but unlike most women I just don’t like shopping for them. In fact, I’d be tickled pink if I never had to see another mall for as long as I live, even if it meant wearing the same clothes every day until they fell off in tatters and I had to go around stark-raving mad and naked to boot—which may very well happen one day. Standing in the middle of my closet and surveying my measly collection of outfits, though, I wished I had a slightly better attitude.

There were only a few viable options, one of which was a beautiful plum-colored evening dress, but I’d worn that the first time we’d gone to Yolanda and it didn’t seem right to wear it twice in the same place, so instead I decided on something a little less fancy. I laid out a white silk blouse with mother-of-pearl buttons, a low-cut yellow cotton camisole, and a pair of cream-colored linen capris.

Looking in the mirror over the desk, I applied a little makeup, with just enough blush and eyeliner to make it look like I hadn’t given it a moment’s thought. That took me a good ten minutes. Then I pulled the hair dryer out from under the sink, blew off the dust, and coaxed my hair into a state of natural, windswept fluffiness—as if I’d just come in from a fun, carefree day at the beach. That took another ten minutes at least. Then I got dressed, which took another half hour because I changed my mind about what to wear ten times, and just when I’d given up and settled on my first choice—with a resolution to go to the mall as soon as possible—I heard Ethan’s car rolling up the driveway. I knew I had just enough time to slip my bare feet into a pair of nice low-heeled sandals before he could climb the steps and knock on the door.

As I checked myself one last time in the mirror, I had a momentary lapse. I think it was the mother-of-pearl buttons on my blouse—for a second I saw the shiny brass buttons of Mr. Hoskins’s shirt staring back at me in the darkness, but I closed my eyes and chased the image away before it had a chance to take over my whole brain. Then I just stood there and waited.

There was no knock. I went into the living room and looked through the window, thinking Ethan was waiting for me in the hammock, but he wasn’t there. I grabbed my pocketbook and opened the French doors. Nothing. I looked over the balcony, and sure enough there was his car, parked just behind mine, but he was nowhere in sight. I went down the steps into the courtyard.

The tiki torches were all lit, except they’d been rearranged. Instead of surrounding the deck like they usually did, they were in a line leading all the way down to the beach. I looked in the kitchen window. It was empty. Drying on a rack next to the sink was a pile of copper pots and pans, but Michael and Paco were nowhere to be seen.

I went over to the edge of the deck and followed the line of torches down to the beach, where my eyes finally landed on Ethan, illuminated by the golden glow of the last torch. He was at the water’s edge, standing next to a small table and two dining chairs. There was a white cloth spread across the table with a glass hurricane lamp in the middle, sending a flickering light over a sparkling arrangement of silverware, wineglasses, and gleaming white china.

He called out, “Hemingway, party of two?”