The Cat Sitter's Whiskers
Page 23
My jaw fell wide open. “You have got to be kidding me.”
“I’m not. He told us a very interesting story about Mr. Fiori, the man who kidnapped you. At his direction, that figurine you saw was stolen from a church in a remote village in the mountains of Peru, but the man he paid to steal it decided to sell it himself, and Mr. Fiori has been after it ever since. Paxton was helping him, as was his assistant, Daniela, who not surprisingly has disappeared.”
I nodded, imagining Daniela returning Pachamama to her true home in Peru, and I imagined all of Pachamama’s worshippers gathered around her, crossing themselves and bowing in prayer.
McKenzie said, “Hello?”
“Sorry, I’m here—I’m just trying to process everything.”
“Dixie, do you think you’d be able to identify the two men that kidnapped you?”
I gulped, knowing exactly what she was going to ask next. “Yeah, I can identify them. Where do you want me?”
“Let’s meet at my office. I should be there within the next twenty minutes. All right?”
“Yes, of course.”
“And after the crime technicians give the clear, I’ll need to walk through this storage room with you. I’ll need to know everything you saw, every detail, no matter how small.”
I looked over at Mrs. Duffy’s yard to see if my heron friend was still there, but he’d flown away.
I said, “Sure. I’ll tell you everything.”
35
Sometimes when I wake up in the morning I open my eyes and I see Christy. She’s on the bed next to me. Her head on the pillow, her eyes wide open. They’re big and clear blue. She’s watching me, her face still and quiet, searching my face for answers the way a child does.
When it happens, I know what I’m seeing is more like a memory than a dream, because it feels real. The day Christy died might as well have been a million years ago, but at the same time, it feels like right now, like all those years are rolled into a tiny ball that I carry like a lump in the breast pocket of one of my sleeveless T-shirts, no bigger than a pebble but as heavy as the world.
In the beginning, when I’d wake and see her on the pillow next to me, her reassuring smile, her wise eyes, I’d cry. But now I just smile back, reveling in the miracle of her face as the edges blend and blur with the sounds of the gulls and the waves rolling in on the beach down below. She usually vanishes after a few moments, and then there comes a moment of gratitude, grief, clarity, silence, guilt … guilt that I couldn’t give her any of the answers she was looking for.
It breaks my heart a little, and sometimes I spend the rest of the day rebuilding it.
Lately, though, I wonder if maybe I’ve been reading it wrong this whole time. Lately I wonder if perhaps she’s not so much looking for answers as giving them—giving me a little advantage in the world, sending me little clues the way a cat’s whiskers send tiny electronic signals to its brain. Like magic.
Like providence.
I was lying in bed, and when I opened my eyes, it wasn’t morning at all, and it wasn’t Christy there next to me, but Ethan. At first I thought he was sound asleep, his dark lashes still, his lips slightly parted, but then he opened his eyes and smiled sleepily at me.
He said, “Hi.”
I smiled back and then his eyes closed and he was almost instantly asleep again, his breathing deep and heavy. I raised my head off the pillow to find Ella curled up in a ball on his chest, one paw stretched out daintily across his neck.
The coroner had examined the knife that Daniela had used to free me from the refrigerator in the storage room. He didn’t rule it out completely, but he’d been unable to definitively connect it to Levi’s stabbing. Of course, that didn’t mean it wasn’t still considered evidence, especially since Daniela’s fingerprints had been all over Levi’s trailer. As it turned out, I’d been right—she was the woman who’d come home with Levi that night.
And now I knew why: She wanted to get her hands on Pachamama before Paxton could hand it over to Fiori, who had probably paid off the owner of the shop outside Tampa for information on who he’d sold it to. Mrs. Keller had told them she’d have her cat sitter return it because she was out of town, but she’d refused to give them her home address.
Daniela must have thought she’d find Mrs. Keller’s address on Levi’s delivery list, but she hadn’t considered the possibility that the Kellers didn’t take the morning paper … but we’ve had the paper delivered for as long as I can remember. All it took was a quick look in the yellow pages under “Pet Sitting” to get my name, and she knew I’d lead her straight to Pachamama.
It hadn’t been Levi outside my driveway that morning at all. It was Daniela. And as for the security monitor outside the Sea Breeze, the video files had mysteriously disappeared, so whether Daniela had lied about what time she got home that night was still a complete unkown.
As it stands now, she’s wanted for the murder of Levi Radcliff. They still haven’t found her, and I doubt they ever will.
Mrs. Duffy passed away quietly in her sleep about a week later. There was a small service, attended by Mona and a handful of neighbors, including Tanisha and her sister. Mona didn’t say a word, but I think she was grateful I was there. We never spoke of Levi or Mrs. Duffy again.
* * *
The air was warm, and the night-blooming cereus was sending out its sweet, magical scent, transporting me back to my youth, when I’d sneak out of bed in the middle of the night and go out to the courtyard. I’d lie on my back in one of the chaise lounges and stare at the stars. Sometimes I’d wake up to the birds announcing the sunrise, and there’d be a blanket on top of me and I’d have no idea how it got there.
But it wasn’t the cereus that had woken me up now. I realized it was the dream I was having. It’s a dream I’ve had before: Christy is running on the beach. She’s wearing a blue one-piece bathing suit under a Disney World T-shirt that I’ve had since I was a teenager, and she’s throwing chunks of bread high in the air and laughing as seagulls swoop in to catch them. Her hair is almost white in the sunshine, white as the seagulls’ wings, white as the flashes of light bouncing like diamonds off the rolling waves in the sea.
In the dream, I’m watching her, and I’m thinking in a little while I should make her come back into the shade so she won’t get burned.
About the Authors
John Clement is the son of Blaize Clement (1932–2011), who originated the Dixie Hemingway mystery series and collaborated with her son on the plots and characters for forthcoming novels. Blaize is the author of Curiosity Killed the Cat Sitter, Duplicity Dogged the Dachshund, Even Cat Sitters Get the Blues, Cat Sitter on a Hot Tin Roof, Raining Cat Sitters and Dogs, Cat Sitter Among the Pigeons, and The Cat Sitter’s Pajamas. Visit their Web site at www.DixieHemingway.com. Or sign up for email updates here.
ALSO BY BLAIZE AND JOHN CLEMENT
The Cat Sitter’s Nine Lives
The Cat Sitter’s Cradle
ALSO BY BLAIZE CLEMENT
The Cat Sitter’s Pajamas
Cat Sitter Among the Pigeons
Raining Cat Sitters and Dogs
Cat Sitter on a Hot Tin Roof
Even Cat Sitters Get the Blues
Duplicity Dogged the Dachshund
Curiosity Killed the Cat Sitter
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Contents
Title Page
Copyright Notice
Dedication
Acknowledgments
Epigraph
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
About the Authors
Also by Blaize and John Clement
Copyright
This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the authors’ imagination or are used fictitiously.
A THOMAS DUNNE BOOK FOR MINOTAUR BOOKS.
An imprint of St. Martin’s Publishing Group.
THE CAT SITTER’S WHISKERS. Copyright © 2015 by Blaize and John Clement. All rights reserved. For information, address St. Martin’s Press, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10010.
www.thomasdunnebooks.com
www.minotaurbooks.com
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The Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available upon request.
ISBN 978-1-250-05116-5 (hardcover)
ISBN 978-1-4668-5202-0 (e-book)
e-ISBN 9781466852020
First Edition: April 2015