The Cat Sitter’s Cradle (14 page)

I nodded mutely. I could feel my cheeks getting hot. Sometimes it felt like Sergeant
Owens had a twenty-four-hour security camera aimed right at the center of my brain.

He smiled and knocked on the hood a couple of times. “Alright, go home and get some
dry clothes. Detective McKenzie will probably want to see you down at the station
later.”

I pulled out onto the road, flashing him a pained grimace at the thought of having
to spend another moment under Detective McKenzie’s magnifying glass, but in truth
I didn’t want him to see the tears that were forcing their way out of my eye sockets.
At the very core of any cop’s heart, any cop worth a grain of salt, is a burning desire
to help people. I guess that’s true for ex-cops, too, because I felt like I had failed
Mr. Harwick.

As for Detective McKenzie, I knew Owens was right. There was a lot more she would
want to know, and there was a lot I hadn’t told her.

12

The Kitty Haven is a boarding kennel on Avenida del Mare, just a block from the beach
in an old Florida-style house with lemon yellow siding and peeling white shutters.
There’s a big bay window in the front overlooking a shady porch with a pair of white
rocking chairs. Inside, it’s all burgundy velvet, overstuffed pillows, and lace curtains.
I always feel like I’ve walked into the front parlor of an old-timey brothel whenever
I go there.

Instead of some scantily clad ladies of the evening lounging about, there were four
cats stretched out on a big puffy sofa and two more sleeping blissfully on the windowsill.
One of them raised its head when I came in and squinted at me the way cats do when
they can’t be bothered. The others barely moved a whisker.

A little bell over the door announced my arrival, and from the back of the house I
heard Marge’s assistant call out, “Be right there!”

Marge Preston is a plump, white-haired woman with a soft voice and the patience of
an angel. She started the Kitty Haven almost by accident. A stray cat had taken up
residence under her porch, and Marge, being a softie through and through, decided
to rescue it. She started putting out little pieces of cheese and tins of tuna to
seduce the cat, whom she named Albert. Eventually Albert was sitting at the breakfast
table in Marge’s kitchen and eating kibble out of the palm of her hand, although it
turned out she hadn’t picked the best name in the world, since within a few weeks
Albert gave birth to nine beautiful calico kittens. Marge decided to raise them all
herself and find good homes for them, and in no time at all she was known all over
the Key as “that cat lady.” Perfect strangers would knock on her door with cats they’d
rescued, asking if she could take them in and offering donations.

The Kitty Haven is Marge’s one true passion. In all the years I’ve known her she’s
never had a single vacation, and she’ll take any cat, no questions asked. In fact,
business had been so good in the past few months that she’d recently hired a new assistant.

“Dixie!”

“Hi, Jaz!”

I put Charlotte’s cage down, and Jaz wrapped her arms around me in a big bear hug.
When I first met Jaz, she was an angry, confused teenager who’d fallen in with a crowd
of hooligans and gotten herself into all kinds of trouble. But now she’d grown into
a beautiful, mature young woman, and all that anger had disappeared.

She had coffee-colored skin and a head of long black curls. There were still a few
telltale signs of her “questionable” past—nails painted jet black, a dagger tattooed
on her ankle—but she had the biggest smile on her face, and I could tell all those
days were long forgotten. She had always been a fierce animal lover, so when Marge
mentioned she was looking for someone to help out at the Kitty Haven, I knew Jaz would
fit in perfectly.

She said, “Marge isn’t here. Some lady called, said she’d seen a box of kittens on
the side of the road, so of course Marge ran off to save them.”

Charlotte had poked an arm out of one of the air holes in her crate and was frantically
waving it around trying to get our attention.

I said, “That’s okay, I’m just dropping off a temporary orphan.”

“Awww, what’s her name?”

“Charlotte, or sometimes she’s called Queen B.”

I unfolded the top of the crate. Charlotte poked her head out and hissed, but I could
tell her heart wasn’t really in it.

Jaz knelt down. “Oh my goodness, she’s not in a very good mood, is she?”

“Well, don’t take it personally. She’s grumpy even on a good day, and so far she has
not had a good day.”

Jaz picked Charlotte up out of the box and cradled her like a baby. “Poor Queen B,
did you have a bad morning?”

I cringed, waiting for Charlotte to go ballistic, but instead she buried her face
into Jaz’s armpit and started purring like a miniature jackhammer.

I said, “Wow, I think she likes you, which is good because she could definitely use
some extra TLC today, and she hasn’t had any breakfast.”

“Oh, I think we can take care of that. We have all kinds of goodies around here that
nobody can resist, no matter how big a grump they are!”

I gave Charlotte a little scratch between the ears. “Okay, well, tell Marge I’ll give
her a call. It should only be a couple of days.”

Jaz flashed me a big smile. “Don’t worry, she’s in good hands.”

I winked. “I know she is.”

I barely remember the rest of my morning. I had a few more pets to check in on, and
then I must have switched into autopilot, like a homing pigeon drawn to her coop,
because the next thing I knew I was dragging myself up the stairs to my apartment.
Michael and Paco were both at work, which was a relief, because I knew if they saw
me they’d know right away something was wrong, and I just didn’t have the energy to
explain it to them. Plus, I didn’t think I could even if I tried. My brain felt like
cold mush, and I needed some time to sort it all out. Not to mention the fact that
I was absolutely starving.

I didn’t even say hi to Ella Fitzgerald, who was napping in a little shaft of sunlight
from the kitchen window. I headed straight for the refrigerator and reached for half
a grapefruit, but just behind it was a chocolate brownie calling my name. I slapped
the grapefruit aside and went for the brownie, practically devouring it in one gulp.
Clearly I needed some comfort food. I found a bag of corn chips in the cabinet and
was about to rip it open and down them, too, when I remembered my date with Ethan
the following night. The last thing I needed to be worried about was fat hips. I stopped
myself, put the grapefruit in a bowl, and glumly carried it out to the porch with
one of the silver-plated grapefruit spoons my grandmother left me.

I sat down on the hammock and looked out at the waves lapping up on the beach. Ella
Fitzgerald followed me out and rolled around at my feet, scratching her back on the
rough wood flooring.

Where could I even start? My head was spinning with questions. Why had Mr. Harwick
come home, and why had he left Mrs. Harwick in Tampa? Perhaps they’d had a fight.
Given the way they treated each other in front of me, I had a feeling things could
get a lot nastier when they were alone. Had he just gotten up in the middle of the
night and snuck out of their hotel room? And if so, what did he think would happen
when Mrs. Harwick woke up in the morning and discovered he wasn’t there? Maybe it
was just one of the stupid games they played, goading each other on, each of them
trying to get under the other’s skin. But I knew that wasn’t right. When I answered
Mr. Harwick’s phone, there had been a note of desperation in Mrs. Harwick’s voice.
She was genuinely worried.

Then I think I actually said out loud, “No!”

I shook my head like a salt shaker, literally trying to empty it out, and took a bite
of grapefruit. I decided it was time to give myself a good talking-to.

I told myself enough is enough. How Mr. Harwick got in that pool, and who put him
there, was none of my damn business. He had a wife and two grown children and an entire
police department to help figure it out. He didn’t need me. I wasn’t his wife or his
daughter, and I’m certainly not a homicide detective. I’m a cat sitter. Besides, maybe
he hadn’t even been murdered at all. I thought of the liquor bottle on the coffee
table—I hadn’t noticed that the night before. Maybe he’d just gotten drunk and fallen
in the pool all by himself. Although, there had been
two
glasses.

No. I shook my head again.

If what Michael had said was true, Mr. Harwick traveled in circles that I did not
want to get mixed up in: cutthroats and thieves and oil potentates and foreign dictators.
He was a principal figure in one of the largest companies in the world, a company
synonymous with greed and wealth. There were probably people all over the planet that
would jump for joy at the news that he’d been found dead at the bottom of a pool,
and probably just as many that would have pushed him in themselves. I didn’t want
to be involved any more than I already was. And anyway, Detective McKenzie seemed
like a perfectly capable detective. I was sure she didn’t need my help.

Except …

It was hard not to compare McKenzie to her predecessor. Guidry had probably been the
finest homicide detective Siesta Key would ever know. Everything about him was smooth
and flawless, from the way his mind worked right down to his fine Italian shoes and
imported linen slacks. Okay, I might or might not have been in love with him, but
any fool could see that Samantha McKenzie was his polar opposite. She was obviously
intelligent, but she was about as stylish as a sack of wet rats. I couldn’t imagine
her wearing expensive Italian shoes any more than I could picture Guidry wearing a
beige blouse with ruffles, although it made me giggle a bit to try.

I’d almost put the whole thing out of my mind. I had even started to swing a bit in
the hammock, absentmindedly eating my grapefruit and imagining Guidry in a skirt and
high heels, when it hit me.

I jumped off the hammock. Poor Ella scattered out from under me like it was a bomb
raid. I raced inside to the answering machine and hit the
PLAY
button. There were no new messages, just the one Kenny had left me the day before:

“Dixie, it’s Kenny. Listen, I should have told you, but I couldn’t. Something’s about
to go down and … it’s big. I can’t tell you what it is, and probably by the time you
hear this I’ll be gone. I just wanted to say I’m sorry for not being honest with you
from the start. I was scared, and now it’s too late. I hope you’ll understand that
I didn’t have a choice.”

The machine beeped and clicked off. I sat down on the edge of my bed and cradled my
head in my hands. This whole time I had assumed he was planning on telling Becca he
couldn’t handle having a baby, that he was running away, moving on to another town
and starting all over again. Was it possible he’d planned on something else? Detective
McKenzie would need to hear about this, but before I could jump to any conclusions,
I picked up the phone and started dialing.

I hadn’t even thought what I would say if he picked up, but I was relieved this time
when I got Kenny’s voice mail. At least that meant he hadn’t canceled his phone service.

I said, “Kenny, this is Dixie. You need to call me. Right away. I don’t know what
you’ve done, but I just need to talk to you before … before things get out of hand.
I’m not mad at you, I just need you to call me the minute you get this, okay?”

I paused for a second, as if he might answer, and then hung up. I peeled off my clothes,
tossed them on top of the washer, and stepped into the shower. I stood there for a
few blissful moments and let the hot water stream down my body. When Becca had first
poured her heart out to me, she had said she was completely afraid of telling her
mother she was pregnant by the pool man. Could Becca have turned to her stepfather
for help? Perhaps he’d snuck out and driven home in the middle of the night. Tampa
is only a little more than an hour away by car. Maybe he’d come home to console Becca,
only to find her in the house alone with Kenny … and then what? Had there been a fight?

I knew there were things in Kenny’s past that he wasn’t proud of. Michael and Paco
were right, why else would he live on a boat and only work odd jobs for cash? Even
so, I couldn’t imagine him hurting a flea. And yes, Becca was impetuous, immature,
and an emotional disaster, and she didn’t seem too fond of her stepfather, either,
but she couldn’t be a murderer. She just couldn’t. I started to feel a little knot
at the center of my chest. It was just a small tightening of the muscles there.

I toweled myself off and put on a clean pair of shorts, a sleeveless white tee, and
a fresh pair of Keds. I sat down at my desk, and Ella hopped up and curled into a
purring ball in my lap. I ran my hand down the length of her spine and thought,
If only she could talk to Charlotte in whatever secret language cats speak, then we’d
have some answers.
I shuddered at the thought that poor Charlotte must have witnessed everything that
had happened.

Forget it. I opened some mail and paid a few bills, trying to think about anything
else. I left a message for a prospective client, a woman with a Yorkshire terrier
that lives out on South Coconut Bayou, and then I tried to balance my checkbook, but
it was no use. I had given myself a good talking-to, but apparently my self hadn’t
been listening. My mind kept flashing back to one particular moment. When I had pulled
the body up on to the edge of the pool and moved the tangle of black hair away, I
hadn’t for one second considered the possibility that it might be Mr. Harwick.

But I wasn’t surprised when I saw his face. I wasn’t surprised one bit.

13

Some afternoons on the Key can be as hot as blue blazes, especially in the summer
when the sun reaches its highest point in the sky. The crickets and birds and frogs
all take a break, finding cover in the shade and giving their voices a well-deserved
rest. Afternoon clouds sneak in off the shore all demure and innocent, but before
you know it they let loose with a torrent of rain and lightning bolts, sending golfers
and beachcombers dashing for cover. Then, just as quickly as they rolled in, the clouds
roll out. The sun shines through again, the leaves all sparkle, and the crickets,
birds, and frogs start warming up for their evening performance, which usually begins
about the same time the sun starts her slow descent into the Gulf.