Блейз Клемент - The Cat Sitter’s Pajamas

Instead, I said, “When will the investigators be done with the house? I’ll need to call the crime-scene cleaners before I can take the cats back home.”

Owens said, “Check with me in the morning and I’ll know more about that. I’ve talked to Mr. Trillin. He and his wife will leave Parma for Rome a little after midnight our time. If they make all their connections, they’ll get to Sarasota around ten tomorrow night. Twenty-one damn hours in the air.”

I had never heard Owens profess so much interest in somebody’s travel plans. He was trying to divert my attention from the investigation.

I said, “Who is the homicide detective on the case?”

Curtly, he said, “I’ll know more about that tomorrow, too.”

He clicked off without saying good-bye, which left me staring at my phone. Owens is never a gushy guy, but he’s not rude. He didn’t want to talk about the homicide detective on this case. Guidry had waited until the department had hired his replacement before he left, but this was going to be a high-profile case, and my bet was that the new guy hadn’t worked out. The department was probably scrambling to find somebody with the experience to handle it.

I wished I knew if the murdered woman had been identified.

I wished I knew if Cupcake was lying about knowing Briana.

I wished I knew if Briana had told the truth about a mysterious person coming into the house and murdering the woman.

If Briana’s story was true, a vicious killer was on the loose.

7

Before it was time to go on my afternoon calls, my cell phone rang with the distinctive ring reserved for Michael, Paco, or Guidry. My heart did the same little tap dance it always did when I heard that ring, because I hoped it was Guidry. Guidry had left Sarasota in November, and at first he had called often. After almost six months, not so much.

I hoped he’d got over his disappointment that I’d stayed in Siesta Key. I hoped he didn’t miss me. I hoped he missed me and hurt every waking moment because I wasn’t there.

I wished I would quit missing him.

I was a mess.

The call wasn’t from Guidry. It was my brother, Michael.

He said, “I just heard a news report about a killing at Cupcake Trillin’s house. Aren’t you taking care of his cats?”

I gave him a quick rundown of what had happened, leaving out the part about talking to Briana and taking her to see Ethan Crane. Michael tends to get stressed when I get involved in things having to do with crime. He goes into burning buildings without the least hesitation, but murder investigations make him uneasy. Especially if I’m part of them.

He said, “The news report said the woman who did it turned herself in. Some big-name model, it sounded like.”

“If that’s what they’re reporting, they’ve got it wrong. She turned herself in because she knew they were looking for her, but she says somebody came in while she was in another room and killed the woman. She may be telling the truth.”

Michael’s voice grew suspicious. “How do you know what she’s saying?”

“I called Sergeant Owens.”

It was absolutely true that I had called Owens, so technically I wasn’t lying.

“According to the TV reporter, the judge denied bail for her because she broke into the Trillin house and because they think she was stalking Trillin. With her history, I guess they think she’ll run if they let her out.”

I didn’t think there was any question that Briana would definitely want to leave if she thought she could hide out and never be found. But since her face was so famous, leaving wasn’t really an option for her.

I was afraid I’d give away the fact that I knew Briana better than the TV reporter did if I talked to Michael any longer, so I told him I was on my way out the door for afternoon pet visits. I was almost on my way out, so it was only a small lie.

He said, “I’ll be home in the morning. Love you.”

“Love you.”

We always end our conversations like that. Both of us have plenty of reason to know that every day might be our last, so we don’t leave love unsaid.

I hurried to get dressed in my regulation khaki cargo shorts and sleeveless white tee. I slipped on fresh white Keds from the drying rack over the washer/dryer—I can’t stand shoes that smell like feet, so I go through a lot of Keds. Then I called the guy who does homicide cleanup.

I said, “I wanted to give you a heads-up about a cleaning job in Hidden Shores. So far as I know, there’s only one contaminated floor in one room. I’ll let you know when the criminalists are done there.”

“What kind of floor?”

“Tile.”

“What kind of tile? May have to replace it.”

“Expensive tile. The owners of the house are out of the country, but they’ll be home tomorrow night. If you have to replace the tile, they can give you the particulars.”

He thanked me for giving him a chance to plan ahead, and we said our good-byes. He didn’t ask the homeowners’ name, and I didn’t volunteer the information. He was a professional, he knew not to pry.

Morning and afternoon, my first pet stop is at Tom Hale’s condo on Midnight Pass Road. Tom is a CPA whose life went off on a different road than he’d intended when a wall of door displays fell on him at a home improvement store and crushed his spine. Life is like that. One moment you can be strolling down an aisle in a store admiring doorknobs, and the next moment you’re not who you used to be but somebody totally different.

After his agony and fear and fury had got sorted out, Tom faced life as a paraplegic without a CPA office, a wife, or children. Well, he still had children, but his ex-wife had taken them and most of his settlement money to another state. But Tom’s not one to sit around feeling sorry for himself, so he started over in a wheelchair. Instead of doing CPA work in a fancy office, he does it at his kitchen table. He adopted a greyhound racing dog, who had also been given up by the world as useless, and named him Billy Elliot.

Some retired greyhounds are happy to leave their racing days behind them, but not Billy Elliot. He needs a good twenty minutes of all-out running twice a day, so Tom and I do a trade-off. I run with Billy, and Tom handles my taxes and anything that has to do with money.

I took the mirrored elevator to Tom’s floor, knocked lightly on his door to let him and Billy know I was there, and let myself in with my key. Tom yelled hello from the kitchen, and Billy met me in the foyer grinning and wagging his tail in absolute ecstasy. I love that about dogs. They don’t stand back and make you work at being friends with them, they’re your best friend the minute they see you.

I got Billy Elliot’s leash from the closet and went to stand in the kitchen doorway. Tom had his laptop computer open on the table, and he looked up at me with a friendly grin. Not as friendly as Billy Elliot’s, but friendly. If Tom were a dog, he’d be a standard poodle. He has short curly black hair, round black eyes, and a round face. When he’s working, he wears round glasses with black rims that make him look a little bit like a grown-up Harry Potter.

Tom’s on his computer a lot. I suppose he researches things for business. Maybe he also e-mails and tweets and chats and blogs, I don’t know. I’m the only person in the western hemisphere who doesn’t do any of those things, and I don’t ever intend to. But occasionally I need the kind of information that computer-savvy people can get in a trice—whatever a trice is—and when I do, I throw myself on Tom’s mercy.

I said, “You know that football player named Cupcake Trillin?”

“I know somebody got killed in his house this morning.”

Bad news really travels fast.