Блейз Клемент - The Cat Sitter And The Canary

Mrs. Wincock slipped her glasses back on. “Well, you know Guidry. He doesn’t have a lot of friends. Always busy with work. But Monica comes from a big family, so…”

“Monica?”

“… that’s his fiancée.”

I nodded enthusiastically. “Oh, right,” I said. “I totally forgot.”

She smiled warmly. “I don’t blame you one bit. Let me show you the rest of the house.”

After the tour, I gave Mrs. Heedles a good scratch between the ears and told her it was a pleasure meeting her, and then we went back through the living room, where Mr. Wincock was back on his hands and knees, tinkering with his harpsichord project. The TV was still on, and there was an earnest-looking woman gazing intently into the camera, jabbering away in front of a mobile news van with a big satellite dish perched on top. I remember telling Mr. Wincock that Mrs. Heedles would be in very good hands while they were in New Orleans, at which point he shot Mrs. Wincock a bewildered look, but neither of them said anything after.

Mrs. Wincock stood in the doorway as I made the excruciating journey down the pebbled walkway to the Bronco, feeling her pitying eyes like a target on my back. The entire way, I whispered the name of Guidry’s fiancée and soon-to-be bride over and over again. Monica … Monica … Monica … Monica …

By the time I got behind the wheel, I’d said it so many times it didn’t seem like an appropriate name for a human being at all—more like a species of lizard, or maybe a topical ointment for ringworm … Ask your doctor about Monica!

Just as I stabbed my keys into the ignition, Mr. Wincock appeared, his face grim as I rolled down the window. He was still holding the TV remote in one hand, and the laugh lines around his eyes had fallen.

He said, “Miss Dixie, I think you better come see this.”

15

As Mr. Wincock led me inside the house, Mrs. Wincock was standing slack-jawed in the middle of the living room, just next to the tarp of harpsichord innards, her arms hanging limply at her sides, her eyes fixed on the TV screen. She turned and said, “Oh, dear.”

The reporter had perfectly coiffed brunette hair perched on top of her head like a lacquered helmet. She was gesturing at the scene behind her, which at first looked like nothing more than an empty roadside with a dense woods behind it, but then the camera panned around to reveal a deputy squad car, its lights flashing blue and red.

The reporter stepped into the frame and nodded earnestly. “What we know so far is that a morning jogger was making his way down this peaceful stretch of road when he was nearly run down by a car that came speeding out of this driveway. It took off toward the center of town. We don’t know yet what kind of car it was, but as soon as we get more details we’ll let you know.”

All I could think was how impossibly overinflated the woman’s breasts were. They seemed to defy all reason and logic, squeezed as they were into an impossibly tight silvery blouse like two Goodyear blimps floating side by side in front of her body. I wondered that they didn’t each have their own LED display panel, with blinking text announcing the end of dignified reporting as we know it. Surely, I thought to myself, this was not what Mr. Wincock wanted me to see.

I said, “What’s happening?”

He said, “A jogger found a dead body on a private lane.” He turned to me. “They said it’s down on the south end of the Key.”

I nodded.

“They said it’s off Midnight Pass … by Turtle Beach.”

Just then, the reporter pointed to the driveway beyond the squad car, and I felt the hair on the back of my neck stand up.

Mrs. Wincock said, “Dixie, didn’t you say you live down there?”

* * *

I’d like to think I said something like, “Okay, thanks for letting me know,” or, at the very least, “I need to go now,” but I don’t remember saying a word. I’d also like to think I turned and walked calmly around Mr. Wincock’s harpsichord project and then made my way out the front door with measured aplomb, but I didn’t. I stormed right through all the various piles of parts and burst through the front door like a bat out of hell, where I collided into Deputy Marshall so hard it nearly toppled him to the ground.

Blocking my way, he said, “Miss Hemingway, where are you going?”

I said, “I need to get home.”

He held his hands out in front of me like he was calming a rabid dog. “Now, hold on. I just received a request to keep you here until we know exactly what’s happening.”

My eyes must have looked like they were about to pop out of my head, because he immediately took one step back and said, “Okay. Let’s don’t panic.”

I looked down at the ground and thought for a moment. I was beginning to think somebody in the sheriff’s office had given Marshall a heads-up about me. I repeated myself, trying to keep my voice as calm as possible, “I need. To get. Home .”

That stretch of road behind the reporter on the TV—I had recognized it almost immediately. The sea grape and moss-laden oaks should have been a dead giveaway, but as soon as I saw the rusty old PRIVATE DRIVEWAY sign that sits at the top of our lane, my body had switched into autopilot.

Marshall adjusted his belt. “I think it’ll be safer for everyone involved if we wait right here until further notice. Got it?”

I said, “That’s a great idea. You do that.”

I steered past him and headed for the Bronco, but I hadn’t gotten far when I felt his hand on my left shoulder. I spun around to face him, knocking his arm out of the way.

I said, “Deputy, everyone left on this earth that I care about is in that house. I’m going there now. You can help me, or you can arrest me for speeding when we get there.” I hadn’t felt this mix of rage and fear in a very long time. Every muscle in my body was as tightly drawn as a cat poised for attack, but when I spoke, my voice was calm and even. “Got it?”

I didn’t even look back.

I jumped in the Bronco and fired the engine. Pulling out of the driveway, I caught a glimpse of Mr. and Mrs. Wincock in their doorway. Mrs. Wincock had Mrs. Heedles in her arms, and they were all three watching me, motionless and wide-eyed, like they were watching the climactic scene of a horror movie.

I screeched to a stop at the corner of the main road and took a deep breath, telling myself to keep my eyes open and my wits about me. I knew I wouldn’t be doing anybody any favors if I crashed and burned trying to get there, and I certainly didn’t want to put anybody else in danger, but every cell in my body was telling me to get home as fast as possible, no matter the cost.

Just then, a blur of colored lights streamed by on my left, and the next thing I knew Marshall’s squad car was in the middle of the intersection, with cars in both directions rolling to a stop as the wail of his siren broke through the deafening buzz in my head. Marshall leaned out his window and pointed directly at me. Then, as if cracking an imaginary whip, he signaled me to follow, and I stepped on the gas.

With Marshall leading the way, I’m pretty sure we shot through town faster than anyone’s ever driven from one end of the island to the other. Less than two minutes later, we’d gone through the traffic light at Stickney Point, where there was a line of cars in front of us about a half mile long, like a stalled parade headed south. There wasn’t room enough on the shoulder to pass them, so Marshall veered into the oncoming lane, his lights and sirens shifting into full-out emergency mode. From then on, we had a clear path.

There were no cars coming north.

At some point, my field of vision narrowed to a deep, dark tunnel, as if I was peering through the ragged aperture of a homemade pinhole camera and all I could see were the flashing lights of Marshall’s cruiser in front of me. Everything else turned black and fuzzy around the edges. I kept hearing Michael say he was going for a jog, and how Paco had said he’d noticed a rabbit’s nest along the driveway and that he had some carrot tops for them. As we got closer, I caught the occasional glimpse of people gathered outside their cars or standing on the sidewalk, craning their necks to see what in the world was happening up ahead.