Blaize Clement - Curiosity Killed The Cat Sitter

I kept repeating it, and she gradually stopped snarling and decided not to bite me. But when I turned her around to pick her up, her eyes were full of reproach. I had hurt her feelings and she wasn’t going to forgive me easily. I didn’t blame her. I never hit an animal, any more than I would hit a child, and I despise people who do. No matter how people may try to justify it, any time a large person uses physical punishment on a small vulnerable body, it’s despicable abuse.

But here the first time I’d caught Mame with a corpse’s finger in her mouth, I’d smacked her nose. Both of us were going to have to readjust our opinions of me.

I picked up the phone and carried Mame to the street, stepping out of the thicket just as a green-and-white patrol car cruised toward us. I told the dispatcher the deputy had arrived and turned off the phone. The patrol car pulled to a stop and the driver got out. When I saw who it was, I took a deep breath. Deputy Jesse Morgan recognized me at about the same time. I imagine he had to suck up a bit of air too. The last time we’d met had been over another dead body, in circumstances no less peculiar than this one.

He was crisp and neat in his dark green shorts and shirt, his waist bulging with all the paraphernalia of a law-enforcement officer, his muscular legs covering the ground in a confident stride. Only the diamond stud in one earlobe indicated that he had a life apart from keeping Siesta Key safe.

He nodded to me with that impassive face that all law-enforcement officers cultivate.

“Miz Hemingway.”

I nodded back. “Deputy Morgan.”

“You called about a body?”

“The dog smelled it and ran over and started digging. She had a hand pulled out before I knew what it was.” I pointed toward the thick trees and underbrush. “The body is under that big oak.”

He stepped into the thicket, walking as if he wasn’t at all concerned about poisonous snakes or spiders or fire ants. I could see his dark green back through the branches, saw him stop and stand a moment with his hands on his hips, saw him kneel for a few seconds, and then stand and turn to walk back to me, talking on his phone as he came. When he stepped onto the street, his face was unreadable. I wasn’t surprised. Only once or twice in our acquaintance had I caught him in a smile.

“What time did you find it?”

“Not more than ten minutes ago.”

“You called as soon as you saw it?”

“I had to fight the dog first. She wouldn’t let go of the finger. If it has tooth marks, they’re from Mame.”

His mouth turned down a bit. “She chewed on the finger?”

“I wouldn’t say she chewed on it exactly, more like clamped her teeth down and held on.”

He looked hard at Mame, who returned his look with an imperious tilt of her nose. It took a lot more than a uniformed deputy to intimidate Mame.

He said, “I used to have a dachshund. They’re stubborn little guys.”

“That’s just it; she doesn’t know she’s little.”

He didn’t slip up and smile, but his eyes warmed a bit and he nodded. Another car drew up, and Deputy Morgan walked over to meet Sergeant Woodrow Owens. Mame squirmed in my arms and I put her down. Like a little guided missile, she headed straight back toward the thicket. I had the leash this time, so I pulled her back and glared at her, feeling like an embarrassed parent whose child is showing unflattering traits in public.

Read on for an excerpt from

Cat Sitter Among the Pigeons

The next Dixie Hemingway mystery from Blaize Clement

Chapter 1

I read somewhere that if two quantum particles come into contact with each other—like if they happen to bump shoulders in the dairy aisle of a subatomic supermarket—they will be forever joined in some mysterious way that nobody completely understands. No matter how far apart they travel, what happens to one will affect the other. Not only that, but they will retain some eerie form of ineffable communication, passing information back and forth over time and space.

Ruby and I were a bit like those weird particles. From the moment I opened the door and saw her standing there holding her baby, we had a strong connection that neither of us particularly wanted. It was just there, an inevitable force we couldn’t resist.

I met Ruby the first morning I was at her grandfather’s house. Her grandfather was Mr. Stern, a name which fit him remarkably well. Slim, silver-haired, and ramrod straight, Mr. Stern had ripped his bicep playing tennis. He was not the sort of man to make a fuss about a torn muscle, but his doctor had insisted that he rest his arm in a sling until it healed. That’s where I came in. Mr. Stern lived with a big orange American Shorthair named Cheddar, so he had asked me to help twice a day with cat-care things that required two hands. When he asked and I agreed, neither of us had known that Ruby was on her way with her baby. We hadn’t known how much exquisite pain we’d both suffer in the following days, either. Not muscle pain, but heartache.

I’m Dixie Hemingway, no relation to you-know-who. I’m a pet sitter on Siesta Key, a semi-tropical barrier island off Sarasota, Florida. Until almost four years ago, I was a sworn deputy with the Sarasota County Sheriff’s Department. Carried a gun. Had awards for being a crack shot. Went to crime scenes with the easy self-confidence that comes with training and experience. Had faith. Faith that I could handle anything that came along because I was solid, I was tough, I had my act together, I was on top of things. When I looked at myself in the mirror, I had calm, fearless eyes. Then my world exploded into an infinity of sharp-edged fragments and I’ve never had those fearless eyes again.

But on that Thursday morning in mid-September when I met Mr. Stern and Ruby for the first time, I had dragged myself out of a cold, dark pit of despair. I wasn’t hollow anymore. I enjoyed life again. I had even thawed out enough to take the risk of loving again. I was actually happy. Maybe all that happiness was the reason I got careless and ended up in big trouble.

I usually make a preliminary visit to meet pet clients and provide their humans with written proof that I am both bonded and insured. The humans and I discuss my duties and fees, and we sign a contract. But since Mr. Stern had something of an emergency, my first trip to his house was also my first day on the job. He lived on the north end of Siesta Key on one of the older streets where, during the mass hysteria that hit southwest Florida’s real estate market, nice houses originally valued at two hundred thousand had sold as tear-downs to be replaced with multimillion dollar colossals.

Mr. Stern’s house was a modest one-level stucco painted a deep shade of cobalt blue. In most places in the world, a cobalt house would probably seem a bit much, but on Siesta Key, where houses nestle behind a thick growth of dark greens and reds and golds, it seemed just the way God intended houses to look. It sat too close to an ostentatious wealth-flaunting house on one side, with another overblown house on the other side that had a huge untended lawn. The lawn sported a bank foreclosure sign—a not-so-subtle reminder that the real estate boom was over and that the value of anything depends on human whim, not on any intrinsic worth. Slim as a spike of sea oats, Mr. Stern had neatly combed thin gray hair, bushy eyebrows above fierce blue eyes, and a spine so straight he didn’t need to tell me he was a military veteran. He told me anyway. He also told me that he was not the kind of man to waste his time on a cat, and that the only reason he had one was that his granddaughter had left her cat at his house and now he was stuck with it. He told me this while he gently cradled Cheddar, the cat, in the crook of his good arm.