The Cat Sitter's Nine Lives Read Free Page B

mouth.
    I pulled some gauze out of my backpack. “It’s okay. My car was at the back of the pileup. I think I bit my lip when I got rear-ended.”
    He stood up and stuck his hands down in his pockets. “Oh, good. I mean, it’s not good you got rear-ended, but you might want to make sure you don’t get any of this guy’s blood on that.”
    “What are you? A doctor?”
    A faint look of guilt flashed across his face. He extended his hand. “Dr. Philip Dunlop.”
    I shook his hand. “Oh. Dixie Hemingway. Nice to meet you.”
    “Yeah. I guess I better go see what the driver of that truck looks like.”
    A crowd of people had formed around us, and as he made his way through them I heard him say, “Alright, people, give ’em some air,” as if we were on some kind of TV hospital drama.
    I wadded the gauze up and gently dabbed it at the blood on Baldy’s head. He opened his eyes and looked around, checking out his new surroundings.
    “It’s okay,” I said. “Help is on the way.”
    He looked at me and frowned, and then groaned as he lifted his head off the sidewalk to see past me into the street.
    I said, “Oh, no, sir, please don’t try to move.”
    His frown disappeared, and again a strange smile played across his lips. I turned to see what he was looking at, but there was nothing but the row of cars stopped in the street. I could see the young girl that had rear-ended me pacing up and down the sidewalk, holding her cell phone to her ear and gesticulating wildly with her free hand, and just opposite us was the cranky old woman in the black Cadillac. She was staring at us with a look of utter disgust, as if Baldy had ruined her entire day by nearly getting himself killed.
    Just then a pair of black boots stepped into my field of vision. They were almost knee height, shined to a glossy, mirrorlike finish with steel toes and thick rubber heels. I recognized them immediately. They were the same boots I’d worn every day for years—the boots of a Sarasota County sheriff’s deputy.
    I looked up to find Deputy Jesse Morgan staring down at me over the frames of his mirrored sunglasses, which he’d slid partly down the bridge of his sharp nose. He had broad shoulders, a buzzed military-type haircut, and a lone diamond stud in his left ear. I knew him, not from having worked for the department—he joined the force after I left—but from several other unfortunate occasions when our paths had crossed. He’s about as fun as a bag of rats, but I respect him.
    “Dixie,” he said, his lips pursed to one side.
    I looked down at my cargo shorts, which were smeared with blood. There were red splotches all over my white T-shirt, my hands were covered in blood, and there were red streaks running up and down my arms and legs. I wasn’t sure what Deputy Morgan was thinking at that particular moment, but let’s just say this wasn’t the first time he’d found me kneeling over a listless, bloody body.
    “Don’t look at me,” I said. “He was like this when I found him.”

 
    2
    I’ve never been a smoker. My grandfather smoked Camels, unfiltered. Sometimes he’d have several cigarettes going at the same time. He’d be sitting on the deck after dinner, listening to the waves roll in, his cigarette precariously balanced on the edge of the hand-painted clamshell ashtray I made for him in the fourth grade. He’d get up, stretch, and go inside to grab a beer. Then he’d forget what he’d gone inside for and settle down on the couch with an ice-cold Coke, light up another cigarette, and watch the Lawrence Welk show. Then he might leave that cigarette, wander into the kitchen to talk with my grandmother while she made dinner, and light up another cigarette.
    It drove my grandmother bonkers, and it’s a wonder he didn’t burn the house down, but my point is I had lots and lots of opportunities to sneak a puff now and then. Only when I did, it felt like my throat was on fire and my lungs were about to explode right out of