The Cat Sitter’s Pajamas Read Online Free PDF

lipstick. Whatever the reason, I’m sort of a flesh-and-blood lie detector machine, and I didn’t think Briana was lying. I thought she was a complete kook, a neurotic bundle of fantasies, an immature woman crammed with silly dreams, but I didn’t believe she was a killer.
    The light turned green, and cars behind me began to honk. Briana opened the Bronco’s door and got out, but turned back with a pleading look that would have melted a steel beam. My mind whirled with ideas, each of which I rejected before it was completed.
    I said, “Look, I have to take care of some pets. I’ll be finished in about an hour and a half. Meet me at the pavilion at Siesta Beach.”
    She half-sobbed, “Thank you!” and slammed the door shut.
    As I drove on, I watched in the rearview mirror as she sprinted to the Jaguar. My hands were calm on the steering wheel, but my brain was in utter chaos. It screamed that I was the dumbest, weirdest, craziest person in the universe. It hollered that I should call Sergeant Owens and tell him where Briana was. It thundered that talking to Briana was a form of betrayal. A betrayal of the faith Sergeant Owens had in me, of the faith Cupcake and Jancey had in me, of the faith I had in me. Everything it said was true.
    I told myself I should have nothing to do with the situation. The homicide detective handling the case might not have Guidry’s sharp intelligence, but my sole responsibility was to see that Elvis and Lucy were cared for. I should pick up the phone and call Sergeant Owens and not even think about keeping my promise to Briana to talk to her.
    But the entire time I was telling myself all that, I was remembering a time in my own life when I had teetered on the edge of insanity. I had never been so crazy that I’d become delusional like Briana, but perhaps whatever had happened in Cupcake’s house had snapped her back to normal and she was scrambling to claw her way back to the real world. When I had been crazy, kind people had offered me the hand I needed to get back to myself. Briana had reached out to me, and it seemed to me that it would be hypocritical to turn her down since I had once been in such need of help myself.
    While I had that internal debate with myself, I continued driving without calling Sergeant Owens. As if I was being moved by forces outside myself. As if it wasn’t my choice to cross a line from which there would be no return.
    Funny how we can play games with ourselves like that.

 
    4
    On ordinary days, I have breakfast at the Village Diner after I’ve finished my morning rounds. But this wasn’t an ordinary day. This was a day when I’d stupidly made an appointment with a famous model who was a prime murder suspect. Nevertheless, I was famished, so I crossed the north bridge to the mainland and hurried into Morton’s Gourmet Market, where the sandwich guy is nice enough to custom-make my favorite sandwich in all the world: baked turkey breast on pumpernickel bread with fresh tarragon mayonnaise.
    While he stacked layers of turkey on dark bread, I filled a large to-go cup with coffee and went to the bakery department and asked for a fruit tartlet. As the bakery woman handed over the tartlet in its little see-through box, she said, “Anything else?”
    I shook my head, then wondered if Briana had eaten breakfast. It’s a curse I have. Like my brother, I want to make sure nobody in the world goes hungry. Unlike him, I don’t want to cook for people, I just want to see them eat.
    I said, “Um, make that two tartlets.”
    I filled another big cup with coffee and went back to the sandwich counter, where my turkey on pumpernickel waited.
    I said, “I need another one, please. And two large pickles.”
    The sandwich guy turned to build another one, and I snagged two bags of chips from a rack. I was now doubly wrong. I was not only guilty of planning a secret meeting with a woman wanted for murder, I intended to feed her.
    A sweet-faced woman stepped to the deli