Блейз Клемент - The Cat Sitter’s Pajamas

I felt as if a boxcar filled with ice had just been dumped on me. Ethan’s description of what might have happened seemed so plausible that I was amazed I hadn’t seen it like that myself. I had been so focused on the idea of a killer cutting the woman’s throat from behind that I hadn’t realized she could have been unconscious and stretched on the floor. Briana was certainly big enough and strong enough to have squatted beside her and slit her throat.

Briana’s hands gripped the mahogany arms of her chair so tightly her knuckles gleamed like white bone. With visible effort, she parted her lips and said, “Weiland.”

Ethan said, “Spelling?”

She spelled it with a sound of weariness. “W-E-I-L-A-N-D.”

Ethan said, “And you’re from?”

I felt like raising my hand and saying, “I know! I know!” because I knew she came from the same little swampy Louisiana town that Cupcake was from.

She said, “Switzerland. My parents were killed when I was a child. I was adopted by Americans from Minnesota. They’re also dead.”

She didn’t look at me. She was cool as a Popsicle. She sounded as if she absolutely believed every word she said, the same way she had sounded when she’d told me she was Cupcake’s wife. The woman was either so crazy she believed every lie she told, or she was an Oscar-level actor. Or both.

Ethan took a slim leather directory from his desk drawer and flipped through it looking for a number. When he found it, he punched it into his phone. While the call went through, he got up and walked out of the office. We couldn’t hear his conversation, but I knew he was calling a defense attorney.

Briana’s head was high, and she still hadn’t looked at me.

She said, “When you talk to Cupcake, please tell him I’m very, very sorry.”

6

I left Ethan’s office feeling awful. He had made an afternoon appointment for Briana to see a defense attorney whose name I’d heard in connection with wealthy people who’d been accused of major crimes—the ones you instantly assume are guilty as hell but will walk because they have the money for a smart attorney. I didn’t know anymore what I thought of Briana’s guilt or innocence. One minute I believed she really had found the murdered woman already dead. The next moment I wasn’t so sure.

But that wasn’t what made me feel wretched.

The thing that made me feel as if some tarry monster were sucking at my breath was that I had sat quietly and let Briana protect Cupcake by telling her professional lie about being from Switzerland with conveniently dead Swiss parents and adoptive American parents. I hadn’t spoken up because I’d wanted to protect Cupcake, too.

Worse than that, the man I liked so much that I’d kept my mouth shut for him was also a liar. He had lied not only to me but to his wife. He had pretended to be completely at a loss to understand why Briana had been stalking him. He’d played the big innocent, when all the time he’d known Briana since he was a boy. He’d even broken into houses and stolen things with her. You can’t get much more intimate with another person than to commit a crime together. Even though they’d been kids at the time, that would have forged a guilty connection he wouldn’t have forgotten.

Knowing that Cupcake had lied about knowing Briana made me question him in a way I hated. I liked Cupcake more than most anybody I knew. I knew him to be loyal to his friends and levelheaded and fair, even with people who didn’t deserve fairness. He had the physique of a granite mountain and a scowly face guaranteed to scare people, but underneath all that hardness was a sentimental streak as sweet as the smile that had earned him the name Cupcake. He was one of my heroes, and I felt sick every time I remembered the colossal lie he’d told about knowing Briana. I felt even sicker at the fact that I would have to confront him with the lie. I hated to think what would happen when Jancey found out.

By the time I got home, I was exhausted not only from being up since 4:00 A.M. but from my own dark thoughts.

Siesta Key’s shape is a bit like a cigar with a bulge at the northern end. The Gulf of Mexico is to the west and Sarasota Bay to the east. I live in an apartment on the south end on the Gulf side. My apartment is above a four-slot carport at the end of a twisting shelled driveway lined with mossy oaks, pines, sea grape, and palms. A deck lies behind the carport, and the deck is attached to a frame house my grandparents bought from the Sears, Roebuck catalog. They raised my mother there, but she never loved the Key the way her parents did. She married a firefighter and had my brother and me, but she never loved us either. She left us after our dad died putting out a fire, and Michael and I moved into the house with our grandparents.

So many relatives from the North showed up every summer that my grandfather built the garage apartment as a guesthouse. Now it’s my home. I moved in after my husband and little girl were killed in a freak accident. Michael and his partner, Paco, had already moved into the house after our grandparents died, so now we’re all here in our own little private gulfside compound, secure in the sound of surf and sea gulls.

Except for Paco’s Harley, all the car slots were empty when I got home. Michael was on duty at the firehouse, and God knew where Paco was. Michael is a fireman like our dad was, so he works twenty-four/forty-eight—twenty-four-hour shifts with forty-eight-hour breaks. Paco is with the Sarasota County’s Special Investigative Bureau, so his work schedule depends on whatever undercover operation he’s in. Michael and I don’t ask him about his work. In the first place, he wouldn’t tell us. In the second place, it would make us worry if we knew, so we just don’t.

I eased my Bronco into its space and got out into steamy noontime heat. The parakeets had retreated into the shadows of treetops for a siesta. A few gulls trudged along the edge of the shoreline making halfhearted pecks at microscopic sea life in the frothy edges of the surf, but they looked as if they were ready for naps, too. All intelligent life in Florida naps in the middle of the day.

As I climbed the stairs to the porch, I used the remote to raise the metal hurricane shutters on my apartment’s French doors. The doors are the only entry to my apartment, so the shutters double as security bars. Since our place sits off the beaten track in secluded privacy, we have to think about things like that. The porch has a deep roof and runs the length of the apartment. Two ceiling fans are there to move the air when I sit outside, and a hammock is strung in one corner in case I want to fall into it. There’s also a glass-topped table with two chairs where I can sit and look out at sailboats in the Gulf.

When I got to the top of the stairs, I saw Ella Fitzgerald inside looking through the glass on the door. Ella is a true calico Persian mix, meaning she’s part Persian and that her fur has distinct red, black, and white blocks of color. She’s named for Ella Fitzgerald because she makes funny scatting sounds. Officially, Ella was a gift to me, but she’d had the same flutter-lash reaction to Michael and Paco that most females have, so she’s more theirs than mine now. I groom her and take care of her when they’re on duty, but she considers Michael’s kitchen her real home. Pretty smart of her, too.

I opened the French doors and picked Ella up and smooched the top of her head.

She said, “Thrrrrrppp!”

I walked through my minuscule living room into my equally minuscule bedroom and threw my shoulder bag on the bed.

I said, “You’re right, I’m late. I had a little problem this morning.”

She smiled at me and nosed at my chin. There is just nothing in the world like a cat wanting to kiss your chin to make you feel that the world may turn out okay after all.