Блейз Клемент - The Cat Sitter's Cradle

When I walked up, she stood and shook my hand firmly.

“Thanks for meeting me, Dixie. It’s much easier to talk in person than on the phone.”

I muttered something vague like “Sure is,” but the truth was I didn’t want to talk to her at all. For some insane reason I still felt a lingering loyalty to Kenny, some inexplicable desire to protect him, even though he’d given me his word that he would turn himself in to the police as soon as he left my apartment. Apparently he’d had other plans.

As I sat down she said, “First of all, does he have Becca?”

I shook my head sadly. “No. He says he has no idea where she is.”

“Alright. And I don’t suppose he told you where he’s staying.”

I shook my head again. “No.”

She smiled uncomfortably. “Well, now that we’ve got that over with. Tell me everything that happened last night.”

I told her the entire story, including how Kenny had asked me not to let the police hear the message he’d left on my answering machine. She pulled her clipboard out of her bag and made a few notes as I talked, but she didn’t say a word until I got to the part where Kenny said he was Mr. Harwick’s son.

She held up one hand to stop me. “Wait a minute. He’s been working in the Harwick house for months.”

“I know. He was going to tell them who he was, but I think he was scared.”

“So he never told them?”

“He did. He called Mr. Harwick.”

“When?”

“The night before I found him in the pool.”

“Does Mrs. Harwick know about this?”

I said, “I don’t think so. Mr. Harwick was whispering on the phone, so Kenny got the impression he was trying to hide it from her. They agreed to meet at the house, and Mr. Harwick drove back from Tampa that night. They met alone. He told Kenny he was sorry, and he wanted to make it up to him. He said he would buy Kenny a house and give him money and put him in his will, but Kenny didn’t want anything to do with it. He told Mr. Harwick that he wasn’t there for money. He just wanted his father to tell him to his face why he had run away.”

She took off her sunglasses and looked me squarely in the eye. “Dixie, let me get this straight. It’s the middle of the night. This man who’s been missing since Mr. Harwick drowned shows up at your door out of nowhere. You know the police are looking for him. You’re all alone. Why in the world would you let him in your house?”

I wasn’t sure how to respond, but I suddenly felt my cheeks turning red. “Well … I wasn’t alone, actually.”

She waved her hand like a teacher erasing a chalkboard. “Okay, forget that. Why would you let him in your house at all ?”

I thought for a moment, but I couldn’t come up with a good answer. “It was stupid. I shouldn’t have let him in. I guess I trusted him.”

She put her sunglasses back on. “Yes, I’m beginning to see that. So how did their meeting end?”

“Kenny told Mr. Harwick he didn’t want anything from him, including his money. And to prove it, he gave him an envelope with all the letters that Mr. Harwick had ever sent him, including checks that he never cashed.”

I paused for a moment. I knew that what I was about to say was not going to sound good, but I also knew I didn’t have a choice. “He also said that he told his father he could take his money and rot in hell. Then he left.”

Detective McKenzie frowned. “This packet of letters, did he say where it was?”

“No. He said he gave it to Mr. Harwick before he left.”

She nodded. “That’s interesting. There was no packet of letters in that house when we searched it.”

The teenagers had gone down to the beach and were running in and out of the waves and laughing in that carefree way kids do. A small brown sparrow perched on the table next to ours and pitched a couple of bossy chirps at us. I think he was checking to see if we had any hot dog buns for him.

It was hard to tell what Detective McKenzie was thinking. She had laid her clipboard down in her lap and was resting her hands on it.

“Dixie, tell me what you know about Becca.”

“I’ve only met her a couple of times, but she seems like a sweet girl, just a little in over her head.”

“Mrs. Harwick tells me that Becca can be emotional. Does that sound right to you?”

“Yeah, I would say she definitely has a flare for the dramatic.”

“And that day you found her crying on the floor in her parents’ bathroom, did you wonder why she was there, instead of her own room?”

“No. It’s a pretty nice bathroom, and the aquarium is kind of soothing, so I got the impression she spent a lot of time in there.”

“Did anything seem strange about her?”

I said, “Other than that she was totally freaking out?”

“I understand she was upset, but the way you described it made me wonder if there wasn’t something else going on, something that might have been influencing her behavior.”

“You mean … like drugs?”

She nodded.

“It’s possible. Like I said, I didn’t know her before all this, so I couldn’t say if the way she was acting was normal for her or not. But she did say her brother had been involved with drugs. That’s why he got a job at the golf club, because the Harwicks cut him off when they found out.”

She nodded. “Mrs. Harwick mentioned that. She also told me she overheard an argument between Becca and August. Apparently something was missing from August’s room, but Becca denied having anything to do with it. Do you know what that might have been about?”

“No. She didn’t say anything about that to me.”

“Alright, one last thing. I keep going back to your porcupine fish. You didn’t notice if it was alarmed that morning you talked to Becca?”

“No, definitely not, I would have remembered that for sure.”

“Do you think a loud noise could have caused it to puff up like it did?”

“Definitely. Especially if the noise was nearby.”

Detective McKenzie pursed her lips together. I could tell she was making an effort to choose her words carefully.

“Like a scream, for example. Could a scream have set off that kind of reaction?”

I nodded slowly. “I think any loud noise could have set it off.”

“Okay. That’s helpful.”

I looked down at my hands. “Detective McKenzie, do you think Becca is still alive?”

She looked at the water for a long time. Eventually I figured out that she wasn’t going to answer me, which was fine. Her silence was answer enough. No matter what had happened the night Kenny met with Mr. Harwick, the fact that Becca had been missing ever since was not a good sign. If she had witnessed what had happened, it was possible that she had been discovered hiding in the bathroom. Becca was tough, but she was still just a teenager and probably not more than a hundred pounds. I don’t think she would have been able to defend herself. Whoever killed Mr. Harwick that night might have taken her. Or worse.

Detective McKenzie turned to me and said, “When my husband died, I felt like I was instantly a member of a secret club, where only people who’ve lost a husband or a wife before their time can understand me. Do you ever feel that way?”

I waited a couple of moments before I answered. “Yeah. I know exactly what you mean. It’s like a club you wish you weren’t in, but you’re glad it’s there all the same.”

“Yes. That’s exactly it. I don’t know what it’s like to lose a child, Dixie, but I imagine it must be that same feeling, multiplied a million times over.”

I nodded. That felt about right.

We sat for a while longer, not talking, just watching the kids play on the beach. I think we were both thinking the same thing: For every hour that Becca was missing, the odds that she was alive got smaller and smaller.