Блейз Клемент - The Cat Sitter’s Pajamas

She shook her head. “What are you saying?”

“I’m saying to leave me the hell alone. Leave me alone, leave Cupcake alone, leave his wife alone. We are not a part of your world, and we don’t want to be. And if you’re in contact with your rivals, pass the word along to them. If they come after me again, that precious list of contacts will be spread all over the world.”

I left her sitting on the arm of the sofa and went to the kitchen, where I fed the cats and gave them fresh water. When I went back to the den, Briana was gone.

21

Sometimes being a good pet sitter means that you do the same thing a good parent does: You fake it. You pretend that everything is fine and dandy, that everything is normal, that there’s nothing to get anxious about, when all the time your knees are trembling and your tongue is cottony with abject panic. But children and animals always know when you’re lying, so even though I pretended to be calm when I told Gumdrop and Licorice good-bye, their eyes said they knew better and their ears pointed forward in a show of uneasiness. Briana had not only scared the bejesus out of me, she’d caused me to upset the cats. The woman seemed to create discord and destruction everywhere she went.

By the time I arrived at the next client’s house, my whirling mind had arrived at a plan. I parked in the driveway and called Cupcake from my cell.

I said, “I don’t have time to go into all the details now, but please call Steven and ask him to meet me at your house in three hours. Tell him I have a list of local businesses selling counterfeit designer goods.”

“You do?”

“Well, sort of. I’ll explain when I see you.”

I galloped through the rest of the pet visits, looking over my shoulder before I went into every house, listening for footsteps while I played with cats. I didn’t expect Briana to come after me again. She had nothing to gain from accosting me again if I had copies of the list of contacts, and she’d looked as if she believed me when I said I did. But I wasn’t sure the men with the sap and the asp baton would be as easy to manipulate. If Briana had sent a message to them that I’d made copies of their stupid list, they might kill me just out of spite.

Since I had reversed my usual pattern and started at the north end of the Key, Billy Elliot was my last call instead of my first. He and Tom were waiting for me with anxious faces.

I said, “I’m sorry I’m so late. I had to take some hot water bottles to Cora Mathers, and since I was coming from the north end, I worked my way south.”

Tom watched me snap Billy Elliot’s leash on his collar. “How is Ms. Mathers?”

“She ate some carrot cake that gave her a tummy ache.”

“She’s a nice lady.”

What he meant was that Cora was an innocent lady. Tom handles Cora’s finances, and he knows as well as I do that the money her granddaughter left her didn’t come from shrewd investments the way Cora thinks. It came from a clever blackmailing scheme that was never exposed because the granddaughter was murdered. I appreciate Tom’s discretion in the way he keeps Cora innocent. She’s had too many hard knocks in her life to learn this late that her beloved granddaughter was a phony.

Billy Elliot and I went downstairs, and as soon as he had peed on every bush that needed peeing on and had run around the oval track three times, I took him back upstairs. Tom was sitting in his wheelchair with an anxious face.

“Dixie, you don’t have to tell me anything if you don’t want to, but I know something is wrong. If you’re in any trouble that I can help you with, please don’t do a strong stoic act. I’m your friend, and friends help friends.”

My eyelids pricked with hot tears. Sometimes I get so overwhelmed with the rank awfulness of parts of the world that I forget we’re all connected by a solid foundation of goodness and kindness.

I stooped to remove Billy Elliot’s leash before I answered him. I was afraid I’d bawl like a baby if I talked before I got myself under control. Billy Elliot caught the atmosphere and looked from Tom to me with a quizzical arch to his eyebrows.

I said, “I can’t talk to you about it yet, but as soon as it’s over, I’ll tell you all about it.”

“Are you in danger?”

I hesitated. “Maybe.”

“Have you called Guidry?”

There it was, the reminder that my protector was gone. For a moment, I felt a stab of annoyance, a woman’s resentment that a man thought she needed another man to keep her safe. But the truth was that I was up against an amoral woman with transnational criminal contacts, not to mention a rogue security cadre who answered to no recognized authority. Both groups believed I possessed information vital to their existence, and neither of them would hesitate to use torture to get what they wanted.

I said, “I’m meeting in just a few minutes with an FBI agent.”

“This has something to do with that woman killed in Trillin’s house, doesn’t it?”

I nodded. “The woman was an FBI agent. That’s all I can tell you now.”

Tom had gone pale. “Somebody killed an FBI agent in Cupcake Trillin’s house? Good God.”

Tom’s smart. I could almost hear the gears in his brain processing the implications of an FBI agent being in Cupcake’s house while an internationally famous model was there, too, and what the agent’s murder might mean.

He said, “Will you let me know if there’s anything I can do?”

“I promise.”

I left with a fake cheery smile and assurances that I was being very careful and that everything was going to be fine, but I wasn’t sure that everything was going to be fine at all. I’d had a sample of the Serbian group’s ability to inflict great pain without leaving evidence, and it scared me. I don’t like pain. I don’t deal well with pain. If I were tortured, I’d probably confess everything in about three nanoseconds. If I did, they would move to Cupcake’s house and do God-knew-what to get that list.

Before I drove out of Tom’s parking lot, Michael called to tell me he was going to an Orioles/Mets spring training game at Sarasota’s Ed Smith Stadium, so he wouldn’t be home for dinner. I was sorry he wouldn’t make dinner but glad he wouldn’t be home to see all the emotions I was feeling. I didn’t want him to know anything about my fear of men coming with saps to hurt me, because he would go ape-shit if he knew it had happened before. When Michael feels the call to protect me, he tends to break bones.

I arrived at Cupcake’s house almost exactly three hours from the time I’d called and told him to have Steven there. A brown sedan was parked in Cupcake’s driveway, so Steven had apparently taken my message seriously. Before I got out of the Bronco, I got my gun from my shorts pocket and put it in the glove compartment. Friends don’t carry guns into friends’ houses.

When I rang the bell, Jancey opened the door. She looked annoyed, scared, and angry. I didn’t blame her. She had gone to bed one night the wife of a famous athlete who was admired by everybody who knew him and woken up the next morning the wife of a famous athlete whose reputation was teetering on the razor’s edge of disaster.

She said, “What’s going on, Dixie?”

“Do you have a ladder?”

“A ladder?”

“I need to climb up to look in the cats’ hiding places.”

She opened her mouth to ask a question, then closed it and hurried ahead of me to the kitchen where Cupcake and Steven sat drinking coffee.

“Cupcake, Dixie needs a ladder.”

Both men looked up at me as if Jancey had asked for a flying saucer, but Cupcake lumbered to his feet and went through the kitchen door to the garage. Steven stood up and looked a question at me. I waited until Cupcake came back carrying a stepladder so long the ends of it waved out of control. Jancey rushed to support the ends, not because Cupcake couldn’t handle the weight but because she didn’t want her walls scratched.