Blaize Clement - Dixie Hemingway Mysteries 04 - Cat Sitter On a Hot Tin Roof p.01

Acknowledgments
Many thanks to:
Kay Adams, Edith and John Rozendaal, Suzanne Beecher, Nancy Thomas, Jane Phelan, Kate Holmes, Greg Jorgensen, and Madeline Mora-Summonte for their support
and friendship.
Roland Rio for keeping my computer running smoothly.
Tara Bolesta for taking care of boring stuff like filing so I could concentrate on writing.
Linda and Tom Witter for keeping my house clean when I was too distracted by plot and characters to notice dust.
Doris and Todd Finney for keeping my roots touched up so I didn’t get depressed.
Bill Sullivan, true Sarasota crime-scene cleaner, for letting me use his name.
Phyllis Ullrich of Southeastern Guide Dogs for information about service dogs.
Kathy Alexander of Therapy Dogs Sarasota for information and introduction to her therapy puppies.
D. P. Lyle, M.D., of the Writers Medical and Forensics Lab, for information about post-op stages following brain surgery.
Marcia Markland, Diana Szu, Hector DeJean, Jessica Rotondi, and the rest of the super team at St. Martin’s.
Annelise Robey and her cohorts at the Jane Rotrosen Agency.
And most of all, Don, Kit, John, David, Amy, Jesse, Kim, Travis, Sarah, and Sierra for being the greatest family in the universe.
If I were who I would be
Then I’d be who I am not
Here am I where I must be
Where I would be I cannot
—Adapted from “Katie Cruel”
Cat Sitter on a Hot Tin Roof

1
It was early April, about nine o’clock in the morning, when I first met Laura Halston. Well, I didn’t exactly meet her. It was more that I almost ran her down.
I was easing my Bronco around a curve on the single narrow lane in Fish Hawk Lagoon, a heavily wooded area on the north end of Siesta Key. Driving there is like going
through a tunnel cut in a mountain. Towering oaks meet overhead to block out the sky, and one side of the meandering street is edged with wildly growing bougainvillea, sea
grape, potato vine, and practically every known variety of palm and pine. On the other side, a manicured hibiscus hedge screens a jogging path so nobody can see rich runners
sweat.
As I rounded a curve, a woman in running gear leaped into the street from the wooded side and raced toward the hibiscus hedge. If I’d been going a nanosecond faster I
would have hit her. I came to a jolting stop as she turned her head, and for a second I saw stark terror in her eyes. At the curb, she swooped in a graceful arc and picked up a
dark brown cat with a long lashing tail. Holding the cat firmly in her arms, she pulled iPod wires from her ears and turned toward me in fury.
“Idiot! Bitch! You nearly hit me!”
I don’t take kindly to being called an idiot or a bitch, especially by a woman who looked like she had an IQ smaller than her size zero waist. She was about my age, which is
thirty-three, and I pegged her as either a runway model or a rich man’s trifle. Like the cat, she was an exquisite creature, but her beauty seemed accidental, an unplanned
coming together of parts that shouldn’t have fit but did. Almost albino pale, she was fine-boned and slim, with tousled white-blond hair cut high at the back of her neck and
flopping over eyebrows too thick, too dark, too crude. Her eyes were like jade stones set too far apart, her nose was a fraction too long and thin, her chin too pointed. She
should not have been beautiful, but she was. She also had the snottiness of a woman accustomed to getting anything she wanted because she was beautiful.
With what I thought was remarkable restraint, I said, “Here’s a hot tip. The best way to avoid being hit by a car is to avoid jumping in front of one.”
Twin patches of pink outrage gave her pale face some color. “How could I know you were there? I couldn’t hear you! You’re sneaking around in a . . . in a stealth car!
What are you doing here anyway? These are private streets!”
I could hear faint music from her dangling iPod earbuds. I was pretty sure it was Pink, so my estimation of her went up a few notches.
I said, “Maybe if you weren’t listening to music, you could hear better. That’s Pink’s latest cut, isn’t it?”
She looked surprised. Her mouth got ready to say something mean and then changed its mind.
I said, “Look, I’m sorry I startled you. I’m Dixie Hemingway. I’m a pet sitter. I have a client in the neighborhood.”
Her face relaxed a bit, but she didn’t seem the type to apologize for being rude.
I said, “That’s a gorgeous cat. Havana Brown?”
It was the magic phrase. Pet owners melt like bubble gum on a hot sidewalk when you compliment their babies.
She said, “His name is Leo. An old boyfriend gave him to me, only he called him Cohiba, for the cigars. Dumb, huh? What cat’s gonna come when you say Here, Cohiba? I
changed it right away. He hates being cooped up in the house. Well, so do I, to tell the truth. Anyway, when I opened the door to go running, he ran out with me. I was afraid I
wouldn’t be able to catch him, so I guess I should thank you for scaring him so he stopped.”
The transformation from fury to friendly had happened so fast it was like watching a cartoon. When she wasn’t angry, her eyes sparkled with energy and she spoke in a
breathless rush, as if she had so much to say that she was afraid she’d never get it all said.
Now that I had complimented her cat and apologized for almost running her down, and she had introduced the cat and sort of exonerated me because I’d made him stop so
she could catch him, there wasn’t much else to talk about.
I said, “I’m glad you caught him,” and edged on past her.
She raised her hand in a hesitant half wave, and in the rearview mirror I could see her watching when I turned into my client’s driveway.
Like I said, I’m Dixie Hemingway, no relation to you-know-who. I’m a pet sitter on Siesta Key, which, like Casey Key, Bird Key, Lido Key, and Longboat Key, forms a
narrow barrier between the Gulf of Mexico and Sarasota, Florida. Officially, Siesta Key is part of the city of Sarasota, but when you get right down to it, we’re not part of
anything but ourselves. Our function is to absorb the fury of storms so they weaken a little bit before they hit the mainland. In exchange, we get sea breezes, a direct view of
spectacular sunsets, and annual hikes in storm insurance rates that keep our blood circulating nicely.
Before I became a pet sitter, I was a deputy with the Sarasota County Sheriff’s Department, but I left with the department’s blessing a little over three years ago. I don’t like
to talk about it, so I’ll just say my world exploded in a way that broke my heart and almost destroyed my mind. When I was able to function again, I became a professional pet
sitter. It was a good move. The pay is good, the animals I take care of are mostly sweet and lovable, and I don’t have to spend a lot of time interacting with destructive people.
I get up every morning at four o’clock, brush my teeth, rubber-band my hair into a ponytail, pull on a pair of khaki cargo shorts and a sleeveless T, lace up my Keds, and
begin my rounds. I mostly take care of cats, but I also have a few canine clients and an occasional rabbit or ferret or bird. No snakes. While I firmly believe that every snake
has the right to live well and prosper, I get swimmy-headed around creatures whose diet consists of things swallowed still kicking and squealing.
On the key, you either live on the Gulf side or the Sarasota Bay side. Fish Hawk Lagoon is on the bay side at the north end. My clients there were Hal and Gillis Richards,
their three-year-old son Jeffrey, and Jeffrey’s seizure-assistance dog, Mazie. Jeffrey had a severe seizure disorder, and Hal and Gillis were leaving that morning to take him to
All Children’s Hospital in St. Petersburg for brain surgery. Mazie would have to stay at home. For the last couple of days, I had come there every morning to walk Mazie so
she would be accustomed to me, and Pete Madeira, an octogenarian who sometimes did twenty-four-hour sitting for me, was going to move into the house with Mazie to keep
her company. None of the adults looked forward to the moment when child and dog realized they were going to be separated.
Their house was like most houses on Siesta Key—pseudo-Mediterranean/Mexican stucco with barrel-tile roof, lots of curves and arches. In this case the stucco was the
color of terra-cotta, and the barrel-tile roof was dark blue. It was surrounded with the same lush green foliage and flowering shrubs that most yards on the key have, the kind
of extravagant natural beauty that those of us living here year-round take for granted.
When I rang the doorbell, Hal Richards opened the door. Hal probably wasn’t much older than I, but strain and worry had put lines in his face, and thinning hair and a layer
of fat softening a former athletic build made him seem older than he was.
He gestured me into the house. “Gillis is giving Jeffrey breakfast, so come on in the kitchen.”
I followed him into a large sunny room with a glass wall offering a view of a dock behind the house where a small pleasure boat rocked. Siesta Key has over fifty miles of
waterways, so boats are common. From Hal Richards’s pallor, though, I doubted that he went out in his very often. Gillis, a softly pretty dark-haired woman in a scoop-neck
T-shirt and an ankle-length linen skirt, stood at the sink stirring something in a cereal bowl. Like Hal, Gillis wore the stunned look of people whose world has shrunk to the
small arc of here and now.
Jeffrey sat in a child’s booster chair at a round table. He had a fading yellow bruise on his cheek, from falling, and a new purple bruise on his upper arm. Dark shadows lay
like soot under his drug-dulled eyes. Mazie, a golden retriever, sat close beside the boy’s chair. The dog’s eyes were bright and healthy, watching the boy with close attention.
Adults with seizure disorders frequently have seizure-alert dogs who sense when a seizure is coming and signal the person, then do whatever is necessary to protect them
from harming themselves during the attack. Children as young as Jeffrey can’t be made responsible for that kind of warning. Instead, they have seizure-assistance dogs, who
may or may not sense impending seizures, but stay close by the child’s side at all times.
Gillis smiled at me and put a bowl of something white and lumpy in front of Jeffrey.
Gillis said, “Jeffrey, say hello to Miss Hemingway.”
The kid spooned up a blob of whatever his mother had given him and grinned shyly.
I said, “Is that oatmeal you’re eating?”
Gillis said, “It’s groats, actually, with some banana mixed in.”
I managed to keep my upper lip from lifting, but the word groats sounded too much like gross to me. Besides, what the heck are groats, anyway?
Gillis smiled. “It’s whole oats, healthier than oatmeal. Jeffrey likes it. Don’t you, Jeffrey?”
The kid nodded, but he didn’t seem excited about it. Actually, he didn’t look as if much of anything excited him. I didn’t know a lot about seizure disorders, but I knew the
erased look that people get when they’re on heavy medication, and Jeffrey had it.
Knowing that Mazie was a service dog currently on duty, I didn’t speak to her or touch her. But I sat down at the table so she could smell me and feel my energy. She gave
me a quick glance, but her job was to be exquisitely alert to Jeffrey and to any change in him, even something as slight as a change in his body odor that would signal an
impending seizure. Hal and Gillis went silent, knowing what I was doing and not wanting to interfere.
After a few minutes, I stood up. “Hal, maybe you and I should talk in the living room for a minute.”
Hal said, “Good idea.”
In the living room, I took an easy chair and Hal sat on the sofa. I got out my client notebook and prepared to take any last-minute instructions or information.
Sometimes people are surprised to learn that pet sitting is a profession like any other. I approach it the same way I approached being a deputy. I was always aware that lives
could depend on my being alert, on remembering my training, on handling my job in a professional manner. I feel the same way about pet sitting. Pet owners entrust me with
animals they love, and I take that trust very seriously. I’m licensed, bonded and insured, and I never commit to a pet-sitting job without first meeting both the pet and its
owners. I go to their house and get the pet’s medical history, along with details of its diet and daily habits. I let the pet look me over and get to know my scent. By the time I’ve
finished interviewing new clients, I know everything I need to know about their pet, and the pet feels comfortable with me. I insist on a key to their house, a number where I
can reach them, and the name and number of the person they want called in case of an emergency. Just as I was when I was a deputy, I’m always aware that bad things can
happen when you least expect them.
Hal said, “I know I explained this before, but the only reason we’re doing this is that Jeffrey has temporal lobe seizures—two or three a week—and they’re severe. Of all
seizure disorders, temporal lobe seizures are most responsive to surgery and least responsive to medication. He’s been on several meds, but none of them have done much
good, and they cause so much dizziness that he has problems with balance.” As if he felt guilty saying it, he added, “They also cause behavior problems. Temper tantrums, that
kind of thing. That’s why we have Mazie. She calms him down, and she walks close beside him so he can lean on her.”
He had already told me about the medication and why they had decided on surgery, but he obviously needed to tell it again.
He closed his eyes and took a deep breath. “As you might imagine, Gillis and I live with the fear of a terrible fall—into fire, water, whatever—or of his cognitive development
being . . . well, you know. Do you have children?”
I didn’t want to answer him, because a parent numbed by fear over a child’s illness doesn’t want to hear how another child died. But I also didn’t want to disrespect my own
child by denying her.
I said, “I had a little girl. She was killed in an accident when she was three. I understand how you feel about Jeffrey.”
He looked stricken. “I’m sorry.”
For both our sakes, I needed to get the conversation back to why I was there.
I said, “Please don’t worry about Mazie while you’re gone. Pete Madeira will be here twenty-four/seven, and I’ll come twice a day and walk her.”
Pete’s a former professional clown I’d met through some circus people I know—Sarasota has a long circus history—and he sometimes helped me out when a client needed
a full-time pet sitter.
Hal leaned forward and clasped his hands with desperate urgency. “There’s a risk to surgery, but there may be a larger risk if we do nothing.”
The doorbell interrupted Hal’s compulsive explanation. As he opened the door, Gillis and Jeffrey came into the living room, Jeffrey with his arm over Mazie’s back and
leaning against her as he walked.
Pete Madeira stood at the door, suitcase in hand and a clown nose stuck on his face. He also had a case with him that looked as if it might hold some kind of musical
instrument. Pete had visited several times before, so he was as familiar to the family as I was. Hal and Gillis looked relieved to see him, and Mazie wagged her tail as if she
were giving Pete her approval. Jeffrey gave him a tired smile, but I doubted that he understood Pete’s presence meant he was soon going to be separated from his best friend.
Pete is tall, slim, silver-haired, and handsome in the way men who are bright and curious remain all their lives. He retired a few years ago, but he still does gigs in hospices
and children’s hospitals. He has woolly caterpillar eyebrows that he waggles for emphasis, and the softest heart in the western hemisphere.
Three suitcases already stood in the foyer, lined up by size like Papa Bear, Mama Bear, and Baby Bear luggage. Pete set his on the opposite side of the foyer.
He said, “I brought my saxophone. I hope that’s okay.”
Hal said, “I didn’t know you played saxophone.”
“Sure. That’s how I started in the circus. I was in the band, but clowning paid better and was more fun. I just play for my own pleasure now.”
“Pete, you’re a man of many talents.”
Pete grinned and did that thing with his eyebrows.
Gillis knelt beside Jeffrey. “Honey, you remember Pete? He’s going to stay here with Mazie and keep her company until we come home.”
Pete said, “Hi, pal.”
Jeffrey smiled but looked confused.
Pete said, “Want a clown nose like mine?”
Jeffrey shook his head and covered his nose with his hand.
Hal said, “We have to go now.”
Gillis knelt beside Jeffrey while Hal picked up their luggage.
Too hesitantly, Gillis said, “It’s time for the trip I told you about. Remember I told you?”
Jeffrey stiffened and reached for Mazie, already resisting what was to come.
Gillis said, “Mazie’s staying here. Remember?”
Jeffrey burst into hysterical shrieks and flung himself flat against the floor. “I want Mazie to come too!”
Gillis was pale with tension. As Jeffrey’s fists churned, Mazie got to her feet and nuzzled his neck. It took me a moment to realize she did it intentionally to forestall a tantrum.
Or a seizure. Jeffrey’s rigid body relaxed and his cries reduced to a low droning.
Like a man inspired, Pete knelt beside his cases and in seconds held a gleaming saxophone to his lips. Soft sweet music rose above Jeffrey’s cries, and in a minute or two
Jeffrey stopped crying and looked toward Pete. Even Mazie took her eyes off Jeffrey for a moment to look at him. I remembered Pete telling me once that circus bands had
always played to distract audiences when something unpleasant happened, like an aerialist or ropewalker falling.
Gillis gathered Jeffrey into her arms and stood up. Intrigued by the music, Jeffrey put a thumb in his mouth and stared at Pete. Jeffrey’s eyes were dull and flat. I doubted he
fully realized what was happening, which is probably the only good side effect of children’s medication. Mazie began walking in erratic circles around Gillis, who looked as if
she might break down at any moment.
Hal murmured, “Mazie hasn’t left Jeffrey’s side more than a few minutes in all the time she’s been with him.”
I got Mazie’s leash and snapped it on her collar.
“Come on, Mazie, let’s go for a walk!”
Because she was a good dog trained to obey commands, she reluctantly followed me outside and allowed herself to be led to the sidewalk. I took her in the opposite
direction that her family would take. She looked over her shoulder several times, obviously confused about the turn of events, but we had rounded a curve when I heard Hal’s
car drive away, so Mazie didn’t see them leave. If I had it to do over again, I might not handle Jeffrey’s departure that way, but at the time it seemed the right thing to do.
When I thought it was safe, I led Mazie back home. At the driveway, the woman I’d met that morning trotted by, her tank top dark in spots with jogging perspiration. When
she saw me, she stopped and came forward with her hand out.
She said, “I’m Laura Halston. I should have introduced myself this morning. I was a total shrew, wasn’t I?”
Her teeth were milk white, with a little inverted V at the bottom of the two upper centrals that was too perfect—one of those subtle signs that tell you a person has given a lot
of money to a cosmetic dentist.
I gave her my name again and tried not to stare. I didn’t want to be the kind of person who went slack-jawed just because another person had more than an average share
of good looks. A lot more.
She said, “Do you run?”
“Run?”
“For exercise.”
“Well, I run with a greyhound twice a day. That’s plenty exercise.”
“I run every morning. It’s the only thing I’m disciplined about.”
She said it with pride, and stuck out a foot in its expensive running shoe to emphasize that she was serious about running.
Then she put her hands on her knees and leaned toward Mazie. “Hi, Mazie. How’re you doing, girl?”
I was once again struck by all her contradictions. She was gorgeous but she didn’t seem stuck up about it, she was sensitive to animals, she seemed to say every thought that
drifted across her cortex, and she took little-girl pride in the fact that she ran. I liked that.
Mazie tried to be friendly, but she kept looking over her shoulder toward her house. If I hadn’t been so taken with Laura Halston, I might have been more sensitive to
Mazie’s confusion. She knew something was different in her world, and she didn’t know why.
As it was, Laura and I said some more innocuous things, nothing of any importance, and she trotted away while I took Mazie back inside the house.
That’s all there was to it. There was absolutely no way I could have known that my chance meeting with Laura Halston would one day haunt me, or that knowing her would
ultimately make me question myself in a way I’d never done before.
2
Most people, when they hear about any key in Florida, think Florida Keys, but the Florida Keys are about six hours south of us, damn near to Cuba. They’re just a string of
barrier islands too, so I don’t know why they get to be called the Florida Keys, as if they’re the state’s licensed keys, but that’s how it is. Life’s like that. Half the things people
take for granted don’t make a lick of sense.
To get technical about it, we’re roughly fifty-five miles south of Tampa and two hundred fifty-five miles northwest of Miami. We have around seven thousand full-time
residents, but during “season” from November to April, our numbers swell to around twenty-four thousand. We lose some of our laid-back panache then, but anybody who
manages to be a grouch while living on Siesta Key really has to work at it.
Siesta Key has one main street, Midnight Pass Road, which runs eight miles from the key’s southern tip to the northern end. We have two other sort-of-major streets, one
arcing around Siesta Beach, one of the most beautiful beaches in the world, and the other running through the Village, which loosely passes as our business district. We’re
connected to Sarasota by two drawbridges, and a favorite topic of conversation is the amount of time lost waiting for a drawbridge to come down after it rises to let a boat go
through. We like to talk about lost time; it makes us feel as if we’re as rushed and busy as New Yorkers or Chicagoans. The truth is that most of us don’t really need to rush
anywhere, we just like the high of pretending to.
Wild rabbits play tag on the cool white sands of our beaches. Gulls, terns, plovers, pelicans, egrets, herons, ibis, spoonbills, storks, and cranes busily search for food along
the shore, and dolphins and manatees play in the warm waters of the Intracoastal Waterway, Sarasota Bay, Roberts Bay, and the Gulf of Mexico. Inside the key itself, there
are almost fifty miles of canals and waterways lined with palms, mossy oaks, cedars, mangroves, and sea grapes. We also have balmy days, white crystalline sand beaches,
brilliant flowers, and every tropical plant and bird and butterfly you can imagine. I’ve lived here all my life, and I wouldn’t dream of living anywhere else.
Some days, if I’m lucky, I don’t run into a single human being until at least nine o’clock, when I stop at the Village Diner for breakfast. It isn’t that I don’t like people or need
them. It’s just that I sometimes go a little nuts over certain behaviors in certain people, and then I’m not responsible for what I do. I don’t have that problem with animals.
Animals always have sensible reasons for whatever they do. People, on the other hand, do stupid things that cause other people to die.
Since it was April, a faint scent of cocoa butter hung in the air from late spring break kids splayed out on the beach. Most schools take spring break in March, but no matter
when they come, the kids mostly stay on or around the beach, broiling during the day and partying at night. Unless they get too loud at night, the locals take a live-and-let-live
attitude toward them.
The day being Sunday, traffic was light on worker trucks and delivery vans but heavy on churchgoing cars. Personally, I feel a lot closer to God when I’m at the beach
watching a sunset than I’ve ever felt inside a church. When I was little, I got the Sunday school God mixed up with the grandfather in Heidi, so for a long time I imagined God
surrounded by long-eared goats and greeting people in heaven with hunks of goat cheese he’d toasted over an open fire. I liked that about him.
When I got older, my best friends were Hillary Danes and Rebecca Stein, and they made God seem a lot less friendly. Hillary was Catholic, and God made it his personal
business to forbid her to see certain movies. My grandmother forbade me to see most of the same movies, but that didn’t seem as awesome as God doing it. Then, when we all
started our periods, God declared Rebecca a woman responsible for her own actions. That really steamed me. My grandmother sort of did the same thing, but Rebecca got to
do a Bat Mitzvah and all I got was lunch at an expensive restaurant on the bay.
While we ate crab salads, my grandmother said, “Is there anything you want to ask me about periods?”
I shook my head. “Not really. They showed the girls a movie at school.”
“What about how women get pregnant? You know how that works?”
“The sperm hits the egg and it divides and turns into a baby.”
“And you know how the sperm gets to the egg? The man-and-woman business?”
“I think so.”
“Well, that’s good. I guess if your mother were here she would explain it in more detail, but my generation didn’t talk about those things much. The main thing is that boys
would have sex with a snake if it laid still, so don’t think it means they love you if they want to have sex with you, not even if they say they do. And don’t get any romantic
notions about what fun it would be to have a cute little baby, either. It’s not like playing with dolls.”
I said, “Hillary said the priest told her mom she’d go to hell if she took pills not to have another baby, but she does anyway.”
“Huh! If priests were the ones having babies, they’d be guzzling those pills by the handful.”
We’d had strawberry sundaes for dessert, and that had been the end of my Presbyterian Bat Mitzvah. Since then, God and I have given each other respectful space.
That morning, I headed for breakfast at the Village Diner where I’m such a regular that the minute she sees me, Tanisha, the cook, automatically starts making two eggs over
easy with extra-crisp home fries and a biscuit. Tanisha’s a friend I only see at the diner. She and I half solved a crime one time by putting two and two together. Judy, the
waitress who knows me almost as well as my brother does, grabs a coffeepot and has a full mug ready for me by the time I sit down.
Before I headed for the ladies’ room to wash off dog spit and cat hair, I grabbed a Herald-Tribune from a stack by the door and dropped it at my usual booth, sort of
marking my territory. Not that I’m particular about where I sit. It’s just that I don’t like to mess up our routine by sitting at a different booth. It’s an efficiency thing.
Sure enough, the coffee was ready and waiting when I came out, and I gulped half of it before I was good and settled. Judy was a couple of booths down taking
somebody’s order, but she had her coffeepot with her. When she headed toward the kitchen, she paused long enough to top off my coffee with the calm air of an old friend
who knows exactly what you like.
Judy’s tall and sharp-boned, with golden-brown hair, caramel-colored eyes, and a scattering of topaz freckles over a thin pointed nose. If she had long flapping ears, she
would look a lot like a beagle. She’s loyal like a beagle too. If she likes you, it’s because she’s decided you’re worth her trouble even though you’re probably going to royally
screw up your life. We have never met anyplace except the diner, but I know every detail about all the no-good men who have broken her heart, and she knows about Todd
and Christy.
Both our lives had been fairly calm lately. I’d had a bad patch around Christmas, not only because it was Christmas and my third year without Todd and Christy, but
because there’d been a murder involving one of my clients and I’d ended up being involved in the investigation. Around the same time, Judy had been about to let a loser move
in with her lock, stock, and gun rack, but she’d had an attack of clear judgment and dumped him. We both had a new flinty glint in our eyes, because by God we were
survivors. Like loggerhead turtles that drag themselves onto our beaches every year to dig nests and lay eggs that may be destroyed by morning, Judy and I keep going on.
I said, “Tell Tanisha to give me some bacon too.”
She waggled her eyebrows because I rarely allow myself bacon even though I love it beyond reason.
She said, “You celebrating something?”
“Nope, just feel like bacon.”
“I thought maybe you and that hunky detective had finally done the deed and you were rewarding yourself.”
I rolled my eyes to show I thought she was too silly to even answer. She grinned and sashayed away with her coffeepot, every line of her saying she thought she was clever
to say she thought I’d finally decided to lose my self-imposed second virginity.
She wasn’t, and I hadn’t, and I didn’t want to talk about it.
While I waited for her to come back with my breakfast, I scanned the front page of the paper, skimming over the usual boring stuff. Some Washington senator had been
caught soliciting sex from a kid on the internet, a lobbyist had been caught paying a huge bribe to another senator in exchange for preferential treatment to his employer, and a
local man had caught a pregnant shark and all its babies had died. The fisherman was photographed standing proudly beside the hanging shark. He missed his calling. He
should have been in Washington.
Judy plopped down my breakfast plates and splashed more coffee in my mug.
She said, “You hear that?”
I raised my head. “What?”
“The quiet. They’ve almost all gone.”
I nodded. “I’ve been seeing car transports.”
We both got almost misty-eyed at the thought. We year-rounders on the key mark our lives by the arrival and departure of the seasonal residents. In the fall, when we see
auto transports hauling snowbirds’ cars into town, sandhill cranes returning from Canada, and an occasional magnificent frigatebird soaring high overhead, we know the
seasonals are on their way and we brace ourselves. In the spring, when all the migratory signs are reversed, we let out a big sigh of relief. Not that we don’t like our seasonals,
or that we don’t appreciate what they do for our economy. But having them descend on us every year is like having beloved relatives come for long annual visits—we count
them as blessings, but we’re still glad to see them go.
Judy left, and I turned my full attention to breakfast. If I were on death row facing execution, I would ask for breakfast as my last meal. Of course, I’d want it prepared by
Tanisha, with eggs cooked so the whites were firm and the yolk quivery, with a rasher of bacon laid out like little crisp brown slats without a trace of icky white bubbles, and a
puffed-up flaky biscuit served so hot that butter melted into it at the touch. And coffee. Lots of hot black coffee.
While I ate, I looked at the Sudoku puzzle in the paper, but it made my brain ache a little bit, so I finally pushed the paper aside. I had been up since four o’clock, and I
needed a shower and a nap and some time to myself. When I’d scarfed down every last crumb, I put down money for Judy, waved goodbye to Tanisha, and dragged my
weary self out to the Bronco.
Parakeets and songbirds fluttered up like smoke signals as I eased the Bronco between pines, oaks, palms, and sea grape lining my meandering Gulf-side driveway. On the
shore, the day’s first high tide was rolling in, and a crowd of seabirds was loudly arguing over its catered delicacies.
Rounding the last curve in the drive, I saw Michael and Paco beside the carport washing out paintbrushes. They usually take Michael’s boat out on their days off, but they’d
decided to paint their house and my apartment before the weather got too hot. Both of them wore brief cutoffs that revealed acres of firm sun-tanned flesh. They were sweatshimmery
topless, with folded bandannas tied around their foreheads as sweatbands. Half the women on Siesta Key would have paid big bucks for front-row tickets to see
them like that—the same women who pray every night that a miracle actually can happen to convert a gay man to straight.
A firefighter like our father, Michael is big and blond and broad, with a piercing blue gaze that turns women into blithering idiots. Like me, Michael has our inherited Nordic
coloring. Paco, on the other hand, can pass for almost every dark-haired, dark-eyed nationality under the sun, which comes in handy since he’s with the Special Investigative
Bureau—better known as SIB—of the Sarasota County Sheriff’s Department. He’s actually fourth-generation Greek-American, with the surname Pakodopoulos—too much
of a mouthful for the kids he grew up with in Chicago so they nicknamed him Paco, and it stuck. He’s slim and deeply tanned, so handsome it makes your toes curl and so
smart it’s sometimes unnerving. He mostly does undercover stuff, mostly in disguise, and mostly so dangerous that Michael and I don’t even want to think about it. They’ve
been a couple for almost thirteen years now, so Paco is my brother-in-love. He’s also my second-best friend in all the world.
When I drove into the four-slot carport, they both looked up and watched me park. It made me itchy to see them looking at me with such studied speculation. I knew that
look.
I got out of the Bronco and glared at them. “Don’t even think about it!”
Michael said, “Come on, Dixie, it’s good exercise.”
Paco said, “Yeah, climbing up and down a ladder would firm your butt.”
I said, “My butt is firm enough, and I get plenty of exercise walking dogs. Which I’ve been doing since four o’clock, and I’m beat.”
I shaded my eyes and looked at the half-painted house. If we’d had our druthers, the house would have been built of cypress and left unpainted to weather pale gray, but
cypress hadn’t been an option when our grandparents ordered the house from the Sears, Roebuck catalog. The new color was the same as it has been since our grandfather
put the first coat of paint on it, the cerulean blue of the water in the Gulf on a clear sunshiny day. It takes about six months for salt breezes to scour it pale, so painting is an
annual job.
But not mine.
I am firmly of the conviction that house painting is man’s work, like assembly-line drilling or sperm donation—things that require rote repetitious movements.
I said, “Looks good!” which made Michael and Paco beam like little kids getting a gold star on their paper. Men are like puppies, they’re easily distracted by compliments.
3
My apartment rides above a four-slot carport next to the frame house where my brother and I went to live with our grandparents when Michael was eleven and I was nine.
Our firefighter father had been killed a couple of years before while saving somebody else’s children, and our mother had just up and left one day.
We didn’t see her again until we were grown and she came to our grandfather’s funeral. Oddly, she had her suitcase with her. She left it in the chapel vestibule before she
came down the aisle and took a seat on the front row. Michael and I were across the aisle, and until the minister looked pointedly at her, we didn’t notice her. I turned my head
to see what he was so taken with and met my mother’s gaze. Her face was awash with tears, but otherwise she looked exactly as I remembered her when she’d left seventeen
years before.
I squeezed Michael’s hand and he leaned around me to see her. We all smiled automatically and uncertainly, as if it were the socially acceptable thing to do but we weren’t
sure it was the honest thing to do. My mother pursed her lips in a mimed kiss across the aisle, the way she had always done as she left our bedroom after tucking us in, and I
was suddenly shaken with sobs for all the kisses lost, all the love withdrawn, all the pain that could never be forgotten.
After the funeral service, we were all awkward with one another. Our grandmother had died the year before, and it didn’t take long to figure out that our mother had
returned not out of grief at her father’s passing but out of a greedy hope that she had inherited the beachfront property he’d bought when he was a young man and land on the
key was cheap. As soon as Michael set her straight about who now owned the place, she took her suitcase and left again.
Her brief visit hadn’t changed anything. When she left, we didn’t know where she went and she didn’t make any effort to stay in touch, not even when the next loss
threatened to pull me under to dark oblivion. I don’t think of her much anymore. Or at least I try not to.
Pushing the remote to raise metal hurricane shutters, I climbed the stairs to the covered porch that runs the length of my apartment. The porch has a small glass-topped table,
two ice-cream chairs, ceiling fans to stir the air, and a hammock in one corner for napping and daydreaming. French doors open to a minuscule living room furnished with my
grandmother’s green flower-printed love seat and easy chair. A one-person bar separates the living room from a narrow galley kitchen, where a window lets in light over the
sink and allows a view of treetops. The bedroom is barely big enough for a single bed pushed against one wall, a nightstand, and a dresser holding a photograph of my husband
and child. In the photograph, Todd is thirty and Christy is three. If they had lived, Todd would be thirty-three now, same as I am, and Christy would be six.
One day I will be forty, fifty, sixty, perhaps ninety or a hundred, but Todd will remain thirty and Christy will always be three. I imagine them in a different universe, eternally
the same age they were when they were killed.
The air was humid and stale, and I flipped the switch to turn on the air-conditioning unit set high on the bedroom wall. On the way to the shower, I tossed my clothes and
white Keds in the stacked washer/dryer in an alcove in the hall outside my tiny bathroom. With the morning’s fatigue and cat hair washed off, I fell naked into bed and slept a
couple of hours, then padded barefoot to my closet. The closet is the most spacious room in the apartment, big enough to serve as an office as well. A desk sits against one
wall, and shelves for my shorts and T-shirts and Keds fill the opposite side. Between them, on the back wall, there’s a floor-to-ceiling mirror and a short rack of listless dresses
and skirts reaching toward the floor like banyan rootlets hoping to acquire greater purpose.
I pulled on clean shorts and a knit top and went to the kitchen to get a bottle of water from the fridge. I wanted cookies, but I didn’t have any. I switched on the CD player
to fill the apartment with Patsy Cline’s voice—there’s something about Patsy’s steady tumtee-tum-tee, tumtee-tum-tee rhythm that helps organize my brain—and went back
to the closet-office to take care of the business side of pet sitting.
I’m very meticulous about keeping records and sharing them with pet owners. I list times I arrived and left, what I did while I was there, and anything out of the ordinary that
I noticed. It can be important to know exactly what date I felt a tiny lump under a cat’s skin, or when I noted that a dog’s eyes were pained or dull. I keep a record of
everything, maybe more than I need to, but it makes me feel better to know I’m doing the very best job I possibly can.
When I finished, I still wanted cookies and I still didn’t have any. A furtive peek over the porch railing revealed that Michael and Paco had put away the painting supplies,
and Michael’s car was gone. Which meant they had gone off on some errand. Which meant they wouldn’t know if I snuck down to their kitchen and stole cookies. Not that
they’d care, but it was sort of exciting to think I could get away with something they didn’t know about.
Michael always has cookies, cookies that he personally makes in his big commercial oven, cookies that are so good you have to be strict with yourself or you’ll whimper
when you eat them. I was out like a flash, thumping down the stairs to go filch some of his cookies.
Michael is the cook of the family. He’s also the cook at the firehouse. If he could, he would travel the world cooking for anybody who was hungry or lonely or
downtrodden. He would cook for happy people too, but it gives him a great sense of satisfaction to feed needy people, and if he thinks their lives are improved because of it,
that absolutely makes his day.
Except for Ella Fitzgerald, Michael and Paco’s kitchen was empty. Ella is a true Persian-mix calico—meaning she has some Persian in her ancestry and her coat has distinct
blocks of black, white, and red—and she makes funny scatting sounds like Ella Fitzgerald. Left on my porch by a woman departing the country, Ella had liked me well enough,
but the first time she sniffed the air in Michael’s kitchen, she knew she’d found her true love. Lots of human females feel that way about Michael too. Fat lot of good it does
them.
When I came in, Ella jumped down from her perch on a bar stool at the butcher-block island and came to twine her body around my ankles. I knelt to stroke her hair and
kiss her nose.
She said, “Thrrripp!”
I said, “I totally agree.”
She trotted beside my feet when I went to inspect the cookie jar. Just as I’d expected, it was full of freshly baked cookies. Coconut and chocolate chip and oatmeal raisin. I
made a small stack on a paper napkin while Ella flipped the tip of her tail and watched me. Cats have too much dignity to beg for table goodies like dogs do. They just give you
unblinking stares until you break down and give them something.
I got a couple of kitty treats from her special canister with the design of a cat on the front and added them to my stack. Then I scooped Ella up in one arm and pushed
through the kitchen door to the wooden deck and the beckoning redwood chaise. With Ella happily sitting on my stomach, we both munched our treats while the surf made
gurgling noises at the shore and seabirds swooped and called to one another above us.
Ella finished her treats, licked her paws, and stretched out to purr, her warmth comforting against my body. All my cookies were gone too, and for a little while I closed my
eyes and enjoyed the aftertaste of cookies, the warmth of a kitty on my tummy, the fresh clean scent of the sea, and the familiar sound of seabirds circling overhead. There was
a time when I was numb to moments of pleasure like that, so I was not only floating on a tide of bliss, but aware that I was. I suppose we have to experience the loss of
pleasure to truly appreciate it when it comes back.
It was almost time to make my afternoon rounds, so I finally roused Ella and stood up to go inside. I stopped when a dark blue Blazer crunched down the lane and stopped
next to the carport.
Oh, noodles, it was Lieutenant Guidry.
If Michael and Paco came home and found him here, Michael would have a cow. Just the sight of Guidry reminded Michael of all the times I’d been in mortal danger
because of some murder investigation I’d got myself involved in.
As Lieutenant Guidry of the Sarasota County’s Homicide Investigative Unit got out and started toward me, I tried to convince myself that Michael’s distaste for Guidry was
the only reason my heart had started jiggling.
Guidry is fortyish, with skin eternally bronzed, dark short-cropped hair showing a little silver at the sides, gray eyes bracketed by fine lines, a beaky nose, and lips that are
never indecisive. As always, he looked as if he had come from a fashion shoot rather than a crime scene. Woven leather sandals, pleated linen trousers the color of wet clay, a
dark gray shirt, and an unstructured linen jacket in an expensive shade of wine red. No tie, but something told me he’d recently worn one and removed it. Oh, man, he’d
probably gone to church that morning. Probably had rosary beads in his pocket.
Feeling very heathenish, I noted how his jacket hung from his square shoulders without any pretension, but somehow it managed to look like something an Italian count
would slip on before he went out to inspect his estate. From the elegance of his wardrobe and the casual ease with which he wore it, I knew he had grown up with money. A
lot of money. But Guidry’s past was none of my business, and I had no intention of ever asking him about it.
Still, I wondered for the millionth time what his background was. What was it that made him walk with such aristocratic confidence? What was it that made him wear the
kind of clothes you see in films where Italian playboys are hanging out in sidewalk bistros on the Riviera? All I knew about the man had been dropped in bits and pieces that
I’d collected like a starry-eyed groupie. I knew he was from New Orleans and that he’d been a cop there, but New Orleans cops are probably no more elegant than cops in
any other city.
I knew he’d been married once, but if being married turned men into model look-alikes the world wouldn’t be so full of fat slobs.
He had spoken French to me once. Actually, I had thought he was speaking Italian, but he had laughed and said, “Italian is one of the few things I’m not.” That’s all I knew
about him.
Except that he was a terrific kisser. Oh, yes he was.
For reasons that neither of us ever intended or wanted, Guidry and I had been drawn together by some grisly murders. We had also been drawn together by chemistry.
Neither of us had ever intended that either.
Our chemistry had resulted in one kiss that had left me feeling like a volcano that had spewed out a few hot rocks but was still gathering steam to blow sky high. That had
happened around three months ago, right before Christmas. Thirteen and a half weeks ago, to be exact. Not that I’d been counting, or that I’d been disappointed that I hadn’t
seen him since Christmas Eve, because I wasn’t.
I didn’t any longer feel that being attracted to another man made me disloyal to my dead husband. I’d got over that. But I had a lot of reservations about falling in love with
another cop. Too many people had died and left me, and it seemed to me that I might be better off with a man who had a nice safe desk job. Somebody like Ethan Crane, for
example, an attorney who had also kissed me and set off some hot tremors.
But both Guidry and Ethan must have had as many doubts as I had, because after a few weeks of eluded opportunity—sometimes mine and sometimes theirs—they had all
but disappeared from my horizon.
Guidry stopped in front of me, and for a second we scanned each other’s faces as if we were using visual Braille.
He said, “Enjoying the fresh air?”
My head bobbed up and down like one of those fool dogs that people put in their back car windows. For some reason, I always become incoherent around Guidry.
He said, “Ah, I just wanted to ask you . . . uh, the thing is, somebody donated tickets to the sheriff’s office for a shindig Saturday night. A black-tie thing . . . there’ll be
dinner . . . some kind of entertainment too, I think . . . it’s a fund-raiser for the Humane Society—you know, the animal people. I should go, you know, as a member of the
department, and I know you like that kind of thing. The animals, I mean, so I wondered if you’d like to go with me.”
Ella must have been as astonished as I was to hear Guidry lose his usual cool smoothness because she sat up in my arms and studied him. Guidry narrowed his eyes as if he
wasn’t accustomed to a cat’s scrutiny.
As if I had a lot of pressing engagements, I said, “This coming Saturday?”
“Yeah, sorry. I just got word about it, or I would have asked you sooner.”
I said, “I love the work the Humane Society does.”
Guidry passed the back of his hand across his forehead as if he’d suddenly suffered a pain. He tends to look like that when I talk about animals.
He said, “That’s why I thought you might like to go to the dinner.”
“Okay.”
He looked relieved. “Pick you up about seven?”
“Great.”
“Well, okay, then.”
We smiled at each other for a moment, both of us blinking a little bit because it was probably the first time in our acquaintance that we’d had an entire conversation—if you
could call it that—that hadn’t revolved around a murder.
He gave me a half wave and turned back to his car.
I watched him walk away and then felt something with claws clutch my chest.
I said, “Guidry, did you say black-tie?”
He turned back. “Yeah.”
“Okay.”
I was proud that my voice didn’t squeak. He got in his car, waved again, and backed out. I looked at Ella, and she looked at me. Maybe it was my imagination, but it
seemed to me that her eyes looked as alarmed as I felt. I had just accepted an invitation to a black-tie event that was to be held in six days. Which meant I had six days to go
find something fancy to wear, because I sure as heck didn’t have anything in my closet.
I took Ella back inside Michael’s kitchen and kissed her goodbye.
I said, “I have to go see to my pets. And I have to buy some new clothes. You’re lucky, you can just wear the same fur all the time, but women have to wear special clothes
for special occasions. Oh, God, shoes too. Okay, I’ll just do it. It’s really no problem. No, really, it’s not.”
She didn’t look convinced.
I said, “Don’t tell Michael and Paco I stole cookies, okay?”
She tilted her head back, looked solemnly into my eyes, and blinked twice, slowly. In cat language, that means I love you.
Even so, she was probably planning to rat me out.
4
My afternoons are pretty much a repeat of my mornings, except I don’t groom any of the pets. Instead, I spend more time playing with them or exercising them. My petsitting
day ends around sunset, and it’s very satisfying to know that I’ve made several living beings happy that day. That I left their food bowls sparkling clean and fresh water in
their water bowls. That I brushed them so their coats shined, and played with them until all our hearts were beating faster. That I kissed them goodbye and left them with their
tails wagging or flipping or at least raised in a happy kind of way. That’s a heck of a lot more than any president, pope, prime minister, or potentate can say, and I wouldn’t
switch places with any of them.
Morning or afternoon, my first stop is always at Tom Hale’s condo. He lives in the Sea Breeze on the Gulf side of the key. Tom and I swap services. He handles my taxes
and anything having to do with money, and I run twice a day with his greyhound, Billy Elliot.
Tom has curly black hair that hugs his head like a poodle’s trim, and he wears round eyeglasses that give him a cute Harry Potter look. Until you look into his eyes. His eyes
betray a time of intense suffering, a look that says he can endure whatever pain life sends, but hopes, oh God, that it won’t happen again.
His transition came during a casual saunter down a lumber-and-door aisle in a home improvement store—one of those huge places that sells everything from flashlights to
entire kitchens. To this day he doesn’t know what caused it, but there was an avalanche and his spine was crushed under tons of lumber. And that was just the beginning of the
cataclysmic change. Within a couple of years, Tom had lost his CPA firm, his wife and children, and most of the money he’d got in a lawsuit against the store. About all he had
left was Billy Elliot, a dog he had saved from the fate that befalls racing dogs who have quit winning. Billy Elliot returned the favor by saving Tom from utter loneliness and
despair. Dogs are like that. Dogs don’t stop loving you when your luck turns sour.
Tom had been pretty much of a hermit until last Christmas, when he had fallen in love with a woman named Frannie. Since then, he’d been looking more relaxed and a little
heavier. Happiness seems to make men gain weight, while it makes women skinnier. Frannie was nice enough, but I suspected she wasn’t a dog person. I would never have
told Tom, but the truth was I didn’t think she was good enough for him and Billy Elliot.
I knocked on Tom’s door, then used my key to go in. Billy Elliot bounded to meet me in the foyer, and we kissed hello as if we hadn’t just left each other a few hours
before. Tom was working on taxes or something at his kitchen table, so I hollered hello to him and took Billy Elliot out to the elevator and downstairs.
Billy Elliot needs to run hard laps around the parking lot for at least fifteen minutes, and then it takes him another ten minutes to find the right bushes to pee on, the right patch
of grass to make a deposit. By the time I’ve collected it in one of my poop bags, and he’s made one final streak around the parking lot, we’ve spent a good thirty minutes
outside. When we got back upstairs, Tom was still working and didn’t come out to chat like he usually does. I stuck my head in the kitchen to say hello and saw a strained face
and bloodshot eyes.
I said, “You okay?”
He waved his hand dismissively. “I’m fine. Stayed up too late.”
I could tell he didn’t want to talk, so I told him goodbye, gave Billy Elliot another smooch, and left them. But I was suspicious about Tom’s explanation. I would have bet
good money that Frannie was the problem, not late hours. I hoped they worked it out, because he had been happier since Frannie came into his life. As much as I didn’t think
she was good enough for him, I didn’t want him to lose her.
By the time I worked my way to Mazie’s house, it was nearing five o’clock. I parked in the driveway behind Pete’s car and rang the doorbell. Mazie was close beside Pete
when he answered the door, and they both looked anxious.
Pete said, “Mazie has been searching all the rooms for Jeffrey. She’s whimpering too, like she thinks she’s lost him.”
That’s exactly what Mazie probably thought, that somehow she had lost her boy. That would be bad enough for any companion dog, but for a service dog it would be even
worse. Her job was to stay close to Jeffrey, so she would think she had failed in her duty.
I said, “Pete, have you ever brushed a golden retriever?”
His brow furrowed like Mazie’s. “Excuse me?”
“Let’s take Mazie to the lanai and I’ll demonstrate.”
Nothing in the world is as calming as brushing a dog, and dogs like it too. Even though I don’t usually groom pets during an afternoon visit, this day wasn’t an ordinary day
for Mazie.
I led her to the lanai, and Pete followed with two mugs of hot coffee. He put one on the table for me, and said, “Jeffrey’s awfully young to have to fight for his life.”
I didn’t answer him. I didn’t want to talk about what was happening to Jeffrey. It hit too close to home, made me remember too vividly how small and fragile Christy had
looked in death.
Pete fell silent and watched me pull an undercoat rake through Mazie’s hair.
Nature gave golden retrievers double coats to keep them warm in winter. That’s an asset up north, but in Florida it’s like wearing thermal underwear in August, so they shed
it. You have to keep it raked out or it’ll be all over the house.
Mazie looked over her shoulder at me and smiled, not because she was glad she wouldn’t be carpeting the house with dog hair, but because getting rid of it made her feel
cooler and lighter.
Pete watched closely and didn’t speak until I’d finished with the undercoat rake and got out my boar-bristle brush.
I said, “You finish off with the brush to fluff her topcoat and make it shine.”
He said, “I’ll call you the minute I hear something about Jeffrey.”
Over Mazie’s head, I met his knowing eyes. I guess I hadn’t fooled anybody. Certainly not Pete, and probably not Mazie. They both knew I was afraid for Jeffrey. I wished
I weren’t, but I knew only too well that there are times when the worst happens, and there’s not a damn thing anybody can do to stop it.
Mazie was calmer once she was brushed, but when I snapped the leash onto her collar and led her outside she didn’t happily swish her tail. I wondered if she had lost trust in
me since I had taken her away while Jeffrey and his parents left. More than likely, she was simply confused and unhappy because her people had left her and strangers had
taken their place and she didn’t know why.
We took a long walk, following a meandering sidewalk past houses almost invisible behind palms, oaks, and thick shrubbery, all the way to the far side of the lagoon.
Occasionally through the hibiscus hedge screening the jogging path on the other side of the street, I saw a dark shape running on the track. Mazie and I didn’t run until we
made a U-turn and retraced our walk. Then, as if by tacit agreement, we both broke into an easy trot that gradually turned into a hard run. By the time we got to Mazie’s
driveway, we were flying.
A car rolled up behind us in the street, and a voice yelled, “Hey!”
It was Laura Halston, waving to us from a red Jaguar convertible. In big dark sunglasses that hid her eyebrows, and a blue Dallas Cowboys cap pulled low over her hair. I
wouldn’t have recognized her if I’d seen her on the street.
She nodded to grocery bags piled in the backseat. “Had to go stock up on essentials. Coffee, wine, Pepperidge Farm cookies.”
“No ice cream?”
“Well, hell, sure. Ice cream’s a given.”
Then she turned her attention to Mazie, who was looking up at her with anxious eyes. “Oh, sweet Mazie, don’t worry about Jeffrey. He’ll come home all better.”
To me, she said, “I know about Jeffrey’s surgery. Poor little guy.”
Relieved that I didn’t have to keep it a secret, I said, “Pete Madeira will be staying in the house with Mazie. He’s a clown, so if you see him wearing a red nose, don’t be
alarmed. He also plays saxophone, so if you hear music, that’ll be Pete playing for Mazie.”
She said, “I dated a saxophone player once. Sweet guy. Great kisser.”
We chatted for a few minutes more about nothing, the way women do when they like each other and don’t much care what they’re talking about. I didn’t divulge any more
information about Mazie’s family, and she seemed to understand that I wouldn’t, that I was a professional, and that it would be unprofessional to talk about my employers.
I hadn’t had a close woman friend since high school, when Maureen Rhinegold and I used to go to Turtle Beach and sit behind a sand dune and try to get high smoking
marijuana. We were abject failures at it—we mostly just coughed and gagged—but we kept at it until my brother caught us and told me he would kick my butt clear to Cuba if
I ever smoked weed again. We had drifted apart after Maureen married a rich man and I became a deputy married to a deputy. Talking to Laura stirred up a nostalgic wish for
the kind of closeness I’d had with Maureen. There had been an easy trust in that closeness that I missed.
Laura must have wanted to prolong the chat too, because she said, “Say, do you have time for a glass of wine?”
I felt a bubble of excitement, as if one of the girls at the popular table in the high school cafeteria had invited me to sit with her. Trying not to sound like a lonely soul grateful
for an invitation, I said a glass of wine sounded fine, and that I would take Mazie home and be at her house in a flash.
She said, “I’ll be in the kitchen, so just come in through the garage door.”
Every time I met the woman, I liked her even more. Except for being gorgeous, she seemed refreshingly uncomplicated. Straight-forward, friendly, generous, and a pet lover.
How could I not like her?
Back in Mazie’s house, Pete was puttering around in the kitchen.
“Hal called while you were gone. He said the surgery is scheduled for tomorrow morning at seven. Gillis will spend the night in the hospital with Jeffrey, and then she and Hal
will take turns sleeping in a recliner by his bed. He left his cell phone number and their hotel number in case we need to get in touch. He said he would call after it’s over.”
He gave me the numbers and I wrote them down, even though Hal had already left his cell number and hotel number and the hospital’s number several times. We were all
repeating ourselves, doing an overkill of efficiency to make ourselves feel organized enough to keep Jeffrey safe.
Pete said, “Is it okay if I give Mazie a treat? So she’ll associate me with good things?”
I shook my head. “Sorry. The rules for service dogs are that only their trainer can give them treats. But she’s a smart dog, she knows you’re a good person.”
“I guess all we can do now is pray for the boy. For all of them, really.”
I went over and kissed his cheek. Mazie wasn’t the only one who knew Pete Madeira was a good man.
I said, “I’m going to leave my Bronco in the driveway here, but I’m going to have a glass of wine with Laura Halston. She lives next door. Have you met her?”
Pete’s face took on a guarded look. “I met her this morning. Mazie and I went out to get some air and she came over. Said she was doing some gardening.”
“I don’t know her well, but she seems like a very nice person.”
“Can’t always tell about people by the way they look, Dixie. She’s pretty, but pretty is as pretty does. We had a woman in the circus with the ugliest face you ever saw, but
she had a beautiful soul. That woman next door has a beautiful face, but don’t let that fool you.”
That was the first time I’d ever heard Pete say something mean or cynical, and I was disappointed in him. On the other hand, Laura was so outstandingly beautiful that she
might have made him uncomfortably aware that he was no longer a man who might attract her.
I said, “Don’t worry, I’m just having a glass of wine.”
I didn’t stay to debate the wisdom of spending time with Laura, just blew kisses at Pete and Mazie. As I hotfooted it over to Laura’s house, I could feel Pete and Mazie
watching from the doorway, both of them with worried faces.
5
Once I got past the greenery that hid Laura’s house, I was surprised at how modest it was. An L-shaped frame bungalow, it had a covered carport on the long side and a
multi-glass-paned front door on the protruding side. The former deputy in me made me think how those square panes of glass in her front door made the house easy to break
into, but I certainly didn’t intend to mention it.
I skirted the red Jag, rapped twice on the door to the kitchen, and turned the knob. But before I pushed the door all the way open, I stuck my head in to announce myself.
I heard Laura say, “Don’t come here, Martin. And don’t call me again. Not ever.” Her voice was hard and angry, full of bitter animosity.
I froze with my head inside the kitchen and the rest of me outside. Laura stood at a bar on the far side of the kitchen, cell phone at her ear, her face drawn tight. She had
taken off the dark shades but still wore the Cowboys cap.
Motioning me in, she said, “Goodbye, Martin.”
Hesitantly, I pushed the door open and got my whole self inside. But the instant I was completely in, a banshee scream sounded at my feet and caused me to leap like a
kangaroo. Leo streaked to Laura’s side and glared at me.
I said, “Oh, I’m so sorry! Did I step on him?”
In a heartbeat, Laura’s face went from savage fury to wry humor. As if stepping on a cat were a trifling thing, she said, “It’s his own fault. He has this awful habit of sitting
beside a door and stretching his tail across the opening. Gets his tail stepped on all the time, but he keeps doing it. I don’t know if he’s too dumb or too stubborn to give it up.”
Waving her cell phone for emphasis, she said, “He’s a lot like my soon-to-be ex. Either too dumb or too stubborn to know when it’s time to let something go. That was him
on the phone, being a complete ass, as usual.”
I said, “If this is a bad time—”
“Oh, no! This is a perfect time. I have much more need of a friend than I do to talk to my ex!”
I liked being called a friend.
Putting the cell phone on the bar where a bulky black land phone squatted, she took off her cap and shook her hair. She wore a long skirt with a brief ribbed cotton sweater
and high-heeled espadrilles. Even with her Cowboys cap and dark glasses, she would have been the glamorous one at the supermarket.
She said, “I have to get out of these clothes. There’s a bottle of Chablis in the fridge. If you’d rather have red, there’s some in the rack. Wineglasses in the far right cabinet.”
She scooted down a hallway, and Leo trotted after her. In a minute or two, I heard two screeches, one from her and one from Leo.
She hollered, “Leo! You’ve got to stop doing that!”
In a softer voice, she said something else I couldn’t make out. Whatever it was that Leo had done seemed to be forgiven.
Left alone, I considered the wine options. I actually prefer red, but I didn’t want to risk staining my teeth before the evening with Guidry, so I got out two wineglasses and
poured Chablis in both of them. Men wouldn’t do that. Men eat garlic and onions without worrying about their breath and they drink whatever they damn well please no matter
what kind of stains it may leave on their teeth. Women are dopes. But I was a woman, so I would drink white wine.
Searching for napkins, I opened several drawers that held flat-ware and cooking stuff, then pulled out a drawer that turned out to be a deep pull-out storage cabinet. It held
all kinds of cat supplies—cat vitamins, packets of kitty treats, bottles of food additives to make coats shiny, and two twenty-pound bags of organic dry cat food. I grinned at
the generous oversupply, sort of a sure sign that Leo was Laura’s first cat.
Behind me, Laura said, “What are you doing?”
Her voice had gone hard again, and when I turned to her I saw frost in her green eyes. She had changed into baggy drawstring pants and a sleeveless knit top, but that was
the only thing about her at the moment that looked relaxed.
I said, “Sorry, I’m looking for napkins. It’s an illness I inherited from my grandmother. She got the vapors if anybody used paper towels.”
She laughed, easy and friendly again, and padded barefoot to pull out a slim drawer full of cocktail napkins. Flapping a couple at me, she said, “Do they have to be cloth, or
will paper do?”
I shoved the drawer of cat stuff closed with my hip. “My grandmother would have preferred cloth, but paper works for me.”
She smiled, handed me a napkin, and picked up one of the glasses of wine. Raising it toward me, she said, “Cheers, new friend.”
Again, I was flooded with the warm fuzzy feelings that come with discovering that somebody you like likes you back. The fragrance of some very expensive perfume wafted
toward me. I hoped I wasn’t sending off wafts of doggie smell.
Leo trotted into the kitchen and stopped beside Laura to give me a calculating once-over. Havana Browns are graceful solid-brown hybrids with emerald eyes and big
forward tilting ears. As svelte as they are, they’re muscular cats, and it’s always a surprise to pick one up and discover how heavy it is. Males like Leo weigh about ten
pounds, and every ounce is strong.
I didn’t speak to him, just waited for him to deign to speak to me. Cats like for you to acknowledge their superiority right away. Dogs are so happy to have new
acquaintances they’ll throw away every shred of dignity and approach you first. I’m afraid I’m more like a dog.
Laura said, “I know it’s early for dinner, but I’m starving. How about you?”
“Whenever there’s food, I’m hungry.”
Putting her wineglass down, she opened the refrigerator, dived into the vegetable bin, and began tossing out plastic bags of mystery things, hurling them more or less
accurately into the sink.
She said, “I hope you’re not on one of those low-carb diets. I was thinking about fettucini Alfredo.”
I said, “I love Alfredo and everything he stands for.”
She grinned. “I knew you were a smart girl first time I met you.”
She got out a wooden salad bowl, and I moved to the sink and began washing romaine while she put water on to boil and chopped garlic. It was nice, very nice, to have that
kind of rapport with another person.
By the time we had dinner ready, we had each stepped on Leo’s long tail several times and done quick dances of remorse and annoyance, which Leo ignored.
We had also crossed over the divide that separates friendly acquaintances from friends. Laura had told me who her hairdresser was—Maurice at the Lyon’s Mane—and I
had given her the name of a holistic veterinarian, my gynecologist, and my dentist.
Women need other women as friends. To giggle at dumb things one minute and go deep into our most secret selves the next. Laura and I had that kind of connection, the
kind that allows you to explore any idea without worrying that you’ll be judged.
We carried our dinner to the living room, a surprisingly impersonal room with oversized white ceramic tile on the floors and louvered shades covering the windows. The
furniture was the sell-by-the-roomful type that landlords put in seasonal rentals. No rugs to break the white monotony of the tile. No family heirlooms. No lovingly collected
flea-market finds. No photographs, no magazines, no collectibles. The only personal touch was an African violet in a white porcelain pot under a window. I knew that barren
look. It was a lot like my own place.
We ate sitting on the floor around the coffee table. Leo lay between us, blissfully resting his head on Laura’s bare foot, his long tail stretched out for somebody to trip over.
I confessed that my favorite singer of all time was Patsy Cline, and Laura said hers was Roy Orbison, which we both thought was an amazing coincidence because anybody
who’s ever given it any thought knows that Patsy and Roy must have come from the same soul. We also agreed that k.d. lang is most likely Patsy Cline reincarnated, and
neither of us was embarrassed to say it.
Something thumped outside the window, and Leo jerked upright with his ears pointed toward the sound. Laura went still, with her fork poised in midair.
I said, “It was just a squirrel or something.”
She shook her head as if she were mentally lecturing herself.
“I never know whether Leo’s heard a serial killer or whether he just gets a kick out of scaring me.” Leo lay back down with his tail draped across her lap. She pushed it
aside and said, “You know, moving here has brought me the first sense of peace I’ve ever had.”
There was a curious blend of innocence and world-weary wisdom in the way she said it.
I said, “I’ve never lived anyplace else.”
She grinned. “I know. You put on a tough front, but deep down you’re just a sweet southern girl who’s never seen the ugly side of life.”
I bristled. “I am not sweet, and I’ve seen plenty of ugly.”
She laughed. “Sweetie, what you’ve seen is chicken feed.”
The landline phone in the kitchen rang, and an impersonal robotic voice announced, “Call from Number Available.”
Laura went still, her jade eyes wary. After a few more announcements, the answering machine switched on. An unctuous male voice spoke loudly enough for us to hear
every word.
“Please pick up, Laura. I know you’re home. Please don’t reject me this way.”
Laura scrambled to her feet to race to the phone, but she got there too late to keep me from hearing him. “I’m outside your house. Please open the door to me, Laura.
That’s all I ask.”
Laura snagged the phone from its cradle, her own voice sharp. “You have to stop this! I swear to God, if you don’t leave me alone I’ll have you arrested for stalking me.”
Leo had sat up again with his ears pointed forward. He and I sat frozen in place.
Laura listened a moment and said, “No! I have company now. Please, please, please go away, and don’t call me again.”
Another pause and then her voice became almost amused. “You misunderstood. I appreciated your help, but that’s all. Now leave me alone.”
I heard the phone slam into its holder, and she stomped back to the living room with her lips tightened. “So help me, if that man calls again I’m going to report him to the
police.”
She sat down on the floor again. Beside her, Leo remained at attention.
“Who is he?”
She sighed. “Right after I moved here I twisted my knee running. It swelled pretty bad, so I went to the emergency room to see if it was something serious. This jerk was
there, and he must have got my number from the woman at the desk. He calls every day begging to see me. He’s a nut.”
I’m not exactly an eyesore, but I’ll never cause people to go all goggly the minute they see me. I wondered what it was like for Laura to know she had that effect.
Rapping sounded at the front door, and we all swiveled our heads. Through the glass panels we could see the shadowy outline of a large man.
Laura made a fist and shook it toward the door. “Go away!”
The knocking continued, but Laura didn’t go to the door.
Outside, the man shouted, “This is quite unacceptable, Laura! Unacceptable and unfair!”
After a while, the figure disappeared. Leo stretched himself beside Laura’s feet, and Laura’s body relaxed.
Even moderately beautiful women attract men whose fantasies can cause them to go to nutty extremes. A woman as jaw-droppingly gorgeous as Laura probably attracted
them by the dozen.
I said, “Has he come here before like that? Demanding to see you?”
“No, he’s never gone that far before.”
I was tempted to warn her that her front door would be a snap for anybody wanting to break in, but I didn’t want to add to her fears. Besides, any door can be opened by
somebody really determined.
I said, “If he does it again, you really should call the police.”
“I know. It’s just that I’d thought I’d left all that behind. Being afraid, threatening to call the police. I hate it.”
She leaned to pour the last of the wine in our glasses.
“I was in an abusive relationship,” she said. “Very abusive. I’m not over it yet.”
“Ah, so that’s what it was.”
“You knew?”
“I knew you were recovering from something. I recognized the signs.”
“Like what?”
I gestured around the impersonal room. “This place, for one thing. I know it’s not your home. Are you hiding from your ex?”
She looked alarmed. “You’re very perceptive. He’s not exactly my ex yet, I’ve just filed for divorce. He’s a very powerful orthopedic surgeon in Dallas. You may have
heard of him. He’s Dr. Reginald Halston. The Dr. Reginald Halston. Before he went to medical school, he was a linebacker for the SMU Mustangs. He’s big. Really big.”
I could have sworn I’d heard her call him Martin, and I wasn’t sure if she meant he was big in size or just big in fame, but I didn’t press the point. Plenty of people are
known professionally by one name but their families and close friends call them something else. Laura’s eyes had widened with awe when she said the name, so he must have
been a big deal in Dallas. I said I’d never heard of him, and she looked faintly disappointed.
In a rush, she said, “I was his receptionist for a year before he asked me out. He’d been married twice before, and he has children. He never sees them, but I always knew
they were there, waiting in the wings for me to fall on my face. His first wives were college-educated and from rich families. Not like me. I guess I fell in love, but I’m not sure. I
have to admit I liked the idea of marrying a rich doctor. And to his credit, I have to say he was never cheap. I could buy anything I wanted, and I did.”
She drained her wineglass and ran the tip of her tongue around her lips to get the last drop.
I said, “I’m guessing there was another side to him, right?”
“At night, he would lie in bed and throw scalpels at the ceiling. They never stuck, just fell back down, and he would laugh at me for being afraid one would hit me. He carved
my stomach with his scalpels too. He almost killed me several times. One time he choked me until I blacked out and my eyes were red for days from broken blood vessels, but
he wouldn’t let me go to the hospital. He’s so big and strong, I was terrified of him.”
She was watching my face closely, and I got the feeling she had never told anybody else about her husband’s violence. I was flattered she trusted me enough to confide in
me.
“Jesus, Laura, he sounds sick.”
“He’s insane. If the hospital knew what he’s really like, they would kick him out. My folks don’t know either. They were so thrilled I had married a rich doctor that I never
told them. I told my sister everything, but Celeste is the only one who knows.”
I said, “It must have taken a lot of courage to leave.”
She laughed shortly. “I left when I found out I was pregnant. I will not let him turn his sick mind on my child. I’m four months now, and nobody knows except my sister.”
I looked at her drawstring pants. “You don’t show yet.”
“I’ve put on a little weight, but I was too thin before.”
“He doesn’t know where you are?”
She looked smug. “When I left Dallas, I cleaned out our joint checking account. Then I drove my Mercedes to Arkansas and sold it at a used-car place. I took a bus to
Sarasota and bought the Jaguar. I have enough money to live on for a while, and I have some good diamond jewelry. When I need to, I’ll pawn it or sell it.”
Her face flushed, either with embarrassment at having revealed so much about herself, or because she’d called attention to the jewelry.
“He told me if I ever left him he would kill me.”
I said, “He knows how to reach you—”
“He only knows my cell number, and it’s still based in Dallas. He doesn’t know where I am. But I’m always afraid. . . .”
She didn’t need to finish the sentence, I knew what she was afraid of. I also knew that nobody can truly disappear if somebody wants them found. Especially if the
somebody has plenty of money to hire good private investigators.
“Is anything in your name here? A lease? The house phone? Utilities?”
She shook her head. “I’ve thought of all that. The house belongs to my folks. They live in Connecticut and all the bills go to them. They intend to move here when Dad
retires, and in the meantime it’s a retreat for whoever needs it. Celeste, that’s my sister, lived here for a year when she got a divorce, and one of my cousins stayed here for a
while when he was out of work.”
“Your sister’s in Connecticut too?”
She shot me a look that said I was dangerously close to asking too many personal questions.
“Dallas.”
Leo yawned with a big show of boredom, and I leaned to stroke his neck. There were some holes in Laura’s story, but people gloss over details in the interest of condensing
an account to its main facts. For now, the fact that she had told me something so painful meant we had crossed an important hurdle in our beginning friendship.
She said, “You said you recognized the signs that I was hiding from somebody. Does that mean you were—”
“No. I was never abused.”
A silence stretched, and I opened my mouth and told the thing so hard to say.
“Almost four years ago, my husband and little girl were on their way home, and they stopped to pick up some groceries. My husband was a deputy, and he had picked
Christy up at daycare when he got off duty. She was three years old. A man driving across the parking lot turned into a parking place, but instead of hitting the brake he
slammed his foot on the gas pedal. He jumped over the wheel stop and hit Todd and Christy and three other people before he crashed into a parked car. They told me Todd
and Christy died instantly.”
Laura whispered, “I’m so sorry.”
That’s all. She didn’t try to make me feel better about it, didn’t tell me to cheer up because they were with Jesus now, didn’t tell me she was sure I’d get over it in time. She
just absorbed a little bit of my pain. I don’t think there’s anything more generous one human being can do for another.
I suddenly wanted to tell her more about myself, to be as open as she had been and share the kind of things that women share. I wanted to tell her that I was a lot better
now, that I had actually begun to live again. I wanted to tell her that I had kissed two men a few months ago, and that while I had pulled back from both of them, I hadn’t
closed any doors. I wanted to tell her I was going on a date with Guidry Saturday night. I wanted to tell her all the kinds of things women tell each other when they’re close
friends. But it was late, and there would be time for those confidences later.
When I told her goodbye that night, I knew I was leaving a new friend.
She said, “I’ll see you soon.”
But as it turned out, she wouldn’t.
6
Back in the Bronco, I considered my options. I could go straight home, or I could go shopping for something to wear to Guidry’s Saturday-night shindig. One good thing
about living in a resort town is that a lot of posh shops are open late, even on Sunday. If I got the dreaded dress-buying over with, I could forget it. Or at least not have to think
about it anymore. I decided there was no time like the present and headed downtown. For most of my shopping, I think the Gap or Sears, but for the Humane Society party I
went to a little boutique on Pineapple Street where the price of a dress would feed a family of five for several weeks.
An hour later, I was on my way home, with a big shiny white bag in the passenger’s seat and a dress bag hanging from the do-hickey over the back door. The bag held new
underwear, new shoes, and a dumb little purse the saleswoman had described as “just big enough to hold a woman’s essentials—door key, lipstick, passport, and a condom.”
She obviously was accustomed to women who had more interesting lives than mine.
The dress bag held a short black strapless job I had to have the minute I saw it. But when I’d tried it on, it had given me a peculiar feeling—the same feeling I remembered
having when I was thirteen and in a store dressing room trying on bathing suits. I had looked at myself in the mirror and realized I had become a woman. It had been exciting
and scary. Totally appropriate for a thirteen-year-old, but totally idiotic for a thirty-three-year-old.
At home, the light was on in Michael and Paco’s kitchen, so I made a quick stop to say good night and show off my purchases. They were sitting at the island eating key lime
pie, and Ella was on her stool adoring them. It was the last night of Michael’s vacation. He would leave the next morning for a twenty-four-hour shift at the firehouse, then he
would be home forty-eight hours—a rhythm that has been a constant refrain all our lives, beginning with our firefighter father. Paco’s schedule wasn’t so regular. Undercover
cops don’t keep normal hours, and Michael and I have adjusted to that.
Michael said, “Where’ve you been? Want some pie?”
I flourished my shiny bag. “I had to go shopping. Got a new dress. I have a date Saturday night.”
Both men gave me looks of astonished pleasure. For the past year, they’d been upping the pressure on me to find a man, have sex, get a life. They had loved Todd like a
brother, but they both thought I had dragged widowhood way past its expiration date.
Michael said, “With who?”
“Whom.”
Ella Fitzgerald put a paw on the island top, and Paco gave her a stern look. “You know the rules.”
She made a meek thripp sound, withdrew her paw, and gave a demure twitch to her tail. Paco and Ella have an agreement—if she sits politely and keeps her paws off the
table, she’s allowed to adore her men from a bar stool. I know some human females who operate under the same rule.
For a moment, I thought Ella might have made Michael forget his question, but he was still waiting. I said, “Guidry asked me to a big party next weekend.”
Paco said, “Hot damn.”
Michael’s mouth drew up like he’d just bit into a green mango. “Guidry.”
Paco said, “Michael,” in a warning kind of way, like Shut the heck up, your sister has a date, for God’s sake, so don’t quibble about who the guy is.
Michael nodded, shrugged, and stuck a fork in his pie with a little more force than was absolutely necessary. Paco and I exchanged rolled eyes. Paco is protective too, but
he’s not as extreme as Michael. I guess that’s because he hasn’t been protecting me since he was four and I was two, the way Michael has.
I pulled the dress out of the bag and held it in front of me. Ella sat up straighter and squinted her eyes, while Michael and Paco made the noises men make when a woman
says, “What do you think?”
Fathers probably teach those noises to their sons when they’re young—“Stand up when you’re introduced to a lady, use your napkin instead of your sleeve, and make
admiring noises when a woman shows you anything, no matter what it is, and asks you what you think about it. Never, never, never say you have no opinion.”
Paco said, “High damn time you bought something sexy.”
“I got shoes and underwear too. The works.”
Paco grinned. “I do believe you’re about to take old Guidry to bed. You remember how the girl thing goes?”
Unlike Michael, Paco thought Guidry was a fine candidate for ending my self-imposed celibacy.
“I’m just going to a party with him.” My face got hot when I said it, because to tell the truth I wasn’t at all sure I remembered how the girl thing went.
Michael got to his feet and noisily rinsed his plate. “There’s leftovers if you’re hungry.”
“No, thanks, I had dinner with a new friend.”
His eyebrows raised hopefully. “A guy?”
“No, a woman.” Next thing I knew, I was telling them all about it, like a little kid reporting her cool new friend.
“She lives next door to the little boy I told you about last week, the one who’s having surgery for seizures. He’s three years old. Surgery is tomorrow morning. The woman is
Laura Halston. She has a Havana Brown cat named Leo. Longest tail you ever saw, and he’s always leaving it across doorways so it gets stepped on.”
Michael said, “What’d you say the cat is?”
“Havana Brown. They’re sort of rare. Brown all over, even their whiskers. I think they’re called Havana Brown because they’re the color of the cigars. She said the
boyfriend who gave him to her had called him Cohiba, but she changed his name to Leo.”
“She should have named him Castro.”
I rolled my eyes, partly to disparage Michael’s humor, and partly because he’d missed the point. The point wasn’t Laura’s cat, it was that I had a new woman friend.
I said, “She’s here hiding from her husband until their divorce is final. He was abusive, and she’s left him because she’s pregnant. She said she didn’t want him inflicting his
cruelty on their child. He’s a well-known surgeon in Dallas.”
Paco’s eyes narrowed. “Hiding how?”
“Oh, just that she’s living in a house her parents own so nothing is in her name.”
“No car?”
“Yeah, a car, but she bought it with cash she got from selling her old car. She cleaned out their bank account and drove to Arkansas and sold her car, then took a bus to
Sarasota and bought a new one.”
“What kind of car did she buy?”
It struck me that Paco was being awfully nosy. He also had a look in his eyes that I recognized. It was his I-don’t-believe-a-word-of-this look.
I said, “She drives a Jaguar convertible. Red.”
“Uh-huh, perfect car for somebody trying to hide.”
“Oh, come on, Paco, if her husband finds her, it won’t be because she drives a Jaguar convertible.”
He shrugged. “I don’t think a Dallas surgeon’s wife would come to Sarasota to get a divorce, she’d get it in Texas. That’s all I’m saying.”
I could feel my face flushing with defensive anger. Being an undercover cop made Paco suspicious of every little thing that wasn’t consistent. Usually he was right, but this
time he was wrong. I had misjudged Laura at first too, but now I knew she was an honest, good person going through a bad stretch.
Ella chose that moment to hike her hind leg and gnaw on it, as if to let us know that she found it rude of us to discuss anything other than her majestic self. We all laughed,
and my irritation evaporated.
I said, “I’m taking my loot and going home to bed.”
I kissed two cheeks and one furry head and left them. As I climbed the stairs to my apartment, I looked up at a coconut palm silhouetted in the curve of a waning moon rind.
The palm’s fronds had fallen away and left a rim of boots around its bulbous head. Caught in the moon’s thin arc, the trunk had a priapic look. Or maybe it was just me. When
you haven’t had sex in almost four years, you tend to see phalluses in unlikely places.
As I fell asleep that night, my thoughts went to All Children’s Hospital in St. Petersburg and to a little boy whose skull would be opened the next morning in hopes of giving
him a better life. I knew the anguished fear his parents must be feeling. No matter how skilled the surgeons were, nothing is certain. The operation could fail, or something could
go wrong. And because my own child had died, I couldn’t keep from thinking the unthinkable—Jeffrey could die. I also knew that if anything went wrong, Hal and Gillis would
never forgive themselves for choosing the surgical option. They would question their decision for the rest of their lives, just as I would always wonder if Christy would have died
if I had not been working that day.
I muttered, “No!” and punched my pillow. Thoughts like those could only lead to useless pain, and I refused to linger in that hurtful place.
Deliberately, I imagined Jeffrey and his parents coming home. I imagined him running to greet Mazie, with Hal and Gillis standing behind him beaming with joy that he was
now free of seizures. With images of Jeffrey playing with Mazie rolling inside my head, I drifted to sleep and dreamed that Christy and I were walking on the beach. She was
just a toddler, and her little pink shoes made three-inch footprints on the white sand. I shuffled along behind her, close enough to put out a steadying hand when she needed it,
but far enough away to let her feel the thrill of toddler independence.
She looked over her shoulder at me and laughed with sheer joy. The laughter turned into the sound of rain against the window, and I opened my eyes and fought the
momentary confusion that dreams bring. It was the first time I’d dreamed of Christy in several weeks. For a long time after she died, she had filled my dreams every night.
Now, when weeks sometimes passed without her nocturnal visits, a dream always brought a disquieting sense of having abandoned her.
I went back to sleep until the alarm sounded, and I got up with a foreboding sense of dread.
7
The sky was still pearly white when I walked out on my balcony next morning, and a gentle sea murmured drowsily to the shore. As I went down the stairs to the carport, I
caught a faint vanilla scent, a whiff of fragrance from a night-blooming cereus twined around the oak tree beside Michael’s deck. Creamy white and big as dinner plates, cereus
blossoms last only one night, but they are magnificent. By June, they are so profuse and fragrant that being outside at night is like bathing in perfume. Since it was only early
April, first blooms were there as friendly promises.
In the carport, all our cars and Paco’s Harley were damp with morning dew. Michael’s shift at the firehouse would begin at eight that morning, and then for the next twentyfour
hours his car would be gone. I always instinctively look to see whose car is home and whose is gone, and I always breathe a little easier when both Michael’s and Paco’s
cars are there. I hate to admit that, but it’s true.
I took a deep final hit of salt air and cereus, shooed a trio of sleepy pelicans off the hood of my Bronco, and crept down the twisting lane toward Midnight Pass Road. I
went slowly so as not to disturb the parakeets roosting in the mossy oaks along the lane. Parakeets are such prima donnas, they make a big to-do if you wake them up.
At the Sea Breeze, where Tom Hale lives, the parking lot was quiet, with the only movement from a few early risers and their dogs. The elevator was coming down when I
entered the downstairs lobby, and when the door opened Tom’s girlfriend came out, walking fast and frowning like the Wicked Witch of the West. She had a thick square
bandage on her chin, and when I spoke to her, she gave me an icy glare. I swear, the more I saw of that woman, the less I liked her. I supposed she must have some invisible
stellar qualities or Tom wouldn’t be involved with her, but I had never seen them. More than likely, they only came out in bed.
Upstairs, I used my key to open Tom’s door and found him sitting in the living room with his arm around Billy Elliot’s neck. They weren’t watching early morning news, they
were just sitting.
I said, “I just met Frannie leaving the building.”
Tom nodded and tightened his lips.
I got Billy Elliot’s leash and snapped it on his collar. If Tom didn’t want to talk, I wouldn’t press him.
Tom raised his arms like an orchestra conductor who’d been waiting for his cue. “Okay, here’s what happened. She had a small skin cancer removed from her chin. Nothing
serious, not a melanoma, she’s going to be fine. But she’s self-conscious like you wouldn’t believe about it. We went out to dinner last night, and when we came home she told
me she’d noticed people staring at her. I’d noticed it too. You know how people look at anything unusual, and they were looking at her bandage. I said it wasn’t surprising that
people stared at her because she’s a beautiful woman. She said no, they were staring at her because she was with me. Said she could tell they felt sorry for her.”
He spun his chair around to face me. “She brought it up again this morning, and I told her the truth. Nobody was looking at her because she was with a man in a wheelchair,
they were looking at her because she had a big honking bandage on her chin. And they weren’t pitying her, they were just rude and curious. She got pissed and stormed out.”
I wanted to tell him Frannie was all wrong for him and Billy Elliot, but I knew better. Tell a friend who’s having a lover’s quarrel that you hate his girlfriend’s guts, and the
next thing you know they’ll be back together again and he’ll never forget what you said.
As mild as milk, I said, “You might want to consider what kind of woman would think people pitied her for being with you. Not to mention what kind of self-consumed bitch
would tell you that.”
He gave me a half grin. “Come on, Dixie, don’t be shy. Tell me what you really think.”
“Sorry, gotta go. Billy Elliot and I have an appointment with some bushes downstairs.”
I took Billy Elliot out to the hall. Before I closed Tom’s door, I saw a full grin on his face.
Billy Elliot and I ran our laps in the parking lot until he was happy and I was wheezing, then we rode the elevator back upstairs to Tom’s condo. I could smell coffee brewing
and hear the shower running. I kissed Billy Elliot goodbye, hung his leash back in the closet, and let myself out. On the ride downstairs in the elevator, I counted the women I
knew who were both single, attractive, heterosexual, smart, the right age, and good enough for Tom and Billy Elliot. It was a short list, but if Tom ever dumped Frannie’s selfcentered
ass, I would be matchmaking before sundown.
By the time I’d walked all the dogs on my list and fed and groomed all the cats, it was almost nine o’clock and I was on my way to Fish Hawk Lagoon to walk Mazie. Just
after the light at Stickney Point, I saw a dark form the size of a toddler’s fist moving across the pavement ahead of me. Only one thing in the world has that shape and moves
with that sprawling bent-leg gait. A baby turtle had decided to see the world.
I veered onto the shoulder and had my door open before I came to a jolting stop. Behind me, a green-and-white sheriff’s car stopped in the spot where I’d just been. The
driver’s door opened, and a deputy in dark green shorts and shirt jumped out and started flagging down traffic. He must have come up behind me while I was pulling onto the
shoulder, spotted the turtle, and realized my intention.
I recognized that deputy. He was Deputy Jesse Morgan, an officer I’d met several times before in less pleasant circumstances. I was fairly sure that Morgan thought I was a
nutcase. Considering his reasons, I couldn’t actually blame him.
Flashing him a grateful grin, I sprinted across the pavement and picked up a three-inch Florida box turtle. As I ran back to my car, Deputy Morgan got back in his car and
waited for me to pull back on the road. He didn’t smile and his eyes were shielded by dark glasses, but I had the distinct impression that he was pleased. I felt as if he and I
had made a new turn in our acquaintanceship.
The turtle’s oval shape marked it as female. When I put her down on the passenger floor, she immediately resumed her plan of moving from Point A to Point B, totally
ignoring the interval when a force much larger than herself had swooped down and grabbed her.
I’ve felt that way myself a few times.
Except for the threat of being eaten by birds and killed by humans, nature has been especially kind to female box turtles. If a female meets a male she fancies as a father for
her children, she can have a night of mattress-slapping, heel-banging, headboard-butting sex and then store his sperm for six or seven years. She can go to graduate school,
start a business, get tenure at a university, make partner at a law firm, all the while secure that she has plenty of desirable sperm ready and waiting. Then, when her maternal
urges kick in, she can dig a hole and use the stored sperm to fertilize her eggs. Maybe she has completely forgotten the male who donated his sperm. Or maybe she remembers
and a tear rolls down her leathery cheek while she inseminates herself. At any rate, she can repeat the whole sex-and-storage thing as many times as she chooses for the rest of
her life. Box turtles may live to be a hundred, so that’s a lot of sex with freedom to choose when to be pregnant. How cool is that?
Fish Hawk Lagoon is actually a man-made lake in the shape of an artist’s palette. The lake has narrow inlets that allow small pleasure boats access to the bay, and it’s a
favorite nesting place for ospreys, which are also called fish hawks. The residential area curves around it, and there are picnicking spots interspersed with nature preserves
around its perimeter.
I followed the hibiscus hedge beside the jogging trail until it ended at a boggy lakeside area shaded by moss-hung oaks. Thick with ferns, potato vines, lilies, and taro, and
bounded on two sides by palmetto and hibiscus, it was as good a sanctuary as a little turtle could hope for. Pulling behind the hedge into a shelled parking area beside the trail,
I picked the turtle off the floor and took a minute to study the perfect symmetry of her carapace markings. They conjured a faint echo of drumbeats, a flash of an initiate dipping
her finger into pale yellow dye to trace a clue on a dark turtle shell, sounds of female voices raised in triumphant ululation. If creatures that link us to our distant past become
extinct, will we lose the unconscious memory of our origins?
With the little turtle’s legs valiantly churning the air, I walked toward the bog, then stopped a moment to look at a nesting pair of sandhill cranes on a minuscule sandbar
about ten feet offshore. Four or five feet tall, sandhill cranes are magnificent stalk-legged birds with brilliant patches of red on the tops of their heads. Males and females work
together to build nests of twigs and weeds, then the male stands guard while the female sits on their eggs, usually just two. He stays close by until the chicks are able to fly by
themselves too, not like some human males who leave their mates to raise their babies alone. This couple must have lost one of their eggs, because only one fluffy caramelcolored
chick was poking its head from its mom’s shoulder feathers.
When I squatted on the loamy ground, the male crane stretched his snaky gray neck, made a high-pitched gurgling cry, and flapped his huge wings a couple of times. With
his five-foot wingspan, he looked like Rodan, the old horror-film monster, ready to shock and awe Tokyo. I hoped he had shocked and awed the baby turtle so she would
hide from him, because he could easily gulp her down for breakfast.
When I set her down, she zipped out of sight under a clump of taro leaves. She probably thought she had cleverly escaped a giant predator, but it wasn’t the sandhill crane
she feared, it was me. Like all of us, she would have to learn that some things that seem horrifying are really benign.
From the other side of the hibiscus hedge separating the street from the trail, a man’s outraged voice rose above the hum of insects and birdsong.
“How could you do that to me? How? Even for you, it’s especially despicable. You’ve outdone yourself this time. Of all the stupid, selfish, unforgivable things you’ve ever
done, this is the worst!”
Peering through the hibiscus, I saw two people approaching, a woman in jogging shorts, and a barrel-chested bull of a man in a dark suit. Fury surrounded the man in a kind
of subliminal red mist. Not that I’m able to see auras. But if I were, I’m positive that’s what his would have been—hot, pulsating energy the color of blood. He walked with the
heavy-shouldered tread of a man with a thorn in his soul.
He said, “This time you went too far. You won’t get away with this one.”
They moved forward until I could see their faces. The man had the glossy patina of raw power, the kind that always sits at the head of the table no matter what the meeting
is. He looked to be in his mid-fifties, with dark slicked-back hair, deep pouches under heavy-lidded eyes, and a mouth that was accustomed to giving orders. His body was
thick and broad-shouldered, but every inch seemed to be muscle. The woman was Laura Halston. She looked bored.
She said, “You can’t do a thing to me, Martin. Not now, not ever.”
I looked harder at the man, imagining him carving Laura’s stomach with one of his scalpels. Now that I knew who he was, I could imagine him as a young linebacker. I could
also imagine him stalking like a king through hospital halls while nurses fluttered in his wake.
It was one of those moments when no matter what you do, it’ll be wrong. I could have stood up and made my presence known, but then Laura would have been
embarrassed to know I had heard an intensely personal conversation. I could have put my hands over my ears or scuttled out of earshot, but it was too late. I’d already heard
enough.
I watched Laura step into the street and start walking away from her husband.
In a voice choked with rage, he said, “Don’t you dare walk away from me! You owe me, goddammit! You owe me!”
Without turning, she stretched her arm overhead and shot him a finger.
He stared at her back a moment longer and then charged to a car parked down the street. Spraying shell, he roared away.
I waited until Laura had disappeared around a curve in the other direction before I stood up and walked to the Bronco. Then I drove sedately and carefully toward Mazie’s
house. I might be a voyeur, but I don’t speed.
I didn’t need a playbill to know that Laura’s husband had found her, and he hadn’t sounded to me as if he intended to let her go without a nasty fight. Laura had said she was
afraid of him. Now that I’d seen him and had a sample of what he was like, I wasn’t sure she was frightened enough. With his raw rage, he seemed inherently capable of
violence—violence that went far beyond the sick practice of throwing scalpels at the ceiling to frighten his wife.
8
An ancient story tells about a prince who died and went to heaven. As he always had, his dog followed him. At heaven’s gate, the gatekeeper said, “You can’t bring a dog in
here, he’ll have to stay outside.”
The man said, “This dog has been the most loyal friend I’ve ever had. He’s stayed with me through my every loss and humiliation, and he’s celebrated with me my every
success. I cannot enter heaven and leave my best friend outside. If he can’t go in, I won’t go in either.”
At that, the dog was revealed as a god in disguise, and they went in together. According to the story, that’s why dogs are called dogs, because they’re really gods in
disguise.
I thought about that story when I got to Mazie’s house. Pete was in the kitchen crouched beside Mazie, who lay by Jeffrey’s chair with its empty booster seat. Pete’s shaggy
eyebrows were so low I could barely see his eyes.
He said, “She didn’t eat last night, and she didn’t eat this morning. She’s too sad.”
I wasn’t surprised. Dogs don’t have superficial love or shallow devotion. They don’t ever wonder if it would better serve their own interests to switch their loyalties to
somebody else. Once they give their hearts to one person, that’s where their commitment lies, and they grieve the loss of a loved one the same way humans do. For a service
dog like Mazie, her sense of loss was even more acute.
I knelt to stroke Mazie’s head. “Did Hal call?”
“Not yet. It’s too soon.”
I went to the cupboard and shook some kibble into my hand, then went back to sit on the floor beside Mazie.
I said, “Jeffrey will be back, Mazie. And you have to keep your strength up so you can take care of him when he comes home.”
As I said it, I sent a mental photo of Jeffrey giggling and hugging Mazie, while Mazie’s tail beat with wild happiness. Some people think I’m nuts to send pictures to animals,
but the animals seem to get them, so I keep doing it.
She lifted her head, sniffed the kibble, and ate one or two nuggets.
Pete said, “She needs to eat more than that.”
“If she’s drinking water, she can fast for a day or two with no problem. Remember, don’t try to tempt her with people food. When she’s ready, she’ll start eating again.”
Pete reddened, as if he might have already offered her a bite of his own breakfast.
Trying to act as if I were as confident as I sounded, I got Mazie’s leash and took her for a walk. She came along docilely, but her heart wasn’t in it and she kept looking
back toward her house. I didn’t keep her out long. As soon as she had done her doggie business, we ran home at a fast clip.
I looked toward Laura’s house, but all I could see were trees and the driveway. It was just as well. I was still embarrassed to have eavesdropped, and I needed some time
before I saw Laura again.
Back at Mazie’s house, I handed her off to Pete, told him I’d be back around three P.M., and scooted to the Bronco with visions of breakfast dancing in my head.
On the way to the diner, I stopped at a traffic light and noticed a hand-lettered cardboard sign taped to a light pole: LOST CHIHUAHUA PUP! REWARD! CALL
LYON’S MANE. There was no phone number or address, which I took to mean that whoever printed the sign assumed that everybody knew where and what the Lyon’s
Mane was. Which they probably did. The Lyon’s Mane was the salon Laura had mentioned, a pricey place for people accustomed to big-city stylists and big-city fees.
Needless to say, I’d never been there.
A car honked behind me and made me aware the light had changed, so I moved on with the herd. Somebody had been busy putting up that LOST CHIHUAHUA PUP
sign, because it was at every intersection. A block away from the Village Diner, I spotted the little guy cowering under an oleander bush. I pulled off the street and got out of
the Bronco, moving as slowly as I could so as not to frighten him. Even adult Chihuahuas make me feel like a big ogre, they’re so small and dainty. A Chihuahua pup is like a
fairy dog, all big eyes and dancy legs.
I knelt down and spoke softly while my hand crept forward, palm up. “Don’t be scared, it’s okay. I’m going to take you home.”
I slipped my hand under the pup’s chest and lifted his front paws off the ground, then did a one-hand lift to cuddle him against my own chest.
I said, “How in the world did a little bitty thing like you get so far away from home? Did a hawk pick you up and carry you? Catch a ride on a turtle?”
He didn’t answer, just burrowed into my bosom as if he liked the warmth.
I thought he’d been through too much trauma to add a ride in a stranger’s car, so I walked through some parking lots and side streets to the Lyon’s Mane. At the salon, I
pulled open the glass door and stepped into the odor of shampoo, styling products, and singed hair. A young woman with lizard-green eye shadow and hair in white Statue of
Liberty spires stood behind a tall reception desk talking on a phone. Before I got to her, a ponytailed marionette of a man came clattering around the desk on backless clogs.
His arms were raised from the elbows and his hands were flapping excitedly.
“Oh, my God, you’ve found Baby!”
He grabbed toward me, and I hastily put the puppy into his grasping hands. The puppy licked the man’s lips while he cooed and kissed its nose.
I said, “He was under an oleander bush. They’re poisonous, so I hope he didn’t try to eat any of the leaves.”
“Baby? Eat a leaf off a bush? Hell, Baby won’t even eat dog food! My wife feeds him off her plate.”
I smiled and nodded, polite as anything, and edged toward the door. I’d done my good deed for the day, and breakfast was close by.
The man said, “Hold on! There’s a reward for bringing Baby home.”
I waved him off like Lady Bountiful telling the peasants they didn’t owe her anything. “That’s okay. Glad to do it.”
He stopped patting Baby and stared at my head. “No offense, hon, but who’s been cutting your hair? The yard man?”
Actually, I’d cut it myself, and I thought I’d done a pretty good job. My hair is straight and just hangs there, so cutting it isn’t like rocket science. Nevertheless, my hand
went anxiously to my head. Suggest to a woman that her hair is bad, and her hand is compelled to feel it.
“You think it’s uneven?”
“Doll, if it was any choppier, people would get seasick just from looking at it. Sit down and I’ll even it up for you. A reward for rescuing Baby.”
I gave a fleeting thought to breakfast, and dropped into his chair. No woman in her right mind would turn down an opportunity to get her hair trimmed by a master stylist.
I said, “Maybe just a teeny bit off.”
He flapped a hand from a loose wrist. “Sweetie, you just leave it to me. You’re gonna love it. By the way, my name’s Maurice.”
He pronounced it Maur-eeese.
I said, “I’ve heard of you. My friend Laura Halston is one of your clients.”
As soon as I said it, I was afraid I’d mentioned Laura’s name to elevate myself from a strange woman in cheap shoes to a person who was in the same league with his
clientele.
He said, “Oh, Laura! Isn’t she gorgeous? And just as down-to-earth as she can be.”
He scooted away to settle the pup in its own monogrammed basket, and I looked at the hair stuff laid out on his workstation. I didn’t know what half of it was. A shallow
shelf under the work top held a couple of glossy glamour magazines, and I pulled one out and looked at the photograph on the cover. It was the generic photo that every
glamour magazine has—airbrushed close-up of a young woman with carefully applied eyeliner and fake eyelashes that somebody spent an hour or two lacquering and
separating so they look like heavy fringe, chemically colored hair with extensions teased and gelled and sprayed to mimic the way healthy hair would look if nothing had ever
been done to it, and a pouting, seductive mouth plump with collagen shots. We are all supposed to believe that if we only purchase the products advertised in those magazines,
we too can look like the cover model, but not even the cover models look like that.
Maurice came back and grabbed a pair of scissors. “Put the magazine down, because I’m going to turn you around so you’re facing me instead of the mirror. You just
relax.”
I immediately tensed up, because my experience is that when somebody says, “You just relax,” you’re in for a harrowing time.
Maurice spun me around and began to cut and snip like a wild man, sending pieces of hair flying all over the place. I was so disappointed I could have cried. Sarasota
women have two hairstyles: Barbie-doll long and highlighted white blond, or short and chopped off at the nape of the neck. The Barbie-doll do has bangs that hang over the
eyebrows, the chopped-off do is frothed up on the crown like meringue. There is no in between.
I stand up for myself against alligators, religious fanatics, and gun-toting madmen, but I am a hopeless coward with hairdressers. I not only thank them for bad haircuts, I pay
them and tip them. Then I go home and recut my hair. It’s disgusting to be a hairdresser wimp, but I am. And every time, while I’m in the chair being ruined, I rationalize my
cowardice by telling myself that my hair will grow out, that a bad haircut won’t last forever.
Maurice knelt in front of me to get a better angle with his scissors. He had kind eyes.
He said, “I worry about her.”
“Who?”
“Laura. With that awful husband of hers, I think she should hire a bodyguard. But she’s so brave, she just acts like there’s no danger. And then there’s that other man after
her. I feel bad that she met him here, but it’s out of my hands, you know? She’s an adult and she can see anybody she wants to.”
Maurice apparently didn’t share my disinclination to gossip about his clients, and I felt a bit let down. Laura had apparently told Maurice everything she’d told me, plus he
knew about a man she hadn’t even mentioned. So I wasn’t so special after all. I wondered how many other people knew her story.
He stood up and whirled me around so I could see myself, and I made an involuntary gasp of surprise.
I felt like Julie Christie in the old movie Shampoo. My hair wasn’t any shorter, and I didn’t know exactly what was different, but now it looked as if it needed a man’s fingers
running through it.
Maurice smiled. “Now that’s kick-ass hair!”
The front door flew open and a woman built like a manatee came charging in. She had large dark eyes with lots of dramatic makeup, shiny black hair cut close to her head
like a skullcap, and she wore lavender Lycra tights under a bright orange smock. She should have looked ridiculous, but she looked oddly exotic.
In a deep baritone, she bawled, “Baby!” and snatched the Chihuahua pup from its basket.
Misty-eyed, Maurice said, “That’s my wife.”
I didn’t know whether he was on the verge of crying because my hair was so gorgeous or because his wife was so . . . so much.
To his wife, Maurice said, “Ruby, sweetie, this is . . . who are you, hon?”
Weakly, I said, “I’m Dixie Hemingway.”
As if he’d invented me, Maurice said, “She’s the one found Baby and brought him back to us.”
With Baby held tight against her jutting bosom, Ruby stuck out a hand twice as big as Maurice’s and gave me a firm handshake.
“You’re a pet sitter, aren’t you? I read about you in the paper. Great haircut.”
I allowed as how I was a pet sitter and that I also thought it was a great haircut, but I didn’t respond to the comment about reading about me in the paper. There were only a
few times my name had been mentioned in the paper, and none of them were because of events I wanted to remember.
Maurice said, “She’s a friend of Laura Halston’s.”
Ruby opened her mouth to say something enthusiastic, but she closed it when the front door opened and a thick man stalked in, glowering like he owned the place and had
caught the employees goofing off. He was donkey-butt ugly, with a deeply pockmarked face and thorny black eyebrows. When he raised his hand to his shades to remove
them, several diamond rings glittered on fingers thick as cheap cigars. Maurice and Ruby got quiet, and the smile Ruby gave him was so false it could have been lifted off and
pinned to the wall.