Блейз Клемент - The Cat Sitter's Nine Lives

I let out a little sigh of relief when I felt pretty confident he wasn’t showing up. Michael’s been taking care of me for as long as I can remember. Our father died in action, fighting a fire in an old abandoned warehouse north of the airport, and our mother was not exactly what you’d call a domestic goddess, so Michael tends to be pretty protective—you might even say overprotective. I’m sure the sight of me sitting on the hood of my car covered in blood would have sent him right over the edge.

Now that the ambulance had taken Baldy away and the fire was out, people were walking by on the sidewalk and gawking at me. I thought about how they always say the most beautiful people in the world are the ones who’ve experienced true tragedy and suffering. Of course, nobody was looking at me for my world-weary beauty. They were mesmerized by the sight of a bloody, blond-haired mess sitting on the hood of her car.

I looked down at my arms and legs and felt a little shock go through my body. Somehow I’d managed to block out the fact that I was smeared from head to toe with another man’s blood. At that moment the only thing that kept me from having a complete nervous breakdown was the promise that as soon as I’d answered whatever questions Deputy Morgan had for me, I’d make like a homing pigeon and head straight for my shower.

I’ve never been to Tibet or Jerusalem or any of those other places where people go to find inner peace or the meaning of life. Hell, I’ve never even crossed the Florida state line. I don’t need to. The shower is my own personal mecca. There’s nothing like a strong, steady stream of hot water to make you feel like you’re a fully enlightened deity. For now, though, some old towels and a bottle of rubbing alcohol would have to do the trick.

I slid off the hood and went around to the back and opened up the cargo door. I keep a big plastic cat carrier and two old canvas tote bags back there. One has some extra leashes, a few collars of varying sizes, a Baggie full of bacon-flavored treats, some chewed-up Frisbees, a couple of peacock feathers, and a collection of collapsible food bowls. The other has a fresh supply of clean towels, which come in handy for lining cat carriers or drying off a wet dog, and they’re good for keeping fur off upholstery, too.

I don’t like a messy car. In my book, your mind is only as clean as your car, so I keep the Bronco as spotless as the day we drove it off the lot. Back then, I kept the back fully stocked with paper napkins, baby wipes, goldfish crackers, and juice boxes … but that was a whole other life.

I pulled a bottle of rubbing alcohol out of my backpack and unscrewed the lid. Then I took one of the towels out and folded it into a square. I doused one side of it with alcohol and then, humming along to myself as if it were the most normal thing in the world, wiped the towel up and down first my right leg and then my left. I’d planned on averting my eyes so I wouldn’t have to see exactly how much blood there was, but I couldn’t help myself. In no time at all, the towel looked like a red tie-dyed T-shirt an aging hippie might wear to a Grateful Dead reunion concert.

I folded it over, dabbed a little more alcohol on the clean side, and then ran it up and down my hands and forearms. It looked like I’d gotten it all, but just to be on the safe side, I took another towel out of the tote bag and did the whole thing over again.

Feeling a little more civilized, if not completely sanitized, I stuffed the stained towels down into a plastic bag, closed up the back of the car, and returned to my spot on the hood to watch the sun set over the proceedings. I could see patches of the ocean between the shops and buildings on the Gulf side of the street. It was turning a deep indigo blue, and reaching up all along the horizon were vast fields of cadmium and scarlet, all shot through with glowing slivers of white clouds, like undulating seams in the fabric of the sky.

Just when I was thinking I’d probably have to sit on the hood of my car all night long waiting for Deputy Morgan, he came peacocking across the road, his tool belt weighted down with all the accoutrements of a sworn officer of the law: flashlight, handcuffs, department-issue pistol, billy club, digital recorder. He had that smug cop-strut down to a tee. I should know. I used to have a smug cop-strut of my own.

“Fancy meeting you here,” he said as he leaned his hip against the hood and pulled out his report pad.

I nodded. “Yep.”

Morgan and I have a pretty long history of encounters at crime scenes, largely due to the fact that I seem to have a knack for getting myself involved in all kinds of things I shouldn’t. Granted, my job puts me in lots of places where most people would never be: alone in strangers’ homes with their pets, in all kinds of neighborhoods, at all hours of the day and night. Plus, it’s a small town. Naturally if anything exciting is happening, the odds of my being somewhere in the vicinity are probably higher than the average Joe’s. Still, drama seems to track me down like a chump-seeking missile.

Morgan flipped his report pad open and clicked his ballpoint pen, which he somehow managed to do with an impressive amount of attitude, and cocked his head at me. “So, tell me what happened.”

I told him all about Baldy (who hadn’t been carrying a driver’s license or any other ID, so I’d just have to go on calling him Baldy) and how he had been in a huge hurry, how he’d flashed his lights at me and then swerved into the oncoming lane, and how the next thing I knew he was wrapped around the front of that landscaping truck, and how the burly doctor had helped me pull him out before his car exploded.

“So how long would you say he was behind you before he went around?”

“Probably less than a block. It all happened pretty fast. Wherever he was going he was in a big hurry to get there.”

“Well, he’s lucky he didn’t kill somebody. Do you remember how fast you were driving?”

“Yeah, because I had specifically slowed down to the speed limit when I realized he was tailgating me.”

Morgan raised an eyebrow. “You slowed down to the speed limit?”

I gulped. The last thing I needed right now was a speeding ticket.

He made a note in his pad. “And just how fast were you going before you slowed down to the speed limit?”

At that moment, the thought flashed across my mind that if I hadn’t let Baldy pass, this whole thing might have been avoided entirely. If I hadn’t been so nice, he would have been stuck behind me and forced to drive the speed limit—more or less. I might have disrupted the whole chain of events, the whole time-space continuum or whatever. For some reason, that, plus the thought of getting a speeding ticket on top of everything else, made something in me go snap.

I jumped off the hood of the Bronco and started waving my hands around in front of Morgan’s face like a conductor. “Are you kidding me? There is no way in hell you’re giving me a speeding ticket! I just pulled a guy out of a burning vehicle. I’m covered in blood. I almost got blown to smithereens. You should be giving me a goddamn medal, not a stupid traffic citation!”

Morgan stared down at me for a couple of seconds and then burst out laughing. “Aww, come on, Dixie! How long have we known each other? You really think I was gonna give you a speeding ticket?”

He flipped his report pad closed with a wink and sauntered off toward his patrol car. I could hear him chuckling as he walked away, and then he called over his shoulder, “You gotta lighten up, babe. Take a vacation or something.”

I could feel my cheeks burning, and for a moment I considered taking off one of my shoes and throwing it at the back of his head, but I figured I’d better not press my luck. Also, I couldn’t remember ever seeing Morgan smile, much less chuckle. Either he was going soft as he got older, or he didn’t take me to be the stark-raving madwoman that I just assumed everyone at the sheriff’s department thought I was. It actually felt good to joke around with one of the deputies. It felt like old times, even if I was the butt of the joke.