The Cat Sitter’s Pajamas (13 page)

She laughed. “What’s even sadder is that we can get the same hit of drugs by
imagining
the feelings that release them. People addicted to the drugs created by anger go around imagining angry confrontations. People addicted to drugs created by great sex spend a lot of time imagining sex. Or, conversely, if they’re addicted to the drugs created by sexual guilt, they may go around thinking of shameful sexual experiences that are purely imaginary.”

“So you think Briana—”

“Imagine what it would be like to be a poor kid breaking into houses to steal. Your heart would pound, your eyes and ears would be hyperalert. If you got into a tight spot you’d have to think fast to get out of it, and your only resources would be your wits and an agile body. You’d have to keep quiet about it, too, have a sly secret when you were with your family and friends. You would live with fear, excitement, triumph, relief, arrogance—emotions that would create a host of addictive chemicals.”

I said, “So if Briana got addicted to those chemicals, she would have to find a way to keep her body supplied with them.”

“Exactly. And in Briana’s case, the way opened up like magic. She got noticed, she became a model, then a supermodel, and all the time she was lying about her background. The fear of exposure would give her the same old chemicals she got from breaking into houses. But over time, bodies require more of the old addictive drug to get the same satisfaction. So Briana would have had to do something to increase her fear of being caught.”

“Like stalking Cupcake.”

“That would be my guess. And since he was her companion when her addictions began, she might have got additional satisfaction just by being near him.”

“But why wasn’t Cupcake addicted to the same chemicals? He was breaking into houses with her.”

Dryly, Reba said, “Have I missed something? Isn’t he a famous football player? He has to move fast, be highly alert, be on top all the time, or he’ll lose games and his career. That’s excitement. That’s anxiety. That’s triumph. Those are emotions that create all the old chemicals he knew as a kid breaking into houses. He also got rewarded for doing a good job, so he would have dual addictions. Most people have a lot more than two.”

As if she sensed that I bristled at the idea of Cupcake being an addict, she leaned over and patted my knee. “As I said, Dixie, we’re all addicts. Every person in the world is addicted to several self-created chemicals. Our addictions can be productive and beneficial, or they can be destructive. In Briana’s case, they seem to be self-destructive.”

I thought about how Briana’s and Cupcake’s lives had diverged. Cupcake got recognition for his athletic skills. Briana shot the uncle who’d molested her for years. Cupcake had heard cheers and been offered scholarships. Briana had run away and became an anonymous face among other anonymous faces in the French Quarter of New Orleans. Cupcake had followed a trajectory that led to pro ball and an ability to express his innate generosity by helping underprivileged kids escape the same poverty he’d escaped. Briana had followed a trajectory that led to being a famous model, but instead of helping other young women dealing with abuse and poverty, she’d hung out with criminals. Perhaps Briana had only one addiction—to chemicals that came from flirting with the danger of public exposure.

Without meaning to, I blurted, “I think the investigators know who the murdered woman is, but they’re saying they don’t.”

“You don’t like people keeping secrets from you.”

That’s the problem with shrinks, they always bring it back to
you,
and what
you
feel. But she was right, I hate it when I know people are holding back something from me.

“I guess not.”

“Well, that’s the way law enforcement works, isn’t it?”

I didn’t even bother agreeing. We both knew why I hated secrets.

I said, “What do you think I’m addicted to?”

She smiled. “We all have to figure out our own addictions, Dixie, but I think one of your addictions is to chemicals that come from the satisfaction of seeing wrongs righted, justice done. You’ve been that way as long as I’ve known you. It’s why you became a deputy, and it’s why you’ll always have an interest in criminal cases. Luckily for me and Big Bubba, you’re also addicted to chemicals derived from the satisfaction of doing a good job as a pet sitter.”

On hearing his name, Big Bubba yelled, “Whatcha doing there?”

Reba and I laughed, and I felt a ton of weight slide off my shoulders. At least I didn’t have to carry around a false burden of trying to understand things that really didn’t have anything to do with me.

12

When I got home, Michael’s car was in the carport, but I didn’t go inside the house to talk to him. I didn’t trust myself not to blurt out all that had gone on. If I did, I’d create worries for Michael. I chuckled a little bit to myself when I thought what Reba would say about the way Michael worried about me and Paco. With our irresponsible mother, Michael had been protecting me all his life. The poor guy was probably addicted to the chemicals his brain cranked out every time he worried about somebody he loved.

I trudged up the stairs to my apartment, using the remote to raise the electric shutters over my French doors. The sun was directly overhead, but my porch’s roof kept it from being blazing hot. A cardinal couple cooling their feathers on the porch railing watched me open the French doors and go inside. I lowered the shutters over the doors, plunging my apartment back into cavelike dimness. Except for the glass doors, the only light in my apartment comes from a small window over my kitchen sink and a narrow stretch of glass near the ceiling in my bedroom. An AC unit is wedged into an opening cut for it in my bedroom wall.

Shedding clothes like a cat shedding hair, I went straight to the bathroom and stood under a warm shower. Then I pulled on a terrycloth robe and fell into the rumpled bed I’d left that morning at four o’clock. My day had already lasted eight hours, and it had barely started.

I was asleep before I’d got my arms and legs arranged for it. I dreamed I was walking up a narrow mountain trail. On one side of me was a rough mountain wall with granite protrusions I had to duck to keep from hitting. On the other side was nothing, just space. I could see clouds below me, and what looked suspiciously like the moon. I turned a corner, and the trail came to an abrupt end. A red door with shiny gold hinges was set in the mountain face. The door had a golden doorknob. I reached for it, but the door flew open before I touched it, and a narrow red carpet unrolled before me. It marked a passageway to a tall throne at the far end of a cavernous room lit by millions of flickering birthday-cake candles set in little rosebud holders. The candles were pink.

On each side of the carpet were brown frogs in satin livery—white waistcoats and orange pants, and emerald green cummerbunds around their waists. They were frisky frogs, and as I walked forward they leaped and danced like Baryshnikov, clicking their heels together in midair and doffing white satin top hats while they sang in smooth harmony. I could not make out the words to the song because I didn’t speak frog, and my ignorance of the language bothered me. As I got closer to the throne, I could see that a large black frog sat on it. I knew he was a king because he had a gold crown on his head and he was dressed all in white satin—tight pants, fitted vest, white satin cravat knotted at his neck, little white satin ballet slippers on his feet.

I walked to the very end of the carpet and looked up at the king.

He said, “What do you want?”

I said, “Well, sir—”

His bulgy eyes swelled and he yelled, “Do I look like a sir? Don’t be calling me sir, I’m a king!”

So I said, “Forgive me, Your Majesty. I just want to know—”

He said, “You want to know! You want to know! Always you want to know! You always want to know, don’t you?”

I said, “Well, I just—”

“I know,” he said, “you want to know the future. You want to know what’s coming.”

He leaned forward, and his eyes were like big yellow balloons about to pop.

“You know what, sister? You waste all your todays wanting to see tomorrow.”

The other frogs leaped on me, and I shoved at them, struggling to get free.

I woke up kicking and grunting, with my robe twisted around my legs and one of the sleeve edges caught under my body so my arm couldn’t move. My heart was pounding and I was breathing fast and my skin was still puckered from the clammy feel of frog bellies pressed on me.

I sat up and shuddered for a minute, then padded to the kitchen and made a cup of tea in the microwave. I stood at the sink and looked out the window while I drank it. That stupid frog king had made a point, and I’d got it.

Even so, I wondered why Ethan had chosen to meet me that morning. I wondered what he’d been about to ask me when Steven arrived. I felt as if I were on the verge of having to make a huge decision about my personal life, and I wasn’t sure I was ready to make it. I had been a chaste widow for three years, and then I had been in a relationship with Guidry for a brief time. After Guidry moved to New Orleans, the relationship had been strictly via the phone. That wasn’t a situation that could continue forever. The truth was that it was time to either completely sever the relationship with Guidry or change my mind and follow him to New Orleans. And as I had told Ethan, moving to New Orleans wasn’t right for me.

I didn’t want to think about it. I didn’t want to face what had to be faced. People say that denial doesn’t work, but it worked just fine for me. I could deny all over the place.

For the next couple of hours, I sat at the desk in my office-closet and took care of the clerical side of a pet-sitting business. When it was time to leave for my afternoon rounds, I got into clean cargo shorts, white tee, and fresh Keds, smoothed on sunscreen, put my hair in a ponytail, and grabbed my big carryall shoulder bag.

Out on my porch, I saw Michael down on his deck adjusting things on his prized outdoor cooker. Michael is big and broad and blond like a Viking warrior. He’s also persnickety about his cooking equipment. Everything in his kitchen was built for professional chefs, and so is his barbecue stuff. Michael loves it all with a tender devotion. If he ever meets George Foreman, they’ll probably spend a couple of days discussing the relative merits of charcoal and wood chips.

I clattered down the steps and went and stood beside him.

He said, “Grilled flank steak for dinner.”

I said, “Um. With scalloped potatoes?”

“You bet.”

Governments who send spies to gather secrets from other governments should send members of the same family. Nobody would be able to break their codes. In our brother-sister speak, Michael had just told me that Paco would not be home for dinner, because Paco doesn’t eat meat and he doesn’t like scalloped potatoes. Which meant that Paco would be at some undercover job that night, which neither Michael nor I would mention.

I told Michael I’d be home at the usual time and zipped off to see to my afternoon pet clients, beginning with Billy Elliot.

Tom and Billy Elliot were in the living room watching an old romantic movie on TV. I apologized for intruding, and they both hurried to assure me they were too macho to care about that girlie romantic stuff and that I was a welcome interruption. Billy Elliot did that by kissing my knees, and Tom by clicking off the movie with a very emphatic thumb, as if I’d caught him watching a porn flick.

Tom sported a lilac-hued knit shirt with a yellow polo pony embroidered on its chest. He had the shoulders-back posture of a man showing off a new purchase.

I said, “Nice shirt. Is that new?”

He beamed. “Guess what it cost!”

When somebody asks you to guess what they paid for an item, it’s like somebody asking how old you think they are. You have to guess more than you really think they paid and less than you really think they look.

I said, “Twenty-five dollars!”

“Two fifty!”

I let my jaw drop. “No!”

“Found it at a consignment shop. They had a whole box of them, brand-new, still had the price tags on them.”

“Ralph Lauren shirts for two fifty!”

He grinned. “Well, they had the Ralph Lauren polo pony on them, but the pony’s tail was a little too bushy and the backside of the embroidery was snarled. And when I take it off tonight, I may have lavender-colored skin from the dye. But what the heck, it was only two fifty.”

I held out my wrist. “My Rolex was only fifty dollars.”

“I’m glad you didn’t go for a diamond bezel. Plain is more tasteful.”

“Yeah, and a diamond bezel would have been an extra five bucks.”

He shook his head in mock sorrow. “All we have to believe in now is reality TV. Everything else is fake.”

“You mean the reality shows where a guy’s lost in the swamp, all alone, scared to death, thrashing around though the trees, while a director, a camera crew, a makeup crew, and a recording crew are filming him?”

Billy Elliot nudged me, and I bent to clip his leash to his collar.

Tom said, “They still haven’t identified the murdered woman in the Trillin house. Wouldn’t there be fingerprints they could check?”

I did not say,
They know who she is, they’re just not saying!

Instead, I said, “Not unless she’s been arrested for a crime or fingerprinted for a job. Or if she served in the military.”

“Maybe they know who she is and just aren’t telling.”

“Could be. They wait until they notify the family before they release a homicide victim’s name.”

“Still seems like a long time.”

I stood up straight. “Tom, while Billy and I run, would you find out the exact time the Trillins’ flight will arrive? They left from Parma, Italy, a little after midnight this morning, and I think they’ll arrive in Sarasota around ten o’clock tonight.”

Tom’s round black eyes danced with curiosity, but he nodded without comment, and I led Billy Elliot out his front door.

Billy and I did our racer imitation on the track in the parking lot and went back upstairs. Tom was in the living room watching the same romantic movie he’d been watching when I first arrived. This time he only muted the sound when I came in. As soon as I took off his leash, Billy Elliot trotted to sit on the floor beside Tom’s wheelchair and stare at the TV.