The Cat Sitter's Whiskers (10 page)

“And about what time did you arrive?”

“I'm not sure.”

She looked down at her notes. “I'm told your call came in at exactly 10:27 a.m. Does that sound right?”

I nodded. “Yeah, and I think I was only here a few minutes before that. As soon as I saw Levi's car, I got out to knock on his door, and I probably only talked to his fianc
é
e about twenty seconds before we saw his body…”

“And how did you know it was his?”

I frowned. It had been a while since I'd last had a full-fledged conversation with Detective McKenzie. I'd forgotten how her mind careened from one thought to the other. I've never ridden blindfolded on a unicycle through a corn maze, but I would imagine it feels pretty much the same.

Before I could answer she said, with a note of impatience in her voice, “How did you know it was his car, how did you know it was his fianc
é
e, and how did you know it was his body?”

I put my hands on my hips and thought,
Enough.

The whole day was starting to feel like a parade of abusive lunkheads who refused for one reason or another to take me seriously, from Dick Cheney to Morgan to Sasquatch, and now this honey badger of a woman. I took a deep breath, composing an answer in my head like I was preparing for a school report.

I said, “I knew it was his car because he's been delivering the paper in it for twenty years. I knew Sasquatch … I mean, that woman, was Levi's fianc
é
e because she told me, in her words, that I was trespassing on her man, and also because Sergeant Owens told me, and I knew it was Levi's body because I've known him since grade school and it had his face attached to it.”

She didn't miss a beat. “It's good to see you again, Dixie.”

I blinked. If my frustration was getting through, she wasn't letting on. “Uh, you, too.”

“And how's your brother … it's Michael, right?”

“Yeah. Oh, he's great, thanks.”

“And how well do you know him?”

Okay,
I thought to myself.
You can do this
.

I had a feeling she wasn't really interested in how well I know my brother. I tried to picture my brain working the way I pictured hers, like a tangled web of telephone wires and high-speed Internet cables wrapped around a nest of smoking cogs and spinning reel-to-reel tapes, with maybe a couple of fuses mixed in, throwing off sparks and little bolts of lightning. My mouth was fixed in a kind of dumb
O
as I mentally rewound our conversation a couple of beats.

“You mean Levi?”

She nodded. “You said you've known him since grade school?”

“Right. We had a few classes together, but we weren't really that close.”

I realized I was still holding my indignant
Enough
pose, which consisted of my fists pressed firmly into my ribs and my head cocked to one side. Somehow, without my even realizing it, McKenzie had charmed me right back into submission, but apparently my body hadn't caught up yet. I tried to relax my arms and slid my hands down into my pockets as nonchalantly as possible.

I said, “After graduation I didn't see him again except on his morning paper route. We're both up early, so our paths cross every once in a while, but that's about it.”

“And how did you know where to look for him?”

“My friend Tanisha. She's the cook at the diner. She lives in this neighborhood, although I'm not sure which place is hers. She might be able to tell you more about him.”

“Okay, that's helpful. So, you were about to knock on Levi's door…”

“Right, I was just about to knock and I was trying to figure out what I would say to him, and then all of a sudden his fianc
é
e was there. She said this was private property, and I told her I was just checking on Levi.”

“And where did she come from?”

“I don't know. I turned around and there she was, just to the left of his car.” I pointed at the driver's-side door of Levi's LeSabre.

“And what were her words, exactly?”

“She was pretty upset right from the start. I think she said, ‘Can I help you?' or something like that. I tried to tell her I was a friend of Levi's and I just wanted to make sure he was okay, but she was hell-bent on getting rid of me. Apparently, Levi came home last night with another woman, and she thinks it was me.”

McKenzie flipped a page over in her pad, and without looking up said, “She says you and Levi came home last night around 11:30. Does that sound right?”

I shook my head slowly. “No. That does
not
sound right. Detective McKenzie, I don't know who that woman was, but it definitely wasn't me. I was not here last night.”

“Well, then, you'll forgive me, but I do need to ask … where were you?”

“I was home.”

“And were you alone or was there someone with you?”

I felt my ears turning red. “Yes.”

Her eyes narrowed slightly. “Yes, you—”

I cut her off. “Yes, there was someone with me, and no, I was not alone.”

“And you don't by any chance happen to know where we might find someone in Levi's family … his parents, or a sibling perhaps?”

“No. I'd think that would be a good question for his fianc
é
e.”

She nodded and then leaned in slightly. “Just between you and me…” She looked over her shoulder and lowered her voice. “Sasquatch—I believe that's what you called her—is a bit unstable.”

One of the deputies stepped up and whispered something in McKenzie's ear. She nodded curtly and put her hand out. “Thanks for your time, Dixie. I think I'd better go have a talk with her now.”

I nodded mutely.

“In the meantime, I need to ask that you not talk about this to anyone, at least not until we've had a chance to locate the next of kin.”

Just then, a black and white van pulled in behind the row of cars. I figured it was probably the department's new mobile forensics unit, which they'd been able to purchase recently thanks to an anonymous donation. A woman in dark navy pants and a white lab coat stepped out with a bulky black briefcase. It looked very official and high-tech, like something you might keep the nation's nuclear codes in.

The woman was exquisitely beautiful, with jet-black hair pulled back in a tight ponytail, and almond-shaped eyes that were a deep obsidian-brown. She looked like a Chinese movie star, or—I'll admit it—like a part-time model from one of those TV crime shows. As I made my way back to the Bronco, I heard her say, “Detective McKenzie? I'm Megan Granda.”

In a daze, I got behind the wheel and backed up slowly until the nose of the Bronco was pointed out, then I headed toward the stretch of grass along the shoulder of the dirt road. I was wondering if I'd be able to make it through without making everyone move their cars when I looked up in the rearview mirror to find Detective McKenzie trotting along behind me and waving a finger in the air. I slowed to a stop as she came around to the window.

“Dixie, sorry.” She put her hands on her hips and paused to catch her breath. “I just remembered one more thing. About this morning, are you absolutely certain it was Levi parked outside your driveway?”

I said, “I just assumed it was him because that's usually about the time the paper arrives, and it definitely looked like his car…”

“But you're not sure.”

I shook my head. “It was so dark and foggy.”

“It might help pinpoint the time of death…”

I don't think the reality of what had happened had actually sunk in yet, because the idea that there was a “time of death” sent a tremor down my spine.

I said, “I wish I could say for sure, but he's the only person on the island I can think of that would've had a good reason for being there, right?”

She turned and looked in the direction of the trailer. For a second I imagined all those cogs and wheels in her head spinning in slow, deliberate circles, then she turned and for the first time looked me directly in the eye.

“Define
good.
”

 

12

The whole way home, I left the windows in the Bronco rolled down, and eventually—I'm not sure when—my little fly friend escaped back into the wild. The warm breeze felt good blowing through my hair, and the sound the wind made as it rushed through the car helped dampen the melee of thoughts that were spinning around inside my head. I could barely hold on to one before another would swoop in and knock it out of the way.

I kept seeing Levi's face, the way I remembered him from high school, the way he always smiled and gave me a wave whenever our paths crossed, but then the image of his body lying on the floor of the trailer would rush in, and then Sasquatch's angry maw would appear, telling me to get the hell off her property, and then Dick Cheney's scary eyes and gnashing teeth bearing down, and then Levi's car outside my driveway and candles and curtains and red-toed Buddhas, all bouncing around in my brain like ping-pong balls in a front-load washing machine.

I shook my head and tried to clear it all away. It had probably been a bit of an understatement when I told Detective McKenzie I was in shock, because as soon as I turned out of Grand Pelican Commons and headed up Tamiami Trail, my whole body started shivering slightly, despite the fact that the sun was straight overhead and it was easily ninety degrees in the shade.

The copper pod trees along Midnight Pass Road were all blanketed with their yellow orchidlike blossoms, filling the air with the scent of crushed grapes, and following along in the clouds over the treetops to the west was a lone osprey, its wings spread wide, coasting on the breeze. For a while I pretended he was my own personal escort, assigned to make sure I got home safe and sound. It felt good to think I wasn't alone.

Poor Levi.

I couldn't get the image of his lifeless body out of my mind. In spite of our brief encounter outside Mrs. White's ninth-grade history class (or maybe because of it) we hadn't really talked that much in the years following. Every once in a while we'd wind up in the same class or study period, and one of his buddies on the baseball team was the brother of one of my best girlfriends, so we often found ourselves at the same parties or sitting together at football games, but that was about the extent of it. He was tall, blond, good-looking, and he always seemed like a nice enough kid, even if, as Judy had said, he did have a bit of a wild streak in him … but in the era before cell phones and computer games, every teenager with half a pulse went through a wild stage. There wasn't much else to do in a sleepy beach town like Siesta Key.

Of course, there was drinking, and a lot of kids smoked pot, especially the older ones, but if there were harder drugs than that being passed around, I never saw them. Levi and his friends would stay out partying and carousing in the streets until all hours of the night, giving their parents heart palpitations and early-onset baldness, and sometimes they'd congregate in the parking lot at the old Ringling Shopping Center, but basically all they did was drink beer and make a lot of noise until the cops would roll through and order them all home. I remember hearing that Levi had been hauled in for public intoxication shortly after graduation, he'd even spent a night in jail, but other than that, there was no indication he'd ever wind up in more serious trouble.

But now, I wondered. As for Levi's money situation, he was clearly living hand-to-mouth. I don't know how much a paper delivery boy makes these days, but newspapers everywhere are struggling to make ends meet, so I doubt it's much more than minimum wage. Was it possible Levi had been forced to turn to more desperate means … drugs or petty burglary or something worse? It was a terrible thought, but why else would anyone want to kill him?

I suddenly realized I was sitting in the carport at my place with the engine idling, staring straight ahead like a zombie. I switched off the ignition and reached for my backpack, and just then I heard a car coming up the driveway. Right away I could tell by the sound of the wheels on the crushed shell who it was: Paco and my brother, Michael, in their four-wheel-drive pickup truck. Michael is a firefighter, just like our father before him. He's big and blond and broad, with pure blue eyes that can melt the hearts of either sex in a matter of seconds.

Paco, on the other hand, is slim and tall, with long muscles and deep olive skin, the kind of good looks that make your toes flutter and your eyelashes curl, plus he rides a motorcycle, which in my book only adds to his overall hotness factor. Women all over the island have fantasized about turning Michael and Paco straight, but there's little chance of that—they've been together almost fifteen years now. Paco is my brother-in-love.

Michael flashed me a toothy grin as they backed up to the edge of the deck. The fact that they weren't pulling in next to me meant only one thing: groceries.

“Hey, sexy,” Paco said as he stepped out and shut the door with a hip bump. “You're just in time to help unload.”

Normally, the vision of the two of them pulling in with a truckload of goodies is enough to make me forget all the troubles in the world, especially since they both happen to be really good cooks, but it wasn't working this time. I just stood there with my arms dangling helplessly at my sides.

I said, “Somebody killed Levi Radcliff.”

Just like that. I hadn't meant to blurt it out so fast, but I couldn't help myself. Michael had hopped out of the truck on the other side and was halfway around the front fender when he stopped dead in his tracks.

“What?”

I felt my eyes start to sting with tears. I said, “Somebody killed him. This morning. I was afraid something was wrong so I went over to his place at Grand Pelican. The door was open and he was on the floor in a pool of blood…”