Cat Sitter on a Hot Tin Roof: A Dixie Hemingway Mystery Read online

  I said, “I’m taking my loot and going home to bed.”

  I kissed two cheeks and one furry head and left them. As I climbed the stairs to my apartment, I looked up at a coconut palm silhouetted in the curve of a waning moon rind. The palm’s fronds had fallen away and left a rim of boots around its bulbous head. Caught in the moon’s thin arc, the trunk had a priapic look. Or maybe it was just me. When you haven’t had sex in almost four years, you tend to see phalluses in unlikely places.

  As I fell asleep that night, my thoughts went to All Children’s Hospital in St. Petersburg and to a little boy whose skull would be opened the next morning in hopes of giving him a better life. I knew the anguished fear his parents must be feeling. No matter how skilled the surgeons were, nothing is certain. The operation could fail, or something could go wrong. And because my own child had died, I couldn’t keep from thinking the unthinkable—Jeffrey could die. I also knew that if anything went wrong, Hal and Gillis would never forgive themselves for choosing the surgical option. They would question their decision for the rest of their lives, just as I would always wonder if Christy would have died if I had not been working that day.

  I muttered, “No!” and punched my pillow. Thoughts like those could only lead to useless pain, and I refused to linger in that hurtful place.

  Deliberately, I imagined Jeffrey and his parents coming home. I imagined him running to greet Mazie, with Hal and Gillis standing behind him beaming with joy that he was now free of seizures. With images of Jeffrey playing with Mazie rolling inside my head, I drifted to sleep and dreamed that Christy and I were walking on the beach. She was just a toddler, and her little pink shoes made three-inch footprints on the white sand. I shuffled along behind her, close enough to put out a steadying hand when she needed it, but far enough away to let her feel the thrill of toddler independence.

  She looked over her shoulder at me and laughed with sheer joy. The laughter turned into the sound of rain against the window, and I opened my eyes and fought the momentary confusion that dreams bring. It was the first time I’d dreamed of Christy in several weeks. For a long time after she died, she had filled my dreams every night. Now, when weeks sometimes passed without her nocturnal visits, a dream always brought a disquieting sense of having abandoned her.

  I went back to sleep until the alarm sounded, and I got up with a foreboding sense of dread.

  7

  The sky was still pearly white when I walked out on my balcony next morning, and a gentle sea murmured drowsily to the shore. As I went down the stairs to the carport, I caught a faint vanilla scent, a whiff of fragrance from a night-blooming cereus twined around the oak tree beside Michael’s deck. Creamy white and big as dinner plates, cereus blossoms last only one night, but they are magnificent. By June, they are so profuse and fragrant that being outside at night is like bathing in perfume. Since it was only early April, first blooms were there as friendly promises.

  In the carport, all our cars and Paco’s Harley were damp with morning dew. Michael’s shift at the firehouse would begin at eight that morning, and then for the next twenty-four hours his car would be gone. I always instinctively look to see whose car is home and whose is gone, and I always breathe a little easier when both Michael’s and Paco’s cars are there. I hate to admit that, but it’s true.

  I took a deep final hit of salt air and cereus, shooed a trio of sleepy pelicans off the hood of my Bronco, and crept down the twisting lane toward Midnight Pass Road. I went slowly so as not to disturb the parakeets roosting in the mossy oaks along the lane. Parakeets are such prima donnas, they make a big to-do if you wake them up.

  At the Sea Breeze, where Tom Hale lives, the parking lot was quiet, with the only movement from a few early risers and their dogs. The elevator was coming down when I entered the downstairs lobby, and when the door opened Tom’s girlfriend came out, walking fast and frowning like the Wicked Witch of the West. She had a thick square bandage on her chin, and when I spoke to her, she gave me an icy glare. I swear, the more I saw of that woman, the less I liked her. I supposed she must have some invisible stellar qualities or Tom wouldn’t be involved with her, but I had never seen them. More than likely, they only came out in bed.

  Upstairs, I used my key to open Tom’s door and found him sitting in the living room with his arm around Billy Elliot’s neck. They weren’t watching early morning news, they were just sitting.

  I said, “I just met Frannie leaving the building.”

  Tom nodded and tightened his lips.

  I got Billy Elliot’s leash and snapped it on his collar. If Tom didn’t want to talk, I wouldn’t press him.

  Tom raised his arms like an orchestra conductor who’d been waiting for his cue. “Okay, here’s what happened. She had a small skin cancer removed from her chin. Nothing serious, not a melanoma, she’s going to be fine. But she’s self-conscious like you wouldn’t believe about it. We went out to dinner last night, and when we came home she told me she’d noticed people staring at her. I’d noticed it too. You know how people look at anything unusual, and they were looking at her bandage. I said it wasn’t surprising that people stared at her because she’s a beautiful woman. She said no, they were staring at her because she was with me. Said she could tell they felt sorry for her.”

  He spun his chair around to face me. “She brought it up again this morning, and I told her the truth. Nobody was looking at her because she was with a man in a wheelchair, they were looking at her because she had a big honking bandage on her chin. And they weren’t pitying her, they were just rude and curious. She got pissed and stormed out.”

  I wanted to tell him Frannie was all wrong for him and Billy Elliot, but I knew better. Tell a friend who’s having a lover’s quarrel that you hate his girlfriend’s guts, and the next thing you know they’ll be back together again and he’ll never forget what you said.

  As mild as milk, I said, “You might want to consider what kind of woman would think people pitied her for being with you. Not to mention what kind of self-consumed bitch would tell you that.”

  He gave me a half grin. “Come on, Dixie, don’t be shy. Tell me what you really think.”

  “Sorry, gotta go. Billy Elliot and I have an appointment with some bushes downstairs.”

  I took Billy Elliot out to the hall. Before I closed Tom’s door, I saw a full grin on his face.

  Billy Elliot and I ran our laps in the parking lot until he was happy and I was wheezing, then we rode the elevator back upstairs to Tom’s condo. I could smell coffee brewing and hear the shower running. I kissed Billy Elliot goodbye, hung his leash back in the closet, and let myself out. On the ride downstairs in the elevator, I counted the women I knew who were both single, attractive, heterosexual, smart, the right age, and good enough for Tom and Billy Elliot. It was a short list, but if Tom ever dumped Frannie’s self-centered ass, I would be matchmaking before sundown.

  By the time I’d walked all the dogs on my list and fed and groomed all the cats, it was almost nine o’clock and I was on my way to Fish Hawk Lagoon to walk Mazie. Just after the light at Stickney Point, I saw a dark form the size of a toddler’s fist moving across the pavement ahead of me. Only one thing in the world has that shape and moves with that sprawling bent-leg gait. A baby turtle had decided to see the world.

  I veered onto the shoulder and had my door open before I came to a jolting stop. Behind me, a green-and-white sheriff’s car stopped in the spot where I’d just been. The driver’s door opened, and a deputy in dark green shorts and shirt jumped out and started flagging down traffic. He must have come up behind me while I was pulling onto the shoulder, spotted the turtle, and realized my intention.

  I recognized that deputy. He was Deputy Jesse Morgan, an officer I’d met several times before in less pleasant circumstances. I was fairly sure that Morgan thought I was a nutcase. Considering his reasons, I couldn’t actually blame him.

  Flashing him a grateful grin, I sprinted across the pavement and picked up a three-inch F
lorida box turtle. As I ran back to my car, Deputy Morgan got back in his car and waited for me to pull back on the road. He didn’t smile and his eyes were shielded by dark glasses, but I had the distinct impression that he was pleased. I felt as if he and I had made a new turn in our acquaintanceship.

  The turtle’s oval shape marked it as female. When I put her down on the passenger floor, she immediately resumed her plan of moving from Point A to Point B, totally ignoring the interval when a force much larger than herself had swooped down and grabbed her.

  I’ve felt that way myself a few times.

  Except for the threat of being eaten by birds and killed by humans, nature has been especially kind to female box turtles. If a female meets a male she fancies as a father for her children, she can have a night of mattress-slapping, heel-banging, headboard-butting sex and then store his sperm for six or seven years. She can go to graduate school, start a business, get tenure at a university, make partner at a law firm, all the while secure that she has plenty of desirable sperm ready and waiting. Then, when her maternal urges kick in, she can dig a hole and use the stored sperm to fertilize her eggs. Maybe she has completely forgotten the male who donated his sperm. Or maybe she remembers and a tear rolls down her leathery cheek while she inseminates herself. At any rate, she can repeat the whole sex-and-storage thing as many times as she chooses for the rest of her life. Box turtles may live to be a hundred, so that’s a lot of sex with freedom to choose when to be pregnant. How cool is that?

  Fish Hawk Lagoon is actually a man-made lake in the shape of an artist’s palette. The lake has narrow inlets that allow small pleasure boats access to the bay, and it’s a favorite nesting place for ospreys, which are also called fish hawks. The residential area curves around it, and there are picnicking spots interspersed with nature preserves around its perimeter.

  I followed the hibiscus hedge beside the jogging trail until it ended at a boggy lakeside area shaded by moss-hung oaks. Thick with ferns, potato vines, lilies, and taro, and bounded on two sides by palmetto and hibiscus, it was as good a sanctuary as a little turtle could hope for. Pulling behind the hedge into a shelled parking area beside the trail, I picked the turtle off the floor and took a minute to study the perfect symmetry of her carapace markings. They conjured a faint echo of drumbeats, a flash of an initiate dipping her finger into pale yellow dye to trace a clue on a dark turtle shell, sounds of female voices raised in triumphant ululation. If creatures that link us to our distant past become extinct, will we lose the unconscious memory of our origins?

  With the little turtle’s legs valiantly churning the air, I walked toward the bog, then stopped a moment to look at a nesting pair of sandhill cranes on a minuscule sandbar about ten feet offshore. Four or five feet tall, sandhill cranes are magnificent stalk-legged birds with brilliant patches of red on the tops of their heads. Males and females work together to build nests of twigs and weeds, then the male stands guard while the female sits on their eggs, usually just two. He stays close by until the chicks are able to fly by themselves too, not like some human males who leave their mates to raise their babies alone. This couple must have lost one of their eggs, because only one fluffy caramel-colored chick was poking its head from its mom’s shoulder feathers.

  When I squatted on the loamy ground, the male crane stretched his snaky gray neck, made a high-pitched gurgling cry, and flapped his huge wings a couple of times. With his five-foot wingspan, he looked like Rodan, the old horror-film monster, ready to shock and awe Tokyo. I hoped he had shocked and awed the baby turtle so she would hide from him, because he could easily gulp her down for breakfast.

  When I set her down, she zipped out of sight under a clump of taro leaves. She probably thought she had cleverly escaped a giant predator, but it wasn’t the sandhill crane she feared, it was me. Like all of us, she would have to learn that some things that seem horrifying are really benign.

  From the other side of the hibiscus hedge separating the street from the trail, a man’s outraged voice rose above the hum of insects and birdsong.

  “How could you do that to me? How? Even for you, it’s especially despicable. You’ve outdone yourself this time. Of all the stupid, selfish, unforgivable things you’ve ever done, this is the worst!”

  Peering through the hibiscus, I saw two people approaching, a woman in jogging shorts, and a barrel-chested bull of a man in a dark suit. Fury surrounded the man in a kind of subliminal red mist. Not that I’m able to see auras. But if I were, I’m positive that’s what his would have been—hot, pulsating energy the color of blood. He walked with the heavy-shouldered tread of a man with a thorn in his soul.

  He said, “This time you went too far. You won’t get away with this one.”

  They moved forward until I could see their faces. The man had the glossy patina of raw power, the kind that always sits at the head of the table no matter what the meeting is. He looked to be in his mid-fifties, with dark slicked-back hair, deep pouches under heavy-lidded eyes, and a mouth that was accustomed to giving orders. His body was thick and broad-shouldered, but every inch seemed to be muscle. The woman was Laura Halston. She looked bored.

  She said, “You can’t do a thing to me, Martin. Not now, not ever.”

  I looked harder at the man, imagining him carving Laura’s stomach with one of his scalpels. Now that I knew who he was, I could imagine him as a young linebacker. I could also imagine him stalking like a king through hospital halls while nurses fluttered in his wake.

  It was one of those moments when no matter what you do, it’ll be wrong. I could have stood up and made my presence known, but then Laura would have been embarrassed to know I had heard an intensely personal conversation. I could have put my hands over my ears or scuttled out of earshot, but it was too late. I’d already heard enough.

  I watched Laura step into the street and start walking away from her husband.

  In a voice choked with rage, he said, “Don’t you dare walk away from me! You owe me, goddammit! You owe me!”

  Without turning, she stretched her arm overhead and shot him a finger.

  He stared at her back a moment longer and then charged to a car parked down the street. Spraying shell, he roared away.

  I waited until Laura had disappeared around a curve in the other direction before I stood up and walked to the Bronco. Then I drove sedately and carefully toward Mazie’s house. I might be a voyeur, but I don’t speed.

  I didn’t need a playbill to know that Laura’s husband had found her, and he hadn’t sounded to me as if he intended to let her go without a nasty fight. Laura had said she was afraid of him. Now that I’d seen him and had a sample of what he was like, I wasn’t sure she was frightened enough. With his raw rage, he seemed inherently capable of violence—violence that went far beyond the sick practice of throwing scalpels at the ceiling to frighten his wife.

  8

  An ancient story tells about a prince who died and went to heaven. As he always had, his dog followed him. At heaven’s gate, the gatekeeper said, “You can’t bring a dog in here, he’ll have to stay outside.”

  The man said, “This dog has been the most loyal friend I’ve ever had. He’s stayed with me through my every loss and humiliation, and he’s celebrated with me my every success. I cannot enter heaven and leave my best friend outside. If he can’t go in, I won’t go in either.”

  At that, the dog was revealed as a god in disguise, and they went in together. According to the story, that’s why dogs are called dogs, because they’re really gods in disguise.

  I thought about that story when I got to Mazie’s house. Pete was in the kitchen crouched beside Mazie, who lay by Jeffrey’s chair with its empty booster seat. Pete’s shaggy eyebrows were so low I could barely see his eyes.

  He said, “She didn’t eat last night, and she didn’t eat this morning. She’s too sad.”

  I wasn’t surprised. Dogs don’t have superficial love or shallow devotion. They don’t ever wonder if it would better serve their own
interests to switch their loyalties to somebody else. Once they give their hearts to one person, that’s where their commitment lies, and they grieve the loss of a loved one the same way humans do. For a service dog like Mazie, her sense of loss was even more acute.

  I knelt to stroke Mazie’s head. “Did Hal call?”

  “Not yet. It’s too soon.”

  I went to the cupboard and shook some kibble into my hand, then went back to sit on the floor beside Mazie.

  I said, “Jeffrey will be back, Mazie. And you have to keep your strength up so you can take care of him when he comes home.”

  As I said it, I sent a mental photo of Jeffrey giggling and hugging Mazie, while Mazie’s tail beat with wild happiness. Some people think I’m nuts to send pictures to animals, but the animals seem to get them, so I keep doing it.

  She lifted her head, sniffed the kibble, and ate one or two nuggets.

  Pete said, “She needs to eat more than that.”

  “If she’s drinking water, she can fast for a day or two with no problem. Remember, don’t try to tempt her with people food. When she’s ready, she’ll start eating again.”

  Pete reddened, as if he might have already offered her a bite of his own breakfast.

  Trying to act as if I were as confident as I sounded, I got Mazie’s leash and took her for a walk. She came along docilely, but her heart wasn’t in it and she kept looking back toward her house. I didn’t keep her out long. As soon as she had done her doggie business, we ran home at a fast clip.

  I looked toward Laura’s house, but all I could see were trees and the driveway. It was just as well. I was still embarrassed to have eavesdropped, and I needed some time before I saw Laura again.

  Back at Mazie’s house, I handed her off to Pete, told him I’d be back around three P.M., and scooted to the Bronco with visions of breakfast dancing in my head.