Blaize Clement - Curiosity Killed The Cat Sitter

See how the mind works when you have an overactive conscience? Not to mention a guilty secret.

In my dream, Marilee had said, “You have the key.” I had thought she meant it in a metaphorical way, but maybe I was trying too hard to read symbols into something that was literal. Like Freud said, sometimes a cigar is just a cigar. Maybe she meant a real key. Maybe I had the key to the safe in my possession and my subconscious was trying to remind me of that.

Thinking of the dream brought back the image of Marilee holding Ghost. Maybe that was the dream’s message—the key had something to do with Ghost. Marilee had chosen Ghost’s name as the numerical code for the safe, so maybe the key was hidden with something of Ghost’s, too. With a burst of inspiration, I sprinted to the pantry and grabbed the bag of dried cat food and dumped it into the sink. I searched through it, stirring it and turning it with both hands, but I didn’t find a key. Guiltily, I put it back into the bag handful by careful handful. Ghost came back in the kitchen and jumped on the counter while I did that, giving me a look that suggested he would eat food that had been roiled around in the sink when hell froze over.

I went back to the bar and drank some more water. Ghost hopped down from the counter and meowed up at me. In the bright kitchen light, his shiny fur gleamed like silver. I knelt and stroked his head and neck.

“I wish you could talk. You probably know where the key is.”

He gave me a couple of I love you blinks, and in the next instant, I was racing for my backpack. I rummaged inside and pulled out Ghost’s velvet collar with its little silver hearts and keys. A silly, frivolous thing for a cat to wear, a one-of-a-kind item made by a silversmith in New Orleans and bought on a trip Marilee had made with Dr. Coffey. I turned it around, examining each silver key, and then found the one that was heavier and thicker than the others.

“Hot damn,” I whispered.

It was a real key, not just a charm, and I had been carrying it around all week in my backpack. I cut it off with Marilee’s kitchen shears, and went back to the safe. The key glided into the lock like a hot knife into butter. I wiped my hands on my shorts and pulled the door open. Inside the safe was a stack of manila envelopes.

Carrying the stack with both hands, I went to the bar and put it down as gingerly as I would lay a ticking bomb. The stack tipped over and envelopes fanned out beside my gun and cell phone. I took a deep breath and moved the gun and phone over a bit. A thin thread of warning spiraled across my cortex like a figure skater making frantic figure eights, but I ignored it. If the contents of the envelopes held information vital to the murder investigation, I would most certainly call Guidry and turn them over to him. But if these were records having to do with Marilee’s daughter and her relationship with Harrison Frazier, I would protect them. For Marilee’s sake. For Lily’s sake. For Cora’s sake. Maybe for my own sake.

The envelopes were the kind that have a metal clasp to hold the flap down, and my fingers trembled a little when I pulled up the prongs on the first one and opened the flap. I upended the envelope and let its contents slide out onto the bar. They were photographs, all turned face-down. Expecting a photograph of Lily in her formative years, I turned over the one on top. It wasn’t Lily. It was definitely not Lily.

It was a view of a large naked man laid out on a messy bed. His arms were spread across the rumpled sheet and his hairy legs were open. Incongruously, he wore black dress socks. A black-headed woman lay prone between his legs with her face shoved into his crotch. A blond woman hovered above him with her breasts dangling above his head, and his lips had a firm hold on one of her nipples. Neither woman’s face was clear, both being shrouded by long hair, but the man’s face was clearly visible. He could not have looked any sillier.

All the other photographs were of the same man, and some of the poses made the first one seem innocent. The man had been caught in every conceivable obscene position with two hookers. He had not only made a complete and total fool of himself, he had exposed himself to eighteen kinds of blackmail, loss of respect, ridicule, and perhaps loss of his loved ones. Each photograph bore the date and time, as if the photographer wanted them to have every possible stamp of validity. A ruled sheet of paper was folded with the photographs. In her rounded handwriting, Marilee had recorded a column of dates, with numbers beside each date. The dates went back over five years, regular as a calendar every month. The amounts were regular, too. Five thousand, five thousand, five thousand. There were no dollar signs, but I assumed the numbers referred to money received.

I put the photos back in the envelope and washed my hands at the sink. Before I went back to the other envelopes, I drank a glass of water. Revulsion really dries up the mouth. The next envelope held almost identical photos, but the man was different. This one was a squat, round man with a receding hairline. He looked vaguely familiar, but I couldn’t place him. The two women were the same blonde and brunette, and the man’s look of mindless bliss was also the same. Another ruled sheet of paper with a column of dates and figures, but this one had started only two years ago. The numbers were greater, though. Eight thousand every month. Next to the dates and amounts, Marilee had noted where the money had gone, always distributed in amounts of one or two thousand dollars to several mutual funds. Marilee had apparently believed in diversity. Cora had been right, Marilee had been good with numbers. Big numbers. She had also had a savvy sense of how to invest small amounts of cash without attracting attention.

I had to wash my hands again before I opened the other envelopes. It wasn’t that I found the graphic sexual images so shocking, it was the reason for the photographs being taken that made me feel like I’d been dipped in a vat of congealed chicken fat. The reason was obviously blackmail. And while the two women were always careful to keep their faces hidden from the camera, I was almost positive they were Marilee and Shuga. At least one mystery was solved. Now I knew how two women without any marketable skills could make an indecent amount of money. Literally.

I went through the other envelopes with increasing horror, revulsion, and reluctant admiration.

The photographs of Dr. Gerald Coffey were in the fourth envelope, and they confirmed my first mental image of his hairy back. The pose that exposed it was a special one, involving the insertion of a large dildo into his equally hairy backside while he knelt on all fours and apparently howled like a wolf. It was not the sort of pose that would inspire confidence and trust in heart-surgery patients. Which was no doubt why the column listing his payments culminated in the number one, followed by six zeros. The million he had paid Marilee before she jilted him at the altar had been hush money, not the love money he claimed. Wondering briefly why she had ever considered marrying him in the first place, I moved on to the other envelopes.

Thirty-Three

The photographs seemed almost commonplace now, all of naked men made hopelessly vulnerable by lust and stupidity. Some of the faces looked faintly familiar, and I assumed they were in the public eye in one way or another. Each of them had been paying Marilee between five and ten thousand dollars a month for years. Even splitting the take with Shuga, she would have been raking in a considerable amount of money. With the quarter million she got every year from Harrison Frazier’s family, she surely had never worried about paying the rent.

The vulnerable fifteen-year-old girl who had been tricked into giving her baby to Harrison Frazier’s sister had grown up to be a woman who extorted money from a lot of men for the sheer pleasure of it. The money the Fraziers had given her had been more than enough for her and Cora to have a good life. It had been enough to live well in the present and also invest for the future. But it hadn’t been enough to fill the need Marilee had nurtured, the need to have control over men and to make them pay. And she had been aided and abetted by her friend Shuga, the poor girl who wouldn’t have had enough to eat if Marilee’s grandmother hadn’t fed her. I wondered if all the money they’d taken had ever made up for what they thought they’d missed out on.