Blaize Clement - Curiosity Killed The Cat Sitter

He clicked off and left me holding an empty phone.

I muttered, “Fuck you very much, Lieutenant,” and started the Bronco.

Talking about Ghost had helped me get my priorities straight. I had to find a new home for Ghost, and I had to do it quickly. He was not only cramped in his private room at Marge’s, but it was costing me forty dollars a day to leave him there.

I didn’t want to leave him with just anybody, either. Pets are like surrogate children. Now that I knew how Marilee had been denied her own daughter, I understood a little better why she had lavished so much love and attention on Ghost. Unable to choose the most nutritious food for her child, she chose it for her cat. Forbidden to buy pretty clothes and toys and baubles for her daughter, she bought them for her cat. Even Ghost’s collar with its silver hearts and keys was like a charm bracelet she might have given her daughter. I felt a new affinity for Marilee, a kind of mother-to-mother rapport. Marilee had entrusted me with her substitute child, and I wanted to carry out her wishes.

I was already late making my afternoon pet visits, but I turned the Bronco toward Roberts Point Road and Shuga Reasnor’s house. I pulled up in front of Shuga’s glass doors and slammed out of the car into the suspended heat peculiar to late afternoon on Siesta Key.

Shuga was home. I could see her through the glass doors. She was sitting on one of her rose linen sofas with a phone stuck to her ear and one long bronzed leg swinging like a nervous pendulum. She saw me when I got to the top step, and even that far away I could see her eyes widen. She got up and started toward the door, still talking on the phone. I put my fists on my hips and stood without ringing the bell while she ended her conversation and flipped the phone shut.

She pulled the door open and stood looking at me. At first, I thought she had two black eyes, but it was smeared mascara. She said, “I know she’s dead. The detective called me.”

“Can I come in?”

“What do you want?”

“You’re the person Marilee authorized to make decisions about her cat.”

“Oh, for God’s sake!”

Rolling her eyes, Shuga stepped out of the way and pulled the door shut behind me. We walked silently to the living room and sat down across from each other.

“I just have a few minutes,” she said. “I have to take care of things a lot more important than a damned cat.”

“Things like calling Marilee’s daughter and telling her that her mother’s dead?”

Her leg stopped swinging, and she gave me a level look.

“Yeah, things like that.”

“That’s who you called, isn’t it? That’s where you thought Marilee was going when she left here.”

“Okay. Is that a crime?”

“Why didn’t you tell Lieutenant Guidry that you’d talked to her daughter? Why didn’t you tell him you knew Harrison Frazier?”

Her head snapped up then, and she jumped to her feet. “Get the hell out of my house, lady. My best friend just died, and I don’t have time for this shit.”

“Your best friend didn’t die, she was murdered. Did you kill Marilee, Shuga? Were you involved with Frazier and got jealous because he had the hots for Marilee?”

She barked a loud laugh, then sat down and took a cigarette from the crystal holder on the coffee table. She stuck it in her mouth and talked around it while she lit it from the silver lighter on the table. “That’s rich. Me involved with Harrison Frazier? I don’t think so.”

She sucked smoke deep into her chest and slumped back on the couch, looking at me the way a cobra looks at the man playing the flute, wondering whether to be nice or lunge for my throat.

I said, “Let me make it easier for you. I know that Harrison Frazier was the father of Marilee’s daughter, and I know he’s been seeing her for years. Did he come here to Siesta Key to see her?”

Through a fog of exhaled smoke, she said, “Oh, God no. Too close to Orlando. No, they met in other places. Every month or so, she would fly off and spend a few days with him. They always went to some out-of-the-way place where nobody would recognize them. Harrison would rent a cabin in some godforsaken spot in Louisiana or get a room in a mom-and-pop motel in Bumfuck, Nebraska, places like that. He could have taken her to the penthouse suite at the finest hotel in the world, but he took Marilee to dumb places like that. She was so crazy about him, she thought she had a good time. I think they spent all their time fucking, so I guess maybe she did.”

“If they always met someplace else, what was he doing here when he was killed?”

“I don’t know. That’s why I got scared that something had happened to Marilee when you found him in her house.”

“Marilee’s grandmother thinks Harrison killed Marilee. Cora says he was crazy jealous and that he threatened to kill her if she got involved with another man.”

“He was jealous. Marilee thought jealous meant he loved her, the dumb cluck. But he couldn’t have killed her, he was dead. Somebody killed both of them.”

“You said Dr. Coffey wouldn’t kill her himself but that he might hire somebody to do it. Who else had reason to kill Marilee?”

“I don’t know anybody who would kill her. I’m telling you the truth.”

I wasn’t sure I believed her, but I let it go. “How did Marilee get involved with somebody like Harrison Frazier, anyway?”

“Cora was a cook at the grade-school cafeteria in Orlando. She barely made enough to scrape by, so she was always looking for ways to make money. The summer Marilee and I were fourteen, Cora got a job cooking at a ritzy camp for rich Baptist families outside Orlando. It was more of a resort than a camp, but it was supposed to be a way for families to have a clean, wholesome vacation with their kids and still give them a chance to swim and hike and hang out like normal kids. They let Cora bring Marilee and me with her, and we waited tables in the dining room. The rest of the time we were free to walk around the camp. If we were at the lake and one of the rich boys decided to come down and sit with us, we couldn’t do anything to stop them.”

“Harrison was one of those boys?”

“So far as Marilee was concerned, he was the only boy. She was nuts about him. If he’d asked her to drown herself in the lake, she would have jumped right in. She thought he was in love with her, the dumb dope, but I think he was more excited about the idea of easy sex. He was just fifteen, and she was probably his first. With all the things going on, it was easy for him to slip off to meet her, and neither of them knew jack shit about condoms or had any way to get any. By the time camp ended, Marilee was pregnant.”

She shook her head and stared at the floor for a moment, lost in the memory. “Harrison hadn’t even given her his address, but Cora tracked down his family and contacted them. She was smart enough to know they would pay for Marilee to go someplace and have the baby, but I don’t think she ever expected them to want it. Poor dumb Marilee thought Harrison would marry her.” She wiped away sudden moisture on her cheek and said, “What an idiot!”

“Did Harrison know how she felt?”

“Oh sure. Marilee never was good at keeping her feelings hidden, at least when it came to Harrison. She kept thinking one day he would leave his wife and marry her. Then their daughter turned eighteen, and Marilee got a letter from Harrison’s attorney saying there wouldn’t be any more money. It was like somebody had dropped a bomb on her.”

“How much had they been paying her?”

She gave me a tight grin, exhaling a cloud of smoke and curling the tip of her tongue to touch her upper lip like a smirking dragon. “A quarter mil a year.”