Curiosity Killed the Cat Sitter (7 page)

After I got myself together and saw to the other cats, I drove to one of the ritzy streets coiling around the edge of Roberts Bay to see Shuga Reasnor. Half-hidden behind a cluster of royal palms, her house was a behemoth of glistening white stucco shaped in a wide V, its upjutting wings giving it the look of an albino frigate bird in flight.

In the circular driveway, I got out of the Bronco and pulled my shorts out of my crotch before I climbed three wide stone steps to the entrance. The front door was a thick slab of glass that allowed a view all the way through the house to the lanai. I couldn’t see it, but I knew the pool would be damn near Olympic in size and either equipped with every accessory known to man or built with a cascading waterfall. Or both. I rang the bell, a brass plate the size of a turkey platter, and stood looking up at the glass door while I waited. If that sucker broke as you walked through it, a shard could slice your head right off.

Through the glass wall at the back of the house, a woman moved into view out on the lanai. She came through the slider and walked toward me, giving me a thorough examination as she came.

“Are you Dixie? Sorry it took me so long, I was watering plants on the lanai. Come on in.”

Shuga was tanning-booth brown, with the kind of long blond hair that you get only by being fifteen years old or
paying a bundle for extensions. Her skin was smooth and taut like a fifteen-year-old’s, too, and her body was trim and youthful. She was wearing a short black tank top and low-rider white jeans that showed her flat belly and smooth swirl of navel. Only her knowing eyes and corded hands gave away her age, which I estimated as somewhere between thirty-five and forty-five. Barefoot, she led the way into her living room, her feet leaving faint damp prints on the black tile. Outside the sliding glass doors, a water hose lay coiled like a green anaconda in the midst of a jungle of potted plants.

Swooping over a coffee table the size of my bed, she plucked a cigarette out of a nicotine bouquet stuck in a crystal holder, and waved her hand at me in a gesture that managed to invite me to smoke and to sit at the same time. Her fingernails were like Porsche fenders, sleek and curved and bright red. I shook my head at the cigarette offer and lowered my butt to a curved sofa covered in a rose-colored linen. Like Shuga, the room was beautifully done, but it had a hint of street toughness that no amount of cosmetics or money could overcome.

She got right to the point. “I wasn’t entirely truthful over the phone. I don’t want to talk about the damn cat, it’s Marilee I’m worried about. The detective talked to me, so I know about that man in her house. That what’s-his-name person. But that’s all he would tell me. You know how the police are, they won’t tell you a thing, even if you’re a person’s best friend. You work there, you’re bound to know more than the police do.”

She said the last with a pasted-on smile, as if she had suddenly remembered that she needed something from me and ought to be sucking up.

“I don’t exactly work there,” I said. “I just stop in twice a day to take care of the cat.”

“And you don’t know where she went?”

“No, that’s why I called you. She didn’t leave a number where she could be reached.”

“The detective said she was going to be gone a week.”

She gave me a pointed look with one raised eyebrow, as if it was my turn. I stayed silent. If she wanted me to play coy guessing games, I wasn’t playing.

She sighed and blew out a stream of smoke. “What I want to know is how they can be sure she left town. Has anybody checked to make sure?”

I thought of the hair dryer left on her bathroom countertop. “Do you have any reason to think she didn’t?”

She took another hit from the cigarette and looked out at the plants on the lanai, as if hoping to find inspiration out there. Abruptly, she dropped into a chair and gave me a hard stare. “I might, but Marilee would kill me if I told anybody.”

“Miss Reasnor, if you know something that bears on a crime, you should tell the detective.”

“Call me Shuga,” she said throatily. The seductive way she said it was well practiced.

I gave her a level stare and her mouth twisted impatiently. “People have secrets,” she said. “Everybody has secrets. You probably have secrets.” She slitted her eyes and peered at me as if assessing what kind of secrets I had.

“And you’re afraid Marilee will be mad at you if you tell one of her secrets.”

“Hell yes. Wouldn’t you be mad if your best friend told one of your secrets?”

I shrugged and stood up. I didn’t have time for this. “Don’t tell it, then.”

She crossed her legs and swung her foot like an agitated cat swinging its tail. “I made a phone call last night to the place where she might have been going. She wasn’t there.”

I sat back down. “I thought you said you didn’t know where she was going.”

“I didn’t know there had been a murder when you asked me.”

“And you lied to the detective after you knew.”

“I’m not
sure
that’s where she was going. It wasn’t like she had
told
me she was going there.”

Her leg swung faster, and she sucked so hard on the cigarette, it almost disappeared into ash. Then she slapped her free foot on the floor and leaned forward and looked hard at me.

“It’s damn funny. It’s just damn funny. The murder’s all over the news, why hasn’t she called?”

To tell the truth, I’d been wondering that myself.

I said, “If you’re really concerned about her, you should give the investigators all the information you have.”

She leaned over and stubbed out her cigarette in a crystal ashtray that already had several lipstick-tipped butts in it. She lit another cigarette, and this time her hands were shaking. “I’ll think about it,” she said. “I really will think about it. You won’t tell them what I said, will you? I mean, I don’t know that’s where she was going.”

I stood up to go. “Not unless I think I have to. I can’t promise I won’t.”

She nodded, and for a moment her face looked as old as her hands.

I pushed through the great glass door and went down the steps to the Bronco, conscious all the way of Shuga Reasnor’s eyes watching me. I was sure of two things—she had been hoping to use me, and she had been lying through her teeth. I just didn’t know what she had lied about.

I am blessed and cursed with an excellent memory for the things people say and how they say them. It began
when I was a kid and had to pay close attention to what my mother said so I could figure out which things were lies and which were the truth. It was the only way I could predict what was going to happen from one minute to the next, and even then it didn’t always work. I got better at it over time, and now it’s second nature to me, like having a builtin lie detector.

I threaded my way through the serpentine streets, running through the entire conversation with Shuga, hearing her voice and its inflections. I passed the village and the fire station, driving on automatic, while my mind kept going over the meeting. Then I played it again, like rewinding a tape and starting all over. She had been nervous, but honest people can be nervous when they’re talking about things they don’t want to talk about, and her reluctance to betray a friend’s secret could account for her uneasiness.

As I turned onto the shell-topped lane leading home, a black Harley-Davidson came roaring toward me. The driver had a bandanna tied over bushy black hair. A thick beard covered the bottom of his face and dark glasses hid his eyes. He wore a black leather vest and faded jeans. Black boots. I stopped at the side of the drive and let him go by, watching his right hand. As he passed, his first two fingers extended and then folded back around the handlebar.

He sped out to Midnight Pass Road, and I drove on down the lane. The two fingers were the signal Paco and I had agreed on he’d use whenever he was working a case in disguise. Otherwise, I might have thought a serial killer was on the property.

I started replaying the meeting again, but this time seeing it instead of hearing it. Seeing Shuga’s face, her swinging leg, her fingers stabbing out her cigarettes. Liars always give themselves away one way or another. Some liars sweat profusely, some raise their voices to a
telltale falsetto, and some cut their eyes up and to the right, as if they’re seeing a vision of the story they’re inventing. I was dead sure Shuga Reasnor had been lying about something, but I hadn’t caught her giveaway sign.

I pulled into the carport and sat with the motor running, staring straight ahead at the Gulf but blind to everything except the mental images in my head. Like watching a movie, I slowed it down to an almost frame-by-frame run, and then I had it. When Shuga spoke of the dead man, she had called him “that what’s-his-name person.” As she said it, she had cut her eyes for an instant toward the right edge of the ceiling, the way people do when they’re inventing a lie. Now that I had the sign, I realized even her words had been a giveaway. She had tried too hard to feign ignorance of the man’s name, when it was known to every Floridian who was halfway sentient. Shuga Reasnor knew Harrison Frazier. She either had a personal relationship with Harrison Frazier or she knew that Marilee did.

A little voice in my head said, “No shit, Sherlock! You just figured that out?”

I should have realized it from the beginning, the way Tom Hale had. I had been so focused on putting one foot in front of the other that I hadn’t given the details of the murder much thought. Now I felt the way Snow White must have after the Prince kissed her and brought her out of her coma. In a way, I had been in a coma for three years, and now I was beginning to wake up.

I climbed the stairs to my porch and opened the French doors to let the sea breeze blow out all the morning’s stale air while I went to the bathroom and brushed my teeth. I checked my answering machine, which had no messages, then went out to the porch and sank into the hammock.

I thought about the aura of hard knowing that surrounded Shuga Reasnor, and about her opulent lifestyle.
My guess was that she had gotten her money the hard way, either on her back sequentially or in a marriage bed to somebody who had conveniently died with no other heirs. For all I knew, Marilee might have gotten her money the same way.

Had Marilee been present when somebody conked Harrison Frazier on the back of the head? Had she been there when somebody taped his face nose-down in Ghost’s water bowl? Maybe Marilee had been having an affair with him, and his wife followed him and killed him. If so, what had she done with Marilee? It could have been Marilee who killed him. He was big, but a woman can swing a baseball bat or golf club hard enough to knock a man out. But surely Marilee wouldn’t have been stupid enough to kill a man in her kitchen and leave him with his face taped inside her cat’s water bowl. Unless she’d counted on people thinking she wouldn’t be stupid enough to do that and therefore they’d think she had to be innocent. And where the hell was Marilee anyway? If she had killed him, she could be halfway around the world by this time. With all the money she had, she could buy a new identity, dye her hair, lay low, and she might never be found.

No matter who killed Harrison Frazier, Shuga Reasnor was right, it was damn strange that Marilee hadn’t called.

The hammock swayed ever so gently in the sea breeze and seagulls squawked and circled in the cloudless blue sky. The surf surged onto the beach in an unbroken rhythm, and I stayed wide-awake. Finally, I gave up trying to sleep and grabbed my car keys. Olga Winnick thought Marilee was a slut. Kristin Lord thought she was predatory. Tom Hale thought she was a gentle soul. Shuga Reasnor knew a secret about her that she was afraid to tell. All I knew about her was that she was neat and clean and took excellent care of her cat. I wanted to see what her grandmother had to say about her.

Sarasota has a slew of retirement communities and assisted-living facilities, and Bayfront Village is one of the most exclusive. Its main building is a pink brick monstrosity constructed in a vague mix of Gothic spires, Mediterranean arches, red tile roof, and Art Deco turquoise trim. I drove up a fake cobblestone drive and pulled under a portico, where a uniformed valet courteously opened the door for me. As he drove off to park my Bronco in some secret spot, wide glass doors automatically sighed open when they felt my presence. Inside, the cavernous lobby appeared to have been decorated by a committee of feverish designers who saw an opportunity to unload all the mistakes former clients had refused. Overstuffed sofas upholstered in fox-hunting scenes kept company with Hindu statues and gilded rococo. Plaster cherubs with fat cheeks mingled with sleek Danish modern and ruffled chintz.

Silver-haired men and women were moving around, some going outside to cars drawing up under the portico. A lot of them pushed little three-wheeled canvas walking aids that looked like empty doll carriages. I wasn’t surprised. The decor alone was enough to give them vertigo. Most of them wore sweaters, in spite of the fact that it was sizzling outside.

Feeling obscenely young and fit, I passed an easel supporting a large cardboard sign giving the week’s activi
ties. The sign was outlined in flashing lights, a tacky way of attracting attention, in my opinion, but I read it as I went by. One of the events being announced was a talk by Dr. Gerald Coffey, entitled “Help for the Heart.”

I went up to the front desk and told a calm young woman in a tailored black suit that I was there to see Cora Mathers.

“Is she expecting you?”

“No, I should have called, but I just took a chance and came over.”

“I’ll call her. What’s your name?”

“Dixie Hemingway, but she doesn’t know me. Tell her I’m her granddaughter’s cat-sitter.”

“Her granddaughter’s cat-sitter?”

“I take care of her granddaughter’s cat when she’s out of town. She left without giving me a number where she could be reached, and I’m hoping Mrs. Mathers knows how to contact her.”

She nodded and punched numbers into a phone pad. I could hear buzzes on the other end of the line, and after nine or ten of them, I was ready to turn away. The young woman didn’t seem fazed, however, so I waited. After what must have been thirty rings, a voice answered. The young woman explained my reason for coming and then listened intently while the person gave a lengthy response. She said, “Okay, Mrs. Mathers, I’ll tell her,” and put the phone down.

“She says to go on up,” she said. “She’s on the sixth floor. Turn right when you get off the elevator, her apartment is number six thirteen.”

The elevator was mirrored, so on the ride up I smoothed my hair and tried to brush some wrinkles out of my shorts. At the sixth floor, I stepped out and turned right, and saw a tiny woman with wispy white hair planted in the middle of the hall waving a heavily freck
led arm side to side like a highway construction worker. She wore a pair of wide-legged shorts in an exotic parrot print, with a bright red blouse that fell loosely over her thin hips. Her pale legs were as scrawny as a child’s, and she would have had to get on tiptoe to be five feet tall.

“Here I am,” she called. “Come on.” She was beaming at me with such a sweet face that I felt a stab of yearning for my own grandmother.

When I got close, I said, “Thank you for seeing me, Mrs. Mathers. My name is Dixie Hemingway.”

She turned into her doorway and crooked her finger at me to follow. “I know,” she said. “Debby told me when she called. Are you related to Ernest Hemingway?”

“No, afraid not.”

Taking tiny steps that moved her along in minuscule increments, she said, “I wouldn’t regret it if I were you, he wasn’t a man with a strong character. Oh, he was strong enough when he was young, all that swagger and boasting, but when the going got tough, he couldn’t take it. Shot himself, you know. Got old and shot himself. Being young is easy, you know, anybody can do that, but it takes guts to be old.”

We had now made it through a small foyer lined with framed botanical prints. Her apartment smelled like chocolate chip cookies.

I said, “Oh, this is lovely.”

I wasn’t just being polite, it really was. To my left was a bar in front of a small galley kitchen, and I could see a spacious bedroom to the right. Directly in front was an airy living room with a glassed wall across the back. The floor was pale pink tile and the walls were a deeper shade of pink. A pale green linen Tuxedo sofa sat in front of a glass-topped coffee table, and a couple of armchairs in a muted green and pink chintz faced the sofa. Between the kitchen and the sofa was a skirted round table with two
pale green ice-cream chairs. The effect was graceful and serene, enhanced by white wicker and greenery on a narrow sunporch that ran across the back of the living room and bedroom.

“It is nice, isn’t it? I’m so blessed to have it. Marilee bought it for me, you know. Sit down and I’ll make us some tea. You’re in luck, I just finished making chocolate bread.”

I took a seat at the round table and said, “I never ate chocolate bread.”

“Well, it’s my own invention. Marilee gave me a bread-making machine, oh, it must have been fifteen years ago now, and I use it every week. I start it and then at just the right time I throw in some chocolate chips. I won’t tell anybody when I throw them in, that’s my secret.”

She mini-stepped around the bar to the kitchen, where she clattered down two mugs from a rack and poured boiling water into a fat brown teapot. “I keep water simmering all the time,” she said. “You never can tell when somebody may drop by for a cup of tea.”

“You must have a lot of friends here.”

“Well, not a lot, but a sufficient amount. You don’t want too many people coming and going, but enough so you don’t feel alone. Of course, Marilee stops by pretty often, too, and that’s nice.”

She put the tea things on a tray and added a plate of fist-size hunks of brown bread studded with dark bits of oozing chocolate. Next to freshly fried bacon, the scent of hot melted chocolate may be the most tantalizing smell in the world. I got up and carried the tray to the table.

“It’s Marilee I wanted to talk to you about, Mrs. Mathers.” I said.

“Call me Cora.”

“Do you happen to know where she’s gone? She forgot to leave me a number when she left.”

She pulled out a chair and sat down across from me. “This is about that Frazier fellow, isn’t it?”

“Sort of. I’d like to let her know about it before she comes home.”

Pouring tea into our cups, she said, “Well, dear, I expect she knows by now, don’t you? I’m sure it’s been on all the news. Here, butter some bread while it’s hot. I don’t slice it, I just rip off chunks of it. I don’t know why, but it seems better that way.”

While Cora watched intently, I smeared butter on a hunk and took a bite. I closed my eyes and moaned. “Oh God, that’s good.”

“Better than sex, isn’t it? Of course it’s been a long time since I had sex, so I may not remember it clearly. I’ll bet you have plenty of sex, pretty young woman like you.”

I sipped some tea and avoided her eyes. “Cora, have you heard from Marilee?”

She swallowed a bite of bread and took a sip of tea before she answered. “I don’t imagine she’ll be wanting to talk to me right now. Not with that Frazier fellow dead in her house.”

“You knew him?”

“I never met the man.”

My head felt like it had been twisted like a doorknob and allowed to spin back into place. I buttered another bite of bread and chewed it slowly while I studied Cora’s face. Her eyes were overhung by crepey eyelids, but they were bright and alert. I said, “Why don’t you think Marilee will want to talk to you?”

Her lips tightened and she slapped a pat of butter on a bit of bread. “Well, Frazier’s the man who ruined my granddaughter’s life, isn’t he? Don’t think I’m saying Marilee hasn’t made the best of it, because she has. But that’s all water over the dam now, isn’t it?”

The words lay on the table along with the bread and
butter and tea. I could pick them up and learn something very personal about Marilee that she probably didn’t want known, or I could mind my own business and stay ignorant.

I said, “I don’t know about that, Cora. To tell the truth, I never understood what that meant, water over the dam, under the bridge, whatever.”

“Well, it’s just too late, isn’t it? What’s done is done, and you can’t go back and undo it, can you?”

“I guess not. Uh, Cora, would you mind telling me how Marilee knew Harrison Frazier?”

“Well, yes, I would mind, dear. That’s personal and private business of Marilee’s, and I don’t go around telling my granddaughter’s personal and private business, now do I? Have some more tea.”

“No thanks. Can you tell me where she is? I really think I should contact her.”

“No, can’t tell you that, either. But here’s what I’ll do: If she calls me—and she usually does call when she’s off on one of these trips—I’ll tell her you want to talk to her. How’s that?”

“Cora, the Sheriff’s Department would like to know where she is. It isn’t just me.”

“Well, I’ll tell them the same thing I told you. I don’t know, and even if I did, I wouldn’t say, because that’s Marilee’s private business.”

“But you’re not worried about her?”

“Oh my, no. Marilee can take care of herself. I’ll say that for her, she can take care of herself.” She waved her arm toward the glass wall as she said that, presumably to indicate the vastness of the visible blue sky as a symbol of how well Marilee could take care of herself.

I said, “Marilee left the number of Shuga Reasnor to call in case of an emergency. Do you know Ms. Reasnor?”

“Oh my, yes, I’ve known her since she was a little bitty
thing, only her name wasn’t Shuga then, it was Peggy Lee. Her mother was a fool for Peggy Lee, so that’s what she named her little girl. Poor little thing, that’s about the only thing her mother ever gave her. Her daddy wasn’t much better. Drunks, both of them. If I hadn’t fed Peggy, I think she might have flat starved to death. She’s done all right for herself, though. Last time I saw her, she looked like Miss Gotrocks herself.”

“You saw her lately?”

“No, it was several months ago. Marilee had picked up my heart pills at the drugstore and forgot to bring them to me before she left town, so Peggy Lee brought them to me. I told her she looked like a movie star. Between you and me, though, I don’t think that’s her own hair.”

“So she had a key to Marilee’s house?”

“Oh my, yes. Those two have always been in and out of each other’s house like it was their own.”

“Cora, did you know Marilee had her locks changed? I had to stop by and pick up a new key before she left.”

“Is that a fact? Well, no, I didn’t know that. But then, I wouldn’t, because I don’t have a key myself. The only time I go over there is when Marilee comes and gets me, so why would I?”

I was stumped. So far as I knew, Marilee hadn’t broken any laws or done anything wrong. If her grandmother didn’t want to say where she’d gone, she wasn’t obligated to do so. Furthermore, I was a pet-sitter, not a criminal investigator. I had already stepped over a line by coming here, and if I went any further, I would be getting into serious unethical territory.

I stood up. “I’d better go,” I said. “If Marilee calls, I’d appreciate it if you’d ask her to contact me. I’ve put her cat in a day-care center until the house is released, and I’d like to discuss that with her.”

“I’m sure whatever you’ve done is just fine.”

“Would you like me to put the tea things away before I go?”

“Well, if you don’t mind, dear, yes, I would. Things get heavier when you’re old.”

I set the teapot and mugs and plates on the tray and carried them around to the kitchen counter. The refrigerator door had notes attached by magnets, and there were several snapshots of a pretty dark-haired young woman.

I called, “Are these photos of Marilee when she was young?”

Through the open space above the bar, I saw Cora’s face close like a flower pulling its petals inward. She looked much older, and infinitely sadder.

“No, dear, those are not of Marilee.”

Her voice held such finality that I knew I had violated some unspoken rule by asking.

“I’m sorry,” I said. “I didn’t mean to pry.”

“Oh, of course you did, but it’s all right. I’m not angry. I just can’t discuss what it isn’t my business to discuss, now can I?”

I reminded myself that I had no right to ask questions, and said my goodbyes, leaving her hunched over the little round table.

Downstairs in the lobby, I veered behind a couple of elegantly dressed women standing in front of the blinking activities display.

“Excuse me,” I said, “my grandmother is thinking about buying an apartment here. Could you tell me how you like living here?”

They turned and started talking at once, the gist of which was that the chef in the dining room put out a fabulous Sunday brunch, that there were always classes and workshops and outings planned, and that everybody who
lived there was interesting. They could have done commercials for the place.

I nodded toward the blinking display. “I noticed that Dr. Coffey is going to do a talk about bypass surgery. Does he do that often?”

They sobered and nodded. “Yes, he does,” said one. “I suppose he’s operated on so many of the people living here that he needs to let us know that it’s available for us.”

I looked toward a tanned silver-haired couple striding out the door carrying tennis rackets. “Everybody looks awfully healthy. He can’t do
that
many bypasses.”

One woman fingered a string of cultured pearls at her throat and said, “Looks can be deceiving. Several people have been active one day and in the hospital the next. It’s really alarming.”

The other woman said, “Like Mary Kane. She had a big party for Sunday brunch, and that night she went into a diabetic coma. She just insisted on eating those cherry blintzes, and why not? She was eighty-five years old and she’d lived with diabetes for years and years. She knew what she could do and what she couldn’t do, but I guess that time she overdid it. Two days later Dr. Coffey did a triple bypass on her.”