Curiosity Killed the Cat Sitter Read online

  Kristin was four months pregnant and she had developed an acute case of Fear-Of-Cat-Poop. Specifically, she was afraid of catching toxoplasmosis from her cat’s litter box. Cats can only get toxoplasmosis from eating a diseased rodent, and a pregnant woman can only get it if she touches the diseased cat’s feces and then eats something without first washing her hands. Kristin’s cat had probably never even seen a rodent, much less eaten one, and what woman doesn’t wash her hands after changing a litter box? But it was Kristin’s fear and her cat and her money, so I allowed her to pay me twenty dollars a day to groom her cat and change its litter box.

  The cat was an American Shorthair named Fred. Shorthairs are low-maintenance cats, so it was almost a crime to take money for what little I did. Fred’s litter box was in a guest bathroom, and I kept the door closed because Kristin was so spooked about it. A litter box shouldn’t have more than a quarter inch of sand in it, and flushing it away took a nanosecond. I spritzed it inside and out with my all-purpose water and Clorox mix, rinsed the hell out of it with hot water, dried it with paper towels, and spread another quarter inch of sand on the bottom. I replaced the bag of litter under the counter, and washed my hands and dried them. The whole procedure had taken two minutes, tops.

  When I went out to the lanai for Fred’s grooming, he and Kristin were both pretending not to be excited that I was there. Fred was doing a jug imitation, sitting tall with his long tail curled around his toes the way some executives curl a long line back under their signatures. Kristin was sitting in a cushioned redwood chair, eager to gossip. Dishing dirt was Kristin’s favorite pastime. She had done it when we were in high school, and she was still doing it. She had never been fastidious about facts, and if somebody’s reputation was hurt because she’d passed on malicious gossip, it never seemed to bother her.

  Kristin said, “It was on the news this morning about that dead man in Marilee Doerring’s house. They said you found him, but they weren’t giving his name until his next of kin is notified. Who was he?”

  My heart did a somersault at hearing that anything about me was on the news, but I kept my face still and lifted Fred to the table.

  “They gave my name?”

  “They just said a pet-sitter, but I knew it was you.”

  As if he sensed that a dark cloud had lowered around me, Fred looked over his shoulder with sad eyes.

  Fred was large and muscular, brown, with a white muzzle and throat and white paws. Like all American Shorthairs, he was sweet and affectionate. When I ran my hands lightly over his body, telling him by touch where I was getting ready to brush, he arched his back and began to purr. I dipped a hand into my grooming kit for my small slicker brush and pulled it through the hair on the back of Fred’s neck, careful to keep the brush flat so the bristles wouldn’t dig into his skin.

  “I don’t know who the man is,” I said. “Like they said, they have to notify his family before they announce his name.”

  Fred tilted his head back so I could get under his chin, and I made short strokes on his snowy throat and chest. He stretched his head up higher. If he could have spoken, he would have said, “Yes! Yes! Now a little to the right! Oooh, that’s good!” Since he couldn’t talk, he purred louder.

  Kristin said, “The Sheriff’s Department won’t say how he was killed until they do an autopsy. Isn’t that odd?”

  I shrugged. “They always do an autopsy whenever a person dies in mysterious circumstances.”

  Kristin did a disappointed pout with her bunny mouth. “I know Marilee Doerring from the yacht club. People don’t like her much. Well, men like her, but women don’t.”

  I put a protective finger over Fred’s sensitive spine and combed in short parallel strokes on each side. Fred gave a warning flick of his tail, and I went back to his neck and throat, making sure I was keeping the teeth of the brush comfortably pointed straight at his skin and not tilted to the side.

  “I think it’s because Marilee’s so flashy,” said Kristin. “Lately she’s been wearing an enormous square-cut diamond that’s soooo ostentatious. The thing just screams zircon!”

  My experience with diamonds being limited to the small kind that nobody would mistake for a zircon, I continued combing Fred and stayed quiet.

  Kristin gave a little self-deprecating laugh. “God, I sound catty, don’t I?”

  I don’t know why people say they’re being “catty” when they make unkind remarks about other people. Cats are never like that.

  Kristin shifted in her chair and said, “It’s not because she’s pretty that I don’t like her. I’m not afraid of pretty women. And it’s certainly not because she has money! It’s that you always get the feeling Marilee’s trolling for men. If a man’s anywhere in her vicinity, you can almost hear the music from Jaws playing.”

  I thought of Olga Winnick and said, “Predatory music?”

  “Exactly! Marilee is a predatory woman.”

  I was imagining Kristin and Olga Winnick together talking about how predatory Marilee was, when Kristin’s eyes settled on my wedding band.

  “You’re a widow. Why do you still wear a wedding ring?”

  The question caught me off guard, causing my hand to jerk so the bristles of my slicker brush bit into Fred’s skin. He growled a warning and waved his tail, and I quickly went back to his throat to placate him. I’ve never thought of myself as a widow. Widows are old women with blue hair and a lifetime of memories. I don’t belong in that group, I’m just a formerly loved.

  Kristin looked up at me as if she’d suddenly had an attack of sensitivity. “I hope you don’t mind my asking.”

  I didn’t answer, but just to scare her, I turned Fred so that his anus faced her while I brushed the hair around it. She watched with pale dread, so hyperalert for bits of cat poop that she forgot her question. Fred whipped his tail back and forth to let me know his patience was wearing thin. To reward him for not jumping down, I combed his neck and throat again.

  He pushed his head up against my hand and purred his thanks. I picked him up and set him on the floor, packed my slicker brush away, spritzed the table with my handy-dandy water–Clorox mix, and wiped it dry with paper towels.

  “I’ll let myself out,” I said. I had been there only about five minutes.

  Kristin looked disappointed. She would have paid me another twenty dollars just to stick around and dish dirt about Marilee. Fred stuck his left back leg into the air and curved around to enthusiastically lick the inside of it. He didn’t even say goodbye.

  Seven

  It was one o’clock when I put my grooming equipment in the back of the Bronco and started home. The sky was a clear Crayola blue, with a relentless white sun that lasered the top of my head. Something was nagging at me, but I couldn’t put my finger on it. I’d been up since 4:00 A.M. and my brain wasn’t working on all cylinders.

  The lane leading to my apartment is covered with oyster shells that have leeched lime and become hardened by rain into a concrete-hard surface. Australian pines, mossy oaks, sea grape, and palms line one side of the drive, and the other side edges the sandy beach. It’s a private drive with a sign at its entrance proclaiming it not for public access, but people turn into it anyway and nose down to see what lies at its end.

  On most of Siesta Key, a private road like ours will take the curious to a multimillion-dollar house whose owners are readily recognizable from movies or book jackets or TV talk shows. Our road leads to a weathered two-bedroom house where my brother and his partner live, and to a detached four-slot carport with an upstairs apartment where I live. My grandfather bought the house from Sears, Roebuck in the fifties for a thousand dollars, now the house and garage apartment together are worth about fifty cents. The beachfront property they sit on is worth about five million. Or at least that’s what we’ve been offered for it. We wouldn’t sell at any price, so it doesn’t matter.

  Michael and Paco were in the carport putting away fishing gear, both with the bleezy, sun-blasted look that men get w
hen they’ve happily spent arduous hours sweating and squinting at a blazing sea. Michael is thirty-four, blond and blue-eyed like me, but a lot taller and wider. He’s a fireman, and when he’s suited up in his fire-fighting gear he’s roughly the size of Sasquatch. Women fling themselves at Michael the way mating lovebugs splat themselves on car windshields in the spring. I wouldn’t be surprised if some of them bear razor scars on their wrists at the futility of it, because he and Paco have been together for over twelve years and counting.

  As slim and dark as Michael is blond and broad, Paco is with the Sheriff’s Department’s SIB—Special Investigative Bureau—which means he gets involved in cases that require him to take on disguises his own mother wouldn’t recognize. Cases that we don’t question him about. Michael is my best friend in the whole world, and Paco is my second-best friend. When I lost Todd and Christy, Michael and Paco sort of sandwiched me between them and kept the world out until I was ready for it.

  Michael works twenty-four/forty eight at the firehouse, which means a twenty-four-hour shift on, followed by forty-eight hours off. He usually spends his off-time fishing. Paco works mysterious hours that nobody can predict, many of them after midnight. When he isn’t working or sleeping, he goes out in the boat with Michael. I never do. I love to look at the Gulf and I love the sound and smell of it, but I don’t like being on it. It’s too big and willful for me. I don’t much like things I can’t control, at least a little bit.

  I got out of the Bronco and shaded my eyes against the glare. Out in the Gulf, sunlight sparked diamonds off glittering waves undulating toward the beach where they gently exploded into lacy white froth. A few gulls half-heartedly squawked and spiraled overhead, but most of them had retreated to shady nooks for a siesta.

  I said, “What’d you get?”

  “Some nice pompano. A couple of snapper.”

  “There was a dead man in one of my houses this morning.”

  They both stopped what they were doing and stared at me with identical expressions of shocked concern. I felt like a kid with a great Show and Tell.

  “Marilee Doerring’s house,” I said. “I found him in the kitchen with blood on the back of his head and his nose taped in the cat’s water bowl. I’m not supposed to tell the part about the water bowl yet.”

  Michael said, “Well hell, Dixie. What’d you do?”

  “Called nine one one. Sergeant Owens came out, and a detective I never heard of before. Paco, do you know a guy named Guidry?”

  “Nope, must be somebody new.”

  Having delivered my impressive news, I said, “Well, I’m going to go take a nap,” and left them staring after me as I dragged my weary butt upstairs to my little private world.

  I have a wide covered porch, a living room with a one-stool breakfast bar and galley kitchen at the side, and a bedroom barely big enough for a single bed, a nightstand, and a double dresser. Photographs of Todd and Christy sit on the dresser. They’re the last things I see before I turn off the lamp, and the first things I see when I get up in the morning.

  Off the bedroom, I have a tiny bathroom, a laundry room, and a big walk-in closet that doubles as an office. It’s where I handle my pet-sitting business—at a desk in a windowless cubicle in front of a wall of shelves holding folded Ts and shorts and jeans, Keds and sandals and a couple pairs of heels. A lone rod across the short end holds a few dresses and skirts.

  I went inside just long enough to go to the bathroom and check my answering machine. I had three calls from women asking for my pet-sitting rates. I didn’t return any of the calls. I’d already had way more than my daily quota of people, and the day was only half over.

  I went back to the porch, switched on both ceiling fans, and lowered myself into the hammock strung in the corner. The surf was tumbling in its endless rhythm and gulls squawked overhead. My thoughts tumbled and squawked along with them as I let the terrible truth of the morning settle in. A man’s life had been taken, and whoever did it had made sure his dignity was stripped away, too. I felt personally violated. I didn’t know him, but he was a fellow human being.

  I drifted to sleep and dreamed that Christy was running on the beach throwing chunks of bread to the seagulls, laughing into the sky as they swooped down to catch them in their beaks. Her hair was almost white in the sunshine, and it bounced on her shoulders from a ponytail high on the back of her head. I was thinking I’d let her play until all the bread was gone and then call her into the shade so she wouldn’t burn.

  I woke up without knowing I was awake, with the edges of the dream blending with the sounds of the gulls and the surf. I lay there for a moment with my eyes shut before I realized it had just been a dream.

  Those of us who’ve lost loved ones to terrorists or religious fanatics or doped-up drivers or some other senseless violence ask, “Why? Why? Why?” But after a while, the question becomes “Why not?” Why should we get to have our loved ones around us when people all over the world are keening the loss of mothers, fathers, sons, daughters, brothers, sisters, lovers? So many people dying for so little reason.

  Todd and Christy were killed when a ninety-year-old man slammed his Cadillac into them in a Publix parking lot. If I say it fast like that, I can keep my voice even, but just.

  Todd and I had talked on the phone before he left to pick Christy up at day care. “We need some milk and Cheerios,” I said. “I think we’re out of orange juice, too.”

  “Christy and I will get it on our way home,” he said. “See you a little after six.”

  For the rest of my life, I’ll play that conversation over and over in my head, wishing I could rewind it and do it over, wishing I had said, I love you, my darling, and I always will, wishing I had told him how safe he made me feel, how protected and cherished.

  He and Christy were both killed instantly. Todd was thirty. Christy was three.

  The man who hit them said he had accidentally hit the gas instead of the brake. He felt terrible about it. His son came to see me after the funeral and told me his father was a good man who had resisted giving up his independence even after macular degeneration had robbed him of most of his sight. Florida allows people to renew their driver’s license over the phone, so he had just kept driving in spite of his family’s objections. The son said he had taken the car away from his father after the accident, and that his father had wept every day since it happened. From grief and guilt, he said, not just because he couldn’t drive. As if that made us even.

  For a long time I was so consumed by anger that it almost destroyed me. Anger at the state for allowing people to renew their driver’s license without an eye exam. Anger at a man for continuing to drive after his vision and reflexes were shot. Anger at his family for not taking his car away sooner. In the end, forgiveness came not because I stopped feeling the gash of bitterness, but because I was exhausted by it. My anger has settled down from a flaming roar to a dull simmer now, like a volcano that seems calm but may erupt when you least expect it. It’s the volcanic part that’s the problem, the part I can’t control—especially if I see somebody abusing a child or a pet. Then I go totally apeshit, and there’s no telling what I’ll do.

  I got up feeling flushed and swollen and went inside and stood in front of the open refrigerator and glugged an entire bottle of cold water. I carried another bottle to my closet office, and put in a call to Lieutenant Guidry. He wasn’t in, so I left my number. Then I called Shuga Reasnor.

  She answered the phone on the first ring, and her voice had that mix of desperation and annoyance that people get when they’ve been hovering around a phone for a long time hoping it would ring.

  I said, “It’s Dixie Hemingway, Ms. Reasnor. I just wanted to ask you something. Do you know Dr. Coffey?”

  She waited so long to answer that I thought for a moment she might have laid the phone down and walked away. Then she said, “Why do you ask?”

  “I saw him in the Village Diner, and I asked him if he knew where Marilee might have gone. I thought si
nce they were engaged, he might have some idea. He got very angry. Wouldn’t even talk to me. It seemed odd.”

  “He’s odd. He’s mean and he’s odd. Stay away from him. Don’t talk to him about Marilee.”

  “Do you think he’s dangerous? Do you think he might have been the one who killed the man in Marilee’s house? Jealous, maybe?”

  “Gerald Coffey’s too big a coward to kill anybody. He might hire somebody to do it, but he wouldn’t do it himself.”

  “But you think he might do that? Hire somebody?”

  “I didn’t say that. I just said he didn’t have the balls to kill anybody himself.”

  “If you think of anything that the Sheriff’s Department ought to know about Dr. Coffey, I hope you’ll tell them.”

  “Yeah, I’ll do that.”

  We said our goodbyes and hung up. I knew she wasn’t going to tell Guidry about Coffey. Shuga Reasnor didn’t sound like a woman anxious to help in the investigation. In fact, she sounded like a woman with something to hide.

  I spent the next hour attending to business. I called the people who wanted to know my rates, which is twenty dollars a day to make a morning and afternoon visit. If they want a sitter in the house overnight, it’s forty dollars. For twenty-four-hour care, the fee is sixty dollars. Most pets are accustomed to being home by themselves during the day, but I have a crew of retirees who do sleepovers and round-the-clock care.

  All my fees are spelled out in a contract I have my clients sign, along with our respective responsibilities. If a pet becomes ill and needs medical care when the owners are gone, I pay for it. If some disaster happens that causes water to be shut off or the pet to have to be evacuated, I supply whatever is needed, including new quarters. When the owners return, they reimburse me for my expenses. Taking on the care of a beloved pet while its owners are away is like taking on the care of a child. I have to trust the owners, and they have to trust me.