Curiosity Killed The Cat Sitter

For a woman who must have consumed a lot of alcohol before she came, she spoke with amazing control and clarity. The only thing that betrayed how much she’d had to drink were her red eyes and the odor she radiated.

She took a step forward and Ghost sailed over my head to the top of the armoire. She flinched and looked up at him, interrupted for the moment. Ghost crouched at the edge of the armoire and peered down at her, his mouth making the peculiar little smile of a cat smelling something highly offensive, every muscle in his body quivering, his whiskers pointed forward and his ears on alert. With all the chemical odors in the house, the alcohol she radiated was too much for him to stand.

My mind was scrambling, screaming at my body to do something, but I was paralyzed. My gun and phone lay on the kitchen counter with the photographs, and she had me cornered. Marilee’s big bed blocked me on one side and the bedroom wall was at my right. The only possible weapon was the nearest lamp. The lamps were tall and made of what appeared to be heavy cast iron. If I could grab the closest one and unplug it before Olga Winnick stabbed me, I might be able to stun her with it and run.

As I edged a half step toward the table, she looked back at me.

In that split second, I understood why she was there. I said, “You’re protecting your family right now, aren’t you? You’re here to stop me from telling the truth about who killed Marilee Doerring and Harrison Frazier. It wasn’t you, it was your husband.”

Tears filled her eyes and spilled unheeded down her cheeks. “She lured him into her perversions! She was an evil, evil woman.”

I thought of the photographs on the kitchen counter. “She did lure him and trick him and use him. How did you find out?”

She wiped at her eyes with her free hand. “A wife always knows. He would leave our bed and come here, he was obsessed. Night after night, I saw him go through her lanai to her. She was here waiting for him, here with all her filthy practices.”

Her voice broke and she shut her eyes for a second to compose herself. I took the opportunity to scoot a few steps closer to the lamp. If I could keep her talking, I had a chance.

She opened her eyes and looked at me with renewed determination.

I said, “He came here Thursday night, didn’t he? And found Harrison Frazier with Marilee. That must have been a shock to him.”

She shook her head, quick to support her husband’s intelligence. “He already knew. He saw him when he arrived. He kept watching the house, pacing back and forth, acting as if I wasn’t even there, didn’t see, didn’t understand. Men can be so blind where predatory women are concerned.”

I nodded sympathetically, thought about saying “Ain’t it the truth,” then decided against it. Instead, I said, “Did you know when he came here Thursday night?”

“Oh yes, I knew. Carl didn’t know I was awake, but I knew when he got out of bed and left the house. I stood in my kitchen window and watched him go to her lanai just as he always did, saw him disappear into her house just as I’d watched him many times before. He carried a weapon in his hand, a piece of pipe he must have had in the garage. My heart was breaking, but I could not stop him, you see, because it would have led to a scene that might have wakened Phillip. I did not want him to know what his father was doing. A boy should look up to his father as a role model.”

“So you stood at the window and waited and watched.”

Her breath shuddered, sending out more intense waves of alcohol. “Yes.”

“And what did you see, Mrs. Winnick?”

“I saw my husband come out of this house with something in his arms. He carried it across the backyard and walked along the fence beside the woods, and then he disappeared from my view. I didn’t know what it was that he carried. Then he came back here to the house again. In a little while, he went out to the driveway and got into that man’s car and drove away.”

I pushed my foot a few inches to the left and said, “What time was this?”

Wearily, she said, “It was exactly five minutes past one. I know because I looked at the clock on the microwave after he left.”

I pulled my right foot alongside the left one, trying to make it look as if I were just adjusting my posture, and said, “You must have been extremely concerned. I mean, it didn’t look good for your family, did it?”

“I had to do something. A woman like you can’t understand what it is to be a good wife and mother. You can’t know how a real woman will go to any length to save her family.”

For a minute there, I’d been feeling sorry for her, but that brought me back to reality. “What did you do, Mrs. Winnick? How did you save your family?”