Curiosity Killed The Cat Sitter

I never wear any kind of fragrance when I’m working with pets, but watching Ghost’s reaction to the odor of chemicals on the walls made me remind myself to be extra careful with scents for a while. Ghost was going to be supersensitive until he got used to all the changes in his life. That made two of us.

I got down an ordinary ceramic bowl—Ghost’s silver bowl being not only impounded by the Sheriff’s Department but forever rendered too gross to drink from—and put out fresh water for him. He brushed his cheeks and rubbed his ass against all the cabinet doors to leave his scent and reclaim his territory from the haz-mat crew.

I knew he hadn’t been eating much at the Kitty Haven, so even though he had already had breakfast, I got out his food dish. Ordinarily, I preach a daily diet of dried organic food, because it contains all the nutrients a cat needs to stay sleek and healthy. But a constant healthy diet gets pretty boring, even for cats, so an occasional dish of canned stuff is okay as a special treat. Ghost loved sliced beef in gravy the way I loved bacon, and after all he’d been through, I thought he needed sliced beef. I wouldn’t have minded some myself.

Marilee kept a ten-pound bag of dried cat food in the pantry, along with stacks of canned food. I opened the pantry door and did a double take.

“Huh,” I said. When you’re all by yourself with a cat, you can make an intelligent comment like that without having to explain yourself.

The pantry was L-shaped, with the short end at the left of the door. In the past, the sack of dried food had sat on the floor under the long shelves, and stacks of canned food, jars of catnip, boxes of special treats, and some kitty toys had taken up a long shelf facing the door. Now they took up two shelves on the short end. Marilee had apparently rearranged the pantry since I’d last seen it.

As I moved cans of veal and lamb and chicken around on the short shelves, looking for sliced beef, I realized the shelves were now only half as deep as they used to be. Marilee hadn’t just rearranged her shelves, she had remodeled them.

“Huh,” I said again, my repertoire of intelligent exclamations being somewhat limited by then.

I got out a can of sliced beef and opened it for Ghost. He began to swoon with ecstasy even before I put the bowl on the floor. Then I went back to the pantry and removed everything on the newly foreshortened shelves so I could get a better look at the back wall.

It looked like all the other wallboard unless you looked closely, then you could see it was freshly painted hardwood. I got a knife and slid it in the crack on the left. I moved the knife up and down without hitting any resistance. I did the same thing on the right side, and hit resistance at the top, middle, and bottom.

“Bingo,” I whispered. The back of the shelf was a hinged door.

Right then, I should have got on the phone and called Guidry. I should have confessed that I had an invoice to a wall safe in a folder in my desk drawer. Should have admitted that I had opened Marilee’s mail and found the invoice. I should also have told him I had been keeping this information from him, and that I had no earthly reason for doing so except that Marilee had lost her daughter, too. Even I knew that was an irrational reason to hide evidence, but it seemed logical at the time. If I could protect her secrets, she and I wouldn’t be so vulnerable.

I tried prying the door open with the knife, but it didn’t budge. Thinking it must have a pressure-sensitive latch, I pushed my fingers all along the top edge of the door. When I got to the left side, I heard a click, and the door swung open.

“Oh gosh,” I whispered, because a cream-colored safe was set flush inside the wall.

“Oh hell,” I muttered, because the safe had both a combination and a keyed lock.

To open this sucker, you not only had to get inside Marilee’s mind and figure out her code, you also had to have a key.

My cell phone rang and I froze. Only two or three people in the world had my cell number, and I wasn’t looking forward to talking to any of them. It was Michael, calling from the fire station.

He said, “Are you okay?”

“Yeah, I really am.”

“You’re at Tom Hale’s, right?”

I twisted the toe of one of my Keds into the floor, exactly the way I used to do when we were kids and Michael quizzed me about something we both knew I’d done and I was denying. I took a deep breath and straightened my back. I was thirty-two years old and I could do anything I wanted.

“Actually, I’m at Marilee’s house. I’m going to spend a few days here. I’ll explain about it later. It’s a long story.”

He said, “Are you crazy?”

“I think that’s still to be decided.”

“Aw shit, Dixie, I don’t like this one bit. That asshole Dr. Win is right next door. He’ll have every reporter in town over there.”

“I don’t think so. I think this is the last place anybody would think to look for me. I’ll be back in a day or two. After this blows over.”