Even Cat Sitters Get the Blues (10 page)

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Authors: Blaize Clement

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I lifted the .38 from its Styrofoam nesting place and laid it on the bed. I closed the case and slid the drawer back in. I pushed the bed back against the wall and stomped into the kitchen and put the gun on the bar in front of Guidry.
I said, “You’ll note that it’s clean and oiled. It hasn’t been fired.”
“I don’t want to press the point, Dixie, but the gun could have been cleaned and oiled since this morning.”
I slapped the counter and glared at him. “Guidry, this is nuts!”
“What was nuts was leaving the scene of a crime and pretending you didn’t know anything about it.”
I couldn’t argue about that. I said, “My grandmother always said that wisdom came from knowing that every decision we make carries a consequence. I made a bad decision.”
“That may be the understatement of the century.”
“Guidry, tell me the truth. Do you really think I could have killed that guard?”
“The truth? The truth is that I have a better chance of winning the lottery than I have of finding the shooter.”
The room seemed to grow dimmer for a second as it dawned on me that in the absence of an arrest of the real killer, I would look like a tasty suspect to a DA hungry to assure the public that all killers were speedily caught and executed.
When I was growing up, Sarasota was essentially lily white and essentially North American. Even Canadian snowbirds were considered foreigners. But as airfares from Europe got cheaper and European vacation spots more expensive, Florida became salted with temporary visitors from all over the world. Now criminal investigators have to think international. A serial rapist may follow an MO known to police in the Netherlands but not here. A burglar may leave a calling card familiar to French gendarmes but not to Sarasota law-enforcement officers. A tourist can commit a crime in Sarasota and be back home in Europe before the Forensics Department has had time to evaluate all their findings. Now when murders are committed, every homicide investigator has a secret fear that the perpetrator is halfway around the world laughing at him. The guard’s killer could be safely across the Atlantic while the DA focused on me.
I said, “Kurtz was carrying a gun when I got there this morning. He had it in a fanny holster under his bathrobe. Looked like a backup gun a law-enforcement officer might carry.”
“For Kurtz to kill that guard, somebody would have had to carry him out to the guardhouse.”
“He lied when he said nobody knew about the wine room. The nurse knew about it, because she’s the one who told me Ziggy was in there.”
Guidry waved his fingers back and forth to show how insignificant my blabbing was.
“Dixie, can you account for your time this morning? Did anybody see you during the hours before the guard was found dead?”
I swallowed against a lump in my throat. “There was a woman, Guidry. She was out walking a miniature bulldog and she stopped me this morning. There was something odd about her. She said her dog’s name was Ziggy, and she seemed relieved when I said I was going to see an iguana named Ziggy. She ran off and got in a car and drove away fast. The whole thing seemed phony somehow.”
“Dixie, that’s not—”
“Her picture was on the table beside Ken Kurtz’s bed. He denied it, but I’m positive it’s the same woman.”
“What do you mean, he denied it?”
I licked lips that had suddenly gone bone dry. “I asked him about her. I know I shouldn’t have, but I did.”
Guidry’s pupils contracted into little pinpoints, like a man about to jump up and ward off the devil. Half the people in Southwest Florida believe in a literal Satan, so for all I knew he might have caught the devil-believing bug, like catching chicken pox.
He said, “What’re you doing, running your own investigation?”
“It may be an investigation to you, but it’s my
life
! I’m the one who got tricked into going to that house. I’m the one the woman accosted. I’m the one somebody’s using, and I have a right to know who’s doing it and why.”
“I’ll agree that somebody tricked you into the house, but all that other stuff is your imagination—the woman didn’t accost you, it doesn’t mean a thing that her dog has the same name as the iguana, and the odds of her being the same woman in Kurtz’s photograph are about a quadrillion-to-one.”
“The photo was on his table when we carried him into the bedroom, and then later it was gone. He hid it.
Why would he do that unless he didn’t want anybody to see it?”
“I can think of a million reasons why a man might not want people to see whose photo he keeps beside his bed. The point is that you’re there as a pet sitter, not as an investigator. If you see something you think is relevant, tell me about it, don’t go blundering around asking questions. Furthermore, don’t withhold information,
any
information, and don’t put groceries in a refrigerator that may be an important part of a homicide investigation.”
Uh-oh. I’d forgotten about putting Ziggy’s veggies in the refrigerator.
Guidry’s voice had got louder with each word, and by the time he ended his face had gone from an appetizing peachy color to a rather unhealthy rose.
In a little-bitty voice, I said, “Okay.” Under the circumstances, that seemed like the best thing to do.
Visibly, he got control of himself. “I don’t know what it is about you, but you always seem to pop up whenever something really weird is going on.”
“So you agree the whole Kurtz thing is weird.”
He slid my gun in his jacket pocket and headed toward my French doors. “I don’t see how it could get any weirder.”
He didn’t even say goodbye, just left me wishing he hadn’t said that it couldn’t get any weirder. Call me superstitious, but I think it’s a big mistake to challenge the universe to pull out all its weird possibilities. That’s like declaring what you will not do, will not accept, or will not believe, ever, so long as you live, amen. Like parents who say about their baby boy, “No son of mine
will ever have a motorcycle,” are bound to look up one day and see him wearing a bug-eating grin with a biker chick glued to his road-calloused buns. You have to be careful about what you set into motion with what you say.
I went into my office-closet to check on messages. All but one were from people wanting to know my rates. I took their numbers to call back. The other was from Ethan Crane. Ethan’s an attorney, but he’s more interested in getting justice than in getting rich, so I don’t hold that against him. I’d first met him when he handled the estate of a cat I was responsible for. Later, he took over the management of a foundation set up by a man whose murder indirectly led to my killing somebody. I don’t hold that against him either.
Ethan is also one of the handsomest men I’ve ever seen in my life, and the second man I’d recently realized I was attracted to. In a sexual sort of way, I mean. In a holy-smokes-he’s-hot kind of way.
Which was all very confusing because all my pores had only recently commenced salivating whenever I was around Guidry, so what the heck was I doing feeling sexual toward Ethan Crane? It was like my body had been without sex or romance for so long it had lost its ability to make choices.
Ethan’s message was short and to the point. “Hi, Dixie, Ethan Crane here. Say, I was driving down Midnight Pass Road this morning and saw your Bronco in a driveway where there were a bunch of sheriff’s cars and a crime scene tape. I hope everything is okay with you. I think about you a lot. Could we have dinner one evening? Give me a call, okay?”
There’s a lot to be said for having dinner with a man who isn’t mad at you, so I punched in his private number. He picked up the phone on the first ring.
“Hi, Dixie, how are you?”
Damn, I always forget about caller ID. Knowing he’d known it was me before he answered made me stutter a little bit.
“I’m fine. Good to hear from you.”
“I know this is a busy time of the year, with the holidays and all, but if you’re free this evening, I’d like to take you to dinner.”
He had no idea how free all my evenings were. He also had no idea how I hated the whole idea of dating. I opened my mouth to tell him I was tied up until Easter.
My lips said, “Sure. Where shall I meet you?”
A beat passed while he registered that I would take my own wheels. “How about the Crab House at seven?”
“Better make it closer to eight-thirty. I have a full schedule today.”
He chuckled lightly. “Okay, I’ll meet you tonight at eight-thirty. Looking forward to it.”
I nodded at the phone and then found my voice. “Good.’Bye.”
As I hung up, it occurred to me that I’d just said what sounded like a curt
Goodbye
. What I’d actually said hadn’t been much less curt, but I had to fight myself to keep from calling him back and saying, “I didn’t say
Goodbye,
I said
Good.’Bye
.” Another reason to hate dating and all the rules and crap that go with it.
I got up and pawed through my few clothes. If I was going to start going out with men, and it looked possible,
I was going to have to buy a whole new wardrobe. Dresses. Skirts. Shoes and purses. The thought made me almost gag, but I had to start thinking like a grown-up, acting like a grown-up, dressing like a grown-up. I couldn’t go through life forever in shorts and jeans and T-shirts and Keds.
It was time to leave for my afternoon pet visits—all of them except Ken Kurtz. I wasn’t going to deliver a message to him, and I wasn’t going back to his house for any reason except to feed Ziggy. Furthermore, I wasn’t going until tomorrow. If either Ziggy or Kurtz got hungry before I came, they could damn well call out for pizza. But first I had to let Michael know what was going on.
I found him in his kitchen spreading freshly toasted chili-cayenne pecan halves on paper towels. When Michael and Paco moved into our grandparents’ house, they left it pretty much the way it had always been, except for the kitchen. Now the kitchen is outfitted with Sub-Zero appliances, an enormous grill, and every gizmo ever made for professional cooks. A wide butcher-block island has a salad sink at one end and stools on each side at the other end for eating. Since Michael does the cooking at the firehouse as well as for me and Paco, his freezer is always stuffed and he spends a lot of his off time cooking things for fellow firefighters.
Firefighters must like things hot, because chili-cayenne pecans are Michael’s annual Christmas treat for the firehouse. I popped one in my mouth and then did an Indian war dance while I fanned my lips and whimpered.
He waved a wooden spoon at me. “Coffee’s fresh. Pour me a cup too, would you?”
Still fanning my lips, I got down mugs and splashed hot coffee into them. When I handed one to Michael, he stopped me with his spoon on my chest.
“Okay, something’s wrong, and I want to know what it is.”
I took my coffee to the big butcher-block island and perched on a bar stool.
I said, “A man working as a security guard for Ken Kurtz was murdered early this morning. He was shot in the head in the guardhouse.”
Michael rotated his spoon, meaning
Get on with it
. “I heard that on the news. What does it have to do with you?”
I swallowed coffee and tried to think of a way to tell the story that didn’t make me seem crazy.
“Ken Kurtz has an iguana I was hired to feed, so I had to go to his house.”
Michael’s eyes were getting brighter blue, a sure sign his patience was wearing thin. “So?”
“I went there twice, once to get out of the rain and once to feed the iguana. The first time, I saw the dead guard and I didn’t report it. The second time, I went for the iguana, only I hadn’t realized the first time that it was the iguana’s house because I’d never been there before, because the man who hired me wasn’t really Ken Kurtz, he just pretended to be. And there’s a woman mixed up in it somehow. Two women, really, the nurse and the woman with a bulldog, but the nurse ran away and Kurtz claims the other woman is dead. But I think
he’s lying because he has her picture and I’m sure it’s the same woman.”
I couldn’t bring myself to look higher than Michael’s belt, but from the stiff way he stood, I was pretty sure I hadn’t done a good job of telling the story like a sane person.
He said, “Anything else?”
My voice came out weak as a new kitten’s. “A
Herald-Tribune
deliveryman called nine-one-one to report the guard was shot. He had seen me leaving as he drove in the driveway, and he reported that too, so Guidry has me as the only person seen leaving the crime site. The ME has put the time of death within the last few hours before it was reported. Guidry took my thirty-eight for ballistics testing.”
Michael moved to the bar stool across from me. He had gone so pale I could see tiny freckles I’d never noticed before dotting his cheekbones.
“Are you saying you’re a murder suspect?”
“Only because the
Herald-Tribune
guy saw me. When they do the ballistics test, they’ll know it wasn’t my gun.”
I tried to make my voice sound positive, but the truth was that Guidry hadn’t told me if they’d recovered an intact bullet or a casing. If they hadn’t, a ballistics test on my gun wouldn’t help me a bit.
When a bullet travels through a gun barrel, the bullet takes on marks unique to that particular barrel. Any bullet fired from a specific gun will show the same marks, unless there’s been some intentional alteration between firings. Or unless the bullet itself is distorted
because of hitting bone or passing through a body and hitting something else hard. Shell casings leave distinctive marks too, so the Forensics firearm examiner would be able to match a casing to the gun that fired it—unless no casing was found.
“But until then you’re a suspect, right?”
I was surprised at how calm he sounded. Then I noticed the handle of his coffee cup lying on the bar. He had snapped it clean off.
Miserably, I said, “Michael, I try to stay out of these things, I really do. I don’t know how I get involved.”
“The important question,” he said, “is how to get you uninvolved.”
It was way too late for that and we both knew it, but for a few moments we pretended there was a way out and that I would find it.
I said, “By the way, I won’t be here for dinner tonight. I have a date.”
I tried for nonchalance, but my voice came out squeaky.
Michael’s eyebrows climbed nearly to his hairline. He and Paco had been pushing me to get a man in my life for over two years.
Trying equally hard to sound like it was something I did every day, Michael said, “Actually, I won’t be here either. One of the guys at the station needs to take the night off for his daughter’s wedding, so I’m going to cover for him. A date with who?”
“Whom. Ethan Crane, the lawyer.”
“Ahhh.”
As I went out the door, I said, “This will all work out, Michael.”
He said, “Yeah,” and went back to laying out his pecan halves. I didn’t look at his face, but he actually sounded a bit hopeful. Only thing was, I knew it was because I’d told him I had a date.
At Tom Hale’s condo at the Sea Breeze, Tom stayed out of sight while I snapped on Billy Elliot’s leash. Downstairs, we ran around the parking lot several times like demented dervishes. I was still wheezing when we got back to Tom’s apartment, but Billy Elliot was grinning and calm. As I hung Billy’s leash in the hall closet, Tom rolled into the living room with a smile that managed to be both smug and sheepish, one of those sexual reactions peculiar to men.
He said, “Sorry about this morning, Dixie. I would’ve introduced you to Frannie, but you left too soon.”
“I didn’t know you were involved with somebody. It sort of took me by surprise.”
“Me too. I mean, I just recently decided to get involved. I figured I’ve been without love too long.”
I gave him my best cynical look. “You decided to fall in love?”
“Sure. Not that I wasn’t particular about the woman, but I’d made the choice to love before I met the person.”
I must have looked unconvinced, because he gave me a somewhat pitying smile.
“Love is always a decision, Dixie. It’s not something that descends on you like manna from heaven.”
I thought about that remark for the rest of the afternoon, while I was walking the dogs on my list and while I was playing with the cats. At Muddy Cramer’s urine-stinky house, I found him clinging to the top of the Cramers’ silk velvet draperies, leaving shred marks
with his claws and making heartrending cries of desperation. While I tried to coax him down, it occurred to me that humans are the only species that considers a house a shelter. Muddy had spent all his life in the open air, taking his chances with rain and wind and predators and traffic. While that’s not what anybody wants for a domestic cat, it had been Muddy’s life and he obviously didn’t consider it a blessing that the Cramers had rescued him from it.

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