couldn’t see in. And I wasn’t about to glue my nose to the glass like some creepy Peeping Jane.
Further along the house, I could see another set of doors, but the path that way was blocked off by a garden bench. Freddy slipped right past the bench, headed for those doors. I watched him… and noticed the little panel on the bottom of one of the doors.
A kitty door.
“Oh, shit. Wait, wait!” I called after him, and Freddy stopped with a jolt. I scrambled around the bench as he rubbed lovingly against a tree. “Don’t go in yet. I need you, little guy.” I reached out, and he came over to rub his cheek on my fingers. Thank God he was so friendly. “Just… a sec…” I dug in my purse for my pen and pad of paper, and quickly jotted out a note. “Wait… just… one more sec…” I tore the paper off and folded it, squatting down in front of the cat.
I showed him the paper. He sniffed it.
“You’re gonna take this inside for me, okay?”
I reached to tuck it under his collar, and his whole back twitched; he shook his head and tried to eject the note. I tucked it in tighter and he just blinked at me.
“Wow. You’re a patient one. Okay, go on in your kitty door.”
He just stared at me.
“Kitty door. Inside.” I pointed at the door, then actually poked it, swinging it open an inch.
The cat, being a cat, took his time. He took the long route all the way back around the bench, rubbing against a tree on his way, then finally squeezed through the door.
Well. That was either brilliant or stupid.
For all I knew, he’d go have a cat nap now and that note would be tucked under his collar for days.
I went back out to the pool area and sat down on one of the lounge chairs. Everything looked beautiful, but very untouched. The pool was immaculately clean, but I wondered if anyone even used it.
The words recluse, workaholic and shut-in had all been tossed around in my vicinity—as descriptors of Courteney Clarke’s brother—late at night when people were drunk and they got loose lipped about such things. And yes, words like crazy were tossed around, too.
If anyone ever tried to tell you that men didn’t gossip as much as women did, they were fucking full of it, because I’d never heard anyone gossip like a bunch of male rock stars pounding whiskey shots at three a.m..
My best friend, Danica, had married a rock star—Ashley Player—six months ago. And Ash’s bandmate, Xander, was Cary Clarke’s best friend and former bandmate. I supposed if anyone had the goods on Cary, it was Xander. I never heard Xander use any of those labels to describe Cary; he never said much about Cary at all. But he certainly didn’t deny it when everyone else said those things.
And all Courteney had said about him was He’s very private and He doesn’t go out much.
I’d still taken this meeting with him, at her request, because frankly, I liked her. She was friends with Danica, and she and I had become friendly, socially. And yes, maybe there was just a dash of morbid curiosity involved.
Plus, I needed the work. Courteney had offered me a week-long contract—to meet with her brother, then meet with her to help her vet, interview and hire an assistant for him—a contract that would nicely bridge the gap between the temp contract I’d just ended and whatever gig I took next.
As I waited by her brother’s pool, I wondered what he was really like. And yes, I wondered if he was really crazy.
I knew what he looked like, more or less. I’d seen him in music videos years ago, when his band was big. I remembered, more or less, the image of this beautiful guy playing guitar, with wavy, sun-streaked hair. And I may have Googled him over the weekend, after his sister asked me, over beers, to meet with him.
I saw pictures.
But those pictures were all old. More than five years old. So I really wasn’t sure what I was expecting now.
For some reason, I kept imagining some washed-up loser who’d embalmed himself in alcohol, cologne and ego. I pictured him with his hair slicked back in a bad ponytail, maybe going slightly bald, wearing a Hugh Hefner style satin robe, probably open. Maybe with no shirt and a slight beer belly, some tacky jewelry, the stink of last night’s whiskey