The Cat Sitter's Whiskers

7

I’m a creature of habit. Seven days a week, rain or shine, hell or high water, dogfight or fur ball, my alarm clock goes off at five a.m. and I roll right out of bed. I stagger blurry-eyed into the bathroom, splash cold water on my face, and pull my hair into a ponytail. If I think about it I dab on a little lip gloss and maybe some mascara, and then I walk like a zombie into the closet and get dressed in the dark. The order is always the same: Underwear, bra, cargo shorts, sleeveless white tee, and a fresh pair of white sneakers.

I might do a shot or two of OJ and then I’m out the door. All my pets get at least two visits a day, one in the morning and another in the afternoon—usually about half an hour each, or more if the client wants it. I’m usually done with my morning rounds by nine or ten. Then it’s off to my home away from home.

The Village Diner is at the heart of the Key’s “commercial” area, what we locals call the Village, thus the name. I’ve been eating breakfast there my whole life. Well, that’s not exactly true. Before Todd and Christy left, I made breakfast at home. Pancakes were Todd’s favorite. Christy was crazy for my avocado-and-mushroom omelets. You’d think it would have been the other way around, but Todd and Christy were full of surprises like that.

I almost feel like I work at the diner, I’ve spent so much time in one of its teal pleather booths. My reserved spot is at the very back on the right. As soon as I walk in the door, Tanisha gives me a wave and a wink from her little window in the kitchen to let me know she’s already started on my order: Two eggs over easy with home fries and a biscuit.

I normally make a detour for the restroom to wash away the cat fur and the dog slobber I’ve accumulated, then I grab the newspaper and slide into my booth, where Judy’s usually waiting for me with a pot of piping-hot coffee.

Judy is about my age and pretty much my best friend in the world, even though I never see her outside of the diner. She’s smart-mouthed and long-limbed, with a sprinkling of freckles across the bridge of her nose, and honey-brown eyes that look out at the world with a distant longing. She knows everything about me and all my tales of sorrow, and I know all hers, most of which have a man at the bottom of them. And even though she’s not had the best of luck in the romance department, she’s always cheerful because, as she puts it, “on the road of life, the grumpier you are, the more jackasses you meet.”

She was leaning against the table with one hand on her hip, holding a coffeepot out from her waist and sloshing it around in slow circles. Her lips were pursed to one side and she had a particular look on her face—what I call the “Judge Judy.” It usually means I’m in trouble.

I slid into the booth and pushed an empty coffee cup toward her. “What are you looking at?”

“Well, first of all I’m looking at that Fu Manchu mustache you’ve got going on.”

I brought one finger to my lip and pulled away a small white tuft of fur that was clinging to my upper lip. “Oh, dammit! That’s probably been there all morning.”

Judy nodded as she poured my coffee. “Probably. And then I’m also looking at that pretty little bump on top of your head.”

I sighed. “Great. Is it that obvious?”

She grinned triumphantly. “No, but your friend Captain Morgan was in here a little while ago and told me all about it.”

“Are you kidding me? Isn’t that like a breach of confidence or something? And he’s a deputy, by the way, not a captain.”

She shrugged. “Deputy, captain, colonel. All I know is, I’m a sassy waitress in a small-town diner. If anybody’s got local gossip, they’re pretty much required to hand it over.”

I heard Tanisha ring her order bell as I took a sip of coffee. “So how much do you know?”

“Not much, I made the mistake of telling him he should be a little more professional, that people could be listening, but that was before I realized he was talking about you. If I’d known I would have kept my big mouth shut.”

“Well, what did he say?”

The order bell rang again, this time with a little more oomph to it, and Judy held up one finger. “Hold on, that’s probably for you.”

She zigzagged down the aisle, picking up plates and topping off cups of coffee here and there, and then in the blink of an eye returned with my breakfast. Tanisha must have known I’d had a rough morning, too, because sitting next to my eggs were two biscuits instead of one. They were topped with twin pads of melting butter and dollops of Tanisha’s homemade peach marmalade. One bite and my eyes rolled right up into the back of my head. I could barely hear Judy over the moans of sheer ecstasy coming out of me.

“He said he found you passed out on the floor in the Kellers’ laundry room and that you had a nasty bump on your head, but other than that he wouldn’t give me the details. Dixie, what the hell happened?”

I dabbed at the crumbs on my lips and took a sip of coffee for dramatic effect. “I don’t know.”

She shifted her weight to one side and crossed her arms over her chest. “What do you mean, you don’t know?”

“I mean, I don’t know.”

“Dixie, I’m in no mood for games. I’ve been worried sick about you.”

“Seriously, I have no idea what happened. Believe me, I wish to hell I did.”

I told her the whole story, how everything seemed fine when I arrived at the Kellers, how I’d given Barney his breakfast and taken out the trash, and how Dick Cheney had been waiting for me with his red-toed, baldy she-Buddha. The whole time I was talking, her eyes got wider and wider until finally she interrupted me.

“Wait a minute, somebody broke in to the Kellers’ house, put a mask on, and attacked you?”

I shrugged. “Maybe. Maybe not.”

Her eyes narrowed. “I’m gonna add another bump to that head of yours if you don’t stop foolin’ around and tell me what happened.”

“I’m telling you! Here’s everything I know: I passed out, and at some point or other I woke up, the doors in the living room that lead out to the back garden were standing wide open, and there were two candles on the coffee table that weren’t there before. And they were lit.”

She frowned. “You sure you weren’t the one that was lit?”

“Hold on, it gets weirder. When the cops showed up, those doors were shut and locked, the candles were gone, and the mask was hanging right where it’s supposed to be. So in other words, I may have fainted and dreamt the whole thing.”

She eyed me for a second and then sighed as she slid into the booth opposite me. “Hmm.”

“Yeah. Hmm is right. So I have no idea, and there was no sign of a break-in, either. Nothing missing.”

She put her elbows on the table and brought her hands together like she was about to say a prayer. “Now I know why Captain Morgan wouldn’t give me the details.”

“And this is gonna sound crazy, but Judy, I halfway think somebody followed me there. Do you know Levi, the paper guy?”

She nodded and started to speak but I interrupted her. “Well, he was parked outside my driveway about five this morning, at least I thought it was him because that’s what time the paper usually comes … only now I’m not so sure. Either way, I’m wondering if maybe he saw something suspicious. Or maybe he saw somebody lurking around outside the Kellers’ house…”

Her eyes narrowed slightly and she looked down at the table for a brief moment. I could tell she wasn’t convinced. “Honey, I think you better go see a doctor.”

“Now you sound like Morgan.”

“Well, Dixie, did you faint or not?”

I didn’t know whether to nod, shake my head no, or shrug, so I did a combination of all three.

She put one hand on top of mine and sighed. “Maybe you just need some food in you and a little rest. Just stop thinking about it and maybe it’ll all make sense tomorrow. You’ve just been working too hard, that’s all.”

I felt my eyes start to well with tears, much to my surprise, but I rubbed my eyelids with my thumb and forefinger so Judy wouldn’t notice. If she did, she pretended not to.

“And I know you don’t want to, but you need to stop by Dr. Dunlop’s office and let him take a look at that bump on your head. It looks like you’re growing a little horn, and it’s high time you got your head examined anyway.” She slid out of the booth and straightened her apron. “Now eat your breakfast and don’t worry. I’m gonna fetch you a couple of slices of bacon. That’ll get you feeling back to normal in no time.”

I nodded. “Okay. And bring me the newspaper, will you? Maybe that’ll help distract me.”

She reached over and picked up my coffee cup. “Well, I would if I could. That’s what I was gonna say before. The damn paper never came this morning.”

She turned and took two steps toward the kitchen, and froze.

As our eyes met she whispered, “Oh, Dixie, you don’t think…”

* * *

I remember reading once about Carl Jung, the Swiss psychologist who blew everybody’s minds in the 1920s when he came up with the whole idea of synchronicity. The way Jung saw it, anybody with a central nervous system was part of a collective unconscious, maybe even some kind of world soul, where the thoughts and actions of one being could touch, on some basic level, the thoughts and actions of every other being on earth. Of course, that just freaked everybody out because it meant that two seemingly unrelated events could actually have some kind of relationship with one another, even if you couldn’t exactly draw a straight line between them.

I think on any other day, the fact that the diner hadn’t received its morning newspaper wouldn’t have registered as even the slightest blip on my radar, but the idea that I’d spent the whole morning with Levi hovering in the back of my mind made it stand out, and I knew Judy was thinking the exact same thing. She’d done a quick poll of her other tables, and the results made the hair on the back of my neck stand up: more than half of her customers hadn’t received their morning papers, either.

After I wolfed down my breakfast, including two scrumptious pieces of Tanisha’s world-famous, lip-smacking bacon, I took a cup of coffee out to the bench on the sidewalk just outside the front door and slipped my phone out of my pocket. I had no idea what I was doing or what I hoped to accomplish, but that’s never stopped me before.

“Hello, and thank you for calling the Sarasota Herald-Tribune. If you’re a new customer, press one. If you’re calling to cancel your subscription, press two. If you plan on being out of town and would like to stop delivery, press three. If you didn’t receive your paper today, press four.”

The woman on the recording had a smooth, silky voice. I pulled the phone away from my ear and pressed four.

“Thank you. You have chosen to report a problem with your delivery. Please enter the telephone number associated with your account, beginning with the area code.”

“Oh, shoot.”

I tried my best to remember the diner’s telephone number, but after I punched it in, the voice said, “I’m sorry. I don’t recognize that number. Please enter the number associated with…”

I hung up and sighed. There was no point going on. First of all, the chances of getting an actual human being on the phone were pretty slim, plus I didn’t think my silky-toned friend would ever say, Press five if you think your paperboy may be in danger.

Just then Judy popped her head out the front door. “Any luck?”

“No, I couldn’t get a connection with a real person.”

“Ha. Story of my life.” She stepped out and leaned her hip against the bench, squinting into the sun. “Tanisha says he lives in her neighborhood.”

“Who, Levi?”

“Yep.”

“Where does she live again?”

“Grand Pelican Commons. She walks her dog past his place every night, so she said she could stop by and check on him when she gets off here.”

“Grand Pelican Commons. Isn’t that the trailer park across the bay?”

She tipped her chin up. “I think the preferred term is ‘mobile home community.’”

That was all I needed. I stood up and gave her a quick thumbs-up. “Perfect! Then I’m off the hook. I was starting to think I was overreacting anyway.”

She nodded. “Well, it certainly wouldn’t be the first time.”

“And just because a few people are missing their newspapers doesn’t mean diddly.”

“Nope. Doesn’t mean a thing, and Tanisha said he’s kind of wild anyway. Probably up late partying and just called in sick or something.”

I passed her my coffee cup and pulled my bike out of the rack next to the bench. “Well, if your paper ever shows up let me know.”

“Yes, ma’am. And if you faint while you’re on that bike and veer into traffic and get your head busted open like an overripe watermelon, be sure to give me a call.”

“Yeah, yeah, yeah. I’m on my way to Dr. Dunlop’s now.”

“Seriously?”

“Yes, seriously. I’ll stop by on my way home.”

“Good girl. Let me know what he says.”

“Okay. And tell Tanisha I said thanks.”

She swung open the door to the diner but stopped it with her foot. “For what?”

“For checking in on Levi. What do you think?”

Her eyes narrowed as I pedaled off, and I could feel her watching me all the way down to the end of the block.

* * *

This time of year, when the sun hangs just a few feet over your shoulders and the heat feels like it has weight to it, anybody with a lick of sense stays indoors in the middle of the day. If they absolutely have to go outside, it’s only for as long as it takes to walk from their air-conditioned house to their air-conditioned car, and then they park as close as possible to the front door of their air-conditioned destination. It’s only the tourists who don’t know any better.

I reminded myself of that as I pedaled through the throngs of heat-soaked vacationers wandering around the center of town: gaggles of teenagers in flip-flops and Ray-Ban sunglasses with candy-striped towels like sarongs around their waists, hand-holding gray-haired couples with blissful smiles and dabs of chalk-white sunblock on their noses and ears, parents with kids in tow all happily negotiating their melting ice-cream cones, and young lovers without kids in tow happily negotiating their four-wheeled beer coolers down to the beach to work on their tans.

It was like riding through an obstacle course, but as soon as I got down to the end of the Village, the crowds thinned out and I was able to pick up speed. By the time I got home I was drenched in sweat. Normally I would have gone right upstairs to my apartment, taken a nice long shower, and collapsed in bed for a quick nap before I was out again for my afternoon rounds, but not this time. I rolled into the carport, leaned my bike under the steps, and hopped right into my Bronco.

With the air conditioner on blast, I took Midnight Pass all the way up to Stickney Point, where I hung a right and crossed over the bridge to the mainland. Then I headed down Tamiami Trail, past the clusters of thrift shops and burger stands and streetside fruit vendors, all the way down to Old Wharf Way, which isn’t easy to find because it’s often confused with New Wharf Way a mile or two farther south, but also because the road sign got knocked down in a storm almost a decade ago and no one’s ever bothered to put it back up.

You have to know where you’re going to find Grand Pelican Commons.