Cat Sitter on a Hot Tin Roof (21 page)

30

I said, “I spoke to Celeste Autrey a few minutes ago. She was at Laura Halston’s house with the locksmith. Outside the house, actually, because she refused to pay for having the locks changed, so he refused to give her the new key. She finally threw money at him and he gave her the key, but she was so mad that there was only one key that she spit at him and threw it back. Then she left, and he gave the key to me. What do you want me to do with it?”

“She spit at him?”

“Like an adder.”

“Why’d the locksmith give you the key?”

I sighed. “I don’t know, Guidry. Probably because I was there and he was fed up with the whole business. He’d been paid for changing the locks and making the new key, so he wanted to be rid of it. Good thing Martin Freuland wasn’t there, he would have given it to him. Did you pick Freuland up?”

“Can’t pick a man up just for being outside a house, Dixie. I sent some deputies over to suggest to him that loitering outside a dead woman’s house could be construed as suspicious behavior, so he left.”

“What about Vaught? I’ve been thinking about him. The man’s hands are too clean. Freuland has more reason to want to kill Laura if she stole money from him, but Vaught’s hands look more surgical, like they’d know how to use a scalpel.”

The line was silent for a long moment, then Guidry’s voice came back almost as heavy with fatigue as mine.

“Dixie, I never told you Laura Halston was stabbed with a scalpel.”

My tired brain started gathering all the information it had collected to tell him that of course the killer had used a scalpel. For starters, there was her sadistic surgeon husband who threw scalpels at the ceiling for fun.

An icy trickle of reason slid down my neck, and my entire body went cold with shame. The husband had been one of Laura’s lies, and I was an idiot. Not only had I fallen for the lie when I first heard it, I’d continued to operate as if it were true even after I’d learned it wasn’t.

I said, “Oh.”

“Does anybody else know you have that key? Anybody besides the locksmith?”

“You do.”

“Don’t mention it to anybody, okay? I’m a little tied up right now, but I’ll call you later and pick it up.”

“Okay.”

He must have been surprised at my unaccustomed meekness, because he actually said “Goodbye” before he clicked off.

I sat there with my phone in hand and wondered how I could have been so stupid. But I knew the reason. Laura had been a master at pulling people into her fantasies. Unlike her sister’s, Laura’s dishonesty had been laced with warmth and generosity and humor. She’d made people
want
to believe her, and once they believed, they protected themselves from feeling like fools by continuing to believe.

For the first time, I felt a touch of sympathy for Martin Freuland, whose huge ego and lust for power would have made him a perfect mark for a woman of Laura’s talents. Even the town had been a perfect venue for her heist. A city in which the predominantly Hispanic residents throw a monthlong celebration every year in honor of George Washington is a world where fantasy rules. In such an atmosphere, it wouldn’t have seemed incongruous to Freuland to allow his lover access to his bank’s vault. After all, he believed in her. He believed she was mentor to the town’s debutantes, and he’d thought the model’s bag she carried on the day of the debutante ball was admirably philanthropic.

I wondered how long she had plotted and schemed before she carried her model’s bag into the bank vault and filled it with stacks of Freuland’s ill-gotten money. I wondered how long it had taken Freuland to realize he’d been had. It had been an almost perfect crime. He couldn’t charge her with theft because the money had been given to him as a payoff for taking deposits from drug dealers. All he could do was report her missing, which must have seemed something of a joke to the city’s police.

I doubted he had understood right away—or that he’d been willing to admit to himself—that what she’d done had been premeditated. Laura would have pulled him in as skillfully as she’d pulled me in. She would have made him believe she was in love with him, and even after she left he would have continued to believe it. More than likely, he had chosen to believe that Laura had put money in her model’s bag and driven to Dallas as a spur-of-the-moment thing, a momentary lapse of ordinary good sense.

I might have thought that too, but she had taken Leo with her. Leo had either been in her car when she went in the bank with her model’s bag, or she’d gone home and got him before she drove away. Laura had known exactly what she was doing when she took that money. Furthermore, she hadn’t been afraid of Freuland. Not then, and not when he found her and confronted her. She had walked away from him, and the flippant finger she’d shot him hadn’t looked the least big frightened.

Had she underestimated his capacity for violence? Perhaps she went too far when she reported his illicit dealings with his drug-dealer depositors. Perhaps he would have forgiven her for stealing his money, or at least not killed her for it, but killed her for being disloyal to him.

On the other hand, maybe he hadn’t been the killer at all. Maybe the creepy nurse Vaught had killed her because she’d rejected him. His sickness was a desire to control, to humiliate, to create terror in helpless victims. The police suspected he’d smothered elderly people in nursing homes, but he could have committed other kinds of murders that nobody knew about. Homeless people, children, mentally ill people, unwary women are killed every day and the killers are never found. Frederick Vaught could be a shadow killer who’d gotten away with crimes simply because he chose helpless victims in private places.

With that gloomy thought, I backed out of Mazie’s driveway and headed for Tom Hale’s condo. I was a pet sitter, and it was time for my afternoon rounds, beginning as always with Billy Elliot.

When I let myself into Tom’s condo, he and Billy Elliot took their eyes off the TV and looked up at me with mild welcome. Then they both widened their eyes a bit, and it seemed to me that Billy Elliot’s nostrils pinched together. I know for sure he pulled his head back a bit.

I said, “I look like hell, don’t I?”

Tom said, “Maybe not hell. More like heck. Why are you so . . . ah . . .”

“Sweaty. The word is sweaty, Tom, plus rumpled, plus hairy, plus I don’t know what-all.”

“Yep, that would be the word. So why are you?”

I sighed and lowered my rump to the arm of the sofa. “Pete Madeira and I drove to St. Pete this morning and took Mazie to see Jeffrey.”

Tom’s face was blank, so I dragged an explanation from my basket of words.

“Mazie is a seizure-assistance dog. Jeffrey is a little boy who just had brain surgery to stop his seizures. Mazie was becoming too despondent away from him, so we took her to the hospital. Which means that I didn’t get to go home and take a shower or nap. Well, I napped a little in the hospital in a chair, but it’s not the same.”

“She’s one of those dogs that signal a person when they’re about to have a seizure?”

“No, that’s a seizure-
alert
dog. Jeffrey’s too little to have that kind of dog. Mazie’s a seizure-
assistance
dog, which is different. She doesn’t alert him to a seizure, but she stays close to him when his balance is off from the medication, and she distracts him when he’s unhappy and frustrated.”

“Dogs are so great.”

I got Billy Elliot’s leash and led him into the hall and to the elevator, where he moved as far from me as he could get.

I said, “If you hadn’t had a bath lately, you wouldn’t smell so hot either.”

He pretended not to understand, but when we got to the parking lot, he ran at a slower speed than usual, which I appreciated. By the time I got him back upstairs, I’d made up my mind to go home and take a quick shower. When dogs make a point of standing upwind from you, it’s time to attend to your personal grooming.

My apartment is only about half a mile from Tom’s condo building, so if I hurried, I could shower and change clothes without losing more than half an hour. I didn’t even try to avoid alarming the parakeets when I tore down my curving drive, just let them have hysterics in the air. They like to do that, so I didn’t feel bad.

Paco’s car was in the carport, but his Harley was gone, which meant that he was out impersonating some road-calloused biker, which meant that some drug dealer or gang leader was under scrutiny. I took the stairs two at a time, using my remote to raise the aluminum shutters as I went. Inside, the apartment was fusty and warm, but I didn’t turn on the AC because I’d only be there a short while. Peeling clothes off as I went toward the bathroom, I felt a renewed energy just from anticipation of a shower. Next to telephones and Tampax, warm water piped to a shower has to be the greatest invention of modern man.

I didn’t indulge myself, just stayed in long enough to scrub down one side and up the other, letting the water fall hard on my hair but not actually shampooing it. Well, I may have run a teensy bit of shampoo through it and rinsed it out, but it wasn’t a true shampoo with huge lather or anything, and I only used a dollop of conditioner so it wouldn’t fan out from my head like a sunflower.

Out of the shower, I ran a comb through my hair, brushed my teeth, smeared on some moisturizer with sun block, and ran a quick slick of lipstick over my mouth. As I ran to the office-closet still damp, I gathered my wet hair into a ponytail. It didn’t take five minutes to pull on underwear, clean shorts, a T, and lace up clean Keds. A new and better-smelling woman, I was halfway to the front door when I remembered the key to Laura’s house, and ran back to the bathroom to fish it out of the pocket in my dirty shorts.

As I raced back toward the front door, a very large man dressed head to toe in black loomed in the doorway between my bedroom and living room. Except for his eyes and lips, his head and face were entirely covered by a dark ski mask, and he wore leather driving gloves on his hammy hands.

I came to a thudding halt with about a million thoughts running through my mind. One was that in my haste I’d left the front door unlocked and the shutters up. So much for the lecture I’d given Pete about keeping doors locked because a killer was loose. The other was that my .38 was six feet away in its special case inside a secret drawer on the wall side of my bed.

Through a slit in the mask thin as a mushroom gill, he said, “No doubt my presence is unwelcome, but it would behoove you to eschew any thoughts of escape. I assure you I have taken every precaution to complete the task for which I came.”

Oh, Jesus, it was Frederick Vaught.

There have been a few times in my life when some wisdom I didn’t know I had takes over. This was one of them.

With a nervous giggle, I said, “Oh, my gosh! You scared me half to death! Richard put you up to this, didn’t he? I swear, that boy will do anything for a practical joke. When he gets here, I’m sure the two of you will have a big laugh at how high I jumped.”

The eyes outlined by the ski mask’s holes wavered slightly.

I said, “For a minute there, I thought you
were
Richard, all dressed up to scare me. But he’s bigger than you. And excuse me for saying it, but he’s in better shape too. Probably from his wrestling. Or maybe it’s just that he climbs utility poles all day. Being a lineman builds muscles.”

Vaught’s eyes shifted with uncertainty. I didn’t blame him. I was almost beginning to believe in a lineman named Richard myself.

Tilting my head to one side, I said, “If I were you, I’d take the mask off now. A joke is a joke, but Richard’s a good friend of my brother’s, and my brother will be royally pissed if he thinks you overdid it making like the bogeyman with his little sister. I mean, my brother has a sense of humor as good as anybody’s, but he’s not going to think this is funny.”

Vaught gave a quick look over his shoulder and then fled through the living room and out the open front door. I already had my cell phone out and was punching 911 when I heard a car door slam. I sprinted to close the French doors and lower the shutters as the operator answered.

Crisply, I gave her my name and the address. Crisply, I told her an intruder wearing a ski mask had come into my apartment. Crisply, I told her he had already left the scene, and I promised I would remain there until officers came to investigate. I was calm, cool, collected. It was amazing.

While I waited, I went to the bedroom and pulled my bed from the wall. I opened the drawer built into my bed and looked at the guns nestled in their specially built niches. I no longer have the SigSauers issued by the Sheriff’s Department because they had to be returned when Todd was killed and I was put on indefinite leave. But I have Todd’s old backup guns and my own. I took my favorite, a Smith & Wesson .38, from its niche. I dropped five rounds into the cylinder and another five in a Speed Loader to put in my pocket. My hands were trembling, a peculiarity I noted from what seemed a far distance, as if I were watching somebody’s hands on a movie screen.

The doorbell rang, and I marched to the front door to peer through a slit in the hurricane shutters. I wasn’t taking any chances. I was cool. Deputy Jesse Morgan stood on the other side of the door, his diamond stud glinting in the afternoon sunlight. His face was as impassive as ever.

I raised the shutters and opened the French door. I said, “Deputy Morgan, we have to stop meeting like this.”

Then I burst into convulsive sobs. I don’t know which of us was more surprised.

31

D
eputy Morgan said, “Miz Hemingway?”

I erased the air with the flat of my hand, denying what I was doing even as I did it.

Snuffling like a kid, I said, “I don’t know why I’m crying, I’m not hurt.”

“You reported an intruder?”

“His name is Frederick Vaught. He’s a suspect in the Laura Halston murder. He was stalking her. He used to be a nurse, but he lost his license for abusing elderly patients. He may have killed some of them.”

While I leaked tears, Morgan pulled out his notepad and wrote the name. “You’ve had contact with him before?”

“He was waiting outside the Sea Breeze when I ran with a dog this morning. He told me to quit asking questions about him.”

“You’d been asking questions about him?”

“I overheard him talking to a patient at the Bayfront nursing unit, and I asked who he was. Lieutenant Guidry knows all about it.”

Morgan took in the information about Guidry and nodded.

“And this guy, Vaught, he came in your house?”

I snuffled some more and pointed toward the door into the bedroom, where my bed was still pulled away from the wall.

“I was running out, and he just stepped into the doorway.”

“He threaten you?”

“He said it would behoove me to eschew any thoughts of escape, because he had taken every precaution to complete the task for which he came.”

Morgan looked up from his notepad.

I said, “He talks like that. Like a dictionary. That’s how I knew it was him.”

“You didn’t recognize him?”

“He was wearing a ski mask. Also gloves.”

My voice quivered when I said the part about gloves. Laura’s killer had worn gloves.

“But you didn’t see his face.”

“Trust me, that man was Frederick Vaught.”

Morgan studied me for a moment. “How’d you get rid of him?”

“I pretended to believe he was pulling a prank, that it was a big joke that somebody named Richard had put him up to. I said Richard would be here any minute, and that Richard was a good friend of my brother’s.”

“And he believed that?”

“I guess he did, he ran out.”

For some reason the tears came back then, and I stood there for a minute and bawled like an idiot while Morgan looked extremely uncomfortable.

When I could speak, I said, “I don’t know why I’m crying.”

In about three strides, Morgan walked over to my breakfast bar where a roll of paper towels stood. Tearing off a towel, he came back and handed it to me.

“Sure you do. That was a close call. If you hadn’t played it right, no telling what would have happened. That was a smart thing you did.”

Shakily, I mopped my face and blew my nose. “Thanks.”

“Are you going to be home for a while?”

“No, I have rounds to make. My pets. Dogs, cats, you know.”

“Oh, yeah. Okay, I’ll put out an alert about Vaught and I’ll contact Lieutenant Guidry. I imagine he’ll want to talk to you about it.”

“I imagine he will.”

“These calls you’re going to make, are all the houses empty? I mean, except for the pets? No people?”

I knew what he was getting at. If Vaught was determined to get me, he could follow me and surprise me inside a pet’s house.

I said, “I’ve got my thirty-eight now. Until Vaught is picked up, I’m carrying it with me.”

He nodded and closed his notepad. “I’ll just wait until you leave.”

I knew what that meant too. Vaught could be lurking nearby waiting for me to come out.

Together, Morgan and I went down my stairs to the carport, and Morgan waited until I was in the Bronco. I drove out first, with Morgan following me. In my rearview mirror, I could see him talking on his phone.

For the rest of the afternoon, I was hyperalert for Frederick Vaught. At every pet’s house, I locked the door behind me when I went in and I was extra cautious when I left. Even in ordinary circumstances pet sitters have to be vigilant for creeps hiding in the bushes, but in this case I had even more reason to take care, and I knew who the creep was.

Even on edge and watching for Vaught to pop up in front of me in his freaky monster getup, I was still acutely aware that breakfast had been a long time ago. Maybe fear makes me hungry, but I kept thinking about what I could eat for dinner without having to go to a lot of effort to get it. Michael was on duty at the firehouse, so he couldn’t feed me, and I had no idea what Paco was doing.

By the time I was playing with the last cat on my schedule, I was having visions of platters of food set in front of me. The food on the platters was indistinct, but there was a lot of it and I knew it would be delicious. That’s the good thing about visions, you don’t have to be specific about the details.

I was just telling the last cat goodbye when my cell phone rang.

It was Michael, with a curious sound to his voice. “Are you near a TV?”

“I’m at a cat’s house.”

“Turn on the TV quick, Channel Eight.”

He sounded so urgent that I obediently went to the TV set, punched it on, and found the channel. With the phone at my ear, I looked at a close-up of a young news reporter holding a microphone close to her ruby-red lips. Under the shot on the screen, a hyperventilating banner told us we were watching a special news bulletin. To prove it, the young woman was gushing that viewers were seeing a once-in-a-lifetime event.

The camera pulled back to show another person standing beside her, and I made the kind of sound you make when somebody punches you in the stomach. The other person was Frederick Vaught, but without his ski mask and gloves.

On the phone, Michael said, “That guy claims he killed the woman you knew.”

I couldn’t answer. All I could do was breathe.

On-screen, the reporter was trying her best not to sound too perky, given that it was a murder she was talking about, but it was a stretch for her.

Shoving the microphone into Vaught’s face, she said, “Without going into any detail about the manner in which you killed Ms. Halston, would you repeat the main point of what you’ve told me?”

Vaught stared directly into the camera and spoke in a deliberate monotone. “I had a romantic relationship with Laura Halston, and we had a lover’s quarrel. In a moment of passion, I stabbed her. I feel incalculable remorse for what I’ve done, and I therefore make a full confession in a vain attempt to expiate my crime.”

There was a disturbance off camera, with sounds of raised voices. The camera swung to a uniformed deputy with about thirty pounds of guns and radios and flashlights dripping from his belt. He seemed to be seriously contemplating a crime of his own.

Stepping to the reporter, he said, “Ma’am, this interview is over.”

Widening her eyes in mock innocence, she said, “Mr. Vaught called the press conference, officer.”

Another officer must have persuaded the cameraman to aim his camera away, because the screen went dark while a muffled voice read Vaught his Miranda rights. I imagined Vaught was being handcuffed at the time, and that he was enjoying it immensely.

Every crime brings out mentally deranged people who confess their guilt. Some of them may actually believe they committed the crime, others just want the momentary attention. Vaught was either crazy enough to believe himself actually guilty, or crazy enough to enjoy the limelight of TV interviewers and cameras.

Michael said, “What do you think?”

“In the first place, Laura Halston wouldn’t have touched Frederick Vaught with a ten-foot eyebrow pencil, so that stuff about being her lover is a lot of hooey. In the second place, Vaught is crazy. I’m talking bona fide mentally ill, like he should be locked up. He came in my apartment today dressed up like some geek version of Darth Vader.”

Michael’s voice sharpened. “He came in your apartment?”

“It’s okay. I got rid of him, and I called nine-one-one. There’s been an alert out for his arrest.”

“Well, now they’ve got him.”

“And he’s having his fifteen minutes of fame. They’ll find out he’s lying and let him go.”

“Couldn’t he be telling the truth about killing her and lying about the reason? Maybe he killed her because she wouldn’t have anything to do with him.”

I said, “Huh,” because he had a point. I would never believe Frederick Vaught had been romantically involved with Laura, but he could have killed her in a frustrated rage because she rejected him.

Michael said, “Call me before you go home tonight, okay?”

That’s my big brother, always concerned about me, always wanting to protect me. I promised I would call him, knowing he would get in touch with Paco if he could, knowing they would join forces to keep the big bad world away from me. We’re a family, and that’s what families do.

Knowing that Vaught was in custody made me less wary, but it didn’t make me less hungry. Streetlights had come on, and early-bird diners were already headed home with leftovers packaged in little square Styrofoam boxes. I would have paid a dollar and a quarter for one of those little boxes.

Thinking Pete might be starving too, I called him before I went to the Kitty Haven to get Leo.

He said, “Thanks, Dixie, but I heated a can of soup earlier. After I get Purr-C home, I’ll just have a bowl of cereal or something.”

“I’m picking him up in a few minutes.”

“Okay, that’s good. I forgot about the sheets from my bed, but they’re in the washer now. It’ll just take awhile to dry them and put them back on the bed, and then I’ll be ready. But I don’t think you should bring Purr-C in here. I wouldn’t want Mazie to come home and smell cat in the house.”

It wouldn’t have been ethical to take a pet into another pet’s home in any case, but it was thoughtful of Pete to consider how Mazie would feel. I told him I’d get Leo, aka Purr-C, and be there in half an hour.

I wished I had a chunk of cheese or an apple or at least some crackers. I rummaged around in my bag and found a box of breath mints and ate a few. They weren’t very nourishing, but they gave me something to chew.

At the Kitty Haven, I took the .38 and the Speed Loader from my pocket and stashed them in the glove box. With Vaught in custody, I didn’t have to go around armed like a vigilante. Besides, I don’t like to take a gun inside a gentle place like the Kitty Haven. I got one of my emergency cardboard cat carriers from the back of the Bronco and took it inside. Marge had gone to her own apartment in the back, and a nighttime assistant was lolling on a velour sofa in the front room with a few cats piled on her. The TV was on with the sound turned low, and the cats were as slow to take their eyes off the screen as the human.

I said, “Sorry to interrupt, but I’m here to pick up Leo.”

Disengaging herself from the limp cats, the young woman rose with feline grace.

“Last name?”

“His owner’s name was Halston, but Marge may have registered him under my name. I’m Dixie Hemingway.”

She looked at me with more interest. “I’ve heard of you.”

I swung the cat carrier. “I’m in a bit of a hurry, so I’ll settle up the charges with Marge later. I know where Leo is. Do you mind if I go on back and get him?”

She looked a little flustered at so much decisiveness in one sentence, but opened the door to the private cat rooms and followed me to Leo’s quarters.

Setting the open carrier on the floor, I said, “Good news, Leo. You’re going to a new home.”

I opened the screen door and lifted him, taking a moment to stroke him before I settled him in the carrier. He hunched low to the floor, looking up at me with suspicious eyes.

The attendant said, “He’s been very quiet. I think he’s sad.”

“He’ll be happier now.”

“His owner got killed, didn’t she?”

I gave her the look I give dogs who lift their legs on the furniture, and closed the cat carrier.

“Tell Marge I’ll stop by in the next few days and pay her.”

The attendant blushed, undoubtedly hoping I wouldn’t mention her tactless nosiness to Marge.

The cats in the velvety front room languidly flipped their tails as Leo and I went out the door. While Leo had considered his time there a jail sentence, the resident cats believed themselves in paradise. I know humans who feel one way or the other about their own situations.

It was almost eight when Leo and I got to Mazie’s house. While Leo waited in the Bronco, I rang the bell. Pete was slow getting to the door, and when he opened it his hair was standing upright as if he’d been in a whirlwind.

He said, “I’m just finishing up. Had a heck of a time getting the sheets on the bed. Those king-size mattresses are big as a circus ring.”

“Leo’s in the car. Can you use a hand?”

“Purr-C. No, no, I’m almost done. My bags are packed and in the car. I just have to gather up some last-minute things, get my saxophone, make a last check to be sure I haven’t forgotten anything.”

I said, “I’ll wait with Purr-C.” I was sort of looking forward to seeing how Leo would react when he found out his name had been changed.

“Dixie? Did you think to get food for him?”

I did a slow pivot to look at him. If he hadn’t looked so cute, with his white hair sticking up like a Smurf’s and his bramble eyebrows hovering above the kindest eyes in the world, I would have yelled at him. I’d been up since 4 A.M. with only a catnap in a hospital lounge, I’d driven over the Skyway Bridge to St. Petersburg, I’d shopped for supplies for Mazie, I’d been damn near attacked by a man who might be homicidal and who was definitely crazy, and I’d picked up Leo at the Kitty Haven, all without any food since nine o’clock in the morning, which was damn near twelve hours ago unless you counted the piddling little apple thing I’d eaten in the car on the way to St. Petersburg, a little apple thing I wished I had right then, and he wanted to know if I’d remembered to get cat food as well?

With what I thought was admirable mildness, I said, “No, Pete, I didn’t.”

“Well, I guess I can stop on the way home and get some. But I hate to leave him in the car by himself while I’m in the store, and I don’t want to take him home first and leave him by himself because he won’t know what’s going on. Do you think you could go pick up some things for him now? While I finish up inside? I’d go but I don’t know what brand to get. That’s one of the things I’ll have to learn.”