Blaize Clement - Curiosity Killed The Cat Sitter

A pair of egrets fluttered low over my head, making those guttural egret sounds that always remind me of somebody trying to cough up a popcorn husk. I turned my head to look over my shoulder, and realized with a sense of shock that I was afraid. That’s the trouble with allowing yourself to start feeling emotions after you’ve been closed down for a long time. You can’t feel selectively. You have to let the whole gamut of feelings in, even fear.

As I started jogging toward my car, a form detached from the shadows and ran after me. I picked up my speed and ran like hell. Thanks to Billy Elliot, I had recent experience in covering ground fast. I beeped the car unlocked, tore the door open, and leaped inside, pulling the door shut and locking it a second before the man slammed a fist against the passenger window and pushed his face against the glass. Even with his nose and mouth mashed flat in a grotesque mask clearly intended to frighten me, I recognized the bullet-headed man from the bar. I threw the Bronco into reverse and whipped out of the parking space, almost hoping the man would be foolish enough to run after me so I could run him down. He didn’t. He ran behind the row of cars and ducked out of sight. I sat with the motor churning for a couple of minutes and then pulled out of the lot.

Driving north on Midnight Pass Road, I watched the rearview mirror for headlights in case the man was following. At the drive to my house, I passed it and drove straight ahead to the firehouse, where I backed into a parking place across the street. From where I sat, I could see all the traffic on Midnight Pass Road, and I could also see the firehouse where Michael was sleeping. Just knowing Michael was nearby made me feel calmer. Traffic was sparse, and after a while I decided I hadn’t been followed, so I drove home. Paco’s car was in the carport, but his Harley was gone, so I knew he was still on an undercover job. I ran up the stairs to my apartment two at a time.

Everything in the apartment seemed exactly as I had left it, but I still felt jittery. The malevolence of the man’s eyes looking at me through the passenger window weren’t what scared me. What had me feeling uneasy was that he had seemed so determined, as if he had a particular goal and I was it. I lowered the metal storm shutters, checked the answering machine, brushed my teeth, did a few turns around the apartment to work off my nervous energy, and finally went to bed with a million questions buzzing in my head.

If the woman Phillip saw had been Marilee, she would have been leaving Harrison Frazier dead in her house. Did that mean she had killed him? And if she had, who had been driving the car she got into? If it hadn’t been Marilee, who was it? It could have been Shuga Reasnor. She knew Harrison Frazier, and maybe she had some personal reason to kill him. Maybe she had lured Frazier to Marilee’s house on some pretext and killed him there. Maybe Marilee had a good alibi of where she was at the time Frazier was killed. Maybe she and Shuga had planned it together, thinking nobody would connect Shuga to the killing. I wondered if Shuga had an alibi for that night. I would ask Guidry when I talked to him.

I turned over and pounded my pillow and tried to go to sleep. It wasn’t my job to find Harrison Frazier’s killer. My job was to take care of Ghost. But who the hell had killed Frazier? Maybe his wife had followed him to Marilee’s house and conked him on the head and had somebody pick her up afterward in a black Miata. That didn’t seem very likely, though. And why did Marilee have her locks changed before she left town? It had to have been because somebody had a key to her house and she didn’t want that person to go in, but who? And why? Maybe she and Shuga Reasnor had had a falling-out and she was making sure Shuga couldn’t get in while she was gone. Maybe Dr. Coffey still had a key to her house from when they were engaged and she’d just gotten around to making sure he couldn’t use it. Maybe Coffey had hired a woman to go in and kill Harrison Frazier. No, that was dumb. Why would he do that? If he wanted anybody killed, it would be Marilee, not Frazier.

I turned on my back and took deep breaths. Why had that man in the parking lot been after me? Had he been so pissed off that I’d given him the cold shoulder that he’d waited out there for me all that time? Surely it wasn’t the first time he’d been turned down by a woman. Surely he wouldn’t have let something like that cause him to become so violent. Maybe he had been on something. Maybe he had snorted or shot up or ingested his drug du jour after he left the bar and got so high that he came back for lust revenge. Maybe it was just coincidence that he had chosen me, maybe he had just been there to go after any woman coming out alone.

My eyelids popped open. Oh shit, I should have called the Crab House and warned them that a psycho was loose in the parking lot. I should have told them to be sure no woman went out by herself. I turned over again and smacked the pillow. It was too late now, it was after two, and the Crab House was closed. But if somebody had been raped in that parking lot, it would be all my fault.

On that cheerful note, I finally drifted to restless sleep.

Seventeen

Thunder woke me in the night. Hard rain was pelting the roof and making drumming music on the storm shutters. It was a comforting sound. I love sleeping in a storm, safe and dry while a deluge rages outside. I went back to sleep, and when the alarm sounded at 4:00, I smacked it off and groped my way to the bathroom to splash water on my face. I estimated that I’d had all of two hours’ sleep, tops.

The rain had stopped, so I left the Bronco at home and took my bike, riding out into a glorious Sunday morning. On the lane to the street, I stirred up a flock of wild parakeets in the damp treetops, and their chattering brought answering cello tones of mourning doves from their hiding places. The temperature was around seventy degrees, the humidity low enough to be tolerable, and the air had a fresh, just-washed smell. Even with a sluggish brain from last night’s fear and sleeplessness, I loved the feel of the day.

With the Graysons back home, I only had Billy Elliot to dog walk. The rest were all cats, which was good. Cats are a lot easier than dogs, and I needed an easy day. My plan was to wait until eight o’clock and call Guidry with last night’s information, see to all the cats, and go home and sleep. Michael would come home this morning, which meant we’d have a good dinner at home tonight. Maybe Paco would be home, too, and I could catch them up on everything that had happened.

Tom Hale was asleep when I went into his condo, but Billy Elliot met me at the door. We went outside and ran like idiots, and then I kissed Billy Elliot goodbye inside the condo and panted my way back to my bike. It was still dark, but the sky was taking on a vanilla tinge of false dawn, and birds were beginning to wake in the trees and call sleepily to one another.

My next stop was at the home of twin calico tabbies named Stella and Marie. If they had been humans, they would have been lounge singers. Stella spent her time on the windowsill, looking longingly at her reflection in the glass, and Marie lolled on the sofa, waiting for somebody to come do her nails. When I groomed them, they preened and posed with delicious self-absorption, and when I ran the vacuum to pick up hair they had flung on the carpet, they both turned their heads and gave me languid looks of total disinterest.

I cleaned their litter box while they ate, then washed their food bowls and put out fresh water for them. “I’m leaving now,” I said. “I hope you won’t miss me too much.”

From the windowsill, Stella lowered her eyelids to half-mast in grudging acknowledgment of my existence, but Marie merely flicked the tip of her tail and yawned. I was still grinning when I got on my bike and started to the next stop. A pale coral tint was washing over the sky by then, gilding the eastern edges of puffy little clouds with a darker salmon pink. In another hour, the sun would be fully up and traffic would get thicker.