The Cat Sitter’s Cradle (29 page)

Mrs. Harwick laughed incredulously. “This is ridiculous. What are you even saying?”

“Butorphanol is a narcotic. It acts very quickly. You must have led your husband out
to the lanai. Once the drug took effect, either he fell into the pool or you rolled
him in.”

“And why in the world would I do that?”

“Because you didn’t want to share his money. Because you were looking out for your
own children.”

She shook her head. “You stupid woman. I was in Tampa that night.”

I said, “That’s what I thought, too, until I saw that receipt, the one in the bag
with the butorphanol. The receipt was for seventy-nine dollars, which is probably
about what a taxi would cost from Sarasota to Tampa.”

She shook her head. “You’re crazy. You have no idea what happened.”

I kept my voice level. “Mrs. Harwick, the taxi driver wrote an address on that receipt.
I recognized it from the files your husband gave me with your contact information.
It was the address of the hotel you stayed at with your husband in Tampa. 1146 Del
Rio Way.”

A smile played across her lips. “You certainly have it all figured out, don’t you?”

I said, “No, not everything. There’s some kind of code written at the bottom of the
receipt. It says ‘230A1P.’ I didn’t know what that meant at first, but I knew it wouldn’t
be too hard for the police to talk to the taxi company and get their records, especially
since it’s all computerized these days. If I was a taxi driver, I think I’d definitely
remember driving a beautiful older woman from Sarasota to Tampa in the middle of the
night. Say around 2:30
A.M.
, and I think ‘1P’ stands for ‘one passenger.’”

She put her hand on the clasp of her shoulder bag, and I immediately had the feeling
that August wasn’t the only one in the family that carried a gun.

She said, “Dixie, I’m afraid you’re going to be very sorry you ever met me.”

I said, “Mrs. Harwick, you should know that when I heard your car drive up just now,
I called the police. They’ll be here any minute.”

She was still holding the packet to her chest. She glanced around the room. I wondered
if she wasn’t thinking about running, but then she casually reached over and dropped
the packet into the wood-burning stove. The flames leaped up around it, and the cabin
filled with the smell of burning plastic.

She turned to me calmly and said, “When the police arrive, I’m going to tell them
that you and your lover, Kenny Newman, called me here tonight to blackmail me. I’m
going to tell them that you first tried to blackmail my husband. You threatened to
expose his true identity. When he wouldn’t cooperate, you drugged him and pushed him
into the pool. I’ll tell them you told me to take a taxi back to Tampa or you’d kill
me, too, and that if I ever breathed a word of what happened that night, you’d kill
both my children.”

She drew a metal poker out of the wood bin and stirred the ashen remains of the packet
around in the red-hot embers. “Roy was good at making money, but he wasn’t a very
smart man. If anyone ever found out that he had faked his own death, he would have
gone to jail for insurance fraud and tax evasion. He would have lost his position
at Sonnebrook, not to mention his stock, and my family would have been left with nothing.
But apart from all that, Roy wasn’t a very good person. I think you figured that out
pretty quickly. So yes, you’re right.”

She laid the poker down on top of the stove and turned to me. Her eyes were sparkling
like two black marbles, and her lips curled into a smile. “I killed him. Of course,
without this packet, it’s just your word against mine. And I do wonder who the police
will believe. Me, the grieving widow of one of the wealthiest, most powerful men in
the country? Or you, a small-town litter-box cleaner, who got kicked off the police
force for mental instability.”

I said, “Mrs. Harwick, I don’t need that packet.”

She leaned forward slightly. “And why is that, sweetheart?”

“Because I took everything out of it before you got here. That one was just stuffed
with old newspapers.”

Her face went white.

Shadows rose up behind her, and as she turned, Detective McKenzie and two deputies
moved swiftly down the steps with their guns drawn and pointed directly at her.

McKenzie said, “Mrs. Harwick, that’s good enough. Please drop your bag and raise your
hands over your head.”

Deputy Morgan moved into the room with his gun still fixed on Mrs. Harwick as she
lowered her purse down to the ground. He glanced at me. “You okay?”

I felt dizzy, like someone had just hit me in the head with a frying pan. “Yeah—but
I think she has a gun in that purse.”

Detective McKenzie said, “Mrs. Harwick, you’re under arrest for the murder of Roy
Harwick.”

*   *   *

By the time I came up out of the boat, Mrs. Harwick had already been read her Miranda
rights and taken away. The whole area around Hoppie’s was surrounded with police cars,
and the parking lot looked like it had been turned into a disco of flashing red and
blue lights. Except instead of dance music, there was only the sound of crickets,
which had woken up when the rain stopped, and the chatter from the police radio in
Detective McKenzie’s unmarked sedan.

I was sitting in the driver’s seat of the Bronco, waiting for the adrenaline that
had been coursing through my bloodstream for the last hour to subside. It had left
me feeling like a bowl of mush, and I wondered if that wasn’t what a porcupine fish
feels like after it’s spent a couple of hours all blown up and spiny. All I wanted
to do was go home, have that drink Mrs. Harwick suggested, and crawl into my bed.

Detective McKenzie came up to the window and said, “I’ll need you to make a statement
about everything, but I think it can wait until tomorrow. Will you be okay?”

I said, “I’ll be fine, but I am worried about one thing. I’m afraid of what August
will do when he finds out what’s happened to his mother.”

She nodded. “Dixie, I should probably tell you—the special investigative team conducted
a sting operation at August’s hotel tonight. They picked him up for smuggling endangered
species into the country and selling them illegally. One of his couriers has agreed
to testify against him, so I don’t think you’ll need to worry about that young man
for a long time.”

I nodded. No wonder Paco had been so quiet whenever the Harwicks came up. He’d been
in the middle of an investigation into August’s smuggling operation.

Meekly, I said, “Do you by any chance know the name of that courier?”

She smiled. “Dixie. You know I can’t tell you that.”

I did, but I also didn’t need her to tell me. I had a pretty good idea who it was.

She stuck her hand in the window and shook mine firmly. “Thank you for what you did
tonight. Do you need someone to follow you home?”

“No, I don’t have that far to go. My place is just up the road.”

She nodded curtly and started to turn away, then stopped herself. “You know, people
talk about you down at the station. They wonder why you keep getting involved in things
like this, why you would put yourself through this kind of danger. They say it’s crazy.
But I think I know why.”

I blinked dumbly at her. I hoped she would share it with me, because I had no earthly
idea.

She said, “It’s not fair how you lost your family. Believe me, I have an idea of what
that feels like. So, I get it. I just wanted to tell you that.”

She turned and walked away. I sat there for a few moments. I wasn’t completely sure
what the heck she was talking about, but it did dawn on me that seeing someone punished
for wrongfully ending someone else’s life felt good.

Really good.

I picked up my phone and punched in Ethan’s number.

He answered on the second ring. “Umm, isn’t it a little late?”

I said, “Remember tonight when you said to call if I needed you?”

“Yeah?”

I said, “I need you.”

27

A light fog had risen up after the rain had stopped, but as I drove home I barely
noticed it since my brain was already in a fog of its own. To be honest, I think I
was in a state of shock. I couldn’t help thinking about Mrs. Harwick. When she had
pulled that poker out and stirred the burning embers in the stove, there had been
a look of real fear in her eyes, but more than that, there was a look of certainty.
She seemed driven, as though there was no doubt in her mind that what she was doing
was right and that there were no other choices.

Had things gotten so twisted in her head that she really believed she needed to murder
her husband in order to protect her children’s security? Or perhaps it was never Mr.
Harwick that she loved, but his money, and she wanted to keep it all for herself.
I remembered with a shudder that she’d mentioned that Mr. Harwick was her second husband
and that her first husband had died unexpectedly. I wondered if somebody shouldn’t
look into that.

I pulled into the curving lane that leads down to my house and slowed to a crawl.
I didn’t want to wake anyone up. Ethan’s car was parked under the carport next to
Michael’s, but of course Paco’s was gone.

The Special Investigative Bureau was probably still booking August, and I had a feeling
they had a lot of questions for him. I thought of Corina and how nervous she’d looked
getting on that private plane. I knew why now. There had been a sleeping bird in that
purse she was carrying. That’s why August had handed it to her so gently. If she was
the courier that was cooperating with the police, I wondered if she’d been caught
in the sting as well or if she’d turned herself in voluntarily. I hoped it was the
latter.

I’d get Paco to tell me. Or at least I’d try. He can be a tough nut to crack sometimes.

As I pulled into the carport I saw Ethan waiting at the bottom of my steps. He came
over and opened the door of the Bronco, and when I stood up he hugged me. We just
stood there for a long time, not talking, but then it all came pouring out of me and
I told him everything. How I’d found the package of letters that Kenny had told us
about. How when I saw that bottle of Butorphanol and the taxi receipt, I’d realized
that Mrs. Harwick was probably not as grief-stricken as she was pretending to be.
How she had drugged her husband and rolled him into the pool and had planned on framing
me. He listened to the entire story and didn’t interrupt once, not even when I got
to the part about waiting in Kenny’s boat with my gun hidden in the cushions next
to me and the police hiding out nearby. He didn’t say a word. He just listened.

Have I mentioned that I like that in a man?

When I was finished with the whole story, I fully expected to hear a lecture about
never putting myself in that kind of situation again, or how I should have let the
police handle it, or what would have happened if, blah blah blah. Instead, he merely
nodded with an impressed expression on his face, as if he’d just watched me hit a
baseball out of the park.

“Nice job, Dixie.”

He walked me over to the steps with his arm around my shoulder. I was thoroughly exhausted,
but luckily this time he didn’t need to carry me up.

When we got to the top, Ethan said, “Looks like somebody left you a present.”

Sitting on my doorstep was a small paper gift bag, tied shut at the top with a scallop-edged
pink ribbon.

I put my hands on my hips. “Did you put that there?”

“No. I wish I could take credit for it, but I didn’t. Any other guys I should be worried
about?”

I rolled my eyes at him. “Come on.”

“No, seriously, I got here right before you did.”

“Really?”

I knelt down and picked up the bag. Then it hit me.

I said, “Oh, no. I bet it’s from Michael. He was teasing me earlier, and I got mad.”
I handed it to him and pulled my keys out. “He’s so sweet. I was going to apologize
to him in the morning, but he beat me to it. Open it up. Knowing Michael, I’m sure
it’s something good to eat.”

I dropped my backpack just inside the door and collapsed on the couch. Ethan walked
over to the kitchen counter and pulled the pink ribbon off and rustled through the
tissue paper inside.

He said, “Cynar. Nice.”

He pulled out a wine bottle with a red cap and a picture of a green artichoke against
a red background on the label.

I said, “What the heck is Cynar?”

“It’s really good. It’s made out of artichokes.”

“Ick! Artichoke wine?”

“No, it’s liqueur. It’s kind of bitter, but sweet, too. Tasty!”

It figured Michael would have gone out and bought me some strange, fancy liqueur.
He knew damn well I’d be just as happy with some homemade brownies or a six-pack of
beer, but he’s always trying to get me to develop a taste for more sophisticated things.
I felt like I recognized the label on the bottle, but I was pretty sure I’d remember
drinking something made out of artichokes.

Ethan tossed a card on my lap. “Here.”

I said, “He’s really trying to make up with me, isn’t he?”

“Let’s have some. After what you’ve been through today, you deserve it.”

“Okay. There are some glasses in the cabinet over the sink.”

He opened up the cabinet and rummaged through my sad, ragtag collection of mugs, plastic
cups, and wineglasses.

“Don’t you have any liqueur glasses?”

I shot him a disdainful look.

He laughed and pulled down two mismatched wineglasses. “Gotcha!”

I slid the card out of its envelope. It was the color of light butterscotch, with
a black border around its edge. There was no signature, just a short note. It said,
“Dear Dixie, love doesn’t always have to be a sacrifice.”

It was written in the tiniest, most precise handwriting I’ve ever seen.

Actually, that’s not true. I had seen that handwriting before: when Mrs. Harwick handed
me her feeding instructions for the fish.

I stood up and brought the bottle into the kitchen, studying the cap. I couldn’t really
tell if it had been tampered with, but I had a pretty good idea. I have to admit,
I was definitely in the mood for taking chances, but drinking artichoke liqueur laced
with a narcotic, or worse, was definitely not one of them. I twisted the cap off and
tipped the bottle into the sink.