Блейз Клемент - The Cat Sitter's Nine Lives

The nurse tapped her foot and said, “Ma’am? Right now.”

I touched Mr. Vladim’s hand lightly and headed for the door while the nurse glared at me. I thought about how I’d made a promise to myself that the next time somebody called me ma’am, I’d sock them right in the mouth. I can’t say it was my proudest moment, but sometimes action speaks louder than words. As I passed by her, I made a face and stuck out my tongue.

26

About ten feet outside Baldy’s room I started having second thoughts. Then in the elevator down to the lobby, I was quietly mumbling to myself while my fellow passengers pretended not to notice. Then by the time I made it through the lobby and outside into the fresh air, I didn’t care who saw me—I was straight-up talking out loud and giving myself a good, stern disquisition on the basic standards of reasonable behavior.

I’d gone too far. I should never have promised to deliver Baldy’s message to his wife. He was a grown man. He could do it himself. Don’t get me wrong—I knew without a doubt that what he and his wife had been through was unimaginably heartbreaking, but it just wasn’t my responsibility, and it was crazy of me to even consider delivering messages back and forth between two wanted criminals. Except …

I thought of Janet, all alone in that sprawling mansion, crying herself to sleep every night, isolated from the outside world, and with no earthly idea where her husband was or why he had disappeared. For all she knew he was dead, and now I understood why she always looked so exhausted and tortured—her life was a living hell, and all because she had tried to save her child.

Except, I thought, lots of people deal with sick children, and they don’t all go around robbing banks to pay their medical bills. Not to mention the fact that if I didn’t report Janet’s whereabouts to the authorities, I would essentially be committing a very serious crime.

As I unlocked the Bronco and jumped into the driver’s seat I mumbled to myself, “It’s called aiding and abetting, you dummy.”

No. I just couldn’t take that kind of risk, not even for Janet.

Except then I thought of the pain she must have been in—to lose her child like that, and now the only thing standing between her suffering and a little bit of relief was me. Except I knew without a doubt that if she turned herself in right away she’d have a much easier time in court … and it wasn’t like she and Baldy were murdering thieves. They were just small-time bank robbers, right?

Except how exactly had they robbed all those banks? Had Janet held a gun to the teller’s head while Baldy filled a bag with cash? I mean, robbing a bank is one thing, but robbing a bank with a deadly weapon could mean life in prison for both of them. Except they just didn’t seem capable of that kind of violent crime … except what did I know? They could just as easily have been cold-blooded killers, except …

Except, except, except!

In the car all the way home, I shook my head and sighed so many times I must have looked like a bobblehead doll. Yet again I’d managed to get myself tangled up in a seriously complicated mess, but there was no way out. I’d given my word to Baldy. I couldn’t very well change my mind now and turn his wife in to the police. That would have been wrong, no matter how hard I tried to justify it.

I told myself that if Baldy and his wife had fallen into a life of crime as a way of paying for their child’s medical bills, then that meant they’d been abandoned from the get-go, that society had turned its back on them. No parent should ever be put in that kind of situation, no matter who they are or where they come from or how they got here, and I knew I’d never be able to look myself in the eye again if I betrayed my promise to Baldy. My only choice was to deliver his message to her.

I just hoped I wouldn’t go to jail for it.

Meanwhile, the whole time I was engaged in that mental game of tug-of-war, there was a little voice in the back of my mind, repeating the same words over and over again: What you do with chocolate? What you do with chocolate? I shook my head like an Etch A Sketch that needs erasing. The man was on enough painkillers to down an elephant, that was all. Somehow he’d gotten chocolate on the brain, a condition I could completely understand, and with all those drugs, not to mention the head trauma, he had just hallucinated some crazy scene where he gave me chocolates … some chocolates that for some reason he didn’t want me to eat.

As I pulled into the driveway, I had to laugh at the absurdity of it all. I’m not exactly the most religious person in the world, but I do believe that we each have some kind of higher power—some presence that watches over us all, pulling the strings and keeping everything spinning. Whatever it is, I was beginning to think that my higher power had a very mischievous sense of humor. On top of all the craziness that had unfolded in the last few days, the moment I had decided to go on a diet it seemed like there was something tempting me to break it every five minutes. I was beginning to feel like a character in a book, where everywhere I turned the author put some chocolate in my path just to torture me.

* * *

As I came around the curve and saw the carport under my apartment, I breathed a huge sigh of relief. Michael’s car was in its regular spot, and so was Paco’s. As an undercover agent, Paco rubs elbows with all kinds of shady characters—corporate embezzlers, drug dealers, gang members—and as for Michael, fighting fires isn’t exactly the safest activity in the world, so a full carport always means one thing: I can rest a little bit easier. It’s like a big ball of tension in the pit of my stomach just starts melting away.

Of course, a full carport usually means I’m probably getting a gourmet meal for dinner, so that feeling in my stomach could just be hunger.

Either way, as I crunched across the driveway to the steps, the sight of Michael and Paco busily moving around in their kitchen helped take my mind off everything. I decided that, at least for tonight, I’d just let it all go and try to have a nice, relaxed evening with Ethan.

He was taking me to Yolanda, the Spanish restaurant where we’d had our very first official date, so I definitely didn’t want to spend the whole night thinking about Baldy and Janet and Mr. Hoskins and Cosmo. It helped that I didn’t have Mr. Silverthorn’s number; otherwise I would probably have been calling him every half hour to find out how his search was going. I didn’t even know if he owned a cell phone at all, but I had already decided that it wouldn’t hurt to sneak away at some point during our date and give Mrs. Silverthorn a quick call, just to see if there was any news.

Once inside, I dropped my backpack in the middle of the floor and sat down on the couch. There was just one more little thing I needed to take care of if I really wanted to have a nice night and focus all my attention on Ethan.

I reached down in the side pocket of my cargo shorts and pulled out my souvenir from the Silverthorn Mansion—the shredded remains of my book’s missing chapter.

I laid it down on my lap and whispered, “Okay. How in the world did you end up in that tree?”

Given the week I’d had, I half expected it to answer me, but of course it didn’t. It just sat there all shredded and mute—clearly it wasn’t giving up its secrets that easily—so I unfolded the loose covering of lavender fabric and drew out the pen-and-ink drawing.

“And who the hell are you?”

The woman peered back at me, tight-lipped and sly. I flipped it over. It wasn’t signed anywhere, but I knew it had to have been one of Mr. Hoskins’s drawings. The only difference was that it looked almost like a preliminary sketch. The style was the same, but it wasn’t as detailed and intricate as the other drawings.