The Cat Sitter's Whiskers

by Blaize Clement

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  About the Authors

  Copyright Page

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  For Blaize … you’ll always have the last word.

  Acknowledgments

  As always, thanks go to my beloved friends and family; to my editor, Marcia Markland, for her vision; to Dana Beck, Hellyn Sher, and David Urrutia for their encouragement and feedback; to Elizabeth Cuthrell and Steven Tuttleman for their support; to Sharon Salzburg, Dr. Anna Owren Fayne, and the men and women of the Sarasota Sheriff’s Department for helping me get my facts straight; to the team that keeps me in line: Kat Brzozowski and Quressa Robinson at St. Martin’s Press, and Al Zuckerman at Writer’s House; and finally to my amazing and generous readers and fans, who have welcomed me into Dixie’s world with open hearts.

  The ache for home lives in all of us,

  the safe place

  where we can go as we are

  and not be questioned.

  —Maya Angelou

  1

  It was a little after 5:00 on Monday morning when I pulled my bike out and brushed off the dewy cobwebs that had appeared between the spokes overnight. The sky was coal-black except for the vaguest hint of pale pink breaking at the horizon to the east. I knew once the sun got herself situated it would be hot as blue blazes, but for now there was a cool breeze riding in on the waves from the ocean, so I zipped up my hoodie before I rolled across the courtyard.

  It was still pretty dark and there was a blanket of fog covering everything. Anybody else would’ve needed a bike light—the driveway twists and turns through the jungle that separates my place from the main road—but I’ve been riding up and down this narrow lane since I was a little girl. I know it like the back of my hand. Plus, my bike light burned out two years ago.

  The crunching sound the bike’s wheels made in the crushed shell sent the yellow parakeets in the treetops bouncing around like kernels of corn on a hot skillet. I mouthed a silent, sorry, for waking them up so early.

  I’m Dixie Hemingway, no relation to you-know-who (as far as I know). I’m a cat sitter. I live on Siesta Key, a sliver of sand that hugs the shoreline of Sarasota, Florida, about midway down the state on the Gulf side. On a map, our little island looks like a prehistoric heron—a slender, feathered dinosaur with long, graceful legs hanging south and a scraggly neck stretching north, with Bay Island as its beak pointing east toward the mainland. I like to imagine it’s a faithful sentry, keeping an eye on Sarasota and all its suburbs, guarding it from angry sea dragons and marauding pirates (or at the very least absorbing blows from the occasional hurricane).

  I mostly take care of cats, but I do have a few dog clients here and there. In fact, I’ll pretty much take care of anything—hamsters, lizards, parrots, iguanas, rabbits … but not snakes. If I get a call from somebody with a snake that needs looking after, I politely decline and refer them to someone else. First of all, I hate snakes. Second of all, I hate snakes.

  Yes, I know we’re all God’s creatures and everything, but I’m not sure God was thinking straight when she came up with the idea of a fanged, slithering cylinder of scale-encrusted muscle that goes around swallowing whole animals alive. Just the thought of it makes me want to jump up on a chair and stay there for the rest of my life.

  At the end of the driveway I looked both ways—mostly out of habit. At this hour, Midnight Pass is pretty much deserted except for maybe a few early-bird scrub lizards skittering back and forth in search of breakfast, hoping to get a head start on their less ambitious friends. The fog was moving along the road, and as I rolled to a stop little wisps of it curled up around me like baby ghosts.

  I took a moment to breathe in the cool, salty air, imagining it filling my entire body all the way down to my toes. This is my favorite time of day, when there’s not a soul in sight and all the world is mine. I’m not really the type to wake up and loll around in bed half the day reading magazines and eating donuts … well, actually that’s exactly the type I am, but I’d go broke in two seconds flat if I let myself do that, so I always get up early. It’s the only way I can manage to fit all my clients in.

  I was just about to lean on the pedals and take off into town when something stopped me. I inched the bike out into the road and peered down toward the end of the island, waiting for my eyes to adjust to the darkness. At first all I could see was the faded lines on the asphalt disappearing into the mist, but then something dark floated into my vision on the right.

  There, at some indiscernible distance—it could have been a hundred feet, it could have been twenty inches—was a looming, motionless field of darkness, just slightly darker than the black shadows around it. My heart started racing. I didn’t know exactly what it was, but I knew one thing for certain: it wasn’t supposed to be there.

  Slowly, I let my backpack slide off my shoulders and zipped it open with trembling hands. I whispered, “Stop shaking, you idiot. It’s probably just a…” But I couldn’t come up with anything good.

  A few weeks earlier, a woman outside Sarasota had opened her back door to find a six-hundred-pound black bear helping himself to the bird feeders on her patio. The first thing she’d done was scream bloody murder. Then she slammed the door and called animal control while the bear lumbered off into the woods.

  He hadn’t been seen since.

  As I fumbled around in my backpack for a flashlight, I reminded myself that a bear would have to walk over one of the two bridges to get to the island, either that or swim clear across the bay, both of which seemed pretty unlikely. Just as my fingers closed around the cold metal of my flashlight, the entire road beyond the dark shape filled with white light, and a moment later two glowing orbs of red appeared at its center.

  Well, I thought, it’s finally happening. They’ve come to take me to their mother planet.

  I’d read about it. Innocent country folk sucked out of a cornfield and flown to a research lab in another galaxy, where they’re probed and prodded by slimy, mute aliens with eyes big as bowling balls. Then they’re flown home and released back to the field they disappeared from, with their memories erased and nothing to show for their journey except some sore spots in various embarrassing places on their bodies.

  As I saw myself being interviewed by Oprah and describing my vivid memories of being a human guinea pig in space, I heard the sound of an engine start up and rumble softly.

  The black shape was a car, a dark brown four-door sedan parked on the side of the road about fifty feet past my driveway. I dropped the flashlight down in the side pocket of my cargo shorts and let out a sigh of relief … with maybe just a smidgen of disappointment mixed in.

  At this end of the island most of the houses are the kind you only get to see in movies or on old reruns of Lifestyles of the Filthy Rich and Annoyingly Fabulous. They’re hidden behind manicured hedges and meticulously kept gardens, which of course you can’t see because those are hidden behind big iron gates and stucco walls painted shell-coral or lemon-yellow and overflowing with masses of flo
wering bougainvillea. The walls are mostly a security measure—sometimes there’s even a coil of razor ribbon hidden beneath those innocent-looking vines—but they also serve a more practical purpose: keeping the riffraff like me from being able to stand around and gawk and upload pictures to Twitter and Facebook.

  In other words, it’s not the kind of neighborhood where people park their cars on the street. They house them in garages bigger and nicer than my whole apartment. Hell, some of their cars are bigger and nicer than my whole apartment, so I knew there was only one person who could have been parked on the side of the road this early in the morning: Levi Radcliff, the paperboy.

  Well, boy isn’t exactly the right word.

  Levi’s about thirty-five, the same age as me. We went to high school and junior high together, but I still call him the paperboy because he’s been delivering the Herald-Tribune for about as long as I can remember. He couldn’t have been much older than twelve when he started.

  He was a big shot in high school—good-looking, blond, star of the baseball team. After we graduated there was talk of sports scholarships and professional recruiters, but nothing ever came of it. I’d heard rumors of drinking getting in the way, but I never really found out what happened. He’d started spending a lot of time hanging out with friends and surfing, and I figured he’d just decided a life at the beach was good enough.

  And anyway, people’s dreams don’t always pan out. Believe me. I know.

  I guess I should mention that Levi was the first boy I ever kissed. Yep … it sounds like a big deal, and in a way I guess it was, but it wasn’t like we had some big hot and heavy romance. It was ninth grade, after all. I guess we were old enough to know what we were doing, and yet still young enough to have absolutely no clue. It happened in Hallway B in the old Sarasota High building, just outside Mrs. White’s history class.

  We were playing “Who Am I?” a game that Mrs. White claimed to have invented herself, where two people were sent out of the classroom, one boy and one girl, and then the class chose two prominent figures from history. The two kids were called back in, and then they each took turns asking the class questions about their secret identity. Whoever guessed right first was the winner.

  There was only one rule. While you waited in the hallway and the class chose your identity, you were supposed to stand with your back against the lockers so you couldn’t hear, but of course we always cheated. I was on my hands and knees with my right ear pressed against the door, and Levi was crouched down just in front of me, cupping his left ear against the gap of the doorjamb. I can still feel the giddy rush of adrenaline at the prospect of getting caught, and of course we couldn’t really hear a thing because all the kids were talking at once, and then the next thing I knew Levi leaned forward and kissed me—not on the cheek or forehead or anything like that. Right on the lips. And I didn’t move, I just stayed there, perfectly still, with my lips slightly puckered. His eyes were closed, but mine were wide open, like a deer in the headlights.

  I remember thinking it was a little rude of him not to ask first, like he didn’t even care one bit if I wanted to be kissed or not, but I was so overcome with the excitement of it all that I didn’t dwell on it. At the clicking sound of Mrs. White’s high heels approaching, we both leapt up and threw ourselves against the lockers, just in time for Mrs. White to swing the door open and call us back in.

  I was in such shock that I could barely concentrate, and I don’t remember which of us won, just that it turned out I was Rosa Parks and Levi was Amerigo Vespucci. After class, Levi must have bragged to his friends about what had happened, because by the time the school bell rang at the end of the day we were officially a couple.

  Everybody was talking about it—well … everybody except me and Levi. We just continued on as if nothing had happened, and within a few weeks the whole thing was forgotten.

  Of course, I should have recognized his car—a lovingly restored Buick LeSabre convertible that he’d bought senior year with money he’d saved from his paper route—but it was too dark and foggy. I hoisted my backpack over my shoulder and waited. He’d probably pulled over to look at his delivery list or make a quick phone call, but I noticed the engine was making a funny hiccuping noise every once in a while—as if it might stall any minute—so I figured I’d better check on him just in case he was having car trouble.

  I wheeled my bike around, but when I got about even with the back bumper he pulled forward and headed off down the Key, leaving me in a cloud of sooty exhaust.

  So much for being a good Samaritan.

  I pulled my phone out to check the time. It was already 5:15.

  In the dead of summer, when it feels like the Florida sun has a personal beef with you, a lot of full-time residents hop on a plane and escape to cooler climates for as long as their bank accounts allow, but since most pets, especially those of the feline persuasion, aren’t exactly thrilled with the idea of air travel, that means it’s usually the busiest time of year for me. I knew if I didn’t get a move on I’d never stay on schedule, plus I figured if Levi was having car trouble he certainly didn’t need me. He was a big boy and could take care of himself.

  The parakeets had quieted down again, but I knew any minute there’d be a chorus of birds announcing the new day. For now, though, they were probably still snoozing away in their leafy beds.

  Looking back, if I’d known what was right around the corner I would have gone back to bed myself. In fact, if I’d known what was coming my way I’d have gladly hopped aboard a spaceship, flown clear across the universe, and submitted myself to any and all experiments those slimy aliens could come up with.

  But that’s not what I did. Instead, I slipped my phone down in my back pocket, stood up on the pedals, and headed out for a brand-new day.

  2

  I hate the word widow. It makes me think of black spiders or gaunt-faced spinsters wasting away in a decrepit old shack down by the river, but I might as well tell you right off the bat that I am one. My husband Todd and my daughter Christy were both killed in a freak car accident about five years ago. I could tell you the exact number of months, weeks, days and hours that have passed since then, but I know I’d come off a little “tetched,” as my grandmother used to say, so let’s just pretend the numbers are getting mushy around the edges.

  Christy was three years old. You’d think my memory would be frozen, that I’d still see her as the same scrawny, independent, headstrong little girl she was on the day she died. But no. In my mind, she’s almost nine now. She has a burgeoning collection of silver dollars—one for every baby tooth she’s lost—and any day now she’ll put in a request for her own smartphone. We have words like widow and orphan to describe people who’ve lost loved ones, but there’s no word for a mother who’s lost a child.

  That’s because it never stops.

  Up until the day my world shattered, five years, blah-blah months, so-and-so days, and whatchamacallit hours ago, I was a deputy with the Sarasota Sheriff’s Department. I was good at my job. Real good. I traveled the streets in my patrol cruiser, my mirrored sunglasses perched on my nose, my department-issued SIG Sauer 9mm handgun tucked securely in my side holster. Protecting children, catching criminals, rescuing tree-bound kittens … you know the type. Just another blond badass, making the world a better place.

  But the day Todd and Christy died, a little switch flipped in my head—a crazy switch. I’ll spare you the details, but let’s just say all parties involved agreed it would be best if I took a little break from law enforcement. This is Florida. There are enough maniacs walking around with guns as it is.

  After wallowing in my own wacko for about a year, I finally managed to stand upright and fraternize with the human race again. I have Michael, my older brother, to thank for that. He’d always taken care of me, even when we were little kids, but that whole year he barely left my side. I remember watching his hands as he laid out lunch for me and set the tray down on my bed. I remember him gently waving a spoonful
of homemade soup under my nose and whispering, “Mmmm, soup!” as if I were a brain-addled infant barely capable of feeding myself … which basically is what I was.

  I don’t know what I would have done without him.

  The sky had lightened by the time I biked into the village, enough that all the leaves were glittering with dew. There’d only been one other car on the road the whole way into town, but it had stayed back at least half a mile, not going much faster than I was, which meant it was probably Levi. I knew he started his route on the south end of the Key and worked his way up.

  I didn’t have much farther to go, just a couple more blocks and left on Island Circle Road to my first client of the day: Barney Feldman, an eight-year-old Maine Coon. Mr. Feldman (only his closest friends call him Barney) lords over the two thousand square feet of his domain like a pirate guarding a treasure ship, which makes sense when you consider that Maine Coons are believed to have descended from cats that traveled around the world on Viking ships in the eleventh century.

  He lives with his owners, Buster and Linda Keller, in a decidedly nondescript three-bedroom ranch house. It’s all white stucco, with a simple lean-to carport off the right side and a poured concrete driveway in front, cracked and buckling in its old age. If you didn’t know better, you’d assume it was just an old tear-down waiting for somebody to snatch it up for a few thousand dollars and put a proper house in its place. But this is Siesta Key, and the beach is only a two-minute walk away. The Kellers bought their home ten years ago for roughly half a million dollars. There’s no telling what it’s worth today.

  As I rolled up the driveway, I didn’t think Levi had beat me there, but I glanced around for the newspaper just in case. Then I remembered Mrs. Keller saying that, like a lot of people, they got all their news online now, which was bad for the Herald-Tribune but great for me, since it meant I wouldn’t have to worry about collecting the newspapers while they were away.