Блейз Клемент - Even Cat Sitters Get The Blues

I said, “I’ll get the tea things,” and hurried to her narrow kitchen.

Cora transferred a stack of mail and some magazines from a small skirted round table set between her kitchen and living area while I put tea bags in her teapot and filled it with boiling water. She pulled out one of the ice cream chairs at the table and sat down with her elbows on the table and her chin resting in her hands. I could feel her keen old eyes watching me from under their hooded lids.

She said, “Don’t slice the bread, just tear off hunks of it. It does better that way. And don’t forget the butter.”

“I know, I’m getting it.”

I stacked bread plates and cups and saucers on a tray, added butter, a plate of fist-sized chunks of chocolate bread, and the teapot. When I carried it to the table, I moved my chair so I didn’t face the blinking tree. Cora deftly set out the plates and poured the tea while I tore into a hunk of bread.

I closed my eyes and moaned. “God, that’s good.”

“It is, isn’t it? I don’t do too many things good, but I’m good at chocolate bread. What’re you best at, Dixie?”

I stopped in mid-chew and considered. “I’m best with pets. Dogs. Cats. Right now I’m taking care of an iguana.”

“A whata?”

“Iguana. They’re big lizardlike animals. This one is a bright shade of green, about five feet long. Most of that length is tail, though.”

“Do they bite?”

“They can, but they don’t unless they feel attacked. They have little fish teeth, so their bite isn’t dangerous, but they can break the skin.”

“Huh. Imagine that.”

I set my teacup down and took a deep breath. It was time to tell her why I was there.

NINE

I said, “Cora, I’m not doing so good.”

She shrugged. “I imagine killing somebody would take the starch out of a person.”

“It’s not just that. It’s something else, like I’m not myself anymore.”

She sipped her tea and searched my face. “Who are you, if you’re not yourself?”

I slid the butter knife down the stick of soft butter and sliced off a large piece of it. I laid it on a fresh chunk of hot chocolate bread and watched it ooze into the bread’s pores. When it had totally disappeared, I took a big bite and chewed.

Cora waited until I swallowed and took a gulp of tea. Then she said, “Dixie?”

“I’m thinking. I guess I’m still myself, but I’m doing things I don’t usually do.”

“Well, sugar, nobody but a pure nincompoop spends their whole life doing the same things over and over. There comes a time when you start doing new things.”

“I lied to a homicide detective, Cora.”

She frowned. “You mixed up in something?”

“No, it’s not like that. It’s the iguana. Not the iguana itself, but the man who owns the iguana. See, somebody called me and said it was him, but it wasn’t, and when I got there the guard had been shot in the head. I didn’t want to get mixed up in anything again, so I left. I didn’t report it. I just went home and took a shower and then when I went to find the iguana’s house, it turned out that’s where he lived. There where the guard got killed.”

Cora blinked rapidly a few times. “I guess you should have reported it, but it’s not exactly lying that you didn’t. You just didn’t tell what you knew.”

I drained my teacup and set it down. “There’s more. Before Lieutenant Guidry got there, I warned the iguana’s owner to get rid of a gun he was carrying. Then I heard him tell a couple of lies to Guidry and I didn’t tell Guidry they were lies. I didn’t tell Guidry about the woman, either.”

“What woman?”

“A strange woman stopped me this morning. She had a bulldog with the same name as the iguana, and I think she was watching me. The man had her picture on his bedside table. And he’s blue, by the way. I think he’s really sick.”

Cora blinked some more. “Dixie, do you take vitamins? You know, you’ve been under a lot of stress lately, what with killing that man and all, and you need to take care of yourself. Get more rest, take vitamins. You shouldn’t drink coffee either. I don’t drink coffee at all anymore, just tea. It’s better for you. They say green tea is healthiest, but I just drink it brown, and I’m pretty healthy.”

“I sound crazy, don’t I?”

“A little, but women go plumb loony when they’re in love.”

“I’m not in love, Cora.”

“Well, of course you are, sugar. You’re in love with that detective fella. Trouble is, you’ve forgotten how to do it.”

“Believe me, I remember how to do it.”

“Oh, I don’t mean the sex kind of doing it. You don’t ever forget that.”

She paused for a while and smiled at whatever image had flitted through her head. I took a big bite of chocolate bread and waited for her to return to this century.

“I’m talking about how you’re doing love ,” she said. “You’ve gotta be strict with love, or it’ll just move in and take over your whole life. You have to give it a special room and make sure it stays there until you’re ready for it to come out. That’s what you’ve forgotten. Your problem is you’re hauling love’s butt around with you every place you go.”

I swallowed wrong, and Cora eyed me while I had a coughing fit.

She said, “Men don’t do that. You don’t see men dragging love around with them every minute, worrying does it need a drink of water, is it hungry, does it need a sweater. Men just let love fend for itself while they go off and work or play or fight or fool around. They don’t let love rule their lives like women do. You put love in its place, and you’ll stop lying to people.”

My cell phone rang and I leaped to snatch it from my purse. It was Guidry.

He said, “Dixie, we need to talk.”

“I know, that’s why I called you.”

Cora rolled her eyes at how snippy I sounded.

Guidry said, “I’ll be at your place in ten minutes.”

He hung up without giving me time to tell him I wasn’t at home. Well, okay, let him cool his heels while he waited for me.

I rushed the tea tray to the kitchen so Cora wouldn’t have to lug it in there, then scooted to hug her thin shoulders and kiss the top of her feathery head. “I have to go, Cora. Thanks for the bread.”

She said, “Don’t worry about that man being sad, Dixie. After all, his guard got shot. That would make anybody blue.”

“You’re right. I won’t think about it anymore.”

I left her sitting at the table pensively staring into her teacup. I knew she hadn’t understood a thing I’d said, but I actually felt a lot better.

During the summer months, I could easily drive from Cora’s condo to my apartment in ten minutes. But during the season, when Sarasota’s population triples, the streets became as congested as any large city, and half the drivers are of the opinion they are privileged people who should not be expected to obey traffic laws made for ordinary humans. You therefore have to be hyper-alert for expensive cars zooming out of driveways or running red lights, and if you get behind a blue-hair going fifteen miles an hour on Tamiami Trail, you have to resist the urge to gently tap her rear bumper to give her the idea to move along.

It took me a good thirty minutes to make the drive, and when I got home Guidry was nowhere in sight. Michael’s car was in the carport, but his kitchen door was closed and all the shades were drawn. As I unlocked the French doors, Guidry’s dark Blazer eased past the carport and parked in the open space next to Michael’s cypress deck. I paused, hoping Guidry didn’t guess that I’d raced home to meet him. He spotted me as he got out of his car, and then I started worrying that he might think I had been home all along and was so eager to see him that I’d come outside to wait for him.