The Cat Sitter’s Pajamas (23 page)

“And the rivals? How do they know about the names?”

She looked uncomfortable. “They were my friend’s partners. They expected to take over the business while he was in prison.”

“Only you took it from them instead.”

“My friend wanted me to have it.”

“Is that why he was killed in prison?”

She smiled and shrugged. “It’s a cruel business, Dixie.”

Images flitted across my mind like a slide show: Briana in her designer clothes slouching down a runway, the counterfeit black Nikes left on Cupcake’s bed, the murdered woman’s bloodstained white shirt.

“Did you get the reward money for turning in your Serbian gangster friend?”

She looked surprised again, as if I were a frog she’d picked up that was turning into a prince.

“That was for
money,
it wasn’t personal. I saw the opportunity and I took it.”

Even Gumdrop and Licorice looked shocked.

She said, “I know what you’re thinking, but models only have a few good years, and most of us aren’t lucky enough to marry a Sarkozy or a Mick Jagger or a Billy Joel. We have to think of our future.”

“Explain to me exactly how your business works.”

She looked bored. “Counterfeit goods are manufactured in Asian countries, China mostly, and shipped out under fake papers showing them originating in Croatia or Montenegro or some other Balkan country. The American shipment is stored in a warehouse in New Jersey, then distributed to shops in big-money resort areas. The shop owners buy at a big discount and sell at a large markup.”

“How do you solicit those shop owners?”

She smiled. “That’s the tedious part. It took my friend years to build up his stable of upper-crust retail outlets. He did it himself, not like some who hire people to do it. He traveled to every store in person, and each place he went he had a different disguise, a different name. He was a master at disguise. He told people he was an agent for the manufacturer, and for one retailer he’d put on a wig and beard, then go bald and with fake teeth to call on the next. He was good with words, too. He’d get people talking, and when he left nobody could remember exactly what he looked like.”

For a second, I had a disastrous urge to laugh. A slick criminal had spent years building a list of secret markets where his counterfeit goods were sold. When he was arrested, he had double-crossed his partners by giving the list to a sexy model—the same sexy model who had turned him in to the police for the reward. The man had been killed in prison for his double-cross, and the sexy model had come to Florida to introduce herself to the retailers on the list, expecting to carry on the business and make billions. But because she had come to believe in a false memory she’d created of being Cupcake’s close friend when they were sixteen, she’d broken into his house. While she was inside, she’d lost the list. A transnational counterfeit business had been thrown into disarray because of a false memory and a woman’s carelessness.

I said, “You know, you could have saved yourself a lot of grief if you’d made a copy of that list.”

She looked ashamed. “I’m not used to the clerical end of business.”

I felt a stab of pity. With no family, Briana had been forced to create herself, and the self she’d created was truly amoral. With her blend of nuttiness and slyness, life was a game to her, a chance to become involved in intrigue and manipulation of other people. Her sense of self was so slippery that she broke into other people’s houses to see how normal people lived. She was obsessed with Cupcake for the same reason she’d been obsessed with her Serbian gangster friend: They both exuded power and self-confidence. Reba Chandler had been right about Briana’s addiction to drugs released by danger. Getting the list of contacts had been so scarily satisfying to her that she hadn’t given any thought to the practical, mundane, ordinary ways that people held on to important papers. Instead of making a copy of her precious list, she’d carried it around the same way Elvis carried his pilfered papers.

Cupcake had been right about Briana, too. The woman had a bag of unusually lustrous marbles, but she wasn’t playing with all of them.

I pulled my hand away from my gun. Briana was dishonest and cunning, but she wasn’t a physical danger.

I said, “Somebody told me that you did something outrageous at the Milan fashion show last year. What was that about?”

Her eyes rounded in surprise again. “One of the men trying to take over my business was in the audience. He made a gesture toward a reporter, a way of telling me he was going to expose me. He wouldn’t have, of course, because he would have been exposing himself at the same time, but the threat made me furious. I leaped off the runway and beat at him with my fists. It got me good publicity because I told the reporters he had made an obscene gesture that I found highly offensive. I was the injured innocent.” With a world-weary roll of her eyes, she said, “That’s the way it is in this business. The competition is cutthroat.”

“Aren’t you afraid of being caught?”

She shrugged. “My modeling career would be ruined, but I’m close to a time when I’ll have enough money to live without sucking up to prime ministers and wealthy playboys.”

She sounded as if she were talking about grabbing a bargain at Marshalls.

Suddenly defensive, she said, “I’m not the only famous person selling copies of top fashions and distributing them under fake labels. It’s a way to make millions, and the risk isn’t great. If someone is caught bringing in a container of fake sneakers, they lose their goods and get a mark on their customs records, but that’s all. It’s not like getting caught with three kilos of coke in a shipment of Gucci watches like my friend did. That was a stupid thing to do, because it gets you a four-year prison sentence. I’d never do that.”

I heaved a huge sigh and stood up. The cats circled around me eying the peacock feather that was now at my shoulder height.

“Briana, you have to leave now. These cats have to be fed, and then I have other pets to call on. Don’t follow me, and don’t come in another house after me.”

Confusion moved across her face like spiderwebs. “What about the list?”

“I run a business, Briana. Business people make copies of important papers. I’ve made several copies of your list. One of the copies is in my safety deposit box at the bank. If anything should happen to me, the list will go to every newspaper editor and law enforcement agency in Florida.”

She shook her head. “What are you saying?”

“I’m saying to leave me the hell alone. Leave me alone, leave Cupcake alone, leave his wife alone. We are not a part of your world, and we don’t want to be. And if you’re in contact with your rivals, pass the word along to them. If they come after me again, that precious list of contacts will be spread all over the world.”

I left her sitting on the arm of the sofa and went to the kitchen, where I fed the cats and gave them fresh water. When I went back to the den, Briana was gone.

21

Sometimes being a good pet sitter means that you do the same thing a good parent does: You fake it. You pretend that everything is fine and dandy, that everything is normal, that there’s nothing to get anxious about, when all the time your knees are trembling and your tongue is cottony with abject panic. But children and animals always know when you’re lying, so even though I pretended to be calm when I told Gumdrop and Licorice good-bye, their eyes said they knew better and their ears pointed forward in a show of uneasiness. Briana had not only scared the bejesus out of me, she’d caused me to upset the cats. The woman seemed to create discord and destruction everywhere she went.

By the time I arrived at the next client’s house, my whirling mind had arrived at a plan. I parked in the driveway and called Cupcake from my cell.

I said, “I don’t have time to go into all the details now, but please call Steven and ask him to meet me at your house in three hours. Tell him I have a list of local businesses selling counterfeit designer goods.”

“You do?”

“Well, sort of. I’ll explain when I see you.”

I galloped through the rest of the pet visits, looking over my shoulder before I went into every house, listening for footsteps while I played with cats. I didn’t expect Briana to come after me again. She had nothing to gain from accosting me again if I had copies of the list of contacts, and she’d looked as if she believed me when I said I did. But I wasn’t sure the men with the sap and the asp baton would be as easy to manipulate. If Briana had sent a message to them that I’d made copies of their stupid list, they might kill me just out of spite.

Since I had reversed my usual pattern and started at the north end of the Key, Billy Elliot was my last call instead of my first. He and Tom were waiting for me with anxious faces.

I said, “I’m sorry I’m so late. I had to take some hot water bottles to Cora Mathers, and since I was coming from the north end, I worked my way south.”

Tom watched me snap Billy Elliot’s leash on his collar. “How is Ms. Mathers?”

“She ate some carrot cake that gave her a tummy ache.”

“She’s a nice lady.”

What he meant was that Cora was an innocent lady. Tom handles Cora’s finances, and he knows as well as I do that the money her granddaughter left her didn’t come from shrewd investments the way Cora thinks. It came from a clever blackmailing scheme that was never exposed because the granddaughter was murdered. I appreciate Tom’s discretion in the way he keeps Cora innocent. She’s had too many hard knocks in her life to learn this late that her beloved granddaughter was a phony.

Billy Elliot and I went downstairs, and as soon as he had peed on every bush that needed peeing on and had run around the oval track three times, I took him back upstairs. Tom was sitting in his wheelchair with an anxious face.

“Dixie, you don’t have to tell me anything if you don’t want to, but I know something is wrong. If you’re in any trouble that I can help you with, please don’t do a strong stoic act. I’m your friend, and friends help friends.”

My eyelids pricked with hot tears. Sometimes I get so overwhelmed with the rank awfulness of parts of the world that I forget we’re all connected by a solid foundation of goodness and kindness.

I stooped to remove Billy Elliot’s leash before I answered him. I was afraid I’d bawl like a baby if I talked before I got myself under control. Billy Elliot caught the atmosphere and looked from Tom to me with a quizzical arch to his eyebrows.

I said, “I can’t talk to you about it yet, but as soon as it’s over, I’ll tell you all about it.”

“Are you in danger?”

I hesitated. “Maybe.”

“Have you called Guidry?”

There it was, the reminder that my protector was gone. For a moment, I felt a stab of annoyance, a woman’s resentment that a man thought she needed another man to keep her safe. But the truth was that I was up against an amoral woman with transnational criminal contacts, not to mention a rogue security cadre who answered to no recognized authority. Both groups believed I possessed information vital to their existence, and neither of them would hesitate to use torture to get what they wanted.

I said, “I’m meeting in just a few minutes with an FBI agent.”

“This has something to do with that woman killed in Trillin’s house, doesn’t it?”

I nodded. “The woman was an FBI agent. That’s all I can tell you now.”

Tom had gone pale. “Somebody killed an FBI agent in Cupcake Trillin’s house? Good God.”

Tom’s smart. I could almost hear the gears in his brain processing the implications of an FBI agent being in Cupcake’s house while an internationally famous model was there, too, and what the agent’s murder might mean.

He said, “Will you let me know if there’s anything I can do?”

“I promise.”

I left with a fake cheery smile and assurances that I was being very careful and that everything was going to be fine, but I wasn’t sure that everything was going to be fine at all. I’d had a sample of the Serbian group’s ability to inflict great pain without leaving evidence, and it scared me. I don’t like pain. I don’t deal well with pain. If I were tortured, I’d probably confess everything in about three nanoseconds. If I did, they would move to Cupcake’s house and do God-knew-what to get that list.

Before I drove out of Tom’s parking lot, Michael called to tell me he was going to an Orioles/Mets spring training game at Sarasota’s Ed Smith Stadium, so he wouldn’t be home for dinner. I was sorry he wouldn’t make dinner but glad he wouldn’t be home to see all the emotions I was feeling. I didn’t want him to know anything about my fear of men coming with saps to hurt me, because he would go ape-shit if he knew it had happened before. When Michael feels the call to protect me, he tends to break bones.

I arrived at Cupcake’s house almost exactly three hours from the time I’d called and told him to have Steven there. A brown sedan was parked in Cupcake’s driveway, so Steven had apparently taken my message seriously. Before I got out of the Bronco, I got my gun from my shorts pocket and put it in the glove compartment. Friends don’t carry guns into friends’ houses.

When I rang the bell, Jancey opened the door. She looked annoyed, scared, and angry. I didn’t blame her. She had gone to bed one night the wife of a famous athlete who was admired by everybody who knew him and woken up the next morning the wife of a famous athlete whose reputation was teetering on the razor’s edge of disaster.

She said, “What’s going on, Dixie?”

“Do you have a ladder?”

“A ladder?”

“I need to climb up to look in the cats’ hiding places.”

She opened her mouth to ask a question, then closed it and hurried ahead of me to the kitchen where Cupcake and Steven sat drinking coffee.

“Cupcake, Dixie needs a ladder.”

Both men looked up at me as if Jancey had asked for a flying saucer, but Cupcake lumbered to his feet and went through the kitchen door to the garage. Steven stood up and looked a question at me. I waited until Cupcake came back carrying a stepladder so long the ends of it waved out of control. Jancey rushed to support the ends, not because Cupcake couldn’t handle the weight but because she didn’t want her walls scratched.