Curiosity Killed the Cat Sitter

by Blaize Clement

  “That’s always the way,” he said. “Those sanctimonious holier-than-thou types are always covering up something rotten. I hope they roast his balls over an open flame.”

  “First, they’ll have to prove he did it.”

  “The boy, how bad is he?”

  “It was to his head, Tom.”

  Tom looked down at his ruined legs. “It would be better for the kid if he doesn’t make it. Not if it’s to the head.”

  I felt tears coming, so I stood up and got Billy Elliot’s leash and snapped it on his collar. Tom rolled his chair toward me and fixed me with a stern look.

  “Dixie, don’t try too hard to make sense of any of this. Life doesn’t make any sense. Like they say, bad things happen to good people. It’s like chaos theory. You know chaos theory?”

  I considered my options. If I was honest and said I didn’t know diddly about chaos theory, Tom would tell me everything about it twice, and I’d never get away. If I lied and said chaos theory and I were old friends, he’d catch me in my ignorance and I’d still end up hearing all about it.

  I sighed. “Tom, I really have to go. I’ve got a million things happening at once and none of them make any sense, and so far as I can tell, they’re all impossible.”

  He smiled and gave me a thumbs-up. “You’ve got it, Dixie! That’s chaos theory!”

  When I got back to Marilee’s house, a green-and-white vehicle from the Community Policing Unit was in the Winnicks’ driveway—either to gather information or to offer the services of the Victim Assistance Unit.

  I laid my.38 on the kitchen bar, and sat on a bar stool to use Marilee’s phone to call the trauma center at St. Pete. A woman told me she could not provide any information about any patient, period.

  I said, “I just want to know if he’s still alive.”

  “I’m sorry. I can’t tell you anything.”

  I had known before I called that I wouldn’t get anywhere. To the woman answering the phone, I could be a ghoulish reporter following up a lead on a kid who’d committed suicide, or I could be the person who had pulled the trigger, checking to see if I’d been successful.

  I called Guidry to see if he knew anything, but he didn’t answer his cell, so I left a message.

  I fed Ghost, showered, and changed clothes, then went out to the lanai to get the grooming supplies I’d left on the table when I combed him. Phillip’s window was dark. I walked to the side screened door to look at it, as if the window held some secret that might help Phillip live. Phillip’s phone message now made perfect sense. He had already decided to kill himself when he called. He had wanted to thank me and to apologize for lying before he died. He should have known he didn’t need to apologize to me, especially not for lying about being gay.

  A coil of surprise moved at the base of my skull, and I looked at Phillip’s window again. Drought-tolerant Bahia grass grew from Marilee’s lanai to the wooden fence that marked the back boundary at the woods, with a bed of low junipers separating her yard from the Winnicks’. I opened the lanai’s screened side door, stepped out onto the grass, and went to stand at Phillip’s window. From that spot, I looked toward Marilee’s driveway. It was completely hidden from view by the corner of her house. Even the street in front of her house was invisible from Phillip’s window. I walked down the side of his house until I came to a spot where I could see Marilee’s driveway and the walk from her front door. It was at the very front of the Winnicks’ house, next to their garage. If Phillip had seen a Miata pull into Marilee’s driveway, it hadn’t been from his window.

  With my mind whirling, I went back to Marilee’s lanai and picked up my grooming supplies. As I was going through the glass door, my cell phone started beeping from the kitchen bar and I hurriedly pulled the slider closed and sprinted to answer it. It was Michael, his voice anxious because I hadn’t answered promptly. I told him I was absolutely jim-dandy and not to worry. I still hadn’t told him about the safe, but now didn’t seem the time. I also didn’t tell him that I’d just discovered that Phillip had lied to me.

  I put my grooming supplies in the Bronco and went back to the kitchen. I was hungry, but there was still the danger of being caught out by a reporter or by Bull Banks out on bail, so I toasted some waffles from Marilee’s freezer and ate them dry while I thought about Phillip’s lie. He had lied either about where he’d been when he saw a woman leave Marilee’s house or about what he’d seen. I tried to put myself in the shoes of an eighteen-year-old kid who had seen something connected with a murder. Could he have heard a woman’s footsteps and a car’s engine and then exaggerated, saying he’d seen a woman walking and a black Miata pulling in the driveway? Maybe. Or maybe the Miata pulled back far enough for him to see it in the street when it drove away. It made me too sad when I thought that Phillip might not live to explain what he’d lied about, so I wrenched my mind away from the lie and focused on the combination to Marilee’s safe.

  I hadn’t given up on the expectation that it would involve numbers most familiar to Marilee, but I had already tried the obvious ones. I got a bottle of water from the refrigerator and leaned on the bar to drink it, staring blindly at the phone on the counter. Ghost came and wound sinuously around my legs, rubbing his silky hair against my bare skin. Marilee had probably stood in exactly this spot a million times, talking on the phone while he rubbed against her ankles.

  Marilee had loved Ghost. She had chosen a strange name for him, but I supposed it had meaning to her. Thinking about that made the hairs on the back of my neck rise to attention. What if Marilee hadn’t been thinking of numbers when she chose a combination for the safe? What if she had been thinking of a word? I grabbed a pen and wrote Ghost. Then I looked at the phone’s keypad and put the corresponding number under each letter.

  I went to the safe and punched in 4 4 6 7 8. A satisfying click told me I had guessed right. The combination to the safe was the name Ghost. Now that I had figured it out, it made perfect sense. All I had to do now was find the key to open the second lock.

  I toasted some more waffles and tried to think where I would hide a key if I were Marilee. The killer had ransacked her closet and the drawers in her bedroom and bathroom. I had assumed he’d been searching for the safe, but maybe he’d known where the safe was and had been searching for the key. If that were true, maybe he’d had reason to search where he did.

  I got a black plastic garbage bag and went into Marilee’s bathroom. Ghost sat on the countertop and watched me empty bottles of lotions and boxes of powder, throwing the empties in the trash. I checked for a key inside every bottle and jar in the medicine chest and tossed them, too. Except for some aspirin and several bottles of vaginal gel guaranteed to feel like natural secretions, Marilee’s medicine cabinet was as innocent as a twelve-year-old girl’s. No prescription painkillers, no tranquilizers or antidepressants, no stimulants or hormones. Except for an occasional headache or dry vagina, Marilee had apparently been bloomingly healthy.

  I gathered up some unopened bottles of perfume and cologne and bath oil to take to Cora along with a bunch of scented candles with virgin wicks. The rest went in the trash bag, including half a dozen sticks of mascara and enough lipsticks to paint the lips of every woman in Sarasota and still have some left over for Bradenton. Ghost followed me when I hauled the bag out to the garage and stashed it in the garbage can. I made a mental note to remember to put the can out at the curb Thursday night, then went back into the kitchen.

  Getting rid of the bathroom trash had made me feel more organized. I hadn’t found the key, but at least I was doing something constructive.

  I stood in the middle of the kitchen and looked around. Get focused, I told myself. Think.

  I put a colander in the sink. Then I went through all the cupboards and got out every sack of flour and sugar and cornmeal, every box of cereal, every jar of spices, every opened package of anything. Ghost sat on the counter, intently watching my every move, his head turning like somebody watching a tennis match while I sif
ted everything through the colander. I ended up with a sinkful of dry stuff that would probably stop up the drains.

  I looked at Ghost. “I should have done this over the wastebasket, shouldn’t I?”

  He looked at me and let the vertical aperture in his eyes widen, but not in a judgmental way.

  I scooped the mess into a big bowl and dumped it into a garbage can under the sink, but I hadn’t given up yet. I got out all the jars in the refrigerator and lined them up next to the sink. I stuck my hand inside jars of jelly and jam and pickle relish and mayonnaise and mustard. All I got for my trouble was yucky fingers and gross condiments which I then tossed in the trash. Ghost’s whiskers wavered and he scooted back from the sink’s edge, disgust written all over his face.

  Pointedly, he got to his feet and arched his back and yawned. I knew what he was saying: It was bedtime, and I was wasting my time. But I couldn’t stop. I searched the refrigerator’s vegetable drawer and meat drawer. I got out every opened bag of frozen vegetables and dumped them in the colander, running hot water on them in case the key was frozen inside a solid mass of peas or carrots. At least I could get rid of the ruined vegetables by pushing them down the disposal.

  Ghost left me when I turned on the disposal. He had been loyal, but even an Abyssinian’s loyalty has its limits.

  I sat down at the bar and glumly considered my options. If I told Guidry about the safe, he could have somebody from the department crack it. But that would mean I’d have to tell him about the invoice I’d found in Marilee’s mail. And then I’d have to come up with a good explanation for not telling him before. And what if the safe held a wad of cash or valuable jewels? Common sense told me I was still a possible suspect. The same common sense told me that nobody considered me a strong suspect, because I’d had nothing to gain by the murders. But if there was a chunk of money in the safe, Guidry might think I’d known about it all along.

  See how the mind works when you have an overactive conscience? Not to mention a guilty secret.

  In my dream, Marilee had said, “You have the key.” I had thought she meant it in a metaphorical way, but maybe I was trying too hard to read symbols into something that was literal. Like Freud said, sometimes a cigar is just a cigar. Maybe she meant a real key. Maybe I had the key to the safe in my possession and my subconscious was trying to remind me of that.

  Thinking of the dream brought back the image of Marilee holding Ghost. Maybe that was the dream’s message—the key had something to do with Ghost. Marilee had chosen Ghost’s name as the numerical code for the safe, so maybe the key was hidden with something of Ghost’s, too. With a burst of inspiration, I sprinted to the pantry and grabbed the bag of dried cat food and dumped it into the sink. I searched through it, stirring it and turning it with both hands, but I didn’t find a key. Guiltily, I put it back into the bag handful by careful handful. Ghost came back in the kitchen and jumped on the counter while I did that, giving me a look that suggested he would eat food that had been roiled around in the sink when hell froze over.

  I went back to the bar and drank some more water. Ghost hopped down from the counter and meowed up at me. In the bright kitchen light, his shiny fur gleamed like silver. I knelt and stroked his head and neck.

  “I wish you could talk. You probably know where the key is.”

  He gave me a couple of I love you blinks, and in the next instant, I was racing for my backpack. I rummaged inside and pulled out Ghost’s velvet collar with its little silver hearts and keys. A silly, frivolous thing for a cat to wear, a one-of-a-kind item made by a silversmith in New Orleans and bought on a trip Marilee had made with Dr. Coffey. I turned it around, examining each silver key, and then found the one that was heavier and thicker than the others.

  “Hot damn,” I whispered.

  It was a real key, not just a charm, and I had been carrying it around all week in my backpack. I cut it off with Marilee’s kitchen shears, and went back to the safe. The key glided into the lock like a hot knife into butter. I wiped my hands on my shorts and pulled the door open. Inside the safe was a stack of manila envelopes.

  Carrying the stack with both hands, I went to the bar and put it down as gingerly as I would lay a ticking bomb. The stack tipped over and envelopes fanned out beside my gun and cell phone. I took a deep breath and moved the gun and phone over a bit. A thin thread of warning spiraled across my cortex like a figure skater making frantic figure eights, but I ignored it. If the contents of the envelopes held information vital to the murder investigation, I would most certainly call Guidry and turn them over to him. But if these were records having to do with Marilee’s daughter and her relationship with Harrison Frazier, I would protect them. For Marilee’s sake. For Lily’s sake. For Cora’s sake. Maybe for my own sake.

  The envelopes were the kind that have a metal clasp to hold the flap down, and my fingers trembled a little when I pulled up the prongs on the first one and opened the flap. I upended the envelope and let its contents slide out onto the bar. They were photographs, all turned face-down. Expecting a photograph of Lily in her formative years, I turned over the one on top. It wasn’t Lily. It was definitely not Lily.

  It was a view of a large naked man laid out on a messy bed. His arms were spread across the rumpled sheet and his hairy legs were open. Incongruously, he wore black dress socks. A black-headed woman lay prone between his legs with her face shoved into his crotch. A blond woman hovered above him with her breasts dangling above his head, and his lips had a firm hold on one of her nipples. Neither woman’s face was clear, both being shrouded by long hair, but the man’s face was clearly visible. He could not have looked any sillier.

  All the other photographs were of the same man, and some of the poses made the first one seem innocent. The man had been caught in every conceivable obscene position with two hookers. He had not only made a complete and total fool of himself, he had exposed himself to eighteen kinds of blackmail, loss of respect, ridicule, and perhaps loss of his loved ones. Each photograph bore the date and time, as if the photographer wanted them to have every possible stamp of validity. A ruled sheet of paper was folded with the photographs. In her rounded handwriting, Marilee had recorded a column of dates, with numbers beside each date. The dates went back over five years, regular as a calendar every month. The amounts were regular, too. Five thousand, five thousand, five thousand. There were no dollar signs, but I assumed the numbers referred to money received.

  I put the photos back in the envelope and washed my hands at the sink. Before I went back to the other envelopes, I drank a glass of water. Revulsion really dries up the mouth. The next envelope held almost identical photos, but the man was different. This one was a squat, round man with a receding hairline. He looked vaguely familiar, but I couldn’t place him. The two women were the same blonde and brunette, and the man’s look of mindless bliss was also the same. Another ruled sheet of paper with a column of dates and figures, but this one had started only two years ago. The numbers were greater, though. Eight thousand every month. Next to the dates and amounts, Marilee had noted where the money had gone, always distributed in amounts of one or two thousand dollars to several mutual funds. Marilee had apparently believed in diversity. Cora had been right, Marilee had been good with numbers. Big numbers. She had also had a savvy sense of how to invest small amounts of cash without attracting attention.

  I had to wash my hands again before I opened the other envelopes. It wasn’t that I found the graphic sexual images so shocking, it was the reason for the photographs being taken that made me feel like I’d been dipped in a vat of congealed chicken fat. The reason was obviously blackmail. And while the two women were always careful to keep their faces hidden from the camera, I was almost positive they were Marilee and Shuga. At least one mystery was solved. Now I knew how two women without any marketable skills could make an indecent amount of money. Literally.

  I went through the other envelopes with increasing horror, revulsion, and reluctant admiration.

&nb
sp; The photographs of Dr. Gerald Coffey were in the fourth envelope, and they confirmed my first mental image of his hairy back. The pose that exposed it was a special one, involving the insertion of a large dildo into his equally hairy backside while he knelt on all fours and apparently howled like a wolf. It was not the sort of pose that would inspire confidence and trust in heart-surgery patients. Which was no doubt why the column listing his payments culminated in the number one, followed by six zeros. The million he had paid Marilee before she jilted him at the altar had been hush money, not the love money he claimed. Wondering briefly why she had ever considered marrying him in the first place, I moved on to the other envelopes.

  Thirty-Three

  The photographs seemed almost commonplace now, all of naked men made hopelessly vulnerable by lust and stupidity. Some of the faces looked faintly familiar, and I assumed they were in the public eye in one way or another. Each of them had been paying Marilee between five and ten thousand dollars a month for years. Even splitting the take with Shuga, she would have been raking in a considerable amount of money. With the quarter million she got every year from Harrison Frazier’s family, she surely had never worried about paying the rent.

  The vulnerable fifteen-year-old girl who had been tricked into giving her baby to Harrison Frazier’s sister had grown up to be a woman who extorted money from a lot of men for the sheer pleasure of it. The money the Fraziers had given her had been more than enough for her and Cora to have a good life. It had been enough to live well in the present and also invest for the future. But it hadn’t been enough to fill the need Marilee had nurtured, the need to have control over men and to make them pay. And she had been aided and abetted by her friend Shuga, the poor girl who wouldn’t have had enough to eat if Marilee’s grandmother hadn’t fed her. I wondered if all the money they’d taken had ever made up for what they thought they’d missed out on.