Блейз Клемент - Cat Sitter On A Hot Tin Roof

That’s how smart he was.

Now he said, “Damn, girl, I was hoping you’d stopped attracting dead bodies.”

“Me too.”

He flapped a bony hand at me and went past me to confer in low tones with Morgan. They both went inside the house for a few minutes, and when they came out Sergeant Owens held his mouth clamped in a straight line. Morgan studiously held his head with his chin tilted up, as if he’d decided never to look at the floor again.

While Morgan went to his car and got out yellow crime-scene tape and began stretching it around the perimeter of the yard, Owens whipped out his phone. He spoke in clipped tones for a while, then closed it and walked back to me.

“What’s the story?”

“The woman who lives here is Laura Halston. I don’t know her well, but I had dinner with her night before last, and she told me she’d left her husband. He’s a sadistic surgeon, used to carve her up with scalpels. They lived in Dallas, and she ran away and came here. Then he found her.”

“She told you he’d found her?”

My face got warm. “I happened to overhear them talking yesterday. I was putting a turtle out by the lake, and they were on the other side of the hibiscus hedge that runs along the street. He told her he would make her pay for what she’d done. She walked away from him, and he drove off.”

“You ever see him again?”

“That’s the only time.”

“Got a name for him?”

“Dr. Reginald Halston. He’s a prominent doctor in Dallas.”

He scribbled the name, and I said, “She called him Martin.”

“When you were listening to them behind the trail?”

I felt myself blush again. “I wasn’t deliberately listening, they just happened to come by while I was there.”

“How do you know he was the husband?”

“I heard her talking to him on the phone the night we had dinner. She called him Martin then, too.”

“And she said he was her husband?”

“She said he was her soon to be ex-husband.”

“In Dallas.”

“That’s what she said.”

“You know a next of kin to notify?”

“Her parents live in Connecticut, but I don’t know their name. She mentioned a sister in Dallas named Celeste. She didn’t say a last name.”

Owens deliberated a moment. “You know anybody else who could identify her body?”

“Besides me?”

“I think it would be better if it was somebody else, Dixie. You don’t need to see that.”

My heart quivered. Morgan had upchucked at seeing Laura’s body, and now Owens wanted to protect me from seeing it.

“It’s that bad?”

“It’s about as bad as it can get, Dixie.”

It’s funny how your mind can split at times like that. One side of my brain recoiled from what was happening around me. The other side was cool as grass. The cool side knew investigators would look through Laura’s address books looking for names and numbers for her relatives. The cool side knew calls would be made, awful truths said, grim arrangements made.

The cool side said, “I’ll take care of Leo until the house is cleaned up.”

“Leo?”

“Laura’s cat. I’ve put him in my car.”

Owens gave me a slow look, then nodded. “Lieutenant Guidry will be handling the homicide investigation. He’ll want to talk to you.”

As if on cue, Guidry’s dark Blazer pulled to a stop in the street, and Guidry got out and walked to us.

Owens said, “Dixie knows the woman. She spent some time with her night before last.”

I said, “I was only with her a few hours. She invited me for a glass of wine, and then we had dinner.”

Owens flapped his notebook at Guidry. “The woman has a husband in Dallas. A surgeon. She told Dixie he was a sadist, used to scare her with scalpels. Dixie believes the man came here and found her. She saw the woman with a man she believes is the husband.”

Guidry nodded, digesting the scant information without comment.

I said, “She was a runner. Ran every morning. That’s how I met her. She’d opened the door to go running and Leo got out. Leo’s her cat. I’ve put him in my car.”

Guidry’s face took on the pained look he always got when I mentioned pets, but neither man answered me.

I said, “She wore serious running shoes. The expensive kind.”

I studied their implacable faces for a moment and knew it was time to shut up.

I said, “If you need me, you know where to find me.”

As I turned away, Owens said, “Dixie? We don’t need to tell you not to divulge anything about the ex-husband and the scalpels.”

Of course he didn’t. When word of the murder got out, the usual loonies would come forward to make false confessions. Guilty people would give false alibis. Citizens would call with leads and misguided information. The murder would be public knowledge, but the fact that Laura’s ex-husband was a surgeon who liked to play with scalpels was information that only the homicide investigators would know. And me.

Without answering, I turned away and trudged back to the Bronco.

14

At the Bronco, Leo was peering out the air holes in the cardboard carrier and making piteous noises. I leaned in the window and said, “It’s okay, Leo.”

My mouth said that, but my feet knew it was a huge lie, and the next thing I knew I was kicking the bejesus out of my front tire, all my rage and horror banging in useless fury.

Behind me, Pete said, “Dixie? What’s wrong?”

A surge of adrenaline brought teeth-rattling shakes, and I turned around to lean against the Bronco with my knees stiffened and my elbows braced on the car. Pete had Mazie on her leash, and both man and dog were taking in the fact that Leo was crying in the car, and that Laura’s yard was marked by yellow crime-scene tape.

An ambulance and several marked and unmarked sheriff’s cars passed by, slowing to a crawl in front of Laura’s house and then oozing to parking places by the curb. I knew what the criminalists would do. They would post a Contamination Sheet by the front door to record every person who entered and left the house. Then they would photograph the interior of Laura’s house, dust for latent prints, and look for shoe tracks, for fibers, for hair, for anything that might point to the identity of the person or persons who had killed her. Outside, they would walk shoulder to shoulder around the area looking for anything a killer might have dropped.

Pete said, “Something’s happened to that woman, hasn’t it?”

Still shuddering, I bobbed my head up and down.

Inside the Bronco, Leo made a long wailing noise. Mazie whimpered and trotted toward the sound, moving her tail back and forth in a nervous show of sympathy.

I waited until a final tremor released me, then said the thing that had to be said.

“Laura’s been killed.”

“I’m so sorry.”

I said, “I’m going to take Leo to Kitty Haven until Laura’s family comes.”

I put my hand on the door handle and then turned to him. “Pete, what time was it that you saw Laura?”

“Oh, it was early. Around five, probably. I get up early, you know, and once I’m up Mazie is up, so we went outside for a few minutes. That lady came down the driveway over there and ran across the street. Just sort of squeezed through the hibiscus there where the running path is.”

It was now close to eleven, which meant Laura had been killed within the last five or six hours. The killer could have got inside Laura’s house while she was running and killed her when she came back. Then he must have left the door open as he ran away, and Leo got outside.

I pulled the car door open, and Mazie trotted over to look up toward the cat carrier where Leo was still crying. Service dogs are trained from puppyhood to live amicably with other household pets, so Mazie was free of cat prejudice.