Блейз Клемент - Cat Sitter On A Hot Tin Roof

“What does that have to do with Laura?”

He looked surprised again. “Laura was like a big sister to the debs. She showed them how to walk, how to do makeup, hair, all that kind of thing. She’d been a model.”

I made a stirring motion with my hand, meaning Get on with it!

Doggedly, as if he had to tell the story in a particular order, he said, “Every year she’d bring her model’s bag to the bank on the morning of the twenty-second. Everybody expected her to do that, she’d been doing it for years, had all the tricks of the trade in that bag. Then she’d leave and spend the day helping the girls.”

His jaw tightened, and for a minute he seemed loath to tell me the rest. “This year, she went in the vault and stuffed her model’s bag with money. Then she drove to her sister’s house in Dallas. I reported her missing, but the police didn’t take me seriously. They thought she’d just left me. It took awhile to track her down.”

I said, “I don’t suppose you told them about the money.”

He had the grace to look embarrassed. “It was too complicated to explain.”

Some perverse part of me was glad she’d gone to Dallas. At least it made that part of her story true—the part about coming from Dallas. It wasn’t much, but it was a teeny truth, and I was irrationally grateful for it.

With an effort, he got his face under control. “I didn’t kill her, Ms. Hemingway. I know I’m a prime suspect, but I didn’t do it. I was furious at her for stealing from me, but I wouldn’t have hurt her.”

I remembered what Guidry had said and almost laughed at Freuland’s self-pity. The cash Laura stole might have been illegally deposited in his bank by drug dealers. Or it might have been payoff money the drug dealers had given to Freuland as a commission for not reporting them. In either case, I wasn’t sure whether Laura had stolen from drug dealers, the bank, or Freuland. Somehow stealing either drug trafficking money or money paid to a corrupt bank president didn’t seem as onerous as stealing money honestly earned.

Freuland said, “I have to get that money back. I have to. If you know where it is, I’ll give you a handsome reward for taking me to it.”

My nostrils pinched inward and I took a step backward, the way you do when you’ve stumbled on something nasty.

I said, “I don’t know about any money, Mr. Freuland.”

I spun around so fast I almost tripped myself, and stalked away from him. As I walked, I pulled out my cell and punched in Guidry’s number again. My fingers didn’t even need to think, they’d done this so many times.

This time he answered, with a curt, “Guidry here.”

I said, “Martin Freuland is at Laura’s house. He says she stole money from the bank vault and he has to get it back. He was examining the glass pane on her front door, and I imagine he’ll be inside her house in about ten seconds. He offered to share the money with me if I told him where it was.”

Guidry actually chuckled. “People who take bribes expect other people to take them too. If she took money from the bank vault, it was probably his payoff money.”

“He wants it back.”

“I imagine he does. I’ll send somebody over there. By the way, the Autrey woman has officially named you the person responsible for her sister’s cat. Says you can do whatever you want to with him.”

“Gee, the woman is all heart.”

“Will you take him?”

“I’m not a cat shelter, Guidry, but I’ll find a home for him.”

“Good. Ms. Autrey says she’s going back to Dallas late today.”

“So soon?”

“She’s already gone through her sister’s house and collected the valuables she wanted. I guess she doesn’t have any more reason to stay.”

“What about Laura? What about her sister’s body?”

“The ME won’t release it until the criminal investigation is completed. I assume Ms. Autrey will make arrangements with a funeral home before she leaves.”

That only meant Celeste would pay the cost of a cremation or a burial and then go home. There would be no memorial service or funeral for her sister, but since Laura had only been in Sarasota a few weeks, maybe that was sensible. But if there were one, I would go, and Maurice and Ruby probably would go too. Also Gorgon, with his diamond rings. Certainly Frederick Vaught would show up and be mournful. It would be a dismal service, but it seemed to me that Laura deserved something to mark the fact that she had lived.

As I reached for the doorknob to go inside Mazie’s house, I realized that Celeste Autrey had to have been the person who’d talked about me to Freuland. She had probably described me, perhaps described my vehicle as well, so that he immediately knew who I was. It seemed strange that Celeste would buddy up to Freuland since she thought he’d killed her sister, but Celeste was cold enough to sleep on an ice mattress and think it was cozy.

Pete had left the front door unlocked again, but when I went in and saw his face, any lecture I might have given him evaporated. His eyebrows were nearly at his hairline, and his expression was one I remembered Michael wearing as a teenager—defiant and determined and hopeful all at once. I guess men don’t ever lose those traits, even in their eighties.

Mazie stood beside him, and it seemed to me that she had the same look. Per my instructions, she was wearing her blue Service Dog vest with its embroidered medical caduceus symbol.

Pete said, “We should have done this sooner.”

I said, “We couldn’t do it before now. No hospital in the world will allow a dog in ICU, not even a service dog, so we had to wait until Jeffrey was in a room. Even then, we had to have permission. From Hal and Gillis, from Jeffrey’s doctor, probably from the hospital.”

“You did all that?”

“I got Hal’s permission. He’s taking care of the rest of it.”

I wasn’t absolutely sure he could take care of the rest of it, but I was absolutely sure that somehow, some way, Pete and I were taking Mazie in to see Jeffrey.

Pete’s smile split his handsome face, and he actually gave a little hop of joy, like a boy. He said, “Then let’s go!”

He was practically out the door before he got the words out of his mouth, rushing to the Bronco and getting Mazie secured in a travel crate in the back. We made sure she had water in her bowl, put down rolled towels to protect her from sliding in the crate, and got ourselves in the front.

I took one last look toward Laura’s driveway as we backed out, but I couldn’t see through the trees. If Martin was still there, I hoped the sheriff’s deputies came in time to catch him.

27

As I got in the driver’s seat, Pete scurried to the passenger side. “Don’t worry,” he said. “I go to the hospital all the time and do clowning skits for the kids. They all know me there. We won’t have any problem.”

“Uh-huh.”

St. Petersburg is about an hour from Sarasota via I-75 north, then over to I-275 and the Skyway Bridge. Before we got to the I-75 on-ramp, Pete said, “Do you mind if I get something to eat? I was too worried to eat before.”

I swung into a drive-through lane at McDonald’s and waited while he studied the menu.

He said, “I’ll have a Quarter Pounder with cheese and fries. And a large Coke. And a pie thing. Apple.”

Happiness always perks up my appetite too. I decided to get one of the apple pie things.

I only ate when we were stopped at traffic lights, but the apple pie was gone by the time we hit the interstate. Pete was almost as fast with his burger and fries. After we had done our boa constrictor acts, we rode along in thoughtful silence.

On that stretch of highway, more than half the vehicles were trucks—semis, panels, pickups, or big trucks with hoists and cranes or some other special equipment. Southwest Florida has been under constant construction ever since the new kind of retirees came—no longer in mobile homes but with wads of money from the dot-com boom or hefty executive payouts from bankrupt companies. New highways have been laid, new buildings erected, old buildings remodeled, all work done by men who drive trucks.