Read The Cat Sitter’s Pajamas for Free Online Page B

said, “You left out the part about breaking into people’s houses.”
    She took a deep breath. “That’s how Cupcake and I got the money for books and shoes, clothes, haircuts, things we couldn’t have had otherwise.” With a sly smile, she said, “Cupcake mostly did it so he could buy a pair of Nikes.”
    My jaw dropped. Cupcake was the most honest man I knew.
    She grinned. “We were very young then. And we never took anything truly valuable. We wouldn’t have recognized anything valuable anyway, and the fence we took things to insisted that we stick to small things that he could sell easily.”
    “That’s how you learned to break through security systems?”
    “No, that came later. Cupcake didn’t have anything to do with that. I learned all that on my own.”
    I could feel my cheeks firm up, the way a face does when it’s trying not to show shock or disgust.
    She said, “After I left the parish, I never had any contact with Cupcake, but I followed his career. He was the only person in my life I could depend on to always be kind to me.”
    “So you showed your appreciation by coming here and breaking into his house?”
    Her lips trembled. “You can’t know what it’s like to be famous. To be Briana . Everybody in the world wants something from me. I haven’t lived my own life for a long time. I’ve lived for agents, accountants, photographers, designers, reporters, all those people sucking my breath out of my body. I started remembering what it was like when it was just me and Cupcake against the world. I didn’t really think I could make that happen, but I wanted to be close to him, just absorb some of his kindness and calm. I knew he was away from home at the camp he runs for kids. I didn’t think it would hurt anybody if I borrowed his life for a while. Until you walked in, I was like a kid playing house. I guess I took it too far.”
    She was right in thinking that Cupcake’s plans had been to spend time at the kids’ camp. That had been reported in the news, and I didn’t correct her about where he’d really been.
    I had a feeling that Briana had left out a lot of her history, but I believed parts of what she’d told me. Fame is hard for anybody to handle, even mature people with firm philosophies. For a poor, uneducated, sexually molested small-town girl who’d had to use every wile and wit she had to escape a life of grinding poverty, it would have been a crushing assault.
    Nevertheless, she had not explained the dead woman in Cupcake’s house—and the more I listened to her, the farther I crawled into a dark tunnel that had no exit.

 
    5
    I said, “Okay, I’ll buy the reason you were in Cupcake’s house. Now tell me about the woman.”
    She leaned closer to me. “I swear to you I don’t know who she was. I’m telling the truth about finding her dead on the floor when I came back from the bedroom.”
    “And you just bolted and ran?”
    She hesitated. “I took time to restore the security system after I was away from the back door.” Her voice had risen an octave.
    With great deliberation, I took my tartlet from its little clear box and took a bite. I studied her face while I chewed. Her face went pink while I washed the tartlet bite down with coffee.
    I said, “You’re lying.”
    “I swear it’s the truth.”
    “Considering your track record when it comes to truth, I’m not moved.”
    I couldn’t see her eyes, but I knew they were fixed on me, waiting for me to dissect her lie. Only problem was, I didn’t know what her lie had been. Growing up with an alcoholic mother whose lies had slid all over the place, I’d learned early to detect the presence of an untruth in the midst of candor, but it was like a whiff of something gone bad in a refrigerator full of good food. You know something in there is spoiled, but you don’t know what it is. I still believed somebody else had killed the woman in Cupcake’s house, but either Briana had lied about not recognizing the