Блейз Клемент - The Cat Sitter’s Pajamas

I said, “But the Nikes were fakes.”

“That was the whole point.”

“I don’t understand.”

He looked at me in his rearview mirror and grinned, dimples flashing. “You’re not supposed to. Robbie and I had a connection, I’m not sure what you’d call it, but we sort of saw things the same way, read the same things into movies and stories. I was a nut about Nikes, and Robbie teased me about it. When I took the money I got from robbing our first house and bought a pair of Nikes, it cracked Robbie up.” His face went sober. “Robbie used his share to buy food.”

“So—”

“So all these years later I come home and find a pair of Nikes in the middle of my bed. Nobody could have left them except my old white, skinny, redheaded friend Robbie Brasseaux, but Robbie hasn’t been in my house. Instead, a famous model named Briana has been there, and Briana was white, skinny, and had red hair. Which made her a fake because she was really Robbie. And that’s why Robbie left fake Nikes. It was a little joke he knew I’d get.”

“Why didn’t you tell Steven that Briana was Robbie?”

He took a deep breath. “I didn’t figure it was any of his business. Besides, Robbie had enough trouble in his life without people knowing he’d gone and got himself turned into a woman.”

Jancey nodded. She and Cupcake had apparently discussed the whole thing and she agreed with him that Briana’s real identity was nobody’s business.

I said, “Briana said she had killed her pedophile uncle when she was sixteen. She suspected that you had told a story about her hiding in the swamps that threw the police off while she ran away to New Orleans. Did you?”

A muscle worked in Cupcake’s jaw. “Robbie didn’t kill just his uncle, he killed his entire family. His drunken abusive uncle, his mean-as-a-wolverine aunt, and his three slack-jawed cousins who’d bragged about sodomizing him. Shot them while they slept. He did what he had to do to survive.”

I didn’t press him to tell me anything else.

Some loyalties are almost sacred. Some secrets are best left undisturbed.

ALSO BY BLAIZE CLEMENT

Cat Sitter Among the Pigeons

Raining Cat Sitters and Dogs

Cat Sitter on a Hot Tin Roof

Even Cat Sitters Get the Blues

Duplicity Dogged the Dachshund

Curiosity Killed the Cat Sitter

This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

A THOMAS DUNNE BOOK FOR MINOTAUR BOOKS.

An imprint of St. Martin’s Publishing Group.

THE CAT SITTER’S PAJAMAS. Copyright © 2011 by Blaize Clement. All rights reserved. For information, address St. Martin’s Press, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10010.

www.thomasdunnebooks.com

www.minotaurbooks.com

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Clement, Blaize.

The cat sitter’s pajamas : a Dixie Hemingway mystery / Blaize Clement.—1st ed.

p. cm.

e-ISBN 9781429951142

1. Hemingway, Dixie (Fictitious character)—Fiction. 2. Women detectives—Florida—Fiction. 3. Cats—Fiction. 4. Sarasota (Fla.)—Fiction. I. Title.

PS3603.L463C44 2012

813'.6—dc23 2011033143

First Edition: January 2012

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