Even Cat Sitters Get the Blues Read Online Free Page A

performance and then pretended to ignore me when I left. I love that about cats. They may be secretly gloating that they’ve made a human wait on them like they’re royalty, but they never lose their cool and actually show what they’re feeling. I wish I were more like a cat.
    When I finished grooming the second cat, I checked the iguana’s address again and headed north, looking for the number. For private houses, street numbers are rare along that stretch of Midnight Pass Road. The general attitude is that nobody has any business going to a person’s house if they don’t already know where they live anyway, so why post street numbers just for the curious?
    When I drove past the mansion with the dead guard in the guardhouse, I allowed my head to turn and look down the drive. Two ambulances, three green-and-white sheriff’s cars, and a Medical Examiner’s van were parked along the edge of the drive. At least I could stop worrying that the murdered guard was still alone in there.
    A block or so later, I saw a street number and realized I’d passed the iguana’s house. I pulled into a condo parking lot and doubled back, driving slowly while I tried to find another house number. At the driveway to the guardhouse, the Bronco sort of turned itself in, and I sat staring at the crime scene cars while a horrible realization trickled into my brain.
    My new iguana client lived in the house where the guard had been shot in the head.

THREE
    I parked behind the sheriff’s vehicles and crawled out of the Bronco like a possum slinking out of a tree. The last thing I wanted was to explain to the crime-scene people why I was there.
    Sergeant Woodrow Owens saw me first. A pained expression crossed his face, and he put his hand over his eyes for a moment like he hoped I was an apparition that would go away. Sergeant Owens is a tall, loose-jointed, sad-eyed African American who, if he were a dog, would be a basset hound. He was my commanding officer when I was a deputy. When Todd and Christy were killed and everybody else expected me to get my act together and come back to work, it was Sergeant Owens who finally had the grit to tell me the honest truth—I was way too fucked up to carry a gun for the county. I’ve always respected him for coming right out and saying it and not pussyfooting around. There’s something reassuring about having your own emotional instability recognized and authenticated. Once that’s done, you can get on with the business of
getting through life without the added stress of trying to fake normal.
    He said, “Dixie, I’m almost afraid to ask why you’re here.”
    I said, “I have a pet client in this house.”
    “You know Kurtz?”
    “Who?”
    “Ken Kurtz, the man who lives here.”
    So that was his name. Not Curtis, like I’d written when we talked.
    “Never met him, but he called last night and asked me to come today and feed his iguana.”
    I glanced at the yellow crime-scene tape around the guardhouse and tried to look innocent. “What’s going on?”
    “Somebody shot the guard.”
    “Anybody else hurt?”
    “Just the guard.”
    Well, that was a relief.
    Sergeant Owens said, “When Kurtz called you, did he say where he was?”
    “New York. He said he’d be home today.”
    “You get a number?”
    I felt myself redden. Heck, I hadn’t even got the man’s name right.
    “He hung up before I could, and the ID thing said NUMBER UNAVAILABLE.”
    “Okay, come with me.”
    He went loping off down the driveway toward the areca palm hedge so fast I had to trot to keep up with him. Beyond the hedge, the driveway curved and widened to a four-car garage. At first I thought the garage
formed one wing of an L-shaped single-story house, but then I realized the house was built around a courtyard with a tall oak tree in its center. Sergeant Owens made a sharp right angle and walked down a long paved path between the privacy hedge and the side wall of the garage. We passed an expanse of clear glass