Блейз Клемент - The Cat Sitter’s Pajamas

I sat up and shuddered for a minute, then padded to the kitchen and made a cup of tea in the microwave. I stood at the sink and looked out the window while I drank it. That stupid frog king had made a point, and I’d got it.

Even so, I wondered why Ethan had chosen to meet me that morning. I wondered what he’d been about to ask me when Steven arrived. I felt as if I were on the verge of having to make a huge decision about my personal life, and I wasn’t sure I was ready to make it. I had been a chaste widow for three years, and then I had been in a relationship with Guidry for a brief time. After Guidry moved to New Orleans, the relationship had been strictly via the phone. That wasn’t a situation that could continue forever. The truth was that it was time to either completely sever the relationship with Guidry or change my mind and follow him to New Orleans. And as I had told Ethan, moving to New Orleans wasn’t right for me.

I didn’t want to think about it. I didn’t want to face what had to be faced. People say that denial doesn’t work, but it worked just fine for me. I could deny all over the place.

For the next couple of hours, I sat at the desk in my office-closet and took care of the clerical side of a pet-sitting business. When it was time to leave for my afternoon rounds, I got into clean cargo shorts, white tee, and fresh Keds, smoothed on sunscreen, put my hair in a ponytail, and grabbed my big carryall shoulder bag.

Out on my porch, I saw Michael down on his deck adjusting things on his prized outdoor cooker. Michael is big and broad and blond like a Viking warrior. He’s also persnickety about his cooking equipment. Everything in his kitchen was built for professional chefs, and so is his barbecue stuff. Michael loves it all with a tender devotion. If he ever meets George Foreman, they’ll probably spend a couple of days discussing the relative merits of charcoal and wood chips.

I clattered down the steps and went and stood beside him.

He said, “Grilled flank steak for dinner.”

I said, “Um. With scalloped potatoes?”

“You bet.”

Governments who send spies to gather secrets from other governments should send members of the same family. Nobody would be able to break their codes. In our brother-sister speak, Michael had just told me that Paco would not be home for dinner, because Paco doesn’t eat meat and he doesn’t like scalloped potatoes. Which meant that Paco would be at some undercover job that night, which neither Michael nor I would mention.

I told Michael I’d be home at the usual time and zipped off to see to my afternoon pet clients, beginning with Billy Elliot.

Tom and Billy Elliot were in the living room watching an old romantic movie on TV. I apologized for intruding, and they both hurried to assure me they were too macho to care about that girlie romantic stuff and that I was a welcome interruption. Billy Elliot did that by kissing my knees, and Tom by clicking off the movie with a very emphatic thumb, as if I’d caught him watching a porn flick.

Tom sported a lilac-hued knit shirt with a yellow polo pony embroidered on its chest. He had the shoulders-back posture of a man showing off a new purchase.

I said, “Nice shirt. Is that new?”

He beamed. “Guess what it cost!”

When somebody asks you to guess what they paid for an item, it’s like somebody asking how old you think they are. You have to guess more than you really think they paid and less than you really think they look.

I said, “Twenty-five dollars!”

“Two fifty!”

I let my jaw drop. “No!”

“Found it at a consignment shop. They had a whole box of them, brand-new, still had the price tags on them.”

“Ralph Lauren shirts for two fifty!”

He grinned. “Well, they had the Ralph Lauren polo pony on them, but the pony’s tail was a little too bushy and the backside of the embroidery was snarled. And when I take it off tonight, I may have lavender-colored skin from the dye. But what the heck, it was only two fifty.”

I held out my wrist. “My Rolex was only fifty dollars.”

“I’m glad you didn’t go for a diamond bezel. Plain is more tasteful.”

“Yeah, and a diamond bezel would have been an extra five bucks.”

He shook his head in mock sorrow. “All we have to believe in now is reality TV. Everything else is fake.”

“You mean the reality shows where a guy’s lost in the swamp, all alone, scared to death, thrashing around though the trees, while a director, a camera crew, a makeup crew, and a recording crew are filming him?”

Billy Elliot nudged me, and I bent to clip his leash to his collar.

Tom said, “They still haven’t identified the murdered woman in the Trillin house. Wouldn’t there be fingerprints they could check?”

I did not say, They know who she is, they’re just not saying!

Instead, I said, “Not unless she’s been arrested for a crime or fingerprinted for a job. Or if she served in the military.”

“Maybe they know who she is and just aren’t telling.”

“Could be. They wait until they notify the family before they release a homicide victim’s name.”

“Still seems like a long time.”

I stood up straight. “Tom, while Billy and I run, would you find out the exact time the Trillins’ flight will arrive? They left from Parma, Italy, a little after midnight this morning, and I think they’ll arrive in Sarasota around ten o’clock tonight.”

Tom’s round black eyes danced with curiosity, but he nodded without comment, and I led Billy Elliot out his front door.

Billy and I did our racer imitation on the track in the parking lot and went back upstairs. Tom was in the living room watching the same romantic movie he’d been watching when I first arrived. This time he only muted the sound when I came in. As soon as I took off his leash, Billy Elliot trotted to sit on the floor beside Tom’s wheelchair and stare at the TV.

I hung Billy’s leash in the foyer closet and grinned at them. “You guys watch the soaps, too?”

Tom said, “The plane you want is a US Airways flight from Rome to Charlotte, then Charlotte to Sarasota. It’s expected to arrive here at nine fifty-five. That could change, but the weather is good, so it probably won’t be off by much.”

“Thanks, Tom. I appreciate it.”

He flapped his hand at me and went back to watching the movie. As I closed the door behind me, I heard movie music swelling to a tear-jerking ending. I was sorry I had ruined the movie for Tom and Billy but glad I had the exact information about the Trillins’ flight. I wanted to talk to Cupcake before the law did. If nothing else, I could warn him that his secret about knowing Briana was going to be exposed.

My next stop was at a house where six cats lived. They were all rescues, and each of them had the grateful eyes that rescues always have. Their humans were two sisters who had a pact that if one wanted to bring another cat home, the other would stop her—by force if necessary. The sisters had gone to visit their ailing mother in Georgia, so for a few days the cats would have to make do with just me as a giver of goodies. With all the running and chasing they did, they gave one another plenty of exercise.

Leaving there, I realized I was on the same street where my grandmother’s seamstress lived. I had taken a few things to Mrs. Langham myself—mostly pants or jeans to be shortened—and I knew she also designed and made women’s clothes. On a sudden impulse, I swung into her driveway.

When I rang the doorbell, I heard her yell, “Come in!”

Hesitantly, I turned the knob and pushed the door open. “Mrs. Langham?”

“Come on in, I’m in the sewing room!”

I followed the sound of her voice and found her in a bedroom converted to sewing room, with a full-length mirror, a dressmaker’s form on a stand, an ironing board set up with a steaming iron at the ready, and a pegboard with about a million spools of thread in every imaginable color on the wall. Mrs. Langham herself sat behind a sewing machine on which she was furiously sewing a narrow hem on a full skirt.