Cat Sitter Among the Pigeons (26 page)

I didn’t stay for Ruby’s entire testimony. I had cats to groom and feed, and anyway the testimony would be dry and boring once it moved to the minutiae of money transfers and contracts and taxes and foreign bank accounts. Boring to me, anyway. Tom Hale would have found it juicy and riveting.

Mr. Stern and Cheddar were happily together at the Bide-A-Tide Villas on Turtle Beach. Cheddar had a screened lanai to watch shorebirds leaving tracks in the sand, and Mr. Stern had a row of history books about Florida that excited him as much as the birds excited Cheddar. Workmen were busy at Mr. Stern’s house putting in new wallboard and floors in Ruby’s bedroom, painting, replacing furniture, and getting rid of the odor of smoke throughout the house. I stopped by the Bide-A-Tide twice a day to give him a hand with Cheddar, and I went to the house once a day to feed the koi. Without Mr. Stern and Cheddar to give it life, the courtyard seemed strangely empty.

Sometimes when I was tossing fish food on the pond for the koi, I had an eerie feeling that eyes were looking down at me from Myra’s house, but the house was empty. Angelina had been questioned at length, and her answers had helped law enforcement officers connect the dots in several cases against Kantor Tucker. Like flying a man who was in the country illegally over the Gulf and shoving him out. The man could not be reported missing because he didn’t legally exist, but Angelina knew his widow, and the widow could give dates and times that corresponded to a body that had washed up on Anna Maria Island.

As for me, I was in purgatory. Or hell. Or some weird place between lives like the Tibetan
bardo.

People who aren’t true to themselves are lost to everybody else as well. An easy thing to know, but a hard thing to do. In my imagination, I tried to place myself in a city where I breathed the odor of chicory coffee and beignets instead of sea air. I tried to imagine what it would be like to live in a place where jazz was the subliminal background sound instead of the sigh of surf and cries of seagulls.

All that was easy. It was even easy to imagine myself feeling joy in seeing Guidry’s city through his eyes, getting to know his family, creating a home for us. The only problem was, I couldn’t imagine doing it forever. A few weeks, maybe. A month or two. But I knew as sure as I knew the back of my own hand that I would wake up one morning and
need
the sounds and smells I’d known all my life. I would need them the same way I needed air. Without them, my soul would shrivel.

My mind desperately raced looking for compromise. But I always ran up against the hard wall of knowing that compromise isn’t possible when it comes to
needs
—the unique basics essential to a person’s happiness. Needs can’t be bartered or denied without something intrinsic to the soul dying.
Wants,
on the other hand, are just the things that make life more pleasant. They’re like gravy on your mashed potatoes. Not essential, but nice to have. They can be compromised all over the place, but only after your basic needs are met.

And the hard truth is that while someone who loved me could give me some of my
wants
, the only person who could meet my
needs
was me.

The trick was to tell the difference between needs and wants.

When the levees holding back the sea outside New Orleans broke, the city suffered devastation unlike any this country has ever experienced. When artists, musicians, writers, culinary wizards, and ordinary citizens were driven away by the floods, New Orleans lost part of its soul. For Guidry, the urge to go home and be a part of recovering the city’s soul was a
need,
not simply something that would add to his enjoyment of life. That need was something only he could define, and only he could meet. Loving him meant that I wouldn’t try to stand in his way.

Myra Kreigle and her sort had caused financial ruin for a lot of hardworking people on Siesta Key, but I couldn’t honestly say that I felt the Key needed me for its survival. With me or without me, Siesta Key would continue to be a beautiful place where gentle people walked the beach every morning, where they marked turtle and plover nests to keep them safe, where they rescued wounded manatees and seabirds.

The truth was that I needed the Key a lot more than it needed me. I needed its sand beneath my feet, needed to breathe its sea air, needed to hear the cries of seabirds and share space with tropical vegetation. Without them, I would not be me.

The truth was that while I greatly
wanted
Guidry’s touch, his keen intellect, his loyalty, and his love, I would continue to be myself without them.

It was that truth that broke my heart.

ALSO BY BLAIZE CLEMENT

Raining Cat Sitters and Dogs

Cat Sitter on a Hot Tin Roof

Even Cat Sitters Get the Blues

Duplicity Dogged the Dachshund

Curiosity Killed the Cat Sitter

This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

A THOMAS DUNNE BOOK FOR MINOTAUR BOOKS.

An imprint of St. Martin’s Publishing Group.

CAT SITTER AMONG THE PIGEONS
. Copyright © 2010 by Blaize Clement. All rights reserved. For information, address St. Martin’s Press, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10010.

www.thomasdunnebooks.com

www.minotaurbooks.com

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Clement, Blaize.

 Cat sitter among the pigeons : a Dixie Hemingway mystery / Blaize Clement.—1st ed.

     p. cm.

 “A Thomas Dunne book.”

 ISBN 978-0-312-64312-6 (alk. paper)

         1.  Hemingway, Dixie (Fictitious character)—Fiction.   2.  Women detectives—Florida—Fiction.  3.   Ex-police officers—Fiction.  4.   Pet sitting—Fiction.   5.  Grandfathers—Fiction.   6.  Granddaughters—Fiction.   7.  Swindlers and swindling—Fiction.   8.  Real estate—Florida—Fiction.   9.  Siesta Key (Fla.)—Fiction.   I.  Title.

PS3603.L463C377 2011

813'.6—dc22

2010037537

First Edition: January 2011

eISBN 978-1-4299-7569-8

First Minotaur Books eBook Edition: January 2011