Blaize Clement - Dixie Hemingway Mysteries5 - Raining Cat Sitters and Dogs p.01

Acknowledgments
I am indebted to the “Kitchen Table Writing Group”—Linda Bailey, Greg Jorgensen, Madeline Mora-Summonte, and Jane Phelan—for their support and
encouragement. Watch for those names. You’ll soon be seeing them in your local bookstores.
A huge thank-you to Suzanne Beecher of DearReader.com, who has generously introduced Dixie to her thousands of book club members. Suzanne’s
generosity in helping writers is matched only by her lavish distribution of chocolate chip cookies. I’m honored to have her friendship.
Many thanks to homicide detective Chris Iorio of the Sarasota County Sheriff’s Department, who always patiently answers my law enforcement
questions. Thank you.
A big thank-you too to the Siesta Key Chamber of Commerce for their support, to all the deputies who keep Siesta Key its calm, laid-back self, and to
Siesta Key residents for not minding that I add fictional neighborhoods and businesses to the real ones. I appreciate that.
Many thanks also to Marcia Markland and Diana Szu at Thomas Dunne Books, along with all the terrific production, promotion, and marketing people.
Their efficiency and hard work make it possible for writers and readers to connect.
I’m also deeply grateful to readers who share their pet stories and tell me how much Dixie means to them. Thank you from my heart!
And to my expanding family, you continue to fill me with joy and pride.
Even if there’s no one dumber,
if you’re the planet’s biggest dunce,
you can’t repeat this course in summer:
this course is only offered once.
—Wisława Szymborska, from
“Nothing Twice” (1957)
Raining
Cat Sitters
and Dogs
E
1
very now and then you meet somebody you like on sight, even when everything about them says they’re bad news. Jaz was like that. The first time I
saw the girl, she was sobbing hysterically and rushing across Dr. Layton’s parking lot with a towel-wrapped bundle in her arms. A large man trailed
behind her with reluctance making heavy weights on his feet.
She looked about twelve or thirteen, with beginner breasts making plum-sized bulges under a stretchy tube top, and the thin, coltish awkwardness of
adolescence. She had cocoa-colored skin and a long mop of tangled black curls. Her cutoffs were frayed and had the mulled look that clothes get when
they’ve been slept in.
The man was around fifty, with pale jowls beginning to sag, and graying hair that looked more mowed than barbered. He wore a navy blue suit and a
paler blue tie, both too unwrinkled to be anything except polyester. With his pulled-back shoulders and drip-dry shirt taut across his chest, he looked like a
junior high school principal who had learned too late that he hated kids.
I’m Dixie Hemingway, no relation to you-know-who. I’m a pet sitter on Siesta Key, an eight-mile barrier island off Sarasota, Florida. I used to be a
deputy with the Sarasota County Sheriff’s Department, but something happened almost four years ago that caused me to go howling mad-dog crazy for a
little while, so I left with the department’s blessing. I’m still a little bit tilted, I guess, but not more than the average person. Like they say, a person who’s
totally sane is just somebody you don’t know very well.
Now that I’m more or less normal, I have a pet-sitting business that I enjoy, and I end every day feeling like I matter to the world. I mostly take care of
cats, with a few dogs and an occasional rabbit or hamster or bird. No snakes. I refer snakes to other sitters. Not that I’m snake-phobic. Not much, anyway.
It just gives me the shivers to drop little living critters into open snake mouths.
I had come to the vet’s that morning to pick up Big Bubba, a Congo African Grey parrot who had seemed under the weather when I’d called on him the
day before. When a bird sneezes and looks lethargic on his perch, I don’t take any chances. As it turned out, Big Bubba had merely been having a bad
day. Dr. Layton had called the night before to tell me I could pick him up that morning, so I was there to take him home.
The crying girl and the man went in ahead of me. When I got to the reception desk, one of Dr. Layton’s assistants was taking the bundle from the girl,
and the receptionist was making sympathetic sounds and patting the girl on the shoulder. She was crying so hard that her words came out slurred and
broken.
The only thing I could clearly understand was, “He hit him!”
The receptionist and assistant looked up sharply at the man, who heaved a great sigh.
“It’s a wild rabbit,” he said. “It ran in front of my car. It was an accident.”
The girl turned and screamed at him. “But it matters! It may just be a rabbit, but it matters!”
Now that I could see her face, she was older in the eyes than I’d expected, and they a surprisingly pale aquamarine. With her tawny skin and wild black
curls, the improbable eyes testified to ancestors from all over the world, a coming together of genes that can either be a societal blessing or curse. From
the set to her jaw that was both defiant and desperate, I guessed in her case it had not been a blessing.
Everything about her said, I’m young, I’m pissed, and I’m miserable.
The man said, “Okay, okay, okay,” and looked around with jittery uneasiness.
Dr. Layton bustled out from the backstage labyrinth of examining rooms and boarding areas. A comfortably plump African-American woman roughly my
age, which is thirty-three, Dr. Layton has the ability to soothe and command at the same time. With a quick glance at the injured rabbit lying suspiciously
limp in its towel covering, she turned briskly to the man.
“It ran in front of your car?”
“It was an accident. I wasn’t going more than ten miles an hour. It wasn’t like I was speeding.”
The girl seemed close to a complete meltdown. She buried her face in her hands, her whole body quivering with the intensity of her sobbing. The
receptionist and the vet’s assistant looked like they might cry at any minute, just in sympathy, and people and animals in the waiting area stretched their
necks to look at her.
Dr. Layton said, “What’s your name, dear?”
She said, “Jaz.” At the same time, the man said, “Rosemary.”
The girl shot him a hostile glare, and Dr. Layton studied him.
She said, “Are you this girl’s father?”
Too firmly, he said, “Stepfather.”
Dr. Layton put a calm hand on the girl’s shoulder. “Jaz, go sit down while I check the bunny. I’ll let you know if I can do anything for it.”
To me, she said, “Dixie, do you mind waiting a few minutes? I want to have a word with you.”
I nodded mutely and followed the man and girl to the waiting area. His hammy hand was wrapped around her upper arm in a tight vise, while she
continued to heave with sobs. When she felt the edge of the chair against her legs, she shrank into it and drew her knees up to her face, sobbing as if she
had lost her closest friend.
I took a seat across from her. Around the room, a handful of people and their pets were looking at her with sympathetic eyes. Two seats away from her,
Hetty Soames was there with a new puppy. She gave me a quick smile and discreet wave, the way people do when they see somebody they know at a
funeral, and then turned her attention back to the crying girl.
If Hetty weren’t so busy raising future service dogs, she could be an Eileen Fisher model. An ageless take-charge woman, she has sleek silver hair and
looks elegant in loose linen pants and tunics that would look like pajamas on any other woman. The new pup with her was the latest in a series of pups
she raises for Southeastern Guide Dogs. Raising future service dogs isn’t like raising other puppies. They need the same love and attention, but they
have to be socialized differently. Those little guys will one day need to focus solely on doing their job and not get sidetracked by things other dogs might
explore out of curiosity. Raising them takes thousands of hours of patient work, not to mention a heart big enough to pour out lots of love on a puppy and
then hand it over to somebody else. Hetty has been doing it for years, and the only way you can tell she’s sad when a young dog leaves is that the spark in
her eyes dims for a few weeks, only to come back when a new pup comes to live with her.
The girl’s distress obviously bothered Hetty. It bothered her new pup too. A three-month-old golden Lab-shepherd mix, his little ears were up and he
was watching the girl with concentrated attention. We all were.
Jaz was like the mutt you see at a shelter, the one that reason tells you is not a good choice to take home, but the one that tugs at your heart. Huddled
as she was in the chair, we could see that the golden sparkles had mostly worn away from her green rubber flip-flops. Her toenails were painted black,
and several of her toes wore gold or silver rings. Her ankles were amateurishly tattooed with flower bracelets, but a well-done black tattoo in the shape of
a dagger ran several inches up the outside of her right ankle.
If I’d got a tattoo when I was her age, my grandmother would have sanded it off with a Brillo pad.
The man kept making uneasy shushing sounds, as if the girl’s despair embarrassed him. Teenage angst affects people the same way that a pet
peeing on the furniture does—it brings out basic traits of either patience or meanness.
Hetty’s pup must have decided that since no human was going to do anything constructive, it was up to him. He darted away from Hetty’s feet, reared
on his hind legs, and pawed at one of the girl’s toes. She took her hands away from her face, looked down at him, and laughed. Her laughter was a rusty,
croaking sound, as if it had been jerked from her throat.
Hetty leaned forward in an anxious moment of hesitation, but the girl bent down and scooped the pup into her arms. With no hesitation whatsoever, he
proceeded to lick the tears from her cheeks and to wriggle as close to her as he could get. She giggled, and everybody watching gave a collective outbreath
of relief at hearing that normal adolescent sound. Jaz wasn’t so far gone that she couldn’t laugh, then, not so damaged that she couldn’t respond to
love. I think we had all been unconsciously afraid she might have been.
Hetty said, “Looks like you’ve found a new friend. His name is Ben.”
As if to make sure Jaz understood, Ben gave the tip of her nose a wet kiss, which made her giggle again.
Dr. Layton came from the treatment rooms and walked to stand in front of the girl. “I’m sorry, Jaz. There was nothing we could do for the rabbit. I think he
died instantly. I don’t believe he suffered.”
That’s what they always tell you. That’s what they told me when Todd and Christy were killed. I never knew whether I could believe them, and I could tell
the girl wasn’t sure she could believe Dr. Layton, either.
She pulled Ben closer, took a deep shuddering breath, and nodded. “Okay.”
The man came abruptly to his feet, digging in his hip pocket for a wallet. “How much do I owe you?”
Dr. Layton said, “There’s no charge.”
As she turned to walk away, a loud male voice yelled from the vet’s inner sanctum.
“Get that man!”
The man swiveled toward the sound with his right hand diving under his suit jacket toward his left armpit.
Instinctively, all my former law enforcement training made me leap to my feet with my arm stiffened and my palm out like a traffic cop. “Hey, whoa! No
need for that!”
In the voice of one who hopes to defuse a tense situation, Dr. Layton said, “That was a bird. An African Grey.”
As if on cue, Dr. Layton’s assistant came out with Big Bubba inside one of my travel cages. Big Bubba hated little cages, which is probably why he
swiveled his head toward me and hollered again, “Get that man!”
With an embarrassed twitch of his hand to the girl, the man said, “Come on, Rosemary.”
Jaz and Ben exchanged a long sad look, which may have been the final impetus that caused Hetty to do something that made my mouth drop.
Getting to her feet and taking Ben from Jaz, she said, “I need somebody to help me with this puppy. Just a few hours a week. It doesn’t pay much, but
it’s easy work and I think you’d like it.”
That was probably the biggest lie Hetty Soames had ever told. Not the part about the work being easy, but the part about needing help taking care of
Ben. She had simply taken a shine to the girl, knew she was in some sort of situation that wasn’t good, and wanted to give her a helping hand.
Jaz and the man spoke over each other again. He said, “She can’t do that.”
She said, “Yeah, I can do that.”
I tried not to grin. Anybody who knows Hetty knows she usually gets what she sets her mind on. I figured she would have the girl at her house within the
hour, maybe sooner. Dr. Layton seemed to think so too. With a happier look on her face than she’d had before, she motioned me to the reception counter
where Big Bubba waited in the travel cage.
At the counter, I looked over my shoulder at Jaz and her stepfather. He had jammed both hands in his trouser pockets and was gazing at the ceiling with
the look of a man at the end of his rope. Jaz had moved to squat beside Ben and pet him while she talked to Hetty.
Dr. Layton said, “There was a touch of eosinophilia in Big Bubba’s tracheal wash, but I suspect he’s reacting to the red tide like everybody else. Keep
him indoors until it’s over. If it gets worse, I can give him some antihistamines, but I’d rather treat it by removing the allergen.”
I wasn’t surprised. A bloom of microscopic algae, red tide’s technical name is Karenia brevis, but by any name it’s nasty stuff that causes respiratory
irritations and watery eyes for people and pets. We get the bloom almost every September when Gulf breezes begin coming from the west, but this year it
had started a month early. I promised Dr. Layton I would keep Big Bubba indoors for the duration of the bloom and carried him out the door.
I don’t imagine Hetty or Jaz or the man noticed me leave. They were all too caught up in their own intentions.
Afterward, I would look back on that brief encounter in Dr. Layton’s waiting room and wonder if there was any way I could have prevented all the coming
danger. At the time, all I knew was that a girl who called herself Jaz but was really named Rosemary was desperately unhappy, that her stepfather’s
nerves were shot, and that he wore an underarm holster.
I
O
W
2
left Dr. Layton’s office with Big Bubba’s travel cage draped with a sheet and strapped in the backseat of my Bronco. The sun was knee-high on the
horizon, giving the early August air a gauzy quiver that made all the lush foliage and flowers look even more beautiful than usual, like a scrim laid over the
world to hide tiny imperfections.
Siesta Key is a semitropical island, so our landscape is a riot of greenery and color. It doesn’t make a lot of horticultural sense, but plants grow like
crazy in our sandy soil. Gardeners on the key do more cutting back than fertilizing, and they’re always behind in keeping up with the rampant growth.
Bougainvillea climbs all over the place, orchids nestle in the crotches of oak trees, hibiscus flings red and yellow flowers in every yard, ixora gets trimmed
into red-blossomed hedges, and every flowering tree in the world seems to find its way here. We’re definitely a technicolor island.
The few extra minutes I’d spent at the vet’s had eaten into my time, but I drove more slowly than I usually do so as not to throw Big Bubba off balance.
The sheet covering his cage kept him from freaking out at the passing trees, but he was so upset at being away from home that every now and then he
squawked “Hey!” just to let me know he wasn’t happy.
Siesta Key lies between the Gulf of Mexico and Sarasota Bay, and stretches north to south. I’m told it’s about the same size as Manhattan, which may
explain why so many New Yorkers have second homes on the key. I don’t know how many people live in Manhattan, but Siesta Key has around seven
thousand year-round residents, with that number swelling to about twenty-two thousand during “season,” when it’s cold in Manhattan and other unfortunate
places.
Two drawbridges connect us to Sarasota, and every hour or so a tall-masted boat sails through while cars wait. For the most part, we’re a peaceable
community. So peaceable that only one sworn Sarasota County deputy is assigned to handle our crimes—sworn meaning carrying a gun. Otherwise, for
things like lost bikes or squabbles over who’s responsible for the damage done by a fallen tree limb, unsworn officers of the sheriff’s Community Policing
unit keep us on the straight and narrow.
Midnight Pass Road runs the length of the island, with condos and tourist hotels sharing space with private walled estates, and narrow lanes twisting off
to residential areas. We have fifty miles of waterways inside the key, so most of our streets are as meandering as the canals they follow. Our sunsets are
the most spectacular in the world, our trees are full of songbirds, our shorelines are busy with stick-legged waterbirds, and our waters are inhabited not
just by fish but also by playful dolphins and gentle manatees. I’ve never lived anywhere else, and I never will. I can’t imagine why anyone would.
n the key, you live either on the Gulf side or the bay side of Midnight Pass Road. Big Bubba lived at the south end, on the bay side, in a quiet,
secluded residential area too old to have a formal name. A swath of nature preserve separated the private homes from a plush resort hotel on the bay.
Big Bubba’s human was Reba Chandler. She had recently retired from teaching psychology at New College and was on a boat gliding down some
river in the south of France. I had known Reba and Big Bubba since I was in high school, when Reba had trusted me to take care of Big Bubba while she
was away on vacations. Back then, it had been a teenager’s way to make easy money. Now it was my profession. Funny how life loops back on itself like
that.
Like most of the houses in Reba’s old-Florida enclave, hers was at the end of a shelled driveway with a thick wall of palms and sea grape screening it
from the street. Reba called it her “bird house” because it had been built when people planned ahead for flooding, so it stood on tall stilty legs. Most
people who have houses of that era have enclosed the lower part, but Reba had left hers as it was originally, with ferns growing under the house and a
flight of stairs to a narrow railed porch. Built of cypress, the house had weathered silvery gray. Hurricane shutters that had begun life a deep turquoise had
become pale aqua over the years, giving the house the look of a charming woman who had become more lovely as she aged.
hen I pulled up to the house, my Bronco’s tires made loud scrunching noises on the shell, a sound that Big Bubba must have recognized.
From his covered cage, he hollered, “Hello, there! Hello, there! Did you miss me?”
I parked in the driveway and opened the back door to get his cage. “We’re home, Big Bubba.”
He made aaawking sounds and yelled “Did you miss me?” I grinned because that was what Reba had always said to him when she came home from
school.
I carried him up the steps and unlocked the front door. Ordinarily, Big Bubba lives in a large cage on the screened lanai, but to protect him from the red
tide invasion, I took him to his smaller cage in the glassed-in sunroom. African Greys are temperamental birds. When they’re upset they can take a goodsized
chunk out of your finger, so I placed the travel cage so Big Bubba could hop from one cage to the other by himself. Back in familiar territory, he
marched back and forth on a wooden perch, bobbing his head and giving me the one-eyed bird glare while I put out fresh seed and water for him.
Congo African Greys are the most talkative and intelligent of all parrots, and they’re strikingly beautiful. With gleaming gray feathers, they sport white
rings around their eyes that look like spectacles, and they have jaunty red feathers partially hidden under their tail feathers. Like all intelligent creatures,
they bore easily. If they spend too much time without something to entertain them, they’re liable to become self-destructive and pull out their tail feathers.
People who take on African Greys as companions have to be smart and inventive or they’ll end up with naked birds.
Big Bubba said, “Did you miss me?”
I said, “I counted every minute we were apart.”
He laughed, bobbing his head to the rhythm of his own he-he-he sound.
I said, “It’s not funny. You’re a real heartbreaker.”
Reba stored Big Bubba’s seeds in glass jars lined up on a wide wooden table next to his cage. While I exchanged witty repartee with a parrot, I poured
fresh seed from the jars into his cups. Then I cleaned the sides of the jars holding the seeds. I also cleaned the table the jars sat on. I like to keep things
tidy.
I tossed the paper towels I’d used for cleaning in the wastebasket. I said, “I’m going now, Big Bubba. I’ll see you this afternoon.”
He said, “Sack him! Sack him! Get that man!”
Big Bubba was a great talker, but not so hot as a conversationalist.
His TV set was on the table with the jars of seed, and I bent to turn on his favorite cop show. Big Bubba was crazy about shows where police chase
killers through the streets and knock over fruit stands. I didn’t know if it was the fast cars or the flying fruit that excited him, but he couldn’t get enough of
them.
Before I turned the set on, I heard a sound behind me and jerked upright. Three young men stood shoulder to shoulder in a narrow shaft of sunlight
streaming through the windows.
I may have made a small shriek, I’m not sure. I’m strong and I know how to defend myself, but there were three of them and only one of me.
They looked to be around senior high school age, and they were almost comical in their studied scariness. Eyelids at half-mast, lips twisted in identical
pouty sneers, hair so messy it might have hidden spiders. They would have looked even scarier if their baggy jeans hadn’t been belted so low that their
underwear ballooned around their hips.
One of them, the tallest, oldest, and meanest-looking, said, “We’re looking for Jaz.”
Somehow I wasn’t surprised at the coincidence of hearing the name of the girl from the vet’s office. People with strong personalities seem to turn up all
over the place, either in person or in reference, and Jaz certainly had a strong personality. I also wasn’t surprised that she knew these young men. She
had the combination of innocent tenderness and hard-shelled toughness that would make her fall for street-gang swagger.
I swallowed a large lump that had formed in my throat, and tried to think of something within reach that I could use as a weapon.
I said, “I don’t know anybody named Jaz.”
Three pairs of grudge-filled eyes stared at me. For a moment, nobody said anything, and I almost thought they might leave.
Then the big one that I had decided was their leader said, “Don’t fuck with us, lady.”
I took a half step backward, and in a high voice that I hoped sounded like a clueless dimwit, I said, “Is Jaz somebody you know from school?”
One of the boys tittered, and the big one scowled at him. “We ask the questions, you answer. Understand? Now get Jaz out here.”
The middle boy, whose jeans hung so low the crotch dangled between his knees, said, “We won’t hurt her, ma’am.”
The big one said, “Shut up, Paulie.”
I traced an X across my chest with my finger. “I swear to God, I have never met anybody named Jaz. These houses all look alike, you probably just got
the wrong address.”
The director in my brain said, That’s good. Don’t act like this is a break-in, act like it’s a normal drop-in by friends. If they rush you, grab a jar of
birdseed and bash it on one of their heads.
Big Bubba took that moment to decide he was being ignored. “Helloooo,” he hollered, “did you miss me?”
The most sullen of the three stretched his arm forward with a switchblade knife making a silver extension of his hand.
The boy called Paulie said, “C’mon, don’t do that.”
I took another half step backward. With my heart pounding like a jackhammer, I flashed all my teeth and tried to sound perky.
“He’s an African Grey. He sounds like he knows what he’s saying, but he’s just imitating sounds he’s heard.”
The boy with the knife said, “You got that bird in Africa?”
I said, “He’s from Africa, but I didn’t go there and get him.”
As if he’d had a sudden epiphany, Paulie, the middle boy, shuffled to the table where Big Bubba’s food was arranged. He had to hold his pants up with
one hand to keep them from falling. He picked up a glass jar of sunflower seeds and studied it. Probably one of the few things he’d ever studied.
He said, “This is for birds, ain’t it? I always knew this stuff was for birds. Man, my sister eats this stuff!”
The one with the knife said, “I seen a show one time where people from Africa were squeezed in the bottom of a ship, all chained together. Man, that
was bad.”
The tall one looked as if he’d like to bang their heads together. He said, “That bird wasn’t on no slave ship, stupid.”
Paulie set the jar of seed back on the table. The jar now had gummy-looking smudges on it, which made me want to snatch the paper towels from the
trash and make the kid clean it.
I took another half step backward and wished I had pepper spray with me.
Big Bubba hollered, “Get that man! Get that man!”
I said, “He watches a lot of football games.”
“Hello,” yelled Big Bubba. “Hello! Hello! Did you miss me? Touchdown!”
The boy with the knife clicked it closed and jutted his jaws forward. “I’d like to have me a bird like that.”
The big one said, “Dickhead! How you gone travel with a bird that talks? You need any more attention than you already got?”
I guess that’s why he was the leader, he was the one who thought ahead. He gave me a long look, most likely wondering how long it would take me to
dial the police if they left me conscious.
To the dickhead, I said, “You might like a parakeet. They talk too. But if you get one, be sure it’s a male because female parakeets don’t talk. Not like in
the human world, huh?”
Three sets of vacant eyes swung toward me. I smiled. Broadly. Inviting them to share my humor. Only Paulie smiled back. I’d forgotten that criminals are
too stupid to have a sense of humor.
In a woman’s high treble, Big Bubba crooned, “I’ll be loving yoooo . . . alwaaaaays.” He sounded like he meant it.
Maybe it was because I was doing an Academy Award job of acting like a dithery blonde. Or maybe it was because Big Bubba was making them
nervous. Or maybe they were just apprentice thugs who could still lose their cool.
Whatever the reason, the tall one said, “We’re outta here.”
Within seconds, all three had melted out the door and disappeared.
I waited, straining to hear my Bronco’s motor turning over from a hood’s hot-wire, but the only sound was my own heartbeat.
Dry mouthed, I took out my phone and dialed 911.
Deputy Jesse Morgan was at Big Bubba’s house in less than five minutes, crisp and manly in his dark green uniform, his belt bristling with all the items
that law enforcement officers keep handy. Morgan is a sworn deputy, and the fact that he answered the call meant the sheriff’s office took the incident
seriously.
Morgan and I knew each other from some other unpleasant incidents. When I opened the door he didn’t speak my name, just tilted his firm chin a
fraction in greeting. Maybe he thought saying my name would bring him bad luck.
“You called about a break-in?”
From his cage in the sunroom, Big Bubba shouted, “Hold it! Hold it! Hold it!”
I said, “That’s a parrot.”
Morgan held his pen poised above his notebook and waited.
I said, “It was three boys, Caucasian, late teens, all in baggy pants with their underwear showing. They just walked in on me.”
“Just now?”
“Five or ten minutes ago. I called as soon as they left. One of them had an automatic knife.”
“They threaten you?”
“Not exactly. He just flicked the knife open to let me know he had it.”
Saying the word flicked made me tense a little bit, sort of preparing myself to tell the part I dreaded.
“They said they were looking for a girl named Jaz. They seemed to think she lived here.”
He looked up from his notepad. “You spell that J-A-Z-Z, like the music?”
“I guess so. I don’t really know.”
“You know this girl?”
“No, but I saw her this morning at Dr. Layton’s office. I was there getting Big Bubba—he’s the parrot—and this girl was there with a man. She seemed
like a good kid. They had a rabbit the man had run over, but Dr. Layton couldn’t save him.”
“The rabbit.”
“Yeah. The man claimed he was Jaz’s stepfather. Only he called her Rosemary.”
He raised an eyebrow and studied me for a moment. “Sounds like you didn’t believe him.”
I wasn’t going there. “How would I know? I never saw them before.”
“Except at the vet’s.”
“Except there.”
His face didn’t give away a hint of whatever he was thinking.
He said, “You’re taking care of this parrot?”
“Yeah, for Reba Chandler. I come here twice a day. I had to leave him at the vet’s overnight, but he’s okay. He’s been having a little reaction to the red
tide.”
“Who hasn’t? You have any idea why they came here looking for Jax?”
“Jaz. It’s Jaz. I guess they just got the houses mixed up. She seemed like a nice kid.”
I knew I was repeating myself, but for some reason I didn’t want Morgan to think badly of Jaz just because some thugs were asking about her.
He said, “Jaz doesn’t know Miss Chandler?”
I gave him the look you give people who’ve asked a really dumb question, and then I realized it wasn’t such a dumb question after all. The fact that I
didn’t know Jaz didn’t mean Reba Chandler didn’t know her. Maybe she did. If Jaz lived in the neighborhood, it would be like Reba to befriend her. Except
I didn’t believe she lived in the neighborhood.
I said, “Maybe I haven’t made it clear those guys were scary.”
“Anything more specific that might identify them?”
“One of them was named Paulie.”
I clapped my hand to my forehead like somebody remembering they could have had a V8. “Oh, I forgot! The one named Paulie picked up a jar of
birdseed. It would have prints on it.”
Morgan stopped writing and followed me to the sunroom. He and Big Bubba gave each other the once-over while I scurried to the kitchen to get one of
Reba’s canvas grocery bags. Back in the sunroom, Morgan covered the jar’s metal lid with a paper towel and carefully transferred the jar to the bag.
Paulie’s latent prints would be lifted from the jar and run through IAFIS for a match. If the kid had ever been arrested by city, county, state, or federal law
enforcement officers, his prints would be in the Interstate Identification Index of IAFIS.
I said, “Another thing, one of them said something about traveling.”
“What’d he say?”
“He said, ‘Dickhead, how you gone travel with a bird that talks?’ See, one of the guys said he’d like to have a bird like Big Bubba, and this one, I think
he was the leader, said, ‘How you gone travel with a bird that talks?’ ”
Morgan picked up the canvas bag by its handles. “You know how to get in touch with Miss Chandler?”
I shook my head. “She’s in the south of France on a boat that stops at four-star restaurants.”
Reba had left me the number of the cruise line that I could call in an emergency, but I wasn’t about to disturb her vacation just because some teenage
hoods had come in her house while I was there.
Morgan looked as if he knew I could call Reba if I had to, but he didn’t press it. As he went out the front door, he said, “We’ll keep a closer watch on the
area.”
I nodded, knowing full well that all the trees and shrubbery on the street did a good job of hiding a lot of innocent behavior. It would hide criminal
behavior too.
I gave Big Bubba some sliced banana in case he’d got upset listening to me and Deputy Morgan. Then I turned on his TV and went back down the
steps to the Bronco. As I drove down the lane, I saw a pale form through the fronds of an areca palm. I stopped and looked, and for a heartbeat I thought I
saw Jaz’s face watching me. If it was her, she was instantly swallowed up by green trees and hanging vines.
I thought for a minute, then drove a few lanes over to Hetty Soames’s house. If Jaz was mixed up with those young toughs who’d come into Reba’s
house, Hetty needed to know about it before she got involved with the girl.
L
3
ike Reba’s house, Hetty’s was hidden behind trees and foliage, but it wasn’t wooden or built tall on stilts. Instead, it was pale pink stucco and sat low
under oaks and pines. I followed a side path to the lanai, where Hetty and Ben were playing fetch-the-ball. Racing back and forth with puppy glee, Ben
thought he was just having fun, but Hetty was gently training him to return to the same spot each time he brought the ball to her. In a few weeks, he would
know to touch her leg with the ball and wait for her to take it.
Hetty’s cat, Winston, sat in a cane chair calmly grooming his white socks. A gray mixed shorthair with a white ruff and Cleopatra eyes, Winston
surveyed the world and all its inhabitants with the patient tolerance of the Dalai Lama. Winston could have worn a saffron toga and still keep his dignity.
Pups raised to be service dogs are introduced to just about every situation under the sun. In addition to the regular places that all dogs go, service dogs
in training go to church, to movies, and to restaurants. They learn to live serenely with other pets and children. They learn to keep their cool no matter what
happens, so that when they are eventually teamed with a person who needs them to be their eyes or ears, they’re unflappable. Ben hadn’t learned that yet.
When he saw me, he forgot all about the ball game and charged over to check me out.
Hetty followed him and knelt beside him to keep him from jumping on me.
She said, “I’ll bet I know why you’re here. You’re concerned about Jaz, aren’t you?”
I said, “I’ve just been at Reba Chandler’s house, and some young toughs came in looking for her.”
With one hand on Ben’s neck, Hetty looked sharply at me. “Did they hurt you?”
“No, but they were scary. I called nine-one-one and a deputy came and got the information. He said they would keep extra watch on this area, but I
wanted you to know about it.”
Leading Ben, Hetty went back to her chair. “You think those boys are friends of hers?”
I nudged Winston to one side of his chair and sat down beside him. I scratched the spot between his shoulders, the acnestis that animals can’t scratch
by themselves, and he looked up at me and smiled.
I said, “They asked for her by name, so she must know them. And another thing: When I was leaving Reba’s house, I think I saw Jaz hiding in the
shrubbery.”
Hetty nodded, her eyes clouded with worry. “She lives nearby.”
“You got her address?”
“No, but she said she was close enough to walk here. She’s coming tomorrow morning.”
Winston stretched his head back so I could scratch his neck. He did it with great poise. I wish I were more like Winston.
Hetty said, “Jaz seems like such a sensitive girl. Why would she be friends with boys like that?”
“Sensitive girls can be dumb as anybody else.”
“I wouldn’t call it dumb. She’s just young.”
I couldn’t argue with that. Even under the best of circumstances, adolescence is a god-awful age—too young to have learned from experience but old
enough to act on impulsive decisions. No kid is truly immune to taking a wrong turn, and only the lucky ones who go wrong get a helping hand. From the
look of her, I didn’t think Jaz had had an easy life, and I doubted she’d had many helping hands.
I moved my scratching fingers to the top of Winston’s head.
I said, “Do you really believe she and her stepfather live in this neighborhood?”
“Not really.”
Neither did I. Except for old-timers like Reba and Hetty who had bought before prices skyrocketed, most of the residents in that exclusive tangle of
lanes and canals were modestly rich. Hetty and I both knew that rich girls don’t have Jaz’s pissed-off fear, and rich men don’t wear shiny polyester suits
like Jaz’s stepfather.
Hetty said, “Tourists?”
“Maybe.”
When you live in a resort area, you get used to a river of strangers flowing through. But if Jaz was a tourist, why had those young men come to Reba’s
house looking for her?
Winston decided he’d allowed me to scratch him long enough and bounded to the floor. For a moment, he and Ben touched noses in a kind of neutral
acknowledgment of each other’s presence. Then Winston leaped into Hetty’s lap and Ben trotted away to see if the ball still needed to be picked up.
Heads of warring nations could learn a lot about how to achieve lasting peace by watching dogs and cats who live in the same house.
I said, “I’ll stop by tomorrow after I leave Reba’s house.”
Hetty’s lips tightened, and I knew she was annoyed that I thought she needed help. Independent as she is, though, Hetty’s also a realist, and she didn’t
argue.
With my stomach sending urgent reminders that it was time for breakfast, I drove through the ramble of lanes from Hetty’s house. I peered into the
foliage for a sign of Jaz, but I didn’t see her.
The Village Diner is in the part of Siesta Key that the locals call “the village,” meaning the bulgy part of the key toward the north end. The Chamber of
Commerce and the post office are located there. Restaurants and real estate offices share space with trendy boutiques, and shops sell touristy T-shirts
and giant seashells that people will be embarrassed they bought when they get back home. You have to drive carefully in the village because sunburned
tourists in skimpy swimsuits and straw hats are apt to step into the street without looking. They’re on their way to Siesta Beach, and either the negative
ions of the seaside make them temporarily goofy or they’re blinded by the sun. Being compassionate people, we wouldn’t run them down even if they
were locals, but we probably wouldn’t be quite so patient if it weren’t for the fact that our entire economy depends on them.
At the Village Diner, Tanisha, the cook, always starts my breakfast the minute she sees me come in the door. Judy, the waitress, has my first mug of
coffee poured and waiting for me by the time I get to my usual booth. That’s how much of a regular I am.
Judy is tall and lanky, with pecan-colored eyes and a sprinkle of freckles over a pointed nose. She and I have never met anyplace except the diner, but I
know everything there is to know about all the no-good men who’ve disappointed her, and she knows about Todd and Christy and how crazy I went when I
lost them.
At my booth, I dropped my backpack on the seat and took a few deep glugs of the coffee that was waiting. Tanisha stuck her wide black face through
the pass-through from the kitchen and waved to me so vigorously her cheeks shook. Tanisha’s another friend I only see at the diner.
A second before Judy materialized with my breakfast, Lieutenant Guidry of the Sarasota County Homicide Investigative Unit tapped me on the shoulder
and slid into the seat opposite me. As usual, my heart did a little tap dance when I saw him. Guidry is fortyish, with eternally bronzed skin, steady gray
eyes, short-cropped dark hair showing a little silver at the temples, a beaky nose, and a firm mouth. Laugh lines at the corners of his eyes and lips. Nice
lips. Those lips have kissed mine a couple of times and I can attest that Guidry is one fine kisser. Oh, yes, he is.
Guidry and I had a kind of on-and-off sort-of relationship, meaning that every now and then some strong magnetic force sucked us together, and then
we’d pull back as if it hadn’t happened. I didn’t know why Guidry stepped back, but for me it was just flat too scary. Falling in love with another cop carried
the risk of losing him, and I wasn’t sure I could take that risk again. I wasn’t even sure I wanted to love anybody again. I’d lost too many people already. I
didn’t think I could bear losing anybody again.
On the other hand, my body didn’t seem to pay much attention to what my head wanted.
I looked across the table at him and tried not to let it show that I felt like a sixteen-year-old in the presence of the captain of the football team.
Judy plopped my plate down and splashed more coffee in my cup.
She said, “What’ll you have, sir?”
From the respectful way she spoke, nobody would have dreamed she called him the hunky detective behind his back.
“Just coffee, thanks.”
He was silent while she scooted to get a mug for him. His mouth looked as if he’d been chewing on something for a long time and wished he could spit
it out. Other than that, he looked his usual self—more like an Italian playboy than a homicide detective.
When I first met him, I’d thought he really was Italian, but he’d told me once that Italian was one of the few things he wasn’t. I’d also learned that his easy
elegance came from growing up wealthy in New Orleans. I knew his whole name too, but I’d had to prize it out of him. Everybody called him Guidry, but
when I pushed he’d admitted that his mother called him Jean-Pierre. Which made him some kind of New Orleans French. That was all I knew, other than
the fact that his father headed a big law firm in New Orleans and that his mother was a soft hearted woman. Not that I’d pried, or that I was overly curious. I
had merely asked very casually. And I would never try to get any more information because it was absolutely none of my business. None whatsoever.
After Judy brought him coffee, he said, “Tell me about the boys who accosted you this morning.”
“They didn’t exactly accost me. They came in Reba Chandler’s house and scared me.”
“The fingerprint people got a good print from the jar, but we haven’t got a report back from IAFIS yet. Deputy Morgan said one of them had a knife?”
“Switchblade. I imagine they all had them, but he was the only one who got nervous and showed it.”
Guidry pulled out his notebook and flipped some pages looking for notes, probably searching for what he’d got from Deputy Morgan.
He said, “This girl they were looking for, you didn’t hear a last name at the vet’s office?”
I shook my head. “Dr. Layton just took the dead rabbit from her. Jaz was crying, and the receptionist was calming her. They didn’t have her fill out any
forms with names and addresses.”
“Dead rabbit?”
“The man had run over a rabbit. It was wrapped in a towel, but it was dead.”
Guidry gave me the blank look he always gets when I mention animals.
I said, “Last time I looked, you were a homicide detective. I’m pretty sure you’re not investigating the death of a rabbit, so why the interest in Jaz and
those boys?”
I could see him debating whether to tell me, and if so, how much.
He said, “An elderly man was killed in his house last night. He lived alone and apparently woke up and surprised somebody in the act of burglary. There
was a tussle, and he got stabbed. One of his neighbors reported seeing three young men loitering near the house earlier in the evening. Their description
fits your guys.”
I shrugged. “Lots of young guys look like them. Half the boys on the street have baggy drawers.”
Guidry drummed his fingertips on the table. “Most of those guys showing their underwear are just high on the fumes of their own testosterone. That’s
normal stuff that kids do just to outrage adults. Robbing and killing is not normal, it’s gang behavior.”
I hated to think of gangs in our lovely part of the world. Most people think of gangs as swaggering street thugs shooting at one another, but today’s gang
member is just as likely to be the teenager next door, the one whose parents are too busy or too dumb to notice that their kid suddenly has a lot of
spending money. Gang leaders recruit kids to rob or sell drugs, relatively small-time stuff, but a lot of those kids who aren’t killed or put in prison go on to
big-time drug smuggling, big-time fraud, sometimes big-time assassinations.
I thought about the kid with the knife at Big Bubba’s house. Yes, he had been stupid enough and weak enough to be recruited by a gang. So had the
others. And they had asked for Jaz. I thought about the tattoo on Jaz’s ankle and wondered if the dagger was a gang symbol.
I said, “Guidry, that man with Jaz wore an underarm holster.”
He made a note in his little black book. “Anything else?”
“When I was leaving Big Bubba’s house, I think I saw Jaz’s face through the bushes. She and her stepfather didn’t look like they could afford that
neighborhood.”
He said, “Big Bubba?”
“He’s an African Grey. A parrot. Talks like nobody’s business.”
Guidry passed the back of his hand across his forehead as if he’d suddenly suffered a pain. Another thing he does when I talk about animals.
I said, “There’s something else. Hetty Soames offered Jaz a job helping her with a new puppy. She expects the girl at her house tomorrow morning.”
“I’ll have somebody in the area.”
I looked bleakly at him. He couldn’t have somebody from the sheriff’s department watch Hetty’s house around the clock.
He said, “Morgan said you outtalked those guys that came in on you.”
“I played dumb blonde. Not a big act.”
His mouth played with a smile. “The sisters used to warn us about smooth-talking girls like you.”
His eyes had a spark that looked like he meant it as a compliment, but I was still a bit put off. It was hard enough to wonder what his parents’ opinion of
me might be if I ever met them. Not that I ever would, but I might. I sure didn’t want to have to worry about his sisters too.
I said, “Are they much older than you?”
He frowned. “Who?”
“Your sisters.”
He laughed. “I meant the nuns at school. They were forever warning us boys about the danger of Protestant girls.”
“What about Jewish girls?”
“They didn’t think we’d ever meet any Jewish girls, and I doubt they’d ever even heard of Buddhist girls or Muslim girls. But they knew damn well there
were loose Baptist girls hiding behind every bush ready to jump out and make us get them pregnant so they could trap us.”
“Did that scare you?”
He grinned. “Scared the hell out of me.”
He stood up and dropped bills on the table. “Dixie, if you see those guys again, don’t interact with them. Stay away from them and call me. And if you
see the girl or the man, try to find out where they’re staying. I want to talk to them.”
He touched my shoulder again, letting his fingertips linger a moment longer than necessary, and left me sitting there with my hormones racing as wildly
as my imagination. Guidry always has that effect on me. The hormone part, that is. Well, the imagination part too.
Judy scooted to my side with her coffeepot in hand and an inquisitive look in her eyes. “You and your hunky detective been to bed yet?”
I glared at her. “He’s not mine, and we most certainly have not.”
“Hon, when a man looks at a woman the way he looks at you, he’s hers. And I don’t know what you’re waiting for. If you don’t use it, it’ll rust.”
I rolled my eyes and slipped out of the booth. “I’m going home.”
She grinned. “Girl, when you finally give it up, you’re liable to kill that poor man.”
I made a face and hurried away. The mortifying thing was that I was pretty sure Judy was right.
M
4
y morning schedule is practically set in concrete. I get up at 4:00 A.M., splash water on my face, brush my teeth, pull my hair into a ponytail, drag on
shorts and a sleeveless T, and jam my feet into clean Keds. By 4:15, I’m out the door, and by 4:20 I’m working my way north calling on all the dog
clients. Then I retrace my route and see to all the other pets. I spend about thirty minutes with each pet—there are usually seven or eight, ten at the most—
so with traveling time and occasional glitches to slow me down, it’s usually about ten when I’ve fed and groomed and played with the last pet. Then I head
to the Village Diner for breakfast. After I’ve convinced my stomach that it isn’t starving to death, I head home for a shower and a nap.
My apartment is above the four-slot carport that I share with my brother and his partner. They live in the two-story frame house where my brother and I
grew up with our grandparents. The house and garage apartment are at the end of a twisting lane on the Gulf side of the key, on a hiccup of sandy shore
that alternately erodes and rebuilds with shifting currents. That continual shape-shifting makes our property considerably less valuable than most Siesta
Key beachfront land and keeps our property taxes in the lower stratospheric reaches.
When my grandparents moved to the key back in the early ’50s, they ordered their frame house from the Sears, Roebuck catalog. The carport was
added later, and the apartment wasn’t built until after my brother and I moved in with them. Our father had been killed saving somebody else’s children in a
fire, and our mother had run off with another man. I say “run off” because that’s how my grandmother always described her daughter’s desertion. I doubt
that she really ran when she left. More likely, she skipped.
I was seven when my father died, and nine when my mother left. My grandfather built the garage apartment when I was about twelve. At the time, he
meant it to be guest quarters for visitors from up north. He never dreamed I would end up calling it home.
When I came around the last curve in the drive, I saw Michael and Paco under the carport by Michael’s car. Michael is my brother, two years older than
me and my best friend in all the world. A firefighter like our father, Michael is built like a Viking god. He’s strong and steady as one too, and so goodlooking
that women tend to grow faint when he crosses their line of vision. Too bad for them, because Michael’s heart belongs to Paco, who is an
undercover agent with the Special Investigative Bureau of the Sarasota County Sheriff’s Department.
As slender and dark as Michael is broad and blond, Paco also gives women hopeless fantasies of turning a gay man straight. His family is Greek-
American, but he can pass for just about any nationality, which is a strong asset in his line of work. He’s also a master at disguise, and there have been
times when our paths crossed while he was working undercover and I didn’t recognize him. Since I’ve come close to blowing a few drug busts that way,
he now gives me a secret hand signal if we meet when he’s in disguise—usually his way of telling me to back the heck off. After thirteen years as my
brother-in-love, Paco is almost as dear to me as Michael.
Michael works twenty-four/forty-eight at the firehouse, which means he’s on duty twenty-four hours, then off forty-eight. Paco doesn’t have any set
schedule, and Michael and I never question him about where or when he’s working. He wouldn’t tell us if we did, and we’re better off not knowing because
we would worry a lot more than we already do.
Michael’s twenty-four-hour duty had ended that morning at eight, and from the looks of the bags of groceries he and Paco were hauling out of his car,
he had apparently left the firehouse and hit every supermarket in Sarasota. Michael is the family cook. He’s also the firehouse cook. If it were possible,
Michael would be the world’s cook. I don’t think it’s because he loves throwing raw stuff in pots and pans and putting them over heat, I think cooking is
merely one step toward his real goal, which is to feed people. With all due respect to the miracles Jesus performed, give Michael a few fish and a little
bread, and he’d not only feed multitudes with it, he’d season it and turn it into the best dinner anybody ever ate. Plus he’d give them dessert.
When I pulled my Bronco into its spot, Michael and Paco paused with their arms full of groceries and watched me slide out of the driver’s seat.
I said, “Have I missed a hurricane warning?”
As soon as I said it, I regretted it because it’s not cute to joke about hurricanes in Florida. Especially not in the middle of hurricane season.
Michael said, “I just stocked up on staples. We were running low.”
Behind Michael’s back, Paco rolled his eyes at me because he and I are pretty sure Michael has enough staples to last at least ten years.
I leaned over his car trunk and hoisted out a bushel basket of green beans. “Yeah, I’ve been worried about our green bean supply.”
Paco grinned and headed toward the back door of their house.
Michael said, “I got those at the farmers’ market out on Fruitville. Got some sweet corn too. It’s all organic.” He got a creative light in his eyes just at the
thought of what he could do with those green beans and ears of corn.
We all moved across the sandy yard to the house’s wooden deck and into the kitchen, where Ella Fitzgerald was impatiently waiting. She ran first to
Michael for a quick cuddle and reassurance that he was going to be home for a long time, and then to Paco to get her ears ruffled. Only then did she
deign to wind around my ankles and tell me hello.
Ella is a true calico Persian mix given to me as a kitten by a woman leaving the country. If Ella had never met Michael and Paco, she would have been
happy with me, but one look at them and she swooned into their arms the same way most females dream of doing. It probably had as much to do with the
smell in their kitchen as their looks. My kitchen smelled like tea bags and bottled water. Michael’s kitchen smelled like love.
While Ella watched from her accustomed stool at the big butcher-block island in the center of the kitchen, I helped put away a few groceries so I
wouldn’t look so much like a taker instead of a giver. Then I kissed the top of Ella’s head, promised Michael I wouldn’t be late for dinner, and left them with
their organic booty.
I didn’t tell them about the young men coming in Big Bubba’s house looking for a girl named Jaz, or say anything about Hetty Soames hiring Jaz to help
her with the new puppy she was raising. For one thing, I was too tired to go into it. For another, Michael tended to get downright paranoid at the first hint of
me being involved in anything out of the ordinary. Not that I blamed him, since I’d got tangled up in some fairly bizarre situations in the last year. None of
them had been my fault, but Michael thought I was entirely too willing to stick my nose into places it had no business being stuck. That had never been
true, of course, and wasn’t true now, but I knew Michael wouldn’t see it that way.
It was strictly to spare him unnecessary worry that I kept quiet about everything that had happened that morning. I thought it was very thoughtful of me.
A long covered porch runs the length of my apartment, with two ceiling fans to stir the air, and a hammock slung in one corner for daydreaming. There’s
a glass-topped ice cream table and two chairs next to the porch railing where I can have a snack and look out at waves curling onto the beach. Accordionpleated
metal hurricane shutters cover french doors and double as security bars. As I climbed the stairs, I punched the remote that raises the shutters, and
yawned while the shutters folded themselves into the overhead soffit.
Pushing through the french doors, I stepped into my minuscule living room where my grandmother’s green flower-patterned love seat keeps company
with a matching club chair. A one-person eating bar separates the living room from a narrow galley kitchen, and a window above the sink looks out at
trees behind the apartment. To the left of the living room, my bedroom is barely big enough for a single bed and a slim chest of drawers that hold
photographs of Todd and Christy. An air-conditioning unit is set high on the wall under narrow rectangles of glass to let in light.
I flipped the switch to start the AC and headed down the short hallway to my cramped bathroom, pausing at an alcove in the hall to shed my Keds and
cat-hairy clothes and toss them in the stacked washer/dryer. I hate wearing sweaty shoes, so I buy Keds the way Michael buys organic produce. I always
have several dry pairs waiting, some damp just-washed pairs on a rack above the washer, and some in the washer.
Mexican tile was cool under my bare feet as I padded into the bathroom and turned on the shower. As soon as the fine spray of warm water hit me, I
went into a blissful zonked-out state. I must have had a previous lifetime when water was scarce, because every time I’m in a warm shower all my pores
start singing hymns of thanksgiving. After air, I think water is God’s best gift to us.
When I was squeaky clean, I slicked back my wet hair, pulled on a terry cloth robe, and fell onto my night-rumpled bed to sleep for a couple of hours. I
woke up dry mouthed and a little chilled from sleeping under the AC, so I padded barefoot to the kitchen and made myself a cup of tea. Carrying it in one
hand, I flipped on the CD player on the way to my office-closet and let its sly little robot shuffle through a stack of music and surprise me. Smart robot that it
is, it selected Billie Holiday’s voice to wrap around me while I took care of the business part of pet sitting.
My office-closet is the only expansive feature of my apartment. I don’t know why my grandfather made it so big, but it’s a good thing he did. It’s square,
with two entries. One wall has shelves for my shorts and Ts and the other wall has a desk where I take care of pet-sitting business. A floor-to-ceiling mirror
on the wall between the two entry doors magnifies the light and makes the room look even bigger than it is. My meager collection of dresses and skirts
hang on the back wall. I don’t dress up much.
My answering machine had a few calls to return, mostly regular clients letting me know when they would need me to take care of their pets, and I made
quick work of calling them. Then I got out my big record-keeping book that I always have with me when I make client calls and transferred notes to
individual client cards. I take my pet-sitting duties as seriously as I took being a deputy. In some ways, they require the same skills. You have to be smart
enough to tell the difference between a situation that requires force and one that requires diplomacy, you have to be quick to respond to unexpected
situations, and you have to be patient if somebody upchucks on you.
My clients like the fact that I’ve been a law enforcement officer. Knowing that I can use a gun or disarm a criminal makes them feel more confident about
letting me come in their houses while they’re gone. I don’t know how they feel about my crazy time after Todd and Christy were killed. If they know about it,
they’re all kind enough not to mention it.
When I finished with my record keeping, I got dressed and took a banana out to the porch and ate it while I looked at distant sailboats on the Gulf and
thought about how glad I was that I wasn’t in one. The thing about water and me is that I love having it fall on me in a warm shower and I love looking out at
the Gulf’s waves and frothy surf, but I’m not crazy about getting in the Gulf. Not in the flesh or in a boat. The Gulf is too big and powerful for me to control,
and that makes me uneasy. Not that I’m a control freak or anything. But if I were given a choice between shooting off into outer space or diving to the
bottom of an ocean, I’d take space. At least you can see where you’re going in space, and it’s damn dark at the bottom of the ocean. Besides that,
freakish critters live down there, pale things that never see the sun and have weird mouths shaped like flowers. I figure space aliens are similar to us, but
sea creatures are bound to be slimy and cold.
Having reminded myself of my deep respect for but aversion to deep water, I went back inside and got my backpack and car keys. It was time to make
my afternoon rounds.
Later, I would look back on that afternoon and marvel at how innocent I’d been. While I dithered about scary deep-sea creatures I would never meet,
scarier beings were on land and headed my way.
S
5
ummer on the key is so hot that going outside between ten in the morning and four in the afternoon is somewhat like crawling inside a pizza oven. By
August, the only people who don’t illustrate the meaning of “redneck” are shut-ins or nighttime workers who sleep during the day. The only thing that
keeps the key from spontaneously combusting in August are the occasional rain showers which, along with sending people running from tongues of
lightning, soak the vegetation and cause steam to rise from the ground. August in Florida is God’s way of reminding us who’s in charge.
Maybe we’re just perverse, but the locals love the heat. We use it to keep visitors away. When out-of-state relatives phone to say they’re thinking of
coming to see us, we say, “Oh, gosh, you don’t want to come now! Oooowee, you can’t imagine the heat! It’s just absolutely miserable, not to mention the
sand fleas and mosquitoes. Wait until October or November when it’s cooler.”
If we’re convincing enough, they’ll stay away. We already have red necks from the sun and white eyes from fear of hurricanes. Add company to
entertain, and it’s just too much.
The sky was clear that afternoon, and heat was rising from the ground in visible shimmering waves. Even cats who never left their air-conditioned
homes moved more slowly, as if they felt the need to conserve energy. None of my charges had peed on a houseplant or shredded paper into confetti for
me to pick up. When I left them, every pet’s tail was raised in approval. To a pet sitter, a raised tail means “Brava! Encore!” I try to be modest about those
raised tails, but I’m secretly proud.
On the way to Big Bubba’s house, I saw Hetty and Ben on the sidewalk chatting with a man and his Beagle. I tapped my horn and waved, and Hetty
gave me a big grin. Ben looked hard at me as if he were memorizing my car. Service dogs are so smart, he might have been.
At Big Bubba’s house, sounds of gunshots, sirens, and screaming women blared from his TV, and he was pecking the heck out of a silver bell hanging
in his cage. I turned off the TV and looked anxiously at him, hoping he wasn’t freaking out from being left alone for so many hours. African Greys react to
living behind bars the same way humans do. Leave them in solitary confinement too long and they become self-destructive.
Cocking his head to give me that weird one-eyed stare that birds do, he said, “Did you miss me?”
“Desperately. Did you miss me?”
“Al-waaaaays! Al-waaaaays!”
I swear sometimes Big Bubba truly seems to be carrying on a conversation, not just repeating sounds he’s heard.
I said, “Your mom probably misses you too. She’s in France, you know, eating at four-star restaurants.”
He didn’t answer, but tilted his head to one side as if he was considering how much a woman would miss him while cruising down a river in the south of
France and eating at four-star restaurants.
I took him out of his cage and put him on the floor. He waddled around peering behind the furniture like a suspicious hotel detective looking for
unregistered guests. To replace the sunflower seed I’d sent off with Deputy Morgan, I filled a clean jar with seed from a big bag in Reba’s pantry. Then I
scraped poop off Big Bubba’s perches, disposed of all the seed hulls and knobs of dried fruit on his cage floor, put down fresh newspaper carpet,
washed his food and water dishes, and gave him fresh seeds and fruit. I knew he would immediately set to work throwing nuts and apple slices into his
water dish to make it yucky, but I gave him clean water anyway because that’s how I like it.
Until he was free of the allergy to red tide, I didn’t want him to do any strenuous exercise, but I made him do about three minutes of wing flapping. That
entailed having him sit on my arm while I moved it rapidly up and down, which meant that I did three minutes of wing flapping too. Then I chased him
around the house until I was winded and he was squawking in parrot hilarity.
A pet sitter’s life is just one exciting moment after another.
Pet birds need at least twelve hours of dark silent sleep every night, so the last thing I did was tell him good night and drape his cage with a lightweight
dark cover. With him tucked in, I went back down the front steps to the Bronco. I looked, but I didn’t see any ghostly faces peering at me through the dark
trees. Maybe Jaz had left town. Maybe she wouldn’t show up at Hetty’s the next day. Maybe those scary boys had left town too.
That’s what I told myself. If I’d been able to, I would have thrown a light cover over myself like Big Bubba’s so I wouldn’t have to see reality.
When I got home, the sun was a golden balloon lightly bouncing on the distant horizon, sending a glittering path across the tops of waves to the shore.
Michael and Paco stood on the sand watching it, Michael with his arm slung loosely over Paco’s shoulder. I scurried over and stood on his other side so
he could hug me too, and we all waited in awed silence while the sun did its daily flirtation with the sea. Like a coy virgin, it hovered just out of reach,
seeming at times to pull upward a bit and then dip slightly toward the lusting sea. Behind it, translucent bands of cerise and violet danced with streaks of
turquoise and sparkling yellow. Just when it seemed the sun would hold itself aloof forever, it abruptly changed its mind and fell into the sea’s open arms.
Within seconds, it was lost in a watery embrace, and all that was left were rainbow sighs of contentment.
Michael gave me and Paco a little squeeze and we all turned and trooped toward the wooden deck. Michael’s prized steel cooker was smoking and all
the extra little gizmos for baking and boiling things were occupied with good-smelling somethings.
Next to Paco and me, Michael loves that grill beyond anything else in the world. He can get rhapsodic pointing out its little side extensions on which you
can cook something in a pan—boil potatoes, maybe—while the stuff on the rack grills. And the warming oven below the grill seems miraculous to him. He
just loves to warm dinner rolls down there and never fails to mention when he does. Men and outdoor cookers are like men and cars, a mysterious love
affair women will never understand.
Michael said, “Ten minutes, tops.”
I said, “Gotcha,” and raced up my stairs two at a time, punching the remote to raise the shutters as I went.
If there’s ever a reality TV show that gives prizes for the fastest shower takers, I’ll enter that sucker and win. The trick is to peel off clothes on the way so
you’re already naked when you turn on the water. A squirt of liquid soap on a sponge, a slick up one side and down the other, turn around to rinse all
areas, and that’s it. Two minutes tops. Then a quick foot dry to keep from sliding on tile, a fast comb through wet hair and a slick of lip gloss—another two
minutes—before a gallop to the closet for fresh clothes while towel-patting exposed damp skin. In nanoseconds I was stepping into clean underwear and
pulling on cool white baggy pants and a loose top. No shoes, but I took a second to slide a stretchy coral bracelet on my wrist.
I left the shutters up and clattered down the stairs to the deck where the table was already set for three, with a shallow bowl of gazpacho on each plate.
Paco was pouring chilled white wine into two glasses and iced tea into a third. The glass of tea meant Paco would be leaving later on some undercover
assignment. I didn’t comment on it. He’s safer if we know nothing about his work, but it’s impossible not to know some things.
Paco gave me a quick once-over the way men do and nodded in silent approval. Cats and dogs wave their tails to applaud, men nod and twitch their
eyebrows.
From his beloved grill, Michael said, “Good timing, Dixie. Heat’s just right.”
I went over to a redwood chaise where Ella Fitzgerald was surveying the scene. She wore a kitty harness with a long thin leash attached to one of the
chaise legs, and she gave me a glum look when I stooped to kiss the top of her head. Paco had bought the harness and leash after Ella had bounded into
the woods behind the house and he’d spent several anxious hours looking for her.
Paco said, “The princess is pouting.”
I said, “She’d pout a lot more if a big critter got her in the woods.”
Michael said, “We’ll eat the gazpacho while dinner cooks.”
Like an artist setting paint on a canvas, he laid thick tuna steaks on the grill, then gave us the kind of beatific smile that only a great chef bestows when
everything is going exactly the way he planned.
Paco and I didn’t need encouragement. We hurried to slide into our seats and had our spoons ready by the time Michael joined us. Michael’s gazpacho
is absolutely the best in the world, with everything fresh from the farmers’ market and all the flavors blending like an orchestral creation. For a few minutes,
the only sounds were the clicks of our spoons against the bowls and my soft whimpers of pleasure. There had been a time when I made those same
noises when I made love. But that had been a long time ago.
Paco said, “Gazpacho is what, Spanish?”
Michael did a facial shrug with his eyebrows. “I guess. Or Portugal. Someplace like that.”
Paco said, “Did you ever think how different cultures get connected through food? We’re having gazpacho, somebody in France is eating nachos right
now, some Russian is eating pizza. That’s pretty cool.”
Michael said, “Sauerbraten with potato pancakes. Some red cabbage.” He had obviously lost track of the idea and was imagining menus.
Paco said, “I’ve always had a fantasy of going to Greece and meeting distant relatives. We’d sit and talk and they’d feed me roast lamb and stuffed
grape leaves and kibbe, and I’d come home feeling as if my boundaries had been extended.”
I said, “I don’t think kibbe is Greek. It’s Lebanese.”
Michael said, “You hungry for lamb? Why didn’t you say so? I’ll make you some.”
Paco grinned. “No, doofus, that’s not what I meant. I’m just talking about how food connects us to thousands of relatives we’ve never met. They’re all
over the world, but we eat the same food they eat. You have relatives in Norway, probably in England too, or God knows where, and I probably have
Cypriot cousins. If one of my Greek ancestors married an Irish woman and moved to Russia, I may have Greek-Irish-Russian relatives. Heck, we’re
probably all related to one another in some way.”
We all fell silent at the enormity of the idea. My gosh, everybody in the world could be distant relatives of one another. Boy, talk about a family tree!
When the gazpacho was all gone, Paco gathered the bowls while Michael checked the tuna steaks and peered at the stuff on the grill’s side cookers. I
didn’t do diddly, just sat there like royalty and let two gorgeous men wait on me.
The tuna was cooked to perfection, and the side stuff turned out to be some of the corn and green beans Michael had got that morning. There was also
mango-and-papaya salsa for the tuna. All in all, a dinner fit for royalty.
We chatted idly while we ate, but nothing important. Michael said the latest news report said the red tide had drifted away from us, so the fumes weren’t
a problem anymore. I said Big Bubba would be happy about that because he preferred his outdoor cage. Paco asked who Big Bubba was, so I told him
about Reba being in France eating at four-star restaurants. We all agreed that four-star or not, she probably wasn’t getting food as good as what we were
eating.
They didn’t ask me if I’d had any scary encounters with strangers, and they probably didn’t even wonder if I had. I mean, why would they? I didn’t ask
Paco why he’d been home all day, or when he would be on duty again, but I did wonder. Loving people means you let them have certain secrets they don’t
share with you.
After dinner, Michael and I cleared the table while Paco took a little plate of tuna to Ella. She was still sulking, so he had to sweet-talk her until she
condescended to hop from the chaise to the deck floor and eat his peace offering. Michael and I grinned at each other because Paco deals with the
dregs of humanity without showing a shred of sympathy, but guilt at cramping Ella’s style with a leash had reduced him to pleading with her to eat twentydollar-
a-pound tuna.
In the kitchen, I loaded the dishwasher and helped Michael stow left overs in the refrigerator. Then I hugged him good night and headed for bed, with a
detour to tell Paco and Ella good night. Paco had stretched out on the chaise and Ella was sitting on his chest purring at him, so I guess she’d forgiven
him for trying to keep her safe.
Upstairs, I lowered the storm shutters, checked phone messages, brushed my teeth, and shed my clothes. By nine o’clock, I was in bed with a book. By
ten o’clock, I’d turned out the lights and was asleep. When you get up at four A.M., bedtime comes early.
In my sleep, I heard the subdued purring sound of Paco’s Harley, and knew that he was headed for some undercover job.
It was after one when I woke to the sound of somebody banging on the hurricane shutters and screaming my name. I shot out of bed in a momentary
panic. It took a few seconds to get my bearings and recognize the voice hysterically shouting my name.
T
6
he thing about going crazy, really, truly crazy with no more pretending that you’re even a little bit sane, is that once you’ve been there you don’t have to
wonder anymore what it’s like. Crazy is a dark ugly town. Stay there long enough and you’ll learn all the roads, all the houses and gas stations, until you
figure out that crazy is just an alternate territory. You can live there if you want to, or you can leave. It’s your choice. There’s a kind of strength in that, a
weird kind of power that people who’ve never gone crazy don’t know about. When you leave crazy and come back to normal, you feel a special closeness
to people who were loyal to you while you were there—like the woman calling my name.
Sleep dazed, I grabbed a robe to cover my naked self and ran to open the door to the woman who’d been my best friend all through high school.
Maureen had been a total airhead then, but fun. Her father had abandoned her the same way my mother had abandoned me. Being the kids whose
parents hadn’t loved them enough to stay with them had drawn us together like orphaned lambs huddled away from the herd. In our senior year, Maureen
had fallen in love with a sweet guy named Harry Henry. Everybody had expected them to marry, but right after we graduated Maureen had broken Harry’s
heart by marrying a rich old man from South America.
She and I lost contact after that. I went to college for two years and then to the police academy. Maureen learned to travel in private jets and hang out
with movie stars and European princesses. By the time I married Todd, a fellow deputy, I was deep in the hard-edged world of law enforcement, and
Maureen was deep in the soft world of luxury. She sent me a baby gift when Christy was born, but we no longer saw each other.
But after Todd and Christy were killed and I fell into a bottomless pit of crazed agony, Maureen had shown up one night with a tremulous smile and a
bottle of Grey Goose. She had only come that one time, but I’d always been grateful for it. With Maureen, it hadn’t been necessary to pretend to be strong
or rational. I could be what I truly was, broken and empty and full of fury. And baring my true self had helped me find the thread that would eventually lead
me back to sanity.
Now it was Maureen screaming into the night for my help.
I ran barefoot to hit the electric control to raise the metal shutters. I saw Maureen’s feet step back a bit as the shutters folded into the soffit above the
door. Her feet were bare like mine. Even sleep stunned and addled, I knew her naked toes were an especially bad omen.
When the shutters were head-high, I opened the glass-paned french doors and Maureen hurled through. She was sobbing so hard I couldn’t make out
what she was saying, just that somebody was gone.
Clutching at me like a drowning person, she said, “You have to help me, Dixie! Please!”
I held her tightly for a few minutes and talked to her the way I talk to agitated animals who need calming. When her convulsive shuddering had calmed to
tremors, I led her to the couch and sat close beside her. She wore white gauze pajamas and carried a pouchy brown leather bag. Even without makeup
and with her brown curls in a tumble, she was still as beautiful as she’d been in high school. She also still smelled of tobacco smoke.
I said, “Mo, what’s happened?”
Wild-eyed, she choked, “They’ve taken Victor. Oh, my God, Dixie, they’ve taken Victor!”
I had to dig into my memory bank to remember that Victor was her husband’s name.
“Who? Who took him?”
She waved her hand in front of her face as if she were erasing the air. “I don’t know. Somebody who wants money. They say they’ll kill him if I don’t give
it to them.”
“When? When did they say that? How?”
“Just now, tonight. They called and told me. They want a million dollars in small bills. They want me to leave it in the gazebo tomorrow night. If I don’t,
they’ll kill Victor.”
She spoke as if I was familiar with her private little sunset-viewing house. Actually, I’d only been in it once when she’d invited me to her house for lunch.
She hadn’t been married long, and her cook—boy, had I been impressed that she had a cook!—had prepared a tasty little spread that we’d eaten in the
gazebo. Her husband had come home while I was there and spoiled it. He’d been stiff and cold and looked at me as if I were a smelly bug. I’d left in a
hurry and was never invited back.
I said, “We have to call the sheriff’s department. They know how to handle things like this.”
“No! They said if I called the police they’d kill him for sure. You have to help me, Dixie!”
It occurred to me that Maureen might think I was still a deputy.
I said, “Mo, I’m not a deputy anymore, I’m a pet sitter.”
Her eyes registered mild surprise. “You always were crazy about pets.”
Maureen never had been very interested in what other people did. In high school, that was a trait that had kept her from being nosy and gossipy. It had
also kept her from being discriminating.
I said, “Do you know anybody with a grudge against Victor?”
She gave me a round-eyed stare. “Everybody has a grudge against Victor. It’s his business. You know, all that oil-trading stuff is cutthroat. Men in that
business make enemies.”
I could tell by the way she said it that she didn’t have a clue what Victor’s business dealings were like, or even how he carried them out. Maureen was
sweet and cute, but smart would be the last adjective anybody would use to describe her.
I said, “I didn’t realize Victor was that important. To kidnappers, I mean.”
“In his own country he is. Victor Salazar is a big name there.”
It was creepy to see how quickly she trotted out his importance, as if it justified his kidnapping.
I said, “Mo, I know people in the sheriff’s department. Let me—”
“I’m not going to the cops, Dixie. I can’t take that chance. Victor says this happens all the time in South America. That’s why he keeps such a tight watch
on me. He always told me if he got kidnapped to just pay up. That’s what I’ll do too. I have to handle this myself.”
I said, “Tell me exactly how this happened. When did you last see Victor, and when did you get the call?”
She opened her bag and pulled out a pack of cigarettes, then saw the look on my face and put them back.
She said, “I saw him about three thirty this afternoon. He left to go meet some old buddies from South America. Venezuela, I think, or maybe Colombia.
Could have been Nicaragua. One of those places. He said they’d come here on vacation and they were all getting together for a five-day camping trip,
just those guys, catching up on old times, fishing, boating, you know, guy things.”
For the life of me, I couldn’t imagine Victor out in the woods camping. Or fishing. He had seemed more the type to sit in a deck chair on a megayacht
and look at the little people through narrow glasses too dark to see his eyes.
I said, “How long after he left for the camping trip did you get the phone call?”
“I don’t know, several hours. The call came after midnight. I was already asleep, but I thought it might be Victor calling so I answered. When I heard that
voice I got so scared I couldn’t breathe.”
“Tell me again what the caller said.”
“It’s still on my machine, I can play it for you, but I played it so many times I have it memorized. It was a man, and he said, ‘Mrs. Salazar, we have your
husband. If you want him returned alive, put a million dollars in small bills in a duff el bag and leave it in your gazebo at midnight tomorrow. Do not call the
police or tell anybody. We’ll be watching you, and if you talk to anybody, we will kill your husband and feed him to the sharks.’ ”
“And then what?”
She looked confused. “I guess the sharks would swim away.”
“What else did the man say?”
“That’s all. The line went dead then.”
I took a deep breath. It was now after one o’clock. Maureen had got the call, freaked out, replayed it several times, then pulled herself together and
come to me.
I said, “What do you know about the men Victor was meeting?”
She shook her head. “Not a thing. Victor never said their names, and they didn’t come to our house.”
“Did he say where he was meeting them? Was he going to leave his car someplace and go with them, or were they going to ride with him? And where
exactly were they going to camp?”
I was piling too many questions on her at once, and she waved both hands in front of her face like a besieged child. “I don’t know, Dixie! He just said
they were going to hike in the woods and do some fishing.”
“You didn’t ask where he was going?”
“Victor didn’t like to be asked questions about his private business.”
Something about that sentence caused a camera shutter to click in my brain, but I didn’t look at the photo it took. Maureen was an old friend, and my job
was to help her, not to analyze every word she spoke.
I said, “When the call came, was there a person you could talk to, or was it all a recording?”
She looked surprised. “I think it was a person.”
I didn’t want to bring up the possibility that Victor had already been killed. But I was pretty sure pros demanded proof the abducted person was still alive
before they made any money drops.
I said, “Maureen, this could all be a scam. It happens all the time in other countries. People get a call that their child or spouse has been kidnapped, and
they get so scared they give the kidnappers whatever they ask for. Then they find out there hasn’t been any kidnapping at all. This could be a hoax too.
We don’t know if the call you got was truly from kidnappers. It could have been from somebody who knew Victor was going to be gone and decided to get
an easy million dollars.”
“I think it was real, Dixie.”
“But what if it wasn’t?”
“Then I lose a million dollars and my husband comes home when his camping trip ends. Either way, I get my husband back. I’m not going to nickel and
dime when it comes to my husband’s life.”
I suppose that’s why kidnapping wealthy businessmen is so popular in certain circles. To people who don’t mind losing a million here and there, being
kidnapped probably seems no more than an inconvenience.
I said, “If they’re watching you like they said they were, they know you came here.”
She shook her head. “Nobody saw me leave. Nobody followed me.”
Maureen wouldn’t have noticed if a convoy of trucks had followed her, and the entire conversation gave me the same weariness I’d always felt in high
school when she showed me the inside of her brain. Even then, talking to her had been like zooming to the moon expecting to find life and instead finding
a For Rent sign.
I said, “Mo, not to put too fine a point to it, but I’m not crazy about being involved in something like this. If you’re not willing to go to the sheriff, I can’t help
you.”
She raised her head and looked at me with the direct gaze of a child. “If it were your husband that had been kidnapped, I’d help you.”
Heat traveled to my face and I looked down at my hands. Remembering how she’d come to me when I was so wild with grief, I felt ashamed.
I said, “Can you lay your hands on a million in cash by tomorrow?”
She shrugged. “Sure.”
She seemed surprised at the question, as if everybody had a million in cash lying around the house.
“Tell me again how they want it delivered.”
“At our gazebo. You know, down on the boat dock? I guess they’ll come get it in a boat. They said to put the money in a duff el bag.”
“What do you want me to do?”
“Just go with me. That’s all I ask. Just walk down that path with me to the gazebo. I’ll come here and pick you up and take you back to my house, and
then we’ll go together to take the money. Please, Dixie?”
Her hair had flopped over her eyebrows so that her big puppy dog eyes pleaded with me from under a mass of curls. A girlish barrette with a bright red
plastic flower on one end had come loose, and the flower dangled like a reject.
She said, “I can’t do it alone. Just the thought of that walk in the dark by myself with that money makes my knees buckle. I’d be so scared I’d faint right
there on top of the bag.”
If any other woman had said that, I would have thought she was being overly dramatic. But Maureen had never been capable of handling ordinary things
other people take for granted. In the state she was in, she would probably drop the duff el bag in the water or somehow screw the whole thing up.
Every ex–law enforcement bone in my body said we should notify the police and probably the FBI as well. But what if I was wrong? What if notifying the
police caused Victor Salazar to be killed? Victor had apparently half expected to be kidnapped for ransom someday, or at least he’d known it was a
good possibility, and he’d given Maureen instructions to pay the kidnappers and be done with it. Maybe it was smarter for Maureen to pay up and be
quiet.
The bottom line was that it wasn’t my decision to make. It was Maureen’s husband who had been kidnapped, not mine. Maureen was the one to decide
how to handle it, not me. All she wanted from me was to lend her support in doing what she had decided to do.
And over and above everything else was the fact that Maureen had been a good friend to me at the lowest point of my life.
I said, “What do you have to do to get the money?”
She looked puzzled. “It’s already mine. I don’t have to do anything to get it.”
“I mean is it in your house, or at the bank, or where?”
She looked wary. “I’m not supposed to tell. Victor never wanted me to tell about the money.”
The little camera shutter clicked again, but I ignored it again.
I said, “I only ask because I want to be sure you’ll be safe carrying all that money if you have to go to the bank to get it.”
“I don’t have to leave the house to get it.”
Okay, so she and Victor had a home safe stocked with at least a million dollars in cash.
“Is the money you have in small bills like they want, or will you have to have hundred-dollar bills changed?”
She watched my mouth while I talked as if she could memorize what I said more easily if she read my lips.
She said, “The money is in twenties.”
Softly and carefully so I wouldn’t spook her, I said, “Maureen, do you know the combination to your safe?”
She looked proud. “Two-four—”
“Don’t tell me! I just wanted to make sure you knew it. Now, do you have a duff el bag to put the cash in?”
She frowned. “How big do you think it has to be?”
Now it was my turn to frown. How many cubic feet of space did a million dollars in twenty-dollar bills take up?
I said, “Bigger than a carry-on, but not as big as one of those long things with wheels.”
She nodded. “I bought a hot pink bag like that in Italy. I’ll use that.”
“I guess hot pink is as good as anything.”
Maureen looked thoughtful, and I knew damn well she was imagining what she would wear for the money drop. My guess was that it would be
something that matched the hot pink duff el bag.
Somehow that made my promise to help her seem more sensible. Expecting this child-woman to carry out a kidnapper’s instructions by herself was
like expecting a kitten to walk a tightrope over the Grand Canyon.
A
7
t five fifteen the next morning, I stepped through my french doors like a sleepwalker. It had been almost two o’clock when Maureen left, so I’d slept an
extra hour and got up fuzzy brained and blurry.
While my metal shutters scrolled down over the doors, I stood at the porch railing and breathed in the clean salty air. The sky was paler than it usually is
when I begin my day, with no fading stars in sight, and faint hints of impending pink at the edge of the horizon. The sea was still asleep, dark and glossy
and faintly sighing. A few early-rising gulls ambled at the shoreline, and an occasional hesitant cheeping sound came from the trees, but all the other
shorebirds and songbirds were still snoozing. Lucky them.
Yawning, I slogged down the stairs to the carport, where my Bronco was parked between Michael’s clean sensible sedan and Paco’s dented truck.
Paco’s Harley was gone.
When I got in the Bronco, a great blue heron sleeping on the hood gave me a snarky look, then spread its wide wings and flapped away. I gave him a
snarky look back. He should have been grateful for the extra hour I’d given him. Same thing with the parakeets who exploded in hysterical frenzy from the
oaks and pines as I drove down the winding lane toward Midnight Pass Road. I usually try not to wake them, but I felt so grouchy that I didn’t even slow
down.
I definitely don’t do well on less than six hours’ sleep.
Morning and afternoon, my first call is always to run with Billy Elliot, a rescued Greyhound whose human is Tom Hale. Some retired Greyhounds are like
some retired humans—they’d rather stretch out on the couch than walk around the block, and they wouldn’t run if you begged them. Billy Elliot, however, is
like one of those wiry old guys who were track stars in college and still get up every morning and jog two or three miles before breakfast. He has to run or
he gets nervous and twitchy, and he wants his runs to be hard and full out. If he had his way, he wouldn’t wear a collar and he wouldn’t have a blond woman
attached to the leash trying to keep up with him. He’s polite about it, but I know he considers me a necessary nuisance. I feel that way about some people
too, so I don’t take offense.
Tom would have been happy to run with Billy himself, but Tom’s life had taken a nosedive a few years before when he was ambling down an aisle in a
home improvement store and a display of wooden doors fell on him and crushed his spine. He’s still a top-notch CPA, and he and I trade services. I go to
his place twice a day and run with Billy Elliot, and Tom does my tax returns and handles anything connected to money for me.
Tom and Billy Elliot live in the Sea Breeze condos on the Gulf side of the key. As soon as I used my key and unlocked his door, I smelled fresh coffee.
Tom was up and waiting for me in the living room. Tom has big round black eyes and a mop of short black curls. In his striped cotton robe and wirerimmed
round glasses, he looked like a grown-up Harry Potter.
As Billy Elliot bounded to me for his morning smooch, Tom said, “Is something wrong?”
That’s the problem with being the kind of person with a schedule so consistent that people could set their clocks by me. Be an hour late, and people
notice.
Avoiding his eyes, I said, “I overslept. Forgot to set my alarm.” My head felt like mice had crawled in and built a furry nest, and my tongue tasted like
birdcage carpet.
“Huh.” Somehow he managed to sound like he didn’t believe me but wouldn’t press me for the truth. That made me feel vaguely guilty because Tom
only pries when he thinks I need a friend.
I clipped the leash to Billy’s collar and hustled him out the door without saying anything else. On the way to the elevator, Billy Elliot ecstatically whipped
his long tail side to side while I clumped along like a malfunctioning robot. Downstairs, we whisked through the lobby and out to the parking lot.
Cars park in an oval around the perimeter of the lot, and there’s a shrubby area in the center. Between the cars and the green stuff, an oval drive makes
a perfect racing track for Billy Elliot. As soon as he’d lifted his leg on several bushes and provided poop for me to collect, he tore off around the track
while I ran desperately behind him. Since we were running later than usual, a few other dogs and their humans were on the track too, most of them walking
sedately. We passed them all. As we did, Billy Elliot turned his head and grinned hugely at each one.
When we’d made three rounds of the track and I felt little hairline cracks opening in my skull, Billy Elliot allowed me to pull him to a brisk walk back to the
lobby.
Upstairs, Tom was still in the living room. He said, “Want some coffee?”
My dead brain made a feeble beep. It needed caffeine bad. But if I had coffee, Tom was bound to quiz me about being late, and even on my best days
I’m no match for Tom’s quick mind.
While I tried to decide, he said, “Looks like it’s going to be a nice day. But we could use some rain.”
I said, “Could we talk about this later? I’m sort of stupid right now.”
Tom studied me as if I were a tax form. “What’s wrong?”
“Nothing. I’m just not up to talking about anything deep.”
“The weather isn’t all that deep, Dixie. Not as a topic of discussion, anyway. Now it can get deep as a reality. You take a twenty-eight-foot tidal surge,
now that’s deep.”
He just can’t help himself.
I stooped and unsnapped Billy Elliott’s leash.
Tom said, “You don’t look like you slept last night.”
“Had a surprise visit from an old friend and we yakked too late. You know how you lose track of time like that.”
I tried to make it sound like two goofy women having a good time gassing about old times, not like two women planning to deliver a million dollars in
ransom for a kidnapped husband.
He gave me an understanding look. I hate understanding looks.
He said, “You don’t have to tell me what it is, but you’re stressed about something.”
Like I said, Tom is sharp.
Looking at his kind eyes caused the memory of Jaz and the young men who’d come in Big Bubba’s house looking for her to come crashing back, along
with my promise to stop at Hetty’s house that morning to see if Jaz had showed up. Maureen had driven them clean out of my head, but now they were
back.
I went to Tom’s kitchen, poured myself a mug of coffee, and went back to the living room.
I said, “Some hood types came in a house where I was taking care of a parrot yesterday, and Lieutenant Guidry thinks they may be part of a gang that
killed a guy night before last. Evidently it was a robbery that ended up a homicide.”
“Are you afraid they’re after you?”
“I’m afraid they’re after a girl I met yesterday morning at the vet’s. She was there with a hurt rabbit when I went to pick up Big Bubba. That’s the parrot.
Congo African Grey, talks a blue streak. When the boys came in, they said they were there for Jaz. That’s the girl’s name. The man with her called her
Rosemary, but she said her name was Jaz. Hetty Soames hired her to work part-time, so now I’m concerned about Hetty. She’s raising a new pup for
Southeastern.”
Tom raised his coffee mug to his lips and took a long drink, his eyes glued to mine the entire time. When he lowered the mug, he didn’t look as fresh as
he’d looked when I first arrived. I have that effect on people sometimes.
He said, “You think the guys will go to the woman’s house looking for the girl?”
“Hetty gave Jaz her address, and if Jaz is part of a gang, she might tell the boys and they’ll go there to burglarize the place.”
Tom nodded his head very slowly, sort of like a metronome ticking off beats.
He said, “I knew a girl called Jaz one time. Short for Jasmine.”
That made sense. The girl looked like she might be named Jasmine. For sure she looked a lot more like a Jasmine than a Rosemary.
Tom said, “This all happened in the last twenty-four hours?”
“Less, really. The sheriff’s department has put extra patrols in the neighborhood and I’m going to stop by Hetty’s this morning after I see to Big Bubba.
Hetty lives alone, and I’m uneasy about the whole thing.”
He blinked up at me. “Does it change anything?”
“Does what change anything?”
“Being uneasy. Does it change anything?”
“I guess not.”
“Then how about letting the sheriff’s department take care of their job and letting Hetty take care of herself, and letting what’s her name, Jasmine, do
whatever she does.”
I drained the last of my coffee. “You mean like mind my own business?”
“Something like that.”
“I try to do that, Tom, I really do. I don’t go around carrying a sign that says, ‘Tell me your problems,’ but somehow everybody who has one ends up on
my doorstep.”
Saying doorstep made me think of Maureen and what I’d promised to do that night. I hurried to the kitchen and put my mug in the dishwasher, then told
Tom and Billy Elliot goodbye.
I said, “Thanks for listening to me, Tom. And you’re right. I’m putting it out of my mind right now.”
I doubted that he believed me, but at least he didn’t know about Maureen. If I’d told Tom about our plan to stuff a million dollars in a duff el bag and give
it to kidnappers, he’d have given me the lecture of a lifetime, even worse than Michael’s would be if he found out about it. Michael would be incensed that I
was throwing away my good sense, Tom would be incensed at the idea of throwing away a million dollars.
The rest of the morning went smoothly, and I managed to shave off a few minutes of each visit. Big Bubba would be my last pet call of the morning, but
before I went to his house I stopped at Max King’s to give an antibiotic to his cat, Ruthie. That was my sole purpose, to give Ruthie a pill. I’d done it for the
last two mornings and would continue until all the pills were gone. Even though I charged my usual fee for about five minutes of work, Max thought it was
worth every penny.
A retired air force colonel, Max was originally from the Bahamas, and still had a hint of island music to his voice. He looked a bit like Sidney Poitier and
had a smile that made people want to give him whatever he wanted even before he asked. What he wanted was his wife back. He had become so
depressed after she died that his two daughters had decided he needed a kitten, and had made a special trip to Florida to take him to the Cat Depot.
Max hated cats, but his daughters had talked him into going with them anyway. The Cat Depot rescues abandoned cats, and Max had lost his heart to
Ruthie.
Scottish Folds are medium-sized cats with soft chirpy voices and a curious tendency to sit in Buddha positions or flatten themselves on the floor like
little bear rugs. They’re all born with straight ears, but when they’re about three weeks old their ear tips fold forward. A few kittens stay straight eared, but
whether their ears are folded or not, they are incredibly sweet cats. Insisting that a Scottish Fold do something it doesn’t want to do is guaranteed to make
anybody feel like a vicious ogre.
Ruthie was about a year old now, and she’d developed a nasty urinary tract infection. The vet had prescribed amoxicillin every twenty-four hours. Easy
for the vet to say. Ruthie was mellow and affectionate, but she was still a cat, and trying to get a cat to swallow a pill can cause strong men to break down
and weep.
Hide a pill in a cat’s food, and the cat will daintily pick up every crumb and leave the pill. Force a pill into a cat’s mouth and hold its jaws closed so it has
to swallow, and it will shift the pill to its cheek and spit it out as soon as you take your hand away. Try to strong-arm a cat by swaddling it in a towel and
poking a pill down its throat, and it will spit at you while it spits out the pill.
Max was a man of keen intellect, strong character, and the commanding presence of a man accustomed to having people jump when he gave an order.
But when he’d tried to give Ruthie her pill, he’d ended up with a broken lamp, a scratched arm, several wet tablets that Ruthie had spit out, and a note of
desperation in his voice when he called me for help.
When I rang his bell, he opened the door with Ruthie in one arm. Even in the uniform of a Florida retiree—shorts, knit shirt, and flip-flops—Max still
managed to look like somebody who should be saluted. He gave me his best Sidney Poitier smile and said, “I knew it was about time for you to come, so
I thought I’d make sure she didn’t hide.”
I would have spent all morning searching for Ruthie just to hear Max speak in that warm molasses voice. That man could stand in a supermarket aisle
and read his shopping list out loud, and every woman in the store would offer to cook his dinner.
Feeling very white cracker, I followed him to the living room, where I sat down in one of Max’s big comfy chairs. The prescription bottle of amoxicillin
was on a table beside the chair. Max gently deposited Ruthie in my lap, shook out an amoxicillin tablet that he laid on the table, recapped the bottle, and
took a chair opposite me. He moved with the respectful care of a medical student in a surgical theater.
Ruthie looked up at me with the wide round eyes that give Scottish Folds such innocent expressions. Speaking softly to her, I maneuvered her into an
upright position with my right hand supporting her chest and my left hand cupping the back of her head. Her hind feet were on my lap. Very gently, with my
fingers under one side of her jaw and my thumb under the other, I lifted her from the head so her hind feet momentarily left my lap. She immediately went
limp. At the same time, I reached for the pill with my right hand and pushed it into her open mouth—too far down to spit out. Then I lowered her so her hind
feet were once again in contact with my lap. After she swallowed a couple of times, I lowered her front feet too. She gave me a look of sweet forgiveness
and hopped to the floor.
Mother cats use that same back-of-the-neck lift when they move their kittens because it makes the kittens momentarily immobile. A grown cat shouldn’t
be handled that way more than a second or two, and very large cats probably shouldn’t be lifted that way at all. But when there’s a need to get medication
down a cat, it’s a better method than fighting with them.
As Ruthie leaped into Max’s lap for his masculine stroking, I got to my feet.
I said, “I’ll let myself out. See you tomorrow.”
Max was too preoccupied with telling Ruthie what a good girl she was to do more than give me a nod. Tough young men are pushovers when it comes
to pretty girls. Tough old men are pushovers when it comes to their pets.
B
8
efore I went to Big Bubba’s house, I stopped by the Crescent Beach Grocery to get fresh bananas for him. Big Bubba liked his bananas a little
greenish, so I got fresh ones every couple of days. He wasn’t so picky about other fruit, but he really hated a mushy banana.
I hurried to the 10 Items or Less lane, where a young man was paying for a single bunch of cilantro. The checker, a pretty young woman with dark curly
hair, handed him change.
She said, “Weren’t you in here just a few minutes ago?”
He grinned. “Yeah, my girlfriend sent me to get stuff for a Mexican breakfast. You know, huevos rancheros and salsa. I got parsley instead of cilantro, so
she made me come back.”
The checker said, “Oh, yeah, you have to use cilantro for salsa. I had to learn that when I came to this country.”
He said, “Where are you from?”
“I’m from Lima, Peru. Are you from Mexico?”
“No, I’m from Taiwan. We don’t eat huevos rancheros in Taiwan.”
She laughed. “We don’t eat it in Peru, either, but I love it.”
He hurried away with his cilantro and I took his place with my bananas, happily feeling like a grain in the leavening that keeps the world from being
tediously dense.
As I drove down the tree-lined lanes to Big Bubba’s house, I kept a sharp eye out for a glimpse of Jaz. But the only person I saw was a suntanned man
in a convertible with a kayak in the passenger seat. The man and the kayak looked equally carefree. I waved at the man and he waved back. The kayak
just stared straight ahead.
When I removed the night cover from Big Bubba’s cage, he was so happy to see me that he almost fell off his perch.
He hollered, “Did you miss me? Get that man! Go Bucs!”
I laughed, which made him laugh too—a robotic heh heh heh sound—which made me laugh harder, so for a minute we sounded like a crew member of
Starship Enterprise entertaining a wily Klingon.
I took him out of his cage and let him run around on the lanai while I cleaned his cage and put out fresh fruit, seed, and water for him. Ecstatic to see sky
and treetops and hear his wild cousins calling, he flapped his wings and shouted like a kid at recess. After I had his cage nice and clean, I filled a spray
bottle with water and gave Big Bubba a shower on the lanai. Big Bubba loved showers, and he fluttered his feathers so enthusiastically that I ended up
almost as wet as he was.
After Big Bubba had run around on the lanai some more to dry, I put him back in his indoor cage. Under ordinary circumstances, since the red tide
toxins had abated, I would have put him in his big cage on the lanai. But lanai screens are dead easy to cut, and I was afraid those young thugs might
come back and steal him. We don’t usually have to worry about things like that on the key, and I resented having to think about it.
I turned on his TV and left him carefully pulling his feathers back into their zip-locked position, drawing each feather through his beak to oil and smooth
it. He was so intent on making himself sleek again that he didn’t even say goodbye.
My cell rang as I was getting in the Bronco. With no preamble, Guidry said, “Where are you?”
I gave him Reba’s address, and he said, “Stay put. I’m in the area.”
Three minutes later, his Blazer pulled up at the curb. Except for a certain pink tinge to his eyes that said he’d also missed some sleep, he looked as
calm and collected as always. Natural linen jacket, pale blue open-collared shirt, dark blue slacks, woven leather sandals, no socks. Guidry’s clothes are
always wrinkled just enough to say they’re made of fine fabrics woven by indigenous artisans, and he wears them with the casual ease of one who’s never
known the touch of chemically created threads.
Conscious of being sweaty, cat hairy, and damp from parrot bathwater, I waited while he pulled a sheet of mug shots from a manila envelope.
He said, “You recognize any of these guys?”
They were all young men, all with various looks of sulky rebellion. Three of them looked like the guys who’d come in Reba’s house looking for Jaz.
I touched their faces. “I can’t swear to it, but I think they’re the ones who came in on me.”
“Okay.” He put the pics back in the envelope.
I said, “Well?”
“One of them is the guy whose prints were on the jar. An eighteen-year-old from L.A. named Paul Vanderson. He and the other two have records going
back several years. They’re out on bail right now, charged with killing a sixteen-year-old in a drive-by shooting in L.A. The fingerprint people were able to
match Vanderson’s latents to some that were in the house where the homicide occurred here in Sarasota. With that confirmation, they compared latents
in the house to the other two names, and they matched too. Good job getting the prints, Dixie.”
I preened a little bit. If I’d had any, I would have pulled some feathers through my beak.
I said, “So what do you do now?”
“We look for them. When we find them, the LAPD will want them first. Their drive-by shooting trial is next month. If they’re convicted of that, they’ll spend
the rest of their lives in prison. If they’re not, they’ll still have to stand trial for the homicide here.”
Thinking how close I’d been to human beings capable of such mindless violence made my temperature drop.
Guidry said, “The girl is the first link to them, so that’s where I’ll start. You said the woman’s house where the girl is working is around here?”
“Next street over. I’m going there now.”
“I’ll follow you.”
I got back in the Bronco and moved toward Hetty’s house, acutely aware that Guidry was behind me. I wondered what he thought about seeing me, or if
he was thinking of me at all. Probably wasn’t, since he was there as a homicide detective investigating a murder, not because he wanted to see me. I felt
like an idiot for even wondering about it, but that didn’t make me stop.
Being somewhat involved with a man was like being in a foreign place, an alien world in which I didn’t speak the language or know the local customs.
With Todd, everything had been gradual and easy, moving from friendship to lovers to marriage in an easy arc that felt familiar and right on every level.
But that had been before I knew how love can grow so that losing it is an amputation, how forever after you have the phantom other still attached. I had let
my anguish go, but I would never be a fully individual self again. Todd would always be a part of me, like my DNA.
Nevertheless, I remained exquisitely conscious of Guidry’s eyes on me, and I was absolutely certain that his feelings about me were as conflicted as
mine were about him. He’d had a wife once who’d betrayed him. Perhaps it was difficult for him to trust again. He had a comfortable life as an
uncommitted man. Perhaps he wanted to keep it that way.
At Hetty’s driveway, I pulled into it and turned off the motor. Before I got out of the car I ordered myself to put every thought about Guidry out of my mind.
We were here to keep Hetty safe and to get information about Jaz, not for me to trip over some maybe romance that was no more substantial than a
moonbeam. With my mind firmly made up, I slid out of the Bronco to join Guidry.
C
9
arrying the manila envelope with the mug shots in it, Guidry looked at Hetty’s house with the quizzical expression of one who couldn’t decide if he was
seeing sweet sentimentality or sly irony. I rang the doorbell on the magenta-painted door, and watched Guidry tilt his head to look up where pale pink
walls of the sheltered enclosure met a dark shade of burnt orange at the ceiling. The overhead light had a globular shade as starkly white as the low iron
Victorian bench beside the door. The bench held a golden yellow basket from which red impatiens spilled. Hetty dresses in cool neutrals, but since she’s
an exceptionally brave and confident woman, she surrounds herself with color.
I heard faint footsteps that stopped for a few seconds before Hetty answered the door, and I knew she had taken those seconds to look out the
peephole. I was glad she was taking precautions. After my experience at Reba’s house, I thought it was smart to be extra careful. She opened the door
with Ben close beside her feet. Ben tried to wriggle through the opening and she knelt to hold him in place.
I said, “Hetty, is Jaz here?”
With both hands firmly holding Ben, she looked at Guidry with a suspicious glint in her eye. “Why?”
Guidry pulled out his wallet and politely exhibited his creds. “Lieutenant Guidry, ma’am, with the Sarasota County Sheriff’s Department. We’re
investigating a murder and there’s a possible link between some of the suspects and a girl calling herself Jaz. Dixie told me she might be working for you.
If she’s here, I’d like to ask her some questions.”
Hetty said, “A murder? You think Jaz had something to do with a murder?”
“I think she might know people who had something to do with a murder. She’s not in any trouble.”
I felt like hollering, “Don’t believe him! He’s a homicide detective! He’ll tell you any lie that works. If Jaz is in a gang that killed a man while they robbed
him, she’s in big trouble.”
On the other hand, I didn’t want Hetty to be mixed up with a girl who might be in a gang of thieves and killers, so I kept quiet.
Guidry said, “Is the girl here, Ms. Soames?”
She cut her eyes at me when he said her name, because obviously I was the one who’d given it to him. But then good sense made her give a resigned
sigh, and she rose to a stooped position with one hand on Ben’s collar and gestured us inside.
“I have coffee in the kitchen.” She led the way through her toffee-colored living room, then the dining room with its pale lavender walls, chalk-white trim,
low-hanging wire chandelier for real candles, and its vibrations of laughter and smart conversation.
Every time I walked through that room, I vowed if I ever had another house, it would have a dining room just like Hetty’s. Not that I had plans for another
house. My spartan apartment suited me just fine. Just if I ever did. Like if my apartment got too little for some reason. Not that I thought it would, but still.
Hetty’s big square kitchen showed more of her cavalier approach to color. Cherry red walls, yellow cabinets, and white countertops. A round,
pedestaled table painted glossy purple, with black mule-eared chairs grouped around it. A kindergarten kid with a fresh box of crayons might have used
those colors, but probably not with the same sophisticated effect.
Winston sat in one of the black chairs. Jaz sat in another, with an empty plate and a glass of milk in front of her. The plate had yellow vestiges of
scrambled eggs on it.
When she saw me, the girl seemed to freeze. When she saw Guidry, she rose from her chair halfway between flight and indecision.
Hetty said, “Jaz, you remember Dixie from Dr. Layton’s office? She’s a friend of mine. She likes pets too. Actually, she’s a pet sitter.” Hetty’s voice was
too high.
Jaz looked at Guidry and her eyes grew more wary. Even in wrinkled linen and sandals on his bare feet, Guidry had the aura of a cop.
Guidry said, “Jaz, I’m Lieutenant Guidry of the Sarasota Sheriff’s Department. I’d like to ask you a few questions.”
Jaz shot a hostile glare at Hetty.
Hetty said, “It’s okay, Jaz. He just needs some information.”
Guidry opened the manila envelope and laid the mug shots on the purple table. From his chair, Winston peered at them.
Guidry said, “Do you know any of these guys?”
One glance at the shots, and the girl went pale, with an involuntary jerk of her hand that knocked over the glass of milk. I grabbed the glass before it
rolled off the table. Hetty scurried to get paper towels, and Ben ran to lap up milk splashing on the floor. With a quiver of disapproval, Winston jumped
from his chair and ran out of the room.
Stricken, Jaz said, “I’m sorry!”
Hetty said, “No matter, it’s just spilt milk.”
Something about Jaz’s apology for knocking over the milk seemed so ordinary that it surprised me. Being genuinely contrite for making a mess didn’t
seem to go with knowing gang members. It was more the way I would have reacted at her age.
In seconds, her face tightened into a closed mask.
After the milk was blotted up, paper towels were deposited in a wastebasket under the sink, and Ben was brought to heel by Hetty’s feet, Guidry said,
“You know who they are.”
It wasn’t a question, but Jaz shook her head.
“I never saw any of them before. Who are they?” Her eyelids fluttered with the effort of sounding clueless.
Guidry said, “A man was killed night before last during a break-in and robbery. We have evidence that points to these young men as the perpetrators.”
She shrugged, and her face took on the look of bored adolescence painfully putting up with stupidity from adults. “So why are you telling me?”
Guidry studied her for a moment, then spoke very softly.
“They’ve been looking for you. Asking about you by name.”
I’ve seen kittens inhale in a startled jerk when something frightens them. A quick intake of breath and then they turn tail and run. Jaz made the same
involuntary inhalation, and her eyes grew wide and trembly. She had been shocked and frightened just by seeing the boys’ pictures. Hearing they were
asking about her had frightened her even more.
“I don’t know anything about a robbery, okay? And I didn’t have anything to do with anybody getting killed! Leave me alone! Just leave me alone!”
Sobbing, she turned to run, but Hetty caught her in a protective hug and held tight.
Over her head, Hetty said, “Lieutenant, I don’t think Jaz has anything to tell you.”
Guidry said, “The man you were with yesterday claimed to be your stepfather. Is he?”
With her face buried in Hetty’s bosom, Jaz moved her head up and down. “Uh-huh.”
“Mind giving me his name, and where the two of you are staying?”
Jaz turned her head and glared at him. “Why don’t you mind your own business!”
With a half grin, Guidry said, “Actually, this is my business. I just need a name and address.”
“We don’t live here.”
“Okay, where do you live?”
“It’s a secret, okay? I’ll get in a lot of trouble if I tell you that.”
For a moment, the kitchen went silent with all the possible implications of what she’d said. In that instant, Hetty loosened her grip, and Jaz spun away
from her and tore out of the kitchen. The back door slammed against the wall as she wrenched it open, and then we heard the slapping sound of flip-flops
on the paved walk around the side of the house.
Hetty put her fists on her hips and glared at Guidry. “That girl needs help, she doesn’t need to be bullied!”
Ben reacted to the anger in Hetty’s voice and yipped, which made Hetty squat beside him and stroke him calm.
Guidry sighed and picked up the mug shots from the tabletop. Sliding them into the envelope, he let a couple of beats go by before he spoke.
“Ms. Soames, some young men robbed and killed a man in his home here in Sarasota. We believe the same young men broke into another house
yesterday where Dixie was. It was here in your neighborhood. They told Dixie they were looking for a girl named Jaz. Not too many girls named Jaz, so it’s
a pretty good bet that she knows them. We have identified them as members of an organized gang who are under indictment for murder in L.A. We need
to find them, and Jaz is the only link we have. Since she’s underage, we need to talk to her stepfather.”
Chastened, Hetty said, “I don’t believe Jaz is a bad girl, Lieutenant.”
“Good girls can get mixed up with gangs too, Ms. Soames.”
Hetty looked close to tears, and Ben made a quick puppy grunt of sympathy.
Guidry said, “When you made arrangements with Jaz to come work for you, did you get permission from her stepfather?”
Hetty’s face reddened and she avoided Guidry’s eyes. “There wasn’t time. I wrote my name and address for Jaz and gave her my phone number, but
then he dragged her out without saying anything to me.”
Guidry said, “So he may not know she followed through on it?”
He was being tactful, but he was really asking if Hetty thought Jaz had sneaked away to see her.
With a note of asperity, Hetty said, “I don’t encourage children to disobey their parents, Lieutenant. But Jaz doesn’t actually seem to have a parent, at
least not one who takes care of her. Her stepfather seems a hard, uncaring man. I don’t believe there’s a mother at all.”
“Why don’t you think there’s a mother?”
Hetty waved her hand at the table. “I gave her cookies when she got here and she gobbled them down so fast I asked her if she’d had breakfast. She
said she hadn’t had anything since lunch yesterday, so I scrambled her some eggs and she wolfed them down too.”
Hetty seemed to take it for granted that if there were a mother in the house, she would have fed Jaz. She would have been shocked to know there had
been lots of times when my mother had been too drunk to feed me and Michael.
Guidry said, “Any signs of abuse?”
“Not physical abuse, but emotional abuse is just as bad. Her stepfather seems like a verbal bully.”
In case Guidry had forgotten, I said, “And he has that underarm holster. He almost went for his gun when Big Bubba yelled at the vet’s office.”
Guidry said, “And yet he took an injured rabbit to the vet.”
Hetty and I looked at each other with the same Oh, I forgot about that! expression. Now that Guidry had reminded us, it did seem incongruous.
Guidry tapped the envelope on the table. “She didn’t say where she lives?”
“No, but I think she walked here, so it must be nearby.”
“If she comes back, would you call me?”
Hetty met his eyes with an unblinking challenge. “No, I won’t. But I’ll do my best to find out where she lives and what her stepfather’s name is.”
Guidry chewed on the inside of his cheek for a second and then nodded. “You might be able to get more out of her than I can. Just don’t get any ideas
that you can save her by keeping her secrets. If she’s involved in gang activity, you’ll be obstructing an investigation if you protect her. If she’s not involved,
you can help her to your heart’s content, but I still need to talk to her stepfather.”
With a brisk nod to me, he extended a hand to Hetty. “I appreciate your help, ma’am.”
Hetty allowed her hand to be swallowed in his for a moment, but I could tell she wasn’t squeezing back.
Guidry said, “I’ll let myself out.”
Hetty and I listened to the subdued closing of the front door and then we both dropped into chairs at the table.
Hetty said, “I just don’t believe that girl would be in a gang.”
I thought about the naked fear in Jaz’s face when she’d heard the boys were looking for her. She might not be in their gang, but she knew who they were
and she was afraid of them. I thought about the tattoo on her ankle. Could it be the emblem of a rival gang? But if it were, that had to mean Jaz was also
from L.A. If so, what was she doing here? And why did her stepfather carry that gun?
Hetty said, “She’s such a scrawny, needy little thing.”
“I know, but don’t put yourself in danger. Do what you can to help her, but don’t endanger your own safety.”
Even as I said it, I wondered if there was a bigger hypocrite in the entire world than I was. At midnight, I would be walking with Maureen down a dark
path leading to her private little gazebo by the water’s edge. One of us would be carrying a duff el bag stuffed with a million dollars, and somewhere in the
darkness kidnappers would be watching us from a speedboat.
A bell rang in my head, the kind you hear in a prize fight when one boxer is stretched on the mat for the count. The kidnappers had threatened to kill
Maureen’s husband if she told anybody he’d been kidnapped. If they saw two women with a duff el bag, they would know she had told. Maureen wasn’t the
smartest person in the world, but she was smart enough to figure that out. She didn’t intend to go down that path with me, she intended for me to go alone.
When I left Hetty, I almost stumbled going down the drive to the Bronco. There comes a point when offering a helping hand to somebody in need
becomes an act of rank stupidity, and I thought I might have reached that point. Like an automaton, I got in the Bronco and headed for the Village Diner. I
wanted to eat everything in sight the same way Jaz had devoured the breakfast Hetty had made for her. Girls who don’t have good mothers are always
hungry for a savior’s food.
A