Блейз Клемент - The Cat Sitter's Whiskers

* * *

The sky had turned a pale orange, like the creamy glow of a frozen dreamsicle, and the great white heron that had greeted me from the roof had flown down to the yard. He was standing perfectly still now, one leg planted firmly, the other poised in the air, scanning the lush grass for earthworms and grasshoppers.

I had been sitting in the car outside Mona’s trailer for who knows how long when my phone rang. It was Detective McKenzie. I let it ring a few more times while I considered letting it go to voice mail, but right at the last moment I flipped it open.

She said, “Dixie. I have a deputy in the parking lot at Henderson’s Liquors. He says you’re not there.”

I said, “Oh. Yeah, sorry. I couldn’t wait.”

“Okay. Where are you?”

I thought for a moment. “I’m at the beach.”

“You’re at the beach…”

“Yeah,” I lied. “I just … I felt like everything was closing in on me. I just needed something … something big to look at it.”

There was a moment of silence, and then she said, “Okay, I understand. I just wanted you to know, Mr. Fiori and another gentleman were caught lurking outside your house by a team of SIB agents. They’ve been arrested for the murder of Levi Radcliff.”

I held my breath.

“Also, I’m at Happy Time Self Storage now, and just as you said, it was indeed Wilfred Paxton in the duffel bag, but you were wrong about one thing. He was indeed shot. He was also gagged, and his arms and legs were wrapped in duct tape, but he wasn’t dead. In fact, he’s very much alive, thanks to you. We got him to the hospital just in time, and on the way there he confessed to being connected to a worldwide ring of stolen antiquities dealers.”

My jaw fell wide open. “You have got to be kidding me.”

“I’m not. He told us a very interesting story about Mr. Fiori, the man who kidnapped you. At his direction, that figurine you saw was stolen from a church in a remote village in the mountains of Peru, but the man he paid to steal it decided to sell it himself, and Mr. Fiori has been after it ever since. Paxton was helping him, as was his assistant, Daniela, who not surprisingly has disappeared.”

I nodded, imagining Daniela returning Pachamama to her true home in Peru, and I imagined all of Pachamama’s worshippers gathered around her, crossing themselves and bowing in prayer.

McKenzie said, “Hello?”

“Sorry, I’m here—I’m just trying to process everything.”

“Dixie, do you think you’d be able to identify the two men that kidnapped you?”

I gulped, knowing exactly what she was going to ask next. “Yeah, I can identify them. Where do you want me?”

“Let’s meet at my office. I should be there within the next twenty minutes. All right?”

“Yes, of course.”

“And after the crime technicians give the clear, I’ll need to walk through this storage room with you. I’ll need to know everything you saw, every detail, no matter how small.”

I looked over at Mrs. Duffy’s yard to see if my heron friend was still there, but he’d flown away.

I said, “Sure. I’ll tell you everything.”

35

Sometimes when I wake up in the morning I open my eyes and I see Christy. She’s on the bed next to me. Her head on the pillow, her eyes wide open. They’re big and clear blue. She’s watching me, her face still and quiet, searching my face for answers the way a child does.

When it happens, I know what I’m seeing is more like a memory than a dream, because it feels real. The day Christy died might as well have been a million years ago, but at the same time, it feels like right now, like all those years are rolled into a tiny ball that I carry like a lump in the breast pocket of one of my sleeveless T-shirts, no bigger than a pebble but as heavy as the world.

In the beginning, when I’d wake and see her on the pillow next to me, her reassuring smile, her wise eyes, I’d cry. But now I just smile back, reveling in the miracle of her face as the edges blend and blur with the sounds of the gulls and the waves rolling in on the beach down below. She usually vanishes after a few moments, and then there comes a moment of gratitude, grief, clarity, silence, guilt … guilt that I couldn’t give her any of the answers she was looking for.

It breaks my heart a little, and sometimes I spend the rest of the day rebuilding it.

Lately, though, I wonder if maybe I’ve been reading it wrong this whole time. Lately I wonder if perhaps she’s not so much looking for answers as giving them—giving me a little advantage in the world, sending me little clues the way a cat’s whiskers send tiny electronic signals to its brain. Like magic.

Like providence.

I was lying in bed, and when I opened my eyes, it wasn’t morning at all, and it wasn’t Christy there next to me, but Ethan. At first I thought he was sound asleep, his dark lashes still, his lips slightly parted, but then he opened his eyes and smiled sleepily at me.

He said, “Hi.”

I smiled back and then his eyes closed and he was almost instantly asleep again, his breathing deep and heavy. I raised my head off the pillow to find Ella curled up in a ball on his chest, one paw stretched out daintily across his neck.

The coroner had examined the knife that Daniela had used to free me from the refrigerator in the storage room. He didn’t rule it out completely, but he’d been unable to definitively connect it to Levi’s stabbing. Of course, that didn’t mean it wasn’t still considered evidence, especially since Daniela’s fingerprints had been all over Levi’s trailer. As it turned out, I’d been right—she was the woman who’d come home with Levi that night.

And now I knew why: She wanted to get her hands on Pachamama before Paxton could hand it over to Fiori, who had probably paid off the owner of the shop outside Tampa for information on who he’d sold it to. Mrs. Keller had told them she’d have her cat sitter return it because she was out of town, but she’d refused to give them her home address.

Daniela must have thought she’d find Mrs. Keller’s address on Levi’s delivery list, but she hadn’t considered the possibility that the Kellers didn’t take the morning paper … but we’ve had the paper delivered for as long as I can remember. All it took was a quick look in the yellow pages under “Pet Sitting” to get my name, and she knew I’d lead her straight to Pachamama.

It hadn’t been Levi outside my driveway that morning at all. It was Daniela. And as for the security monitor outside the Sea Breeze, the video files had mysteriously disappeared, so whether Daniela had lied about what time she got home that night was still a complete unkown.

As it stands now, she’s wanted for the murder of Levi Radcliff. They still haven’t found her, and I doubt they ever will.

Mrs. Duffy passed away quietly in her sleep about a week later. There was a small service, attended by Mona and a handful of neighbors, including Tanisha and her sister. Mona didn’t say a word, but I think she was grateful I was there. We never spoke of Levi or Mrs. Duffy again.

* * *

The air was warm, and the night-blooming cereus was sending out its sweet, magical scent, transporting me back to my youth, when I’d sneak out of bed in the middle of the night and go out to the courtyard. I’d lie on my back in one of the chaise lounges and stare at the stars. Sometimes I’d wake up to the birds announcing the sunrise, and there’d be a blanket on top of me and I’d have no idea how it got there.

But it wasn’t the cereus that had woken me up now. I realized it was the dream I was having. It’s a dream I’ve had before: Christy is running on the beach. She’s wearing a blue one-piece bathing suit under a Disney World T-shirt that I’ve had since I was a teenager, and she’s throwing chunks of bread high in the air and laughing as seagulls swoop in to catch them. Her hair is almost white in the sunshine, white as the seagulls’ wings, white as the flashes of light bouncing like diamonds off the rolling waves in the sea.