Curiosity Killed the Cat Sitter Read online

  A screened door was at one side, opening to the yard. Most lanai doors have simple latch mechanisms that can be locked, but since a dedicated burglar can simply slit the screen, most people leave them unlocked so pool cleaners can get in. The furniture on the lanai made dark shapes in the murky light as I sprinted to the outside door. It wasn’t firmly latched, and I pulled it shut, making sure the latch caught. I could see a light in a back window of the house next door, but no sign of Ghost.

  I trotted back inside, pulling the slider shut and locking it behind me, and hurried toward Marilee’s bedroom. Unless Ghost had gotten outside through the lanai door, he was probably hiding. His favorite hideaway was atop an immense antique armoire in Marilee’s bedroom. Abys have powerful back legs that give them unusual jumping ability, and Ghost vaulted up there when he was nervous or when he was sulking, tucking himself into an invisible small mound.

  Calling “Gho-oo-ost,” I went down the hall to Marilee’s bedroom. As I went through the door, I flipped the bedroom light switch, and the room’s vibrant colors sprang alive. I stopped with the hairs on the back of my neck rising. Marilee’s bedroom was like something out of Architectural Digest, with deep pumpkin walls and a tall dark bed that Pancho Villa might have slept in. Ordinarily, the room was fastidiously neat, but not today. The drawers on the bedside tables stood open, and all their contents had been raked to the floor.

  Cautiously, I edged toward the dressing room between the bedroom and bathroom. Somebody had pulled everything crooked, as if they had jerked robes and dresses and skirts and jackets out to dig in their pockets. Handbags that were usually filed on shelves gaped open on the floor. A tall jewelry cabinet stood like a gap-toothed vagrant, with blank spaces where its drawers had been. The drawers were piled on the floor with jewelry spilling from them.

  Whoever had done this hadn’t been after valuables to pawn or sell, but for something that could be secreted in a small space. Drugs were the obvious first thought, but Marilee had never struck me as a user, and if she was a dealer it didn’t seem likely that she would keep her supply in her jewelry cabinet.

  In the bathroom, drawers had been similarly ransacked. A hair dryer lay on the counter with its cord plugged into an outlet by the door. It was a brush-type dryer that doubled as a curling iron, with a few black hairs caught in its bristles. Marilee usually left her bathroom so spotless that the errant hairs seemed almost obscenely disordered.

  I must admit that while I was appropriately concerned that somebody had broken into Marilee’s house, I was more concerned about Ghost. I went back into the bedroom and looked up at the carved cornice at the top of the armoire.

  “Ghost, are you up there?”

  A faint little nik-nik came from the top of the armoire, and Ghost came sailing down and landed at my feet. Cats hate for you to gush at them, so to protect his dignity, I let him wind himself around my ankles before I knelt to stroke the top of his head.

  Ghost’s hair was ticked, meaning it had several colors on one hair shaft. The overall effect was an iridescent sheen graduating from silver to pale lavender. He wore a black velvet collar studded with miniature hearts and keys. The collar gave him a decadent look, like a charming French roué whom you know you shouldn’t allow yourself to trust, but you can’t resist.

  “I was afraid somebody had taken you,” I said.

  He rubbed his face and neck against my leg to reassure me, gently scratching my skin with the charms on his collar. Now that we had properly greeted each other and I knew he was okay, I headed toward the kitchen. I would give Ghost his breakfast first, and while he ate I would call 911 and report the break-in. Ghost trotted behind me making happy little squeaks of anticipation. I’ve trained all my cat owners not to leave food out all the time, but to put it out twice a day and remove it as soon as the cat has stopped eating. That way they don’t get finicky or fat, and mealtime is a big deal to them.

  To a dog, food is simply a necessity of life, and they’re not too picky about how it tastes or what it’s served in. A weighted plastic feeding bowl suits a dog just fine, and you can give them the exact same food twice a day and they’ll think you’re the greatest chef in the world. Cats, on the other hand, are snooty gourmands. Oh sure, they may supplement their finicky diet with an occasional mouse head or lizard tail, but that’s more to satisfy their hunting instinct than for the taste. Cats like their food fresh and flavorful, and they’ll turn up their noses today at what they loved yesterday. If their dishes aren’t spotlessly clean, they’ll even turn up their noses at food they love.

  Cats don’t shove their bowls around on the floor, either. They sit in front of them daintily, giving the impression of having patted a linen napkin in place. Cat owners therefore feed their cats in dishes ordinarily reserved for royalty, and the cats accept them as their due. Ghost ate from a hand-painted porcelain bowl, and he lapped his drinking water from an ornately carved silver serving bowl. It held enough water for a trio of cats, but it served the purpose well enough, and both Marilee and Ghost thought its elegance was totally appropriate.

  When I stepped through the kitchen door and flipped the light switch, I instinctively turned toward the water bowl, and then did a quick backward dance. I’m not sure, but I think my legs may have pedaled the air for a moment. A man was lying on the floor with his face in Ghost’s silver bowl. A strip of putty-colored masking tape ran across the top of his head to the sides of the bowl, holding his nose underwater. The back of his head was caked with dried blood, and he was entirely too motionless to be alive.

  For a second, my eyes darted around the kitchen, refusing to look at the body. Everything in the kitchen was normal. A stainless-steel teakettle of Italian design, with a carved yellow bird for a pouring spout, sat shining on the immaculate stove. A yellow dish towel was on the countertop beside the sink, neatly folded so both edges were turned in, the way you do with guest towels. Trust Marilee to fold her dish towel that way.

  I looked back at the dead man. He wore a navy blue suit, and both sleeves showed white shirt cuffs. His shoes were expensive black wingtips, well polished, the kind pimps and undertakers wear. As well as I could tell with the dried blood on his head, his hair was dark. I couldn’t see his face. I tiptoed over and knelt beside him. I don’t know why I tiptoed, it just seemed the right thing to do. His body had been carefully arranged so that his arms were out to the side with the elbows bent in a kind of “I surrender” pose. I took his wrist in my fingers and felt for a pulse. The wrist was cold. The man was definitely dead.

  Ghost wailed a long insistent falsetto that forced me to do what I should have done already. I got up on rubbery legs and went to the wall phone and dialed 911.

  The dispatcher who answered didn’t sound like anybody I knew. Old training kicked in, and after I gave her Marilee’s address, I said, “I’ve got a Signal Five, adult male.”

  Signal 5 means homicide victim. With his head bloody and taped to a cat’s bowl, I didn’t think it could be anything else.

  The dispatcher verified the address and asked my name.

  “Dixie Hemingway.”

  “Are you sure he’s dead?”

  Ghost had gone into a crouching position with his body stretched long and his nose twitching toward the dead man.

  “Oh yes, he’s dead.”

  “What appears to be the cause of death?”

  I cleared my throat. “He appears to have drowned in a cat’s water bowl.”

  The dispatcher was silent for a moment, and then rallied. “Inside the house or outside?”

  Ghost was slinking toward the man, and I swung my foot to distract him.

  “Inside. In the kitchen. I came to feed the cat and found him.”

  Ghost crept closer to the man’s head. I skittered toward him on my Keds and tried to block his progress with my foot. He ignored me and twitched his whiskers.

  “Do you know who he is?”

  “No, I’ve never seen him before, and the woman who lives here is out of town
.”

  “Somebody’s on the way, ma’am.”

  Just as I hung up, it occurred to me that the killer could still be in the house. I grabbed Ghost and ran.

  I was pacing the driveway with a seething Ghost in my arms when the green-and-white squad car pulled in. The deputy who got out wasn’t anybody I knew, but I knew the type well enough. Hair cut so short it was near-shaven, hard lean body under a crisp dark green uniform, black leather belt bristling with all the accoutrements of authority, and a small diamond stud in one well-shaped earlobe. I could tell from the stiff way he walked that he thought there was something fishy about a woman finding a dead body in somebody else’s house before 6:00 A.M.

  “You called about a dead man?”

  Ghost twisted hard in my arms and glared at the deputy. Either he didn’t like the tone of his voice or he was so pissed at being held against his wishes that he hated everybody on general principle. I took a moment to read the name on the deputy’s ID tag: Jesse Morgan.

  “I’m Dixie Hemingway,” I said. “I’m a pet-sitter. The owner of the house is Marilee Doerring. She left town last night and won’t be back until next week. I don’t know who the dead man is.”

  “How do you know he’s dead?”

  “I tried his pulse. He’s dead, trust me.”

  “Where’d you find him?”

  “In the kitchen. I went in to feed the cat and there he was.”

  “And you think he…you think he drowned?”

  I shot him a look. “Yeah, that would be my guess, since his nose is stuck in a bowl of water.”

  “Anybody else in there?”

  “If anybody was there, they could have gone out the back door after I left. I didn’t look around. I grabbed Ghost and ran.”

  He inclined his head a quarter of an inch toward the cat and said, “That’s Ghost?”

  “Yeah.”

  “He doesn’t look happy.”

  “He hates being held.”

  “So why did you grab him? Why did you bring him outside with you?”

  I blinked at him for a good five seconds before I realized he had a point. Ghost had been there when the murder was committed, and he had been there with the dead body, but I had instinctively scooped him up as if I were rescuing him. I knew the reason, but I doubted Deputy Morgan would understand how maternal impulses can kick in even when they don’t make any sense.

  As if he had asked a really stupid question, I said, “He could have contaminated the area for forensics.”

  “Wait here,” he said, and walked down the driveway and through the open front door. He had a good walk, which surprised me. I would have expected a rookie’s power stomp, but it was a seasoned stride—confident but not cocky.

  I crooned under my breath to Ghost, and he gradually sheathed his extended claws. A frightened or angry cat can do serious harm with its claws, but I knew he wasn’t that angry. His pride was hurt at being restrained and he just needed to remind me that he could hurt me bad if he wanted to.

  In a few minutes the deputy came back with his phone stuck to his ear, calling for a crime-scene unit. When he tucked the phone in its holder on his belt, he said, “I’ll need to get some information from you.”

  “Sure, but I have to do something about Ghost first. I think I’ll ask the next-door neighbor to keep him until I can take him to a day sitter.”

  He looked at his watch. “It’s pretty early. Do you think they’ll be up?”

  “I saw a light there earlier. They have a teenager, and he’s probably getting ready for school. I’ll just be a minute.”

  I was off before he could tell me what he thought of the idea. The house was about forty feet away, with a yard full of ground cover instead of grass, so I sprinted down the street. The house was built on the same lines as Marilee’s, but the stucco was more pink than cream, and the front door was bright turquoise.

  I rang the doorbell, and while I waited I met Ghost’s outraged eyes. I blinked at him slowly, which in cat language means “I love you.” That usually calms an agitated cat, but it didn’t do much this time. Ghost definitely didn’t blink back.

  Three

  The woman who answered the door gave stiff-necked a whole new meaning. Her neck rose from her narrow shoulders like a soaring redwood, broader at the base and held stiffly upright by thick cords that showed bruised blue under her sallow skin. In comparison to her neck, her head seemed too small, made even smaller by the way her pale hair was pulled into a tight knot high at the back of her skull. She held her chin tilted upward, with her eyes squinted and the corners of her rubbery mouth turned down. From the deep grooves running from her thin nose to her jawbone, I surmised that her inverted mouth was a habitual expression.

  I said, “Sorry to bother you. I’m Dixie Hemingway. I take care of Ms. Doerring’s cat. There’s been an incident at her house, so the Sheriff’s Department will be working there for a while. I can’t leave the cat in the house with all the people going in and out, and I don’t have my car with me. I was hoping I could leave him with you for an hour or two.”

  She started to close the door and said, “I don’t want to be involved.”

  Her carefully enunciated syllables oozed with barely suppressed contempt. She definitely felt she was speaking to an inferior, and she wanted me to know it.

  I slid my foot in the door before she could close it. “The deputy over there wants me to leave him someplace, and there’s really no place else to take him.”

  She frowned and allowed her eyes to open all the way.

  I said, “He can stay on the lanai, and it will just be for a little while.”

  She spun around and walked away, managing to do that without moving her head. Since she hadn’t slammed the door in my face, I assumed I was to follow. I stepped into a large square living room with a glass wall across the back. It was dark inside, not just because no lamps were burning but because the glass was covered by thick draperies. They were more appropriate for a cold clime where you need insulation against frigid winds, not for a sun-filled place like Florida.

  Instead of pulling the cord to open the drapes, she pushed the edge aside, unlocked the slider, and held them back while I slipped through the opening. She watched me while I took Ghost to the far corner under the roof. I knelt down and let his hind legs touch the floor between my knees while I kept my hand under his chest to hold his front paws up.

  I said, “You’re just going to stay here for a little while, and then I’ll come get you and take you to Kitty Haven. You’ll like it there.”

  I lowered his front feet to the floor but kept one hand under his chest, ready to lift them if he tried to run. His whiskers were anxiously pointed up, and I talked low to him while I eased my backpack off. I got out one of my emergency Tender Vittle packets, along with a disposable bowl. Semi-moist cat food is like Froot Loops for a child—both are poor excuses for nutrition, but they’ll do in a pinch. Ghost eyed the pouch and made his skin quiver, either to show revulsion or enthusiasm, I wasn’t sure. I emptied the pouch into the bowl and put it on the floor. Slowly, I pulled my hand away from his chest and stroked his head and neck. He dropped his eyelids to half-mast to show me he was not pleased with me, but he didn’t run when I stood up.

  Instead, he crouched in a martyred sulk, tail wrapped tightly to his side, paws folded under his chest, head looking straight forward. Do whatever you want, his posture said. I have to eat breakfast in a strange place and there’s a dead man in my house, but don’t give me a second thought. I’ll be fine.

  I went back inside, and as the woman let the drapes fall shut, I saw Ghost hunker over the Tender Vittles and dig in.

  “I don’t know your name,” I said. “I should have asked.”

  She switched on a lamp that managed to look both priceless and ugly at the same time, and in its weak glow I noticed that a gleaming grand piano dominated the room.

  “I am Olga Winnick,” she said stiffly.

  A tall skinny boy with white-blond h
air and an innocent mouth stepped into the room with his knobby neck angled to the side trying to see what was going on. He was dressed for school in jeans and a white polo shirt with a collar. His eyes were red and puffy, as if he needed several hours’ more sleep. He stopped like a spooked horse when he saw me.

  “Oh, hi,” I said. “I’m Dixie Hemingway. Your mother is letting me leave my cat on your lanai for a couple of hours while the Sheriff’s Department is in the house next door.”

  He gave me a tight, self-conscious grin, the way adolescents do when they can’t figure out what they’re supposed to do next.

  Mrs. Winnick said, “My son is a pianist. He isn’t interested in what happens next door.”

  I said, “Is that you? I’ve heard you. I always thought it was the classical radio station.”

  He didn’t answer, either from embarrassment or because his mother jumped in before he could.

  “He’s going to Juilliard soon.” From the way she said it, she might as well have added “you stupid clod.”

  I made appropriate noises to show how impressed I was that the kid was a musician, while he looked like he would have been extremely grateful if the floor had opened and let him fall through to oblivion. Neither of them volunteered his name, but I was afraid he would have a nervous breakdown if I asked, so I let it slide.

  “I’ll pick the cat up as soon as I can,” I said. “Would you mind giving him a bowl of water? If he has water, he’ll be okay.”

  Mrs. Winnick turned to look at me full on. “I am allowing you to leave that woman’s cat on my lanai. That should be enough.”

  Her son’s face flamed, and he turned and left us.

  I got out as fast as I could, with the slamming front door making it clear that Mrs. Winnick felt sorely imposed upon.