Блейз Клемент - The Cat Sitter's Whiskers

Of course, there was drinking, and a lot of kids smoked pot, especially the older ones, but if there were harder drugs than that being passed around, I never saw them. Levi and his friends would stay out partying and carousing in the streets until all hours of the night, giving their parents heart palpitations and early-onset baldness, and sometimes they’d congregate in the parking lot at the old Ringling Shopping Center, but basically all they did was drink beer and make a lot of noise until the cops would roll through and order them all home. I remember hearing that Levi had been hauled in for public intoxication shortly after graduation, he’d even spent a night in jail, but other than that, there was no indication he’d ever wind up in more serious trouble.

But now, I wondered. As for Levi’s money situation, he was clearly living hand-to-mouth. I don’t know how much a paper delivery boy makes these days, but newspapers everywhere are struggling to make ends meet, so I doubt it’s much more than minimum wage. Was it possible Levi had been forced to turn to more desperate means … drugs or petty burglary or something worse? It was a terrible thought, but why else would anyone want to kill him?

I suddenly realized I was sitting in the carport at my place with the engine idling, staring straight ahead like a zombie. I switched off the ignition and reached for my backpack, and just then I heard a car coming up the driveway. Right away I could tell by the sound of the wheels on the crushed shell who it was: Paco and my brother, Michael, in their four-wheel-drive pickup truck. Michael is a firefighter, just like our father before him. He’s big and blond and broad, with pure blue eyes that can melt the hearts of either sex in a matter of seconds.

Paco, on the other hand, is slim and tall, with long muscles and deep olive skin, the kind of good looks that make your toes flutter and your eyelashes curl, plus he rides a motorcycle, which in my book only adds to his overall hotness factor. Women all over the island have fantasized about turning Michael and Paco straight, but there’s little chance of that—they’ve been together almost fifteen years now. Paco is my brother-in-love.

Michael flashed me a toothy grin as they backed up to the edge of the deck. The fact that they weren’t pulling in next to me meant only one thing: groceries.

“Hey, sexy,” Paco said as he stepped out and shut the door with a hip bump. “You’re just in time to help unload.”

Normally, the vision of the two of them pulling in with a truckload of goodies is enough to make me forget all the troubles in the world, especially since they both happen to be really good cooks, but it wasn’t working this time. I just stood there with my arms dangling helplessly at my sides.

I said, “Somebody killed Levi Radcliff.”

Just like that. I hadn’t meant to blurt it out so fast, but I couldn’t help myself. Michael had hopped out of the truck on the other side and was halfway around the front fender when he stopped dead in his tracks.

“What?”

I felt my eyes start to sting with tears. I said, “Somebody killed him. This morning. I was afraid something was wrong so I went over to his place at Grand Pelican. The door was open and he was on the floor in a pool of blood…”

I had to stop and screw the heels of my palms into my eye sockets to stave off the waterworks, but then the next thing I knew Michael’s big arms were folding around my shoulders. Instinctively, I tried to draw away, but he held on.

I said, “What are you doing?”

“I’m hugging you.”

I snuffled, drawing the back of my hand across my nose. “Yeah, I know that. But why ?”

His voice was steady as he hugged me a little tighter. “You know exactly why.”

* * *

Long before any of us were twinkles in anyone’s eye, my grandfather, Jesse Napoleon Hemingway, found himself on a business trip in Florida. He was twenty-two years old, newly engaged, and it was the first time he’d ever stepped foot out of his hometown of Manhattan, Kansas. He’d been sent here to convince a group of local businessmen to invest in the latest craze: portable steel sandwich shops, those shiny prefab diners shaped like railroad cars that started sprouting up all over the country in the thirties and forties. They could be shipped anywhere there was a mom and a pop with some cash and a dream of opening their very own restaurant.

The way my grandmother told it, that Florida air must have gone straight to my grandfather’s head like a double shot of whiskey, because she never found out how many diners he sold on that trip—they never even discussed it. The day my grandfather returned home he presented her with the deed to a plot of land facing the ocean on the southern end of Siesta Key. My grandmother was none too pleased, especially since by her calculation they’d spent at least a hundred hours strolling hand in hand along the banks of nearby Walnut Creek, dreaming about their plans for the future, choosing names for their children, and discussing in which town (within a thirty-mile radius) they would build a home and spend the rest of their lives together.

In public, at least as a young woman, my grandmother was the model wife, quiet and demure—the way a young woman was expected to be in those days—but behind closed doors she let my grandfather know in no uncertain terms that there wasn’t a snowball’s chance in hell she was leaving Kansas, and if he wanted to go live in a spit of a sandbox on an island in the middle of nowhere like a hermit crab, he could plumb well do it by himself.

Luckily for me and my brother, my grandfather knew a thing or two about the art of persuasion, because if he hadn’t worked things out between them, not only would we not have inherited this house, we would never have even existed. Using every sales trick in the book, he finally convinced her to make the trip to Florida to see it for herself. They stood shoulder to shoulder at the water’s edge, holding their shoes in their hands as the waves lapped at their toes, and watched the sun set into the sea.

The sky turned colors my grandmother didn’t even know existed, and she always said it must have been divine intervention, because the beauty of that moment took her breath away. She knew it was God’s way of telling her she was finally home. Of course, it hadn’t hurt one bit that my grandfather had phoned ahead for the local sunset schedule. He had timed their arrival perfectly.

Now, I live in the one-bedroom apartment over the carport that was built for visiting relatives from back home—it’s small but it suits me just fine—and Michael and Paco live in the main house.

While Paco unloaded the groceries and Michael put on a pot of coffee, I slumped down on one of the barstools in the kitchen and laid my head down on the big butcher-block island. I told them everything that had happened … well, almost everything. I left Dick Cheney out of the story. At that point, I still wasn’t sure whether I’d fainted or not, and there was no point getting them all worked up about a home invasion or an assault with a deadly Buddha if in reality the whole thing had just been a little light-headedness on my part.

“Hold on a second.” Michael slid a cup of coffee toward me with one hand while he dropped a single sugar cube down in it with the other. “What do you mean—”

I interrupted, “Michael, I don’t want to talk about it.”

“You don’t even know what I’m going to say!”

“Yes, I do. You’re going to say, ‘What do you mean, light-headed?’”

He blinked. “Well?”

I laid my cheek back down on the table. “Ugh. I don’t know. I just blacked out for a second, and then the next thing I knew I was flat on my stomach.”