Curiosity Killed The Cat Sitter

Feeling cut off from the world, I pedaled home through church traffic. At the Summerhouse, I pulled my bike to a stop to allow a wedding party to spill over the walk. The bride and groom were young and laughing, the bride radiant in miles of lace and tulle, the groom tall and gallant, all the wedding guests gazing after them with the bedazzled smiles that wedding guests always have—hoping this union would live up to the fairy-tale wedding promises of happy ever after but knowing full well that nobody really lives happily ever after, not even beautiful young people who are truly in love.

One of the bridesmaids saw me waiting and gave me a little shrug and smile, meaning “I’m sorry you’re inconvenienced.” I smiled back and shook my head slightly, meaning, “It’s okay.”

When the walk cleared, I pedaled on, grinning a little bit at how we two-legged animals aren’t so different from the four-legged kind. If that bridesmaid and I had been dogs, we would have wagged our tails and sniffed each other’s butts to communicate our friendly feelings. Instead, we wagged our heads and smiled.

Michael’s car was parked under the carport with its trunk open, showing about a zillion paper bags from Sam’s Club. That meant he had made his weekly run to stock up on food for us and for the firehouse. Michael loves Sam’s the way women love shoe stores, and he buys as if he’s preparing for marauding invaders who will cut off every supply of sustenance.

I got a couple of bags out of the trunk and started to the house with them and met Michael coming out. When he saw me, the grin on his face faded and he gave me a look that can only come from a big brother who bathed in the same tub and peed in front of you for the first years of your lives together. “What’s wrong?”

For a second, I felt like bawling. “You know the kid we saw at the Crab House Friday night? The one who lives next door to where the man got killed? He was beaten up this morning, really bad.”

Michael gathered up bags from the trunk and slammed the lid closed. “How’d you hear about it?”

“I found him. He was in the bushes there on Midnight Pass where the old road goes into the woods. I called nine one one and they sent an ambulance.”

“Poor kid. Is he going to be all right?”

“I don’t know yet. But there’s more. After the deputy left, I noticed some hair on a lime tree, and I went into the woods there where that old road is, you know, and Marilee Doerring’s body was in there.”

Then I did bawl. Just stood there with a bag of groceries in each arm and cried like a baby. “Animals had been at her, Michael.”

“Good God. That’s awful. Come in the house, I’ve got coffee on.”

I trailed behind him with the bags, and we both deposited our loads on the kitchen counters. The house Michael and I grew up in is pretty much the way it was when we came to live in it, except for the kitchen. Michael and Paco knocked out a wall where a baywindowed breakfast room used to be, so it’s a lot bigger and sunnier now. They also installed commercial ovens and a Sub-Zero refrigerator and freezer. A butcher-block island sits in the middle of the floor, with a salad sink on one side and an eating bar on the other.

Michael heaved a spiral-sliced ham from one of the bags and set it aside, then made short work of stowing the other stuff away, while I splashed water on my face at the sink and mostly got in the way. He slit the wrapper on the ham and motioned me to the bar.

“Pour us some coffee,” he said.

While I got out mugs, he deftly peeled off several slices of ham and threw them on the big griddle between the rows of burners on the stove. I carried two mugs of steaming coffee to the bar while Michael got eggs from the refrigerator and cracked a bunch of them one-handed into a mixing bowl. The ham on the griddle was sending up clouds of damp steam and beginning to smell divine.

He said, “Why do you think the kid was beat up?”

I shrugged. “Either the obvious reason or because he saw the murderer leaving Marilee Doerring’s house Friday morning.”

He stopped whisking eggs and looked hard at me. “How do you know that?”

“He told me last night. I ate dinner at the Crab House and talked to him before he started playing. He said a woman left Marilee’s house around four o’clock and got in a black Miata that had just pulled into the driveway. He thinks she saw him watching.”

Michael turned the ham slices and got butter and a slab of Parmesan cheese from the refrigerator. “Have you told the detective?”

I watched his serrated knife cutting thick slices of sourdough bread. “I’ve left several messages for him to call me, but I haven’t heard from him.”

He threw a wad of butter on the griddle, smeared it into a big puddle, and flopped the slices of bread in it.

I got up and held out two plates, and he flipped ham slices on both of them. I said, “I knew all along that Marilee wouldn’t have left her hair dryer behind like that.”