Blaize Clement - Curiosity Killed The Cat Sitter

“I can’t eat now.”

“Yes you can, Dixie! Now you listen here, if you let that slimeball make you go crawling back in your shell, then he’s killed you. You want to let him kill you?”

“No.”

“Then hold your head up and go on about your business. That cop will find out who killed those people, and everybody will know you didn’t have anything to do with it. Now I’m going to bring you some eggs and bacon, and you’re gonna eat every bite of it, and you’re gonna like it.”

I looked up at her flushed face and had to laugh. “I don’t want breakfast, I want some of Tanisha’s coconut pie.”

“That’s more like it. If we let fuckers like that make us stop being normal people, then we might as well crawl in a hole and die.”

She flounced off to get my pie, and I folded the paper and laid it on the seat beside me. My hands were shaking so bad I had trouble folding the paper. One thing kept running through my mind. While I had the greatest respect for the guys with the Sarasota Sheriff’s Department, I wasn’t so naïve that I didn’t know they were under pressure to make an arrest. And if they decided to go with the obvious, it would be me. I had found Frazier’s body, I had led them to Marilee’s body, I had a key to Marilee’s house, and I was known to be a mental case, no longer fit to wear a deputy’s badge. If I had been conducting the investigation, I would have already arrested me as the prime suspect, and now Dr. Win had gone on the air demanding just that. If they arrested me, I didn’t have a shred of an alibi. My only witness would be Rufus, and juries aren’t known to pay much attention to what a dog has to say.

There were people who thought Carl Winnick walked on water. He was a pillar of the community, rich, educated, with plenty of well-placed contacts. I was a pet-sitter with two years of community college and a dubious medical leave of absence from the Sheriff’s Department. An emotionally unstable woman who couldn’t be trusted with a gun or with public safety. Which one of us would people believe, me or Winnick?

For a moment, I felt like going home and crawling in bed and pulling the covers over my head and hope it would all straighten itself out. But Judy was right. I had come too far to do that. I had faced things a lot tougher than Carl Winnick accusing me of being a killer.

Not a lot of things, maybe, but some.

One or two.

Okay, one. Losing people you love is harder than anything.

As Judy put my pie on the table, Tanisha moved her wide smiling face into the square opening between the dining room and the kitchen and waved at me, her jowls jiggling and her black eyes almost lost behind her round cheeks.

Judy said, “Tanisha says to tell that reporter to kiss your big fat ass.”

It surprised me so that I laughed, a big belly laugh from deep inside. Tanisha winked at me and withdrew her head.

Judy said, “Why’s she saying you’ve got a fat ass?”

“It’s a private joke,” I said. “We were in the ladies’ room one day and big fat asses came up.”

“Uh-huh. Well, she’s got a big one, that’s for sure. You know, she cooks for somebody that lives around Marilee Doerring’s house. I heard her telling somebody she was that close to the place where the woman was killed.”

“Lucky them. She’s good.”

Judy splashed more coffee in my cup and left me making love to my pie. The crust was crisp and flaky, the filling rich and smooth, and the meringue was exactly right, not weepy or dry or too sugary, with flakes of fresh coconut making sweet little explosions in my mouth. I managed to eat almost a whole minute without thinking about the newspaper article. Instead, I thought about how a good cook like Tanisha could pick up big bucks cooking for parties or just making occasional meals for a family. I mentally ran down the houses near Marilee’s, wondering where Tanisha cooked. I’d never seen her in Marilee’s neighborhood, but most likely we were there at different times.

My cell phone beeped just as I downed the last pastry crumb. The ID readout showed Michael’s number, so I answered.

He said, “Have you seen today’s paper?”

“I saw it.”

“Are you okay?”

“Yeah. I just had coconut pie. I’m at the diner.”

“That asshole at the paper has been calling me, looking for you.”

“I’m sorry, Michael.”

“Not your fault. What does your detective say about it?”

“He’s not my detective, and I haven’t talked to him.”

“Maybe you’d better. Tell him I’m going to stick my foot up that reporter’s ass if he writes any more shit about you.”

“It’ll blow over, Michael. Any response from us will just give him something else to write about.”

“You sound pretty cool about it.”

There was a note of admiration in his voice. I took a deep breath and realized I was rather cool about it. No more hammering heart. No more fast, shallow breathing. No more fine hand tremors.

I gave a shaky laugh and said, “I guess I am. Who would have thought?”

“So when are you coming home?”

“I’ll be late. I haven’t even started my rounds yet. I had to talk to some people first.”

“Well, be careful.”

“Yeah, I love you, too.”

I felt calmer after I hung up. I had a big brother who cared about me, and I had handled a lot of stress in one day with only a couple of minor breakdowns. I was making progress.

As I was leaving the diner, I saw Tanisha heading for the ladies’ room, so I made a U-turn and followed her. She was already in a stall when I got there. I washed my hands and dried them while I waited. When she came out, she grinned shyly at me. I watched approvingly as she lathered her hands, then handed her some paper towels.

I said, “Judy said you did some cooking for somebody in Marilee Doerring’s neighborhood—where that man was killed.”

“Not no more I don’t.”

“Oh.”

“Hunh-uh, I wouldn’t set foot on that street again, no way, hunh-uh. Bunch of stupid people live on that street, and that man’s the stupidest.”

“What man?”

“You know, that one I told to kiss my ass, that’s who.”

“I didn’t hear you say his name.”

“I guess I didn’t say it. Come to think of it, I don’t believe I did.”

“Tanisha, could you say it now?”

She laughed, but looked at me warily. “Why you want to know?”

I was stumped. I didn’t know why I wanted to know, I just did. I said, “I guess I’m just nosy. I work around there, too, and I’d just sort of like to know who to watch out for. I don’t know what the guy did to piss you off so much, but you seem pretty easy to get along with, so whatever it was must have been something I wouldn’t like, either.”

She pushed out her lips and furled her brow while she considered my reason, and then nodded. “I guess you got a right to know, if you work around there. He accused me of stealing something, like I gave a rat’s ass about the stupid thing, and it wasn’t even his.”

“Why’d he do that?”

“He seen me getting this little piece of pipe out of the trash when I was on my way to the bus stop. Somebody had put it out at the curb, and I saw it. It’s at the curb, it’s the trash, it ain’t stealing to take it, right? Somebody threw it away, it’s for anybody to take that wants it. Short little piece of brass pipe about two feet long.”

“That must have been the Graysons’ house. They hung a carousel horse on some brass pipe.”

“Uh-huh. I don’t know whose house it was. It’s on the other side of the woods where that man got killed. They just put the pipe out and I saw it and picked it up. I thought maybe I could make a towel rack or something out of it.”