Blaize Clement - Curiosity Killed The Cat Sitter

For a second, Guidry looked like he needed to put his head between his knees and take deep breaths.

“And you think…”

“Maybe that was Bull. Maybe he used the pipe to kill Frazier and Marilee.”

“He got inspired when he saw the pipe and decided to go kill somebody with it?”

“You have to admit it’s a strange coincidence.”

“Somebody had to have a damn good reason for killing Harrison Frazier and Marilee Doerring, and unless we turn up some compelling evidence, I don’t think Bull Banks had anything to gain by their deaths.”

“Somebody could have hired him.”

“Yeah, but who?”

“Shuga Reasnor said Gerald Coffey wouldn’t kill them himself, but that he might hire somebody.”

“That’s just gossip, Dixie.”

“Guidry, you didn’t just meet Paco for the first time today, did you?”

“Who?”

“Paco, the guy downstairs, the one who called your private line when he caught Bull Banks.”

“Is that his name? Nobody introduced us.”

The guileless look he gave me would have fooled the most confirmed cynic, but it didn’t fool me.

“Dixie, before you arrived at Marilee Doerring’s house and found Harrison Frazier, where had you been?”

My heart skipped a beat. “Why are you asking me that? Do you believe that crap Winnick is saying?”

“That’s irrelevant, Dixie. Where had you been?”

“I told you that before. I walked the Graysons’ dog about four-thirty, and then Billy Elliot, the greyhound at the Sea Breeze. After that, I went to a house to take care of a cat. Marilee’s was my second cat of the morning.”

My voice was tight and curt. I couldn’t believe Guidry was asking me for an alibi.

He said, “Any humans see you? Anybody who can verify that you were where you say you were?”

I could feel my jaws clenching and my hands making fists. If there’s anything I pride myself on, it’s honesty. Having my honesty questioned was like jabbing me with a sharp stick to see how much pain I could take.

“That’s the whole point of my work, Lieutenant. I wouldn’t be going to those houses if people were home. Tom Hale was home, but he was still in bed.”

“He lives where?”

“At the Sea Breeze, with Billy Elliot.”

“The greyhound.”

“Yeah.”

“Besides Tom Hale, nobody else saw you that morning?”

“I don’t know, Guidry, I guess somebody could have seen me, but I don’t know who.”

“Okay.”

I stared at him a moment, feeling a confused mixture of anger that he’d asked me for an alibi, and a rational understanding that he was just doing his job.

I said, “This has been really fun, Lieutenant, but I need to take a nap so I’ll be awake for my afternoon pet visits.”

He stood and handed me his empty water bottle. “Thanks for the refreshments.”

I watched him walk down my steps and then went inside and lowered the storm shutters against the glaring western sun. Amazingly, I was fairly calm. A year earlier, I might have curled up in a corner and sucked my thumb if in one ninety-six-hour period I’d found two murdered bodies, been accosted by a psycho in a parking lot, been vilified on radio by a radical hatemonger, stumbled on a kid I liked a lot who’d been badly beaten, and had a homicide detective question me as if I were a possible murder suspect. Now I was just pissed. A little jumpy, true, but mostly pissed.

It was true that I needed a nap, but first I went in my closet–office and checked my messages. One was from somebody named Ethan Crane, who claimed to be Marilee’s lawyer but was probably a reporter trying to trick me.

“I need to speak to you about Miss Doerring’s will,” he said. “Please call me as soon as possible.”

“Yeah, sure,” I said. There was absolutely no reason why an attorney would need to talk to me about Marilee Doerring’s will, and reporters will stoop to anything to get an interview.

I went in the bedroom, kicked off my Keds, and fell on the bed, lying with my toes pointed toward the ceiling like a body in rigor mortis. I wanted to be in the hammock on the porch, but now I didn’t feel safe to sleep out there. Some creep like Bull Banks could sneak up the stairs and stand looking down at me sprawled out with my mouth open and drool running down my chin. A reporter could tiptoe upstairs and take photographs of me and run it with the caption “Is she a murderess being coddled by the Sheriff’s Department?”

I got up and looked up the name Ethan Crane in the phone book. There really was an attorney by that name. The phone number was the same, too, but that didn’t mean the call was legitimate.

I padded barefoot to the French doors and looked through the square glass panes. The sky was a clear and innocent blue. A young snowy egret stood one-legged on the porch railing, his yellow beak pointing upward and his raised foot invisible in his underfeathers. A soft breeze gently ruffled his fine feathers, and he seemed to be smiling. Why not? He didn’t have to worry about reporters or public opinion or homicidal thugs.

I went back to my office–closet and dialed Ethan Crane’s number. A receptionist answered in a nasal singsong: “Ethan Crane’s office.”

I gave my name and said, “I’m returning Mr. Crane’s call.”

She immediately put me through, which told me two things: She had been told to be on the lookout for my call and Ethan Crane wasn’t very busy.

His voice was a smooth burr. “Ms. Hemingway, thanks for calling. I’m sure you’re aware that Marilee Doerring is dead. We need to meet and discuss her will.”

“Why?”

“That’s what we need to discuss. I’d rather not get into it over the phone, but you are one of the principals named in the will.”

I shook my head like a boxer taking one punch too many. “Mr. Crane, I hardly knew Marilee Doerring. I take care of her cat when she goes out of town, but that’s my only involvement with her.”

“Can you come to my office?”

Still dazed, I said, “When?”

“How about right now?”

I still felt like I was being set up for something, but I told him I’d be there in fifteen minutes. To make myself feel more like a grown-up, I put on a white linen skirt with a toast-colored cropped top. I put on high-heeled sandals, too. If you’re going to match wits with a lawyer, you need to stand tall and stick your tits out.

Twenty-Seven

Ethan Crane’s office was in a narrow building on a side street in the cluttered business section of the key. The building was old and crumbling, set so close to the sidewalk that dark fingerprints and smudges from palms and shoulders spotted it. Down at ground level, chunks of stucco had flaked off like scabs from an old sore. The doorway was recessed in an alcove lined with wooden benches like church pews, on which a vagrant and a couple of tourists too tired to go on sat mutely staring at one another.

Old gilt paint on the glass door had faded so the words ETHAN CRANE ESQ., ATTORNEY AT LAW were barely discernable. Feeling like a character in a gothic novel, I pushed the door open and went up a flight of worn wooden steps rising from the linoleum-floored vestibule. Why in the ever-lovin’ blue-eyed world would a woman like Marilee Doerring choose an attorney in a dump like this?

At the top of the stairs, a door stood open at the far end of a wide oaken landing, with two closed doors on either side. A man sat at a desk watching my approach. He wore a white shirt with the sleeves rolled up, and a dark tie that had been loosened and thrown over one shoulder. He stood up, rearranging himself with amazing speed and grace, so that by the time he was fully erect, his tie was hanging true and knotted firmly under his collar, and his shirt cuffs were buttoned. He was fortyish, ruddy-complected, and extraordinarily good-looking. The reason for Marilee’s choice of attorneys might not be so mysterious after all, I realized.