“Nothing except that I found Marilee’s body this morning in the woods. I’m sure you already know that.”
Guidry’s eyes were calm and expectant. I had a momentary flash of what it would be like to be his kid. He would be the kind of father you couldn’t lie to. You wouldn’t even try, because you would know he could see right through you.
I said, “Marilee’s grandmother lives at Bayfront Village. She’s a sweet lady, and whoever tells her about Marilee needs to be very careful with her. She knows who Frazier is. She said he ruined Marilee’s life, but she wouldn’t say what she meant by that.”
Guidry carefully put his coffee cup on the table. “When did you talk to the grandmother?”
“Yesterday. I went to see her because I thought she might know where Marilee was. She knew all about Frazier’s murder from the news, but she wouldn’t say what his relationship had been to Marilee.”
“You talk to her very long?”
“A little while. We had tea and some fresh chocolate bread she’d just made. She uses a bread maker Marilee gave her fifteen years ago. Marilee bought her the apartment she lives in, too, and Cora said Marilee came by to visit real often.”
For some reason, I wanted Guidry to know that Marilee hadn’t been just a gold-digging bimbo who got herself murdered and thrown in the woods. She had also been a loving granddaughter who bought her grandmother a bread-making machine and a nice apartment.
He gave me a lifted eyebrow. “You get around, Dixie.”
I thought about the letter I’d put in a folder in my desk—the letter Marilee had written to her daughter. I thought about the invoice for installing a wall safe in Marilee’s house. I even opened my mouth to tell Guidry about them, but instead I shrugged.
“It’s just that I find out things about people from taking care of their pets.”
His expression changed, and I suddenly felt chilled.
He said, “Dixie, how did you know that Marilee’s body was in the woods?”
Twenty
My mouth went dry. I didn’t need him to spell out his real question. He was asking me if I had anything to do with Marilee’s murder.
“I got curious when I saw a strand of hair caught on a tree. I’ve always thought it was odd that she didn’t take her hair dryer with her, and when I saw that hair, it reminded me of the hair in her brush. I just had a feeling I should look farther back in the woods.”
“You didn’t already know she was there?”
“Of course I didn’t!”
“But you see how it could look, don’t you? You had keys to the house where both murders were probably committed. You found Harrison Frazier’s body, and then you went straight to where Marilee Doerring’s body had been dumped in the woods, even though she hadn’t been declared missing. You talked to Phillip Winnick and he tells you that he walks home before dawn every morning, and that he saw a woman leave the Doerring woman’s house the night Frazier was killed. The next morning, he’s found badly beaten, possibly with the same blunt instrument used to kill both Harrison Frazier and Marilee Doerring.”
I felt dazed and confused, and at the same time intensely aware. The dark blue of Guidry’s shirt seemed to brighten, and I could detect the musky fragrance of his aftershave. Guidry seemed on high alert, too. His gray eyes were wide and watchful as a hunting cat’s. If he’d had cat whiskers, they would have been pointed forward and his ears would have been up.
My fingers were gripping my Styrofoam cup so tightly, the coffee was shivering. Just the thought of being a suspect caused a slick of hot guilt to coat my throat.
“Guidry, I never laid eyes on Harrison Frazier before I found him dead.”
“I believe you, Dixie, but you have to admit that logic would put you at the top of the list of suspects.”
“Why do you believe me?”
“Motive, Dixie. You had opportunity, but I don’t think you had reason to kill anybody.”
He sounded like a professor lecturing a class of would-be homicide detectives. Or like somebody giving me a friendly hint of an effective defense to use in case I was arrested for murder.
Stiffly, I said, “This has been very interesting, Lieutenant, but I have to get back to work.”
When I got to the elevator, Guidry caught up with me.
“Can I ask you a favor? Would you tell Cora Mathers that Marilee is dead?”
I stared at him, ready to tell him that I was a pet-sitter, dammit, not a member of the Sheriff’s Department. But I knew why he wanted me to notify Cora. I had already made a connection with her, and she was more likely to give me information that might help the investigation.
“You owe me,” I said.
“Big time. And you’ll talk to her about Frazier’s relationship with Marilee?”
“Sure, Guidry. I’ll go tell a sweet old woman that her granddaughter’s body has been lying in the woods with animals eating her, and then I’ll ask her a lot of questions. Are you nuts?”
“I didn’t mean it that way, Dixie.”
The elevator doors opened and I stepped in. “I’ll go see Cora,” I said. “That’s all I’m promising.”
He put his hands in his pockets and stood silently watching me until the elevator doors closed.
At the Sarasota Bayfront Village, the woman at the front desk called Cora’s apartment and told me to go on up. In the elevator, I tried to find the right words to say what had to be said, but there is no right way to tell somebody about death.
Cora was standing outside her door again, waving at me like a little girl excited to have company. “Did you come back for some more of my chocolate bread? I don’t have any fresh today, but yesterday’s is still good. It doesn’t have to be hot, you know. It’s good cold, too. I keep it in the refrigerator and just heat it up in the toaster oven. Sometimes I don’t even heat it, I just eat it cold.”
“I have something to tell you, Cora.”
“Well, come on in. You can tell me while we have some tea.”
She scuttled ahead of me, talking a mile a minute. “I don’t think there’s anything that don’t go down better with tea, do you? A lot of people here are drinking green tea. I never saw any green tea, did you? I just drink plain old brown tea. I don’t think I’d like to drink something green. Would be like drinking hot lime Jell-O. Yuk. Here, you sit down while I make us some brown tea. I’ve always got the kettle on, you know.”
I edged into one of the ice-cream chairs at her round table and watched her totter into the kitchen area. She turned up the heat under a steaming kettle and put teabags into a teapot, then clattered down cups and saucers while she continued to talk.
“A lot of people say they can’t sleep at night if they drink tea after noon, but it never hurt me none. I drink tea all day long and I sleep just fine. If I don’t, I get up and watch TV. Some of them shows are dirty, got people doing it right there in front of your face. You ask me, there’s some things people ought not do in front of other people, and that’s one of them. You ever see any of them dirty shows?”
I got up to get the tea tray and said, “I’ve seen some of them, but just for a few minutes. I don’t much like watching other people having sex.”
“Well, that’s how I feel, too. What good does it do you to watch? If I’m not going to do it, I sure don’t want to watch somebody else doing it. What did you want to tell me?”
She had caught me off guard, and when I looked at her, I realized she had been babbling because she was scared. I probably wore the same face that Sergeant Owens and Todd’s lieutenant had been wearing three years ago when they came to tell me about Todd and Christy. They didn’t have to say a word for me to know that my life was over.
I said, “I think you’d better sit down, Cora.”