Curiosity Killed the Cat Sitter

by Blaize Clement

  Guidry said, “I guess it doesn’t matter. Whether it was the blow to the head or drowning or choking to death, it was still homicide.”

  “Well, that’s the problem, Lieutenant. It does matter. The blow to his head was inflicted by a blunt object moving in a right-to-left trajectory. The tape applied to his head to keep his nose and mouth underwater was done left to right.”

  Guidry and I both stared openmouthed at her. I found my voice first. “You mean he was killed by two people?”

  “I mean he was first struck in the back of the head by a right-handed person, and then taped to the cat’s water bowl with his nose and mouth underwater by a left-handed person.”

  Guidry said, “Maybe it was one ambidextrous person.”

  “That’s possible too.”

  “Any idea what hit him?”

  “Blunt instrument, Lieutenant. You know what that means.”

  We all knew. A blunt instrument can be just about anything.

  “Here’s another thing,” said Dr. Corozon. “He was nude when he was struck, and there was a time lag before somebody dressed him and tried to drown him. I know that because there was dried blood on his body, under his clothes.”

  I said, “If they let him lie around long enough for blood to dry on his body, maybe he was already dead when they stuck his nose in the cat bowl.”

  She shook her head. “No, he had some water in his lungs. He was still breathing when somebody taped him down in the water, but he wasn’t fully conscious. I know that because there are no petechiae, little broken blood vessels from struggling to breathe.”

  Guidry said, “Can you give me a time of death?”

  “This isn’t TV, Lieutenant. He died between the time he was last seen alive and the time he was found dead.”

  He grinned. “Can’t you narrow it down a bit more?”

  “From the lividity, best estimate is around two A.M.”

  “Any idea how much time elapsed between the time he was hit and when he died?”

  “Several hours, probably.”

  Guidry thanked the ME and took the manila envelope from her. She said, “Good luck, Lieutenant. Nice meeting you, Ms. Hemingway.”

  We smiled at each other and she bustled off to her grisly inner sanctum. Guidry held the door open for me, and I went through like an obedient puppy. We retraced our way through that peculiar combined odor of chemicals and putrefaction and body wastes that permeates every hospital, both of us with our heads down to keep from breathing deeply, both of us thinking hard. I suppose Guidry was thinking about his case, but I was thinking how strange it was that I had stopped trembling the minute the medical examiner had come out to talk to us, when it was the ME I had been dreading so much. The last time I’d spoken to an ME, it had been to get the details of the autopsies on Todd and Christy, but somehow that memory hadn’t surfaced while Dr. Corozon had spoken. Instead, I had snapped into cool, objective detachment.

  We went through the exit and stepped into the heat of the parking lot. I said, “I looked through the house before I found the body. I didn’t see any blood spatters.”

  Guidry said, “He was probably taking a shower when he got hit. Forensics found blood traces in the bathtub drain.”

  “Somebody had cleaned the tub?”

  “Yeah.”

  We trudged across the hot pavement to Guidry’s car, and he beeped it unlocked. We slid into its stifling heat and he started the engine and turned the air conditioning up high. I looked at my watch. We had been inside the hospital only fifteen minutes.

  I said, “When I stopped by to pick up her house key, Marilee said she was just about to take a shower.”

  He turned his head and gave me a look. “You think that’s significant?”

  “Not unless she was about to take a shower with Harrison Frazier.”

  “Do you have any reason to think she was?”

  “Come on, Lieutenant, they were bound to know each other. Harrison Frazier wasn’t the kind of man to go around breaking in a woman’s house.”

  “Not unless he was accustomed to using a key and she’d had the locks changed.”

  Right then and there, I should have confessed that I had read Marilee’s letter to her daughter. I should have told him that Shuga Reasnor knew things she hadn’t told. But Marilee was a kind woman who gave her grandmother bread makers and expensive apartments, and she deserved a chance to have a relationship with a daughter she’d given up when she was fifteen without it becoming public knowledge. Besides, Shuga Reasnor was right. If Marilee was okay, she would be pissed sixteen ways from Thursday if she came home and found her most intimate secrets blabbed to the world.

  For all those irrational reasons, I kept quiet.

  Guidry said, “Do you happen to know whether she’s right-handed?”

  I shut my eyes and replayed her arm stretching toward me with the door key dangling from her fingers. “She handed me the new key with her left hand.”

  He nodded and didn’t say anything else. I didn’t, either.

  At the entrance to the parking lot at the Sea Breeze, Guidry stopped to let a woman on a yellow three-wheeler cross in front of us. Red-faced under hair dyed an improbable shade of magenta, she was leaning over the handlebars and pedaling with grim therapeutic exertion. A pole jutted at an angle from the rear of the trike, with a triangular orange alert flag attached to its end like a waving tail. We watched her move down the sidewalk the way jungle animals might watch a lioness chasing prey.

  We pulled into the parking lot, and I pointed silently to the spot where my Bronco was parked. When Guidry stopped behind it, I said, “So when can I bring Ghost home?”

  He gave me an “Oh for God’s sake” look.

  I said, “Come on, the cat didn’t do anything wrong. Let him come home.”

  “Maybe late tomorrow.”

  “You’ll let me know?”

  “Yeah.”

  I shut the door and walked to my own car, beeping it unlocked as I went. Guidry drove off without saying goodbye, which suited me just fine. I was glad I’d gone with him, but I didn’t want any conversation about it.

  By the time I finished with the last cat and drove home, it was after 8:00 P.M. Before I went upstairs, I stood a few minutes looking out at sailboats silhouetted against a sky so clear and blue, it caused my heart to swell with inchoate longing. Sailboats always seem carefree to me, even though I know a lot of them are manned or womanned by people who are anything but carefree. I went upstairs and unlocked the French doors, tossing my shoulder bag on the desk in the closet–office as I walked to the bathroom. In the kitchen, I opened a bottle of cold Tecate and poured it in a wineglass. I added a wedge of lime and took it out to the porch to drink while I watched a brilliant orange sun sink toward the horizon.

  When it touched the rim of the earth, pulsating for an instant on the water, a shimmering gold ribbon moved over the sea to the shore beneath me. When I was little, I believed that golden path was stretching out especially to me. I thought that if I were brave enough, I could step out on it and walk to the edge of the sea where I would find an enchanted world. I was never brave enough, so every sunset was an occasion of both wonder and chagrin.

  When the sun had slid under the horizon and left only a faint reflection of itself behind, I went inside and took inventory of the refrigerator. With both Michael and Paco away, I would have to fend for myself. Except for mayonnaise and mustard and pickles, about all I had was some sliced cheese and beer and a package of corn tortillas. The freezer section held a box of Boca Burgers, some ancient hamburger buns swathed in a thick layer of ice crystals, and some Ziploc bags holding mystery leftovers.

  I thought about having a bowl of Cheerios, but except for breakfast twelve hours ago, all I’d had to eat all day was an apple, and I was famished. Also, the shrink I saw after I lost Todd and Christy said it was important to eat a real meal when I was alone—if you don’t take good care of yourself when you’re alone, you’ll end up thinking you’re o
nly important when you’re with another person.

  There was a little Greek place in the village where I could get great lamb shish kebab if I could get there before they stopped serving. I jumped in the shower, and then ran still damp into my office–closet to pull on a short denim skirt and a white stretchy T. I dug my feet into a pair of white canvas mules, grabbed my shoulder bag from my desk, and was on my way out when I noticed the blinking red light on my answering machine. The strap on my bag must have been covering it before. I hesitated a moment, then punched the playback button.

  “Um, Miz Hemingway? This is Phillip Winnick? Uh, would it be okay if…I’d like to talk to you about…you know, the club and all. It’s very important. Ah, you can’t call me, so I guess I’ll try to call you later? And would you mind not mentioning this to anybody? Please? Thank you. Ah, it’s Phillip Winnick.” Then in an anxious rush, he said, “I’ll talk to you later. It’s Phillip Winnick.” Somebody must have told him it was important to give his name more than once when he left a message.

  I threw my bag over my shoulder and went downstairs to the Bronco and headed for the Crab House instead of the Greek place. Phillip wasn’t there when I arrived, but the waiter who led me to a table on the back porch said he was due at 11:00.

  The waiter said, “Would you like a drink?”

  “A margarita, please, but I’m starving, so I’ll go ahead and order.”

  “Stone crab?”

  “Absolutely.”

  “Fries?”

  “Extra-crispy.”

  “Salad?”

  “Please, with blue cheese dressing.”

  “Caesar or house?”

  “House.”

  “What kind of dressing?”

  “Blue cheese.” There must be a law that says waitpersons must ignore you if you tell them what salad dressing you want before they specifically ask you.

  He flashed a wide grin and buzzed off. Without Phillip’s music, the Crab House was quiet. Two guys at a table next to me were being so careful and polite that it was clear they were on a first date. On the other side of me, a man and woman were leaning forward with their elbows on the table and their hands interlaced. They had drinks on the table, but from the way they were gazing into each other’s eyes, they were already intoxicated by romance. A motorboat chuffed up to the dock and a man in cutoffs jumped out to tie it up while two women and a man stood up and made tugging and fluffing motions to clothes and hair before they climbed over the side and stepped onto the dock. They all trailed onto the porch and took a table at the side, laughing and talking amongst themselves with the kind of easy camaraderie that old friends have.

  The waiter brought my margarita and a board holding a mini-loaf of hot bread that had a big lethal-looking knife stabbed into it. He said, “A guy at the bar paid for your drink.”

  I looked through the glass wall and saw a large ruddy man at the bar grinning at me. He had a bullet-shaped bald head and eyes like black ball bearings. He raised his glass to me and began to slide off his bar stool with the clear intent of coming out to the porch.

  “Take it back,” I said.

  “It’s paid for. You might as well drink it.”

  “Take it back, and tell the bartender to make me another one.”

  He set the glass on his tray and hightailed it away to the bar. My admirer turned to him and asked a question, and then looked out at me with a dark scowl when the waiter answered. The bartender looked out at me, too, and his lips firmed into a tight-mouthed smile as he dumped the margarita and whipped up another one.

  I cut a thick slab of bread with the giant knife, and was using the knife to smear butter on the bread when the waiter brought a new drink. He carried it out on a tray held shoulder-high and set it down with a flourish.

  “He says you’ve got an attitude.”

  “Tell him I’ve also got a sharp knife.”

  “Whoa, hon, just take it as a compliment. Men are gonna hit on you. That’s just life.”

  He left and I looked toward the two men on my right. They had forgotten their first-date anxiety and were grinning at me. When they caught my eye, they raised their wineglasses in a toast. I smiled back and sipped my margarita. Inside, the bullet-headed man put money on the bar and stomped out, his pants creasing around a thick wad in his crotch.

  By the time I got the stone crab, I had eaten enough bread and salad to be in a better mood. Stone crab is probably what God eats every night of the year, but in Florida we mortals only have it from mid-October to mid-May. Florida law prohibits fishermen from killing the crabs, but stone crabs can regenerate lost claws, so fishermen break one off and throw the crab back into the sea. That only leaves them one claw to defend themselves with, but they’re not boiling to death like they would be if they were lobsters.

  The claws are steamed right there on the boat, and then they’re chilled and delivered to restaurants like the Crab House, where people like me eat them without giving a thought to the crab’s trauma. Mine came with mustard sauce and a wooden mallet for cracking the claw, and I happily cracked and slurped away.

  Sixteen

  While I ate, I watched boats bobbing at the dock and idly listened to bits and pieces of conversation from neighboring tables. I learned that somebody named Tony was a real bitch and a half, and that somebody named Grace had finally gotten the money she had married for when her husband’s rich and ancient mother died. Grace, they said, was hell-bent to move back east where people would be impressed with their new wealth, but the husband was refusing to give up his golf and tennis life just to hobnob with some snooty New Englanders. Poor Grace. All that money and no place to flaunt it.

  It was almost eleven o’clock when I ate the last morsel. I put some bills on the table before the waiter came back, adding a hefty tip to make up for being churlish earlier, and stood up and started inside. The waiter saw me leaving and scurried over with a questioning look.

  I said, “I’m going to sit at the bar and listen to the piano player.”

  He looked over my shoulder at the money on the table and smiled. “No prob,” he said. “The pianist should be here any minute.”

  “You know him?”

  “Just to speak to. Seems like a real nice guy.”

  “He is.”

  “Oh, he’s a friend of yours?”

  I smiled, suddenly feeling proud to know Phillip. “Yeah, he’s a friend.”

  Inside, only a few people were at the bar. All men, and all with the appraising look of people who realized the evening was growing old and if they hoped to hook up with somebody, they’d better do it soon. None of them gave me a glance. I took the stool at the end near the bandstand and ordered another margarita.

  The bartender grinned when he set it in front of me. “This will be your third, right?”

  “Counting the one I didn’t drink.”

  “That guy, what an asshole! What’d he think, anyway?”

  “Maybe that works for him sometimes.”

  “Not with a woman like you. He shoulda known that.”

  Behind me, Phillip’s voice said, “Miz Hemingway?”

  I spun around, to see him standing there looking at me in disbelief, as if I were a genie he had conjured up from a bottle. Up this close, I could see the black flocked jacket he wore had been made for a much larger man. He looked like a little boy dressed up in his father’s suit coat.

  “Gosh, you snuck up on me, Phillip!”

  “Oh, I’m sorry! I didn’t mean to scare you.”

  “You didn’t, I just didn’t see you come in.”

  “I came in the back.”

  “Can you talk a few minutes before you start playing?”

  He grinned nervously, and I wanted to hug him. He was all wrists and ears and cheekbones, too ill at ease to know how to handle this unexpected moment.

  “Come on,” I said, “let’s go sit at a table for a minute. You want something to drink?”

  He shook his head, then licked dry lips and nodded. The bart
ender, who had been silently watching us, filled a glass with club soda and handed it to him.

  “Okay,” I said briskly, and walked the length of the bar to a tiny two-top in the back corner. Phillip trailed along behind me carrying his club soda, and we both dropped into chairs like falling rocks.

  He still seemed nonplussed that I was there, so I leaned toward him and said, “You left a message on my machine that you wanted to talk to me.”

  “Oh. Yeah. That. Well, see, I got to thinking and all…you know, about what happened next door. You know, how the policeman asked if I’d seen anything?”

  “Uh-huh. And did you see something?”

  “Well, that’s just it. I mean, I should have told him, but my mother was there and I didn’t want her to know I’d been outside at that time, you know. But the cops probably should know…I thought maybe you could tell that detective guy.”

  I could tell this would take all night if I didn’t prompt him. “Okay, what did you see that you didn’t want to talk about in front of your mother?”

  A deep port-wine blush rose from his throat and suffused his face. “It was when I was coming home Friday morning. I was crossing behind Miz Doerring’s house and I saw a woman come out of her house and get in a car in the driveway. A black Miata. The car swung in the driveway, the woman came out of the house and got in, and it drove off. I thought it was Miz Doerring, but now I’m thinking maybe it was somebody else. You know, like the killer.”

  I waited, but he seemed unable to continue. I said, “Could you see the driver?”

  Phillip’s flush deepened. “The top was up, so I couldn’t see. I just saw the woman.”

  I took a sip of my drink and pretended not to notice his discomfort. “And you could see her well enough to think it was Marilee Doerring?”

  He looked down at his plate, and for a moment I thought he might cry. “Not really. I guess I didn’t really look good. It could have been her or it could have been some other woman.”