Блейз Клемент - The Cat Sitter's Cradle

It all started falling into place. Those drugs Mr. and Mrs. Harwick had found in August’s room—he wasn’t using them on himself, and he wasn’t dealing them, either. He was using them to sedate the birds he was smuggling into the country, to keep them quiet so they wouldn’t be discovered. That was why the bird Joyce and I found in the park had been knocked out. It hadn’t flown into a window. Corina had drugged it.

I knew it didn’t take long for a narcotic like butorphanol to take effect. Corina had probably squeezed it into the bird’s mouth with an eyedropper in the taxi or the bus on her way to the airport in Guatemala. By the time she boarded the plane, the bird would have been out like a light, sleeping away in a drug-induced stupor inside her handbag.

I turned the bag around and read the faint blue machine-printed text on the receipt inside: ALLIED TAXI, $79. At the bottom of the receipt was a Tampa address, written with a purple felt-tip pen in round, childish handwriting, followed by a short sequence of numbers and letters, “230A1P.”

Calmly, I folded everything back together with the rubber bands and slid the package down into my backpack. I switched off the light in the hidden closet and pulled the sliding door closed. My mind was racing at about a thousand miles per hour. I was so distracted that it wasn’t until I’d gotten back in my Bronco and was rolling down the cobblestone driveway that I realized I’d forgotten to put the mermaid back down on her treasure chest, and I had left the wet towel lying on the floor in the access closet behind it.

But it didn’t matter. I had more important things to do.

First, I dialed Detective McKenzie. She answered as if it was the most normal thing in the world to get a phone call in the middle of the night.

“Dixie, thanks for returning my call. I have a question about when you tried to revive Mr. Harwick.”

I interrupted. “You want to know if a large amount of water came out of his lungs when I pressed on his chest.”

“Uh, yes. How did you know that?”

I said, “Because if he drowned, there would have been water in his lungs, but there wasn’t. That means he was already dead or had stopped breathing before he went into the pool. And they found a massive amount of narcotics in his body, right?”

“Yes, they did.”

“I know. It was butorphanol, wasn’t it?”

“Dixie, what the hell is going on?”

“Detective McKenzie, I think I know who killed Mr. Harwick. I don’t have hard proof of it, but I think I know how we can get it. I’m on my way to Kenny’s boat at the dock behind Hoppie’s Restaurant right now. Can you meet me there in ten minutes? I can explain everything then.”

There was a long pause on the other end, and for a second I thought the call had dropped.

I said, “Hello?”

McKenzie said, “Okay. Listen to me. I don’t know what you’re up to, and I’m not sure I like it, either. But I’m going to meet you at Hoppie’s in ten minutes, and I don’t want you to do a goddamn thing or talk to anyone else until you’ve explained everything to me first. Understand?”

I gulped. “Yes.”

She sounded relieved. “Thank you. I’m on my way now.”

Before she hung up, I thought about the gun that August carried in his glove compartment and said, “Oh, Detective McKenzie?”

“Yes?”

“Bring backup.”

26

After meeting with Detective McKenzie, I waited in the sleeping cabin below the main deck on Kenny’s houseboat. I had situated myself in a musty old armchair next to Kenny’s bed. The cabin was completely dark except for the glow from the fire I’d built in a small wood-burning stove in the corner and a faint patch of light spilling in under the cabin door from a lantern on the dock. There was a small kitchenette next to the stove, and lined up along the countertop was a row of canned tuna and several bags of dried pasta.

Hung about the walls were various coils of rope, fishing rods, maps, hooks, and bags of shells. There was a battery-operated radio hanging by a string tied around its broken antenna, and there was a huge, yellowing map of the Gulf. Tacked in the middle of it was an old photo of a young couple, a man and a woman, sitting in a swinging porch chair. The caption read, “On the patio with Danny holding Tiger.” There was a little boy sitting on the man’s lap, and he was beaming at the camera. Cradled in his arms like a baby was an orange tabby kitten.

I took a deep breath and reached into my backpack. Pulling out the business card that August had given me the day I met him at the Harwick house, I thought about how cocky and sure of himself he had been. I’m sure he fantasized that if he ever got a call from me, it would be a booty call. Never in his wildest dreams would he have imagined the call I was about to make.

I punched his number into my cell phone. When he answered, his voice croaked and his words were a little slurred. He was either half asleep or drunk or both.

I said, “August, it’s Dixie Hemingway. I’m sorry to call so late, but I thought your mother would want to know. I think I’ve figured out who’s responsible for your stepfather’s death.”

That woke him up. He said, “Excuse me?”

“I know, I’m sure it’s a shock. I found a package of letters that your stepfather wrote. They were stashed away in your mother’s fish tank. I’ve hidden them on Kenny Newman’s boat at Hoppie’s Restaurant. It’s the last place he’d ever think to look for them. In the morning, I’ll turn them over to the police.”

There was a moment of silence. I could hear the wheels spinning in his head.

He said, “That’s interesting. So, you read the letters?”

I said, “Yeah. I did.”

“And what did they say?”

I said, “August, I really can’t tell you. I don’t think it would be right. Once the police have the letters, I’m sure they’ll be very happy to explain everything to you.”

There was a long silence. “Okay. Well, I’ll be sure and tell my mother right away.”

I said, “You do that. I think she’d definitely want to be woken up for this.”

“That’s not a problem. She doesn’t really sleep anymore.”

I nodded. I could tell by the sound of his voice that he wasn’t making that part up. “Well, now you can tell her she’ll be able to rest soon.”

He said, “I will,” and the line went dead.

The bay was calm when I had first arrived, but now the wind had picked up a bit and the houseboat was rolling gently back and forth. I could hear the water lapping up against the sides of the boat, and occasionally a deep, creaking moan rose up from the hull as it nudged up against the edge of the pier. A couple of iron pots hanging from hooks over the wood-burning stove were tapping into one another with sullen, metallic clunks like a retarded cuckoo clock.

The fire had died down, so I got up quickly and threw in a few more pieces of driftwood and crumpled-up newspaper from a pile that Kenny kept next to the cabin door. I wanted to keep it burning.

As I sat back down in the chair, a slow rain began. I could hear it tapping on the metal roof. It started with just a few drops here and there but gradually grew to a steady hiss, like quiet static on a radio. There were two small round windows on both the port and starboard walls, and a flash of headlights moved from one to the other, lighting up the inside of the cabin briefly. I couldn’t hear anything but the rain, so I wasn’t sure if a car had gone by on the road or if someone had just pulled into the parking lot alongside the dock.

My stomach tightened into a knot, and thoughts were bouncing around inside my head like balls in a pinball machine, but I told myself to keep calm. I took a deep breath and allowed my eyes to close for a moment. I tried to imagine my gentle, babbling brook with all its polished pebbles and butterflies flitting about. I tried to see the steps leading down to the water and the flowers gently swaying in the breeze, but then the unmistakable sound of footsteps coming down the dock broke through the soft hum of the rain, and my eyes shot open.