There was no use pretending I hadn’t caught her crying her eyes out. “I’m sorry,” I said. “This is obviously a bad time to come.”
“It’s nothing,” she said. “We had an argument. Just a heated debate, really.”
From the raw wound I’d seen on his hand, I thought it might have been more than a heated debate. I had been on enough domestic-disturbance calls as a deputy to know that husbands and wives who seem the epitome of decorum may go at each other like barroom brawlers.
As I got closer to her, I got a whiff of an odor on her breath that I remembered from living with my mother, the scent of alcohol overlaid with mouthwash. Even this early in the morning, Olga Winnick had been fortifying her courage with booze.
Inanely, I said, “These things happen.”
I made a beeline to the back sliders where the heavy drapes were still drawn. As soon as I opened the slider, Ghost came running toward me making little chirping noises of relief. I squatted on my heels to stroke him, then lifted him into the cardboard case and closed it. He whined and poked a paw through one of the air holes, but it couldn’t be helped. I retrieved the food bowl and checked the lanai floor for errant Tender Vittles crumbs. There were none. There was also no water bowl.
With the carrying case in both hands, I went through the living room while Mrs. Winnick tracked along behind me.
“It’s this place,” she said. “Nothing but cheap, predatory women living here, and half of them are Jews.”
For a moment there, I had been feeling sorry for her, but the woman was as pompous and bigoted as her husband. It was a good thing they had found each other, instead of contaminating two marriages.
With my back teeth touching, I said, “Thank you so much for keeping Ghost,” and bolted.
She stood in the doorway and glared at me all the way back to my Bronco. I guess she thought I was one of the predatory women after her husband.
I put the cat-carrying case in the front seat and talked to Ghost as we drove north on Midnight Pass Road. He had got an arm through an air hole all the way up to his armpit and was waving it frantically while he made piteous mewing noises to alert people that he was being catnapped.
From the traffic light where Midnight Pass intersects with Stickney Point from the mainland, beachside condos and private clubs stand shoulder-to-shoulder behind hibiscus hedges and palm trees. They all have salty names like Midnight Cove, Crystal Sands, Siesta Dunes, Island House, Sea Club. My personal favorite is Our House at the Beach. If you spend your vacation there, you can truthfully tell your friends, “We’re going down to Our House at the Beach.”
At Beach Road, I turned left and slowed down so I wouldn’t hit any of the half-naked vacationers crossing the street to get to Crescent Beach. It’s amazing how many normally sensible women come to the key, deck themselves out in skimpy bikinis, tie a beach towel around their hips, and step out into oncoming traffic with bemused smiles on their lips. I think it’s the seaside’s negative ions that get to them.
Kitty Haven is on Avenida del Mare about a block off Beach Road in an old Florida-style house—yellow frame with crisp white hurricane shutters and a deep front porch. Except for areas planted with liriope and palmettos and century plants, the yard is completely covered in cedar chips. Walking to the front door through the smell of all that cedar always makes me feel like I’m inside a gerbil cage.
Kitty Haven is like a cross between a brothel and a grandmother’s house, with lush velvet, soft music, and a TV screen that plays continuous films of twittering birds and darting fish. A bell tinkled to announce my arrival, and a couple of calico tabbies lolling on windowsills raised their heads to look me over. Marge Preston bustled from the back, leaving a floating wake of wispy cat hairs like the precursors of angel wings. If I were a cat, Marge is the person I’d want for my human. She’s plump and white-haired like Mrs. Santa Claus, with a soft voice and a light touch that soothe the most agitated cat. She took the case and held it up to look inside the vents, and I swear Ghost began to purr.
“You’ll have to keep his collar,” she said.
“Oh, of course.”
Marge set the case on the floor and she and I knelt to open it. I stroked Ghost’s head, letting my fingers slip down the back of his neck and under his velvet collar. The collar had an elastic insert to allow it to slide over his head, and I brought it out on my fingertips and pushed it up on my wrist.
“I don’t know how long he’ll be here,” I said. “Something happened at his house and he can’t go home just yet. His name is Ghost. He hasn’t had water or a litter box for over two hours. He’s had a lot of stress today, so when you feed him, you might stir in some vitamin C.”
Marge made tut-tutting sounds as she bustled off to the back room to set things right, while Ghost told her in self-pitying yips and growls how he’d been sorely mistreated.
I got back in the Bronco and whipped around the corner, and nosed into a parking place in front of the Village Diner. Detective Guidry was already seated in the last booth in the corner with two steaming mugs of coffee on the table. I tossed my backpack onto the seat and slid in, grabbing one of the mugs and taking a big hit almost before I was settled.
“God, that’s good.”
The charms on Ghost’s collar winked on my wrist, and I realized I still wore it. I wanted to explain that I wasn’t the kind of woman who wore black velvet wristbands decorated with little hearts and keys, but explaining would make me look like the kind of woman who cared what anybody thought, so I didn’t.
Judy, who’s been a waitress at the diner for as long as I can remember, appeared as if by magic with a full pot and a lifted eyebrow at seeing me with a man. Judy is smart-mouthed and efficient, with an angular frame, a dusting of orange freckles over her nose, and pecan-colored eyes that have the faintly astonished look of somebody whose dreams have been worn to a nub by disappointment. We have a close friendship that exists solely in the diner. We’ve shared our most hurtful stories, even though we never see each other anyplace else. I know about the men who’ve treated her like shit, and she knows about Todd and Christy.
I put the mug back on the table so she could top it off. “I’ll have the special,” I said.
“Uh-huh.” She didn’t even write it down. I always have the special. Two eggs over easy, extra-crispy home fries, and a biscuit.
“I’ll have the same, with a side of bacon,” said Guidry.
Judy splashed another bit of coffee in my mug to replace what I’d drunk while Guidry ordered, and swished away with curiosity radiating out of her like lines of light.
I took another sip of coffee and said, “Okay, I’m ready now. Ask me.”
He pulled a narrow notebook from his jacket pocket and clicked a pen into readiness. “First, the particulars. Name?”
We went down the list. Name, address, phone, all those details that you give so many times it seems like they would be engraved on the air.
“Age?”
“Thirty-two.”
“Occupation?”
“Pet-sitter.”
He hesitated with his pen poised above the notebook. “Is that a real occupation?”
“Damn right it’s a real occupation. I’m licensed and insured and bonded.”
“Insured against what?”
“If I’m walking a dog and it bites you, my insurance will pay your doctor bills.”
He got the kind of surprised face that people always give when they find out that pet-sitting is a legitimate profession with its own rules and ethics and legal responsibilities.
“How long have you been a pet-sitter?”
“About two years.”
“Sergeant Owens said you used to be with the Sheriff’s Department.”
“I was.”
“Why’d you leave?”