The Cat Sitter's Cradle

by John Clement,Blaize Clement

  She said, “Well, I think I can safely say he’s in good spirits. Normally I might guess he’d been blown off course in a hurricane and wound up here, but I guess you noticed his primary flight feathers are clipped—so I think it’s safe to say that more than likely someone’s lost their pet. His coordination looks good, his eyes are bright, and I don’t see any signs of a respiratory problem, which is common with exotics like this. They’re taken out of their native habitat and their immune systems get quite a shock. It’s possible he might have ingested something toxic. How’s his appetite?”

  “It’s good. We’ve just been feeding him fruit and birdseed. I wasn’t sure what else to give him.”

  “I can help you with that, but I think it might be a good idea to keep him here for the night. The first thing that comes to mind is trauma. Birds routinely fly into buildings or windows. You’d be surprised how many birds knock themselves out for a bit, and then wake up later completely unharmed. Still, just to be safe I’d like to do some X-rays. We can also run some blood tests and check for a cardiac event, like a stroke. It could be he was simply exhausted and dehydrated, but I’d feel better if we covered all our bases. Any idea who he belongs to?”

  I shook my head.

  “I’ll ask Gia to call around and see if anyone reported a missing bird. In the meantime, are you busy this afternoon and would you like to give a speech for me?”

  I assured her that I was a disaster in front of a crowd, although the topic of her speech, the overpopulation of animal shelters and how pet stores should be regulated, if not done away with entirely, was a topic I am keenly interested in. But I was not meant for a life on the stage. When I was in fifth grade, my class put on a production of “Puss ’n Boots.” I barely remember what part I played because the moment the curtain went up on opening night, I vomited all over the stage. That was my last appearance in front of an audience, and I plan on keeping it that way.

  Dr. Layton took René out of Joyce’s cage and transferred him into a state-of-the-art number with an automatic water feeder and all kinds of rings and mirrors for him to play with. I said good-bye and promised him I’d be back bright and early tomorrow morning to pick him up, and thanked Dr. Layton for seeing me.

  As I was putting the empty cage in the back of the Bronco, I noticed the weather had changed dramatically. There was a mountainous black cloud lurking out at sea, and the air had grown still and damp—perfect conditions for a lovebug orgy. They were out in full force now, frolicking unabashedly in the air, so I drove down Midnight Pass toward home at a snail’s pace. I still had my afternoon rounds, but I needed a shower and a nap first.

  On the way I couldn’t stop thinking about Becca and what she must have been going through. I wondered if she’d worked up the courage yet to call her parents. I wondered how they’d react when they learned that Kenny had been working on more than their pool.

  I was going to have to talk to Kenny, even though there were lots of reasons not to. First, it was none of my business who he slept with; his employment with the Harwicks had nothing to do with me. Second, he was a grown man, and Becca was childish but not a child. Still, I felt an obligation, if not as his employer then as his friend, to try to set him straight. I knew he was a good man, and whatever reasons he had to be afraid of becoming a father, I couldn’t imagine he wanted to hurt Becca. Maybe he just needed a little push in the right direction.

  When I pulled into my spot under the carport, I could see Ella Fitzgerald waiting for me in the window of my apartment, which meant both Michael and Paco were probably at work. She flicked her tail excitedly as I climbed up the stairs. When I unlocked the door and opened it, she hopped down and ran up to greet me. I gave her a little scratch on the top of her head and she scrunched up her shoulders with a high-pitched thhrrrip! and then padded into the bathroom behind me. I was out of my clothes and under a strong stream of hot water in seconds. There is nothing in the world as wonderful as a shower. I don’t care how bad things get, if a person can still take a long, hot shower, life is good.

  I fell naked into bed, and Ella Fitzgerald circled herself into the crook of my arm and purred softly. I soon found myself in a dream. I was standing in front of a huge crowd of people. They were all raising their hands, waiting for me to call on them. I pointed at a young man, and someone handed him a microphone. He said, Hi, Dixie, my question is about string theory: If you rotate one dimension so that its trajectory is opposite to its original path, do the strings then fold in on themselves?

  I had no idea what the hell he was talking about, but I knew I had to come up with some sort of answer. All I could think to say was no. The man looked surprised at first, but then softened. He said, I’m sorry for what’s about to happen. I should have been honest with you from the start, but I was scared, and now it’s too late. I hope you’ll understand that I didn’t have a choice.

  I woke with a start. Kenny was leaving a message on my answering machine. I frantically reached for the phone and pressed the TALK button, but he’d already hung up. I pressed the NEW MESSAGES button, and Kenny’s familiar voice came out of the speaker.

  “Dixie, it’s Kenny. Listen, I should have told you, but I couldn’t. Something’s about to go down and … it’s big. I can’t tell you what it is, and probably by the time you hear this I’ll be gone. I just wanted to say I’m sorry for not being honest with you from the start. I was scared, and now it’s too late. I hope you’ll understand that I didn’t have a choice.”

  There was a slight pause, and then he sighed softly before the machine beeped off. I laid my head back down on the pillow and stared up at the ceiling. My first thought was that he was running away. Becca had worked up the courage to tell him she was pregnant, they had fought, and now he was abandoning her, throwing everything away to join the deadbeat dad club. But it wasn’t like Kenny to be so dramatic. He was a pretty straightforward, shoot-from-the-hip kind of guy, and for a brief moment my nap-happy brain toyed with the notion that it was just Kenny trying to be funny.

  I reached for the phone and dialed his number. By the tenth ring I knew he wasn’t going to pick up. When his voice mail didn’t kick in, I knew he wasn’t joking. I wondered if he hadn’t already had his phone shut off and had called from a pay phone. I looked down at Ella Fitzgerald, curled up and purring in the crook of my arm. I had the distinct feeling I’d been in this exact place and time before: Warm and cozy, curled up in bed without a care in the world, while dark clouds were looming all around me.

  9

  When I arrived at the Harwick house the next morning, I fully expected to find Becca in hysterics on the floor of the bathroom again. Kenny had probably called her the night before to say he was leaving town and she’d never see him again, or for all I knew he might have sent her a text message. That seems to be the primary mode of delivering important information for young people these days. Either way, I had a feeling Becca was going to need a lot more shoulder-crying time, and I already had a full day as it was. I certainly didn’t want her to go through this alone, but the bottom line was I barely knew her, and it wasn’t my job to shepherd her through the hazardous terrain of love and heartbreak. I decided that if she hadn’t talked to her parents by now, I’d try my best to convince her it was the right thing to do.

  The house was completely quiet. This time when I opened the door, the alarm panel didn’t beep, and Charlotte wasn’t waiting for me at the bottom of the stairs. I called out to announce my presence, expecting Charlotte to come slinking around the corner to give me the stink-eye, but no one answered. I went into the living room, where there was a half-empty liquor bottle and a couple of glasses on the coffee table, but no Charlotte. For the first time, I had a funny feeling that something wasn’t quite right.

  Every house has a particular scent to it, a very subtle mixture of the people and animals that live in it, as unique as a fingerprint. The Harwick house had a clean, earthy scent: a combination of cooking aromas from the kitchen, chlorine from the pool, the
salty air off the ocean, and a note of lavender, perhaps Mrs. Harwick’s perfume. But now, something was different. I told myself that the Harwicks had been gone for almost two days, and it was only natural that the scent of the house would change in their absence.

  But I couldn’t find Charlotte anywhere. She wasn’t in the kitchen or the dining area. I even looked under the couch in the living room and behind the dryer in the laundry room off the kitchen, both popular feline hiding spots, but she was nowhere to be seen. I went up the marble staircase and tiptoed down the main hall toward the master suite. The doors to Becca’s and August’s bedrooms were both closed, and I didn’t think it would be right to go snooping around in there. At least not yet, especially since I wasn’t completely sure they weren’t home and I didn’t want to barge in on them if they were. Hell hath no fury like a teenager awakened at dawn.

  The pillows on the big bed in the master bedroom had the same indentations where Charlotte had slept the night before, and the bedspread was a little mussed. Maybe she had slipped under the bed when she heard me open the front door. I felt around the pillows for signs of warmth, but there was nothing. I looked under the bed anyway, hoping I’d see her emerald eyes sparkling mischievously at me, but there were only a couple of dust bunnies and the foil wrapper from a piece of chewing gum.

  I was beginning to get a little concerned as I made my way down the short hall toward the master bathroom. As grumpy as Charlotte was, it didn’t make sense that she would hide—especially since cats are such inquisitive animals. She would have at least been curious enough to find out who was in the house before she gave them the cold shoulder, and it certainly wasn’t possible that anyone else had fed her this early in the morning. I tried to form an image in my mind of where I might be if I was a snarky queen in a sprawling mansion, and that turned out to be quite easy: that peach velvet bench in the bathroom opposite the aquarium, next to the gold-plated telephone.

  I flicked on the light switch by the doorway, and the overhead chandelier lit up to reveal the bathroom in all its over-the-top glory, but no Charlotte. There was a damp towel draped over the counter next to the sink, but otherwise everything looked normal.

  I leaned into the little alcove and peered behind the velvet bench just in case Charlotte was hiding there and thought, This is getting serious. I was out of ideas. I sat down on the bench and put my hand on the gold-plated phone, wondering if it wasn’t time to call the Harwicks and ask them if there were any other places she might be hiding. That’s when I had a feeling I was not alone.

  I looked up at the aquarium, fully expecting to see the mermaid staring serenely back at me, and instead locked eyes with a bloated hedgehog, floating motionless in the middle of the tank. It took me a couple of seconds of shock to realize that it wasn’t a hedgehog at all but a porcupine fish.

  Porcupine fish are pretty cute in their natural state. They have gloppy, rounded bodies with drooping eyes and a goofy smile, like drunken Pillsbury Doughboys with fins. But when frightened, they fill their bodies up with water, pumping to twice their normal size and extending their sharp, quill-like scales out in every direction. If that’s not enough to scare off a would-be predator, a naturally occurring chemical in their body that’s about a thousand times more poisonous than cyanide usually does the trick.

  While the porcupine fish and I stared blankly at each other, my mind did a little wheelie inside its skull. The alarm was off. Charlotte was hiding. The porcupine fish was in a full state of alarm. I glanced about the room looking for anything else out of place. I could hear myself telling Michael and Paco how valuable the fish were, and then I could see Mrs. Harwick pointing at the painted dragon eel and whispering, “Priceless!” I looked back at the tank. Now there were two pairs of eyes on me: the porcupine fish’s and the mermaid’s. She was staring directly into my eyes, like she was trying to tell me something, and I suddenly thought, A burglar is in this house and I’ve just interrupted him.

  I was still sitting on the velvet bench. I tried to look as casual as possible. I shrugged my shoulders.

  “Well, Charlotte,” I said out loud, “you’re not hungry, and I don’t have time to look for you all day.”

  I walked out of the bathroom, flicking the light switch off with a trembling hand as I passed, and steadily made my way downstairs to the front door, talking to myself the entire way, certain I was about to be jumped by an intruder.

  “Charlotte, you’ll just have to wait and have breakfast later, because I have other things to do and I don’t have time to go looking around every nook and cranny whenever it’s time to eat. You’ll just have to learn that if you want your breakfast, you have to eat it when it’s served. So I’ll just be back after lunchtime, and maybe you’ll decide you’re hungry by then.”

  I pulled out my ring of keys and jangled them loudly so whoever was in the house, if they were still there, would hear them and know I was leaving.

  “See you later, Charlotte!” I yelled and pulled the front door closed behind me. I walked down the winding driveway on rubbery legs, feeling like there was a target on my back. As soon as I was in the Bronco, I put the key in the ignition with one hand and pulled my cell phone out with the other. I rolled down to the front gate, and by the time I’d pulled out onto the road I had already dialed the number. Not 911, as I probably should have, but the number of my old superior when I was a deputy, that of Sergeant Woodrow Owens.

  As shaken as I was, I had to smile when he answered the phone. Sergeant Owens and I have a long history together. I served under him when I was a deputy with the sheriff’s department, I cried in his arms when Todd and Christy were killed, and when I laid down my gun and my badge, it was on Sergeant Owens’s desk. Since then I’d stumbled across more than my share of crime cases, and I was beginning to feel like an adjunct private investigator for the local law. Sergeant Owens had once told me I was too fucked up (his words) to carry on as a police officer, but I imagined he had an entirely different opinion of me now. Or at least, that’s what I hoped.

  Even when he’s being his official police self, Owens can’t keep from sounding like he’s about to sit down to crisp catfish and hush puppies that his mama just fried up for him and thirty-nine of his closest kinfolk. Owens is six-three, slow and lanky to look at, but lightning fast when he thinks. He sets high standards for himself and his subordinates, and he’s quick to let you know when you’re being a dumb-butt. Believe me, I know.

  I said, “Sergeant, it’s Dixie Hemingway. Sorry to bother you, but I’ve got a bit of a situation here, and I think you might want to send somebody over.”

  His voice warmed as if he was smiling. “What you got, Dixie?”

  I said, “I’m pet sitting for the Harwicks on Jungle Plum Road, and they have a huge saltwater aquarium full of fish in their bathroom. Valuable fish. When I arrived, the alarm wasn’t on, which is unusual, and the cat is missing, or hiding, I’m not sure which. I went into the bathroom where the aquarium is, and one of the fish is in a state of alarm. I’m not sure, but I think there’s been some kind of crime.”

  After a pause Owens said, “A cat is hiding, and a fish is alarmed?”

  “Yes.”

  “And where are you now?”

  “I’m parked on the side of the road a little ways down from their driveway.”

  After a moment, Owens drawled, “Are any of the other fish alarmed?”

  Okay, maybe he still thought I was a bit loopy. I sighed. “I know it sounds pretty flimsy.”

  “Dixie, flimsy is not the word I was thinking.”

  “I just don’t have a good feeling about it.”

  “Well, could be that cat ate one of them fish, and now he’s trying to make a run for it. You want me to shut down all the roads out of the city?”

  “Alright then, maybe I’m overreacting a little bit.”

  “Could be. Give me a call if you got any more nervous critters.”

  “Sorry to bother you.”

  “Not a bother at all,
Dixie.” I could feel him grinning over the phone. “Good to hear from you.”

  Just as I hung up, a shiny black sports car pulled into the driveway. There was a young man behind the wheel, and I knew it had to be the Harwicks’ son, August. I jumped out of the car and flagged him down. He rolled down his window as I came jogging up alongside the car.

  I said, “Hi, I’m the cat sitter. Are you August?”

  He smiled, looking me up and down, and said, “I am. What’s up?”

  “Look, I know this is going to sound crazy, but I was just in the house, and I think there may be someone in there. I can’t find Charlotte anywhere, and … well, one of the fish is alarmed.”

  His smile faded a bit. “Is my sister in there?”

  “I don’t know, I didn’t see her. I know it sounds ridiculous, but I just had a feeling something was wrong.”

  He looked up at the house and said, “Okay.”

  He shifted his car into park and turned off the ignition. I stepped back as he opened the door and got out. He was tall, at least six feet, with dark stubble and shaggy hair. He had the awkward swagger of a teenaged boy trying to come off like a man. I could smell liquor and cigarettes on his breath, and I wondered if he hadn’t been up all night partying and was just now getting home. No wonder the Harwicks needed me.

  He said, “I’ll check it out. Maybe you better wait in your car.”

  “I’m not sure you should go in there alone.”

  “Look, I already got ripped off once this week. I’m not letting that happen again. You wait in your car and I’ll be back.”

  As I turned to go back to my car, he leaned over and pulled something out of his glove compartment. At first I couldn’t quite make it out, but then I saw the familiar glint of black metal and realized it was a pistol. Why in the world this rich kid drove around with a pistol in his glove compartment was beyond me. Every bone in my body told me to get in my car, drive away, and never look back, but I wasn’t about to go anywhere until I knew Charlotte was safe.