Blaize Clement - Curiosity Killed The Cat Sitter

“Oh gosh,” I whispered, because a cream-colored safe was set flush inside the wall.

“Oh hell,” I muttered, because the safe had both a combination and a keyed lock.

To open this sucker, you not only had to get inside Marilee’s mind and figure out her code, you also had to have a key.

My cell phone rang and I froze. Only two or three people in the world had my cell number, and I wasn’t looking forward to talking to any of them. It was Michael, calling from the fire station.

He said, “Are you okay?”

“Yeah, I really am.”

“You’re at Tom Hale’s, right?”

I twisted the toe of one of my Keds into the floor, exactly the way I used to do when we were kids and Michael quizzed me about something we both knew I’d done and I was denying. I took a deep breath and straightened my back. I was thirty-two years old and I could do anything I wanted.

“Actually, I’m at Marilee’s house. I’m going to spend a few days here. I’ll explain about it later. It’s a long story.”

He said, “Are you crazy?”

“I think that’s still to be decided.”

“Aw shit, Dixie, I don’t like this one bit. That asshole Dr. Win is right next door. He’ll have every reporter in town over there.”

“I don’t think so. I think this is the last place anybody would think to look for me. I’ll be back in a day or two. After this blows over.”

He warned me about a hundred times to call if I needed anything, and I promised I would.

He said, “I don’t like it, but I guess it’s okay.”

“I love you.”

“Love you, too, Dix.”

That’s my big brother, the gentle giant.

Ghost was still hunkered over his sliced beef, blissfully chewing with his eyes half-closed. I went back to the pantry and fingered the safe’s keyhole. I hadn’t expected to need a key. People usually select a birth date or address or Social Security number for a numerical code, so I had thought I had everything I would need to open the safe when I found it. Needing a key was a major problem.

I looked around the kitchen. If Marilee had chosen the pantry to hide the safe, maybe she had hidden the key in the kitchen, too. But before I started searching, I needed to take care of my primary business of pet-sitting. I sat at the kitchen bar and used my cell phone to check phone messages at my apartment. A few more reporters had called, and one client had called all the way from North Carolina to say she had heard the news about me and didn’t want me going back in her house. She had called another sitter, she said, and she would never hire me again.

That really hurt my feelings. I felt like a little kid whose best friend had just told her she didn’t like her anymore.

The last call was from Phillip Winnick. His words were slurred, but more intelligible than they’d been the day before. It wasn’t how he talked that alarmed me, it was what he said.

“Um, Miz Hemingway…I mean Dixie…this is Phillip…If I don’t see you again…I just want to say…thank you…That’s all. Oh, and…I’m sorry I lied.”

I played the message several times, and every time he sounded terrified and desperate. Something was going on, and whatever it was had made Phillip think he might not see me again. I put the phone down with a chill running down my spine.

Thirty-One

Feeling leaden and dull, I took a shower and changed clothes. No matter how hard I tried to convince myself that the Winnicks loved Phillip, I couldn’t shake a feeling of impending doom. Phillip was about as scared and miserable as a kid could get, and it sounded as if he was feeling guilt for not being honest about being gay. I knew his family wasn’t likely to give him the love and support he needed. If anything, they were more likely to add to his despondency. Phillip needed a friend, and right now I might be the only one he had.

I finally couldn’t stand it any longer, so I marched out the front door and down the street to the Winnicks’ house.

I could hear voices shouting even before I got to the front door. Olga Winnick shrill and pleading, Carl Winnick harsh and threatening. Under their harangue, a tortured undertone that was Phillip. It was exactly what my worst fears had been, and maybe even worse. I didn’t care if Phillip was their son, I was going to take him out of there. He was over eighteen, they couldn’t keep him if he wanted to leave.

I jabbed the doorbell and then banged on the door for good measure. Once I could have yelled, “Sheriff’s Department, open up!” but I couldn’t do that anymore. Anyway, I wasn’t there in any official capacity. I was there as a friend, which takes precedence over all other reasons.

The door didn’t open, and the yelling continued. I rang the bell again and banged harder on the door. Olga screamed, a long wail that brought fine bumps to my skin. Carl Winnick shouted something that sounded like “What the hell are you doing?”

Faintly, I heard Phillip reply, but I couldn’t make out the words.

Something was terribly wrong. I grabbed the handle on the door and tried the thumb latch. The door wasn’t locked. I rapped on it one more time and pushed it open, calling out as I did.

“Hello? Phillip?”

Olga and Carl Winnick stood in the shadowy living room with their backs to me, their postures strained and stiff and angry. Phillip stood beyond them in front of the closed drapes. I couldn’t see him very well in the murky light, but he seemed to be in dark pajamas almost the same shade as the bruises on his face.

Olga whirled and shrieked, “Get out of my house!”

I didn’t try any pretense. I said, “I’ve come to get Phillip.”

Olga came at me like an avenging Fury, actually running with her arm held out stiff and her fist closed like a battering ram. The woman was nuts if she thought she could scare me with that fist.

I grabbed her wrist and twisted it, then got her other wrist and locked it behind her back. The woman was wiry, and stronger than I’d expected, but I knew I could have her on the floor in a second. She seemed to know that, too, because she didn’t kick at me, just twisted her stiff neck and panted like a tethered dragon, sending out hot air and the odor of liquor.

Carl Winnick ran past us toward the kitchen. Without his executive suit jacket, his barrel chest and short legs made him look almost pathetically misshapen.

Olga said, “This is all your fault! You and people like you, filling his head with filthy ideas!”

I called to Phillip over her head. “Phillip, you’re a good, decent, talented young man, and you don’t have to stay here. Come with me.”

He shook his head. “It won’t…make any difference.”

“It will! Of course it will. You’re hurt now, but you’ll heal and everything will be okay. You don’t have to live a lie anymore.”

“Just…live with my parents hating me.”

“They don’t really hate you. They just don’t know you. They’ll change, you’ll see.”

Carl ran from the kitchen and jammed his red face close to mine. “I’ve called the police, girl, so you’d best leave before they come and arrest you.”

I stared at him, and something clicked into place in my brain.

Phillip took a couple of steps forward and said, “Leave her alone, Dad.”

That’s when I saw the gun. The barrel was dark, like his pajamas, and he carried it with the muzzle pointed down by his thigh. In his large hand, the stock was almost invisible. But I could see the telltale red pinprick that showed the safety was off. I should have known. In addition to teaching his son to open doors for ladies, Carl Winnick had taught his son how to handle a semiautomatic.

I said, “Phillip, what are you doing with a gun?”

Too calmly, he said, “I’m going to kill myself with it.”