The Cat Sitter’s Cradle (13 page)

August looked at me. “Where’s Becca?”

I said, “August, I called the police. I went out to get Charlotte and—”

Sergeant Owens stepped forward and said, “August, would you mind waiting out here
while we have a look inside?”

August began to tremble slightly as he moved out on the porch. I wasn’t sure if it
was the cool morning air or the all-night drinking, but suddenly all the color seemed
to drain from his face. I felt a pang of guilt for not having woken him up earlier
to warn him that something was wrong, even though I knew I’d done the right thing.
Now, all his swagger had fallen away. He looked like a little boy, wide-eyed and lost
in the woods.

Owens glanced over at one of the deputies and said, “Kendrick, would you please get
this young man a blanket while we have a look inside?”

The deputy nodded and motioned for August to follow. They walked down to the squad
van.

When they were out of range of hearing, Owens turned to me and said, “Who’s Becca?”

“She’s his sister, but I don’t think she’s here.”

He nodded. “Okay, where is it?”

I said, “By the pool. Go through the archway on your right and through the living
room to the big sliding glass doors. I can show you.”

Owens pointed at another deputy. “Hanson, take Dixie down and wait by the cars, and
keep an eye on the front. The rest of you lock down the grounds and let me know right
away if anything looks out of place. Morgan, Lyle, you’re with me.”

He pulled out some blue rubber gloves and booties and passed them to Deputy Morgan
and another officer. They all slipped them over their hands and feet. Rule number
one at any crime scene is to ensure the safety of both the witnesses and the responding
officers. I knew Owens was going in to search every single inch of the house, not
just for evidence, but for anything else that might be hiding inside. Like another
victim. Or a murderer.

I shuddered at the thought that there could still be someone lurking inside. Deputy
Hanson motioned to me, and I followed him down to the squad van, where August was
waiting with a blanket wrapped around his shoulders. I looked back to see Owens, Morgan,
and the other deputy moving slowly through the front door and into the house.

I turned to Deputy Hanson and said, “I have the cat in my car. Is it okay if I just
check on her?”

Hanson had jet black hair cut close to his ears and a little bit of stubble on his
chin. He couldn’t have been much older than August.

He said, “Where’s your car?”

“It’s on the street, just down by the gate.”

“Let’s walk down there.”

I walked down to the gate with August and Deputy Hanson close behind me. We went around
to the passenger side of the Bronco, and I opened up the door. Charlotte hissed from
inside her cardboard prison, just to make a statement, not with any real ferocity
behind it.

Deputy Hanson turned to August. “This is your parents’ cat?”

“Yeah,” August said. “She always acts like that.”

I said, “I think she’s probably not too happy cooped up in this box.”

Hanson walked around the back of my car, and August turned to me. “Dixie, what the
hell is happening?”

“August, I’m sorry, but I really think you should let the sergeant tell you.”

Hanson had noticed Joyce’s antique birdcage in the back of the Bronco. He raised one
eyebrow. “You always travel with a birdcage?”

I said, “No, sir, I was walking with a friend yesterday morning and we found an exotic
bird in the woods. I’m picking it up from the vet this morning.”

August stared at the birdcage without blinking, like he was studying it with every
cell in his body, but I knew better. He wasn’t stupid. I was soaking wet, and there
were cops and ambulances everywhere. He was bound to have figured out by now that
something very bad had happened in the pool, and I knew he must have been thinking
it had something to do with Becca.

Sergeant Owens came out on the front porch and called out to Deputy Hanson, who turned
and motioned for us to follow him. I could tell he didn’t want to leave me alone with
August. And then I realized: For all he knew it was August that needed protecting,
not me.

Until it was ruled otherwise, August and I were not only witnesses. We were suspects.

11

The scene of a murder is like the inside of a beehive. Everyone has a job to do, a
job for which they are specifically trained. The body lies at the center, enshrouded
in perfect stillness, while all the crime specialists buzz around it in ever-widening
circles, performing their one particular skill with single-minded concentration, seemingly
oblivious to everything and everyone around them. Together they operate as one efficient
organism, all in service of answering a deceptively simple question: What happened
here?

Sergeant Owens had asked me to wait in the living room, and even though I’d been in
this kind of situation before, I felt about as out of place as if I actually was inside
a beehive. I was sitting on the couch, wrapped in towels with a blanket over my legs,
trying to stay warm. My hair was still damp, and my clothes reeked of chlorine.

I had a partial view of the proceedings out on the lanai. The paramedics had moved
Mr. Harwick’s body onto a blue plastic tarp and were huddled over it. A photographer
was circling around the edge of the pool, taking pictures from every angle. Beyond
the lanai, deputies were stringing up a line of yellow police tape to seal off the
entire property and more than likely the adjoining properties as well.

Sergeant Owens was talking to somebody I didn’t recognize, a rangy, long-boned woman
in her midforties, with sorrel hair and skin threatening to freckle. She wore a knee-length
skirt approximately the same reddish brown color as her hair, with a beige blouse
that was ruffled down the front and a dull gray scarf tied in a knot around her neck.
The next thing I knew she and Owens were walking up to me.

With a firm handshake, she said, “Samantha McKenzie, homicide.”

“Dixie Hemingway. I’m the pet sitter. You’re Guidry’s replacement?”

A defensive blush rose in her cheeks. “So they tell me.”

“I’m sorry. I’ll bet you get that a lot.”

“I’m used to it. Miss Hemingway, I was wondering if you wouldn’t mind answering a
few questions?”

“Sure, except it’s almost nine, and I have other pets waiting for me.”

She nodded. “We won’t be long. I understand you have the owner’s cat in your car?”

“Yes, I took her with me after I tried to revive Mr. Harwick.”

“And why is that?”

I looked at the scene outside on the lanai. “I didn’t want to leave her here alone
with…”

McKenzie nodded. “And how long have you known August?”

“You mean Mr. Harwick’s son? I only just met him this morning.”

She looked down at a clipboard and read from the police report.

“That’s right, he arrived when you were waiting in your car with the cat.”

“No, he came home before I found the body.”

She looked up at me. “Oh? You just told me you didn’t want to leave the cat alone
in the house after you revived the body. Where was August when that happened?”

My mind was beginning to feel buttery. Detective McKenzie was frumpy and plain on
the outside, but she was sharp as a razor on the inside. She was testing me. Deputy
Morgan had obviously told her everything I’d said when he arrived, and now she was
deliberately trying to trip me up, looking for any inconsistencies in my story. I
could feel my entire body getting warm, and my armpits felt slippery.

I took a deep breath. “I didn’t want to be alone after I discovered Mr. Harwick, so
I took Charlotte with me. August was asleep upstairs.”

“Why do you say that?”

“He said he was going to bed. I think he’d been out all night.”

The corners of her mouth rose slightly in a smile. “No, I mean why do you say you
didn’t want to be alone? August was here, wasn’t he? Why didn’t you go up and get
him when you saw a body in the bottom of the pool?”

I said, “Detective McKenzie, I’m an ex-cop…”

I paused to see if that got a reaction, but it didn’t. Either she’d already been briefed
on my sordid past or she didn’t care. Either way, she didn’t even blink.

“I’m trained in CPR, so at that moment I wasn’t thinking about August or anybody else.
I was thinking I needed to get the body out of the water, and I needed to get it out
fast, so that’s what I did. I tried to revive him, and when that didn’t work I just
needed to get out of the house. I took Charlotte with me because I’ve been hired to
take care of her.”

Her expression didn’t change. She stared at me with milk-paint gray eyes and waited.
She knew I was leaving something out, even before I knew it myself.

I went on, “When I first got here, I had a strong feeling something was wrong, like
somebody was in the house or something. That’s when I called Sergeant Owens. And then
August came home, and before he went inside he pulled something out of his glove compartment.
I think it was a gun.”

She nodded. “You were afraid to be in the house alone with August.”

“I don’t know. Possibly.”

“Were you aware that the Harwicks’ Cadillac was in the garage?”

I said, “I didn’t even know there was a garage.”

“Yes, it’s off the service driveway at the far end of the house.”

“No, I didn’t think to look there, but Mr. Harwick did say that they were driving
to Tampa.”

“Okay. And how long was August inside the house while you waited in your car?”

I said, “Less than five minutes, I think.”

“And how would you describe his mood?”

“His mood?”

“Yes. Was he happy, sad, nervous, angry?”

I was starting to wish I hadn’t said anything. I should have known the minute I revealed
that August had a gun she’d latch onto him as a key suspect.

“I would say drunk and horny.”

She suppressed a smile and made a note on her clipboard. “Sounds like a typical teenager.”

“Yes.”

She paused for a moment and then looked me squarely in the eye. She said, “I was with
the FBI for twenty-five years. Dallas office. My husband was murdered nine years ago.
I have a sixteen-year-old daughter. Her name is Eva.”

I didn’t have to wonder anymore if Owens had told her about me. I figured he’d also
told her I’d lost my husband and my child and been dismissed from the force for “mental
instability.” It wasn’t that she probably thought I was a nutcase that made me want
to melt into a puddle at her feet right then and there. It was hearing her daughter’s
name that broke me open. Hearing her name made me want to lay my life out for this
detective, tell her about my own daughter, whose name was Christy and who had died
when she was three, about my husband, Todd, who’d died at the same time, tell her
how my life had ended that day and how I’d built a new life from scraps and shards
I’d clawed from the rubble of the old. I wanted to ask her if it had been that way
for her, too.

But before I could say anything, my cell phone rang. It must have fallen out of my
pocket down into the cushions of the couch. I fished it out and flipped it open, realizing
before I could stop myself that it wasn’t my phone at all—it just had the same ringtone
as mine.

Awkwardly, I said, “Uh, hello?”

A woman’s voice said indignantly, “Who is this?”

“Uh, this is Dixie.”

“Dixie? Dixie Hemingway?”

I said, “I’m sorry, I thought this was my phone.”

The woman cleared her throat. “This is Tina Harwick. I just woke up, and my husband
isn’t here. What the hell is going on?”

My mouth fell open, and Detective McKenzie looked up from her clipboard. I stammered,
trying to think of the right thing to say.

“Mrs. Harwick, I’m in your house right now…”

Detective McKenzie immediately snapped on a pair of blue rubber gloves and thrust
her hand out in front of me. I laid the phone down in her open palm. I could hear
Mrs. Harwick’s voice rising, “Dixie, what the hell are you doing with Roy’s phone?”

Sergeant Owens led me out of the living room. As we passed the two Roman statues flanking
the archway, I heard Detective McKenzie say, “Mrs. Harwick, my name is Samantha McKenzie.
I’m with the Sarasota Police Department. Is there someone there with you?”

I felt a stab in my chest, as if an arrow had hit me full force in the back and plunged
all the way to my heart. Mrs. Harwick had called her husband’s cell phone only to
find herself talking to a homicide detective. Of all the tricks that fate can play
on a person, that had to be one of the dirtiest.

I felt a little weak in the knees, and I think Sergeant Owens knew it. He walked me
all the way down the driveway to my car and even opened the door for me. Charlotte
peered through one of the holes in her cardboard penitentiary with one accusing eye.

I said, “I’ll see that their cat is taken care of until the crime units are done with
the house, but if Mrs. Harwick is still in Tampa tonight, I’ll need to come back to
feed the fish.”

“Not a problem,” Owens said, his words thick as syrup. “I’ll let the deputy on watch
know you’re authorized to enter the premises whenever you need to.”

There was a note in his voice that caught my attention. He cocked his head to one
side and squinted at me. “Anything else?”

I said, “I know what you’re thinking.”

“I’m not thinking anything, Dixie, except for some reason you seem to have a remarkable
talent for stumbling upon dead people.”

I sat down in the driver’s seat and sighed. “That’s what I thought you were thinking,
and I would
not
call it a talent.”

“You did a good job back there, Dixie. You did the best anybody could’ve done.”

I stared down at my hands folded in my lap. “If I had looked out on the lanai in the
very beginning, it might not have been too late to save him.”

“You don’t know that, and you can’t blame yourself.”