Блейз Клемент - The Cat Sitter's Cradle

It was bad enough that Mrs. Harwick was now a card-carrying member of Detective McKenzie’s secret club. I hoped with all my heart that she wasn’t about to be a member of mine.

I wouldn’t wish that on my worst enemy.

22

After Detective McKenzie left, I stayed a while longer and watched the waves crashing in on the beach. Our meeting had left me reeling, and I just needed to sit and rest for a while. There was something about that woman that always made me feel like I’d just lived through a hurricane or run a ten-mile marathon. She was drab and plain on the outside, but on the inside her mind was spinning at about a hundred miles an hour.

I bought a hot dog from the food stand at the beach pavilion and slathered it with hot mustard and relish. By the time I got halfway to the car I’d already downed it, so I went right back and bought another one.

Sitting in the Bronco in the parking lot, I chewed on my second hot dog and tried to sort everything out in my head. McKenzie had hinted that August wasn’t the only one in the Harwick family with a drug problem. If Becca had been high on something, I wasn’t sure I would have recognized it. I never did drugs when I was a kid, and neither did Michael. Not that I was a goody-two-shoes or anything; it’s just that living by the ocean was a good enough high for me. Plus, I’m sure my grandmother would have taken a belt to my backside if she’d ever caught wind of drugs under her roof. My grandmother was a pretty strict guardian, but she never spanked me with a belt, and I wanted to keep it that way.

There was something else bothering me, though. When I mentioned the packet of letters that Kenny had given his father before he left, Detective McKenzie seemed genuinely puzzled, and I didn’t think it was some kind of trick she was trying out on me. She had probably known right away what was just now trickling into my brain: Either Mr. Harwick had hidden that packet somewhere in the house before he was killed, or someone had taken it.

Of course, there was one more possibility: that Kenny had made the whole thing up and was playing me. He knew I would report everything he said to the police.

My second hot dog wasn’t nearly as satisfying as the first, but I ate it all anyway. Sometimes my stomach doesn’t listen to my brain. At Beach Road, I turned left and took the long route around the Key toward the Harwick house. To be honest, I wasn’t looking forward to being in that house alone. Up until now it had been filled with crime-scene technicians and police every time I’d gone over, but now it would be empty.

On the way, I called the Kitty Haven. Now that the investigation at the Harwick house was over, I wondered if Charlotte might be happier at home, even if it meant staying there alone. Being in a strange place with so many other cats can be stressful, especially for a cat as grumpy as Charlotte, and sometimes grumps like to be left alone. Believe me, I know that from firsthand experience.

Marge said, “No, she’s doing just fine. Not nearly as jittery as she was when you first brought her in. Jaz has been spending lots of time with her, and cats always pick up on the energy of the people around them. You know Jaz, she’s always happy.”

That was welcome news, not just for Charlotte but for Jaz as well. When I’d first met her, there were a lot of things you might have called Jaz, but happy was not one of them. It seemed working with Marge at the Kitty Haven was doing her a world of good.

I thanked Marge and told her I didn’t think it would be much longer before Charlotte could go back home, even though I really didn’t know if that was true or not. Detective McKenzie had made me wonder if Mrs. Harwick would ever go back home again. I figured August might be moving back in at some point, but it was entirely possible that he’d be staying with his mother until she was back on her feet.

When I pulled up to the Harwick house, the first thing I noticed was that all the yellow police tape was gone. Luckily for me, the gang of reporters that had been hanging out on the street had finally picked up shop and moved on, too. Until the coroner’s report on Mr. Harwick was made public, there wouldn’t be anything new to report. They were probably all camped out at Mrs. Harwick’s hotel, hoping to get a shot of the fabulously wealthy grieving widow.

When I opened the front door, my heart did a little skip. The alarm didn’t make its familiar beeping sound, which meant someone had turned it off. I immediately had that same creepy feeling I’d had the morning I found Mr. Harwick—that someone was in the house.

I rolled my eyes and said out loud, “Oh, get over it!”

I dropped my ring of keys into its pocket on my backpack and went over to the marble staircase and called up. “August?”

There was nothing but silence.

Then I realized, of course the alarm wasn’t on. The crime-scene units had only finished their work today. I doubted they even knew the code to set the alarm.

I let out a big sigh of relief and told myself I needed to stop being so dramatic. But just to be on the safe side, I went back over and locked the front door. That’s when I smelled it. Cigarette. Something moved in the corner of my eye. I walked through the main entry where the two Roman statues were standing guard and saw the back of someone’s head.

Mrs. Harwick was sitting on the couch in the living room, staring out at the pool. A plume of white smoke was trailing up from a cigarette perched on the edge of the coffee table.

I stepped lightly up to her side. “Mrs. Harwick?”

She turned her head in my direction but didn’t look directly at me. “Oh, Dixie. I didn’t hear you come in.”

“I’m so sorry to interrupt you. I didn’t realize anyone was home. I just stopped by to check on the fish.”

“Oh, good.” She stared blankly ahead, her eyes fixed on the pool area. “The police left a little while ago. I came by to get a few of my things. I was going to send the driver in to get them for me, but at the last minute I changed my mind. I told him to leave me here and come back in an hour.”

Her voice was small and distant, as if it were locked away inside a safe.

“Mrs. Harwick, I’m so sorry.”

“Oh, thank you, Dixie. I’m sorry, too. That must have been a terrible ordeal for you.”

She tilted her head to the side and closed her eyes.

I suddenly realized that I’d completely intruded on her quiet, and more than likely she just wanted to be left alone.

I said, “Well, I’ll just check on the fish and then I’ll be out of your way.”

As I turned to leave, she stopped me.

“It’s so odd, isn’t it? You think you know people. I’ve never been very close to my son, August. He’s always been a little distant, even when he was a baby. People say that’s just the way boys are. Maybe it’s true. It’s always been Becca that was there when I needed her. But not this time. Not now. Becca’s gone. To be honest with you, I think she’s gotten herself mixed up with drugs, and now it’s August taking care of me. All the paperwork, the police, everything. I don’t know what I would do without him.”

My first instinct was to tell her I was sure that if Becca could be here she would, which of course was about the dumbest thing I could possibly have ever said. Sometimes my mouth starts running before my brain has any idea what’s going on. As my grandmother liked to say, “The wheel is spinning but the gerbil ain’t home.”

Luckily this time I caught myself. Mrs. Harwick was in a state of deep shock. She knew Becca was missing, but she’d somehow managed to avoid considering what everybody else feared: that Becca might have witnessed something that night, and right now could be in very grave danger.