The Cat Sitter’s Pajamas (22 page)

“Has he come to see you since he’s been gone?”

I didn’t answer. She knew he hadn’t.

“You want to know what I think?”

I didn’t, not about this particular topic, but I knew I’d hear it anyway.

“I think he’ll be as relieved to hear you’re going to be seeing other men as you’ll be to tell him. I imagine there are women in New Orleans he’d like to go out with. Women who
want
to live in that town.”

“What if he starts seeing somebody there and I change my mind and want to go there and he doesn’t want me anymore?”

She shrugged. “You take a risk when you love somebody.”

I groaned again and slid forward in my chair like a frustrated kid.

For several minutes, we sat silently and let the sun seep into our bones. Until I’d said it, I hadn’t realized my secret fear was that I might decide I wanted to be with Guidry and it would be too late. As Cora had said, I wanted to hedge my bets. I wanted to keep Guidry and at the same time explore other possibilities with a man like Ethan. I didn’t need Cora to tell me that besides being dishonest and cowardly and manipulative, that was just plain
wrong.

After a while, I sat up straight.

“Do you want to stay out here, or would you like me to help you inside?”

She thought about it, considered it from all angles, and decided to go to bed with her hot water bottles and watch TV. I carried the bags and tea things inside, and while she went to the bathroom and got into a nightgown, I refreshed the hot water in the bags, put a bottle of mineral water on her bedside table, made sure her phone and TV remote were at hand, and helped her get situated against her pillows. In her white cotton nightie, she looked like a little girl.

I hugged her, kissed the top of her wispy hair, and made her promise to call me if her stomach started hurting again.

She said, “You’re a good girl, Dixie. I hope you know that. You know, that may be why some people put on fake ways. Maybe they don’t know they’re good, so they try to make people think they’re somebody else.”

I blinked back sudden tears and hugged her again. Cora believes everybody in the world
came
good, no matter how they turned out. I don’t know that I agree with her, but I’m glad she thinks I’m good.

Before I left her apartment, I peeked into the hallway to see if Miss Taylor was lurking about. She wasn’t, but she got off the elevator before I got in it. She had changed into clingy black velvet pants and a sequined top.

Surprised to see me, she said, “Leaving so soon?”

I nodded. “Their wives are there, too. I didn’t know there would be wives.”

Her face fell, and she stepped back into the elevator with me. We rode down in heavily perfumed silence. I don’t know what she was thinking, but I was giving silent thanks that she wasn’t anything like my mother. My mother might have deserted me and my brother, but she would never look like Miss Taylor. It was nice to know I hadn’t inherited bad-taste genes.

Downstairs, Miss Taylor turned with an air of resignation toward the activities room where people played cards and chatted before the dinner hour, which, in Sarasota, is five o’clock.

At the concierge desk, I stopped with a phony smile. “Ms. Mathers seems to have a touch of food poisoning from the carrot cake at the birthday party yesterday. I think she’s going to be okay, but I’d appreciate it if you’d pass along a suggestion to your chef to refrigerate those cakes until they’re served. We wouldn’t want a resident to get seriously ill from one of them.”

She wore colored contacts, too, but they weren’t oversized. Her eyes rounded in alarm, and her gracious smile was just as phony as mine.

“We haven’t had any other complaints. It must have been something else Ms. Mathers ate.”

“Could have been, but just to be on the safe side, I think it would be a good idea to keep an eye on her—but not so she
knows
you’re keeping an eye on her.”

This time the smiles we exchanged were genuine. Everybody at the retirement condo knew how much Cora hated being fussed over.

She said, “Somebody will check on her tonight. If she’s not feeling well, we’ll see that she goes to her doctor.”

As I waited for the aged valet to bring my Bronco, I thought about how phoniness is so pervasive that we’ve come to take it for granted. Not just phony political rhetoric but phony smiles and phony conversations by ordinary people in which nobody says what they really think. With digital technology, photographs may have settings or people added or removed, and recordings of speeches or conversations may actually be random words spliced together to create a seamless whole. Most of us wear shoes and watches and jeans and T-shirts with fake labels in them, society matrons carry expensive handbags with fake labels, cigar aficionados puff pricey stogies with Cuban labels that are really from someplace else, and heroic athletic feats may be due to muscles or stamina falsely created by steroids. I wondered if living in a phony world changes the way our brains and cellular structures operate. If we accept phoniness, will we do away with honesty and integrity altogether? Will we make up new selves from day to day, with no obligation to mop up the messes the old selves have made? Most important of all, is it possible to be real in a phony world?

The rules of Cora’s condo forbid tipping the valet, but I always tip anyway because I appreciate not having to lope around on the parking lot for my car. The new valet pocketed the money with a smile, and I drove away smiling back. I’m not sure if either of our smiles was genuine.

Everything in the world had begun to seem fake to me, so it was a huge relief to start making my afternoon pet rounds. If a dog wags its tail at you, he really means it. If a cat purrs at you, that’s not a fake purr. And there’s not a dog or cat in the world who would wonder if a change of eye color might make him more popular, or if dying her hair would bring her more attention. Animals may be the only creatures on earth who are content with being who they are.

I usually start at the south end of the Key and work my way north, but since I was crossing the north bridge onto the Key, I changed my usual routine and called on two cats at the north end. They were sisters, sweet Siamese mixes named Gumdrop and Licorice. Young enough to find their primary entertainment in chasing each other through the house, they didn’t let tile floors dampen their enthusiasm for racing. They slid and skidded a lot going around corners, but they seemed to find that an additional thrill.

When I unlocked their front door and went inside, I could hear the soft thudding noise of a wild galloping chase. The noise stopped when they heard me, and I called to them to set their minds at ease.

“It’s just me, Dixie.”

They came charging to look at me with that Siamese expression of alert intelligence. They followed me to the den, where I pulled a peacock feather from my bag. For a cat, a peacock feather waved over its head is an opportunity to leap into the air and grab a bird of its very own. For a cat sitter, waving a peacock feather over a couple of cats is an opportunity to sit on a hassock and enjoy watching the grace and style with which cats spring into the air. Since I had groomed them during the morning call, I was there solely to play with them and feed them. With all the running they did, they got plenty of exercise on their own, but it’s as good for cats to have new experiences as it is for humans.

The cats were fascinated with the feather, I was fascinated with the cats, and none of us knew Briana had come into the house until she was in the room with us.

20

I felt her before I saw her. A faint scent of perfume, perhaps, or just the rearrangement of the air’s molecules by a foreign body. Curiously, I wasn’t surprised. That white convertible I’d seen in traffic had really been following me, then, and a thief who knew how to disengage a specific area of a security system would surely have no trouble creating an electronic signal that would bypass a home’s security pad.

Briana wore an outfit similar to the one she’d worn when we met at the beach pavilion—sheer, wide-legged white linen pants and a matching loose tunic. Not the
same
outfit, of course, just similar. Briana probably never wore the same clothes twice. Her silky red hair was twisted into a knot on the top of her head. Her hands hung loosely at her sides. She had glittering green stones in her ears, and I knew they were real emeralds. Briana wouldn’t have been caught dead in fake emeralds.

I didn’t even stop waving the peacock feather. The cats gave Briana a questioning look and went back to leaping at their prey.

I said, “When did they release you?”

“This morning. I told you I didn’t kill that woman.”

“But you knew who did.”

She shrugged. “Justice will be done.”

“I’m surprised they didn’t hold you as a material witness.”

“Thanks to you, I have a good lawyer who arranged bail.”

“Why are you here?”

She sat down on the arm of a sofa.

“Dixie, I don’t think you know the danger you’re in. You’re holding something that two groups of people much stronger than you want, and if you have any ideas about selling to the highest bidder, forget it. You’re not dealing with sweet little pussycats, you’re dealing with professionals who will snap you in half and throw your body into the ocean if you oppose them.”

I lowered my right hand holding the feather and let my elbow rest on my knee. My gun was in the right pocket of my cargo shorts, and I wanted to be ready to grab it. The peacock feather was still suspended in the air but not moving. The cats watched it suspiciously.

I said, “What is it that you think I have?”

“I must have dropped it in Cupcake’s bedroom and you found it.” With an arch smirk, she added, “If you were the law-abiding citizen you claim to be, you would have turned that list of contacts over to the FBI.”

I thought,
List of contacts?

I moved the peacock feather to my left hand and waggled it. The cats jumped at it. Briana watched the cats while I slid my right hand up my thigh to the flap of the pocket on my cargo shorts. I hooked my thumb in my pocket as if I were resting my hand.

I said, “Why should I give you the list, Briana?”

Her mouth made a little O of realization.

“You want to be my partner? My Florida agent? Is that it?”

“Maybe.”

Her lips curled. “I’ve worked my butt off to get where I am. I’ve been felt up by every obnoxious old fart in Europe. Plus, I can’t take a pee without some goddamn paparazzi catching me on film. You think you can just waltz in and share in the profits when all you’ve done is find a list of names?”

I swirled the peacock feather in the air with my left hand while my right hand slid all the way into my pocket and grasped the butt of my .38.

I said, “I know you had to work hard to be who you are. I really admire that.”

Oddly, I actually meant it.

She said, “You wouldn’t believe all the people in the fashion world that top models have to kiss up to. Not to mention rich men who think a model is just an expensive whore.”

I said, “Like the Serbian gangster who went to prison for adding heroin to a shipment of fake Gucci watches?”

Her eyes widened, and I was afraid I’d gone too far. Then she laughed. “I guess my life is more of an open book than I’d realized.”

In my pocket, I laid my trigger finger alongside the barrel of the gun.

She said, “You know, the partnership you’re proposing might be a good idea. You have the right contacts for my business. They’re all around you. Some of them are probably your clients. Since you already know what the business is, perhaps we should talk about how we might help each other.”

“You’d cut me in on your profits if I help you?”

“Right.”

“Doggone generous of you, considering that I’m the one with the list of names.”

Briana said, “The list is only one side of the equation. I hold the other side. One without the other is useless.”

I had pushed my luck as far as it would go. If I made one slip, Briana would figure out that I really didn’t have a list of names. I didn’t even know why the names were important, but I was pretty sure they had something to do with an illicit business involving fake designer merchandise.

I said, “I still don’t understand why you stalked Cupcake.”

Her eyes closed, and for a second she looked like an ancient carving. Gumdrop must have felt her sadness, because she jumped onto the sofa and nuzzled Briana’s arm with her nose. Briana opened her eyes, smiled, and began to stroke Gumdrop’s head.

She said, “Cupcake was the sweetest boy I ever knew. He didn’t have a mean bone in his big muscle-bound body. After I killed my uncle, somebody told the cops that I had a hideout in the swamps. I didn’t, and I’d never told anybody I did, but while I was losing myself in the French Quarter, search parties were slogging through every bayou and swamp in the county. I always suspected Cupcake was the one who told that swamp story.”

“So to pay him back for his kindness, you broke into his house?”

“I’ve already told you why I did that. I just wanted to be close to him again. He’s one of the few people in the world who’s truly good. I needed to have some of that goodness, even if it was just from hanging around his house.”

“Who was the woman who was killed?”

“The FBI agent? I don’t know her name.”

I tried not to look surprised, but it was hard. Mostly, I felt stupid. Now I understood why the murdered woman’s identity had been kept a secret, and why Paco was involved in the investigation.

“Who killed her?”

“I don’t know.”

“I don’t believe you.”

She shrugged. “Will you help me or not?”

“Who were the men who attacked me and searched my apartment?”

She looked surprised. “I didn’t know that happened. But now that I do, I can tell you they were business rivals of mine. They want that list you have.”

“Well, isn’t that just peachy.”

“Will you help me?”

“Tell me about the list.”

“My old Serbian friend passed them along to me before he went to prison. He wanted me to carry on his business until he got out. Since he was murdered in prison, the business is now wholly mine.”