The Cat Sitter's Nine Lives (3 page)

I wadded the gauze up and gently dabbed it at the blood on Baldy’s head. He opened his eyes and looked around, checking out his new surroundings.

“It’s okay,” I said. “Help is on the way.”

He looked at me and frowned, and then groaned as he lifted his head off the sidewalk to see past me into the street.

I said, “Oh, no, sir, please don’t try to move.”

His frown disappeared, and again a strange smile played across his lips. I turned to see what he was looking at, but there was nothing but the row of cars stopped in the street. I could see the young girl that had rear-ended me pacing up and down the sidewalk, holding her cell phone to her ear and gesticulating wildly with her free hand, and just opposite us was the cranky old woman in the black Cadillac. She was staring at us with a look of utter disgust, as if Baldy had ruined her entire day by nearly getting himself killed.

Just then a pair of black boots stepped into my field of vision. They were almost knee height, shined to a glossy, mirrorlike finish with steel toes and thick rubber heels. I recognized them immediately. They were the same boots I’d worn every day for years—the boots of a Sarasota County sheriff’s deputy.

I looked up to find Deputy Jesse Morgan staring down at me over the frames of his mirrored sunglasses, which he’d slid partly down the bridge of his sharp nose. He had broad shoulders, a buzzed military-type haircut, and a lone diamond stud in his left ear. I knew him, not from having worked for the department—he joined the force after I left—but from several other unfortunate occasions when our paths had crossed. He’s about as fun as a bag of rats, but I respect him.

“Dixie,” he said, his lips pursed to one side.

I looked down at my cargo shorts, which were smeared with blood. There were red splotches all over my white T-shirt, my hands were covered in blood, and there were red streaks running up and down my arms and legs. I wasn’t sure what Deputy Morgan was thinking at that particular moment, but let’s just say this wasn’t the first time he’d found me kneeling over a listless, bloody body.

“Don’t look at me,” I said. “He was like this when I found him.”

2

I’ve never been a smoker. My grandfather smoked Camels, unfiltered. Sometimes he’d have several cigarettes going at the same time. He’d be sitting on the deck after dinner, listening to the waves roll in, his cigarette precariously balanced on the edge of the hand-painted clamshell ashtray I made for him in the fourth grade. He’d get up, stretch, and go inside to grab a beer. Then he’d forget what he’d gone inside for and settle down on the couch with an ice-cold Coke, light up another cigarette, and watch the Lawrence Welk show. Then he might leave that cigarette, wander into the kitchen to talk with my grandmother while she made dinner, and light up
another
cigarette.

It drove my grandmother bonkers, and it’s a wonder he didn’t burn the house down, but my point is I had lots and lots of opportunities to sneak a puff now and then. Only when I did, it felt like my throat was on fire and my lungs were about to explode right out of my chest. At school, all the cool girls gathered out behind the bleachers smoking cigarettes and talking about homework and boys. I desperately wanted to be part of that crowd, but I just couldn’t hack it.

Deputy Morgan had asked me to wait around a bit to answer a few more questions about the accident since the old woman in the Cadillac and the burly doctor had both gone on their merry way the first chance they’d gotten. Except for the young girl in the car behind me and the driver of the landscaping truck, who’d surprisingly come through without a scratch, I was the only witness.

I had pulled into a parking spot so the cops could get the emergency vehicles through, and now I was sitting on the hood of the Bronco and wishing I had a cigarette. My grandfather always said they calmed his nerves, and mine felt like they’d just been through an extra spin cycle at the Laundromat. Two near-miss crashes was one thing, but pulling a bloody man from a ticking time bomb was a whole other ball of fish or kettle of wax or whatever it’s called.

The firemen had doused Baldy’s convertible immediately after the explosion, and miraculously the landscaping truck hadn’t caught fire, which was a good thing for everyone involved since it would surely have exploded, too, and probably taken out half of Ocean Boulevard with it.

From my perch on the hood of the Bronco, I watched as the EMTs loaded Baldy into the ambulance while the firemen lumbered around like astronauts in their big yellow helmets and puffy protective clothing, oxygen tanks strapped to their backs.

They weren’t taking any chances with Baldy’s car. It took two of them to hold the hose steady while another directed the water all around its smoldering carcass, poking the hose inside all the wheel wells and under the cracks of the buckled hood, like a hygienist cleaning teeth at the dentist’s office.

Even though I knew my brother, Michael, was off duty, I was still keeping an eye out for him. He’s been known to go racing out of the house in the middle of the night to help his buddies kill a fire, or as Michael says, “put the wet stuff on the hot stuff.” Our father was a fireman, and so was his father before him, so when Michael joined the squad just out of college, firefighting was already programmed in his genes. He’s blond and blue-eyed like me, but with broad shoulders and muscled arms, kind of like those cover models on the romance magazines they sell at the grocery store.

I let out a little sigh of relief when I felt pretty confident he wasn’t showing up. Michael’s been taking care of me for as long as I can remember. Our father died in action, fighting a fire in an old abandoned warehouse north of the airport, and our mother was not exactly what you’d call a domestic goddess, so Michael tends to be pretty protective—you might even say overprotective. I’m sure the sight of me sitting on the hood of my car covered in blood would have sent him right over the edge.

Now that the ambulance had taken Baldy away and the fire was out, people were walking by on the sidewalk and gawking at me. I thought about how they always say the most beautiful people in the world are the ones who’ve experienced true tragedy and suffering. Of course, nobody was looking at me for my world-weary beauty. They were mesmerized by the sight of a bloody, blond-haired mess sitting on the hood of her car.

I looked down at my arms and legs and felt a little shock go through my body. Somehow I’d managed to block out the fact that I was smeared from head to toe with another man’s blood. At that moment the only thing that kept me from having a complete nervous breakdown was the promise that as soon as I’d answered whatever questions Deputy Morgan had for me, I’d make like a homing pigeon and head straight for my shower.

I’ve never been to Tibet or Jerusalem or any of those other places where people go to find inner peace or the meaning of life. Hell, I’ve never even crossed the Florida state line. I don’t need to. The shower is my own personal mecca. There’s nothing like a strong, steady stream of hot water to make you feel like you’re a fully enlightened deity. For now, though, some old towels and a bottle of rubbing alcohol would have to do the trick.

I slid off the hood and went around to the back and opened up the cargo door. I keep a big plastic cat carrier and two old canvas tote bags back there. One has some extra leashes, a few collars of varying sizes, a Baggie full of bacon-flavored treats, some chewed-up Frisbees, a couple of peacock feathers, and a collection of collapsible food bowls. The other has a fresh supply of clean towels, which come in handy for lining cat carriers or drying off a wet dog, and they’re good for keeping fur off upholstery, too.

I don’t like a messy car. In my book, your mind is only as clean as your car, so I keep the Bronco as spotless as the day we drove it off the lot. Back then, I kept the back fully stocked with paper napkins, baby wipes, goldfish crackers, and juice boxes … but that was a whole other life.

I pulled a bottle of rubbing alcohol out of my backpack and unscrewed the lid. Then I took one of the towels out and folded it into a square. I doused one side of it with alcohol and then, humming along to myself as if it were the most normal thing in the world, wiped the towel up and down first my right leg and then my left. I’d planned on averting my eyes so I wouldn’t have to see exactly how much blood there was, but I couldn’t help myself. In no time at all, the towel looked like a red tie-dyed T-shirt an aging hippie might wear to a Grateful Dead reunion concert.

I folded it over, dabbed a little more alcohol on the clean side, and then ran it up and down my hands and forearms. It looked like I’d gotten it all, but just to be on the safe side, I took another towel out of the tote bag and did the whole thing over again.

Feeling a little more civilized, if not completely sanitized, I stuffed the stained towels down into a plastic bag, closed up the back of the car, and returned to my spot on the hood to watch the sun set over the proceedings. I could see patches of the ocean between the shops and buildings on the Gulf side of the street. It was turning a deep indigo blue, and reaching up all along the horizon were vast fields of cadmium and scarlet, all shot through with glowing slivers of white clouds, like undulating seams in the fabric of the sky.

Just when I was thinking I’d probably have to sit on the hood of my car all night long waiting for Deputy Morgan, he came peacocking across the road, his tool belt weighted down with all the accoutrements of a sworn officer of the law: flashlight, handcuffs, department-issue pistol, billy club, digital recorder. He had that smug cop-strut down to a tee. I should know. I used to have a smug cop-strut of my own.

“Fancy meeting you here,” he said as he leaned his hip against the hood and pulled out his report pad.

I nodded. “Yep.”

Morgan and I have a pretty long history of encounters at crime scenes, largely due to the fact that I seem to have a knack for getting myself involved in all kinds of things I shouldn’t. Granted, my job puts me in lots of places where most people would never be: alone in strangers’ homes with their pets, in all kinds of neighborhoods, at all hours of the day and night. Plus, it’s a small town. Naturally if anything exciting is happening, the odds of my being somewhere in the vicinity are probably higher than the average Joe’s. Still, drama seems to track me down like a chump-seeking missile.

Morgan flipped his report pad open and clicked his ballpoint pen, which he somehow managed to do with an impressive amount of attitude, and cocked his head at me. “So, tell me what happened.”

I told him all about Baldy (who hadn’t been carrying a driver’s license or any other ID, so I’d just have to go on calling him Baldy) and how he had been in a huge hurry, how he’d flashed his lights at me and then swerved into the oncoming lane, and how the next thing I knew he was wrapped around the front of that landscaping truck, and how the burly doctor had helped me pull him out before his car exploded.

“So how long would you say he was behind you before he went around?”

“Probably less than a block. It all happened pretty fast. Wherever he was going he was in a big hurry to get there.”

“Well, he’s lucky he didn’t kill somebody. Do you remember how fast you were driving?”

“Yeah, because I had specifically slowed down to the speed limit when I realized he was tailgating me.”

Morgan raised an eyebrow. “You
slowed down
to the speed limit?”

I gulped. The last thing I needed right now was a speeding ticket.

He made a note in his pad. “And just how fast were you going before you
slowed down
to the speed limit?”

At that moment, the thought flashed across my mind that if I hadn’t let Baldy pass, this whole thing might have been avoided entirely. If I hadn’t been so nice, he would have been stuck behind me and forced to drive the speed limit—more or less. I might have disrupted the whole chain of events, the whole time-space continuum or whatever. For some reason, that, plus the thought of getting a speeding ticket on top of everything else, made something in me go
snap.

I jumped off the hood of the Bronco and started waving my hands around in front of Morgan’s face like a conductor. “Are you kidding me? There is no way in hell you’re giving me a speeding ticket! I just pulled a guy out of a burning vehicle. I’m covered in blood. I almost got blown to smithereens. You should be giving me a goddamn medal, not a stupid traffic citation!”

Morgan stared down at me for a couple of seconds and then burst out laughing. “Aww, come on, Dixie! How long have we known each other? You really think I was gonna give you a speeding ticket?”

He flipped his report pad closed with a wink and sauntered off toward his patrol car. I could hear him chuckling as he walked away, and then he called over his shoulder, “You gotta lighten up, babe. Take a vacation or something.”

I could feel my cheeks burning, and for a moment I considered taking off one of my shoes and throwing it at the back of his head, but I figured I’d better not press my luck. Also, I couldn’t remember ever seeing Morgan smile, much less chuckle. Either he was going soft as he got older, or he didn’t take me to be the stark-raving madwoman that I just assumed everyone at the sheriff’s department thought I was. It actually felt good to joke around with one of the deputies. It felt like old times, even if I was the butt of the joke.

I got in the front seat of the Bronco and sighed. Except for a catnap in the middle of the day, I’d been up since five in the morning, and my head felt like it weighed a hundred pounds. The roadblocks were still up, and it didn’t look like they were clearing them out anytime soon. What remained of Baldy’s convertible was sitting in the middle of the road, and probably the landscape truck would have to be towed away, too. I was thinking I’d have to ask the cops to move the barricades so I could go home, but I knew they already had their hands full and I didn’t want to get in their way.

Just then I looked up and saw a familiar sign on the front of one of the shops up the street. It read
BEEZY’S BOOKSTORE—NEW AND USED.