Curiosity Killed The Cat Sitter

I grinned and tossed my wadded-up paper towel in the bin. “I wish I could have seen that.”

I left them giggling and punched the door open with my knuckles—I’m squeamish about putting the flat of my hand on a bathroom door because half the women who go in there don’t wash their hands—and headed for the parking lot.

The temperature had climbed and the Bronco was like a pizza oven. I started the car and let the AC run while I pulled out my cell phone and client book and flipped to Marilee’s page. I read Shuga Reasnor’s number while I dialed it.

The voice that answered had the husky, half-choked sound of somebody blowing out cigarette smoke and talking at the same time. “Hello, this is Shuga,” she said.

I had been pronouncing the name “Shooga,” but when she said it I realized the name was “Sugar,” with an exaggerated southern accent. Probably a lot of people would think that was cute.

“This is Dixie Hemingway, Miss Reasnor. I take care of Marilee Doerring’s cat, and she gave me your number to call in case of an emergency. Has Detective Guidry been in touch with you yet?”

“Noooo.” She drew out the word while she registered all the implications of what I’d said.

Damn. I should have checked with Guidry before I phoned. Now I’d given her a heads-up that a detective would be calling her.

“The reason I’m calling is that Marilee’s out of town, and I’ve taken Ghost to a day-care center. I expect he’ll be there for a day or two, and I just wanted to make sure that was okay with you.”

“You’ve left who?”

“Ghost. Her cat.”

“Hell, I don’t care. I don’t know why she left my number.”

“You don’t happen to know where she went, do you?”

She laughed uneasily. “I didn’t even know she was gone. What did you say your name was?”

“Dixie Hemingway. If you should hear from Marilee, I’d appreciate it if you would have her call me.” Before she could ask any more questions, I gave her my number and thanked her, then punched the disconnect button.

“That was really dumb,” I muttered to myself. “Really, really dumb.”

Before I backed the Bronco out, I slid Ghost’s velvet collar off my wrist and put it in my backpack. It was 11:55. I should have been at Kristin Lord’s house an hour ago. A murder really screws up a work schedule.

When I got to the traffic light at Beach Road, I automatically turned my head to look at the fire station. I’ve done that all my life. Once when I was about seven years old, my father was in the driveway with some other fire-fighters polishing the fire truck when my mother and Michael and I drove by. My mother honked at him, and he gave us a big grin and waved. It’s one of my favorite memories.

Kristin and Jim Lord were the kind of people who prove the theory of karma and reincarnation—they had less sense than a pair of sand fleas but were filthy rich, so they must have been really, really good in a former life. I’d known them since high school, but we’d never been friends. They’d run with the kids who knew the difference between Polo and Izod—and cared—and I’d run with the kids whose idea of making a fashion statement was not wearing yesterday’s T. Kristin had a huge crush on my brother for a while, and I don’t think she ever forgave him for rejecting her.

Kristin met me at the door of their multimillion-dollar mansion with a smile frosty at the corners. “You’re a little late, aren’t you?”

Kristin was slim, with glossy brown hair cut to curve around her square jaw, and heavy dark eyebrows that made straight slashes above beautiful hazel eyes. Her nose was out of a plastic surgeon’s catalog, but her lips were naturally full and wide. Her upper lip was thicker in the middle, giving her a slightly rabbity look. If she were so inclined, she probably gave her husband great blow jobs—further proof of a previous life of good deeds, at least for him. She was wearing a pair of wrinkled white cotton capris and a free-hanging pink-and-white-striped shirt that covered her newly bulging tummy.

“I got tied up,” I said. “Sorry.”

She made a little snuffing sound with her perfect nose to show her displeasure, and spun around to walk ahead of me, her raffia flip-flops making sucking noises on the cool Italian tile.

Kristin was four months pregnant and she had developed an acute case of Fear-Of-Cat-Poop. Specifically, she was afraid of catching toxoplasmosis from her cat’s litter box. Cats can only get toxoplasmosis from eating a diseased rodent, and a pregnant woman can only get it if she touches the diseased cat’s feces and then eats something without first washing her hands. Kristin’s cat had probably never even seen a rodent, much less eaten one, and what woman doesn’t wash her hands after changing a litter box? But it was Kristin’s fear and her cat and her money, so I allowed her to pay me twenty dollars a day to groom her cat and change its litter box.