The Cat Sitter's Nine Lives (5 page)

“Huh,” I muttered to myself. “I think I’ll take this one.”

The old man had just locked the front door and was shuffling around to the front counter. “That didn’t take very long, did it?”

I marched back up to the front of the store and slid the book across the counter with a proud grin. “Sold!”

He looked down at the book and then back at me.

I said, “I didn’t see a price on it, but it’s perfect. I’m a pet sitter, and my brother is a big-time gardener.”

I slipped my backpack off my shoulder and plopped it down on the counter, but the old man’s rosy complexion seemed to have faded a shade paler. He was just staring at me.

I said, “Uh-oh. Is it expensive?”

He picked the book up and turned it over, studying it carefully. “Well … to be honest with you, this one just came in, and I haven’t had a chance to price it yet…”

I wondered how hard it could be to decide on a price for one book, but it did look rather old, and maybe he needed to do some research before he sold it. For all I knew it was a priceless antique.

I said, “I guess I could always come back in the morning…”

He scratched his head, and I noticed his hands were trembling slightly. “No, that would be silly. There’s no point in making two trips. Why don’t we say ten dollars?”

“Whew!” I said and stuck my hands down in my bag. “I was afraid you were about to tell me it was some rare, first-edition masterpiece and ask me for a thousand dollars.”

He smiled. “Well, it may very well be, but you seem to be a nice young woman, and what would I do with a thousand dollars? It’s more important that it find a good home.”

I thought,
That, in a nutshell, is exactly what’s wrong with most bookstores today.
They feel like giant, sterile farming facilities, not loving foster homes where books are tenderly cared for until they’re matched with their one true owner. It was clear this eccentric old gentleman wasn’t here to make a fortune. He was one of the breed of bookstore owners who are in it for the pure and unadulterated love of books, plain and simple.

As I searched through my backpack for my checkbook, I said, “Sorry, I keep so much stuff in here that it sometimes gets a little out of control.”

He was scratching his head, looking around behind the counter as if he’d never been there before. “That’s quite alright, my dear. I seem to be out of bags. I’ll go and fetch one from the back.”

On the wall behind the counter were more pen-and-ink drawings. One was of a little boy playing the violin, and there was another of a line of leafless trees along the top of a rolling hillside.

I said, “By the way, who’s the artist?”

He looked up at the drawings and said meekly, “Oh my. I suppose that’s me.”

“So you’re L. Hoskins?”

He nodded shyly. “I am.”

“They’re beautiful. I can’t wait to come back and look more closely. The one of the young woman with the little kitten in her lap is my favorite so far.”

His cheeks flushed pink as he waved his hand dismissively and headed to the back office with my book.

I decided right then and there that I’d make it a regular part of my week to stop in and pay Mr. Hoskins a visit. I felt an immediate bond with him that I couldn’t quite explain. I wondered if he’d have a problem with me squirreling away under the big claw-foot table with my own private stash of books-to-read.

Meanwhile, my checkbook was nowhere to be found. I’m embarrassed to admit that I don’t keep my backpack quite as neat and tidy as my car, which probably means it’s a more accurate representation of what’s going on inside my head. While Mr. Hoskins was in the back with my book, I took the opportunity to employ the only surefire method I know of finding anything in there: I dumped the entire contents of the main compartment out on top of the counter.

I rustled through the pile like a cat clawing through its litter box. There were my car keys, an address book, a metal tin of peppermints, a hairbrush, some biodegradable poop bags, two tubes of Burt’s Bees tinted lip gloss, a Luna protein bar, my client keys that I keep on a big chatelaine, two black ballpoint pens, some foil gum wrappers, several small plastic bags of unidentified junk, and various other detritus I had accumulated since the last time I’d cleaned my backpack out, which was never.

Finally, peeking out from under a pack of tissues at the bottom of the pile was my checkbook. I held it between my teeth while I put the top of my bag up against the edge of the counter and scooped everything back in like one of those mechanical arms that clears all the pins away at the bowling alley.

I wrote the check out for ten dollars, payable to Beezy’s Bookstore, and slid it across the counter next to the register. Just beyond that was a big glass bowl with what were probably chocolate-covered cherries, four or five of them, each individually wrapped in silver foil with red stripes. I had recently sworn off two of my favorite things in the world: one of them being bacon, and the other being chocolate.

Fat hips be damned,
I thought to myself.

I’d barely eaten lunch, and even if dinner wasn’t that far around the corner, I told myself it wouldn’t kill me to have just one teeny, tiny chocolate-covered cherry. The bowl was a little out of reach, which probably meant they weren’t exactly intended for customers, but I blocked that thought out.

I was just about to take one when Mr. Hoskins appeared with my book. He had already wrapped it in a crisp paper bag, tied with a piece of twine in a neat bow.

A little sheepishly I said, “You caught me red-handed. I was just about to sneak one of your candies.”

He smiled. “No need to sneak, my dear. If you knew me better, you’d know I eat every chocolate in that bowl before I close up for the day, so you’d only be doing me a favor. I’m taking a trip soon, so they’ll just go to waste otherwise.”

I hesitated. “Well, this is probably too much information, but I have a new boyfriend, so I’ve sworn off sugar and fat.”

“Ah,” Mr. Hoskins said with a twinkle in his eye. “Just one can’t hurt.”

I couldn’t have agreed more, except choosing just one was sheer agony. My fingers hovered over the bowl as if my life were in the balance. I settled on one in the middle and cupped it in my hand as if it were a precious, fragile treasure—which of course it was.

I said, “I’ve never admitted this to anyone, but I have a weakness for chocolate. If I could get away with it I’d eat it every meal.”

“Well,” he said as he handed me the book and opened the door, “not to worry. We all have our weaknesses. I hope you’ll enjoy both your chocolate and your book in equal measure.”

He gave me a little wave and a nod as the door closed behind me. I checked out the stack of dictionaries in the corner of the window display, fully expecting to see Cosmo lounging over the top of it, but he wasn’t there. He probably had lots of secret hiding places all over the shop.

Luckily, the barricades were gone now and cars were moving slowly through the street, but there were still flashing lights up where the accident had happened. The cherry red convertible was gone, but now there was a big flatbed tow truck maneuvering into position in front of the landscaping truck, and the three towering palm trees had been moved onto the sidewalk. They looked like alien visitors from another planet sitting there in their giant burlap-balled bases.

As I made my way down the sidewalk, despite everything that had happened in the past couple of hours, I felt good. Maybe it was the rush of adrenaline from being in a car crash, or from pulling a man from a burning car, or the delicious, soul-satisfying chocolate-covered cherry melting in my mouth, but I think more than anything it was returning to a place where I’d been so happy as a child, when I didn’t have a care in the world and life was simple. Before things went all haywire.

I practically skipped to the Bronco, which probably looked a little odd to the emergency crews, but I didn’t care. I took off Ethan’s black hoodie and tossed it in the back and then carefully laid my new purchase, all crisp and new in its paper wrapping and twine bow, down on the passenger seat next to me.

Looking at it, I felt a small part of my heart open up. It was that feeling I’d had as a child whenever I got a new book. I couldn’t wait to get home and crack it open. A jolt of excitement went through me as I imagined the moment I’d get to step into its secret world.

Little did I know then … I already had.

4

As I passed all the hotels and bungalows along Siesta Key Beach, I started thinking that maybe I’d misinterpreted the little surge of excitement I’d felt at the prospect of diving into a new book. It must have just been a little post-tramautic adrenaline, because my whole body was starting to tighten up and my neck was tingling. By the time I reached Midnight Pass Road, my shoulders felt as if they were each holding up a ten-pound bag of sugar.

Great,
I thought.
Whiplash.

I’d probably jolted my neck when the pink VW bonked into my rear bumper, and then carrying Baldy around probably hadn’t helped matters any. All the more reason to take a good long hot shower as soon as I got home. I stepped on the gas. After my performance with Deputy Morgan I figured I was temporarily immune to speeding tickets.

All the way down Midnight Pass I couldn’t stop thinking about Baldy—how he had looked up at me with that strange smile on his face and said, “Safe.” Just the fact that he had to ask me if he was even alive kind of broke my heart. At that point he must have thought he’d died and gone to heaven, and I’m sure all those pain-blocking endorphins coursing through his bloodstream felt pretty darn heavenly.

I wondered if maybe he hadn’t recognized me from before when he sped past. Maybe he was smiling at the irony of it all. Maybe it was his way of saying, “You’re right, I
am
a jackass. Sorry for the trouble.”

I pulled into the curving lane that leads down to the place I’ve called home for about as long as I can remember. The sound the crushed shell made as the wheels rolled over it actually made my shoulders relax a bit. I hear that sound every single day. It means home to me, just as much as the sound of the waves lapping up on the beach down below the house. My headlights lit up the tangle of pines, mossy oaks, sea grapes, and palms on either side of the lane, and after a couple of twists and turns, I pulled into the courtyard.

Most of the houses along this stretch of the key are sprawling, multimillion-dollar mansions filled with movie idols and star athletes, but ours came right out of the Sears, Roebuck catalog. My grandparents picked it while they were still newlyweds and dreamed of finding the right spot to build one day. Then, a couple of years after my mother was born, my grandfather was in Florida on business, and a co-worker took him on a tour of Siesta Key. When he returned home, he presented my grandmother with a brand-new deed to a piece of land on the edge of the Gulf. She nearly divorced him, but he persuaded her to come down and have a look herself. They stood on the future spot of their dream home and watched the sky turn gold as the sun settled into the ocean. My grandmother always said that buying this land was the smartest decision she ever made, and my grandfather would nod at me and wink.

It’s a simple, two-story frame house with white siding, weathered a milky gray from years in the sun and salty air. After my grandparents passed away, my brother moved in with his partner, Paco, and our cat, Ella Fitzgerald. I live above the four-slot carport next to the house in the apartment our grandfather built for relatives to stay in when they visited from up north.

It has a balcony with a hammock and a little glass-topped breakfast table, and French doors that open into a small living space with a sofa and a big, comfy armchair. A breakfast bar divides the living area from the kitchen, and then there’s a short hallway that goes back to my bedroom. There’s a bathroom on one side of the hall and an alcove with a washer and dryer on the other, and I have a big walk-in closet with room for a desk, which is where I take care of all my pet-sitting business. It’s small, but it suits me fine.

Today, the house and the apartment aren’t worth a hill of coconuts, but the land they’re sitting on … well, that’s a whole other story. We could all retire and travel like queens all over the world on the money we’d get for it. We’ll never sell, though. It’s practically a member of the family now.

As I rolled past the courtyard, I noticed Michael and Paco were out on the deck laying fish and sliced vegetables on the grill. I was happy to see them—not every girl gets to come home to a couple of shirtless hunks making her a gourmet dinner, but also, our schedules don’t always line up so great. Michael works twenty-four/forty-eight at the firehouse, which means he’s at the station one full day and then off for two days. Paco is an agent with the Special Investigative Bureau, which means his schedule, not to mention his job, is a complete mystery to all of us. He’s sometimes gone for days on end, working undercover.

I pulled into the carport to find Ella Fitzgerald perched on the hood of Paco’s pickup. She was licking one white paw and daintily drawing it over her left ear. When she saw me, she stretched herself into a scary Halloween cat and let out a little
nik-nik
sound to signal that she would very much appreciate it if I would be so kind as to come over and give her a couple of scritches behind the ears.

Ella is a pure calico-Persian mix, with alternating patches of red, black, and white fur. She was a gift to me, but it didn’t take her long to figure out that all the good stuff is in Michael’s kitchen—in addition to being a first-class fireman, he’s a world-class cook—so she spends most of her time there. I still think of her as mine, though. I learned a long time ago that just because you love something doesn’t mean you get to keep it forever.

I shut off the ignition and planned my course of action. If I played my cards right, I could slip past the boys, hide my bloody clothes, take a quick shower, and get back down for dinner in a cat’s pounce. Not that I get some sort of thrill sneaking around behind their backs, but I didn’t think it would do Michael any good to see me looking like a bit player from
Dawn of the Living Dead.
He has enough on his plate as it is, and being my older brother hasn’t exactly been a tiptoe through the tulips, so whenever I can I try to spare him the bloody details, so to speak. Although the thought did cross my mind that he’d be pretty proud to find out I’d practically saved a man’s life.