Cat Sitter on a Hot Tin Roof: A Dixie Hemingway Mystery

by Blaize Clement

  On the way to the diner, I stopped at a traffic light and noticed a hand-lettered cardboard sign taped to a light pole: LOST CHIHUAHUA PUP! REWARD! CALL LYON’S MANE. There was no phone number or address, which I took to mean that whoever printed the sign assumed that everybody knew where and what the Lyon’s Mane was. Which they probably did. The Lyon’s Mane was the salon Laura had mentioned, a pricey place for people accustomed to big-city stylists and big-city fees. Needless to say, I’d never been there.

  A car honked behind me and made me aware the light had changed, so I moved on with the herd. Somebody had been busy putting up that LOST CHIHUAHUA PUP sign, because it was at every intersection. A block away from the Village Diner, I spotted the little guy cowering under an oleander bush. I pulled off the street and got out of the Bronco, moving as slowly as I could so as not to frighten him. Even adult Chihuahuas make me feel like a big ogre, they’re so small and dainty. A Chihuahua pup is like a fairy dog, all big eyes and dancy legs.

  I knelt down and spoke softly while my hand crept forward, palm up. “Don’t be scared, it’s okay. I’m going to take you home.”

  I slipped my hand under the pup’s chest and lifted his front paws off the ground, then did a one-hand lift to cuddle him against my own chest.

  I said, “How in the world did a little bitty thing like you get so far away from home? Did a hawk pick you up and carry you? Catch a ride on a turtle?”

  He didn’t answer, just burrowed into my bosom as if he liked the warmth.

  I thought he’d been through too much trauma to add a ride in a stranger’s car, so I walked through some parking lots and side streets to the Lyon’s Mane. At the salon, I pulled open the glass door and stepped into the odor of shampoo, styling products, and singed hair. A young woman with lizard-green eye shadow and hair in white Statue of Liberty spires stood behind a tall reception desk talking on a phone. Before I got to her, a ponytailed marionette of a man came clattering around the desk on backless clogs. His arms were raised from the elbows and his hands were flapping excitedly.

  “Oh, my God, you’ve found Baby!”

  He grabbed toward me, and I hastily put the puppy into his grasping hands. The puppy licked the man’s lips while he cooed and kissed its nose.

  I said, “He was under an oleander bush. They’re poisonous, so I hope he didn’t try to eat any of the leaves.”

  “Baby? Eat a leaf off a bush? Hell, Baby won’t even eat dog food! My wife feeds him off her plate.”

  I smiled and nodded, polite as anything, and edged toward the door. I’d done my good deed for the day, and breakfast was close by.

  The man said, “Hold on! There’s a reward for bringing Baby home.”

  I waved him off like Lady Bountiful telling the peasants they didn’t owe her anything. “That’s okay. Glad to do it.”

  He stopped patting Baby and stared at my head. “No offense, hon, but who’s been cutting your hair? The yard man?”

  Actually, I’d cut it myself, and I thought I’d done a pretty good job. My hair is straight and just hangs there, so cutting it isn’t like rocket science. Nevertheless, my hand went anxiously to my head. Suggest to a woman that her hair is bad, and her hand is compelled to feel it.

  “You think it’s uneven?”

  “Doll, if it was any choppier, people would get seasick just from looking at it. Sit down and I’ll even it up for you. A reward for rescuing Baby.”

  I gave a fleeting thought to breakfast, and dropped into his chair. No woman in her right mind would turn down an opportunity to get her hair trimmed by a master stylist.

  I said, “Maybe just a teeny bit off.”

  He flapped a hand from a loose wrist. “Sweetie, you just leave it to me. You’re gonna love it. By the way, my name’s Maurice.”

  He pronounced it Maur-eeese.

  I said, “I’ve heard of you. My friend Laura Halston is one of your clients.”

  As soon as I said it, I was afraid I’d mentioned Laura’s name to elevate myself from a strange woman in cheap shoes to a person who was in the same league with his clientele.

  He said, “Oh, Laura! Isn’t she gorgeous? And just as down-to-earth as she can be.”

  He scooted away to settle the pup in its own monogrammed basket, and I looked at the hair stuff laid out on his workstation. I didn’t know what half of it was. A shallow shelf under the work top held a couple of glossy glamour magazines, and I pulled one out and looked at the photograph on the cover. It was the generic photo that every glamour magazine has—airbrushed close-up of a young woman with carefully applied eyeliner and fake eyelashes that somebody spent an hour or two lacquering and separating so they look like heavy fringe, chemically colored hair with extensions teased and gelled and sprayed to mimic the way healthy hair would look if nothing had ever been done to it, and a pouting, seductive mouth plump with collagen shots. We are all supposed to believe that if we only purchase the products advertised in those magazines, we too can look like the cover model, but not even the cover models look like that.

  Maurice came back and grabbed a pair of scissors. “Put the magazine down, because I’m going to turn you around so you’re facing me instead of the mirror. You just relax.”

  I immediately tensed up, because my experience is that when somebody says, “You just relax,” you’re in for a harrowing time.

  Maurice spun me around and began to cut and snip like a wild man, sending pieces of hair flying all over the place. I was so disappointed I could have cried. Sarasota women have two hairstyles: Barbie-doll long and highlighted white blond, or short and chopped off at the nape of the neck. The Barbie-doll do has bangs that hang over the eyebrows, the chopped-off do is frothed up on the crown like meringue. There is no in between.

  I stand up for myself against alligators, religious fanatics, and gun-toting madmen, but I am a hopeless coward with hairdressers. I not only thank them for bad haircuts, I pay them and tip them. Then I go home and recut my hair. It’s disgusting to be a hairdresser wimp, but I am. And every time, while I’m in the chair being ruined, I rationalize my cowardice by telling myself that my hair will grow out, that a bad haircut won’t last forever.

  Maurice knelt in front of me to get a better angle with his scissors. He had kind eyes.

  He said, “I worry about her.”

  “Who?”

  “Laura. With that awful husband of hers, I think she should hire a bodyguard. But she’s so brave, she just acts like there’s no danger. And then there’s that other man after her. I feel bad that she met him here, but it’s out of my hands, you know? She’s an adult and she can see anybody she wants to.”

  Maurice apparently didn’t share my disinclination to gossip about his clients, and I felt a bit let down. Laura had apparently told Maurice everything she’d told me, plus he knew about a man she hadn’t even mentioned. So I wasn’t so special after all. I wondered how many other people knew her story.

  He stood up and whirled me around so I could see myself, and I made an involuntary gasp of surprise.

  I felt like Julie Christie in the old movie Shampoo. My hair wasn’t any shorter, and I didn’t know exactly what was different, but now it looked as if it needed a man’s fingers running through it.

  Maurice smiled. “Now that’s kick-ass hair!”

  The front door flew open and a woman built like a manatee came charging in. She had large dark eyes with lots of dramatic makeup, shiny black hair cut close to her head like a skullcap, and she wore lavender Lycra tights under a bright orange smock. She should have looked ridiculous, but she looked oddly exotic.

  In a deep baritone, she bawled, “Baby!” and snatched the Chihuahua pup from its basket.

  Misty-eyed, Maurice said, “That’s my wife.”

  I didn’t know whether he was on the verge of crying because my hair was so gorgeous or because his wife was so . . . so much.

  To his wife, Maurice said, “Ruby, sweetie, this is . . . who are you, hon?”

  Weakly, I said, “I’
m Dixie Hemingway.”

  As if he’d invented me, Maurice said, “She’s the one found Baby and brought him back to us.”

  With Baby held tight against her jutting bosom, Ruby stuck out a hand twice as big as Maurice’s and gave me a firm handshake.

  “You’re a pet sitter, aren’t you? I read about you in the paper. Great haircut.”

  I allowed as how I was a pet sitter and that I also thought it was a great haircut, but I didn’t respond to the comment about reading about me in the paper. There were only a few times my name had been mentioned in the paper, and none of them were because of events I wanted to remember.

  Maurice said, “She’s a friend of Laura Halston’s.”

  Ruby opened her mouth to say something enthusiastic, but she closed it when the front door opened and a thick man stalked in, glowering like he owned the place and had caught the employees goofing off. He was donkey-butt ugly, with a deeply pockmarked face and thorny black eyebrows. When he raised his hand to his shades to remove them, several diamond rings glittered on fingers thick as cheap cigars. Maurice and Ruby got quiet, and the smile Ruby gave him was so false it could have been lifted off and pinned to the wall.

  She said, “Sheila will be right with you, Mr. Gorgon.”

  He said, “Well, get her up here, I don’t have all day.”

  The young woman with the Statue of Liberty hair whipped around the front counter with a smile as phony as Ruby’s. “I’m right here, Mr. Gorgon. You can come on back.”

  As he strutted away, I watched him with the repulsed fascination I’d give a nest of baby vipers. Maurice and Ruby seemed equally unable to tear their eyes away from him. Even Baby had cocked his ears and was staring at him with big astonished eyes.

  Sheila of the white spiked hair bustled around a manicure stand, getting him seated, making sure he was comfortable, offering him something to drink, putting out her bowls and bottles and tools as if she were getting ready to do major surgery. The man all but sneered at her, but he allowed her to touch his broad hands. They seemed to have something of a practiced routine.

  As if we all came out of a trance, Maurice and Ruby and I turned away from them at the same moment.

  In a barely audible murmur, Maurice said, “Speak of the devil.”

  Brilliantly, I said, “Huh?”

  He leaned close and pretended to arrange a hair behind my ear while he whispered, “That’s the man Laura’s seeing!”

  Since she’d only lived in Sarasota a few weeks, she couldn’t have seen much of him. Besides, anybody with two brain cells to rub together would know he wasn’t Laura’s type. Then I remembered how she’d talked about how rich her husband was, and how much she’d liked being a rich man’s wife. This guy sporting diamonds on his hammy hands obviously had money. Maybe his money was enough to make Laura overlook his nasty disposition. I gave the man another look. I knew he wasn’t the man who’d called while I was there because his voice was gruff and harsh, not the unctuous smarm of the guy who’d come to Laura’s door.

  I thanked Maurice profusely, tried to give him a tip which he refused, and left him and Ruby telling Baby how wonderful he was. I didn’t say goodbye to Sheila. I was afraid it would interfere with her concentration and enrage her manicure customer.

  That’s the kind of thing that makes me grateful for my own profession. I don’t have to be a different person at work than I am at home. I don’t have to suck up to people I despise so that little pieces of my soul get chipped away every day.

  As I trudged back to the Bronco, I thought how women tend to envy beauties like Laura, but if we’re going to envy anybody, it probably should be women like Ruby. She was a lot happier than Laura, she had a man who loved her whole zaftig self, and she was content with her life. I suspected that Laura’s experience with men was that they all wanted to show her off to other men, like a rare jewel in their possession.

  Oddly, I felt sorry for Laura. She probably needed a friend as much as I did. Maybe some of her cool self-esteem would rub off on me, and maybe I could help her feel that she was more than just a lovely face.

  9

  At the diner, Judy was too busy to talk, but she was quick with the coffee. After she poured the first cup she stepped back to let a young Hispanic man carrying a bright-eyed baby boy in a plastic carrier pass, and for a second he and Judy did one of those sidestepping routines in which each offers right-of-way to the other. While that went on, the baby and I smiled at each other and he waggled his bare feet in innocent ecstasy at being cute and lovable. I tapped one of his plump little brown toes with my finger, and he laughed before his father moved forward and took the baby out of my reach. It’s just disgusting what a pushover I am for babies.

  Judy hurried away as a middle-aged man and a dewy-eyed young woman—probably office workers taking an early lunch—stopped at the empty booth across the aisle. The girl slid into the booth’s bench seat, and the man hesitated a moment as if he might slide in next to her. Flushing, she quickly put her handbag on the seat, and he sat down across from her. A strand of hair had fallen forward over her face. As if it couldn’t help itself, his hand floated across the space between them and smoothed the errant hair away from her brow. She looked startled, and he jerked his hand back in a shamed spasm. He wore a wedding band. She wore a look that said she might soon change jobs.

  By nature’s design, men have the same response to pretty girls that women have to babies. They are compelled to touch them, caress their soft skin, inhale their scent. Lust and tender yearning are two facets of the same diamond.

  Judy slid my breakfast in front of me. “Tanisha says hi.”

  I looked up and waved a thank-you at Tanisha’s shiny black face smiling at me through the opening to the kitchen. Tanisha is wide as a bus from eating her own cooking, so she took up most of the opening.

  As usual, she had done my breakfast exactly the way I like it—two eggs over easy, extra-crispy home fries, and a biscuit. No bacon, because I have a bacon monitor in my head that knows how much bacon I can eat without ending up big as Tanisha. Some days I tell the monitor to mind its own business, but only when I really, really need fried fat to ease my soul.

  Judy scooted away and left me to enjoy my breakfast. The man and the girl across the aisle were busy eating now, neither looking at the other or talking. A little bacon might have made them both feel better.

  I ate as fast as I could, dropped money on the table, and waved goodbye to Judy and Tanisha. My mind and body were screaming for sleep.

  Except for sloshing surf and squawking seabirds, everything was quiet when I got home. The parakeets were having a siesta, and only a few bored shorebirds ambled along the sand. The day seemed to have lasted a week or two, and my Keds made weary shuffling sounds as I dragged myself up the stairs to my apartment.

  Ella was waiting for me inside the French doors, which meant that Paco had brought her up before he went off to catch a drug dealer or nab a bank robber or do whatever his job of the day was. I picked her up and kissed her nose, feeling better the instant I heard her start to purr. That’s the neat thing about cats. You can be feeling like yesterday’s cold oatmeal, and the sound of a cat’s purring just because you’re there makes you feel like you might be worth something after all. She blinked cat code for I love you and then twisted out of my arms and leaped to the floor, where she proceeded to hike her back leg in the air and gnaw at the base of her tail.

  That’s another neat thing about cats. They don’t waste time in feel-good sentiment when there’s an itch that needs attention.

  I stood for a while under warm water and then fell naked into bed and oblivion. I woke up annoyed at myself for going into a funk over things that were, to be honest about it, none of my business. I was a pet sitter, not a surgeon or social worker. That being the case, I needed to keep my mind on my own life and not indulge in the ego trip of taking on other people’s problems.

  I told myself that Jeffrey had excellent surgeons and caring parents. I told
myself that Laura was an intelligent woman with a family she could call for any support she needed. I told myself that no matter how much I sympathized, I actually couldn’t make any difference in what either of them was going through.

  With that determined, I got up and padded naked to the kitchen to make a cup of tea. Carrying the tea to my closet-office, I flipped on the CD player to let Patsy Cline’s no-nonsense, no-equivocation, no-shit voice break the silence. That’s what I needed, less of my own morbid thoughts and more of Patsy Cline’s soul. While I whipped through the clerical parts of my business, Ella sat on my desk and tapped her tail in sympathy for Patsy Cline falling to pieces at the sight of an old lover.

  After we were done with record-keeping and grooving on the heartbreak of love, I hauled out the vacuum cleaner and sucked up all the dust in my apartment. I scrubbed my bathroom shiny too, until I was high on Clorox fumes. All the time I did it, I heard my grandmother’s voice saying, “Cleanliness is next to godliness,” which annoyed the heck out of me because it reminded me that I’ve become as much a cleanliness freak as she was. I swear, all those bromides that mothers and grandmothers repeat must change a person’s DNA.

  Nevertheless, I felt in control of my little corner of the world when I’d got my environment clean and neat. I almost swaggered when I put away the vacuum. Then I ambled to the closet-office and pulled on a satin thong. I put on a bra too, because I would see Pete later and I didn’t want to give him shortness of breath.

  I still had some time before I had to leave for my afternoon rounds, so I took Ella out to Michael’s deck for a spirited session of chase-the-peacock-feather. Watching a moving peacock feather arouses a cat’s innate hunting instincts, so I buy peacock feathers by the dozen. Both of us were a little winded when I got my grooming kit and put Ella on the plank table. Being a Persian mix, she has medium-long coarse hair with an undercoat that can knot up, so she needs to be groomed every day.