The Cat Sitter’s Cradle (21 page)

I shook my head. “No, Kenny. You’re lying. Mr. and Mrs. Harwick were in Tampa that
night.”

He let out a little laugh. “Really? Well, as soon as he heard what I had to say, he
came right back home, didn’t he?”

For the first time I could feel his anger, not just at Mr. Harwick but at the world.
I think I would probably have felt the same. If he was telling the truth, his father’s
selfishness had triggered a chain of events that led to his mother’s suicide. He had
already grieved away his childhood over the drowning of his father, and now it looked
like he was going to have to do it all over again.

I said, “What did you say to him?”

“When he answered the phone I said, ‘Mr. Harwick, my name isn’t Kenny. It’s Daniel.
Daniel Imperiori. I’m your son.’”

The human brain is such an amazing thing. It’s constantly absorbing new things and
adapting and changing. Scientists have even proven that a person’s intelligence isn’t
some static constant, like an IQ number, but something that can be improved just by
giving it the right combination of food, rest, and exercise. It’s like a kitten—but
kittens can be very predictable. I guarantee that if you wiggle the tip of a peacock
feather in front of a kitten, some magical unseen force will immediately take over,
and that kitten will pounce on that feather without a moment’s thought.

It’s kind of the same with the human brain. It can be pretty predictable, too. As
a cop, I learned to recognize certain signals that people give off when they’re being
less than honest. For example, if you’re making something up that’s not true, nine
times out of ten your eyes will wander to the right without your even knowing it.
But if you’re telling the truth, trying to remember something that actually happened,
most of the time your eyes will wander to the left. As Kenny remembered his conversation
with Mr. Harwick, I noticed his eyes. He wasn’t lying.

“What was his reaction when you told him who you were?”

“Nothing at first. I started to think he was going to hang up on me. Then he said,
‘What do you want?’ I told him I wanted to talk and that it couldn’t wait, so he said
to meet him at his house that night. He was whispering, so I knew he didn’t want Mrs.
Harwick to know about it.”

“What time did you meet him?”

“Late. When I left it was almost midnight.”

His words hung in the air. I knew Ethan and I were both silently thinking the same
thing:
And where exactly was Mr. Harwick when you left?

He looked from me to Ethan and then back again. “Look. I didn’t kill him. I know what
you must think, but it’s not like I planned it to happen this way. I admit—it was
totally cool to be able to watch him, to be right there under his nose. But once I
saw what kind of person he was, the way he treated people, the way he made his money,
I didn’t want anything to do with him. I was sorry I ever met him. Dixie, you have
to believe me.”

I said, “I understand, but you’re going to have a tough time convincing the police
of that. Mr. Harwick was a very wealthy man. You show up, his only living son, the
abandoned heir to his fortune, and then all of a sudden he’s found dead in the bottom
of a swimming pool and you were the last person to see him. It’s a little hard to
believe you wouldn’t want all that money.”

“Yeah, that’s what he said, too. But I’m not stupid. I know what Sonnebrook is, and
I don’t want anything to do with that crap. I told him he could take his money and
rot in hell—” He stopped himself and took a deep breath.

I glanced over at Ethan, and he looked at me out of the corner of his eye.

Kenny regained himself and said, “So that’s why I gave him everything.”

“Gave him what?”

“A big envelope with all the letters he sent me. All the letters where he admitted
he was my father, where he said he wanted to leave everything to me. All of it. There
were even checks he sent me that I never cashed. The only thing I kept was this photo,
just to remind me of what could have been. He said he didn’t care. He could still
leave his money to me and I couldn’t stop him. I said, ‘If there’s anything I learned
from you, it’s how to disappear. So good luck with that.’ Then I left.”

I said, “Okay. Kenny, or Daniel … what am I supposed to call you?”

He shrugged. “Doesn’t matter anymore. Just call me Kenny. I’m used to it now.”

“You’re going to leave here, and you’re going straight to the police. I’ll back your
story up. If you tell them everything you’ve told us, they’ll believe you.”

Kenny nodded. “You have to promise me one thing, though. That message I left on your
machine. When I said I was about to do something big, I was talking about leaving
town. I was going to leave those letters, say good-bye to Becca, and disappear.”

“It’s okay. I figured that out.”

“That’s why I wanted to talk to you. If the police get ahold of that tape, they’ll
think it’s a confession. They’ll think I planned it all along. They can’t ever hear
it.”

I wasn’t sure what to say. I believed everything he had told us, or at least, I believed
he
believed everything he had told us. I believed his father had disappeared in the
ocean when he was a child. I believed his mother had committed suicide on the beach
where his father had disappeared a decade earlier. I think I even believed that his
father was in fact Mr. Harwick. Still, there was a rage in Kenny, bubbling just beneath
the surface, that I had never seen before. I couldn’t be sure that even he was aware
of the kind of power that rage might have over him—the kind of power that could make
him capable of murder.

Ethan cleared his throat and leaned forward, resting his elbows on his knees. “Okay,
this is where I come in. As an attorney, I can tell you without a doubt that you won’t
be doing yourself any favors if you try to hide anything from the police. I’m sure
Dixie would love to make that promise to you right now, but you’ve got to face the
facts: If the detectives don’t already have a record of every phone call you made
in the days leading up to the murder, they soon will. They’ll see right through it.
You’ll just be digging yourself in a hole that you can’t get out of.”

Kenny looked at me, and I tried to reassure him with a smile and a nod, but inside
I was thinking,
Yeah. What he said.

*   *   *

By the time Ethan and I watched Kenny descend the stairs down to the driveway and
disappear into the night, it was just after 4:00
A.M.
, my normal rise and shine. I looked up at the moon and said a little prayer of thanks
to the powers that be for giving me the forethought to ask Pete Madeira to cover my
pet visits for the morning. We stepped back inside and shut the French doors. I looked
at Ethan and he looked at me, and we both let out a huge sigh of relief.

I said, “Well, there’s not much point in you going home now. The sun will be up soon.”

He collapsed onto the couch. “I have to be at work in a few hours, and we still have
to get your car.”

“But it’s Saturday. You still have to go to work?”

“Yep. Unfortunately.”

“Well, I can bike into town later and get my car, so don’t worry about that.” I sat
down on the edge of the coffee table and crossed my arms over my chest. “I’m sorry.”

“For what?”

“For getting you involved in all this.”

He grinned. “Dixie, how long have we known each other?”

“I don’t know. A long time.”

He reached out and pulled me toward him. “Yeah. Long enough for me to know better.”

20

I opened my front door a crack and squinted at the bright morning light slanting in
through the trees. Michael and Paco were sitting out on the deck at the table my grandfather
built when we were kids. They had laid out a breakfast fit for a king. There was hot
coffee, freshly squeezed orange juice, a bowl of locally grown strawberries and blackberries,
and a platter heaped with glistening slices of cantaloupe, mango, and kiwi. Holding
court at the center of the table was a basket of Michael’s freshly baked scones, still
warm from the oven. I was only just a little bit disappointed not to see a platter
of bacon, but since I was apparently going to be seeing more of Ethan from now on,
I figured I could do without it. A moment on the lips, a lifetime on the hips, my
grandmother always said.

It all looked so good I practically skipped down the stairs and across the deck to
the table. I could tell by their empty plates that Michael and Paco had already eaten,
but waiting at my seat was an absolutely yummy-looking slice of spinach and mushroom
quiche, lying on a bed of bright green baby lettuce. I couldn’t remember the last
time I’d been able to stay in bed this late, and I was pretty confident Michael and
Paco had both been fast asleep when Ethan left for work. Not that I was trying to
hide anything. I can do what I want. I’m a grown, mature woman, sort of.

In fact, Michael and Paco had been encouraging me to go out with Ethan for months,
so I knew they’d probably be pretty happy about it, but I just wasn’t in the mood
to be bombarded with a hundred and one questions.

Turns out I was out of luck. The moment I saw the looks on their faces, not to mention
the stack of newspapers spread out in front of them, I knew I was in for a good ol’
session of Q and A with M and P.

Of course they had read all about Mr. Harwick’s death, and now there were a number
of articles in the paper with my name in them, and a quote from the police department
saying there was a search under way for the primary person of interest: Kenny Newman,
the Harwicks’ pool man. I told Michael and Paco the whole story of everything that
had happened, excluding Kenny’s revelation about his father. I did tell them that
Becca had revealed to me that she was pregnant, and that both of them had been missing
ever since Mr. Harwick’s body was discovered.

Michael and Paco sat quietly and listened, except when I was describing the ordeal
of pulling Mr. Harwick out of the pool and trying to revive him. I must have looked
pretty shaken, because Michael got up and came around the table and put his hands
on my shoulders.

When I was finished, we all sat for a while in silence. Finally Paco said, “So, Michael,
I think we should all agree right now to not ever say ‘I told you so’ about Kenny
Newman.”

Michael squeezed my shoulders and said, “Yeah. I totally agree, we should definitely
not ever say ‘I told you so’ about that guy.”

I rolled my eyes and said, “Hilarious,” but I knew their teasing was only meant to
make me feel better about the whole thing. In fact, I was pleasantly surprised that
Michael wasn’t more upset—I hoped it meant that he was beginning to feel a little
less responsible for looking out for me all the time. He had a few gray hairs mixed
in with the blond, and I knew every one of them had my name on it.

Paco said, “So still no sign of him, huh?”

“Not exactly.”

Michael said, “What do you mean, not exactly? You know where he is?”

I took a bite of quiche and reveled in its buttery, cheesy deliciousness for a couple
of moments. “Not really, but he paid me a visit last night.”

Michael’s voice rose. “What? He was here? Goddammit, Dixie, what were you thinking?”

“Michael, I know this is going to be hard for you to understand, but I just don’t
think Kenny Newman is a dangerous person.”

Michael started to interrupt, but I cut him off. “I know what you guys think about
him, and I agree it doesn’t look good that he disappeared after Mr. Harwick died,
but he has an explanation for all of it, and I think I believe him.”

Michael took a deep breath. “Okay, I’m sorry. So what did he want with you?”

“He wanted to talk to me about a message he left on my answering machine the night
before I found Mr. Harwick. He was worried that if I turned it over to the police,
they’d think it was a confession.”

I could tell Michael was getting a little more agitated. He rolled his eyes and said,
“Oh, great. I can’t wait to hear this. What was the message?”

I sighed. “He said he was about to do something. Something big. And that he was sorry.”

Michael sat back down and rubbed his temples with the tips of his fingers. “Dixie…”

“I know, I know, I know,” I said. “But there’s something else, something that explains
why Kenny has led such a secretive life here.”

Michael raised his eyebrows. “What is that?”

I said, “Mr. Harwick is Kenny’s father.”

Michael had just taken a sip of coffee and almost spit it out all over the table.
“What? How is that even possible?”

I told them Kenny’s entire story, and even Michael, who’s about the most skeptical
person I’ve ever known, had to admit it was almost too crazy to make up. He also brought
up a point I hadn’t thought of before: Even though Kenny worked for me, he didn’t
have anything to gain by explaining himself. If he had been planning on murdering
Mr. Harwick, why would he have called me first to warn me about it? Any fool would
know that would’ve aroused suspicion about him right away.

I felt a sense of relief that Michael saw some logic in the whole thing. So much had
happened in the last forty-eight hours I wasn’t sure I still had the ability to see
straight. I was grateful he didn’t think I’d finally gone off the deep end.

Paco had grown more and more quiet the whole time we’d been talking. Now he was holding
his newspaper out in front of him, taking an occasional sip from his coffee cup.

I said, “Paco, what do you think?”

He lowered the paper. “Hmm?”

We both saw it in his eyes immediately. Paco’s not normally one to hold back his opinions,
especially when it comes to matters of law and order. There was a reason he wasn’t
chiming in with his thoughts. He knew something.

I said, “What did you think of Kenny’s story about Mr. Harwick?”

He nodded nonchalantly. “Yeah. Sounds about right to me,” he said and went back to
his paper.