At first I wasn’t sure I’d heard her correctly. I said, “She’s allergic … to insulin?”
“Yeah. It makes her so sick she can’t get out of bed, like she got hit by a bus, but she has to take it or she’ll die. It’s a rare condition, like one in a million or something, and they tried all kinds of different drugs but nothing helps. It used to be she had a few good days a week, but as she gets older it just gets worse and worse. We’re lucky if she has one good day a month, and now she has to use a walker to get around.”
I sat back against the booth. “Mona, I’m really sorry, but I don’t know if I’m the person you should be talking to.”
“I got nobody else.”
“Okay, well, first of all. I don’t want to upset you, but as long as Detective McKenzie thinks you and Levi were engaged, you’re probably her number one suspect. She needs to know that you lied.”
She shook her head. “No. I don’t talk to cops. They can all rot in hell.” She looked out the window and then back at me. “Sorry. Nothin’ personal.”
I sighed. “I’m not a cop anymore.”
“I know. I wouldn’t be here if you was. Tanisha told me.”
I was beginning to think Tanisha was right about her big mouth, but I figured I’d deal with that later. I said, “Look, I know it seems like there’s no way out, but it’s not that bad. You’ll just have to tell your grandmother the truth.”
“You don’t get it.” She looked down at her hands, and I noticed her fingernails were chewed to the quick. “I can’t. My grandma…”
Tears began streaming down her cheeks, and I felt a knot form at the base of my throat. Tanisha was right. This poor girl was truly suffering.
I said, “Mona, I think if you sit down with your grandmother and explain everything the way you’ve explained it to me, she’ll understand. You just have to be brave and tell her the truth. You have to promise her that with or without Levi you’ll be okay, that you’re strong, and that she doesn’t need to worry about you. I know it seems really overwhelming right now, believe me, but maybe there’s someone who could be there with you when you tell her. Maybe a friend?”
She shook her head slowly.
“How about a relative…?”
She didn’t answer, just stared at her coffee cup on the table. “Tanisha said you’re good with problems.”
I said, “Umm, yeah, I suppose you could say that.”
She looked up at me, her eyes as pleading as a lost kitten’s. “Levi was my only friend.”
Right away I knew I was done for. I still wasn’t quite sure what Mona had hoped to accomplish by coming to meet me at the diner, but I knew one thing for certain: she needed help. I also knew I didn’t have the heart to say no. In a strange way, I felt I owed it to Levi.
I said, “Okay, look. I can’t believe I’m saying this, but if you want me to be there when you tell her, I will.”
She looked completely shocked. “You will?”
“Yeah, I will. But listen, if you won’t talk to Detective McKenzie, then I have to. The more she knows about Levi’s life, the sooner she can figure out what happened to him, and it would be wrong of me not to tell her everything I know.”
She nodded slightly and looked out the window. I had a strange feeling there was something more. It wasn’t that I thought everything she’d said about Levi and her grandmother was a lie, or even that I thought she could have been responsible for his death—now that I knew more about her, that seemed unlikely—but I could still hear that voice in the back of my head saying, Why me?
I said, “Mona, Tanisha said you came here because you wanted to apologize, but I don’t think that’s it … and I don’t think you came here to ask me for help with your grandmother, either.”
She shrugged defensively. “It’s a free country. I can do what I want.”
I lowered my chin slightly and gave her my best no-more-bullshit look. “I can’t help you if you’re not going to be honest with me.”
She looked down and was quiet for a moment. I wasn’t sure how old she was, probably in her mid-twenties, but it suddenly occurred to me that she was about as emotionally mature as an eight-year-old girl.
I said, “Mona … what is it?”
Her eyes started to fill with tears again, and she reached up and wiped them away with her sleeve. “I don’t know. Tanisha said you’re the smartest person she’s ever known … and then, you said something that hit me, you know? Kind of like a bullet in my heart, and then I thought Levi must have said something to you … I thought that was why you went to his place.”
I frowned. “I don’t understand. What did I say?”
She turned to me, and I suddenly felt like I had a view all the way down to the bottom of her soul. “It was outside Levi’s trailer, you said … ‘I’m sorry you’re so tortured.’”
I put my hands on top of hers. “Oh, Mona. I’m sorry. I was upset, and you have to admit you weren’t being very nice.”
She shook her head. “No. It’s not that. I mean … how did you know?”
“How did I know … what?”
She took a deep breath and slowly pulled her hands out from under mine. Then she carefully opened the top few buttons of her blouse and parted it to the side.
I gasped.
There on her chest, what I’d originally thought was a tattoo was a field of bruised skin, deep purple, and scattered across it were small dark spots, almost black, each about the width of a pencil eraser … or, I realized with a sinking feeling, the lit end of a cigarette.
I whispered, “Mona … who did this to you?”
She looked up, her black eyes completely still.
“I did.”
* * *
I must have been in a complete fog after I left the diner, because I barely remembered talking to Judy or Tanisha except to say that I was fine and that I’d have to explain everything later. As I got behind the wheel of the Bronco, I glanced under the seat where I’d hidden Mrs. Keller’s package and then pulled my cell phone out of my backpack. I had already dialed Ethan’s number before I even realized what I was doing.
“Hey, babe. What’s up?”
I gulped. “Well, I guess this is one of those phone calls where I’m supposed to let you know if something unusual happened.”
“Uh-oh. Should I be sitting down?”
“Well, it’s not that big a deal … I don’t think … but I just had a little chat with Levi’s fiancée. She was waiting for me at the diner.”
“What? How did she know you’d be there? And what the hell did she want?”
“Tanisha told her, and to be honest, at first I thought she wanted to hurt me, but it turns out she needs help, like really bad. The whole thing about them being engaged? It’s a lie. She made it up so her grandmother wouldn’t worry about her.”
“Dixie, you do realize what you’re dealing with there, right?”
“Yeah, I know…”
“I mean, that woman could be dangerous.”
“I know, but Ethan, the thing is … she hurts herself.”
“What do you mean?”
“She showed me on her chest. She has all these places where she’s burned herself with a cigarette, and the skin is all black and blue.”
“Oh, man, Dixie … I don’t like this one bit. Why did she show you?”
“I don’t know, except when she came up to me outside Levi’s trailer, I said something to her that must have stuck. She was being so nasty, and it just came out of me. I said I was sorry she was so tortured … I didn’t mean anything by it, but apparently she thought it meant Levi had talked to me about her.”
“Okay, first of all, I’m really glad you called…”
“I know. I wanted to hear your voice. It was terrible.”
“… but you need to call Detective McKenzie right away.”
I paused. From his tone, I knew exactly what he was thinking.
“Dixie, I could be wrong, but a person capable of that kind of violence to hers
elf…”
I wanted to say no. I wanted to argue with him and tell him if he’d seen what I’d seen, if he’d looked into Mona’s eyes and seen the fear and sadness there, he’d never think for one minute that she was capable of hurting a fly, much less Levi, a man she clearly loved. But of course he was right. I think I was so convinced there was some connection between what had happened to me at the Kellers’ house and what had happened to Levi that I was blind to reality.
“Okay. You’re right. I’ll call McKenzie right now.”
“And Dixie, I don’t think you should talk to Mona again.”
I sighed. I figured this wasn’t exactly a good time to let him know I’d promised to help her. I said, “Duh. What do you think I am, a complete idiot?”
“Ha … well, not a complete idiot, no.”
“Thanks.”
“Hey … speaking of complete idiots … I’m sorry about yesterday.”
My throat tightened. “What about it?”
He sighed. “You know, about what I said … I was just making a joke. I don’t want you to think having kids is on my agenda right away, because it’s not. It was thoughtless on my part, I really didn’t mean to…”
I pulled the phone away from my ear and glanced down at the screen. I said, “Hey, Ethan, this is Detective McKenzie calling me now.”
“Oh, okay, yeah.”
“I’ll call you back.”
He said, “Yeah, yeah, no problem.”
I flipped the phone shut and dropped it down in the cup holder like a hot potato.
I had agreed to give Mona moral support when she told her grandmother the truth about Levi, but only on one condition: that she have a doctor look at the burns on her chest. She had balked at first, saying there was no way she could afford a doctor since she didn’t have health insurance, but I told her I’d pay for it myself. I gave her a lecture on a topic with which I am well familiar—how avoiding a doctor when there’s a clear medical risk is totally irresponsible, completely risky, and one hundred percent immature. Of course, I had fully expected her to flat-out refuse, but to my utter surprise she agreed.
I told her I had a friend on the staff at Sarasota Memorial, Dr. Philip Dunlop, and that I would ask him to give her a call. How I came to know Dr. Dunlop is a whole other story, but let’s just say he owed me one. I wanted to call him right away, because I knew the sooner Mona got some medical help, the better off she’d be.
In other words, I didn’t have time for chitchat with Ethan. I don’t usually just flat-out lie to him like that, but I had no idea what he was talking about, and frankly, I didn’t want to talk about it.
24
There’s a secret club, a sort of underground society, that only people who’ve lost a loved one know about. There are no membership cards or annual dues or quarterly conference calls or anything like that. The only way to recognize another member is by a particular look in their eye. It’s a mix of things—sadness, joy, longing, wisdom—but when you become a member yourself, you gradually develop a talent for recognizing it, sort of the way a sommelier learns to recognize a fine wine with just one sip. When Mona looked up at me, her blouse parted slightly to reveal the damage on her chest, I knew.
It was probably naive of me, but I just didn’t think Ethan could be right—that because Mona was capable of such violence to herself, it naturally followed she was capable of murder. In fact, if anything I wondered if it wasn’t the exact opposite: Instead of directing that rage at someone else, she’d pointed it inward.
There was a time—it probably didn’t last more than a few hours—when I felt that kind of passionate rage myself. I don’t like to think about it because deep down inside I know it was wrong, but more than that, I don’t like to think about it because I’m not ashamed.
It was after I left the hospital, after Todd and Christy were taken to the county coroner. I was on my way home. I had driven my department cruiser instead of the Bronco to the hospital. I wanted to get there fast, so I had my lights and sirens going full-blast the whole way. Afterward, once I pulled out of the parking lot of the hospital, after it was over, I kept them off. I wanted to draw as little attention to myself as possible.
I’d gotten info on the man who was driving the car from the responding deputy, and I’d run it through the mobile laptop in my cruiser. I’ve forgotten it now, or I’ve pushed it down so far I can’t remember it, but I knew his name. I also knew where he lived, and I had a screen-capture of his driver’s license.
That night, I drove to his house.
He was ninety years old. It happened in the parking lot at the Publix grocery store. He said he’d accidentally hit the gas instead of the brake, and that he felt terrible about it. At the funeral later, his son told me his father had cried every day since, but sitting outside his house I didn’t know any of that yet, and if I had I’m not sure it would have mattered.
The last words I said to Todd were just before he’d gone to pick up Christy at day care. I said, “We need some milk and Cheerios, and I think we’re out of orange juice, too.”
The last thing he said to me was, “See you a little after six.”
I don’t pretend to know how I got there, but I do know what I was doing outside that old man’s house at three in the morning.
I was going to kill him.
I feel guilty about a lot of things. I wish I hadn’t asked Todd to stop and get stuff for breakfast. I wish I’d gotten it myself earlier in the day. Or, I wish I’d gone to pick up Christy from day care instead of Todd, but I had a headache and I didn’t feel like it. I wish I’d told Todd I loved him after he said, “See you a little after six.” I wish I had kissed Christy on both cheeks instead of just one when she left for school that morning … I could go on and on and on.
But I don’t feel guilty about what I wanted to do to that man.
I don’t.
* * *
As soon as I swung around the dogleg on Higel Avenue toward the bridge to the mainland, I let up on the gas a little bit. I love this stretch of road, mainly because it’s festooned with blooming jacarandas and big giant palms that sway in the breeze, their fronds splayed out like fingers. They look like they’re handing out high fives to everyone who enters the island, or maybe waving farewell to everyone who leaves it. I always have the urge to stick my arm out the car and wave back, but I know I’d look crazy if I did that, so I keep it inside and wave with my hand below the windows where no one can see.
The homes on either side of the road along here are mostly bungalows and modest shore houses (with a few mansions sprinkled here and there just to remind you where you are) and they’re all painted in the powdery palette of the beach—sky-blue, shell-pink, sandy yellow—like the baubles hanging from a baby’s nursery mobile or a box of colored chalks.
About the time I got even with Bay Island Park, I heard the distant clang of a bell and sighed. When tourists hear that bell for the first time, they probably look around for the train that’s about to cross the tracks up ahead, but the closest thing we have to a train around here is the old “Cherry the Choo Choo” kiddie ride bolted to the sidewalk outside the Village Ice Cream Shop. The bell is the signal the bridge-keeper uses to let everybody know he’s about to raise the drawbridge.
There were a few cars in front of me that had already rolled to a stop, so I pulled in behind them and switched off the ignition as the bridge began its slow salute. To my right were five or six sailboats in the bay, lumbering around in a wide circle with their sails furled, waiting to pass through to the Gulf. Luckily, the whole process is surprisingly quick, but it still meant I’d have a good ten to fifteen minutes before I’d be moving again.
I tilted my seat back and considered taking a quick catnap, but I figured now was as good a time as any to call Detective McKenzie. I’m not sure why, but I’d been avoiding it … probably because every time I talked to her I felt like a six-year-old on her first day of kindergarten.
She answered on the second ring with a
curt, “McKenzie.”
I said, “Detective, it’s Dixie Hemingway.”
“You must have read my mind, Dixie, I was just about to call you. There’s something I want to show you. I’m wondering if you’re able to meet me at Levi Radcliff’s trailer first thing in the morning.”
The thought of going back to that trailer made me sick to my stomach, but I said, “Sure, I’d be happy to.”
“Excellent. 5:15 alright?”
“Umm, 5:15 … a.m.?”
“No. 5:15 p.m. When I use the term ‘first thing in the morning’ I generally mean at the end of the day.”
I stammered, “No, it’s fine I…”
“Considering your hours, I just assumed—”
I said, “No, no. Of course, it’s not a problem. I forget I’m not the only person who’s up that early.”
“Great. See you there.”
I think I managed to say, “Uh,” before the line went dead, but that was about it. I sat there staring at my phone in disbelief. Sometimes I wonder how McKenzie ever manages to solve a single case, and not just because she has the social skills of a skunk with OCD, but because she seems entirely incapable of paying attention to anything in the world except what goes on inside her own damn head.
Just then the phone rang again. It was McKenzie.
“Dixie, I believe you called me?”
I rolled my eyes. “Yes. I did.”
“Was there something you wanted?”
I thought for a second. “No, I just wanted to hear the sound of your voice.”
I heard her laugh, which I think may have been a first for me, and then she sighed. “You’ll have to forgive me. It’s been a very busy week. What can I do for you?”
“Well, it may not be very useful, but something happened this morning that I think you should know about … Mona Duffy was waiting for me at the Village Diner.”
I paused for dramatic effect, thinking McKenzie would interject with a Wow! or a Gosh! to show her surprise, but apparently she wasn’t playing along.
I said, “So, I have breakfast there every morning, and Tanisha, the cook, told her what time I’m usually there. Of course, when I walked in and saw her, I was terrified. I thought maybe she was still thinking I was somehow involved with Levi’s death in some way, but I was wrong. She just wanted to apologize, sort of … Well, to be honest I think she just needed somebody to talk to. But she told me something you should know. She loved Levi, but I’m not sure he felt the same way. They weren’t engaged.”
The Cat Sitter's Whiskers Page 15
