Curiosity Killed The Cat Sitter

“My husband was a sergeant with the Sheriff’s Department. He was killed three years ago, along with our little girl. Sergeant Owens was my superior officer. He and I decided it would be better for me to do something else.” I gave him a level look over the coffee mug. “I wasn’t real good with people then, and I’m not much better now.”

He nodded. His eyes were dark gray, edging toward blue. They didn’t give anything away. “Tell me about this morning.”

Five

There wasn’t much to tell, but I told him what I knew. Mostly, that consisted of the fact that I’d found the slider to the lanai unlocked and Marilee’s bedroom and bathroom ransacked before I found the dead man.

“Did you notice anything missing?”

“No, but I wouldn’t notice anything except the obvious. There was just one thing that struck me as odd. She had left her hair dryer behind. Most women getting ready for a trip stick their hair dryer in their overnight bag last thing after they’ve finished their makeup and hair. They don’t leave it behind, especially when they’ll be gone for a week.”

“Maybe she had a spare already packed.”

“Maybe, but it sort of bothers me. Marilee’s an unusually neat woman. She doesn’t leave her hair dryer lying out like that.”

“Okay, what else can you tell me besides the hair dryer?”

I caught an edge to his voice and let the hair dryer go. I told him what Marilee had told me the day before—that she was leaving town that night and would be gone a week.

“She travels a lot on business, and the only thing different about this time was that I had to go by and pick up a new house key because she’d had her locks changed.”

“Did she say why she’d had them changed?”

“No, and I didn’t ask.”

“Her car’s in the garage. Does she usually drive to the airport?”

I stopped to think. “I can’t remember ever looking in her garage when she was gone. If she was leaving from the Sarasota airport, I guess she might have driven.”

“But you doubt it.”

“I really don’t know. It’s just that Marilee is more the type to take a limo.”

“Did she leave a number where she could be reached?”

I felt my face redden. “I told her to leave it for me, but I didn’t look for it while I was there.”

Judy slid a plate of eggs and potatoes in front of me, and put another in front of Guidry. “I’ll be right back with your bacon and more coffee,” she said.

To cover my embarrassment at having to admit that I’d let a client leave town without making sure she had left a number where she could be reached, I dug into my backpack and took out my client notebook.

“I have every client’s information in here,” I said. “When I first interview them, I get names of their vets and numbers to call in an emergency.” To emphasize that I hadn’t been irresponsible, I added, “Sometimes people go mountain climbing or something where I can’t call them directly.”

Judy plunked down a rasher of crisp bacon in front of Guidry and refilled both our coffee mugs. I eyed his bacon wistfully. It was exactly the way I like it, stiff, with no icky white bubbles on it.

Guidry moved a pair of slices to his plate and buttered his biscuit while I flipped to Marilee’s page in my notebook. “She gave the number of a woman named Shuga Reasnor as her emergency number,” I said.

“Shuga?”

I spelled it out for him, and forked up some egg. He had left four slices of bacon on its special plate.

“What’s her number?”

I jerked my eyes away from his bacon and peered in the book. I read it off to him, and while he wrote it down, I looked at his bacon again. He sighed and picked up the bacon plate. He raked two slices onto his own plate and then tipped the remaining two onto mine.

“You know you want them,” he said.

“Well, just this once,” I said. “I never eat bacon. I love it, but I never eat it. All that fat…”

“What do you know about Marilee Doerring?”

“Not much. She has some sort of decorating business, I think.”

“Husband? Boyfriend?”

“I’ve never seen a man at her house, and there’s never any sign of one.”

“You look?”

“I don’t look for man signs, but I do give the house a quick once-over every time to make sure the cat hasn’t done something that needs cleaning up. Sometimes pets get bored and knock over a plant or poop in the middle of the bed. It’s part of my job to check for things like that.”

“How many times have you been in the house?”

“Lots. I can get the exact dates for you if you want. I keep a file at home of every visit.”

“Isn’t a week a long time to leave a pet alone?”

“Yeah, but cats can handle it. I go twice a day and play with them and comb them and talk to them. During the day they watch TV, and I always leave the blinds up so they can sit on the windowsill and watch the birds and squirrels outside. At night I put the lights and the radio on a timer. They get a little bored and lonely, but most pets would rather be at home alone than with strangers in a strange place.”

He was watching me closely. “You really like doing this, don’t you?”

“Does that surprise you?”

“It just seems like a big jump, from deputy to pet-sitter.”