Raining Cat Sitters and Dogs: A Dixie Hemingway Mystery by Blaize Clement

Author:Blaize Clement [Clement, Blaize]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
ISBN: 0312369565
Publisher: Minotaur Books
Published: 2010-01-19T00:00:00+00:00

16

At the diner, I picked up a copy of the Herald-Tribune from a stack by the cashier’s stand and dropped it on my table to mark my spot while I washed up. My energy boost was draining by then, and it pretty much completely evaporated when I saw Bambi Dirk standing at a sink in the ladies’ room. The fact that her name was Bambi was just another example of how some people’s names don’t fit them. Bambi Dirk was more like a moose than a fawn, and for a second I wondered if there was some kind of karmic high school reunion going on, a cosmic force that had first drawn Maureen to me and now Bambi.

But where Maureen and I had once shared a special closeness, Bambi and I had shared a special dislike. Actually, she’d hated me like poison and the feeling had been mutual. Bambi had never gotten over the fact that her boyfriend had dumped her for me, and I’d never gotten over the fact that she’d branded Maureen the school slut. All that high school stuff should have been put behind us, but Bambi and I eyed each other like two cats ready to hiss and pounce. She wore a toad-colored blouse and white shorts so tight in the crotch they were giving her a wedgie. She had put on weight since we’d last seen each other, and I hadn’t. That gave me great pleasure.

She said, “Why Dixie, I didn’t know you still lived on the key. I heard you got fired from the sheriff’s department and left town.”

I held my hands under a spray of water and resisted flinging some on her.

I said, “Wrong on both counts, Bambi. I wasn’t fired and I’m still here.”

Her eyebrows drew together to make a deep vertical groove on her forehead. In a few years, that groove would be permanent and she’d look like an elk. Couldn’t happen to a more deserving woman.

She said, “But you’re not a deputy anymore.”

“I’m a pet sitter.”

In the mirror, her face registered disdain. She ran long manicured fingers through her hair. “I guess you’ve heard what happened to your old skanky friend.”

“I have a lot of old skanky friends, Bambi. Which one do you mean?”

“If you don’t know, then you live on another planet. It’s all over the news.”

I jerked a paper towel from its slot, dried my hands, and wadded the towel into a ball. My hand wanted to throw it at Bambi, but instead I tossed it in the wastebasket and turned on my heel, ready to flounce out. But it’s hard to turn on your heel when you wear Keds, harder still to flounce in cargo shorts. A proper flounce needs ruffles or at least a billowing full skirt. As flounce impaired as I was, though, I managed to get in the last word.

“Nice to see you’re still spreading gossip, Bambi.”

The door sighed closed behind me and I stomped down the hall past the men’s room, the manager’s office, and a public phone.

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