Curiosity Killed The Cat Sitter

Tom Hale was hovering near the door waiting for me when I got to his condo. He had heard about Phillip’s suicide attempt on the news, and he was determined to find out everything I knew. I gave him the short version, but it was still a lot to condense. When I told him what I suspected about Carl Winnick, he shook his head in disgust.

“That’s always the way,” he said. “Those sanctimonious holier-than-thou types are always covering up something rotten. I hope they roast his balls over an open flame.”

“First, they’ll have to prove he did it.”

“The boy, how bad is he?”

“It was to his head, Tom.”

Tom looked down at his ruined legs. “It would be better for the kid if he doesn’t make it. Not if it’s to the head.”

I felt tears coming, so I stood up and got Billy Elliot’s leash and snapped it on his collar. Tom rolled his chair toward me and fixed me with a stern look.

“Dixie, don’t try too hard to make sense of any of this. Life doesn’t make any sense. Like they say, bad things happen to good people. It’s like chaos theory. You know chaos theory?”

I considered my options. If I was honest and said I didn’t know diddly about chaos theory, Tom would tell me everything about it twice, and I’d never get away. If I lied and said chaos theory and I were old friends, he’d catch me in my ignorance and I’d still end up hearing all about it.

I sighed. “Tom, I really have to go. I’ve got a million things happening at once and none of them make any sense, and so far as I can tell, they’re all impossible.”

He smiled and gave me a thumbs-up. “You’ve got it, Dixie! That’s chaos theory!”

When I got back to Marilee’s house, a green-and-white vehicle from the Community Policing Unit was in the Winnicks’ driveway—either to gather information or to offer the services of the Victim Assistance Unit.

I laid my.38 on the kitchen bar, and sat on a bar stool to use Marilee’s phone to call the trauma center at St. Pete. A woman told me she could not provide any information about any patient, period.

I said, “I just want to know if he’s still alive.”

“I’m sorry. I can’t tell you anything.”

I had known before I called that I wouldn’t get anywhere. To the woman answering the phone, I could be a ghoulish reporter following up a lead on a kid who’d committed suicide, or I could be the person who had pulled the trigger, checking to see if I’d been successful.

I called Guidry to see if he knew anything, but he didn’t answer his cell, so I left a message.

I fed Ghost, showered, and changed clothes, then went out to the lanai to get the grooming supplies I’d left on the table when I combed him. Phillip’s window was dark. I walked to the side screened door to look at it, as if the window held some secret that might help Phillip live. Phillip’s phone message now made perfect sense. He had already decided to kill himself when he called. He had wanted to thank me and to apologize for lying before he died. He should have known he didn’t need to apologize to me, especially not for lying about being gay.

A coil of surprise moved at the base of my skull, and I looked at Phillip’s window again. Drought-tolerant Bahia grass grew from Marilee’s lanai to the wooden fence that marked the back boundary at the woods, with a bed of low junipers separating her yard from the Winnicks’. I opened the lanai’s screened side door, stepped out onto the grass, and went to stand at Phillip’s window. From that spot, I looked toward Marilee’s driveway. It was completely hidden from view by the corner of her house. Even the street in front of her house was invisible from Phillip’s window. I walked down the side of his house until I came to a spot where I could see Marilee’s driveway and the walk from her front door. It was at the very front of the Winnicks’ house, next to their garage. If Phillip had seen a Miata pull into Marilee’s driveway, it hadn’t been from his window.

With my mind whirling, I went back to Marilee’s lanai and picked up my grooming supplies. As I was going through the glass door, my cell phone started beeping from the kitchen bar and I hurriedly pulled the slider closed and sprinted to answer it. It was Michael, his voice anxious because I hadn’t answered promptly. I told him I was absolutely jim-dandy and not to worry. I still hadn’t told him about the safe, but now didn’t seem the time. I also didn’t tell him that I’d just discovered that Phillip had lied to me.