The Cat Sitter’s Pajamas Read online

  Morgan and I shook our heads. I might have heard about somebody in a cat show who’d made the news, but fashion shows were out of my world.

  As if he had heard all he could stand about fashion models, Morgan put his pen and pad away and took a deep breath. With Beene a step behind him, he strode manfully to the door and rapped on it.

  He yelled, “Sarasota Sheriff’s Department!”

  The door didn’t open. No sound came from inside.

  Morgan waited a few seconds, then knocked and shouted again. Nobody answered.

  I felt a little shiver of guilty relief. Briana and whoever had been in the house with her had probably slipped out the back door while I watched the front. Maybe they were halfway to Tampa by now. Maybe they would never come back. Maybe Briana had learned her lesson and would stop stalking Cupcake.

  Morgan turned to look at me as if it were my fault nobody had answered the door. “You got a key?”

  “I have a security code.”

  “Please use it.”

  Feeling important under their gaze, I stepped forward and punched in my special number. The lock clicked, and I turned the knob and opened the door. Morgan motioned me aside, and he and Beene went into the house.

  Once again, intuition or subliminal cues made the hairs on the back of my neck stand up, as if trouble was barreling toward me.

  I said, “Don’t let the cats out.”

  My sixth sense was right about trouble coming, but it wasn’t two runaway cats.

  2

  Morgan and Beene left the foyer and went into the living room.

  From where I stood by the front door, I couldn’t see them, but I heard Beene say, “Uh-oh,” the way people do when they see something bad.

  Morgan didn’t answer.

  Beene didn’t say anything else.

  Nobody said anything else. Something was wrong.

  I inched forward and tried to peer around the edge of the archway into the living room. All I could see was Morgan’s back where he had squatted on the floor to examine something. I became aware of an off-putting scent reminiscent of floral tributes leaning on a casket, that frigid, artificial, cloying fragrance you never forget. It’s also the odor of death.

  A movement on the floor near Morgan caught my eye, a slow oozing, a snail’s trail of dark red, a glutinous horror inching across the floor. Dead bodies don’t bleed, and this blood was moving so slowly it could have come from a dying body or one whose death was only minutes old. I stepped backward, out of the foyer and into fresh air.

  After a minute or two, the deputies came outside, Beene pale and pink-eyed and walking face forward, Morgan backing out behind her with a phone to his ear.

  Morgan gave the address and said, “We’ve got a Signal Five here. Adult female. Killer suspect possibly still inside. We need backup.”

  Signal Five is code for a murdered body. He didn’t say by what means the body had been killed, but the blood I’d seen told me it wasn’t by poison or suffocation.

  Officer Beene and I made eye contact, and for a moment we stared at each other in silent sadness for a life that had been violently ended. Then she turned to go about her official duties, and I was left to deal with guilt and doubt dancing around me like dark sprites. The sound I’d heard must have been the killer coming into the house. Maybe Briana hadn’t heard the sound I’d heard, maybe I should have warned her, maybe I had wasted too much time calling Cupcake and Jancey before I called 911. I imagined somebody slipping into the house behind Briana and killing her while I sat unknowing in the driveway.

  Morgan snapped his phone closed and turned to me. “Don’t leave. You’ll have to talk to Homicide.”

  As usual, his dark shades hid the expression in his eyes, but his voice bore the custard skin of pity.

  My face grew hot, and I folded my arms over my chest. “I know.”

  Not so long ago, when somebody in the sheriff’s department said the word “homicide,” chances were they’d meant Homicide Detective J. P. Guidry, known to his friends and colleagues as Guidry, known to his mother as Jean Pierre, known to me as the second man I’d loved in all my life. But Guidry had returned to New Orleans several months ago. I could have gone with him. He had wanted me to go with him. I had wanted to go with him, but I had spent over three years learning to live again after my husband and little girl had been killed in a senseless accident, and I’d still been emotionally squishy, afraid I’d lose myself if I left the surf and sea breezes that had sustained me all my life.

  Like everybody else in the sheriff’s department, Morgan had known that Guidry and I were together, emotionally and physically and every other way. But Guidry and I were both intensely private people, and when he left we didn’t announce to the world why I didn’t go with him. Some people probably believed he had chosen to leave me behind and felt sorry for me. Others may have guessed it had been my choice not to go and pitied me for being so stupid. I didn’t know what Morgan thought, but he had other reasons to think I was jinxed, so he probably felt sorry for me just on general principle.

  Forcing my voice to sound neutral, I said, “You have a new homicide guy?”

  Morgan shook his head. “Not yet. Hard to get somebody as good as Guidry.”

  That was for damn sure.

  Inclining my head toward the house, I said, “After I saw the woman and exited the premises, I was out here the entire time. I didn’t hear a gunshot.”

  He said, “Ummm.” His face was so neutral he could have stood in a department store window and people would have believed he was a mannequin.

  My face flamed again and I pressed my lips together. I had seen the blood, and Morgan had given a murder code, not a suicide code. So Briana had been either shot or cut. But I was a former deputy, and I knew better than to ask Morgan which it had been. In the first place, the department wouldn’t give any information until after the medical examiner had signed off on the body. In the second place, my presence would automatically make me one of the suspects.

  Morgan and Beene strode down a walk leading to the back of the house, probably looking for signs of forcible entry. I walked to my Bronco and leaned on the back bumper. I pulled out my cell phone and called Cupcake again.

  He answered on the first ring. “Dixie, did they get her out?”

  I cleared my throat. “Cupcake, I hate to tell you this, but the woman is dead.”

  “What do you mean, dead?”

  “I mean dead dead, as in no longer living. While I called you and nine-one-one and waited for the deputies to get here, somebody came in and killed her.”

  A beat or two went by. “Dixie, if this is a joke, it’s not funny.”

  I heard Jancey in the distance. “Is that Dixie? Did she get rid of that woman?”

  I said, “It’s no joke, Cupcake. I thought somebody was in the house with her because I heard a noise, but what I heard must have been a killer entering the house. I’m here with a couple of deputies waiting for the crime-scene people. I imagine I’ll be one of the suspects.”

  “Good God, Dixie, why would they suspect you?”

  “Because I was here.”

  He heaved a great sigh, as if I had just confirmed some awful suspicion he’d long held. “Are the cats okay?”

  “I don’t know yet. I didn’t see them, but they’re probably hiding. I won’t know anything until the crime-scene investigators get here.”

  “I think we’d better come home now.”

  “Probably.”

  We promised each other we’d stay in touch, and I turned off my phone.

  Cupcake wanted to come home because he was concerned about his cats and his house, and because he was creeped out at learning that a woman who’d been stalking him had been murdered. He didn’t realize yet that he would also be on a list of suspects. Criminal investigators know that most murders are personal, so if a stalker gets murdered in the home of a famous person, that famous person is going to be suspected of having something to do with it even if he was in anot
her country when the murder took place.

  Morgan and Beene were still investigating the back and sides of the house when several vehicles pulled into the driveway behind my Bronco. An ambulance with two EMTs, an unmarked officer’s car driven by Sergeant Woodrow Owens, and a green and white deputy’s vehicle with two deputies I didn’t know. I straightened up when I saw Sergeant Owens. Owens is a tall, lanky African American with basset eyes and a slow drawl that masks one of the quickest minds in the universe. I was in his unit when I was a deputy, so standing up straight was an instinctive reflex because Owens didn’t brook any lazy-ass slouching. He had also been the officer who had come in person to tell me my husband and little girl were dead. I hadn’t stood up straight then, but buckled like a felled tree. Owens had held me tenderly as a mother.

  He said, “Dixie? What’s the story?”

  “I’m cat sitting for Mr. and Mrs. Trillin.”

  Before he could ask what I knew he would ask, I said, “Yes, that’s Cupcake Trillin. His wife is Jancey Trillin. They’re in Italy. I went inside the house and found a woman named Briana in there. She claimed to be Cupcake’s wife, but I knew that wasn’t true, and she seemed mentally unhinged, so I came outside and called Cupcake to make sure she didn’t have permission to be in his house. He said he’d never heard of her, so I called nine-one-one, and Deputy Morgan came with another deputy named Beene from Community Policing. They went inside and found the woman dead. I saw blood, so she was either shot or stabbed. I didn’t hear a gunshot while I waited.”

  “Where are the deputies now?”

  Just as he asked, Morgan and Beene rounded the far corner of the house. When they saw the cars and officers, they broke into a trot and joined me and Owens.

  Morgan said, “We checked all the outside doors and windows. Didn’t see any sign of forcible entry.”

  Owens turned to the gathered deputies and EMTs and tilted his head toward the house. “Let’s go in.”

  I said, “Don’t let the cats out.”

  Every head turned to give me an incredulous gape.

  I shrugged. “Sorry, but my job is to take care of the two cats in the house. If you’d like, I can take them to a boarding place so they won’t be in your way.”

  They all exchanged looks, imagining going about their jobs while two cats climbed over a dead body and tracked through blood.

  Owens said, “Okay, come in and get them.”

  I said, “I’ll get carrying cases,” and loped off to the Bronco for two folding cardboard cat carriers.

  The officers waited until I was in line, then moved forward with Owens in the lead. He and the EMTs went straight to the woman’s body, while the other deputies fanned out to search the house. I pretended to look for cats behind the sofas and chairs, but I was pretty sure that I would find Elvis and Lucy in the media room in their overhead runway or at the top of their fancy climbing tree. If they’d been scared by strangers in the house, they would have climbed the tree for safety. If they hadn’t even known strangers were there, they would be up the tree anyway because it was their favorite place.

  Owens stood up from his stooped position over the woman’s body. “Dixie, can you identify her?”

  “I’ve only seen her once.”

  “That’s more than anybody else has seen her. Just take a look and tell us if she’s the same woman who introduced herself as … what did you say her name was?”

  “Briana. Officer Beene has heard of her. She’s a famous model, just uses the one name.”

  “Okay, is this dead woman the same woman who said her name was Briana?”

  The EMTs stood up and backed away so I could get a clear view, and I crossed the room. Suddenly shy in the presence of death, I looked at the body before I looked at her face. Something seemed wrong. The woman had a stocky build, for one thing, not long and limber the way Briana had been. She was no longer nude under a big printed shirt but wore utilitarian khaki slacks and a bloodstained white shirt. She wore shoes as well, sensible low-heeled and laced-up leather. Not the kind of clothes I expected a famous model to wear. When I let my gaze travel upward, I saw dark, short-cropped hair. I did not allow myself to linger over the grinning slit in the woman’s throat.

  I felt off balance, as if somebody was playing a trick on me.

  I said, “That’s not the woman who was here earlier.”

  Owens said, “You sure?”

  “Positive. Briana was thin and had long red hair. It’s not the same woman. I’ve never seen this woman before.”

  I dared to scan her body again. Her arms were flung out as if she’d been trying to catch herself as she fell. Her hands were tanned, with square palms and sturdy fingers.

  I said, “Briana had very white skin. Like it never was in the sun.”

  Owens ran his own plate-sized hand over his face. “Damn.”

  We all stood for a moment out of an unspoken need to put a space in the time between acknowledging death and attending to it. I moved first.

  “Is it okay if I go through the house to get the cats?”

  The sergeant’s skinny chest rose, taking in air before he moved on to the grisly business at hand. “Don’t touch anything. If you see anything you haven’t seen before, let me know.”

  He didn’t need to tell me that. It was just something to say to reestablish his authority. I nodded and headed down the hall to look for Elvis and Lucy. My head was buzzing with questions. I knew the assumption would be that Briana had killed the woman, but it takes brute strength to cut another person’s throat. Strength and stature. You have to be tall enough to stand behind a person and pull a knife across their throat with enough force to slice their jugular. Briana had been taller than me, but not much, and she had seemed too soft-boned to make the hard slashing motion it would take to cut deeply into another person’s throat. But if Briana hadn’t killed the woman on the living room floor, who had? And whether she had or not, where was Briana now?

  The Trillins’ media room is a movie lover’s dream come true—a six-foot screen, plush theater seats, a sound system probably better than the local movie theaters’. The room is also a cat’s dream come true. Cupcake and Jancey had designed an intricate overhead system of enclosed tunnels near the ceiling, with lower wide tracks for racing. The tracks led to a tall climbing tree with several branches where the cats could sit and dream or watch movies with their humans. The tree had sisal posts for scratching, padded platforms for sleeping, cubbyholes for hiding, and hanging toys for batting with paws.

  I stood under the tree, assembled the folding cat carriers, and sprinkled bonita flake treats in the bottoms.

  “Elvis, Lucy, are you up there?”

  A soft nicking sound answered, and Lucy’s white nose poked through the round hole of one of the condos. Lucy was naturally friendly, but I knew she was more interested in the scent of bonita flakes than in me.

  I said, “Hi, sweetheart! Come on down.”

  After a few more nicking sounds, she oozed out and cantilevered down the tree into my arms. We nuzzled each other until she was purring, and then I lowered her into a carrier and closed it. She made a whirring sound of minor outrage, but Lucy wasn’t one to carp about things she couldn’t control. I wish I were more like Lucy.

  Getting Elvis down took more persuasion. When he finally peered out of the fat tube he was stretched in, I had to stifle a giggle because he had the edge of a crumpled slip of paper in his mouth. Elvis had a fetish about narrow strips of paper that he could easily hold in his mouth. If Cupcake or Jancey tossed a Post-it note or a sales receipt in a wastebasket, Elvis would nab it. If we saw Elvis sitting low with his paws tucked under his chest, we knew he was hiding a slip of paper. He didn’t chew it, he just hoarded it, crumpled it, and carried it around in his mouth. I always suspected that he had a stash of papers somewhere that would never be found.

  Lucy gave some plaintive bleats that brought Elvis all the way out of his tube.

  I said, “Come on down, sweetie.”

&nbs
p; He blinked at me, sniffed at the scent of bonita flakes, and came down carefully, clutching the tree with all four legs like a possum lowering itself, with a long strip of paper gripped in his teeth. When he was arm high, I lifted him into my arms and told him how wonderful he was, then put him into the other carrier and closed it. I felt like a meanie for tricking the cats, but that’s life. Sooner or later, we all get lured by enticing treats and then find ourselves stuck in situations we can’t get out of.

  At least Elvis still had his precious paper.

  3

  I made it to the living room just as a team of criminalists outfitted in paper booties and protective smocks came in the front door. They stopped and looked at me with question marks on their faces while I stood there with a cat carrier hanging from each hand like a statue of Cat Lady Justice.

  Owens said, “This is Dixie Hemingway. She’s a pet sitter. She’s going to get the cats out of the way while we work.”

  As if that cleared that up, they all nodded and pulled on latex gloves in preparation for measuring and photographing and probing and all the other things that criminalists do. They would take the temperature of the dead woman’s liver to establish how long she’d been dead. They would look for stray hairs or fibers on her skin, her clothing, and the floor. They would scan for footprints and fingerprints, trace the arc of blood spatters and blood flow. They would draw an outline of her body on the floor and photograph it from every angle before they bagged her hands, zipped her into a body bag, and took her to the morgue for a more thorough examination.

  Acutely conscious of my unbootied Keds and my unlatexed hands, I mutely circled around them. The cats had gone silent, too. With their keen olfactory sense, they could smell blood through the cardboard of their carriers and had gone into defensive positions with their ears laid back and their backs arched.

  At the door, Sergeant Owens caught up with me and spoke in a lowered voice. I didn’t know if he spoke quietly out of respect for the dead or because he didn’t want the others to hear what he said.