Curiosity Killed the Cat Sitter by Blaize Clement

tanning-booth brown, with the kind of long blond hair that you get only by being fifteen years old orpaying a bundle for extensions. Her skin was smooth and taut like a fifteen-year-old’s, too, and her body was trim and youthful. She was wearing a short black tank top and low-rider white jeans that showed her flat belly and smooth swirl of navel. Only her knowing eyes and corded hands gave away her age, which I estimated as somewhere between thirty-five and forty-five. Barefoot, she led the way into her living room, her feet leaving faint damp prints on the black tile. Outside the sliding glass doors, a water hose lay coiled like a green anaconda in the midst of a jungle of potted plants.
    Swooping over a coffee table the size of my bed, she plucked a cigarette out of a nicotine bouquet stuck in a crystal holder, and waved her hand at me in a gesture that managed to invite me to smoke and to sit at the same time. Her fingernails were like Porsche fenders, sleek and curved and bright red. I shook my head at the cigarette offer and lowered my butt to a curved sofa covered in a rose-colored linen. Like Shuga, the room was beautifully done, but it had a hint of street toughness that no amount of cosmetics or money could overcome.
    She got right to the point. “I wasn’t entirely truthful over the phone. I don’t want to talk about the damn cat, it’s Marilee I’m worried about. The detective talked to me, so I know about that man in her house. That what’s-his-name person. But that’s all he would tell me. You know how the police are, they won’t tell you a thing, even if you’re a person’s best friend. You work there, you’re bound to know more than the police do.”
    She said the last with a pasted-on smile, as if she had suddenly remembered that she needed something from me and ought to be sucking up.
    “I don’t exactly work there,” I said. “I just stop in twice a day to take care of the cat.”
    “And you don’t know where she went?”
    “No, that’s why I called you. She didn’t leave a number where she could be reached.”
    “The detective said she was going to be gone a week.”
    She gave me a pointed look with one raised eyebrow, as if it was my turn. I stayed silent. If she wanted me to play coy guessing games, I wasn’t playing.
    She sighed and blew out a stream of smoke. “What I want to know is how they can be sure she left town. Has anybody checked to make sure?”
    I thought of the hair dryer left on her bathroom countertop. “Do you have any reason to think she didn’t?”
    She took another hit from the cigarette and looked out at the plants on the lanai, as if hoping to find inspiration out there. Abruptly, she dropped into a chair and gave me a hard stare. “I might, but Marilee would kill me if I told anybody.”
    “Miss Reasnor, if you know something that bears on a crime, you should tell the detective.”
    “Call me Shuga,” she said throatily. The seductive way she said it was well practiced.
    I gave her a level stare and her mouth twisted impatiently. “People have secrets,” she said. “Everybody has secrets. You probably have secrets.” She slitted her eyes and peered at me as if assessing what kind of secrets I had.
    “And you’re afraid Marilee will be mad at you if you tell one of her secrets.”
    “Hell yes. Wouldn’t you be mad if your best friend told one of your secrets?”
    I shrugged and stood up. I didn’t have time for this. “Don’t tell it, then.”
    She crossed her legs and swung her foot like an agitated cat swinging its tail. “I made a phone call last night to the place where she might have been going. She wasn’t there.”
    I sat back down. “I thought you said you didn’t know where she was going.”
    “I didn’t know there had been a murder when you asked me.”
    “And you lied to the detective after you knew.”
    “I’m not sure that’s where she was going. It wasn’t like she had told me she was going there.”
    Her leg swung