Блейз Клемент - Even Cat Sitters Get The Blues

The kitten trotted into the living room and mewed at Guidry.

He said, “You have a kitten?”

I shook my head. “It’s just temporary. Somebody left it here. I named her Ella. Or that’s what I would name her if I were going to keep her.”

“Ella Fitzgerald?”

“Sure.”

“It bothers me that I knew it would be Fitzgerald.”

He took a sip of water while he eyed me.

He said, “We took Jochim Torres in today. None too soon, either. His car was packed to the roof and he was ready to leave town.”

When my mouth dropped, he shrugged. “The hundred grand was obviously a payoff.”

“But it was to Paloma.”

“That’s what Jochim said. But when I calmly pointed out to him that he had a record, and that we had good reason to believe he would take money to knock somebody off, he understood where I was coming from.”

“You didn’t tell him I’d told you about the money, did you?”

“I told him somebody at the bank reported it.”

“You lie to people you pick up?”

“All the time. It’s called being a homicide cop.”

I wondered if he had lied to me too.

As if he knew what I was thinking, Guidry’s lip tugged at the side in an almost-smile.

“According to Jochim, he was at home with his wife and kids and several grown cousins the night Ramón was killed, and he has no idea why an insurance man brought his sister a hundred thousand dollars in cash. You will not be surprised to learn that his wife and three men who claim to be his cousins all confirm his story.”

“You believe him?”

“I think they’re all lying through their teeth, but I don’t think Jochim Torres is a killer. He might cheat his brother-in-law out of his last dime, but I don’t think he would kill him.”

“Paloma believes Gilda killed Ramón.”

“She may be right.”

“Any leads on where Gilda may have gone?”

He shook his head. “She’s evaporated.”

I looked at the kitten and felt a little tug of disappointment. If Paloma wasn’t leaving town, she might want the kitten back. Well, so what? I didn’t plan to keep her.

“Will you take the money away from Paloma now?”

“The money will stay where it is until we know who killed Ramón Gutierrez, and so will Paloma and Jochim. If Jochim is innocent, the money belongs to Paloma.”

Ella settled on my bare feet and sent a nice warm wave up my ankles.

I said, “Any idea who the man was who delivered the money?”

He stood up. “Not a clue. Do you?”

“Not unless he’s the man I saw at Ramón’s funeral. Young, slight build, short dark hair, dark glasses. His suit looked too big for him, like maybe he’d lost weight recently. I almost thought I recognized him, but if I’ve ever seen him before he must have been heavier.”

He looked down at me for a long moment as if he wanted to talk about something else, then changed his mind.

“If you see him again, let me know. In the meantime, we’re focusing on finding the nurse. We’ve had some promising leads, and she can’t stay disappeared forever.”

Without waiting for my reply, he opened the French doors and left me with nothing but the sound of his snappy Italian loafers thudding down my steps.

At three-thirty, I got dressed and took Ella down to pee again on the beach. Before I left for my afternoon rounds, I got a disposable cardboard litter box from the stack I keep in the Bronco and shook a quarter-inch layer of clay into it. I put it in my bathroom and made sure Ella knew where it was. My head was pain-free, but I didn’t want to add more stress by taking her to a shelter just then.

It was also too soon for a run with Billy Elliot, so I sailed on by the Sea Breeze. I sailed by Ken Kurtz’s driveway too, with a mere neck swivel to look toward his house.

The marchers weren’t there. Either Guidry had told them to leave Kurtz alone or they’d all rushed off to pray in front of a screen door with a hole shaped like the outline of the Virgin Mary.

With most of the house hidden behind the row of areca palms, all I could see in my quick glance was the row of garage doors. In my imagination, I recalled the first time I’d gone up the walk beside the first garage and saw that huge fireplace through the clear glass. It had been a long walk. Seen from the outside, the long wall along the first garage seemed to be part of the west wing of the house, and I doubted that anybody else had noticed that it seemed too long.

An awareness suddenly plunked itself into my head, neat as a pin turning in a lock, and my skin prickled in astonishment that I hadn’t known it before. That nobody had known it, when it was right there staring us in the face.

Ethan had said the builders had been obliged to retain 30 percent of the original structure in order to avoid public scrutiny of the house plans. Suddenly I knew where that original structure was and why the four garages were so deep. The reason was that they weren’t. More than likely, all the garages were standard size, but there was about fifteen feet of space between their back walls and the back wall of the southern corridor where the wine room was, and I knew why.

Even moving slowly, I was finished with the afternoon pet visits in plenty of time to get ready for the evening with Ethan. I decided it would be better to put off taking Ella to a shelter until the next day. No sense in rushing it. I looked toward the Kurtz house again as I drove home, but there was nothing to see except a thin column of smoke rising from his chimney. I wondered how many times Jessica had driven past and looked toward the hedge. If what she’d said was true, her time was running out before she had to make a decision between the man she loved and the law she’d sworn to uphold.

My own time had run out too. I had to go to Ethan’s. I was a mature woman and it was time to act like one.

When I got home, I took one of the packets of emergency kitten food that I keep in the Bronco upstairs for Ella. She was waiting at the door for me, as if she’d known all along that I was coming home exactly at that time. She really was an exceptionally smart kitten.

I left her eating in the kitchen and took a quick shower to get rid of all the clinging pet hairs. I had left the bathroom door open, and Ella came in and watched me blow my hair.

I said, “I guess I’ll just let my hair hang straight. What do you think?”

She blinked at me in what seemed a female-to-female sign of approval.

I sprayed perfume on the backs of my knees and on my navel. I said, “Don’t get any ideas about that. It doesn’t mean anything. This is just a date. You remember I told you what a date is.”

Her ears twitched. She knew what the perfume meant. It was embarrassing to be so transparent.

She followed me into the office-closet, where I put on a black lace bra and bikini. I figured she knew what that meant too, but I was a grown woman and she was just a kitten, so who cared what she thought?

I put on a short black skirt with a white cotton turtleneck. I took off the white turtleneck and put on a black turtleneck. I took off the skirt and the turtleneck and got myself into an old dress that zipped up the back. I nearly broke my arm zipping it up, and when I stood in front of the mirror I remembered wearing it with Todd, and nearly broke my arm unzipping it. I stuffed my feet into high-heeled sandals for inspiration and stood in my underwear surveying my pathetic wardrobe. I hated everything I owned, and what I didn’t hate was either out of style or worn bald.

I said, “Everything I have is shit.”

Ella turned and gnawed on her back ankle, a sure sign that she thought humans were incredibly stupid.

My lower lip was beginning to push out in a little-girl sulk at the whole business of gift-wrapping myself to go eat dinner with a man. The kitten was right, it was too dumb to credit, especially when I wasn’t sure I even wanted the dinner or the man. I kicked off the sandals and pulled on a pair of clean jeans and the black turtleneck, then climbed back onto the heels because it was a date after all. Now that I felt more normal, I slicked my lips with pink gloss and grabbed my purse. I would eat Ethan’s food, but I would not go gooey just because he was gorgeous and I hadn’t had sex in four years.