Curiosity Killed the Cat Sitter (2 page)

It was almost 6:00
A.M
. by the time I worked my way to Marilee Doerring’s house. On that twisty street, the house next door was the only one visible, but I could see a couple of lights there. The normal world was beginning to wake up. I let myself in with my new door key and flipped on the foyer light. Abyssinians are people cats, and when I’d taken care of Ghost before, he had always come bounding to the door to greet me.

I called, “Ghost?”

Dogs come when you call, and cats answer. But there were no little
nik-nik
sounds of friendly greeting. A stack of outgoing mail was on the foyer table, with the top envelope addressed to the IRS. I figured Marilee must have planned to mail it on her way out of town and forgot. While I gave Ghost time to decide to come out of hiding, I flipped through the other envelopes, most addressed to department stores or utilities, and then slid the lot in a deep-flapped pocket on my cargo shorts. I would put it in her mailbox for pickup as I left.

The living room was to the left, and I ducked in to give it a quick once-over while I called to Ghost again. Sometimes bored animals do something naughty just to announce their annoyance at being left behind when their person leaves, but there were no overturned plants or shredded magazines in the living room. The air seemed oddly humid, with a warm breath coming from the glass
doors opening to the lanai. Linen sheers hung over the sliders, and when I stepped closer, I could see that the glass slider was partially open.

I said, “Uh-oh,” and hurried to the door. There were a ton of potted plants on the lanai, and a water hose had been left lying on the floor. Marilee had probably been interrupted watering the plants just before she left and forgot to close the slider. Peasant that I am, my first thought was that all that warm air would make the AC run harder and that Marilee’s electric bill was going to be enormous. The second thought was that Ghost might have gone outside. The lanai was typical—a tiled pool at the far side and wicker furniture and potted plants grouped under the roof on the inner side. It was screened, of course, sides and top, to keep out insects and falling leaves. In Florida, screened lanais are called “cages,” and anybody who is anybody has a caged lanai.

A screened door was at one side, opening to the yard. Most lanai doors have simple latch mechanisms that can be locked, but since a dedicated burglar can simply slit the screen, most people leave them unlocked so pool cleaners can get in. The furniture on the lanai made dark shapes in the murky light as I sprinted to the outside door. It wasn’t firmly latched, and I pulled it shut, making sure the latch caught. I could see a light in a back window of the house next door, but no sign of Ghost.

I trotted back inside, pulling the slider shut and locking it behind me, and hurried toward Marilee’s bedroom. Unless Ghost had gotten outside through the lanai door, he was probably hiding. His favorite hideaway was atop an immense antique armoire in Marilee’s bedroom. Abys have powerful back legs that give them unusual jumping ability, and Ghost vaulted up there when he was nervous or when he was sulking, tucking himself into an invisible small mound.

Calling “Gho-oo-ost,” I went down the hall to Marilee’s bedroom. As I went through the door, I flipped the bedroom light switch, and the room’s vibrant colors sprang alive. I stopped with the hairs on the back of my neck rising. Marilee’s bedroom was like something out of
Architectural Digest,
with deep pumpkin walls and a tall dark bed that Pancho Villa might have slept in. Ordinarily, the room was fastidiously neat, but not today. The drawers on the bedside tables stood open, and all their contents had been raked to the floor.

Cautiously, I edged toward the dressing room between the bedroom and bathroom. Somebody had pulled everything crooked, as if they had jerked robes and dresses and skirts and jackets out to dig in their pockets. Handbags that were usually filed on shelves gaped open on the floor. A tall jewelry cabinet stood like a gap-toothed vagrant, with blank spaces where its drawers had been. The drawers were piled on the floor with jewelry spilling from them.

Whoever had done this hadn’t been after valuables to pawn or sell, but for something that could be secreted in a small space. Drugs were the obvious first thought, but Marilee had never struck me as a user, and if she was a dealer it didn’t seem likely that she would keep her supply in her jewelry cabinet.

In the bathroom, drawers had been similarly ransacked. A hair dryer lay on the counter with its cord plugged into an outlet by the door. It was a brush-type dryer that doubled as a curling iron, with a few black hairs caught in its bristles. Marilee usually left her bathroom so spotless that the errant hairs seemed almost obscenely disordered.

I must admit that while I was appropriately concerned that somebody had broken into Marilee’s house, I was more concerned about Ghost. I went back into the bed
room and looked up at the carved cornice at the top of the armoire.

“Ghost, are you up there?”

A faint little
nik-nik
came from the top of the armoire, and Ghost came sailing down and landed at my feet. Cats hate for you to gush at them, so to protect his dignity, I let him wind himself around my ankles before I knelt to stroke the top of his head.

Ghost’s hair was ticked, meaning it had several colors on one hair shaft. The overall effect was an iridescent sheen graduating from silver to pale lavender. He wore a black velvet collar studded with miniature hearts and keys. The collar gave him a decadent look, like a charming French roué whom you know you shouldn’t allow yourself to trust, but you can’t resist.

“I was afraid somebody had taken you,” I said.

He rubbed his face and neck against my leg to reassure me, gently scratching my skin with the charms on his collar. Now that we had properly greeted each other and I knew he was okay, I headed toward the kitchen. I would give Ghost his breakfast first, and while he ate I would call 911 and report the break-in. Ghost trotted behind me making happy little squeaks of anticipation. I’ve trained all my cat owners not to leave food out all the time, but to put it out twice a day and remove it as soon as the cat has stopped eating. That way they don’t get finicky or fat, and mealtime is a big deal to them.

To a dog, food is simply a necessity of life, and they’re not too picky about how it tastes or what it’s served in. A weighted plastic feeding bowl suits a dog just fine, and you can give them the exact same food twice a day and they’ll think you’re the greatest chef in the world. Cats, on the other hand, are snooty gourmands. Oh sure, they may supplement their finicky diet with an occasional mouse head or lizard tail, but that’s more to satisfy their
hunting instinct than for the taste. Cats like their food fresh and flavorful, and they’ll turn up their noses today at what they loved yesterday. If their dishes aren’t spotlessly clean, they’ll even turn up their noses at food they love.

Cats don’t shove their bowls around on the floor, either. They sit in front of them daintily, giving the impression of having patted a linen napkin in place. Cat owners therefore feed their cats in dishes ordinarily reserved for royalty, and the cats accept them as their due. Ghost ate from a hand-painted porcelain bowl, and he lapped his drinking water from an ornately carved silver serving bowl. It held enough water for a trio of cats, but it served the purpose well enough, and both Marilee and Ghost thought its elegance was totally appropriate.

When I stepped through the kitchen door and flipped the light switch, I instinctively turned toward the water bowl, and then did a quick backward dance. I’m not sure, but I think my legs may have pedaled the air for a moment. A man was lying on the floor with his face in Ghost’s silver bowl. A strip of putty-colored masking tape ran across the top of his head to the sides of the bowl, holding his nose underwater. The back of his head was caked with dried blood, and he was entirely too motionless to be alive.

For a second, my eyes darted around the kitchen, refusing to look at the body. Everything in the kitchen was normal. A stainless-steel teakettle of Italian design, with a carved yellow bird for a pouring spout, sat shining on the immaculate stove. A yellow dish towel was on the countertop beside the sink, neatly folded so both edges were turned in, the way you do with guest towels. Trust Marilee to fold her dish towel that way.

I looked back at the dead man. He wore a navy blue suit, and both sleeves showed white shirt cuffs. His shoes were expensive black wingtips, well polished, the kind
pimps and undertakers wear. As well as I could tell with the dried blood on his head, his hair was dark. I couldn’t see his face. I tiptoed over and knelt beside him. I don’t know why I tiptoed, it just seemed the right thing to do. His body had been carefully arranged so that his arms were out to the side with the elbows bent in a kind of “I surrender” pose. I took his wrist in my fingers and felt for a pulse. The wrist was cold. The man was definitely dead.

Ghost wailed a long insistent falsetto that forced me to do what I should have done already. I got up on rubbery legs and went to the wall phone and dialed 911.

The dispatcher who answered didn’t sound like anybody I knew. Old training kicked in, and after I gave her Marilee’s address, I said, “I’ve got a Signal Five, adult male.”

Signal 5 means homicide victim. With his head bloody and taped to a cat’s bowl, I didn’t think it could be anything else.

The dispatcher verified the address and asked my name.

“Dixie Hemingway.”

“Are you sure he’s dead?”

Ghost had gone into a crouching position with his body stretched long and his nose twitching toward the dead man.

“Oh yes, he’s dead.”

“What appears to be the cause of death?”

I cleared my throat. “He appears to have drowned in a cat’s water bowl.”

The dispatcher was silent for a moment, and then rallied. “Inside the house or outside?”

Ghost was slinking toward the man, and I swung my foot to distract him.

“Inside. In the kitchen. I came to feed the cat and found him.”

Ghost crept closer to the man’s head. I skittered toward him on my Keds and tried to block his progress with my foot. He ignored me and twitched his whiskers.

“Do you know who he is?”

“No, I’ve never seen him before, and the woman who lives here is out of town.”

“Somebody’s on the way, ma’am.”

Just as I hung up, it occurred to me that the killer could still be in the house. I grabbed Ghost and ran.

I was pacing the driveway with a seething Ghost in my arms when the green-and-white squad car pulled in. The deputy who got out wasn’t anybody I knew, but I knew the type well enough. Hair cut so short it was near-shaven, hard lean body under a crisp dark green uniform, black leather belt bristling with all the accoutrements of authority, and a small diamond stud in one well-shaped earlobe. I could tell from the stiff way he walked that he thought there was something fishy about a woman finding a dead body in somebody else’s house before 6:00
A.M
.

“You called about a dead man?”

Ghost twisted hard in my arms and glared at the deputy. Either he didn’t like the tone of his voice or he was so pissed at being held against his wishes that he hated everybody on general principle. I took a moment to read the name on the deputy’s ID tag: Jesse Morgan.

“I’m Dixie Hemingway,” I said. “I’m a pet-sitter. The owner of the house is Marilee Doerring. She left town last night and won’t be back until next week. I don’t know who the dead man is.”

“How do you know he’s dead?”

“I tried his pulse. He’s dead, trust me.”

“Where’d you find him?”

“In the kitchen. I went in to feed the cat and there he was.”

“And you think he…you think he drowned?”

I shot him a look. “Yeah, that would be my guess, since his nose is stuck in a bowl of water.”

“Anybody else in there?”

“If anybody was there, they could have gone out the back door after I left. I didn’t look around. I grabbed Ghost and ran.”

He inclined his head a quarter of an inch toward the cat and said, “That’s Ghost?”

“Yeah.”

“He doesn’t look happy.”

“He hates being held.”

“So why did you grab him? Why did you bring him outside with you?”

I blinked at him for a good five seconds before I realized he had a point. Ghost had been there when the murder was committed, and he had been there with the dead body, but I had instinctively scooped him up as if I were rescuing him. I knew the reason, but I doubted Deputy Morgan would understand how maternal impulses can kick in even when they don’t make any sense.

As if he had asked a really stupid question, I said, “He could have contaminated the area for forensics.”

“Wait here,” he said, and walked down the driveway and through the open front door. He had a good walk, which surprised me. I would have expected a rookie’s power stomp, but it was a seasoned stride—confident but not cocky.

I crooned under my breath to Ghost, and he gradually sheathed his extended claws. A frightened or angry cat can do serious harm with its claws, but I knew he wasn’t that angry. His pride was hurt at being restrained and he just needed to remind me that he could hurt me bad if he wanted to.

In a few minutes the deputy came back with his phone
stuck to his ear, calling for a crime-scene unit. When he tucked the phone in its holder on his belt, he said, “I’ll need to get some information from you.”

“Sure, but I have to do something about Ghost first. I think I’ll ask the next-door neighbor to keep him until I can take him to a day sitter.”

He looked at his watch. “It’s pretty early. Do you think they’ll be up?”

“I saw a light there earlier. They have a teenager, and he’s probably getting ready for school. I’ll just be a minute.”

I was off before he could tell me what he thought of the idea. The house was about forty feet away, with a yard full of ground cover instead of grass, so I sprinted down the street. The house was built on the same lines as Marilee’s, but the stucco was more pink than cream, and the front door was bright turquoise.