The Cat Sitter’s Cradle (9 page)

Hugging always makes me think of my grandmother. She was quick to give me a smack
on the butt when I deserved it, but whenever I needed a little tender loving care,
she was just as quick to snatch me up in her arms and hug me back to myself.

There’s no better medicine than that.

8

Tanisha is the Martha Stewart of biscuits. I don’t know what kind of magic she works
back there in her kitchen, but her biscuits have a special power over me. They’re
the second-most-delicious thing in the world, the first being her bacon. As Tanisha
puts it, “So good you wanna smack yo momma!” I eat one of her biscuits just about
every day of my life, but I only allow myself bacon on very special occasions. I was
sitting in my regular booth at the diner, thinking about ordering another biscuit,
when Judy put a side of bacon down on the table and said, “Well?”

“Well wuth?” I asked, my mouth full of biscuity goodness.

“Oh, please. You don’t order bacon unless there’s something big happening. What is
it?”

I sighed. Judy could read me like a book. “I’m just a little nervous is all. There’s
a lot going on.”

She slipped her notepad in her apron and sat down opposite me. “Let’s hear it.”

I sighed. “Okay, but you can’t tell a living soul.”

“Got it.”

“Okay. So yesterday morning, right around sunrise, I was walking along the nature
preserve with Rufus and we ran into Joyce Metzger, she was—”

Judy interrupted. “Whoa, whoa, whoa, slow down there, Don Juanita. Who is this Rufus
and what were you doing with him at sunrise?”

“Rufus is a dog! He’s one of my clients, I was walking him.”

She looked disappointed. “Oh. Okay, go on.”

“We found a woman in the bushes. She had just delivered a baby.”

Judy’s jaw fell wide open.

I said, “I know. A young girl, eighteen or nineteen. She doesn’t speak English, and
I’m pretty sure she’s here illegally.”

“What the hell?”

“Yep, that’s how my day started yesterday.”

“Was she okay? What about the baby?”

“They were both fine, considering what they’d been through, but she was terrified,
and she didn’t want to go to the hospital. She was living in a cardboard box hidden
in the brush, so … we took her to Joyce’s. She’s there now.”

Judy’s eyes widened. “She’s homeless?”

“Well, technically, not anymore.”

Judy cocked her head to one side. “Wait a minute. This was yesterday?”

“Yep.”

“Yesterday, at sunrise?”

I nodded as I slid the plate of bacon over in front of me.

She slid it back. “But you were here yesterday after that, and you didn’t order bacon.
What happened between then and now?”

Tanisha’s big round face appeared in the kitchen window, and she rang the pickup bell
on the counter.

I grinned. “You’ve got an order ready.”

“Oh, dammit to hell. You’re not getting off that easy. I’ll be back.”

She slid out of the booth and went scurrying back to the kitchen. I reached over and
delicately picked up a slice of Tanisha’s bacon. She had cooked it exactly the way
I like: extra crispy, with no yucky white spots. I was taking my first glorious bite
of it when Ethan Crane walked in the door.

With his long, wide-shouldered body in a dark pin-striped suit, thick black hair falling
over the collar of a baby blue dress shirt, he could have been on the runway of an
international fashion show. As he strode down the aisle toward me, an estrogen-induced
hush descended on the room and the dopamine level of every female in the diner bumped
up a little bit. A woman across the aisle from me froze with her mouth open and squirted
lemon juice in her coffee.

Ethan has that effect on women.

He said, “I thought I might find you here.”

“Have a seat,” I said, dabbing a napkin at my lips just in case they were coated with
grease and biscuit crumbs. “I’m glad you found me.”

He grinned. “Me too.”

“I actually have a question for you.”

Judy appeared with a cup of coffee and silverware rolled in a napkin. As she laid
them on the table, Ethan said, “Were you wondering which restaurant we’re going to
Friday night?”

Judy shot me a sly look and then turned to Ethan. “Can I get you anything, sir?”

“Not for me. I just stopped by on my way to work, thanks,” he said.

“Oh, you’re welcome, sir.” She turned to me and arched her eyebrows comically. “And
for the young lady?”

“Nope, I’m good.”

“Another platter of bacon?”

“No. Thank you,” I said.

She smiled sweetly at Ethan and shrugged her shoulders. “Alright then, just the one
today.”

On her way back to the kitchen she looked over her shoulder and mouthed
Oh my God!
at me. I had to pinch the inside of my arm to keep from giggling out loud. Ethan
didn’t even seem to notice. He was probably accustomed to women acting like complete
and utter fools around him.

I said, “First I have a kind of legal question for you.”

“Okay, shoot.”

“Well, I have a friend who recently had a baby. Well, it’s not my friend that had
the baby, but she knows somebody who had a baby and this friend is sort of homeless,
so she’s letting her stay in her house and helping her out until she can get back
on her feet. But the thing is, this girl, the one that had the baby … well, she’s
an illegal immigrant, or I’m pretty sure she is. So here’s the question: Is my friend
doing anything against the law?”

Ethan listened intently, sitting forward with his fingers laced together. I could
feel myself getting a little lost in his eyes, and the insides of my palms were getting
sweaty.

He said, “Well, does your friend live in Arizona?”

“No.”

“Alabama?”

“No, she lives here in Sarasota.”

“Then she’s perfectly fine. In Florida, it’s not against the law to offer help to
a fellow human being, no matter what their legal status. Next question.”

I smiled. Any other man would have wanted to know more. I had expected to get a stern
warning and a lecture about getting involved in other people’s business or fraternizing
with criminals. But not Ethan, he just sat there, ready for whatever was next, like
a puppy waiting for a treat. I liked that he trusted me, that he thought I was smart
enough not to go around getting involved in things I shouldn’t. Stupid man.

“Was there anything else you wanted to know? Anything at all?”

I laughed. “Yes, that was going to be my next question. Where are we having dinner
Friday night?”

He grinned. “It’s called Yolanda. It’s just next to the bookstore, where the old bakery
used to be. You sure you don’t want me to pick you up?”

“No, no, it’s fine. I’ll see you there at eight.”

“Sounds good.”

“And it’s kind of dressy. So … you know. Dress up.”

I rolled my eyes. “Yeah, I think I know what the word ‘dressy’ means.”

He touched my hand briefly as he stood up. “I’m looking forward to it.”

“Me too.”

I surprised myself, because I meant it. He looked at me for a second before he turned
to go, and the little hairs on my neck stood up and I could feel myself getting lost
in his eyes again. If I was going to start spending more time with this man, I’d have
to come up with some tricks to stay in focus, like counting backward or reciting the
state capitals.

I watched him cross the street at the corner and then head uptown to his office. I
tucked a twenty-dollar bill under my coffee cup, and while Judy was busy clearing
off a table at the other end of the diner, I snuck out the front door. That was a
rotten thing to do on my part, but I knew she was going to ask if Ethan and I were
getting serious, and I did not want to know the answer.…

Joyce opened the door with a smile. “
Buenos días!
Corina’s teaching me Spanish, and I’m teaching her English. Come on in, we’re all
ready to go to the doctor. Oh, and by the way, Corina has a new friend.”

I followed Joyce into the living room, where Corina was sitting on the couch. The
baby was sleeping soundly on her lap, swaddled in a pink blanket, and Henry the VIII
was dozing on the couch next to her. Perched on Corina’s shoulder, just as happy as
could be, was the resplendent quetzal.

Apparently, Corina had a way with birds. Joyce explained it had only taken Corina
a couple of hours to get the bird to eat fruit out of her hand, and now it followed
her around everywhere she went.

Corina smiled proudly and said, “Hello, Dixie. How are you today?”

I said, “I am
muy bueno
! How is the baby?”

“The baby is very good. I am happy we go to the doctor.”

I sat down next to her, and the bird hopped around behind her neck to the opposite
shoulder.

I cooed at the baby, “Your mama’s English is very good!”

Corina nodded at Joyce. “Joyce is my teacher.”

Joyce beamed at her. I could tell these two were going to become good friends. Their
lives could not have been more different, but it’s amazing how people can be drawn
together in the strangest of circumstances.

Joyce said, “We were wondering if you might be able to take René to see your vet friend.”

I said, “René?”

“Oh, the bird! It was Corina’s idea. Dixie, did you know that Kermit the Frog is called
René in Spain?”

I shook my head.

“Well, he is. Corina told me. So that’s what we named the bird, because of his green
feathers like Kermit.”

I turned to Corina. “You’re from Spain?”

She nodded and smiled nervously. “Yes, Spain.”

I had just assumed Corina was one of the tens of thousands of people that flee Cuba
every year, literally risking their lives to get to American soil. If they have the
money, they’ll take a plane to Mexico and then try to come into the country from there,
but more often they’ll hire a smuggler to ferry them across the stretch of ocean between
Cuba and Florida’s southernmost beaches. It’s expensive, though, and in a country
like Cuba most people don’t walk around with a lot of cash in their pockets. The only
other way is by boat, raft, dinghy, or anything else that floats. It’s a hundred miles
from the coast of Cuba to Florida, but people have been known to set out on an inner
tube if that’s all they can get their hands on.

Of course, it was entirely possible that Corina was lying. If she had crossed the
ocean on a smuggler’s boat, she might have tried to escape without paying the smuggler’s
fee, which would explain the cash in her purse, and there’d be some very nasty people
looking for her. Plus, Cuban immigrants are blamed for nearly every ill in the state
of Florida, from the shortage of jobs to limited housing to the shortage of fresh
water, so either way she’d be smart to make up a story about where she was from.

I usually know when someone is lying. Sometimes I can tell by the way a person looks
to one side while they’re talking, or maybe they blink a couple times more than normal.
It’s a skill I picked up at an early age. Whether my mother was drinking or not, what
came out of her mouth was sometimes the truth, or a jumbled version of it, and sometimes
it was just outright lies, so I got pretty good at recognizing the difference. It
was hard to tell with Corina. I didn’t think she was lying exactly, and it might just
have been the language barrier, but something didn’t seem quite right, like she was
hiding some part of herself from me.

I helped them out to Joyce’s station wagon, and Corina lowered the still-sleeping
baby down into the car seat. It took nearly all of my brain cells operating at full
capacity to remember how to decipher all of its belts and straps and buckles. While
we were trying different combinations, the baby opened its eyes and squinted at me.

Joyce said, “This is going to be Dixie Joyce’s first ride in a car!”

I rolled my eyes. “Joyce, don’t call her that.”

She and Corina exchanged smiles. “Until Corina tells me different, that baby’s name
is Dixie Joyce.”

When we finally had the seat figured out, Joyce started the car while Corina slid
into the back next to the baby. I walked around and tapped on Joyce’s window, and
she rolled it down.

Speaking low so Corina wouldn’t hear, I said, “I’ll split the cost with you.”

“No,” Joyce said. “You already paid for all the baby stuff, I’ll get it.”

“That was nothing compared to what this will be. I’ll pay half.”

“I pay,” Corina said.

She was looking down at the baby, which had fallen back to sleep. There was a distant
look in her eye, but her voice was steady. Joyce and I both looked back at her.

“I have money,” she said. “I pay.”

For a brief moment we both nodded dumbly, as though it were perfectly reasonable that
a person who’d been living in a cardboard box in the woods yesterday could easily
afford to pay an expensive pediatrician bill today.

Joyce said, “Well, that’s settled.”

I watched them back out of the driveway. Joyce and Corina both waved as the car pulled
around and headed up the street.

I didn’t know what to think. Neither of us had wanted Corina to know that we’d seen
the money in her purse, because that would only have destroyed the trust she was beginning
to have in us. But I was worried. I was worried about who that money was for. If there
was somebody out there looking for it, what would they do to Corina when they found
it? Or me? Or Joyce?

Sooner or later, we’d have to get the real story out of Corina. If we were going to
help her, we’d need to know exactly where she was from and why she had so much money.
I cringed to think what could have been so horrible in her home country, wherever
it was, that would drive her to run away, and with a baby due any minute. I decided
I’d ask Paco. He speaks Spanish fluently, and I knew he’d want to help.

I carried René out to my Bronco and put him in the back, wedging some rolled towels
around the cage so it wouldn’t rattle around too much on the drive over to the veterinarian’s.
Normally I would never show up without an appointment, but I wanted to see the look
on Dr. Layton’s face when I showed up with a creature as exotic as this.