Блейз Клемент - The Cat Sitter's Whiskers

But the day Todd and Christy died, a little switch flipped in my head—a crazy switch. I’ll spare you the details, but let’s just say all parties involved agreed it would be best if I took a little break from law enforcement. This is Florida. There are enough maniacs walking around with guns as it is.

After wallowing in my own wacko for about a year, I finally managed to stand upright and fraternize with the human race again. I have Michael, my older brother, to thank for that. He’d always taken care of me, even when we were little kids, but that whole year he barely left my side. I remember watching his hands as he laid out lunch for me and set the tray down on my bed. I remember him gently waving a spoonful of homemade soup under my nose and whispering, “Mmmm, soup!” as if I were a brain-addled infant barely capable of feeding myself … which basically is what I was.

I don’t know what I would have done without him.

The sky had lightened by the time I biked into the village, enough that all the leaves were glittering with dew. There’d only been one other car on the road the whole way into town, but it had stayed back at least half a mile, not going much faster than I was, which meant it was probably Levi. I knew he started his route on the south end of the Key and worked his way up.

I didn’t have much farther to go, just a couple more blocks and left on Island Circle Road to my first client of the day: Barney Feldman, an eight-year-old Maine Coon. Mr. Feldman (only his closest friends call him Barney) lords over the two thousand square feet of his domain like a pirate guarding a treasure ship, which makes sense when you consider that Maine Coons are believed to have descended from cats that traveled around the world on Viking ships in the eleventh century.

He lives with his owners, Buster and Linda Keller, in a decidedly nondescript three-bedroom ranch house. It’s all white stucco, with a simple lean-to carport off the right side and a poured concrete driveway in front, cracked and buckling in its old age. If you didn’t know better, you’d assume it was just an old tear-down waiting for somebody to snatch it up for a few thousand dollars and put a proper house in its place. But this is Siesta Key, and the beach is only a two-minute walk away. The Kellers bought their home ten years ago for roughly half a million dollars. There’s no telling what it’s worth today.

As I rolled up the driveway, I didn’t think Levi had beat me there, but I glanced around for the newspaper just in case. Then I remembered Mrs. Keller saying that, like a lot of people, they got all their news online now, which was bad for the Herald-Tribune but great for me, since it meant I wouldn’t have to worry about collecting the newspapers while they were away.

I propped the bike up next to the front door and fished around in my backpack for my chatelaine, the big brass ring I keep all my keys on. It seems like every client I’ve ever had wants me to keep a key to their home just in case there’s an emergency. I’ve never sat down and done an official count, but there must be at least a couple hundred keys on it, if not more. It’s about as heavy as a bucket of clams. At first it was hard to keep track of them all, but eventually I worked out a system. Each key is individually numbered with a permanent marker, and then I have a list that matches each key to its owner, which I keep in the same notebook where I write down all my alarm codes and pet instructions.

There was a time when I carried that notebook around with me, but after a while it just seemed too risky. If the wrong person got their hands on both my chatelaine and my notes, they could make off with half the valuables on this island, so I keep it hidden in my apartment for now. I’d tell you where, but then you’d be suspect number one if it ever went missing, so let’s just say it’s in a safe place.

As I was unlocking the door, I thought I heard a car in the street behind me, but by the time I had the door open and looked back, it was gone. I punched in the code for the alarm system, dropped my stuff on the white leather bench next to the front door, and knelt down to untie my sneakers.

The Kellers have a strict no-shoes policy, which I thought was kind of silly until I saw the inside of their house. You wouldn’t think a place so drab and boring on the outside could be so elegantly stunning on the inside, but it is. The furniture is all sleek and modern and covered in soothing shades of sand and fawn and bird’s-egg-blue, with bleached hardwood floors buffed to a shiny gloss and walls painted a soft milky gray. It’s like walking through the dunes at dusk.

As I kicked my sneakers off, hopping around on one foot and then the other, I noticed there was a small box on the floor, tucked back under the bench at the far end. It had a white address label on top, but no postage, and there were some red FRAGILE stickers on both ends. I made a mental note to ask Mrs. Keller if she’d meant to mail it. I knew they’d been in a rush when they left the night before because she’d called to apologize for leaving the house in such a mess.

Of course, for Mrs. Keller, mess probably just meant a couple of unwashed coffee cups in the sink.

“Mr. Feldman?”

I didn’t exactly expect him to come running. Dogs like to greet you at the door and dance around your feet, bouncing this way and that while they tell you how absolutely fabulous you are, how absolutely overwhelmed with excitement they are, and how they absolutely adore you. Cats are a little different. They’re glad you’ve arrived, but they’re certainly not about to embarrass themselves with such demeaning displays of subservience.

Instead, they’ll allow you to give them a few good scritches between the ears while they stretch themselves into a scary-cat shape, and then maybe they’ll circle around your legs, purring loudly to let you know that you are indeed loved. I smiled to myself. Barney has his own particular way of greeting visitors. As I pulled my socks up around my ankles, I gave a little nod to the room.

“Good morning, everybody.”

That wasn’t meant for Barney. That was my customary greeting for what was hanging on the walls all around me—Mrs. Keller’s passion, or, as Mr. Keller refers to it, his “financial ruin.”

Masks. All kinds of masks. Big masks. Small masks. Wooden masks from India, sequined masks from New Orleans, feathered masks from Siberia, healing masks, ceremonial masks, tribal masks, voodoo masks, and dozens of other masks from parts of the world I’ve never even heard of.

They’re all artfully arranged on the walls in every room of the house, including the laundry room, the hallways, the bathrooms—even the walk-in closet off the master bedroom. Some of them are quite simple, like the stone masks with blank oval mouths frozen in a perpetual OH! like a shocked smiley face. Others are more fancy affairs, with seashells for teeth and marbles for eyes, and headdresses adorned with brightly colored feathers and painted beads.

Mrs. Keller’s latest addition was a big wooden mask from the Himalayas, hanging dead center in the middle of the wall facing the front door. I remembered how her voice had dropped to a conspiratorial whisper when she told me where she’d found it—in a “charming little gallery” on the outskirts of Tampa. She’d said the owner of the shop had had no idea how rare it was, and that it was probably worth a small fortune.

It was a man’s face, intricately carved out of wood and painted with bright splashes of red, green, and banana-yellow, with gnashing teeth, arched eyebrows, and a string of tiny bleached-white bird skulls perched on the top of its head like a crown. Mrs. Keller said it was from a region in Tibet called Aroomy Choo Pinky, or something like that, but I just called him “Dick Cheney.”