Cat Sitter on a Hot Tin Roof (11 page)

I promised to come back the next day, kissed the top of Cora’s downy head, and retraced my path past her roommate’s bed. She had stopped crying and gave me a slight smile.

She said, “I’d of stayed in Mississippi if it hadn’t of been for the hurricane.”

From the other side of the curtain, Cora laughed. I gave Ms. Grayberg a friendly wave and hoped nobody told her that Florida got hurricanes too.

As I went down the stairs, I probed all the corners of my mind, trying to remember where I’d heard the man’s smug, pompous voice before. But it was like trying to dislodge a speck of lettuce stuck in your back teeth. Every time I thought I had it, it stayed locked in place.

I made it all the way to the parking lot before I remembered where I’d been when I first heard the man’s voice. It was so unlikely that I sat in the Bronco and argued with myself for a long time before I pulled out my cell phone and called Guidry.

He answered with a curt, “Guidry here.”

I said, “I was just at the Bayfront Village Nursing Unit, and a man came in the room to talk to the woman in the other bed. I know it doesn’t make any sense, but you need to know who he was.”

A beat or two passed, and Guidry said, “Dixie, I’m not even going to try to understand what you just said. Do you have something to tell me?”

I stuck my tongue out at the phone and took a deep breath.

“Cora Mathers is in the nursing unit at Bayfront. She has a roommate named Grayberg. While I was visiting Cora, a man came to visit Mrs. Grayberg. I didn’t see him because a curtain was between us, but I recognized his voice, and I’m positive it was the same man who called Laura Halston while I was at her house. She said she met him at Sarasota Memorial in the emergency room. Maybe he’s a doctor. Or a nurse.”

“You didn’t see him. You didn’t talk to him. But you’re sure it was the same man.”

“I know it sounds crazy, but he has a distinctive voice, and he speaks in a peculiar way. He left before I could get a look at him.”

“Peculiar how? Lisp? Stutter?”

“He talks like a college professor too full of himself. Pedantic. Prissy.”

“So you want me to go to the hospital unit over at Bayfront and ask this Mrs. Grayberg about him?”

“Well ah, Mrs. Grayberg is a little bit senile. She might not be able to give you much information.”

Guidry heaved a deep sigh. “I can’t talk any longer, Dixie. I’ll catch you later.”

He clicked off without saying goodbye, leaving me staring at the phone and wondering what he was avoiding telling me.

17

I
drove home in a fog of fatigue and fury. Even though I’d told Guidry about the other men who’d been irrationally drawn to Laura, I knew it was her husband who had killed her. The man had to be completely insane to think he could follow her to Siesta Key and kill her without anybody knowing. His colleagues would know he was gone, and everybody who knew him and Laura would suspect him the minute her murder became public knowledge. If he’d been a nobody, he might already be cooling his odious heels in a jail cell. Since he was famous and wealthy, he would have an attorney to forestall the moment when homicide detectives talked to him. Guidry was probably collecting irrefutable evidence before he moved.

Just the thought of Guidry investigating Laura’s murder sent a chill into my bones, because it was a reminder of Guidry’s job. Every day, he dealt with murder—the grisliest, ugliest, most sordid side of humanity.

Being involved with any law enforcement officer means being vicariously close to violence, at least to some degree, but being involved with a homicide detective means being close to the ultimate effects of brutal hatred. I wasn’t sure I was strong enough for that. I wasn’t sure I
wanted
to be strong enough for that. I wasn’t sure I could spend my nights in bed with a man who spent his days investigating murders.

Not that I’d been invited to spend any nights with Guidry. Not that he had ever even hinted that it was on his mind. But it must have been somewhere in
my
mind, and I wished it weren’t.

At home, I trudged up the stairs to my apartment and fell into bed. Before I went to sleep, I remembered the noise Laura and I had heard while we ate dinner. Could it have been her husband? Could he have been lurking outside, waiting to make sure Laura lived in that house? I wished I had gone outside and investigated. If I had, he might have been frightened away, and Laura might not have died.

I woke with a start from the remnants of a bad dream. In the dream, my father had hit me. The dream was true. I had been seven years old at the time, and my gentle, patient father had smacked my bottom for the first and only time in my life.

He had been about to leave for his shift at the firehouse, and I had sassed my mother one time too many. “You don’t speak to your mother like that,” he said. “It’s rude and it’s unkind, and it’s unfair.”

I’d been so shocked that I yelled, “I hate you! I wish you were dead!” and ran to my room. Within twenty-four hours, he had died saving a child in a burning house.

With a child’s belief in my own magical powers, I believed for a long time that I had killed him. Even now, I sometimes wonder about it. He hadn’t been the kind of man to hit little children, and maybe he had been so upset over my hateful words that night that he’d lost his concentration and got careless.

When Todd and Christy were killed, that childish belief in magical powers must have returned because I had the same kind of nagging guilt. I knew the things the religious fanatics said weren’t true—that God had not punished me for being a working mother. Even so, I’d grieved that I hadn’t remembered to buy Cheerios and orange juice when I went grocery shopping, because if I had, Todd and Christy wouldn’t have been in that Publix parking lot when the old man hit the gas instead of his brake.

Now, lying in the darkness before my alarm sounded, I wallowed for a few minutes in slimy remorse. Then I rolled out of bed and stomped to the bathroom, where I stood in front of the medicine cabinet and glared into my own eyes.

I said, “Don’t start that crap again! You didn’t cause your father to die, you didn’t cause Todd and Christy to die, and you sure as hell didn’t cause Laura Halston to be murdered!”

My eyes in the mirror gazed back at me with a secret knowing. The old irrational guilt was just a way to cover up what I was truly feeling. I hate it when I come up with insights that push me to be honest with myself, especially when the truth is something I don’t know what to do with.

The truth was that primal fear had its talons deep into my shoulders, deeper than I’d realized. No matter what, I had to do everything in my power to make sure Laura’s killer was found and convicted. Otherwise, the fear of being a vulnerable victim might be an unwelcome companion for the rest of my life.

18

M
ercifully, the morning calls went smoothly. No accidents to clean up, no signs of separation anxiety in any of the pets, no wistful calls from any of the absent pet owners about
their
separation anxiety. Before I went to Mazie’s house, I called Pete to tell him I would be a little late. He said Hal had called to say Jeffrey had been moved to a regular room.

“Hal says he’s talking and drinking fluids, but he’s not happy. He’s asking for Mazie and crying a lot.”

Pete and I exchanged silence for a few seconds, both of us imagining a little boy trying to comprehend all the strangeness of a hospital without his best friend.

Pete said, “Mazie’s not happy either. Hal talked to her again, but she’s still agitated. She’s not eating at all, Dixie, and she’s not drinking but a little. I brushed her and took her out to do her business, but she’s not a happy dog.”

“She won’t be happy until Jeffrey comes home, Pete. But there’s not anything you can do beyond what you’re doing.”

He said, “The detective called about me seeing that lady next door. He didn’t seem to believe me.”

“Homicide detectives always sound suspicious.”

“They’re still over there, all those law people.”

I told him I’d see him later, and drove over the north bridge to the mainland and the Bayfront nursing unit. This time I took the elevator so the day-duty nurses could see me get off. A nurse at the desk looked up and smiled as I approached her.

I said, “Hi, I’m here to see Cora Mathers in Two-oh-four.” “Are you the one taking her back to her condo? She said you’d be here.”

“Can I ask you something? What’s a Binswanger?”

She looked up at me and frowned. “Ms. Mathers doesn’t have Binswanger.”

“I just wondered what it was because a man called her roommate a Binswanger last night. I’d never heard the word before.”

“Who called her that?”

“I didn’t see him, I just heard him. He said, ‘All you old Binswangers should have been smothered when you had your first infarct.’ He had a priggy voice like an announcer on a classical radio station. Do you have any idea who that could have been?”

A mottled red flush rose up her neck and face. “Nobody on staff here would have said that to her.”

“I went out in the hall looking for him, but he must have taken the stairs. Could it have been an orderly?”

Her entire body had gone rigid. “I hardly think so. Binswanger disease is a rare form of subcortical dementia.”

“So anybody familiar with that word would have medical training.”

“As I said, nobody on our staff would have said that to Ms. Grayberg.”

“Uh-huh. Well, I’ll go get Cora now.”

No longer friendly, the woman watched me through narrowed eyes as I went toward Cora’s room. She would probably get together with the night nurse and talk about Cora’s crazy friend who was spreading false gossip about a male nurse being mean to the patients.

In 204, Ms. Grayberg was watching an old
I Love Lucy
show. She didn’t take her eyes off the TV screen as I walked behind it. On the other side of the dividing curtain, Cora was dressed and sitting in an easy chair reading the morning
Herald-Tribune
. She didn’t seem surprised to see me, just smiled and stood up.

She said, “I’m glad you’re here. I’m ready to get out of this joint.”

She wore a loose muumuu thing that swallowed her. One hand held it up above her little feet, while she reached for her handbag with the other hand.

She said, “I’m having to walk careful, because I’m afraid I’ll trip on this dress. I ordered it from a catalog, and it’s a little too long.”

It was at least a foot too long, and it looked dangerous as hell. I had mental images of her tripping on it and breaking some of her fragile bones.

“Your ankle okay now?”

“It’s still a mite tender, but I can nurse it at my own place. They said keep it elevated and put ice on it. That won’t be hard.”

A volunteer charged in pushing a wheelchair. I wondered if somebody had told her to get Cora out as quickly as possible, or if she always moved that fast. As soon as Cora got settled in the chair with her skirt tucked in so it didn’t drag on the ground, I took over the pushing while the volunteer trotted along by our side. The elevator door was already open, and we were gone in no time. I noticed that everybody at the nurse’s desk was too preoccupied to tell Cora goodbye. Either they knew who had been so mean to Ms. Grayberg, or they thought I was a lying troublemaker and they didn’t want to encourage me.

I pushed the wheelchair across the Bayfront campus to the main building, where everybody from the doorman to the concierge rushed forward to welcome Cora home. The manager came out to assure her that she had only to call the dining room at any time and somebody would bring up anything she wanted. I was pleased to see how well she was treated, and Cora was as gracious as the Queen Mother flaunting her power. For the elderly, money not only buys decent health care, it buys respect.

Upstairs, she got up from the wheelchair lifting her dress with both hands.

I said, “Maybe it would be better if I took that dress to the tailor and got it shortened. Then you won’t have to hike it up when you walk.”

She looked surprised, as if the idea of shortening a too-long dress was a novel idea.

She said, “I’ll go change into something else.”

I held my breath while she shuffled into her bedroom. While I waited, I heated a teakettle of water and got out her tea things, because Cora likes to be ready for a cup of tea anytime she wants one.

Cora’s apartment has a wide glassed sunroom facing the bay, pink tile floors, a spacious living room, and a small kitchen behind a breakfast bar. It’s airy and high-ceilinged and comfortable, thanks to the generosity of her granddaughter. When I’d got her tea things ready and made sure her TV remote was handy, I stood at the glass wall and inhaled the view—robin’s-egg-blue sky fluffed with cumulus clouds, white sails dotting a bay whose depths were signaled by violet, purple, jade, and emerald. With vistas like that, people in Sarasota don’t need art on their walls.

Cora came out carrying the dress and wearing a velour warm-up suit with baggy pants that she’d pulled on crooked so the crotch seam angled up toward her right hip.

As she handed me the dress, she said, “Ethan Crane called me the other day. He asked about you. I think he’s sweet on you.”

I made a mumbling sound that I hoped sounded like an answer and made a big to-do of folding the dress into a little square. Ethan Crane is a drop-dead handsome attorney who’d handled Cora’s granddaughter’s estate. It was true that he was interested in me. It was also true that any unmarried, unattached, undead woman with estrogen in her veins would have been thrilled to have Ethan want her. So what the heck was wrong with me?

Before Christmas, Ethan had invited me to dinner at his house, and I’d gone planning to lose my second virginity—the one I’d assumed after my husband died—but Ethan hadn’t given me a chance. Instead, he had walked me to my car after dinner, given me a kiss that seared the soles of my feet, and sent me home hot and astonished.

We probably would have had some follow-up dates if circumstances hadn’t intervened. Like a shoot-out when a man got killed, and like Guidry being there when I needed somebody. Ethan had pulled back and seemed to be waiting for a sign from me—either a go-ahead sign or a closed shop sign. The problem was that I didn’t know myself well enough to know which sign I wanted to give him. Especially now, when Laura’s murder was a stone in my shoe and the ultimate result of Jeffrey’s surgery something I couldn’t even let myself think about.

Cora’s shrewd old eyes were sizing me up. “Something’s wrong. What is it?”

I hesitated. I didn’t want to stir memories of the way Cora’s granddaughter had been killed by mentioning Laura’s murder, and I didn’t want to make her sad by telling her about Jeffrey’s surgery. On the other hand, protecting people from the truth is another way of shutting them out.

I said, “I’m concerned about a dog I’m taking care of. He belongs to a little boy who had brain surgery to stop seizures, but I don’t know yet if the surgery was a success. The dog and the little boy are extremely close, and the dog doesn’t understand what happened to him. She’s under a lot of stress, and there’s not much I can do for her. It’s impossible to communicate with animals and explain things to them.”

Like Paco, Cora went straight to the nub. “It’s a terrible thing to lose a child.”

I didn’t want to go there, didn’t want to be reminded that death is always in the wings. Whether you’re three or ninety-three, death knows your name.

I said, “Cora, do you think any of your neighbors might know who that man was that visited Ms. Grayberg over in the nursing unit? I don’t like the idea of somebody going around talking to sick people the way he talked to her.”

“You know, I’ve been thinking about that man, and I think I know who he was. I don’t know his name, but he drives people to the doctor. I was on the elevator one time with him and a man that lives here. Prissy-voiced man. As I remember, he was on the pudgy side, and he had big fat lips.”

“He works here at Bayfront?”

“I guess he must. Anyway, he drives people. But don’t worry about him, Dixie. And don’t worry about that little boy either. You can only do what you can do, and that’s all you can do.”

I grinned and took her muumuu. “You sound positively zen.”

She looked pleased. “Well, I do try to be positive.”

I kissed her goodbye and zipped off with the muumuu. I felt more positive too.

Downstairs, the lobby was buzzing with good-looking white-haired people carrying tennis rackets or shopping bags or just gathered in groups to gossip. All that energy and good humor was almost enough to make me nostalgic for growing old.

Instead of going out the front doors, I detoured to speak to the concierge at the front desk. I said, “You know, Ms. Mathers was in the nursing unit for a couple of days.”

“I know, I’m so glad it was something minor.”

“She had a roommate over there named Grayberg. I heard a man talking to Mrs. Grayberg while I was there, and I thought I recognized his voice. He left before I could make sure. I think he may work here driving people to the doctor. Do you happen to know who it might have been?”

She blinked at me. “I wouldn’t know.”

“He talked like a schoolteacher. You know, the boring kind that nobody listens to. He was nasty to her.”

Twin lines appeared between her eyebrows, and she went professional.

“I’m sure it wasn’t anybody connected with Bayfront. You’d have to ask Ms. Grayberg who he was.”

“Thanks, I’ll do that.”

I gave her a big friendly smile to remind her I was on her good side and went out to the porte cochere, where a valet galloped off to rescue my car. When he eased it under the portico, I handed him a couple of bills. Tipping was prohibited at Bayfront, but he and I both knew that green was a color that got me quicker service.

He said, “You been visiting Ms. Mathers? She’s a sweet old lady.”

Cora would have despised being called a sweet old lady, but I smiled and agreed.

I said, “When she was over in the nursing unit, a man came in and spoke to her roommate. He had a deep voice and used lots of big words like he was reading the dictionary. I think he may work here as a driver. Do you have any idea who he was?”

He grinned. “That old fart does talk like he’s reading a dictionary. That’s a good one. That would be Frederick. Used to work here, but he got fired for being weird.”

My pulse thrummed, and I had to clench my hand to keep it from throwing more money at him. “What’s his last name?”

“Don’t know, you’d have to ask the manager. But he’s really ticked at old Fred. The dumb boob lost a woman over at Sarasota Memorial. Took her to ER and forgot about her.”

I said, “Ms. Grayberg.”

He looked surprised. “You know about that?”

“I heard some people talking about it over at the nursing unit, but I don’t know the details.”

He leaned close, eager to give me the scoop.

“Well, see, Frederick drove people shopping or to doctors’ appointments, things like that. Sort of a personal driver, but anybody living here could hire him. So Ms. Grayberg had him take her to Saks to get something to wear to the birthday party they were throwing for her here—you know, they do that for everybody when they make it to one of the big ones, eighty, ninety, a hundred. Anyway, while she was there she had a stroke. So instead of calling nine-one-one like he should’ve, Frederick put her in the car and took her down the street to Sarasota Memorial. Took her to the emergency room, and then the dumb cluck forgot about her. Didn’t call here to report it or anything. The hospital had to look in her purse and get her address to know where to call. So Frederick got fired.”

My body wanted to jump out of the car and run inside and ask the manager what Frederick’s last name was, but my head told me to be cool. I listened to my head for a change, told the valet goodbye, and drove sedately out of the parking lot. As soon as I saw a driveway into a business lot, I whipped in and took out my cell phone to call Guidry.

I got his voice message, so I was denied the pleasure of saying “I told you so.”

Instead, I said, “The man who came to Laura Halston’s door when I was there used to be a driver at Bayfront Village. Took people shopping and to doctors’ appointments. His name is Frederick. I don’t know his last name, but he has fat lips. He was with Ms. Grayberg when she had a stroke. He drove her to the ER at Sarasota Memorial, but he didn’t call Bayfront to report her stroke, and they fired him for it. I imagine if you check ER records, you’ll find that Ms. Grayberg was there about the same time Laura Halston was there with a pulled knee.”

I closed the phone and pulled out of the lot into traffic. I was quite pleased with myself. Smug, even. I’d found out who the man was who’d stalked Laura and come to her door demanding to see her. Since it seemed to me that nobody else was making a lot of effort to get answers, I was glad I was one who was. What the heck was wrong with everybody else?