Curiosity Killed the Cat Sitter (4 page)

There wasn’t much to tell, but I told him what I knew. Mostly, that consisted of the fact that I’d found the slider to the lanai unlocked and Marilee’s bedroom and bathroom ransacked before I found the dead man.

“Did you notice anything missing?”

“No, but I wouldn’t notice anything except the obvious. There was just one thing that struck me as odd. She had left her hair dryer behind. Most women getting ready for a trip stick their hair dryer in their overnight bag last thing after they’ve finished their makeup and hair. They don’t leave it behind, especially when they’ll be gone for a week.”

“Maybe she had a spare already packed.”

“Maybe, but it sort of bothers me. Marilee’s an unusually neat woman. She doesn’t leave her hair dryer lying out like that.”

“Okay, what else can you tell me besides the hair dryer?”

I caught an edge to his voice and let the hair dryer go. I told him what Marilee had told me the day before—that she was leaving town that night and would be gone a week.

“She travels a lot on business, and the only thing different about this time was that I had to go by and pick up a new house key because she’d had her locks changed.”

“Did she say why she’d had them changed?”

“No, and I didn’t ask.”

“Her car’s in the garage. Does she usually drive to the airport?”

I stopped to think. “I can’t remember ever looking in her garage when she was gone. If she was leaving from the Sarasota airport, I guess she might have driven.”

“But you doubt it.”

“I really don’t know. It’s just that Marilee is more the type to take a limo.”

“Did she leave a number where she could be reached?”

I felt my face redden. “I told her to leave it for me, but I didn’t look for it while I was there.”

Judy slid a plate of eggs and potatoes in front of me, and put another in front of Guidry. “I’ll be right back with your bacon and more coffee,” she said.

To cover my embarrassment at having to admit that I’d let a client leave town without making sure she had left a number where she could be reached, I dug into my backpack and took out my client notebook.

“I have every client’s information in here,” I said. “When I first interview them, I get names of their vets and numbers to call in an emergency.” To emphasize that I hadn’t been irresponsible, I added, “Sometimes people go mountain climbing or something where I can’t call them directly.”

Judy plunked down a rasher of crisp bacon in front of Guidry and refilled both our coffee mugs. I eyed his bacon wistfully. It was exactly the way I like it, stiff, with no icky white bubbles on it.

Guidry moved a pair of slices to his plate and buttered his biscuit while I flipped to Marilee’s page in my notebook. “She gave the number of a woman named Shuga Reasnor as her emergency number,” I said.

“Shuga?”

I spelled it out for him, and forked up some egg. He had left four slices of bacon on its special plate.

“What’s her number?”

I jerked my eyes away from his bacon and peered in the book. I read it off to him, and while he wrote it down, I looked at his bacon again. He sighed and picked up the bacon plate. He raked two slices onto his own plate and then tipped the remaining two onto mine.

“You know you want them,” he said.

“Well, just this once,” I said. “I never eat bacon. I love it, but I never eat it. All that fat…”

“What do you know about Marilee Doerring?”

“Not much. She has some sort of decorating business, I think.”

“Husband? Boyfriend?”

“I’ve never seen a man at her house, and there’s never any sign of one.”

“You look?”

“I don’t look for man signs, but I do give the house a quick once-over every time to make sure the cat hasn’t done something that needs cleaning up. Sometimes pets get bored and knock over a plant or poop in the middle of the bed. It’s part of my job to check for things like that.”

“How many times have you been in the house?”

“Lots. I can get the exact dates for you if you want. I keep a file at home of every visit.”

“Isn’t a week a long time to leave a pet alone?”

“Yeah, but cats can handle it. I go twice a day and play with them and comb them and talk to them. During the day they watch TV, and I always leave the blinds up so they can sit on the windowsill and watch the birds and squirrels outside. At night I put the lights and the radio on a timer. They get a little bored and lonely, but most pets would rather be at home alone than with strangers in a strange place.”

He was watching me closely. “You really like doing this, don’t you?”

“Does that surprise you?”

“It just seems like a big jump, from deputy to pet-sitter.”

I shrugged. “It’s really not so different. You always have to be alert, you always have to expect the unexpected, and every now and then somebody tries to hump your leg.”

He laughed and then sobered. “Do you have any idea who the dead man is?”

“Not a clue. Do you?”

“We’re checking it out.”

That meant he wasn’t going to tell me.

He said, “We’d like to keep the details of how he was killed quiet as long as we can. Have you told anybody about him being taped to the water bowl?”

I shook my head. “I haven’t told anybody anything.”

“Good. I’d appreciate it if you wouldn’t. Some reporter will get your nine-one-one call and report it, but until somebody does, we’re not going to make that public.”

“Is Marilee a suspect?”

He shrugged. “Everybody’s a suspect.”

I had scarfed down a whole slice of bacon before I realized that included me.

Guidry tossed bills on the table and stood up. “You’ll be around?”

I nodded. “I’ll be on the street behind Marilee’s this afternoon walking the Graysons’ dog. I’ll stop by while I’m there.”

“Okay.”

He left without any “See yous” or “It’s been nices” or “Glad to meet yous.”

As soon as he was out of sight, Judy plunked herself down opposite me with coffeepot in hand.

“Okay, who is he?”

“He’s a detective. There’s been a murder at one of my
pet houses and he’s the investigator. I found the body, so we ate while he questioned me.”

“Well shit, I thought he might be a man. You know, a man for you. Who got murdered?”

I ignored the part about a man for me. In spite of the fact that Judy has had terrible luck with men, she persists in thinking it’s time for me to get one.

“I don’t know who he was.”

“Shot?”

“I’m not sure. I turned on the kitchen light, and there he was, stretched out on the floor.”

“No!”

“Yep, DRT—dead right there.”

“Good God. Did you freak out?”

“Come on, I used to be a deputy, I don’t freak out at things like that. Well, I freaked out a little, but just for a minute.”

“Who’s house was he in?”

“Marilee Doerring’s.”

“I know who Marilee Doerring is. She’s a piece of work. You know her?”

“Just from taking care of her cat. She’s always been fine with me. Pays on time, takes good care of her cat. I don’t have any complaints about her.”

Judy looked around to make sure nobody was listening, and leaned closer. “See that man at the counter reading the paper? That’s Dr. Coffey. He’s a heart surgeon. He and Marilee Doerring were engaged a couple of years ago.”

A bell dinged from the back to get Judy’s attention, and she got up with her coffeepot to go pick up an order.

I studied the man at the counter. He was lean to the point of boniness, with sharp shoulder blades jutting from his back like mountain ridges. His dark hair was shorn high, with a longer shock flopping down to meet the
shaved part. It was a cut for a much younger man, a cut meant to be cool and mellow. It made him look like the nerdy kid in high school who never quite fits in, the one who’s always on the sidelines watching the popular kids. He was wearing the Siesta Key male uniform—khaki shorts, short-sleeved knit shirt, and docksiders, which exposed a lot of straight black hair on his arms and legs. For a quick second, I imagined running my hands down his bare back and felt my fingers tangle in a thicket of hair. Ugh.

Somehow I couldn’t imagine him with Marilee, but if they’d been engaged, he must have known where she went on her business trips. Before I could talk myself out of it, I got up and went to the counter and took the stool next to Coffey. He turned his head just enough to give me a quick glance to reassure himself I wasn’t anybody he knew, and turned back to his paper. He had a smooth rectangular face like a department store mannequin, with a high forehead and long cheeks. His sallow skin was perfect as plaster, and his dark eyes were velvety and dull, like ripe olives that have set out too long and lost their sheen.

I said, “Dr. Coffey, I’m sorry to interrupt you, but I’d like to ask you something.”

He looked at me again, this time with a furrow of distaste forming on his unlined forehead.

“I’ll be quick,” I promised him. “My name is Dixie Hemingway, and—”

Looking flustered and anxious, Judy came trouncing to us bearing his order and her coffeepot. He moved his paper out of the way so she could set his plate down. Scrambled egg whites, dry rye toast, sliced tomatoes. I guess if you’re a heart surgeon, you eat like that.

Judy topped off his coffee and looked warningly at me. “Something for you?”

“No thanks, I’m not staying,” I said.

She gave an emphatic nod of her head and stomped off with her coffeepot held in front of her like a lancet.

Ignoring me, Dr. Coffey picked up his fork and cut into his egg whites. His fingers were hairy, too, with black hair sprouting between his knuckles. I watched his fork with a kind of repelled fascination. There’s something unnatural about eating just the white of an egg.

I pushed Ghost’s velvet collar higher on my arm and said, “The thing is, I’m a pet-sitter, and one of my clients left town and didn’t leave a number where she could be reached. There’s been something of an emergency at her house, and I was thinking you might have some idea where she might have gone. Like where her business takes her, or where her family lives.”

He looked toward me again and then stood up so fast it seemed like his knees had suddenly gone stiff and he couldn’t sit anymore. “I know nothing about this! Do you understand me? Nothing! If you bother me again, I’ll have you arrested. Do you understand?” His voice was venomous, and he was shaking.

I said, “Well, actually, you can’t have me arrested just for asking you a question. I’m sorry if I bothered you, but don’t you think you’re overreacting?”

He extended his arm with his skeletal finger pointing at me like Abraham cursing the Philistines. “Stay away from me!”

Stomping to the front door, he charged out of the diner so fast that several people in the front booths looked around.

Judy came over and leaned on the counter. “Thanks a lot,” she said. “You just chased off one of my best customers. Not to mention the fact that he stiffed me for his breakfast.”

“All I did was ask him if he knew where Marilee might
have gone. He was going to marry her, he must know something about where her job takes her.”

She groaned. “He hates her. She dumped him practically while the organ was playing the wedding march. I mean, people were in the church and everything. She just up and left him standing there.”

“Well, that’s sort of brave, don’t you think? It must have been embarrassing, but if she realized she didn’t love him—”

“No, you don’t understand! She had got him to put a million dollars in her name just before the wedding. Gave him some big song and dance about how she didn’t want to be dependent on him after they were married, and how she didn’t want to live in fear that he would dump her one day and she’d be out on the street without a dime. How she wanted to be able to look him in the eye as an equal so they would both know she was with him because she
wanted
to be and not because she
had
to be. You know, like she was a poor little match girl out on the street getting taken in by a prince or something. The poor schmuck fell for it and transferred a million bucks to her account. In her name. Hers to have no matter what happened, like love insurance.”

“And then she dumped him?”

“Like a rock. He sued her, I think, but the doofus had given her the money, so she got to keep it. He hates her guts now. It was just two years ago. I can’t believe you didn’t hear about it.”

I didn’t remind her that two years ago I’d been doing well to get out of bed and find my way to the bathroom. I wouldn’t have known if they’d declared World War III.

She said, “He’s got a live-in bimbo now. I saw her early one Sunday morning coming out of cocaine alley.”

I knew the place she meant. Everybody on the key, including the Sheriff’s Department, knows the areas where
drugs are sold. There’s a drug bust every now and then, but mostly it’s small-time stuff not worth the time and expense to fight, especially when you know the dealers will be back on the street before the ink is dry on the arrest warrant.

“Do you think she was getting it for him?”

“Maybe, but he’s never seemed coked up. She does, though. You look at her and expect her feet to be a few inches off the floor.”

I looked at my watch and said, “Listen, I’ve got to run, okay? I’ll see you later.”

“Let the police handle this, Dixie.”

“It’s not the police, it’s the Sheriff’s Department.”

“Whatever.”

I knew she was right, but it bothered me that I didn’t know how to get in touch with Marilee. I had a responsibility, and I wasn’t at all pleased with how I was handling it.

Before I left, I ducked into the ladies’ room, where two very large black women were at the sinks. One of them I recognized as Tanisha, a cook in the diner, but I didn’t know the other one. I whipped into a stall, and they went dead silent, the way women in a rest room do when they’ve been interrupted mid-conversation. When I flushed, the sound seemed to release them.

“So I says to him, I says, ‘You can kiss my big fat black ass.’”

“Uh-huh, that’s good.”

“I told him, ‘You can start in the middle and kiss your way thirty-six inches to the right, and then you can go back to the middle and kiss your way thirty-six inches to the left. You can just kiss my big fat ass.’”

I went out to wash my hands, and they went silent again. I kept my gaze directed toward my hands, but I could feel them watching me. I pulled a paper towel from the holder and turned around and leaned my butt on the counter.

I said, “I absolutely cannot leave here without knowing what happened next. What’d he say?”

They both laughed. Tanisha said, “Girl, he didn’t say nothing. He just stood there with his mouth hanging open, and I walked. I don’t take that shit from nobody.”

I grinned and tossed my wadded-up paper towel in the bin. “I wish I could have seen that.”

I left them giggling and punched the door open with my knuckles—I’m squeamish about putting the flat of my hand on a bathroom door because half the women who go in there don’t wash their hands—and headed for the parking lot.

The temperature had climbed and the Bronco was like a pizza oven. I started the car and let the AC run while I pulled out my cell phone and client book and flipped to Marilee’s page. I read Shuga Reasnor’s number while I dialed it.

The voice that answered had the husky, half-choked sound of somebody blowing out cigarette smoke and talking at the same time. “Hello, this is Shuga,” she said.

I had been pronouncing the name “Shooga,” but when she said it I realized the name was “Sugar,” with an exaggerated southern accent. Probably a lot of people would think that was cute.

“This is Dixie Hemingway, Miss Reasnor. I take care of Marilee Doerring’s cat, and she gave me your number to call in case of an emergency. Has Detective Guidry been in touch with you yet?”

“Noooo.” She drew out the word while she registered all the implications of what I’d said.

Damn. I should have checked with Guidry before I phoned. Now I’d given her a heads-up that a detective would be calling her.

“The reason I’m calling is that Marilee’s out of town, and I’ve taken Ghost to a day-care center. I expect he’ll be there for a day or two, and I just wanted to make sure that was okay with you.”

“You’ve left who?”

“Ghost. Her cat.”

“Hell, I don’t care. I don’t know why she left my number.”

“You don’t happen to know where she went, do you?”

She laughed uneasily. “I didn’t even know she was gone. What did you say your name was?”

“Dixie Hemingway. If you should hear from Marilee, I’d appreciate it if you would have her call me.” Before she could ask any more questions, I gave her my number and thanked her, then punched the disconnect button.

“That was really dumb,” I muttered to myself. “Really, really dumb.”

Before I backed the Bronco out, I slid Ghost’s velvet collar off my wrist and put it in my backpack. It was 11:55. I should have been at Kristin Lord’s house an hour ago. A murder really screws up a work schedule.

When I got to the traffic light at Beach Road, I automatically turned my head to look at the fire station. I’ve done that all my life. Once when I was about seven years old, my father was in the driveway with some other fire-fighters polishing the fire truck when my mother and Michael and I drove by. My mother honked at him, and he gave us a big grin and waved. It’s one of my favorite memories.

Kristin and Jim Lord were the kind of people who prove the theory of karma and reincarnation—they had less sense than a pair of sand fleas but were filthy rich, so they must have been really, really good in a former life. I’d known them since high school, but we’d never been friends. They’d run with the kids who knew the difference between Polo and Izod—and cared—and I’d run with the kids whose idea of making a fashion statement was not wearing yesterday’s T. Kristin had a huge crush on my brother for a while, and I don’t think she ever forgave him for rejecting her.

Kristin met me at the door of their multimillion-dollar mansion with a smile frosty at the corners. “You’re a little late, aren’t you?”

Kristin was slim, with glossy brown hair cut to curve
around her square jaw, and heavy dark eyebrows that made straight slashes above beautiful hazel eyes. Her nose was out of a plastic surgeon’s catalog, but her lips were naturally full and wide. Her upper lip was thicker in the middle, giving her a slightly rabbity look. If she were so inclined, she probably gave her husband great blow jobs—further proof of a previous life of good deeds, at least for him. She was wearing a pair of wrinkled white cotton capris and a free-hanging pink-and-white-striped shirt that covered her newly bulging tummy.

“I got tied up,” I said. “Sorry.”

She made a little snuffing sound with her perfect nose to show her displeasure, and spun around to walk ahead of me, her raffia flip-flops making sucking noises on the cool Italian tile.

Kristin was four months pregnant and she had developed an acute case of Fear-Of-Cat-Poop. Specifically, she was afraid of catching toxoplasmosis from her cat’s litter box. Cats can only get toxoplasmosis from eating a diseased rodent, and a pregnant woman can only get it if she touches the diseased cat’s feces and then eats something without first washing her hands. Kristin’s cat had probably never even seen a rodent, much less eaten one, and what woman doesn’t wash her hands after changing a litter box? But it was Kristin’s fear and her cat and her money, so I allowed her to pay me twenty dollars a day to groom her cat and change its litter box.

The cat was an American Shorthair named Fred. Shorthairs are low-maintenance cats, so it was almost a crime to take money for what little I did. Fred’s litter box was in a guest bathroom, and I kept the door closed because Kristin was so spooked about it. A litter box shouldn’t have more than a quarter inch of sand in it, and flushing it away took a nanosecond. I spritzed it inside and out with my all-purpose water and Clorox mix, rinsed
the hell out of it with hot water, dried it with paper towels, and spread another quarter inch of sand on the bottom. I replaced the bag of litter under the counter, and washed my hands and dried them. The whole procedure had taken two minutes, tops.

When I went out to the lanai for Fred’s grooming, he and Kristin were both pretending not to be excited that I was there. Fred was doing a jug imitation, sitting tall with his long tail curled around his toes the way some executives curl a long line back under their signatures. Kristin was sitting in a cushioned redwood chair, eager to gossip. Dishing dirt was Kristin’s favorite pastime. She had done it when we were in high school, and she was still doing it. She had never been fastidious about facts, and if somebody’s reputation was hurt because she’d passed on malicious gossip, it never seemed to bother her.

Kristin said, “It was on the news this morning about that dead man in Marilee Doerring’s house. They said you found him, but they weren’t giving his name until his next of kin is notified. Who was he?”

My heart did a somersault at hearing that anything about me was on the news, but I kept my face still and lifted Fred to the table.

“They gave my name?”

“They just said a pet-sitter, but I knew it was you.”

As if he sensed that a dark cloud had lowered around me, Fred looked over his shoulder with sad eyes.

Fred was large and muscular, brown, with a white muzzle and throat and white paws. Like all American Shorthairs, he was sweet and affectionate. When I ran my hands lightly over his body, telling him by touch where I was getting ready to brush, he arched his back and began to purr. I dipped a hand into my grooming kit for my small slicker brush and pulled it through the hair on the
back of Fred’s neck, careful to keep the brush flat so the bristles wouldn’t dig into his skin.

“I don’t know who the man is,” I said. “Like they said, they have to notify his family before they announce his name.”

Fred tilted his head back so I could get under his chin, and I made short strokes on his snowy throat and chest. He stretched his head up higher. If he could have spoken, he would have said, “Yes! Yes! Now a little to the right! Oooh, that’s good!” Since he couldn’t talk, he purred louder.

Kristin said, “The Sheriff’s Department won’t say how he was killed until they do an autopsy. Isn’t that odd?”

I shrugged. “They always do an autopsy whenever a person dies in mysterious circumstances.”

Kristin did a disappointed pout with her bunny mouth. “I know Marilee Doerring from the yacht club. People don’t like her much. Well, men like her, but women don’t.”

I put a protective finger over Fred’s sensitive spine and combed in short parallel strokes on each side. Fred gave a warning flick of his tail, and I went back to his neck and throat, making sure I was keeping the teeth of the brush comfortably pointed straight at his skin and not tilted to the side.

“I think it’s because Marilee’s so flashy,” said Kristin. “Lately she’s been wearing an
enormous
square-cut diamond that’s
soooo
ostentatious. The thing just screams zircon!”

My experience with diamonds being limited to the small kind that nobody would mistake for a zircon, I continued combing Fred and stayed quiet.

Kristin gave a little self-deprecating laugh. “God, I sound catty, don’t I?”

I don’t know why people say they’re being “catty” when they make unkind remarks about other people. Cats are never like that.

Kristin shifted in her chair and said, “It’s not because she’s pretty that I don’t like her. I’m not afraid of pretty women. And it’s certainly not because she has money! It’s that you always get the feeling Marilee’s trolling for men. If a man’s anywhere in her vicinity, you can almost hear the music from
Jaws
playing.”

I thought of Olga Winnick and said, “Predatory music?”

“Exactly! Marilee is a predatory woman.”

I was imagining Kristin and Olga Winnick together talking about how predatory Marilee was, when Kristin’s eyes settled on my wedding band.

“You’re a widow. Why do you still wear a wedding ring?”

The question caught me off guard, causing my hand to jerk so the bristles of my slicker brush bit into Fred’s skin. He growled a warning and waved his tail, and I quickly went back to his throat to placate him. I’ve never thought of myself as a widow. Widows are old women with blue hair and a lifetime of memories. I don’t belong in that group, I’m just a formerly loved.

Kristin looked up at me as if she’d suddenly had an attack of sensitivity. “I hope you don’t mind my asking.”

I didn’t answer, but just to scare her, I turned Fred so that his anus faced her while I brushed the hair around it. She watched with pale dread, so hyperalert for bits of cat poop that she forgot her question. Fred whipped his tail back and forth to let me know his patience was wearing thin. To reward him for not jumping down, I combed his neck and throat again.

He pushed his head up against my hand and purred his thanks. I picked him up and set him on the floor, packed my slicker brush away, spritzed the table with my handy-
dandy water–Clorox mix, and wiped it dry with paper towels.

“I’ll let myself out,” I said. I had been there only about five minutes.

Kristin looked disappointed. She would have paid me another twenty dollars just to stick around and dish dirt about Marilee. Fred stuck his left back leg into the air and curved around to enthusiastically lick the inside of it. He didn’t even say goodbye.