The Cat Sitter’s Pajamas (11 page)

As always, I stopped first at Tom Hale’s condo, where Billy Elliot was aquiver with excitement in the dark foyer. I used my key, whispered a quick hello to him, got his leash from the foyer closet, and we were out the door in seconds, Billy’s tail like a helicopter rotor of anticipation. He feels about his morning run the way caffeine addicts feel about their first cup of coffee.

At that hour, Billy and I pretty much had the parking lot’s oval track to ourselves. The only other dog was an overweight basset hound leading an equally overweight man who wore pull-on knee supports on each leg and listed side to side like a ship in an uneven sea. Billy and I sped past man and hound. I nodded and smiled at them in a friendly good-morning way, but Billy’s grin had a more disdainful look.

Tom was still asleep when Billy and I went back upstairs. Billy was calm and happy, I was still panting a little bit. I replaced his leash in the foyer closet, smooched the top of his head, and left him looking like a pampered athlete who knew his trainer would soon appear with a postexercise serving of protein.

The rest of my morning calls went smoothly. I walked a fluffy white bichon frise whose human had broken an ankle by stepping in the pool skimmer while she was emptying the basket. The bichon was polite during our walk but eager to return to her human. I fed and walked two miniature dachshunds whose human had gone to Orlando for the day. They were also polite but kept giving each other raised eyebrows because I didn’t do things exactly the way their human did them. I fed and cleaned the cage of a parakeet whose human was out of town for a week. The parakeet was muttering to itself when I left, and I had a feeling it was counting the hours until its human would return. I didn’t take it personally. We all like things to stay the same.

The rest of my calls were to cats, all of whom pretended not to miss their humans one iota. Cats are like that. I think it’s because they give their hearts so completely to their humans that they feel embarrassed about it. To cover the fact that they’re more sentimental than the gooiest Hallmark card, they put on a big show of indifference.

Most of the morning’s cat clients remembered me from earlier times, so they tolerated me without fearing they’d been abandoned by the ones they loved. The new ones accepted my food and my grooming with wary appreciation. It takes a cat a while to trust a new person. I’m that way myself, so I don’t take offense.

Midway through the morning, Sergeant Owens called to give me the go-ahead on having the crime-scene cleaners go to the Trillins’ house.

I said, “Do you have an identification for the murdered woman yet?”

He said, “As I recall you’re usually at the Village Diner around ten o’clock.”

I hate it when people answer a question with another implied question. Besides, I didn’t like him implying that I was the kind of person whose routine was so rigid that the entire sheriff’s department knew it. But like it or not, I had to agree that I could usually be found slurping coffee every morning at the Village Diner around ten.

He said, “An investigator working on the homicide will probably stop by while you’re there. He wants to talk to you about what you saw yesterday.”

“Your new homicide detective?”

Owns cleared his throat, mumbled something to somebody else, and said, “Gotta go, Dixie.”

He clicked off and left me with the uneasy awareness that he had avoided answering both my questions. Owens wasn’t the kind of man to get touchy about a delay in identifying a homicide victim. Furthermore, I doubted that Owens would be uncomfortable talking to me about the detective who had replaced Guidry. Which meant that what I’d suspected was true. The department knew who the woman was, but they had some reason for not releasing the information.

But when I considered all the international attention the murder had attracted, I could understand why the sheriff’s department might be reluctant to share details with the world. Especially if they were afraid their new homicide detective wasn’t up to the job.

I called the crime-scene cleanup guy, who said the timing was great because his team could start work immediately.

I said, “When can the owners come home?”

“Depends on whether we have to replace the tile. If the tile’s not contaminated, they
could
come back tonight. If it was me, I’d wait until tomorrow morning to let the odor of ozone and germicide spray dissipate.”

“They have cats.”

“Cats for sure will hate the smell. And, like I said, I won’t know until I see it if we’ll have to replace the tile. Check with me this afternoon and I’ll be able to tell you more.”

My next call was to the Ritz-Carlton, where I booked a suite for Cupcake and Jancey. Making hotel reservations for clients isn’t my job as a pet sitter, but in this case I did it for the same reason I’d taken Elvis and Lucy to the Kitty Haven—I knew Cupcake and Jancey were too shocked and stressed to make arrangements for themselves.

At about nine forty-five, I pulled my Bronco into the Village Diner’s parking strip. None of the other cars there looked like the unmarked sedans driven by Sarasota County detectives. Inside the diner, I waved to Judy, the waitress who’s been there forever, and headed for the ladies’ room. I knew Judy would alert Tanisha, the diner’s cook, that I was there, and that Tanisha would get on my regular order and have it ready by the time I took a seat in my regular booth. Like I said, I’m so predictable it’s downright pathetic.

I took a little extra time in the ladies’ room. In addition to washing off all noticeable cat hair, I splashed water on my face, combed my hair, and redid the ponytail. I slicked on lip gloss, too, and eyed myself with extra care to make sure I looked presentable. I looked okay. With my Scandinavian ancestors, I have a kind of blue-eyed, blond, Jennifer-Aniston-girl-next-door-look. Not a raving beauty, but okay.

Judy had already poured a mug of coffee for me, and she set my breakfast down as I slid into my booth. Judy is tall and angular, with hazel eyes that hide hurt under defiance. She’s one of my best friends, but we never go to movies or talk on the phone or do any of the things most friends do. Instead, we give each other little bits of gossip and an occasional intimacy at the diner. I know all about the good-for-nothing men who’ve taken advantage of her over the years, and she knows about Todd and Christy dying and about Guidry leaving. Judy thought I was an idiot for letting Guidry leave without me, and she thought it was her duty as a friend to point out my idiocy every chance she got.

She said, “Missed you yesterday.”

I said, “Yeah, I had to be somewhere else.”

She waited for more, but I just gave her a big smile.

I said, “Just so you won’t think I’m having a wild love life if you see me with a man, I’m supposed to meet a detective here this morning.”

She raised an eyebrow. “You getting mixed up in another murder?”

I shook my head. “It’s just a formality. I was in the neighborhood. That kind of thing.”

“Uh-huh. Well, I’ll watch, and if a cop comes in, I’ll send him to you.”

She swayed her hips more than necessary as she walked away, sort of telling me she thought a wild love life would be better than an in-the-neighborhood kind of talk with a new detective.

Almost every day of my life, I have the same breakfast—two eggs over easy, extra-crispy home fries, and a biscuit. Tanisha does the best biscuits in the world. I was buttering my biscuit when Ethan Crane walked in the diner door. With his tall, wide-shouldered body in a dark pinstripe suit, stark black hair brushing the collar of a pale lavender shirt, he could have been on the cover of a romance novel. Maybe it was just because I liked to believe it was so, but the way his dark eyebrows rose in surprise when he saw me looked phony, the way people pretend to be surprised when friends jump out and yell, “Surprise!” when they’ve known all along that a surprise party was planned for them.

The estrogen level in the diner rose like fog as he walked toward me. My knife slipped so I sort of buttered my thumb instead of my biscuit. A woman across the aisle froze with her mouth open and her fork poised in midair with cheese grits dripping off it. Behind his back, Judy fanned herself with a menu.

Ethan has that effect on women.

He said, “Can I join you?”

Trying very hard to be cool, I gestured with my buttery hand toward the booth seat. “Of course.”

He slid into the booth, and Judy was beside him in an instant with a mug and coffeepot. If he’d asked, she would have run to the kitchen and brewed up a fresh batch that instant.

He said, “I’ll have my regular.”

Judy shot me a smug smile that said she knew what his regular was and I didn’t.

I said, “I didn’t know you came here often.”

“Every day. But usually a lot earlier.”

“Oh.”

I wondered if I was the reason he had come later that day. Had he known that my schedule brought me there around ten, and purposefully delayed his own breakfast so it coincided with mine?

He said, “Talked to any wanted criminals today?”

“That was nice of you to get her an attorney. I understand she turned herself in.”

“How do you manage to get involved with people like her? Do you have some kind of magnet?”

Judy skidded to his side and put down his breakfast. Tanisha is fast, but not that fast. Judy must have stolen an order intended for somebody else. Scrambled eggs, sliced tomatoes, unbuttered rye toast. The white smile he gave her sent her into a near swoon that she covered by topping his coffee.

I watched him cut into a tomato slice. He ate in the European way, both hands working knife and fork, fork tines turned down, spearing a bite of tomato and sort of stacking egg on the back of his fork before lifting it to his mouth. If I ate like that, I’d probably stab myself in the eye.

I said, “I don’t
try
to attract people like Briana. It just happens. She was in the Trillins’ house when I went in to take care of their cats, and then she followed me.”

“You didn’t have to talk to her.”

I shoveled up some of my own egg in the American way. I speared a bite of fried potato. I chewed, I swallowed. He waited.

“I felt sorry for her.”

His eyes were like dark pools of double chocolate fudge, warm enough to bathe nude in.

He said, “I hear that Guidry left.”

I had an almost irresistible urge to make it clear that Guidry hadn’t left
me,
he’d just left Sarasota.

“He was offered a job in New Orleans that he couldn’t refuse.”

Ethan nodded. His long fingers broke a triangle of rye toast in half and left both halves on his plate.

“Are you going to follow him?”

I swallowed. I hated that question.

“No.”

“Why not?”

“It’s hard to explain. You know how sometimes you know something is wrong for you even if everything about it seems right? I just knew I couldn’t leave my home.”

He leaned back in the booth. “That’s why I’m here. I practiced law for a while in Colorado, but the white sand and the seabirds of Florida kept calling to me. When my grandfather died and left me his practice, I didn’t think twice about it. This is where I belong.”

“Do you miss anybody in Colorado?”

“Sure. Friends, colleagues. A woman.”

“Ah.”

“She felt the same way about mountains and snow that I felt about surf and sea.”

“But now you’re with somebody else.”

“I was, but that didn’t work out.”

“I’m sorry.”

That was
such
a lie!

I was glad it hadn’t worked out, but I felt guilty because I was glad. Anyway, the fact that he was free didn’t mean anything would happen between us.

He said, “Dixie—”

Before he could finish what he planned to say, I saw the new detective come into the diner. I knew he was a cop the minute I saw him, and probably half the other people in the diner knew it, too. Cops have an alert, watchful look, as if they can swivel their eyeballs and see through the backs of their skulls. The cop standing at the front of the diner scanning the booths also had the spine and shoulders of a career military man, that easy erectness that comes from vertebrae getting the habit of stacking themselves with the least effort.

I said, “Uh-oh, here’s the new homicide detective who took Guidry’s place. I’m supposed to meet him here.”

Ethan turned to look at the man. “I’ll leave you to it, then.”

I could have offered to introduce them, but it would have been awkward for all of us. The homicide cop was there as part of an investigation into a murder that Briana might have committed, and Ethan had found a defense attorney for her.

Owens must have given him a description of me, because he started toward me as Ethan left. The two men met in the aisle and gave each other the dismissive once-overs that men do. The homicide guy was lean but not skinny, and I judged him to be midforties. He had that two-day-old beard thing going, along with dark shades and a thin leather bomber jacket. Dark hair cut short and growing gray, skin that was acquainted with sunshine but didn’t live in it. Firm mouth that probably had to remind itself to smile.

He stopped beside my booth and gave me a curt nod. “Ms. Hemingway?”

“That’s me.”

I flipped my palm toward the other side of the booth in an invitation to sit, and he slid into the bench seat opposite me. Judy was instantly at his side to gather up Ethan’s plate and mug.

“Coffee, sir?”

“Please.”

We waited until she wiped off the tabletop and returned with a mug and coffeepot.

Without asking, she topped mine off, too.

The cop said, “Nothing else for me, thanks.”

Judy gave him a megawatt smile, knocking herself out to be charming to the new cop in town, then went away still doing that extra hip-swinging thing.

He said, “My name is Steven.” He said his name with a hint of an accent, almost
Stefan.

He removed his dark glasses and looked gravely at me. He had green eyes, which somehow surprised me. You don’t often see truly green eyes. I wondered if he wore colored contacts.