Marilee kept a ten-pound bag of dried cat food in the pantry, along with stacks of canned food. I opened the pantry door and did a double take.
“Huh,” I said. When you’re all by yourself with a cat, you can make an intelligent comment like that without having to explain yourself.
The pantry was L-shaped, with the short end at the left of the door. In the past, the sack of dried food had sat on the floor under the long shelves, and stacks of canned food, jars of catnip, boxes of special treats, and some kitty toys had taken up a long shelf facing the door. Now they took up two shelves on the short end. Marilee had apparently rearranged the pantry since I’d last seen it.
As I moved cans of veal and lamb and chicken around on the short shelves, looking for sliced beef, I realized the shelves were now only half as deep as they used to be. Marilee hadn’t just rearranged her shelves, she had remodeled them.
“Huh,” I said again, my repertoire of intelligent exclamations being somewhat limited by then.
I got out a can of sliced beef and opened it for Ghost. He began to swoon with ecstasy even before I put the bowl on the floor. Then I went back to the pantry and removed everything on the newly foreshortened shelves so I could get a better look at the back wall.
It looked like all the other wallboard unless you looked closely, then you could see it was freshly painted hardwood. I got a knife and slid it in the crack on the left. I moved the knife up and down without hitting any resistance. I did the same thing on the right side, and hit resistance at the top, middle, and bottom.
“Bingo,” I whispered. The back of the shelf was a hinged door.
Right then, I should have got on the phone and called Guidry. I should have confessed that I had an invoice to a wall safe in a folder in my desk drawer. Should have admitted that I had opened Marilee’s mail and found the invoice. I should also have told him I had been keeping this information from him, and that I had no earthly reason for doing so except that Marilee had lost her daughter, too. Even I knew that was an irrational reason to hide evidence, but it seemed logical at the time. If I could protect her secrets, she and I wouldn’t be so vulnerable.
I tried prying the door open with the knife, but it didn’t budge. Thinking it must have a pressure-sensitive latch, I pushed my fingers all along the top edge of the door. When I got to the left side, I heard a click, and the door swung open.
“Oh gosh,” I whispered, because a cream-colored safe was set flush inside the wall.
“Oh hell,” I muttered, because the safe had both a combination and a keyed lock.
To open this sucker, you not only had to get inside Marilee’s mind and figure out her code, you also had to have a key.
My cell phone rang and I froze. Only two or three people in the world had my cell number, and I wasn’t looking forward to talking to any of them. It was Michael, calling from the fire station.
He said, “Are you okay?”
“Yeah, I really am.”
“You’re at Tom Hale’s, right?”
I twisted the toe of one of my Keds into the floor, exactly the way I used to do when we were kids and Michael quizzed me about something we both knew I’d done and I was denying. I took a deep breath and straightened my back. I was thirty-two years old and I could do anything I wanted.
“Actually, I’m at Marilee’s house. I’m going to spend a few days here. I’ll explain about it later. It’s a long story.”
He said, “Are you crazy?”
“I think that’s still to be decided.”
“Aw shit, Dixie, I don’t like this one bit. That asshole Dr. Win is right next door. He’ll have every reporter in town over there.”
“I don’t think so. I think this is the last place anybody would think to look for me. I’ll be back in a day or two. After this blows over.”
He warned me about a hundred times to call if I needed anything, and I promised I would.
He said, “I don’t like it, but I guess it’s okay.”
“I love you.”
“Love you, too, Dix.”
That’s my big brother, the gentle giant.
Ghost was still hunkered over his sliced beef, blissfully chewing with his eyes half-closed. I went back to the pantry and fingered the safe’s keyhole. I hadn’t expected to need a key. People usually select a birth date or address or Social Security number for a numerical code, so I had thought I had everything I would need to open the safe when I found it. Needing a key was a major problem.
I looked around the kitchen. If Marilee had chosen the pantry to hide the safe, maybe she had hidden the key in the kitchen, too. But before I started searching, I needed to take care of my primary business of pet-sitting. I sat at the kitchen bar and used my cell phone to check phone messages at my apartment. A few more reporters had called, and one client had called all the way from North Carolina to say she had heard the news about me and didn’t want me going back in her house. She had called another sitter, she said, and she would never hire me again.
That really hurt my feelings. I felt like a little kid whose best friend had just told her she didn’t like her anymore.
The last call was from Phillip Winnick. His words were slurred, but more intelligible than they’d been the day before. It wasn’t how he talked that alarmed me, it was what he said.
“Um, Miz Hemingway…I mean Dixie…this is Phillip…If I don’t see you again…I just want to say…thank you…That’s all. Oh, and…I’m sorry I lied.”
I played the message several times, and every time he sounded terrified and desperate. Something was going on, and whatever it was had made Phillip think he might not see me again. I put the phone down with a chill running down my spine.
Thirty-One
Feeling leaden and dull, I took a shower and changed clothes. No matter how hard I tried to convince myself that the Winnicks loved Phillip, I couldn’t shake a feeling of impending doom. Phillip was about as scared and miserable as a kid could get, and it sounded as if he was feeling guilt for not being honest about being gay. I knew his family wasn’t likely to give him the love and support he needed. If anything, they were more likely to add to his despondency. Phillip needed a friend, and right now I might be the only one he had.
I finally couldn’t stand it any longer, so I marched out the front door and down the street to the Winnicks’ house.
I could hear voices shouting even before I got to the front door. Olga Winnick shrill and pleading, Carl Winnick harsh and threatening. Under their harangue, a tortured undertone that was Phillip. It was exactly what my worst fears had been, and maybe even worse. I didn’t care if Phillip was their son, I was going to take him out of there. He was over eighteen, they couldn’t keep him if he wanted to leave.
I jabbed the doorbell and then banged on the door for good measure. Once I could have yelled, “Sheriff’s Department, open up!” but I couldn’t do that anymore. Anyway, I wasn’t there in any official capacity. I was there as a friend, which takes precedence over all other reasons.
The door didn’t open, and the yelling continued. I rang the bell again and banged harder on the door. Olga screamed, a long wail that brought fine bumps to my skin. Carl Winnick shouted something that sounded like “What the hell are you doing?”
Faintly, I heard Phillip reply, but I couldn’t make out the words.
Something was terribly wrong. I grabbed the handle on the door and tried the thumb latch. The door wasn’t locked. I rapped on it one more time and pushed it open, calling out as I did.