But on that Thursday morning in mid-September when I met Mr. Stern and Ruby for the first time, I had dragged myself out of a cold, dark pit of despair. I wasn’t hollow anymore. I enjoyed life again. I had even thawed out enough to take the risk of loving again. I was actually happy. Maybe all that happiness was the reason I got careless and ended up in big trouble.
I usually make a preliminary visit to meet pet clients and provide their humans with written proof that I am both bonded and insured. The humans and I discuss my duties and fees, and we sign a contract. But since Mr. Stern had something of an emergency, my first trip to his house was also my first day on the job. He lived on the north end of Siesta Key on one of the older streets where, during the mass hysteria that hit southwest Florida’s real estate market, nice houses originally valued at two hundred thousand had sold as tear-downs to be replaced with multimillion dollar colossals.
Mr. Stern’s house was a modest one-level stucco painted a deep shade of cobalt blue. In most places in the world, a cobalt house would probably seem a bit much, but on Siesta Key, where houses nestle behind a thick growth of dark greens and reds and golds, it seemed just the way God intended houses to look. It sat too close to an ostentatious wealth-flaunting house on one side, with another overblown house on the other side that had a huge untended lawn. The lawn sported a bank foreclosure sign—a not-so-subtle reminder that the real estate boom was over and that the value of anything depends on human whim, not on any intrinsic worth. Slim as a spike of sea oats, Mr. Stern had neatly combed thin gray hair, bushy eyebrows above fierce blue eyes, and a spine so straight he didn’t need to tell me he was a military veteran. He told me anyway. He also told me that he was not the kind of man to waste his time on a cat, and that the only reason he had one was that his granddaughter had left her cat at his house and now he was stuck with it. He told me this while he gently cradled Cheddar, the cat, in the crook of his good arm.
American Shorthairs are uniquely American cats. Their ancestors came to this country along with the first settlers. They were excellent mousers—the Shorthairs, not the colonials—and they were noted for their beautiful faces and sweet dispositions. Something you can’t say for sure about the first settlers. Cheddar didn’t seem the least bit offended by the way Mr. Stern talked about his disdain for cats. In fact, his lips seemed to stretch toward his ears in a secret smile, and he occasionally looked at me and blinked a few times, very slowly, sort of a cat’s way of saying, between you and me, everything he says is hooey.
Having made it clear that he was a no-nonsense kind of man, Mr. Stern gave me a quick tour of the house. Lots of dark leather, dark wood, paintings in heavy gilt frames, photographs scattered here and there, a book-lined library that smelled faintly of mildewed paper and pipe tobacco. Except for a sunny bedroom with flower-printed wallpaper and a crib rolled into one corner, the house was what you’d expect of a cultured gentleman who rarely had house guests.
In the dining room, Mr. Stern opened a pair of french doors with a ta-da! gesture toward a large bricked courtyard. “This is our favorite place.”
I could see why. Stucco walls rose a good fifteen feet high, with flowering vines spilling down their faces. Butterflies and ruby-throated hummingbirds zoomed around coral honeysuckle, Carolina jasmine, flame vine, and trumpet vine. The perimeter was a thick tangle of sweet viburnum, orange jasmine, golden dewdrop, yellow elder, firebush, and bottlebrush. A rock-lined pond held center stage, three of its sides edged with asters, milkweed, goldenrod, lobelia, and verbena, while a smooth sheet of water slid over an artfully tumbled stack of black rocks at its back. Inside the pond, several orange fish the size of a man’s forearm languidly swam among water lilies and green aquatic plants.
Cheddar twisted out of Mr. Stern’s hold and leaped to the terrace floor, where he made a bee-line to the edge of the pond and peered at the koi with the rapt intensity of a woman gazing at a sale rack of Jimmy Choos.
I said, “This is lovely.”
Mr. Stern nodded proudly. “Those gaps between the rocks make the waterfall something of a musical instrument. I can change the tone by changing the force of the water. I can make it murmur or gurgle or roar, just by turning a dial. At night, colored lights inside those openings dim or brighten on different timers. Sometimes Cheddar and I sit out here until midnight listening to the waterfall and watching the light show.” Ordinarily, when a man talks like that, he’s referring to himself and a spouse or a lover. I found it both sad and sweet that Mr. Stern was a closet romantic who turned a stern face to the world but shared his sensitive side with a cat.
The churning sound of wings overhead caused us to look up at an osprey circling above us. It was eyeing the koi the same way Cheddar did, but with greater possibility of catching one. Ospreys are also called fish hawks, and they can swoop from the air and grab a fish out of water in a flash. As I watched the osprey, I saw a dark-haired young woman looking down from the upstairs window of the house next door. She turned her head as if something had distracted her, and in the next instant disappeared. Another woman appeared. The second woman was older, with the sleek, expertly cut hair of a professional businesswoman. When she saw me, her face took on a look of shock, and then changed to venomous fury. A second passed, and she jerked the drapes together and left me staring at shiny white drapery lining.
The hot air in the courtyard bounced from the bricked floor and climbed my bare legs, but a chill had moved in to sit on my shoulders. As unlikely as it seemed, the older woman’s animosity had seemed personal and directed straight at me.
The osprey made another circle overhead, hovered atop the wall a moment, then extended its long stick legs for a landing. But the instant its toes touched trumpet vine, it lifted and flew away.
Mr. Stern smiled. “Those birds are smart. There’s coiled razor ribbon along the top of that wall. You can’t see it because it’s hidden under the flowers, but that osprey sensed the danger.”
The osprey’s shadow had caused the koi to sense danger too. They had all disappeared under rocks and lily pads. The koi were smart to hide. In the garden paradise Mr. Stern had created, life and death teetered on a fine balance.
If I had been gifted with the ability to see into the future and know that Ruby was at that moment coming to bring danger to all of us, I would have followed the lead of the osprey and the koi. I would have hidden out of sight until the danger passed, or I would have left the place entirely and never come back. But I’m not psychic, and even though the next-door neighbor’s wicked glare had been unnerving, I wasn’t afraid of her.
At least not yet.
Chapter 2
Mr. Stern scooped Cheddar up with his good arm, and I followed them inside. I opened my mouth to ask Mr. Stern if he knew the women next door, and then snapped it shut. A cardinal rule for people who work in other people’s houses is to refrain from asking nosy questions about them or their neighbors.
Mr. Stern said, “Cheddar likes a coddled egg with his breakfast. Do you know how to coddle an egg?” I said, “While I’m coddling an egg for Cheddar, how about I soft-boil one for you?” It isn’t part of my job to take care of humans, but something about Mr. Stern’s combination of tough irascibility and secret sensitivity reminded me of my grandfather, a man I’d loved with all my heart.
He said, “Make it three for me, and leave one in long enough to hard cook it. I’ll have it later for lunch.”
While I served Cheddar’s coddled egg, Mr. Stern got out a plate for himself and sat down at the kitchen bar. I said, “Would you like me to make coffee and toast to go with your egg?”
“I don’t need to be babied, Ms. Hemingway.” He pointed at a small flat-screen TV on the kitchen wall. “If you’ll turn on the TV, I’ll watch the news.”
I found the remote, turned it on, and handed the remote to Mr. Stern, who was using his good hand to slap at his pockets. “Blast! I left my glasses in the library. Would you get them for me?” I sprinted to the library to look for his glasses an
d found them on a campaign chest in front of a small sofa. As I snatched them up, the doorbell rang.
Mr. Stern yelled, “Would you get that? Whoever it is, tell them I don’t want any.”
I loped to the front door and pulled it open, ready to be polite but not welcoming.
A young woman wearing huge dark glasses and a baseball cap pulled low over blond hair stood so close to the door the suction of it opening almost pulled her inside. In skinny jeans and a loose white shirt, high heels made her an inch or two taller than me. She had a baby in a pink Onesie balanced on one forearm, a large duffel bag hanging from a shoulder, a diaper bag dangling from the other shoulder, and the hand that steadied the baby against her chest held a big pouchy leather handbag. She was looking furtively over her shoulder at a taxi pulling out of the driveway. I got the impression she was afraid somebody would see it.
Everything about her seemed oddly familiar, but I had no idea who she was.
She swung her head at me and did the same quick I know you, no I don’t reflex that I’d done.
She said, “Who are you?” Without waiting for an answer, she surged forward as if she had every right to come in.
From the kitchen, Mr. Stern yelled, “Who was it?”
The young woman called, “It’s me, Granddad.”
Footsteps sounded, and I could almost feel his grim disapproval before he came into the foyer with Cheddar at his heels.
His voice was frosty. “What are you doing here, Ruby?”
For a moment, the planes of her face sagged, and then she took on the hopeful look of a child who thinks she might get a different response if she asks one more time for something she’s always been denied. She dropped the duffel bag on the floor and removed her dark glasses. Without them, she looked even younger than she had before, barely in her twenties. That’s when I recognized her. She looked like me. Not the current me, but the me of ten years ago. She also looked desperately unhappy.
Maybe it was because I remembered what it was like to be that unhappy, or maybe it was because she reminded me of my own outgrown self, but I felt her misery like a barbed shaft hurled at my chest.
Cheddar trotted to her duffel bag and sniffed it. We all watched him as if he might do something wise that would resolve this awkward moment.
The woman said, “I don’t have any place else to go, Granddad.”
“Why don’t you go to your so-called husband? Or did Zack kick you out for some other drag-race grouper?”
If he hadn’t sounded so contemptuous, I would have found it amusing for him to confuse a fish with a celebrity hanger-on. But there was nothing funny about his coldness.
The woman didn’t seem to notice his slip, but her hopeful look disappeared. “Please, Granddad. We won’t be any trouble.”
He made a sputtering sound and waved his good arm at her, which frightened the baby and made Cheddar climb atop the duffel bag and stare fixedly at him. The baby howled in that immediate, no-leading-up-to-it way that babies do, and Mr. Stern seemed shocked at the amount of noise coming from such a small form. This was something he couldn’t control. The young woman looked as if she might cry too, and began to jiggle the baby as if jostling her would shut her up.
I’m a complete fool about babies. I can’t be around one without wanting to cuddle it, and the sound of a baby crying makes me react like Pavlov’s dog salivating at the sound of a bell. Without even asking for permission, I stepped forward and took her. I held her close so she would feel safe, murmuring softly against her bobbly head, and patted her back in the two-one heart-beat rhythm that babies listen to in the womb. I had soothed Christy that way when she was a baby, and for a moment I lost myself in the scent of innocence and the touch of tender skin brushing the side of my neck like magnolia petals. As if she recognized an experienced hand, she stopped shrieking and regarded me solemnly with wide pansy eyes.
The woman said, “Her name is Opal.”
“Pretty name.”
“It was my grandmother’s.”
A grimace of old grief twisted Mr. Stern’s face. “You can stay, I guess. But nobody’s going to pick up clothes you throw on the floor. And you know I like things clean.”
As she reached to take the baby from me, she said, “I haven’t thrown my clothes on the floor since I was thirteen, Granddad.”
The baby’s bottom lip puckered as if she were thinking of crying again. The woman said, “I need to change her and feed her.”
Mr. Stern said, “Your old room is just like you left it.”
If she found anything contradictory about Mr. Stern acting like the curmudgeon of the year one minute and then in the next minute saying he’d kept her old room unchanged, she didn’t show it. Bending to grab the duffel bag, she gently edged Cheddar off it and clattered down the hall with Opal’s head bobbing above her shoulder.
Cheddar galloped after them.
Mr. Stern and I regarded each other with solemn faces. He said, “That’s my granddaughter, Ruby. She claims she’s married to a drag racer named Zack. Maybe she is, I don’t know.”
I said, “The granddaughter who left Cheddar with you?”
“The only granddaughter I have.”
I said, “Now that she’s here, I don’t suppose you’ll be needing me.”
He snorted. “Ruby’s not the kind you can depend on. I want you to keep coming.”
Acutely aware of the emotions in the house, I hurried to clean Cheddar’s litter box. It was in a guest bathroom across the hall from the flower-sprigged bedroom, and while I washed the box and spritzed it with a mix of water and hydrogen peroxide, I could hear Ruby’s soft voice murmuring to the baby. She sounded the way I remembered sounding when Christy was a baby—the voice of a young mother absolutely besotted with her infant.
When I finished with Cheddar’s litter box and headed down the hall, I glanced through the open bedroom door. Ruby had pulled the crib from the corner so it stood in front of glass sliders open to a little sunshine-filled patio. Opal and Cheddar were both in the crib. Cheddar’s nose was touching Opal’s chin, and Opal was laughing with the soft sound of a baby duckling. Ruby’s face was naked with love. Mr. Stern had said Ruby wasn’t reliable, but a woman who takes time to play with her baby and is gentle with pets goes to the top of my list of trustworthy people.
I found Mr. Stern in the library. He wasn’t reading or watching TV, just sitting on the sofa staring straight ahead. A grouping of framed black and white snapshots was on the wall behind him, all of young men in military uniform. One of them, a tall man with fierce eyes, was apparently their commanding officer. He looked like a much younger version of Mr. Stern, and for a second I wondered if he was a son. Then I noticed a framed banner bearing a red American eagle and inscribed: The 281st Engineer Combat Battalion, 1944, and I realized it was Mr. Stern himself. It reminded me that we can never imagine the histories of people we meet, the challenges they’ve faced, the losses they’ve known.
He said, “I guess Cheddar remembers Ruby.” He sounded sad, as if he felt abandoned.
Trying to make my voice tiptoe, I said, “Cats love being with babies.”
He seemed to brighten at the idea that he’d been rejected in favor of the baby instead of Ruby. As for me, a job I’d expected to be neatly delineated had become frayed around the edges by a host of complex emotions emanating from Mr. Stern and his granddaughter.
I said, “I’ll be back this afternoon.”
As if he’d heard a bugle call, Mr. Stern got to his feet and stood ramrod straight. He walked to the door with me, followed me outside, and watched me get in my Bronco. I gave him my most fetching smile and waved at him like somebody on a parade float. He nodded sternly, like a general acknowledging the presence of inferiors, then scurried around to the back of the car and began whirling his good arm in come-on-back motions.
I groaned. Mr. Stern was turning out to be one of those men who believes every woman with wheels needs a man to tell her how to turn them. Which sort of explained so
me of the tension between him and Ruby. But, okay, what the heck. It wouldn’t cost me anything to let him think he was a big manly man helping a helpless female back her car out of his driveway.
Ordinarily, I would have used my rear-view mirror to see if anything was behind me, but with Mr. Stern back there vigorously miming me to back straight out, I sort of felt obliged to swivel my head around and pretend to watch him. But as I looked over my shoulder I saw the young woman at the next door house again. This time she was at a front window, and I could see her features. She was plump and plain, and something about her seemed indistinct and faded, like old sepia photographs of immigrants arriving in this country at the turn of the century. I kept looking at her until a palm tree blocked my view, and then I remembered Mr. Stern, who was in the street whirling his arm.
He was a nimble man, I’ll give him that. He jumped out of the way at the right moment and back-walked along the curb, circling his arm to signal me to turn the wheel. The only problem was that he was directing me to turn in the wrong direction.
So, okay, no big deal. I pulled into the street pointed the wrong way.
I gave Mr. Stern another parade-queen wave and drove off in the wrong direction past the vacant house with the foreclosed sign. In my rear-view mirror, I saw him head back toward his open front door. I also saw a long black limo pull away from the curb half a block behind me. Nothing unusual about a limo on the street. People in Siesta Key’s upscale neighborhoods take limos to the airport all the time. There wasn’t even anything alarming about the way the car stayed the same distance behind me. The street wasn’t made for passing, so we both drove along at a steady speed.
I had intended to turn on a side street and work my way back to a main thoroughfare, but residential streets are short on the Key, and this one had no side streets. It ended in a cul de sac, where I made a U-turn. The limo driver made the same turn, and I felt a moment of camaraderie with him, both of us caught by surprise by a deadend street. As I passed Mr. Stern’s house, I looked toward the windows of the house where I’d seen the young woman, but all I saw was the glare of sunlight bouncing off glass.
Curiosity Killed the Cat Sitter Page 28
