Curiosity Killed the Cat Sitter Read online

  It has been three years. I am long past the time grief experts allow for normal grieving. Mine is pathological, they say, and it’s time I got over it. They don’t explain how to do that. They merely look at me with tight lips and annoyed eyes and tell me I have to. I would if I could, believe me, because every time it happens, I fear that next time I won’t realize it’s a delusion and that I’ll actually rush up to a stranger and throw my arms around him and take comfort in his foreign smells, his alien substance. If that ever happens, I may never return.

  I drank a bunch of water and called the hospital again, and this time they gave me the nurses’ station on Phillip’s floor. A harried nurse told me he was “resting comfortably”—whatever that meant—and got off the phone before I could ask if I could see him. I called Guidry again and left another message for him to call me on my cell, then I ate a little tub of yogurt from the fridge while I stood on the porch and looked out at the glittering waves in the Gulf and told myself everything would work out all right. Phillip would recover from his injuries, Guidry would find whoever killed Marilee and Frazier, and I would find a good home for Ghost. Life would go on, and so would I.

  After I took a shower and put on fresh shorts and T and Keds, I went to my office–closet and took care of business, entering records on my file cards and returning calls. A man had left a message asking me to take care of his python, and I called him up and gave him the name of another pet-sitter, one who isn’t squeamish about feeding live mice to reptiles. Somebody else wanted to know if I knew how to hatch eggs laid by a dove on their front lawn, and I gave them the number of the Pelican Man. I figured anybody who has devoted his life to rescuing injured pelicans must know how to hatch dove eggs. When I’d gotten my books in order and all my invoices ready, I got in the Bronco and drove to the Kitty Haven to visit Ghost.

  He was in one of Marge’s private rooms, which is to say he was in a cubicle about three feet wide, six feet deep, and eight feet tall, with a sleeping basket, a scratching post, padded shelves at several levels, and a kitty door low in the back to his private toilet. A screened door across the front had a hinged insert to allow the attendants to move food and water in and out without letting Ghost escape. It was an ingenious setup, but it was still a cell, and he knew it.

  Like all Abyssinians, Ghost had a muscular body and the slender head and almond eyes characteristic of cats that originated in Asia. Abys are a highly intelligent breed, and once an Aby falls in love with you, it’s one of the most loyal animals in the world. Ghost had been with Marilee since he was twelve weeks old, and as far as he was concerned, she was his everything. I took him into the visitors’ room and brushed him and played Chase the Peacock Feather with him, but both of us were off our game. I finally sat down cross-legged on the floor in a dejected heap, and Ghost climbed into my lap and curled himself between my legs. Without his charm-trimmed velvet collar, he looked even more forlorn and orphaned.

  I ran my fingertips over his ticked silver fur and said, “Things are bad, Ghost. Really bad. Marilee’s not coming back, and Phillip has been beaten up. Maybe to scare him so he won’t tell all he knows about what happened at your house. You know what it is, don’t you? You know who he saw that morning.”

  He sighed and closed his eyes and laid his chin on my knee, as if he were worn-out from the heaviness of knowledge he couldn’t express. He had known all along that Marilee was dead. As an eyewitness to two grisly murders, he could identify the killer or killers of both Marilee and Harrison Frazier. He just couldn’t do it in words.

  “Don’t worry,” I whispered. “I’ll make sure you have a good home.”

  He opened his eyes and gave me a look of hurt accusation, and I couldn’t blame him. This had happened on my watch, and I had let him down.

  I slipped him some kitty treats when I left, and promised him I would come back and get him as soon as Lieutenant Guidry said I could. Even with Marilee dead, there was no reason he couldn’t stay in his own home until I could find him another one. He gave me a glum look and whirled his head to the base of his tail and gnawed at it. I wasn’t sure what that meant in cat language, but I was pretty sure it wasn’t something nice.

  Just as I was getting in the Bronco to make the rest of my afternoon visits, my cell rang—Guidry finally returning my calls.

  I said, “Phillip Winnick saw a woman leave Marilee Doerring’s house about four o’clock Friday morning. He says she got in a black Miata and drove off. He didn’t tell you before because he doesn’t want his parents to know he was out of the house at that hour.”

  “When did he tell you this?”

  “I saw him at the Crab House last night and he told me then. But there’s more. Did you know I found him beaten up this morning?”

  “Yeah, I know.”

  I didn’t ask him if he knew about Marilee. Of course he knew.

  I said, “I think somebody didn’t want him to tell what he saw.”

  Guidry was silent for a moment, and I could almost hear his brain digesting what I’d told him, along with its implications.

  He said, “Can you meet me at Sarasota Memorial in the next ten minutes?”

  Before I could stammer out an answer, he said, “In the main lobby,” and hung up.

  I stared at my phone for a few seconds, then flipped it closed and started the Bronco. Guidry always seemed to be one step ahead of me, and I wasn’t sure whether I liked that or hated it.

  At the hospital, I left the Bronco for a valet to park, then hurried past a group of hospital personnel out on the sidewalk for a cigarette break. As I veered round them, they all gave me the defiantly sullen looks that smokers have acquired. Wide automatic glass doors slid open for me, and I went through to the lobby, my eyes searching for a man who looked too rich and well dressed to be a homicide detective. A hand touched my arm and Guidry said, “He’s on the fifth floor.”

  He steered me to the wall of elevator doors, and when one opened and vomited a gaggle of glassy-eyed people, we took their place. Some other people got on with us, and we all stood tensely silent as the elevator began its smooth upward glide. Guidry and I stood at the back, not speaking or touching as some people got off and other people got on at every floor.

  Finally, Guidry said, “This is our floor.”

  He touched the small of my back with his fingertips, and I moved forward. A glass wall on our right showed a large waiting room where people were sitting staring straight ahead, each of them caught in a timeless worry.

  I followed him down the hall to the ICU wing, where glassed cubicles were arranged in a circle around a busy nurses’ station. A uniformed deputy sat in a straight wooden chair outside Phillip’s cubicle. Phillip’s bed was slightly elevated so his face was visible. It looked like a cut of raw meat. His eyes were swollen shut, his nose was bandaged, and his cheeks were wider than his head. A ventilator’s blue accordion hose was taped inside his mouth, and an IV stand stood beside his bed. A couple of machines that looked like apartment-sized washer–dryer combinations stood behind him. Tubes snaked from them and disappeared under the sheet covering him.

  I made a choking sound and covered my mouth.

  “He looks a lot worse than he is,” Guidry said. “He has some broken ribs and a broken nose, but his lungs weren’t punctured and he only has a moderate concussion. He’ll have a headache for a while, but nothing vital is damaged.”

  “His mother must be going crazy to see him like this.”

  “Actually, she hasn’t tried to see him, and Carl Winnick keeps calling to warn us not to leak anything about the attack to the media. Says it’s a liberal conspiracy to push an agenda of a perverted lifestyle and ruin his reputation.”

  I felt a little sick.

  Guidry took my arm and said, “Let’s go find a place where we can talk.”

  I got myself under control as we left the ICU unit and walked down the wide hall. Guidry tilted his chin toward a small waiting area where some overstuffed chairs were pulled around a coffee
table. “Go sit down,” he said. “I’ll get us some coffee.”

  He went into the glassed room where a coffee urn had been set up for visitors, and I went to sit in the waiting area. In a minute, he came out carrying two Styrofoam cups with plastic stirrers jutting from them. He set them on the coffee table and pulled out a handful of sugar packets and tiny creamers from his pocket.

  “I couldn’t remember if you took anything in yours,” he said.

  I shook my head. “I drink it black.”

  He sat down in the chair opposite me. “This morning, a call came in a little after five o’clock from a man named Sam Grayson. He had been out walking his dog, headed toward Midnight Pass Road, and he had let the dog off his leash. The dog started barking and then took off in the other direction, chasing a man running behind the houses, headed toward the bay. Mr. Grayson managed to call the dog off, but he called nine one one to report a prowler in the area.”

  “I know that dog.”

  “That doesn’t surprise me. A deputy went out, but the man had disappeared and everything looked quiet. Then your call about the Winnick boy came in. More than likely, his attack was what the dog had been barking at. He may have saved the boy’s life.”

  “Good old Rufus! Did Sam get a good look at the man?”

  “No. It was dark, and the guy was half-hidden by trees. He thinks he was bald, but I don’t know if he’d be able to identify him if he saw him again.”

  “Last night at the Crab House, a man with a bald head chased me in the parking lot. I barely got in my car before he got to me.”

  Guidry leaned back and looked hard at me, assessing me the way dogs do when they smell something new. “Was this before or after the Winnick boy told you about seeing a woman leave the Doerring house?”

  “After. He tried to hit on me at the bar before I talked to Phillip. Sent me a drink and then got huffy when I refused it. I’d know him if I saw him again.”

  I put my coffee back on the table and leaned forward. “Phillip crawls out his bedroom window after his parents are asleep, and walks to the Crab House and plays piano until it closes at one. He probably goes home with somebody from there, but I don’t know who, then he goes home and crawls back in the window again in the morning. My guess is that somebody drives him to that spot on Midnight Pass Road, and then he walks alongside the woods to his house. Whoever attacked him must have known his routine and waited for him.”

  Guidry was watching me closely, putting together all the pieces. “His parents know he’s gay?”

  “I don’t think so. He doesn’t think so, and he’s scared to death they’ll find out. When I got to him this morning, he said one thing before he passed out. He said, ‘Please don’t tell my mother.’”

  “Shit. Poor kid.”

  “Yeah. He’s leaving for Juilliard in August, and I suppose he’s gotten more careless as the time grows nearer that he can be open.”

  “I’m not letting anybody talk to him until I can question him, and that includes his parents. I think I’d like you to be there when I ask him about the woman he saw. If he’s up to it, I’d like to do it tomorrow morning.”

  I hesitated, wondering what Guidry’s real reason was, but knowing that Phillip would be less nervous if I were there.

  “Okay.”

  “Is there anything else?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Do you know anything else you haven’t told me?”

  “Nothing except that I found Marilee’s body this morning in the woods. I’m sure you already know that.”

  Guidry’s eyes were calm and expectant. I had a momentary flash of what it would be like to be his kid. He would be the kind of father you couldn’t lie to. You wouldn’t even try, because you would know he could see right through you.

  I said, “Marilee’s grandmother lives at Bayfront Village. She’s a sweet lady, and whoever tells her about Marilee needs to be very careful with her. She knows who Frazier is. She said he ruined Marilee’s life, but she wouldn’t say what she meant by that.”

  Guidry carefully put his coffee cup on the table. “When did you talk to the grandmother?”

  “Yesterday. I went to see her because I thought she might know where Marilee was. She knew all about Frazier’s murder from the news, but she wouldn’t say what his relationship had been to Marilee.”

  “You talk to her very long?”

  “A little while. We had tea and some fresh chocolate bread she’d just made. She uses a bread maker Marilee gave her fifteen years ago. Marilee bought her the apartment she lives in, too, and Cora said Marilee came by to visit real often.”

  For some reason, I wanted Guidry to know that Marilee hadn’t been just a gold-digging bimbo who got herself murdered and thrown in the woods. She had also been a loving granddaughter who bought her grandmother a bread-making machine and a nice apartment.

  He gave me a lifted eyebrow. “You get around, Dixie.”

  I thought about the letter I’d put in a folder in my desk—the letter Marilee had written to her daughter. I thought about the invoice for installing a wall safe in Marilee’s house. I even opened my mouth to tell Guidry about them, but instead I shrugged.

  “It’s just that I find out things about people from taking care of their pets.”

  His expression changed, and I suddenly felt chilled.

  He said, “Dixie, how did you know that Marilee’s body was in the woods?”

  Twenty

  My mouth went dry. I didn’t need him to spell out his real question. He was asking me if I had anything to do with Marilee’s murder.

  “I got curious when I saw a strand of hair caught on a tree. I’ve always thought it was odd that she didn’t take her hair dryer with her, and when I saw that hair, it reminded me of the hair in her brush. I just had a feeling I should look farther back in the woods.”

  “You didn’t already know she was there?”

  “Of course I didn’t!”

  “But you see how it could look, don’t you? You had keys to the house where both murders were probably committed. You found Harrison Frazier’s body, and then you went straight to where Marilee Doerring’s body had been dumped in the woods, even though she hadn’t been declared missing. You talked to Phillip Winnick and he tells you that he walks home before dawn every morning, and that he saw a woman leave the Doerring woman’s house the night Frazier was killed. The next morning, he’s found badly beaten, possibly with the same blunt instrument used to kill both Harrison Frazier and Marilee Doerring.”

  I felt dazed and confused, and at the same time intensely aware. The dark blue of Guidry’s shirt seemed to brighten, and I could detect the musky fragrance of his aftershave. Guidry seemed on high alert, too. His gray eyes were wide and watchful as a hunting cat’s. If he’d had cat whiskers, they would have been pointed forward and his ears would have been up.

  My fingers were gripping my Styrofoam cup so tightly, the coffee was shivering. Just the thought of being a suspect caused a slick of hot guilt to coat my throat.

  “Guidry, I never laid eyes on Harrison Frazier before I found him dead.”

  “I believe you, Dixie, but you have to admit that logic would put you at the top of the list of suspects.”

  “Why do you believe me?”

  “Motive, Dixie. You had opportunity, but I don’t think you had reason to kill anybody.”

  He sounded like a professor lecturing a class of would-be homicide detectives. Or like somebody giving me a friendly hint of an effective defense to use in case I was arrested for murder.

  Stiffly, I said, “This has been very interesting, Lieutenant, but I have to get back to work.”

  When I got to the elevator, Guidry caught up with me.

  “Can I ask you a favor? Would you tell Cora Mathers that Marilee is dead?”

  I stared at him, ready to tell him that I was a pet-sitter, dammit, not a member of the Sheriff’s Department. But I knew why he wanted me to notify Cora. I had already made a connection with he
r, and she was more likely to give me information that might help the investigation.

  “You owe me,” I said.

  “Big time. And you’ll talk to her about Frazier’s relationship with Marilee?”

  “Sure, Guidry. I’ll go tell a sweet old woman that her granddaughter’s body has been lying in the woods with animals eating her, and then I’ll ask her a lot of questions. Are you nuts?”

  “I didn’t mean it that way, Dixie.”

  The elevator doors opened and I stepped in. “I’ll go see Cora,” I said. “That’s all I’m promising.”

  He put his hands in his pockets and stood silently watching me until the elevator doors closed.

  At the Sarasota Bayfront Village, the woman at the front desk called Cora’s apartment and told me to go on up. In the elevator, I tried to find the right words to say what had to be said, but there is no right way to tell somebody about death.

  Cora was standing outside her door again, waving at me like a little girl excited to have company. “Did you come back for some more of my chocolate bread? I don’t have any fresh today, but yesterday’s is still good. It doesn’t have to be hot, you know. It’s good cold, too. I keep it in the refrigerator and just heat it up in the toaster oven. Sometimes I don’t even heat it, I just eat it cold.”

  “I have something to tell you, Cora.”

  “Well, come on in. You can tell me while we have some tea.”

  She scuttled ahead of me, talking a mile a minute. “I don’t think there’s anything that don’t go down better with tea, do you? A lot of people here are drinking green tea. I never saw any green tea, did you? I just drink plain old brown tea. I don’t think I’d like to drink something green. Would be like drinking hot lime Jell-O. Yuk. Here, you sit down while I make us some brown tea. I’ve always got the kettle on, you know.”

  I edged into one of the ice-cream chairs at her round table and watched her totter into the kitchen area. She turned up the heat under a steaming kettle and put teabags into a teapot, then clattered down cups and saucers while she continued to talk.