Blaize Clement - Curiosity Killed The Cat Sitter

When the walk cleared, I pedaled on, grinning a little bit at how we two-legged animals aren’t so different from the four-legged kind. If that bridesmaid and I had been dogs, we would have wagged our tails and sniffed each other’s butts to communicate our friendly feelings. Instead, we wagged our heads and smiled.

Michael’s car was parked under the carport with its trunk open, showing about a zillion paper bags from Sam’s Club. That meant he had made his weekly run to stock up on food for us and for the firehouse. Michael loves Sam’s the way women love shoe stores, and he buys as if he’s preparing for marauding invaders who will cut off every supply of sustenance.

I got a couple of bags out of the trunk and started to the house with them and met Michael coming out. When he saw me, the grin on his face faded and he gave me a look that can only come from a big brother who bathed in the same tub and peed in front of you for the first years of your lives together. “What’s wrong?”

For a second, I felt like bawling. “You know the kid we saw at the Crab House Friday night? The one who lives next door to where the man got killed? He was beaten up this morning, really bad.”

Michael gathered up bags from the trunk and slammed the lid closed. “How’d you hear about it?”

“I found him. He was in the bushes there on Midnight Pass where the old road goes into the woods. I called nine one one and they sent an ambulance.”

“Poor kid. Is he going to be all right?”

“I don’t know yet. But there’s more. After the deputy left, I noticed some hair on a lime tree, and I went into the woods there where that old road is, you know, and Marilee Doerring’s body was in there.”

Then I did bawl. Just stood there with a bag of groceries in each arm and cried like a baby. “Animals had been at her, Michael.”

“Good God. That’s awful. Come in the house, I’ve got coffee on.”

I trailed behind him with the bags, and we both deposited our loads on the kitchen counters. The house Michael and I grew up in is pretty much the way it was when we came to live in it, except for the kitchen. Michael and Paco knocked out a wall where a baywindowed breakfast room used to be, so it’s a lot bigger and sunnier now. They also installed commercial ovens and a Sub-Zero refrigerator and freezer. A butcher-block island sits in the middle of the floor, with a salad sink on one side and an eating bar on the other.

Michael heaved a spiral-sliced ham from one of the bags and set it aside, then made short work of stowing the other stuff away, while I splashed water on my face at the sink and mostly got in the way. He slit the wrapper on the ham and motioned me to the bar.

“Pour us some coffee,” he said.

While I got out mugs, he deftly peeled off several slices of ham and threw them on the big griddle between the rows of burners on the stove. I carried two mugs of steaming coffee to the bar while Michael got eggs from the refrigerator and cracked a bunch of them one-handed into a mixing bowl. The ham on the griddle was sending up clouds of damp steam and beginning to smell divine.

He said, “Why do you think the kid was beat up?”

I shrugged. “Either the obvious reason or because he saw the murderer leaving Marilee Doerring’s house Friday morning.”

He stopped whisking eggs and looked hard at me. “How do you know that?”

“He told me last night. I ate dinner at the Crab House and talked to him before he started playing. He said a woman left Marilee’s house around four o’clock and got in a black Miata that had just pulled into the driveway. He thinks she saw him watching.”

Michael turned the ham slices and got butter and a slab of Parmesan cheese from the refrigerator. “Have you told the detective?”

I watched his serrated knife cutting thick slices of sourdough bread. “I’ve left several messages for him to call me, but I haven’t heard from him.”

He threw a wad of butter on the griddle, smeared it into a big puddle, and flopped the slices of bread in it.

I got up and held out two plates, and he flipped ham slices on both of them. I said, “I knew all along that Marilee wouldn’t have left her hair dryer behind like that.”

Michael grunted and put another glob of butter on the griddle next to the frying bread. As soon as he turned the beaten egg into it, he sliced transparent shards of Parmesan on top and started lifting and turning it with a spatula. All that golden brown fried bread and dark red ham and bright yellow eggs was making my taste buds itch. I got forks and knives and hurried to pour more coffee to replace what I’d drunk.

Michael topped the ham slices with scrambled eggs, flopped the fried bread on the side, and slid the plates onto the bar. We sat side by side and dug in, neither of us speaking until we’d finished eating. Then Michael got up and refilled our coffee mugs and sat down with a sigh.

“I wish you weren’t involved in this, Dixie.”

“I wish I weren’t, too, but maybe I’m supposed to be. Maybe this is how I’m supposed to start getting my life back together.”

“How? By finding dead people and a kid beaten up?”

“Guidry said something yesterday that may be true. He said I couldn’t hide forever. I can’t, you know? I have to come out some time and start living again.”

“Hell of a way to come out.”

“This morning when I was coming home, there was a wedding party just leaving the Summerhouse. The bride and groom were so happy and young, you know? Just looking at them made me wish I could turn back the clock and be that innocent again.”

“Feeling jealous?”

“I guess so, a little.”

“Of what, that they were happy and young, or that they were in love?”

“Don’t start that, Michael.”

He raised his hands, all innocence. “Start what? I just asked a question.”

I got up and carried our plates to the sink and rinsed them and put them in the dishwasher. Michael came behind me and squeezed my shoulders.

“Go take a nap,” he said. “You look like shit.”

I turned and hugged him hard, my love for him a shining sun in my heart.

Nineteen

I slept in the porch hammock until almost three o’clock, and woke up feeling dehydrated but less fragmented. I’m always relieved and grateful to find myself sane when I wake up, because for a long time I wasn’t. For the first year after Todd and Christy were killed, I was a mess. Too tired to breathe, with every cell in my body bruised and aching. My nose ran for an entire year, and I barely had the energy to wipe it. I slept whole days, and when I was awake, I stared at the TV without changing stations. Just watched whatever was on, because I couldn’t absorb words anyway. I didn’t dress or bathe. Didn’t answer the phone. I would go for days without eating and then have a giant pizza delivered and eat it all at one sitting.

Michael and Paco tried to get me to eat, to get out of my house, to wake up, but I couldn’t. I just flat couldn’t. Then one day in the spring, when Todd and Christy had been gone a full year, I caught sight of myself in the bedroom mirror and stopped cold. I looked awful. I looked unhealthy. I looked like a wraith. If Todd could have seen me, he would have said, “For God’s sake, Dixie, what good is this doing?” If Christy could have seen me, she would have been afraid of me, I looked that scary.

That was a turning point. I got myself and my house cleaned up and went out and got my hair cut. I sold the house where I’d been so happy with Todd and Christy, and got rid of all the furniture. I donated Christy’s toys to Goodwill, except for her favorite, a purple Tickle Me Elmo, who now sits on the pillows of my bed, fat and silly. When I look at his goofy face, I hear Christy’s laughter spilling out like silver coins. I suppose I will keep Elmo with me forever. More than Christy’s photos, and even more than my memories of her, Elmo keeps her close and keeps me sane. Mostly.