Блейз Клемент - The Cat Sitter’s Pajamas

“So you showed your appreciation by coming here and breaking into his house?”

Her lips trembled. “You can’t know what it’s like to be famous. To be Briana . Everybody in the world wants something from me. I haven’t lived my own life for a long time. I’ve lived for agents, accountants, photographers, designers, reporters, all those people sucking my breath out of my body. I started remembering what it was like when it was just me and Cupcake against the world. I didn’t really think I could make that happen, but I wanted to be close to him, just absorb some of his kindness and calm. I knew he was away from home at the camp he runs for kids. I didn’t think it would hurt anybody if I borrowed his life for a while. Until you walked in, I was like a kid playing house. I guess I took it too far.”

She was right in thinking that Cupcake’s plans had been to spend time at the kids’ camp. That had been reported in the news, and I didn’t correct her about where he’d really been.

I had a feeling that Briana had left out a lot of her history, but I believed parts of what she’d told me. Fame is hard for anybody to handle, even mature people with firm philosophies. For a poor, uneducated, sexually molested small-town girl who’d had to use every wile and wit she had to escape a life of grinding poverty, it would have been a crushing assault.

Nevertheless, she had not explained the dead woman in Cupcake’s house—and the more I listened to her, the farther I crawled into a dark tunnel that had no exit.

5

I said, “Okay, I’ll buy the reason you were in Cupcake’s house. Now tell me about the woman.”

She leaned closer to me. “I swear to you I don’t know who she was. I’m telling the truth about finding her dead on the floor when I came back from the bedroom.”

“And you just bolted and ran?”

She hesitated. “I took time to restore the security system after I was away from the back door.” Her voice had risen an octave.

With great deliberation, I took my tartlet from its little clear box and took a bite. I studied her face while I chewed. Her face went pink while I washed the tartlet bite down with coffee.

I said, “You’re lying.”

“I swear it’s the truth.”

“Considering your track record when it comes to truth, I’m not moved.”

I couldn’t see her eyes, but I knew they were fixed on me, waiting for me to dissect her lie. Only problem was, I didn’t know what her lie had been. Growing up with an alcoholic mother whose lies had slid all over the place, I’d learned early to detect the presence of an untruth in the midst of candor, but it was like a whiff of something gone bad in a refrigerator full of good food. You know something in there is spoiled, but you don’t know what it is. I still believed somebody else had killed the woman in Cupcake’s house, but either Briana had lied about not recognizing the woman or she had lied about when and how she’d run away from the house.

I said, “If you didn’t kill the woman, then somebody else was in the house while you were there.”

She shook her head too emphatically. “I was alone.”

“You think the woman slit her own throat? Disposed of the knife before she fell dead? Damned clever of her.”

She took a deep breath and exhaled in jerky bursts of air. “I meant I didn’t have a companion. Somebody else must have broken in while I was there, and I didn’t know about it.”

“If that had happened, the security company would have got an alarm and sent somebody to investigate. Nobody came.”

“I’m telling the truth.”

I finished my fruit tartlet and considered what to do next. I had to call Sergeant Owens. I had to call Cupcake and Jancey. I had to tell them that I’d talked to Briana without anybody’s permission. I fervently wished I’d never done it. In probing Briana’s story, I’d found out things about Cupcake that he probably didn’t want known. Even worse, I’d provided a dress rehearsal for the interrogation she’d get from the sheriff’s department. My questions had given Briana a heads-up on what the homicide detective—whoever that was going to be—would ask her. Because I had felt empathy for a woman I’d thought was deranged, I might have skewed a murder investigation.

She said, “Are you going to betray me?”

The question was so stark and direct that it took me by surprise. That may be one of the differences between people who have the drive and determination to be internationally famous and the rest of us. Along with the drive comes a loss of social subterfuge.

I said, “I’m not the only person who’s seen you. It’s inevitable that somebody will recognize you. But they won’t call the cops, they’ll call USA Today or Katie Couric. And when they do, you’ll be stuck knowing that somebody used you for their own gain, and it’ll make you even less willing to trust people.”

“Psychology so early in the morning. And from a pet sitter, no less.”

“Most people believe fashion models have the brains of a flea. Those same people belittle the intelligence of pet sitters.”

She colored. “I’m sorry. And you’re right. Every time I’m hurt I grow more paranoid.”

I said, “Do you have a lawyer?”

“Just one who handles contracts.”

“Do you know a defense lawyer?”

She shook her head, and even her hands turned paler. “Do you know one?”

I thought of Ethan Crane, and just the thought of him made me feel lighter. Suddenly moving with quick efficiency, I whipped out my cell phone and dialed Ethan’s number.

When his receptionist answered, I said, “Tell Mr. Crane that Dixie Hemingway has an emergency and will be at his office in five minutes.”

Doubtfully, she said, “I’ll tell him, but I’m not sure—”

All I’d wanted to know was whether Ethan was in, so I clicked her off and crammed our cups and sandwich leavings—Briana had barely touched her sandwich, and she didn’t even open her tartlet box—into the cardboard tray. Briana watched me get up and toss the tray into a trash bin, watched me walk back to our table.

I said, “I’m going to drive to the office of an attorney I know. If you choose to, you can follow me and go in with me and tell your story. If you choose not to, we’re done.”

I spun around and did a fast clip out of the pavilion and down the steps to the parking lot. I got in my Bronco while Briana made a white blur behind me charging to her Jaguar. The woman could move fast when she wanted to. I peeled out, and the Jag kept up. I was both glad and disappointed that she was sticking to me. It would go a lot better for her if she got a lawyer and turned herself in. It would go a lot better for me if she ditched me and ran.

I should be ashamed to admit it, but the reason my blood tingled on the way to Ethan Crane’s office wasn’t solely from guilty excitement at being on the sidelines of a murder investigation. My blood always tingled like that when I thought of Ethan. I hadn’t seen him for a good while, and then just briefly in the parking lot of the Village Diner, but Ethan and I had always set off lust sparks in each other. There had been a time when I’d had to make a decision about pursuing romantic possibilities with Ethan, but I had wanted Guidry’s slightly dangerous company more than Ethan’s reliable solidness.

Ethan’s office occupies one of the old sand-softened stucco buildings in the village. He inherited the building and the law practice from his grandfather and has never seen fit to modernize any of it. The entrance door from the sidewalk has a glass top with flaked gilt lettering reading ETHAN CRANE, ESQ. A cramped foyer is mostly taken up by a wide staircase leading to the second floor. The dark wooden steps are thinner and paler at their centers from generations of feet stepping on them. At the top of the stairs, a wide lobby separates a receptionist’s office from a library and conference room. Ethan’s office is at the back of the lobby. If his door is open, he can see anybody who climbs the stairs.