The Cat Sitter's Nine Lives (30 page)

I said, “How did you…” but my words faded away, because I already knew the answer.

I remembered that first evening, after Baldy’s car crash, when I’d gone to Beezy’s Bookstore and met Mr. Hoskins. I was standing in front of the old cash register and the bowl of chocolates on the countertop, and Mr. Hoskins had just returned from the back office, where he’d wrapped my book up in paper and twine. He caught me eyeing the chocolates and offered me one, and I specifically remembered what I said to him.

I said,
I have a weakness for chocolate.

It was completely quiet now except for a low droning drumbeat coming from somewhere far away, and then I realized the drumbeat was me. I could literally hear the blood pumping through my ears. As my eyes slowly adjusted to the darkness, Mr. Silverthorn gradually came into view, bathed in the pale blue light from the moon overhead. My mind flashed to the old woman in the video, making her way to the bookstore, and then I saw one of Mrs. Silverthorn’s gray wigs.

My voice trembling, I said, “Mr. Silverthorn … where were you the night Mr. Hoskins was murdered?”

There was a long pause. He was about ten feet away. He calmly put the cat carrier down on the ground and then reached into his jacket, and then I saw the gleam of something metal in the moonlight as he raised his arm and pointed a pistol directly at me.

He said, “This is a very unfortunate turn of events.”

A cold tremor crawled up my spine as I felt my breath catch in my throat. I said, “It was you. It was you in the video. You dressed up in your wife’s clothing, and then you put on one of her wigs. You hid somewhere in the store until I left, and then you killed Mr. Hoskins. You killed him for his money.”

His face was grim. “You’re very smart, aren’t you? And yes, you’re right about my disguise, but the rest of your theory is incorrect. Mr. Hoskins was already long dead by then.”

I shook my head. “You’re wrong. He was alive when I left the store.”

The vaguest hint of a smile brushed across his face. “Sometimes I wonder that I didn’t more seriously pursue a career on the stage.”

He held the gun steady as he reached up with his free hand and slowly pulled his long silvery hair forward so that it fell down both sides of his face. Then he hunched his body over and patted his pockets, shuffling toward me and muttering in a creaky voice, “I’m taking a trip very soon, my dear, but I do hope you’ll enjoy your book and your chocolate in equal measure.”

Then he raised himself back up and smiled wistfully.

It was all I could do to keep from fainting. The only things missing were the red beret and the dark wraparound glasses.

“I’ll admit I was nervous, as evidenced by my failure to lock the door. So very stupid. The fact that you’d never met Mr. Hoskins was a wonderful stroke of luck for me—and I might add, Miss Hemingway, for you as well. Otherwise, I would never have been able to let you leave the store that night, although in retrospect that might have been easier for everyone, easier than”—he waved his hand between us—“all this.”

My mind was swimming, but I managed to whisper, “And the woman in the drawing…”

“Oh, very good, now you’ve hit the nail square on the head. Imagine my surprise when Janet informed me you’d found something in that tree and put it in your pocket. What possessed you to poke around in that hole I’ll never know.”

“The woman in the drawing … is Janet.”

He frowned. “Oh, dear, no, why would you think that? No, I’m afraid the woman in the drawing is my wife, immortalized, as it were, in a very private moment.”

“Mr. Hoskins…”

He nodded. “Yes, he’s quite a fine artist, isn’t he? I found that drawing one day when I was going through the library, looking for books we might sell to pay off some of the bills. That’s somewhat embarrassing to admit to you now, but no matter. You can imagine my surprise. She must have hidden it in that book at some point and then forgotten.”

I could see his eyes, floating just above the barrel of the pistol. I said, “Mr. Silverthorn … why?”

“Oh, I think you know why, my dear. I’ll let no man take away my dignity. I have my good name to protect, after all.” His hands started to tremble slightly as his eyes narrowed. “And I’m not a fool, Miss Hemingway. I know very well what you and this entire town think of my family. My fortune may be lost, but when they tell the story of Oliver Silverthorn, it will not include the word ‘cuckold.’”

His entire body shuddered at the word, and I thought to myself,
This cannot be the way it ends.

“Mr. Silverthorn, I think I should tell you that I have a friend. He knows you. He knows you quite well, in fact, and I’ve told him everything I suspected. It won’t do you any good to kill me now. When he finds out, he’ll tell the police everything and they’ll arrest you. Your only hope is to turn yourself in.”

“I believe you’re referring to my missing footman, Mr. Vladim?”

“Yes, I am. And I know where he is.”

He nodded. “I’m sure it’s a lie that you and Mr. Vladim have talked about me at all, but yes, I know where he is, too. And you may be surprised to know that your ‘friend’ was on his way to the bookstore to help me with Mr. Hoskins when he crashed into that landscaping truck.”

I shook my head. “I don’t believe you. He may be a criminal, but he’s not a murderer.”

He smiled. “He doesn’t want to go to jail for bank robbery; therefore he does what he’s told or I’ll report him and his wife to the police. I’m not a violent man, Miss Hemingway, all present appearances to the contrary. I would never have shot Mr. Hoskins if I’d had another option. My plan was to distract him while Vladim replaced those chocolates by his register with others to which I’d added a secret ingredient.”

“A rosary pea.”

“Oh! I see you’ve been reading your book. You’re quite remarkable, aren’t you? Yes, a rosary pea. I knew from my wife that Mr. Hoskins never left the store without finishing off the chocolates in that bowl, so my plan was perfect. However, Mr. Vladim seems to have had a change of heart at the last minute. He apparently decided he’d rather die in a car crash than take part in a murder, and I imagine he thought he had thwarted my plan—for a bank robber, quite an honorable act when you think about it. But he didn’t die in that crash, did he?”

I just stared at him, dumbfounded.

“Miss Hemingway, your attention to detail is impressive, so I’m rather surprised you don’t remember me. I was there when you saved Mr. Vladim. I was right in front of you … in a black Cadillac…?”

As I stood there staring into his steel gray eyes, the barrel of the gun trembling in the space between us, a series of images played through my mind, like a montage in fast motion. The old woman in the Cadillac in front of me, her mannish jaw, her white gloves stretched over her hands, her perfectly coiffed hair like a wig, and that lavender scarf tied around her neck …

Mr. Silverthorn seemed to be a man of more than a few disguises.

He shifted the gun from one hand to the other, and even in the low light I could tell it was fitted with a small, cylindrical piece of metal … a silencer.

He nodded at the bag of chocolates in my hand. “I assumed those chocolates were destroyed in the fire, but apparently he put them in your bag at some point. He’s a smart fellow. I should have known. He probably thought they could be used to incriminate me.”

I shook my head and tried to concentrate. “Why drag him into it at all?”

“Culpability, Miss Hemingway. Had everything gone as planned, I knew the police would scan the footage from that webcam across the street, and they would have seen Vladim entering the store. Once I’d turned him in, it would only have been a matter of time before they traced the poisoned chocolate to our kitchen, where Janet prepares our meals. Then they would have found the cash from Mr. Hoskins’s register, the cash that I had hidden somewhere in Vladim’s bedroom.”

I closed my eyes and slowly shook my head. He had probably asked Janet to make the chocolates. Either she’d put the rosary peas in herself or he had added them later. Either way, the whole time Vladim and Janet had been working for Mr. Silverthorn, they’d been afraid he would turn them in to the police, and here he’d planned on doing exactly that, and framing them for the murder of Mr. Hoskins on top of it.

I said, “You’ve forgotten one thing, Mr. Silverthorn.”

“What is that?”

“You have no power over Mr. Vladim now. The police have identified him. When he’s well enough he’ll go to trial, and I imagine they’ll be very happy to give him a lighter sentence in exchange for the story he’ll tell about you.”

“Yes, I’ve considered that possibility already. I’ll be paying Mr. Vladim a visit as soon as I leave here.”

My heart stopped. “No. You’ll be caught. They’ll figure it out.”

“I appreciate your concern, but they won’t. I wasn’t seen going in or leaving the bookstore, and I didn’t touch a thing without gloves on, so there are no fingerprints. And with no one left to testify otherwise, I’ll be quite fine.”

His words were confident and assured, but I could see he was still trembling, and there was fear in his voice. I was certain he never thought it would come to this, and in spite of myself I felt a momentary pang of sorrow for him.

I shook my head. “Mr. Silverthorn, is this really the story you want to be told about you?”

His eyes softened. “My dear, the story ends here.”

I saw the blast more than felt it. A small flash of light. I remember thinking of the brilliant shade of yellow the sun turns as it dips its hazy edge into the sea, and as my head hit the pavement, I thought of Cosmo. It’s funny how the mind works. I thought to myself,
Now I’ll never catch him.

I lay there on my back and listened to the clicking of Mr. Silverthorn’s footsteps receding in the distance, and then shortly thereafter the low rumble of a car starting up and speeding out of the alley.

I waited.

There wasn’t any pain, just a vague and distant ache in the back of my head where it hit the concrete, and then a strange feeling of pressure on my sternum. The pressure shifted slightly, and I opened my eyes. At that point, I was certain it was a dream. There, in the center of my chest, was a big fluffy orange cat, sitting primly and looking down on me with a slightly curious expression in his deep green eyes.

I whispered, “Cosmo?”

He purred gently and his eyes narrowed, as if to say, “Pleased to meet you.”

A tiny smile played across my lips. “Likewise.”

As slowly as possible, I inched my left hand down along the concrete and eased my cell phone out of my side pocket. When she didn’t answer at first, my heart started racing, but luckily, after the third ring, the line clicked and I heard McKenzie’s familiar voice. “Dixie?”

I tried to keep myself as calm as possible, but my voice was shaky. I said, “Samantha?”

There was a pause. “Dixie, what’s wrong?”

I took a deep breath, “Mr. Silverthorn killed Mr. Hoskins. And he’s on his way to the hospital right now to kill Vladim, the bank robber I pulled out of that car crash.”

I heard a sharp intake of breath. She said, “Where are you?”

“I’m in the alley behind the bookstore. He just left me. If you go now you’ll get to the hospital before him. Sarasota Memorial Hospital. And I think he might be dressed up like an old woman.”

“An old woman?”

“Like the old woman in the video.”

“Dixie, what—”

I interrupted. “You have to trust me this time.”

There was a pause. “I’m sending my men to the hospital now. Are you sure you’re okay?”

I said, “I’m sure,” and then I just clicked the phone off. I didn’t think there was much more to say.

I lay there and watched the stars overhead pull in and out of focus. It was completely quiet, except I thought I could just make out the gentle hum of the ocean and the rhythmic song of its waves rolling in to shore, the song I’ve heard my whole life. In a little while I started to shiver slightly, and I could feel my hands and feet beginning to turn cold.

As gently as possible, I eased myself up on my elbows and slowly turned my head over to my left shoulder. In the bunched black fabric of Ethan’s big hoodie were two burned, dime-sized holes, one where the bullet went in, and another where it went out.

It had completely missed me.

29

For a long time, longer than I care to admit, I dreamed about Christy every night. I’d dream I was tucking her in at bedtime, or cleaning her Popsicle-stained fingers with a warm washcloth … just little things, little moments that either did or didn’t actually happen. She was always giggling and happy. She’d tell me not to be sad, because even though she was gone, she was always with me. I’d wake up in the middle of the night and chase after the scattering remnants of those dreams, like dissolving vapor trails from a jet plane.

Most mornings I’d have her clothes for the day neatly laid out on her bed, but she’d paw through all the closets like a wild animal and come downstairs in an outfit of her own making—one of my T-shirts over a sundress with baggy leggings and oversized sunglasses, or a fluffy pink tutu over faded jeans with one of Todd’s ties draped casually around her neck.

As I drove home through the darkened, moonlit streets of Siesta Key with all the windows open and the cool, salty air streaming through the Bronco, I thought about Baldy and Janet, driving across Texas and holding up banks to save their child. I couldn’t exactly condone what they’d done, but I certainly understood it. If I’d been given half a chance to save Christy, nothing could have stopped me.

Nothing.

So who was I to judge? When Christy was killed, I had dedicated my entire life to fighting on the side of the law, but I knew down to the soles of my feet that all it would have taken was just the tiniest slip of fate to throw me right to the other side of it. If I’d thought robbing banks would have helped her, I would have robbed banks.

By the time I turned down the driveway, I’d made up my mind. When McKenzie called, I wouldn’t say a word about Janet unless she asked me point blank. I wasn’t exactly sure what my plan was, and I didn’t see how I’d ever get a chance to talk to Janet before the police did, but I was still holding on to the hope that somehow I could convince her not to run.