Блейз Клемент - The Cat Sitter And The Canary

Inside my head, I’m not much older than seventeen, so it’s always a bit of a shock to the system whenever I’m reminded of the ugly truth. In fact, it was all I could do to keep from leaping off my seat and attacking the child with her own umbrella, but given the fact that a homicide detective was sitting right across the table from me, I figured I’d better keep my mouth shut and my butt in the seat.

Detective Carthage’s face had turned bright pink. “Sorry about that.”

I said, “OMG it’s totally fine.”

He blushed. “Maybe we better move somewhere more private…”

“Good idea,” I said. “You gather up your files and I’ll get my walker.”

We moved over to a bench just a little ways up the beach but more deserted, and as soon as we sat down, Carthage said, “Before I forget, we found Caroline Greaver.”

I gasped. “You did?”

“This morning. She’s in Key West. She’s apparently having a wonderful vacation. And you were right about her phone, it died and she didn’t have a charger with her.”

I must have looked like I’d just been hit over the head with a sledgehammer. “So … she’s okay?”

He nodded. “I explained everything that’s happened, so she was a little shocked, of course. She asked me to thank you for taking care of her pets, and that she’ll call as soon as she can get her phone charged up.”

A feeling of relief washed over my body. I realized this entire time I’d feared the worst … that somehow Caroline had gotten mixed up in all of this … that she’d found herself in the path of the killer.

I said, “Wait … if her phone is still dead, how in the world did you find her?”

“I’m a detective. That’s what I do.”

A small smile appeared on his lips as he laid a file on the bench between us. Clipped to the top was a photocopy of a driver’s license. I recognized the woman in the photo right away. It was Edith Reed.

Carthage said, “This is the woman who visited your house that morning with her husband, right?”

I sighed. “Yeah. That’s her.”

“We found her license in the bushes about twenty feet from the car. Her purse was nearby. Apparently, she decided to stop by your house again, alone, to see if anybody was home. She took a walk down your driveway, and that’s when someone stabbed her.” He glanced at me. “The same as Sara Potts.”

I closed my eyes. “Until now, I had no idea how Sara Potts had died.”

“If it’s any consolation. Neither of them would have seen it coming. They probably both died quickly.”

“And what about the man across the street?”

He frowned. “What man?”

“Rupert Wolff. The man I saw on Caroline’s front porch.”

He shook his head dismissively. “No. We looked into that. He’s just visiting, but there’s something else I need to tell you. It’s about Edith Reed.”

Almost immediately I pictured her, lying in my driveway surrounded with magnolia petals. I felt my jaw tighten. “It’s about the other note, isn’t it?”

“Yeah…”

“Did it have my name on it too?”

“No.”

His gaze was fixed on the group of teenagers playing volleyball down by the water’s edge. I couldn’t tell from this far away, but I figured his two high school friends were probably among them. Just before Carthage answered, I heard one of the kids call out, “Nice shot!”

Detective Carthage looked down at his hands.

“It said, ‘Third time’s a charm.’ ”

19

Here’s how they make a spicy grapefruit margarita at Colonel Teddy’s Tiki Bar on Siesta Key:

Take a fresh habañero pepper, cut it in half, and then steep it in three ounces of Pueblo Viejo tequila. Next, add an ounce of freshly squeezed lime juice, an ounce of freshly squeezed grapefruit juice, and then one ounce of simple syrup plus a couple handfuls of crushed ice. Cover and shake it for no less than thirty seconds and then immediately pour it, ice and all, into a mason jar with a salted rim, garnished with a wedge of key lime or meyer lemon or both.

You can specify how hot you like it.

For example, if you ask for “pleasantly spicy,” they’ll drop the pepper in a cocktail shaker, pour in the tequila, and then remove the pepper immediately. If you ask for “taste-bud abusive,” they’ll let the pepper sit with the tequila for a couple of minutes. Ask for “medical supervision advised,” and they’ll use a safely guarded reserve that’s been steeping for who knows how long.

And here’s how you drink a spicy grapefruit margarita at Colonel Teddy’s Tiki Bar on Siesta Key: as slowly as possible.

It’s preferable to kick your sandals off and dig your toes in the sand, and if you really want to do it right, you swivel around in your stool and turn your face to the sun to watch the waves roll in. Traditionally, you wait until at least 5:00 P.M., but here in Siesta Key, things are a bit more laid back, so it wouldn’t be considered a crime at four. If you happen to have a serial killer on your tail, 3:45 is perfectly acceptable.

After I left my meeting with Detective Carthage, the rest of the day felt like a blur. I’d seen to all my pets—that much I remember. And I remember when I got home our driveway was still cordoned off with police tape, so I had to leave my car on the side of the road. Mrs. Reed’s body had already been removed and taken to the county coroner’s office by then, but I couldn’t bring myself to walk down the lane. Instead, I thrashed my way through the woods with Deputy Marshall following about ten yards behind me, and then I walked along the beach to the house. Marshall sat on the porch all night long, despite Ethan’s protests, but to be honest I think he was secretly as happy as I was to have an armed deputy guarding us overnight.

I stirred my finger around in my margarita.

So, someone is trying to kill you.

I nodded, as if I’d come up with something completely brilliant.

Well, isn’t that just wonderful?

I nodded again. It seemed almost too outrageous, too surreal, to be true. And why? Was there something I was missing? Some detail that would explain it all? I knew if I could only connect the two murders I’d have an answer. The problem, of course, was that the only discernible connection between Sara Potts and Edith Reed … was me.

The messages on those two notes were playing in my head like a broken record: See you in hell, Dixie … Third time’s a charm … See you in hell, Dixie … Third time’s a charm … I opened my eyes and realized I was talking out loud. At a nearby table was a young couple sharing a basket of crispy fried shrimp and a large Coke, but they didn’t seem to notice, or if they did they were too polite to stare at the crazy lady at the bar, drinking alone in the middle of the day and mumbling to herself. A few tables away were two salty sea-captain types glaring at each other over a row of empty Budweiser bottles.

I took another sip of my margarita.

It burned my lips, but I didn’t care. At this point, anything that distracted me from the reality of the situation was more than welcome. Detective Carthage had contacted Sara Potts’s family—they were on their way to town now with the horrible task of identifying her body—and he’d spoken with the staff at the snack bar. The manager there had told him he’d gotten worried when Sara hadn’t shown up for work, which was unlike her. She’d always been an excellent employee, dependable and friendly, and he didn’t know anybody who might have wanted to hurt her. Still, no one could explain what she was doing in Caroline’s house. As far as anyone knew, they hadn’t been friends.

I closed my eyes again and tried not to think about it, focusing on the stinging tequila in my throat and the gentle breeze in the air. In a little while, I heard what at first sounded like a flock of chickens in the distance but turned out to be a group of about six elderly ladies in brightly colored print blouses and open-toed sandals making their way toward the bar, all talking and laughing over one another. They wore matching baseball caps embroidered with coral-pink sequins, and I figured they were probably a local gardening club or a reading group out for a field trip. They plopped their purses down in the sand at the opposite end of the bar, and one of them announced, “Now, I’m warning you, ladies. Once I sit down, I may never leave this bar again!”