Блейз Клемент - The Cat Sitter's Cradle

Corina started to cry softly. “The bird, she is okay. I am happy.”

Joyce caught my eye, and we shared a look. Corina wasn’t just crying because some crazy-looking bird had gotten a clear bill of health from the vet. She was crying because, at the heart of things, Corina and René had a lot in common. They were both far from their own homes, in a foreign land where they weren’t completely understood, where they had to depend on the goodwill of perfect strangers in order to survive. They had both placed their trust in our hands. It was easy to understand how they might immediately form a tight bond.

Now Joyce started dabbing at her eyes with the corner of her blouse.

“Oh no, not you too!”

Joyce laughed through her tears. “Well, Corina’s right. I’m happy the bird she is okay, too!”

I rolled my eyes and left the two of them together, sniffling and hiccuping. The baby was in the guest bedroom sound asleep in her bright pink car seat, which was situated in the middle of the bed, surrounded with pillows. Her cheeks were flushed pink, and her hands were balled into fists like two tiny cauliflower heads.

As I sat down on the bed, her eyes opened into narrow slits.

I whispered, “Hi, Dixie Joyce.”

She tilted her head back a bit and her eyes widened a little, trying to focus on me. I laid my hand down over hers and softly kissed the top of her head.

“You know,” I said, “there’s a couple of crybabies in there.”

14

I pulled up to the Harwick house not knowing what to expect. Sometimes investigators can take days to comb through the contents of a crime scene, and sometimes it can be over in hours. It all depends on the crime. The first thing I noticed was that the entire property was still cordoned off with yellow police tape, and now it was stretched across the front gate. Partially blocking the entrance were two white news vans with brightly colored logos splashed across their sides and big satellite dishes perched on top, casting long shadows up the driveway. The ambulance was gone now, but there was still a police cruiser next to August’s sports car, and behind that was an unmarked sedan.

I parked behind one of the vans. There were a couple of reporters talking to some neighbors, and across the street there was a balding man, in boating shorts the same orange as Cheetos, pointing his phone at the scene. He was probably taking a video that would be on the Internet as soon as he went back inside his house.

I knew one of the neighbors must have made a call to the local television stations, because if Detective McKenzie had her way, word of Mr. Harwick’s death would have been kept from the media until at least the initial investigation was over and all the family members had been notified. But I guess it’s hard to keep things under wraps when ambulances and police cars start surrounding the home of a major figure in one of the biggest companies in the world. This little group of local reporters was just the tip of the iceberg. Once word started spreading, the whole neighborhood would be crawling with news teams and photographers from all over the place.

I took a deep breath. I don’t get along too well with reporters. Anyone who knows me can vouch for that. So before I got out of the Bronco, I closed my eyes and started slowly counting to ten. With each breath, I imagined myself taking one step toward a gently babbling brook, with sparkling water softly gurgling over time-polished pebbles and blue and yellow butterflies flitting all about. Growing up the lush banks of the brook on both sides were cheery black-eyed Susans, sunning their yellow petals in the dappled sunlight and swaying gently in the warm, nectar-scented breeze. Just when I was at the fifth blissful step, I heard an obnoxiously loud rapping next to my head. I nearly jumped out of my seat, and there was Deputy Morgan’s big face looming in the window next to me.

“Hey, Detective McKenzie is inside. She wants to see you.”

I gulped out, “Okay, I’m on my way.”

“Were you sleeping?”

I grabbed my bag and opened the door. “No, I was not sleeping. I was preparing.”

“Preparing for what?”

“That.”

I tipped my chin in the direction of the reporters, who were now making a beeline right for us.

“Ma’am! What’s your connection to the Harwicks?”

Before I could even answer, another said, “Are you an employee here?”

A young woman in a Tampa University baseball cap stuck a microphone in my face. “Can you tell us in your own words what’s happening here?”

I put my head down and concentrated on the heels of Deputy Morgan’s shiny black boots as he led me past the news vans. The reporters ran alongside us like angry geese until we reached the front gate. Morgan lifted up the police tape and I scooted under, then we made a quick escape up the cobblestone driveway, leaving the gaggle of honking reporters behind.

Morgan grinned. “Well, that wasn’t too bad.”

As we walked away, I heard one of the reporters say, “I think I recognize that woman. She’s a pet sitter.”

I shifted my backpack to the other shoulder and nodded mutely. Detective McKenzie was standing in the doorway on the front porch with her clipboard of notes and police reports.

“Miss Hemingway, I’m glad you’re here. I was wondering if you might show me that fish.”

* * *

The master bathroom looked exactly the same, except now the wet towel I had noticed on the counter had a small yellow card lying next to it with the number 21 written in black ink. There was another yellow card next to the gold-plated phone, and another taped to the door above the handle. The cards were markers left by the investigative team, each indicating a potential piece of evidence. It gave me an eerie feeling to know they’d picked up my own fingerprints in the room, and that they were now part of the puzzle of clues.

The hermit crab I had spotted in the mermaid’s cleavage on that first day I met the Harwicks was now perched precariously on the ridge of her nose. She looked a little peeved about it, and I completely understood. Who can look sexy with a crab on her nose? I pointed to a little fish that was hovering at the base of one of the coral towers, peeking at us from behind a gently waving frond of sea fern. He was creamy yellow from head to tail, with a russet jigsaw pattern tattooed down his sides and fins that seemed almost comically small for his plump body. He had big puppy-dog eyes and a wide goofy smile that looked painted on, as if he’d learned to apply it at clown school.

“It’s that one right there. That’s a porcupine fish.”

Detective McKenzie said, “How did you know it was afraid?”

I said, “Believe me, you know. They puff up into a big ball. And see all those stripes going down his body? Those are spines. When he gets scared and puffs up, those spines stick out like needles in a pin cushion.”

“Or a porcupine.”

“Exactly.”

She nodded thoughtfully. I felt a little secret twinge of pride, imagining her telling Sergeant Owens how brilliant it was of me to notice such an important clue.

“They’re poisonous, aren’t they?”

I nodded. “Yeah, big-time.”

“And did you notice anything else out of place?”

I hesitated. “Not really, other than I couldn’t find Charlotte. And I was a little surprised that the alarm system wasn’t on when I arrived. The Harwicks made a point of telling me that they always kept it on when they were away. When I unlocked the door, it was the first thing I thought.”

“The door was locked?”

“Yes, I’m positive. I know because I remember taking my keys out to unlock the door.”

She sniffed. “Yes, except the use of a key to open a door doesn’t necessarily mean that it’s locked, does it? All it means is that you inserted your key in the lock and turned it. Did you try to open the door before you unlocked it?”