Блейз Клемент - Even Cat Sitters Get The Blues

The little girl went back to playing with the kitten, but I knew she was listening.

I said, “I lost a husband and a daughter a few years ago. When it happened, people tried to keep me from knowing certain details about how … about the end, but I needed to know everything. Perhaps there are things I could tell your sister that would help her now.”

His face softened, and he looked over his shoulder as if consulting somebody inside.

Low and urgently, I said, “Look, I’m not a cop. I don’t have any authority and I don’t have anything to do with the police investigation, but somebody involved me, and the killer is still out there. I need to have some facts to protect myself.”

A thin young woman appeared beside him, looking anxiously first at the little girl and then at me. Her dark eyes were so surrounded by sorrow’s purple shadows that she looked as if she’d been beaten.

She said, “You are not from the paper? Or the TV?”

“I promise.”

She and her brother exchanged a look, and he stepped aside and gestured me in. He closed the door behind me with a soft finality, and I understood he didn’t want the little girl to listen to our conversation. Adults try to protect children from the realities of death, even though children usually handle it as if it were no more mysterious than any of the other realities they’re learning about.

With some notable exceptions, the living room was a typical young family’s—a beige sectional sofa curved to offer an entire family viewing angles of the TV, a couple of homemade afghans of the dark brown and cream variety draped over sofa arms, throw pillows showing signs of jelly smears and spilled soda, and a big cedar chest doubling as a coffee table littered with remotes for the TV, coffee cups, a clumsily formed ceramic Santa, a cell phone, a plate with half a sandwich and some chips, a small poinsettia plant in a foil-wrapped pot, a Barbie doll with no clothes on, and several notepads and pens. The out-of-the-ordinary thing was a plasma TV with tall freestanding speakers and a screen big as some multiplex movie screens. Pretty pricey for a rent-a-cop.

As I perched at the end of the sofa, the woman murmured something under her breath to her brother.

He said, “I am Jochim. This is my sister, Paloma. Would you like some coffee?”

“If it’s already made. Don’t go to any trouble, please.”

He said, “No problem,” and hurried from the room. Paloma sat down at the opposite end of the curved sofa, so that we were facing each other. She was much younger than her brother and her husband, with an immature mix of shyness and defiance. For a second, we looked silently at one another, checking each other out the way women do.

I said, “I’m very sorry for your loss.”

“He knew,” she whispered. “Why didn’t he tell? He didn’t need to die.”

So far, I hadn’t heard any of the “broken English” the reporter had described. From my own experience with news reporters, I thought it was more likely that Paloma had been so furious she’d been incoherent.

Cautiously, so as not to frighten her, I said, “Can you tell me what he knew?”

From the doorway, her brother said, “Paloma!”

Jochim bustled forward with a mug of coffee, and Paloma wearily settled back against the sofa.

Taking a seat between us, Jochim looked uneasy. He said, “These things you can tell us about Ramón’s death, what are they?”

I took a sip of coffee and wondered what it was that Jochim hadn’t wanted Paloma to tell me.

I said, “It’s just that I know a little bit about how the Kurtz household works, so I might be able to answer questions she may have.”

Paloma spoke to her brother in Spanish, so rapidly that I only caught a few words. She ended with “¡Pregúntele! ¡Pregúntele!”

He swallowed so hard his Adam’s apple bobbled. With a nervous smile, he said, “My sister insists that I ask you about the nurse in the house. She has always wondered if her husband and the nurse were … you know.”

It must be a trait peculiar to women that even when their husbands are lying in the morgue, they want to know if they were unfaithful while they were alive. She was obviously able to ask me herself, but I supposed she couldn’t bring herself to say the words.

I rotated my coffee mug on the table, careful not to make eye contact with Paloma. To tell the truth, I’d wondered about the nurse and Ramón myself.

I said, “I only talked to the nurse for a few minutes before she left.”

Paloma sat forward, ashen-faced. “She left? The nurse left?”

“Soon after I arrived. Nobody knows where she went.”

Okay, so this was probably information Guidry didn’t want noised around, but Paloma’s husband had just been killed, and I figured she had a right to know.

She buried her face in her hands, and the keening noise she made sent icicles up my spine. In some corner of my mind I remembered making that sound myself after Todd and Christy were killed.

I said, “The fact that she left doesn’t mean she and Ramón had anything going on.”

Paloma jerked her head up and shouted, “It means she killed him! That’s what it means! And he knew! He knew!”

“Knew what?”

Jochim jerked his head around to stare reproachfully at me.

He said, “My sister has suffered enough. She has children to protect, and I’ve got a wife and kids of my own. We can’t get involved in anything. You understand?”

I understood that Paloma and Jochim knew something they hadn’t told Guidry.

I said, “If Ramón’s killers think you can identify them, they’ll have to get rid of you for their own protection. Help put them away, and you have a chance.”

“It was her, ” said Paloma. “She killed him!”

“I was there when the nurse learned he was dead. I think she was genuinely shocked when she learned it. Personally, I think she ran away because she was afraid she’d be killed too.”

“Then they were together,” said Paloma. “She tricked him, but he could have quit when he knew what she was like. He stayed even after he knew.”

“Please, what do you mean? What did he know?”

Jochim said, “Enough! You have told my sister something she needed to know. We are grateful for that, but now you must go.”

In an involuntary plea, my hand opened toward Paloma, and I saw the pinpricks from the kitten’s claws.

I said, “Is that your little girl on the porch? The one with the kitten?”

“Sí . ”

“She said you planned to have the kitten’s claws removed. Is that true?”

“Oh, sí, it scratches everything.”

“Please don’t. Kittens outgrow their scratching, and if you remove its claws, it will be crippled. Its balance will be off, and it won’t be able to defend itself.”

Both Paloma and Jochim gave me incredulous looks.

I said, “I know it sounds crazy to talk about a kitten at a time like this, but I can’t stand to hear about kittens being declawed. It’s too cruel.”

Paloma rose to her feet, stiff and creaky as an old woman. “Please go now.”

When somebody tells me to get out of their house, I obey. But first I pulled a dog-eared business card from my pocket and laid it on the coffee table with all the other stuff.

I said, “I wish I weren’t involved in this mess, but I got tricked into it, and now my own life may be in danger. There’s something odd going on in that house. I don’t know what it is, but I believe it has to do with the iguana. Please, if you decide later that you can tell me something without causing danger for yourselves, call me.”

At the door, I stopped and turned to look squarely at Paloma.

“I lost my husband too, and I know the pain you feel. But it’s a mistake to torture yourself with suspicion about him and the nurse. You had a life together, children together. It’s bad enough that you’ve lost him. Don’t make it worse by forgetting that he loved you.”