Blaize Clement - Curiosity Killed The Cat Sitter

The Graysons hadn’t called, so I went first to their house. One of their three garage doors was up and Sam Grayson was standing beside the driver’s side of his BMW. Sam was a sexy, seventyish Cary Grant look-alike with a high forehead and silver hair cut in an almost military burr. Tall and lean, he moved with a loose-limbed grace that always made me wish I could dance with him just once.

I parked behind one of the closed doors so he could back out, but he walked out to meet me. “We forgot to call you, didn’t we?”

I said, “Welcome home. How was your trip?”

“Oh, it was great. Just great. We got to spend time with our daughter and the grandkids, and we’ve got enough snapshots to bore our friends for months.”

“That’s true friendship.”

“Yeah. Come on in and say hello to Libby.”

We went up the front walk and he opened the door and stood aside. Rufus came galloping to kiss my knees, and Libby Grayson came from the kitchen, drying her hands on a dish towel. As beautiful as Sam was handsome, Libby had shoulder-length silver hair and brilliant blue eyes that sparkled with intelligence and good humor. Together, they looked like the couples in retirement community ads—the ones who are so fit and sexy, they make you wish you were that old so you could look so good.

“Oh, Dixie, I’m sorry I didn’t call! Oh well, it gives us a chance to thank you for taking such good care of Rufus. Look how he loves you! I’ll bet he didn’t even miss us.”

I leaned down to stroke Rufus, wishing he wouldn’t act so happy to see me.

Libby said, “Sam, pay Dixie.”

He took the bill from her and read it, then got out his wallet.

While he counted out twenties, Rufus trotted over and sat next to Libby and smiled at me, as if he understood it wasn’t polite to two-time her to her face.

I said, “I love the new carousel horse.”

Sam handed me a neat stack of twenties and said, “He’s a rare one. Made of cast iron instead of the lighter stuff. You wouldn’t believe what a project it was to get him mounted on that brass pole!”

Libby said, “He’s so heavy, the brass pole had to be lined with galvanized steel. First we had to find a brass pole that was exactly one and a quarter inches in diameter, because the holes in the horse are one and a half inches. Then we had to find galvanized-steel pipe the right diameter to fit inside the brass pipe. It took weeks of phone calls!”

Rufus yawned and trotted away toward the kitchen. I knew just how he felt. This was way more information than I needed about pipes, but they were getting such a kick out of telling it that I tried to look interested.

Sam said, “We hired a guy to cut the pipes and fit them together. He had to drill a hole through them and attach the horse. When he fitted them into the brass plates on the floor and ceiling, it was like watching brain surgery. If he’d cut either pipe a quarter inch too short or too long, we’d have been back to square one.”

I started edging toward the door. “Well, I’d better run. Oh, by the way, somebody left some books for you in the chest.”

We all said our goodbyes, and as I backed out of the driveway, Sam was leaning over the chest digging out all the accumulated newspapers. I wondered if he and Libby would actually read them or toss them in the trash. My bet was that they would trash them. Who needs so much news?

At Tom Hale’s condo, I found Tom reading in his wheelchair and Billy Elliot lying on the floor with his head propped on Tom’s feet. Both man and dog looked up at me when I walked in. As if we were in the middle of a conversation, Tom said, “Dixie, do you know what a fewterer is?”

“It sounds like something dirty.”

“In medieval days, a fewterer was the keeper and handler of the greyhounds.”

“So you’re a fewterer?”

“I guess you’re one, too, Dixie. We’re two fewterers.”

“Well, that was always my ambition, Tom, to be a fucking fewterer.”

I got Billy Elliot’s leash and he and I went downstairs to run. As I ran down the edge of the parking lot behind him, a dark Blazer pulled to my side and eased along with me. I looked over and saw Lieutenant Guidry eyeing me with that calm level look that only cops have. I could have been jogging along stark naked and he probably wouldn’t have changed expression. I pointed to the building’s front door, and he nodded and pulled away, making a U-turn and parking by the entrance.

Fourteen

Billy Elliot barreled along like he was back on the track with his greyhound buddies, and my muscles burned with the effort of keeping pace. We rounded the end of the parking lot and thundered around the central esplanade of palmettos and hibiscus. At the entrance, where Guidry waited, I pulled Billy Elliot to a halt but left him enough leash to explore a bit. I dragged my aching legs to Guidry’s window, panting like Billy Elliot but managing to keep my tongue from lolling out the sides of my mouth.

Guidry grinned at me. “Now I see how you can get away with eating all that bacon.”

I made a wheezing sound.

“I got a message you’d called,” he said.

“Yeah, I wanted to know when I can bring the cat home.”

He gave me a blank look for a moment and then remembered. “Oh, the cat. Well, the forensics people are finished at the house, but the crime-scene tape will have to stay up until I get the ME’s report.”

“When do you think that’ll be?”

He looked at his watch. “I’m on my way to the morgue now. It’ll just take a few minutes. Wanta come with me?”

I stared at him. Was he nuts?

“The time comes when you have to get back on the horse,” he said. “Maybe this is your time.”

“Maybe you’re way out of line, Lieutenant.”

“Could be. Or I could be right.”

“This conversation is over.”

I spun away from him and jerked Billy Elliot out of the esplanade. I pulled him short and opened the front door.

“You can’t hide out indefinitely,” yelled Guidry.

I pulled Billy Elliot into the elevator and leaned against the wall while it climbed to Tom Hale’s floor. My heart was pounding hard and a surge of adrenaline had made me start trembling. Guidry had no right to tell me what to do with my life. He had no right to tell me anything.

By the time I got Billy Elliot settled in his apartment, I was trembling not only with anger but also with embarrassment for letting Guidry get to me like that. I was the tough one, the one who kept her cool in an emergency. At least that’s who I used to be. Now I was quivering like a wuss because a detective had suggested that it was time for me to stop hiding from the world. My shaking continued all the way down in the elevator, so hard that my teeth were clamped hard together. The worst thing in the world is knowing that somebody else is right and you’re wrong. It was time for me to stop hiding. I just wasn’t sure I was strong enough.

When I went out the front door, I made a little involuntary groan. Guidry was still sitting there with the car idling.

He said, “You ready to go?”

I clomped down the steps and went around the back of the car to the passenger side and got in. Guidry looked straight ahead as I opened the door.

“We have to make this fast,” I said. “I have other pets to take care of.”

“Half an hour, tops,” he said, and put the car in gear.

Sarasota County doesn’t have its own morgue, they use Sarasota Memorial Hospital’s facilities. We were ten minutes away, and neither of us spoke a word the entire trip. I sat with my arms crossed across my chest and hoped Guidry believed I was trembling from the air-conditioning vents blowing on me. He kept his attention on the traffic, and if he noticed my shaking, he didn’t mention it. We parked in the back parking lot at the hospital and took the rear entrance into the maze of hallways that make big hospitals seem like cities. If I ever commit a major crime, I’m going to head straight for the nearest big hospital. You could spend an entire day in a waiting area pretending to be a relative keeping vigil on a loved one, every day moving to a different area. You’d have plenty of bathrooms, you could sleep on the couches, and if you had money to put in food-vending machines, you could hide out indefinitely.