Even Cat Sitters Get the Blues

by Blaize Clement

  I considered that while I tottered into the bedroom and kicked off my high-heeled boots.

  I said, “I’m already hurt.”

  “Because you pushed the damn limits. What were you doing at the Kurtz house, anyway?”

  Oh, God, I hadn’t told anybody what had happened. In fact, I’d completely forgotten it. The thing about having amnesia is that you don’t remember what you’ve forgotten.

  Carefully, I turned around to face him. “Guidry, the woman was there. The woman with the dog.”

  His eyes narrowed. “The woman with the dog.”

  “Yes! Her car was there, but she was gone. That’s her car parked in front of my Bronco. I was going around her car when somebody hit me.”

  “After you called nine-one-one about the fire?”

  “No, before. Somebody hit me and knocked me out. I smelled smoke when I came to, and then I called nine-one-one.”

  “Dixie, you’re confused. Somebody hit you after the firefighters arrived, not before. The chief thinks the arsonist must have been lurking on the grounds and attacked you because he thought you had spotted him. Did you?”

  I shook my head and groaned at the pain the movement caused.

  “No, no, I was hit before the firefighters came. When I came to, there was smoke in the air. I called nine-one-one, and then I moved my Bronco so the fire trucks could get past. I was on my way to tell the fire marshal about the woman when I fainted. She may be under the bushes, unconscious.”

  “You say her car is still there?”

  I nodded and groaned again. God, I had to stop moving my head. “It’s a Ford sedan. It’s the same one she was driving the first time I met her.”

  Guidry had pulled out his cell phone and was punching in numbers with his thumb. I left him and started down the hall toward the bathroom.

  As I stepped into the bathroom, I heard him behind me speaking to a deputy.

  “Check out the plates on the Ford sedan in front of the Bronco. And start a search of the grounds around the house. You’re looking for a woman. Maybe hurt.”

  I pushed the door, but Guidry’s foot slid into the opening so it wouldn’t close.

  “That’s far enough for modesty. I’ll wait out here, but if I hear any thudding sounds, I’m coming in.”

  “Come on, Guidry, I have pet hair and grass and vomit and God knows what on me! Just a quick shower, okay?”

  There was a pause on the other side of the door. “I’ll make a deal. You get undressed and cover up with a towel. I’ll turn on the water and help you in the shower. I’ll give you two minutes, and then you turn off the water and I’ll hand you a robe and help you step out.”

  I opened my mouth to yell No! Then I remembered the squishy feel of the areca palm frond just before I fainted, and the somber warnings of the adolescent emergency room doctor.

  “It’ll take me awhile to get undressed. I’m moving slow.”

  “I noticed.”

  Peeling off tight leather pants is tricky under the best of circumstances. When it makes you woozy to lean over, it’s a bitch to get them down to your ankles. By the time I’d stripped to my panties, I didn’t have the strength to take the sweater off too.

  Gingerly, I leaned over the sink to brush my teeth and splash my face. Leaning made my head feel like it might explode any minute. When I straightened up, the room began to spin, and I had to clutch the edge of the sink until it came to rest. Taking a shower suddenly seemed like climbing Mount Everest.

  When I opened the door in my underpants and pink fuzzy sweater, Guidry took one look at me and scooped me into his arms like a daddy picking up a tired two-year-old.

  I said, “I’ll just stay dirty for a while.”

  “At least you don’t have nasty teeth anymore.”

  “I’d like to take a nap now.”

  “We’re going to talk awhile first.”

  “I need Extra Strength Excedrin for my headache.”

  “I have Extra Strength Tylenol, and I’ll make you some coffee.”

  His cell rang as he lowered me into the green chair and tucked my grandmother’s afghan around my legs. He answered as he started toward my little cubbyhole kitchen. At my bar, he stopped and grabbed a notepad and pencil.

  “Spell the name. And the address? Okay, dust the car for prints and run them through IAFIS. Top priority. Like in the next hour.”

  He pronounced IAFIS as if it were one word, but anybody who’s ever been in law enforcement is familiar with the FBI’s Integrated Automated Fingerprint Identification System. IAFIS has a database of close to fifty million subjects in its criminal master file, and its computers hum twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week, screening ten-point prints electronically submitted by law enforcement agencies. Not too long ago, it could take weeks to get a positive match to a print. Now they can spit back identifications of ten-point prints—the ones taken of every finger—within two hours if they’re criminal prints and twenty-four hours if they’re civil prints.

  Latent prints—the ones lifted at a crime scene—are not so easy to match. They’re analyzed and classified and fed into the network, and then all possible matches are returned. It’s up to the investigators to decide which, if any, most closely resembles the known ten-point print. If the latents are clear and complete, an identification is fairly certain. If they’re fuzzy or incomplete, it can be like making a decision based on tea leaves.

  I could hear squawking sounds from the other end of the line. Guidry didn’t look impressed.

  “Then you’d better get on it,” he said. “Time is fleeting.”

  He hung up, shed his leather jacket, and draped it over the back of my bar stool. Then he moved around my kitchen in search of coffee and cups, his chest looking broad and strong in his black turtleneck.

  I leaned my head back and wondered if I had ever heard a normal human being say Time is fleeting before. I decided I hadn’t. Like everything else Guidry did, it had a slightly foreign flavor. At least he hadn’t said it in a foreign language, which he probably spoke several of, including the French he’d once spoken to me when he called me a liar. But he’d said it softly, and not in a mean way.

  With my head pounding like a son-of-a-bitch, I sat there quiet as a mouse and wished he would talk French to me again. Not that I would know what he was saying, I just wanted to hear it.

  I had dozed off when he jostled my shoulder and set a cup of coffee on the table next to me. He took a seat on the sofa across from me.

  “Drink up. The caffeine may help your headache.”

  With a start, I said, “I have to call Joe and Maria!”

  “Who?”

  Struggling to get to my feet, I said, “Joe and Maria. I have to call them and ask them to take care of my pets tomorrow.”

  Joe and Maria Molina have a housecleaning service on the key, and a lot of their clients are the same as mine. Our paths cross a lot and we give each other a hand when it’s needed.

  Guidry pushed me back in the chair. “You stay put. I’ll bring the phone.”

  Right there in front of me, he picked up my shoulder bag—which he’d slung on the sofa—and plunged his hand in it as if he weren’t committing a major offense. Without even a smidgen of embarrassment at having gone in my purse again without my permission, he handed my cell phone to me, sat down on the sofa, and picked up his coffee. I would have glared at him, but it made my head hurt worse to wrinkle my forehead.

  Feeling like I should press the button gently since it was so late, I hit the speed-dial for Joe and Maria, and waited dully until Joe’s sleep-addled voice answered.

  Without going into detail, I told him I wasn’t going to be able to keep my morning appointments and asked if he and Maria could cover for me.

  Joe didn’t even hesitate. “Sure, Dixie. Which houses?”

  Leaving out Billy Elliot, I named them one by one while Joe mentally ran down his own list of places where he had keys or entrance codes.

  “Okay, okay, okay, no problem. You
want us to see to them in the afternoon too?”

  I told him I would be okay for the afternoon visits and got off the phone before he woke up enough to ask what was wrong. Then I called Tom Hale, imagining him lying in bed with his new lady love.

  When he answered, I said, “Tom, I can’t explain now, but I won’t be there in the morning. Can your friend run with Billy Elliot?”

  Groggily, and with a little affronted burr, he said, “I guess so, Dixie.”

  “Thanks, Tom. I’ll explain when I see you tomorrow afternoon.”

  I didn’t even say goodbye, just closed the phone and laid it on the table, noting as I did that my hand was shaking. Across from me, Guidry’s gray eyes were studying me as if I were a fingerprint.

  “Guidry, what about the fire? Was Kurtz hurt?”

  “It wasn’t in the house, it was outside. Some kind of chemical fire, I think.”

  “In the courtyard?”

  “No, behind the house entirely, on the east side.”

  That would make it behind Ken Kurtz’s bedroom, behind the gym where Ziggy was.

  I said, “Chemicals that could have blown up?”

  “I’m not sure. I haven’t spoken to the fire marshal yet.”

  “Guidry, you told me once that you’d been married. Did you love your wife?”

  It’s just amazing the things a person’s mouth will say when they least expect it.

  Surprised, Guidry put his cup down and rotated it on the coffee table, looking at the wet circles it was leaving as if they held the answer to my question.

  “I loved her when we married, and I didn’t love her when we divorced.”

  “Why not?”

  A shadow flickered across his face. “We had both changed a lot, taken on different ideas. I didn’t like hers and she didn’t like mine.”

  For a moment there was pain in his eyes like a hurt animal’s—raw and astonished.

  He took a deep breath. “It all blew up when I found out she was having an affair with my best friend. I hated them both for a while, but I got over it.”

  “You forgave them?”

  “It wasn’t a matter of forgiveness, I just decided to stop reliving it every day. Every time I remembered it, I felt the same pain and anger all over again. So I let it go. It’s done, over, in the past. If I go around resenting it, I keep it in the present.”

  I understood what he meant. That’s why I’ve forgiven the old man who smashed his car into Todd and Christy in the supermarket parking lot and killed them. Forgiveness may be the most self-serving of all emotions because you do it for yourself, not for the one forgiven.

  I said, “I’m sorry I asked. It’s none of my business.”

  He gave me a keen look. “Maybe it is. You ready to start loving again?”

  I leaned my huge head back against the chair and closed my burning eyes. “You sound like Tom Hale.”

  “Who?”

  “A guy. He says love is a choice people make.”

  “Well, you sure as hell can’t love if you choose not to.”

  I opened my eyelids a tiny bit and looked at him through the slit. I was tempted to say, How can I help holding dear the memory of my first marriage? but I knew that wasn’t the issue. Nobody expected me to forget Todd.

  The issue, plain and simple, was that Guidry was a cop. I didn’t know if I could bear loving another man who left home every day with a chance of being gunned down by some jerk whose judgment had been stolen by fear or greed or drugs. On the other hand, it takes a particular kind of courage to go out every day to do a job that can get you killed, especially when half the population hates or fears you, and I was drawn to that kind of bravery.

  But did I choose to love a cop, when there might be another man I could also love?

  THIRTEEN

  Guidry’s cell phone rang, startling me so that I slopped coffee on my already stained mohair.

  He answered while he walked to the kitchen to get me paper towels. When he handed them to me, his face had taken on his cop look—flinty-eyed, cool, objective—not the open face he’d had a few moments before. He went back to the bar and took notes while the person on the other end of the line talked. Then he spoke briefly and low and hung up. When he came back to the sofa, he was all cop.

  “We have a tag ID for your mystery woman. The car she’s driving was reported stolen three months ago in Langley, Virginia.”

  “Did they get latents from the car?”

  “Surprisingly few, and what they got were poor quality.”

  Guidry sat down on the sofa and took his coffee cup in both hands, leaning over it with his elbows on his knees and looking into its dark depths as if he were trying to find the woman’s identity there.

  He said, “She look like a car thief to you?”

  If my head hadn’t been so full of wet wool, I would have said Aha! So now you believe me about the woman! Instead, I just thought it, but slowly.

  I said, “She looked like a soldier.”

  He raised his head with a spark in his eyes that told me I’d said something that fit an idea he had.

  “Talk to me, Dixie. Why did she look like a soldier?”

  I squirmed down in the chair to find a more comfortable place for my head. “Her posture, I guess, and her shoulders were square, like somebody who’s spent a lot of time standing at attention.”

  “Anything else?”

  “Just a general feeling of authority, like she knew how to give orders. Deep, husky voice. She didn’t smell like a heavy smoker, so I think the voice is more from expecting people to listen when she talks.”

  “So she could have been law enforcement too.”

  “My head hurts really bad, Guidry. The coffee’s not helping and I need to take a nap.”

  He got up and extended his hand. “Let’s go out on the porch. The fresh air will make you feel better.”

  Upright, I felt nauseated again, and I had to take a minute to let my brains settle down inside my skull. With the afghan around me like a sarong, I held Guidry’s arm while we slow-walked to the French doors. Outside, we leaned on the porch railing under a star-sparked cobalt sky. Down at the shore, a moon-oiled sea whispered secrets to the pale sand, and somewhere in the treetops a nesting osprey whistled urgently for its mate.

  Guidry said, “Somebody wiped down the inside of that car. Just like somebody wiped down the nurse’s bathroom and bedroom, the washer and dryer, the kitchen counters. Both of those women made deliberate efforts to erase fingerprints.”

  I put my hand over my eyes to shade them from the piercing starlight. “You checked the refrigerator door handle? From when Gilda opened it and took the bundles inside?”

  He gave me a stern glare. “None there either, although yours would have obliterated them if there’d been any.”

  I said, “Probably the gloves.”

  “What?”

  “Gilda was wearing latex gloves when she came to Kurtz’s door. Not the colored things that people wear to clean house, but thin ones like nurses use. She kept them on, too. Maybe the mystery woman also wore them.”

  Guidry stood straighter and stared out toward the invisible horizon for a second, then whipped out his cell phone, hit a number, and barked at whomever answered.

  “Did you find latex gloves in the sedan?”

  A beat went by.

  “Did you lift latents from inside them?”

  I could tell from his face that the answer was no.

  “Do it!”

  He clicked off and stared out at the horizon again.

  I said, “I’ve had enough fresh air. Can we go inside now?”

  He looked startled, as if he’d forgotten why we were on the porch. “You want some pizza? I’m starving.”

  I waved vaguely at Michael’s house. “Michael will make you something. I don’t want delivery people coming here.”

  “Michael’s on duty, Dixie. Remember? He was at the Kurtz fire.”

  Faster than an eyeblink, I was draped over the porc
h rail sobbing. “He’s so brave! My brother is so brave!”

  Guidry said, “Okay, concussion emotions. Sorry. Come on inside, I’ll scramble us some eggs. You have eggs?”

  Still bawling, I held up five fingers to show how many eggs I had. Grinning, he led me into the living room and gently shoved me back into the chair, where I continued to leak tears while he went in the kitchen. I heard the refrigerator open, I heard soft thumps of items being deposited on the countertop, I heard my microwave buzzing and a pan clank on the stovetop. I stopped crying and wiped my wet face with the paper towel Guidry had brought me to blot the coffee on my sweater. I also used it to wipe at some stains that I suspected were dried spit-up.

  Guidry came back with the coffeepot and refilled my cup, gave me a searching look, and went back to the kitchen and got two plates, one of which he set on the table beside me. I knew I couldn’t eat, but I looked at it anyway, curious to see what he had managed to put together from my meager supplies. Along with buttered toast, there was a mysterious mass of yellow and green stuff with some little chunks of something I couldn’t identify. I took a tentative bite and did a mental groan. I should have known Guidry would be a good cook. Coming from New Orleans, he probably interned as a chef at Antoine’s. He probably knew how to make beignets and crawfish étouffée and jambalaya, whatever that is. I took another bite and looked at him. The arrogant son-of-a-bitch was watching me with a slightly smug expression.

  I said, “Not bad.”

  “Thanks.”

  “What’s this green stuff?”

  “You had a package of spinach in your freezer.”

  “Hunh. Where’d you find the mushrooms? I didn’t have mushrooms.”

  “Yeah, you did, dried ones way back behind the year-old packages of rice cakes that have never been opened. At least you had real Parmesan, not that stuff in a can. It was so hard it must have been in your refrigerator for months, but it was real.”

  “I got those rice cakes when I thought I would go on a strict diet.”

  “Changed your mind?”

  “Uh-hunh.”

  “Dixie, tell me again what the woman said to you this morning.”