Блейз Клемент - The Cat Sitter's Cradle

She drew a metal poker out of the wood bin and stirred the ashen remains of the packet around in the red-hot embers. “Roy was good at making money, but he wasn’t a very smart man. If anyone ever found out that he had faked his own death, he would have gone to jail for insurance fraud and tax evasion. He would have lost his position at Sonnebrook, not to mention his stock, and my family would have been left with nothing. But apart from all that, Roy wasn’t a very good person. I think you figured that out pretty quickly. So yes, you’re right.”

She laid the poker down on top of the stove and turned to me. Her eyes were sparkling like two black marbles, and her lips curled into a smile. “I killed him. Of course, without this packet, it’s just your word against mine. And I do wonder who the police will believe. Me, the grieving widow of one of the wealthiest, most powerful men in the country? Or you, a small-town litter-box cleaner, who got kicked off the police force for mental instability.”

I said, “Mrs. Harwick, I don’t need that packet.”

She leaned forward slightly. “And why is that, sweetheart?”

“Because I took everything out of it before you got here. That one was just stuffed with old newspapers.”

Her face went white.

Shadows rose up behind her, and as she turned, Detective McKenzie and two deputies moved swiftly down the steps with their guns drawn and pointed directly at her.

McKenzie said, “Mrs. Harwick, that’s good enough. Please drop your bag and raise your hands over your head.”

Deputy Morgan moved into the room with his gun still fixed on Mrs. Harwick as she lowered her purse down to the ground. He glanced at me. “You okay?”

I felt dizzy, like someone had just hit me in the head with a frying pan. “Yeah—but I think she has a gun in that purse.”

Detective McKenzie said, “Mrs. Harwick, you’re under arrest for the murder of Roy Harwick.”

* * *

By the time I came up out of the boat, Mrs. Harwick had already been read her Miranda rights and taken away. The whole area around Hoppie’s was surrounded with police cars, and the parking lot looked like it had been turned into a disco of flashing red and blue lights. Except instead of dance music, there was only the sound of crickets, which had woken up when the rain stopped, and the chatter from the police radio in Detective McKenzie’s unmarked sedan.

I was sitting in the driver’s seat of the Bronco, waiting for the adrenaline that had been coursing through my bloodstream for the last hour to subside. It had left me feeling like a bowl of mush, and I wondered if that wasn’t what a porcupine fish feels like after it’s spent a couple of hours all blown up and spiny. All I wanted to do was go home, have that drink Mrs. Harwick suggested, and crawl into my bed.

Detective McKenzie came up to the window and said, “I’ll need you to make a statement about everything, but I think it can wait until tomorrow. Will you be okay?”

I said, “I’ll be fine, but I am worried about one thing. I’m afraid of what August will do when he finds out what’s happened to his mother.”

She nodded. “Dixie, I should probably tell you—the special investigative team conducted a sting operation at August’s hotel tonight. They picked him up for smuggling endangered species into the country and selling them illegally. One of his couriers has agreed to testify against him, so I don’t think you’ll need to worry about that young man for a long time.”

I nodded. No wonder Paco had been so quiet whenever the Harwicks came up. He’d been in the middle of an investigation into August’s smuggling operation.

Meekly, I said, “Do you by any chance know the name of that courier?”

She smiled. “Dixie. You know I can’t tell you that.”

I did, but I also didn’t need her to tell me. I had a pretty good idea who it was.

She stuck her hand in the window and shook mine firmly. “Thank you for what you did tonight. Do you need someone to follow you home?”

“No, I don’t have that far to go. My place is just up the road.”

She nodded curtly and started to turn away, then stopped herself. “You know, people talk about you down at the station. They wonder why you keep getting involved in things like this, why you would put yourself through this kind of danger. They say it’s crazy. But I think I know why.”

I blinked dumbly at her. I hoped she would share it with me, because I had no earthly idea.

She said, “It’s not fair how you lost your family. Believe me, I have an idea of what that feels like. So, I get it. I just wanted to tell you that.”

She turned and walked away. I sat there for a few moments. I wasn’t completely sure what the heck she was talking about, but it did dawn on me that seeing someone punished for wrongfully ending someone else’s life felt good.

Really good.

I picked up my phone and punched in Ethan’s number.

He answered on the second ring. “Umm, isn’t it a little late?”

I said, “Remember tonight when you said to call if I needed you?”

“Yeah?”

I said, “I need you.”

27

A light fog had risen up after the rain had stopped, but as I drove home I barely noticed it since my brain was already in a fog of its own. To be honest, I think I was in a state of shock. I couldn’t help thinking about Mrs. Harwick. When she had pulled that poker out and stirred the burning embers in the stove, there had been a look of real fear in her eyes, but more than that, there was a look of certainty. She seemed driven, as though there was no doubt in her mind that what she was doing was right and that there were no other choices.

Had things gotten so twisted in her head that she really believed she needed to murder her husband in order to protect her children’s security? Or perhaps it was never Mr. Harwick that she loved, but his money, and she wanted to keep it all for herself. I remembered with a shudder that she’d mentioned that Mr. Harwick was her second husband and that her first husband had died unexpectedly. I wondered if somebody shouldn’t look into that.

I pulled into the curving lane that leads down to my house and slowed to a crawl. I didn’t want to wake anyone up. Ethan’s car was parked under the carport next to Michael’s, but of course Paco’s was gone.

The Special Investigative Bureau was probably still booking August, and I had a feeling they had a lot of questions for him. I thought of Corina and how nervous she’d looked getting on that private plane. I knew why now. There had been a sleeping bird in that purse she was carrying. That’s why August had handed it to her so gently. If she was the courier that was cooperating with the police, I wondered if she’d been caught in the sting as well or if she’d turned herself in voluntarily. I hoped it was the latter.

I’d get Paco to tell me. Or at least I’d try. He can be a tough nut to crack sometimes.

As I pulled into the carport I saw Ethan waiting at the bottom of my steps. He came over and opened the door of the Bronco, and when I stood up he hugged me. We just stood there for a long time, not talking, but then it all came pouring out of me and I told him everything. How I’d found the package of letters that Kenny had told us about. How when I saw that bottle of Butorphanol and the taxi receipt, I’d realized that Mrs. Harwick was probably not as grief-stricken as she was pretending to be. How she had drugged her husband and rolled him into the pool and had planned on framing me. He listened to the entire story and didn’t interrupt once, not even when I got to the part about waiting in Kenny’s boat with my gun hidden in the cushions next to me and the police hiding out nearby. He didn’t say a word. He just listened.