The Cat Sitter's Nine Lives (16 page)

Just like that.

Of course, I knew right away that somebody must have told her my whole story, probably somebody at the station, about how I’d lost my family and my badge and my career. She was trying to say that she understood me, that she knew where I was coming from, that she
felt my pain.
At that point, if people even hinted at the idea that they felt my pain, I had two responses: one, I curled up into a ball, or two, I started throwing punches. Still, something in the way she’d said it so matter-of-factly, as if it were just the most normal thing in the world, had kind of broken my heart a little bit.

In the years since Todd and Christy died, one thing I’ve learned is that losing a loved one makes you an instant member of this strange, underground club, a club that only people who’ve lost someone they truly, deeply love can join. Once you’re a member, all you have to do is let your guard down a little bit to see that there are fellow members everywhere you go. At the gym, at the grocery store, in the line for the dressing room at Marshalls, and like it or not, you can never unjoin.

In that moment, when McKenzie had laid her pain out for me so plainly, a bond had been established between us, an unspoken bond, but a true bond nonetheless.

By the time I rolled to a stop at the end of Treasure Boat Way, I half wondered if McKenzie wasn’t trying to ease me back into the station. Maybe she thought it would help me move on, or help me get over the painful memories of the last time I’d been there. If that was her plan, I wanted nothing to do with it.

Suddenly I had a flash of brilliance. I remembered my mystery caller from the night before. I was supposed to be at 9500 Blind Pass Road at two o’clock, but I figured a little white lie wouldn’t hurt anybody.

McKenzie answered the phone with a short “Ready when you are.”

“Yeah, about that, is there another place we can meet? Maybe somewhere closer to me? I have to meet a new client down at the end of the Key, and I’m worried I’ll be late.”

There was a pause. I could tell she was thinking it over.

“Dixie, the problem is I’ve got too much going on here. I want you to see something, but I can’t leave the station for long. I suppose we could meet at Payne Park, but that’s not exactly in your neighborhood.”

“No, that’s perfect,” I lied. “I’m near there now. I’m just finishing up with a client that lives right behind the high school. I can be there in no time at all.”

“Okay, then. I’ll meet you at the park in ten minutes.”

“Great,” I blurted out. “No problemo!”

As I flipped the phone closed, I caught a glimpse of myself in the rearview mirror, with a smile as fake as a three-dollar bill still pasted on my face.

“Really?” I said out loud.
“No problemo?”

I decided right then and there that if I ever said “no problemo” again I’d go directly to the nearest Treatment Center for Blowhards and check myself in.

It wasn’t until I pulled back out on the road that I realized—Payne Park is basically a two-minute walk from the sheriff’s building. Why it was better to meet there instead of McKenzie’s office made absolutely no sense at all.

She was onto me.

15

As I headed out for Payne Park, I had to force myself to drive north instead of down to the beach pavilion, mainly due to the fact that I was starving. Normally I can’t go anywhere near Siesta Key Beach without grabbing at least one hot dog at the food stand, and by “at least one” I mean
two,
but there wasn’t enough time, never mind the fact that technically it was still morning and it just seems wrong to eat a hot dog before noon.

So I took Higel at a respectable speed all the way up to the top of the Key, and then once I was on Siesta I stepped on the gas and sped across the north bridge onto the mainland. Normally I drive as slowly as possible so I can gawk at all the waterfront mansions on San Remo Terrace as I come off the bridge, but this time I cruised on by and turned right on Tamiami Trail.

On our little island there’s not a single fast-food joint, but Sarasota is a whole different story. First I drove by Crusty’s Pizza and the Chicken Shack. Then I drove by them again, except this time in reverse order because I’d gone the wrong way and had to make a U-turn. Then I passed Beethoven’s Steakhouse, Big Top Burgers, Aztec Grill, Vito’s Subs, China Palace, and Taco Depot. After sitting through a green light next to the Waffle House I decided I’d better keep my eyes on the road, but my stomach was whining like a hungry dog.

When I pulled into the lot at Payne Park, McKenzie was already there, sitting at one of the wooden benches that overlook the tennis courts. She wore a plain beige blouse tucked into a faded blue-jean skirt with big round sunglasses and an oversized straw hat to keep the sun off her pale skin. When she saw me, she wrapped something up in a piece of shiny foil and put it down in her briefcase. I wondered if it would be rude to ask what she’d just been eating.

“Thanks for coming, Dixie.”

I sat down while she pulled out a laptop computer and opened it on the bench between us. She wasted no time in clicking a couple of keys, and then a video popped up and started playing.

“I want you to watch this and tell me what you think.”

In the video, there was a group of people eating in an outdoor café, with other people walking by on the street behind them. It was a little blurry and the colors were washed out, so at first I had no idea what I was looking at, but then I saw something familiar in the background. It was a dusty, maroon van with a logo on its side. It read,
BEEZY’S BOOKSTORE.

I realized that what we were watching was the webcam feed at Amber Jack’s, with a view of Beezy’s Bookstore across the street. I said, “Oh, wow, is this live?”

She shook her head. “No, it’s a recording from the night Mr. Hoskins disappeared, and as you can see, we’ve got a clear shot of the bar with a north-facing view of the street beyond, and just to the right of that van is a perfect view of the doorway to Beezy’s Bookstore.”

She was right. Occasionally a truck would go by or a waiter would linger in front of the camera, but for the most part, the front door and the display window of the bookstore were in plain view. Just then a truck pulled into the frame, and McKenzie clicked the pause button.

“Recognize it?”

I looked closely. It was a big dump truck with forest green doors. I shook my head, but then, in the very upper-right corner at the back of the truck, were three identical cocoa brown columns rising up out of the frame. They were palm trees.

I pointed and said, “That’s—”

McKenzie nodded. “That’s the truck that was involved in the head-on collision, correct?”

“Yes. That’s it.”

She sped forward a little bit, and I watched it without blinking. I didn’t want to miss a single frame. Next an ambulance rolled by with its lights flashing, and I knew right away it was the ambulance that had come to take Baldy to the hospital.

“No one comes in or out of the bookstore until…”

She paused the video again, and there, just entering the left-hand side of the screen, was a white blur.

McKenzie said, “Tell me if you’ve seen this person before.”

A gray-haired woman wearing a white dress made her way along the sidewalk outside the bookstore. Her gait was slow and labored. She paused at the window. I could see she was carrying something, like a small cardboard box, about the size of a toaster. She stood there for a few moments, her head down as if she were catching her breath or maybe reading something printed on top of the box, and then the front door opened and Mr. Hoskins appeared.

I knew it was him right away. The big wraparound sunglasses were a dead giveaway, and even though the picture was blurry and the colors washed out, I recognized the red button-down shirt and the bright red beret. I felt a lump form in my throat, thinking how much he had reminded me of a cute little bridge troll or an elf, and how I thought I’d made a new friend.

They exchanged a couple of words, and then Mr. Hoskins stepped back, holding the door open, and the woman disappeared inside. Mr. Hoskins looked briefly up and down the street and then closed the door behind him.

McKenzie stopped the video and turned to me.

“It’s a bit blurry, but no, she doesn’t look familiar at all.”

She frowned. “Are you sure?”

“No idea who she is.”

She clicked again and the video played on. “I want you to be absolutely certain. The main reason is that, with the exception of here…”

She stopped the video. All I could see was a black-and-white checkerboard filling half the frame.

“What is that?”

“It’s the uniform shirt the waiters wear at Amber Jack’s. Except for here where the view is blocked by the waiter for approximately seven seconds, no one comes in or out of the bookstore until…”

She forwarded the video a good bit now. All the cars whizzed by and the people in the bar raced around in superfast motion, completely unaware that this mundane moment in their lives would soon be evidence in a potential homicide investigation, every second of it intensely scrutinized. Just as another person appeared on the left-hand side of the screen, she clicked the pause button.

This time I knew exactly who it was.

A slim woman in her early thirties with straight blond hair. She was standing in front of the bookstore, looking at the display in the big picture window. I recognized her immediately because everyone else on the street was wearing flip-flops, shorts, and tank tops, but this woman was wearing a black zip-up hoodie that was easily ten times too big for her.

It was me.

We watched as I approached the front of the display window, and I remembered thinking how artfully all the books had been arranged, how I’d smiled at the stack of dictionaries in the corner with its fluffy top of orange fur. I lingered in front of the display for a few moments and then pushed open the door to the shop. Seeing myself in the video, the first thought I had was
I am
not
broad in the beam.

Luckily I kept that to myself.

McKenzie then sped forward again, this time to the point where I came out of the shop, and I watched myself leave the frame of the video and head back north toward my car, holding my new book under my arm.

McKenzie said, “That’s it.”

I turned to her. “What do you mean that’s it?”

She sighed. “Just watch.”

The video sped forward as she folded her hands in her lap. Soon it got dark and the crowd at Amber Jack’s thinned out. Then all the waiters raced around clearing away glasses, flipping the chairs over on the tabletops, and mopping the floors. Finally there was only one person left, probably the owner, sitting on one of the tables and drinking a beer as the occasional car passed by in the street. Then he set his empty bottle down and moved out of view, and a few moments later all the lights in the bar went out.

Now, everything was completely dark—everything, that is, except Beezy’s Bookstore. The big window and the front door glowed yellow. The lights inside had been left on, and they stayed on, all night long.

As the video sped forward, the sky eventually started to brighten again, and a few early-morning commuters appeared in the street. Then, sure enough, pulling in to the spot next to Mr. Hoskins’s van was a white truck with a short flatbed full of bundled newspapers. A man hopped out and carried one of the bundles over to the sidewalk in front of the bookstore.

McKenzie stopped the video. “Dixie, with the lights on inside, the front door of the bookshop is clearly visible. After you left, no one went in or out that front door until the next morning when the paper man arrived.”

I nodded. “So the woman in the white dress, she must have left when the view was blocked by the waiter, right?”

“Yes. That’s a possibility.”

“And whoever it was that took Mr. Hoskins, they came in the back door after I left.”

She nodded, but she didn’t look convinced. I couldn’t think of any other explanation. “Maybe someone saw something in the alley?”

She pulled the screen of her laptop down, and it made a little click as it closed. “Well, as a matter of fact, Dixie, someone did.”

“Who?”

She slid her computer back down into her briefcase. “The butcher.”

I was beginning to think ol’ Butch the Butcher was as good as Amber Jack’s webcam when it came to recording what happened in the street around his shop. I started to say as much, but the look on McKenzie’s face stopped me. She was staring off in the distance.

“He told me that after he locked up the butcher shop, when he saw you getting in your car, he immediately went out back to the alley—”

I said, “Yeah, he smokes back there. He probably went out to light up.”

She paused and blinked a couple of times, either because I’d just interrupted her or because she was wondering how I knew so much about what went on in that back alley. Either way I figured I’d better keep quiet and let her talk.

“He saw a car, an old station wagon. It was pulling away from the back of Beezy’s Bookstore. He said a couple of times he’d caught kids parked back there, making out in their cars, and he’d chased them off. But he said this car sped away before he even had a chance. He said he immediately got the feeling that something was wrong.”

I sat up, “So, whoever took Mr. Hoskins, they probably watched the front and waited until they knew the shop was empty. Then they came around the back and broke the door in, grabbed Mr. Hoskins and shoved him in their car. Then when the butcher came out, they sped away so he wouldn’t be able to identify them.”

Of course, that didn’t quite explain the blood on the counter, but I turned to see her reaction to my brilliant analysis anyway.

She just nodded. “When you left the bookstore, how long do you think it took you to get to your car?”

I wasn’t sure what that had to do with anything, especially since I’d just solved a pretty big part of her case, but I figured I’d humor her. “Well, it’s probably less than a minute’s walk, except I probably did it in about twenty seconds or so.”

Now she took off her big sunglasses. “Oh? Why is that?”