Блейз Клемент - The Cat Sitter And The Canary

He blinked and wiggled his nose, which I took to mean he’d had a better night than I had.

Ella burrowed back under the blankets as I reached out and slipped my fingers through the bars to give Gigi a scratch between his long ears, but he hopped over to the opposite side of the cage. I knew he’d eventually get accustomed to his new surroundings and settle down, but at that point I think he’d had enough human contact for the time being.

I knew exactly how he felt.

I rolled out of bed as quietly as possible and padded into the bathroom, where I pulled my hair back into a ponytail and splashed cold water on my face. I decided I wouldn’t tell anybody about what had happened, at least not until after breakfast. For one, I think I was probably in shock. I just wanted to have as nice and normal a morning as possible, and I knew once they found out, I’d get a barrage of questions. But also, Detective McKenzie had explicitly asked me not to talk about the details of the case until she’d had a chance to thoroughly interview everyone involved. So, for now, I decided to put the whole thing out of my mind.

I stared at myself in the mirror and examined my bloodshot eyes.

Easier said than done, I thought.

My poker face is amateur at best. People who know me can usually tell right off the bat if I’m lying or upset, but given the fact that my memory of the night before was already starting to feel like a distant blur, I thought I might get away with it. I’m pretty sure my poor brain was actively trying to block it all out—starting with the moment I laid eyes on that card pinned to Sara Potts’s lapel. I remembered Detective McKenzie asking if I knew who might have put it there, and I remembered being afraid I might burst into laughter or tears or both, so I just shook my head … No.

After that, one of the deputies led me back down the driveway to wait while Detective McKenzie went next door to talk to Elba Kramer. My Bronco had been moved farther down the street, closer to the traffic cones, although I didn’t remember giving anybody the key, and then while I was pulling a couple of cardboard cat carriers out of the back, Deputy Morgan told me he’d follow me home—Detective McKenzie didn’t want me driving by myself.

Normally, I would have objected. If you haven’t figured it out by now, I don’t like being treated like a defenseless pansy. But I was too tired to put up a fight. Either that or I’m a defenseless pansy. I just nodded and told him I had to take Charlie home first, and then I called our local cat kennel, the Kitty Haven, to see if they might be able to take Franklin for the night. He couldn’t stay at Caroline’s, not with the entire place crawling with crime technicians, and I knew Ella wouldn’t be too thrilled about a sleepover with a cat she’d never met.

I don’t remember going back inside the house at all, but we must have entered through the side portico. Gigi was huddled in the corner of his cage under a cover of hay. I doubted he’d ever had so many strangers walking around his house in his entire life, but once I had him in my arms and cradled in a soft towel, he seemed to calm down.

Franklin was hiding under a row of sundresses in Caroline’s walk-in closet. I spotted him right away because his fluffy cream-colored tail was poking out behind a stack of shoe boxes. Luckily, he didn’t put up too much of a fight. As we went back through the living room, I saw a couple more camera flashes from the doorway to the front hall, but I didn’t look back.

Now, staring at my puffy, sleep-deprived face in the mirror, I dabbed on a little lip gloss and squirted some eyedrops in each eye, though I knew the only real cure was more sleep. After I brushed my teeth and got dressed, I tiptoed back into the bedroom and lifted up one corner of the blanket.

Ella had moved up to the top of the bed and was stretched out full length across my pillow with her head right next to Ethan’s. His lips were parted slightly, and Ella’s whiskers were brushing against the stubble of his cheek.

Yes … Ethan.

The words “yes” and “Ethan” seem to go hand in hand now, but for what seemed like an eternity they’d gone together like oil and water, which isn’t saying a thing about Ethan, but it says volumes about me …

He is my—for lack of a better word— boyfriend . That means a number of things: one, I always know where he is, and for the most part, he always knows where I am. It also means we often spend the night together, always at my place since his apartment looks like it’s inhabited by a gang of bachelor pigs (his words, not mine—I’ve actually never seen it). He runs a one-man law firm, Crane & Sons, which he inherited from his grandfather.

The first time I laid eyes on him, I knew I was in big trouble. He’s one quarter Seminole, with high cheekbones and a square jaw, eyes the color of bittersweet chocolate, and lashes so thick they make his eyes look rimmed with kohl. He’s a good foot taller than me, with jet-black hair that brushes past his shoulders and a smile that never fails to make me a little weak in the knees.

If all that sounds a little too cliché for your taste, then you understand my problem exactly. In almost every category, he’s too good to be true, like a character from a cheap romance novel or a fairy tale. There was a time I believed in fairy tales … but I’m not so sure anymore.

Six years ago—six years, one month, and three days to be exact—my husband, Todd, and my daughter, Christy, were both killed in a freak car accident. An old man accidentally ran over them in the parking lot at our local grocery store. Apparently, he thought he had shifted into reverse. He was wrong.

Todd was thirty. Christy was three.

It feels funny to just blurt it out like that, like items on a to-do list or a PowerPoint presentation, but there’s really no other way. Sometimes, it seems like it happened on another planet, light-years away, and sometimes it seems like it’s happening right now, right here.

At any rate, after Todd and Christy’s funeral, I became a blithering idiot. Michael and Paco took care of me the best they could, bringing me food and keeping me relatively clean, but for almost a year I barely got out of bed. My commanding officer at the sheriff’s department, Sergeant Woodrow Owens, was probably more patient with me than he should have been, but eventually—and I’ll spare you all the ugly details—it became patently clear that I couldn’t be trusted to wear a deputy badge, let alone carry a loaded gun around in public. The department asked me to resign, and so I did.

For the longest time, even though I knew he hadn’t done it on purpose, I held that old man responsible for taking my family and my life away. I kept him prisoner in a very dark place inside me, my heart like a jail cell. It took a long time before I finally set him free. I don’t remember his name. I don’t know if he’s still alive, and I don’t want to know. I’m trying to forgive him.

Todd had been a deputy too. We worked together. We had a good life. We had a little house in Sarasota, not more than fifteen minutes from where I live now, with a nice yard and a little vegetable garden. We’d stagger our shifts so most of the time one of us was home with Christy while the other was at work. We had a babysitter when we needed it, a sweet teenage girl who lived a couple doors down, but I don’t remember her name either. In fact, I’ve blocked out most of my memories from that time. I’m sure they’re still bouncing around in my head somewhere, but it’s easier not to think about it. And loads better for my sanity as well.

Pet sitting just kind of fell into my lap … literally. Michael and Paco had a friend who was looking for someone to take care of her cat while she was out of town. They told her I did a little pet sitting on the side—which of course was a bald-faced lie, but I think they were starting to worry I’d end up in a straitjacket if they didn’t come up with something for me to do. It took them a while to talk me into it, but eventually I found myself sitting on the woman’s balcony, in a sprawling luxury condo overlooking Sarasota Bay, with a fluffy cat named Rudy sitting in my lap and gazing lovingly into my eyes.