Blaize Clement - Dixie Hemingway Mysteries5 - Raining Cat Sitters and Dogs p.03

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went up the stairs ahead of Guidry. I felt like a bear with a thorn in its paw. Guidry could just ask me his detective questions and leave. If the only thing he
was interested in was what I knew about homicides, that’s all he would get.
I opened the french doors and pushed into my hot apartment. Ella was gone, which meant that Michael had come home earlier, moved her to his house,
and then left again.
I said, “Sit down, I’ll turn on the air conditioner.”
He dropped to the love seat while I scooted into the bedroom and switched on the AC unit installed in the wall. I tossed my bag on the bed and went into
the living room to face the music.
I said, “Let me save you some time. I knew all along about Victor Salazar being kidnapped. His wife is an old friend of mine, and she came right after
she got the call from the kidnappers and told me. She said they’d demanded a million dollars in cash. They wanted it left in the gazebo at Maureen’s boat
dock. Maureen refused to let me call any law enforcement agency, and she asked me to go with her to deliver the money. I agreed to do it, and she came
here and got me. After we drove to her house, she asked me to carry the money to the gazebo alone. I did what she asked, and she brought me home.”
Flat voiced, Guidry said, “You carried a million dollars down to Mrs. Salazar’s dock and left it for kidnappers.”
I firmed my jaw and looked him in the eye. “It isn’t illegal to pay off kidnappers, and that’s what Maureen chose to do. She said it was what Victor had
always told her to do if he got kidnapped.”
Guidry said, “How well did you know Victor Salazar?”
“Barely. He and Maureen went off somewhere to get married, and I don’t think I was in the same room with him more than once or twice. He wasn’t what
you’d call friendly.”
“What do you know about his business?”
“Maureen said he was an oil broker.”
“Tell me about the million dollars.”
“It was in twenty-dollar bills. Maureen put it in a pink duff el bag.”
“You saw the money?”
I crossed my legs, and a muscle twitched in Guidry’s jaw.
I said, “The money was already in the duff el bag when Maureen came to get me.”
“So you didn’t actually see it.”
Fine hairs on my arms stood up. “What are you getting at?”
Guidry studied me for a moment. “You trust Mrs. Salazar?”
My finger traced uneasy loops on my knee. “Maureen was a good friend in high school.”
“Honest and aboveboard?”
I cleared my throat. “I wouldn’t say Maureen was dishonest. Not really. Not much.”
He didn’t answer, and when I finally looked at him, I knew he was waiting for an explanation. A personal explanation.
I said, “It was complicated. We both had alcoholic parents who’d abandoned us. Nobody else understood what that was like, so we sort of supported
each other.”
He let a beat go by, then said, “Mrs. Salazar told me she’d talked to you and that you’d delivered the money. I just wanted to corroborate what she said.”
I took a deep breath. “On the news, they’re saying that Victor drowned. Is that true?”
He shook his head. “He was already dead when somebody dumped him out of a boat.”
“How?”
“Contact shot to the forehead.”
“Like gangland execution style?”
“What makes you think that?”
I shrugged. “On TV crime shows, when somebody’s shot in the forehead, it always means organized crime.”
“You have any reason to think Victor Salazar was part of organized crime?”
“I told you, all I know about Victor Salazar is what Maureen has told me, and she says he’s an oil broker. You know what an oil broker does?”
He said, “Salazar’s ankles were tied to an anchor. Some snook fishermen snagged him in the Venice inlet by the riprap.”
In warm water, it doesn’t take long for a dead body to accumulate enough gas to float to the surface—but not a dead body bound to a heavy weight.
I said, “If he was attached to an anchor—”
Guidry compressed his lips as if he was afraid he might smile. “The rope they used was too long.”
My mouth tried to find something to say, but all I could do was stare at him and imagine a dead body bobbing upright just under the water’s surface, with
a rope running from its ankles to an anchor on the silty bottom.
For Guidry, the fact that Victor had been anchored with a rope so long that it allowed him to float to the surface was an amusing fact in an otherwise
gruesome homicide. He probably wasn’t even terribly surprised, since most criminals are caught because they do stupid things that make it easy to catch
them.
For me, the too-long rope was a red flag that signaled more strongly than ever that Harry Henry had been involved in Victor’s kidnapping. Harry was the
only person in the world dumb enough to anchor a dead body with a too-long rope.
Guidry and I didn’t have much to say to each other after that. We said our goodbyes and he left, each of us mumbling something about talking later. I
didn’t know how Guidry felt, but I felt oddly ashamed, as if I’d blundered into an X-rated movie and hoped nobody saw me.
I would never have imagined Harry Henry capable of kidnapping or murdering anybody, but every intuitive bone in my body thrummed that he was up to
his handsome cheekbones in Victor’s death. Harry had been in love with Maureen since we were in high school, he was loyal as a dog, and if she had
asked him to kidnap Victor, he would have done it. But would he commit murder for her?
My mind felt like a pinball machine, ricocheting between awful images of Jaz taken by young men who wanted to keep her from testifying against them
in a murder trial, and the possibility that two people I’d known and liked practically all my life might have colluded to kill a man.
And then there was Michael, who was downstairs with a hand swollen from hitting a U.S. marshal. I had caused him to turn into an avenging angel, and
all his vengeance had proven unnecessary. He probably felt foolish, and I needed to go down and explain everything to him.
But as I started down the stairs, Michael slammed out of his kitchen door and strode across the deck to the carport like a man on a mission. He didn’t
even notice me on the stairs, just got in his car and peeled out.
Everybody but me seemed to have a definite purpose.
Wearily, I went back inside, took a long shower, and crawled into bed. When I woke, I was a lot less tired but no less depressed about the state of my
world. A peek over the porch railing at the cars in the carport told me that Michael had come home, so I got dressed in a hurry and went down to talk to
him. It was time to tell my big brother everything that was going on.
I found him and Ella in the kitchen, Ella at her preferred spot on a barstool, and Michael at the cooktop stirring something simmering in a huge pot.
I sniffed the air. “Is that chili?”
Even to me, my voice sounded pathetically hopeful. Michael waved his wooden spoon toward the butcher-block island.
“Get a bowl, I’ll give you some.” Then he did a double take at my face. “Other than kicking U.S. marshals down your stairs, what else have you been up
to?”
I got one of our grandmother’s red-fired chili bowls out of the cupboard and handed it to him. I poured myself a mug of coffee from the pot heating on the
counter.
Michael ladled dark brown chili into the bowl, put Godzilla-sized pinches of grated cheddar cheese and chopped onions on top.
“Hold on,” he said. “I’ve got corn sticks ready to come out of the oven.”
Ella and I watched raptly while he opened the door on the wall oven and hauled out two special pans filled with steaming golden brown cornbread
sticks. With synchronized flips of his wrists, he turned both pans over a dish towel spread on the countertop, and with a smart rap sent hot cornbread
sticks tumbling out. He put two on a plate for me and set it on the butcher block next to my chili.
I sat down at the island bar. “I guess you’ve heard about Maureen’s husband being kidnapped.”
He did a get-on-with-it motion with his hand. It wasn’t swollen, just a little red.
He said, “I know some snook fishermen found his body.”
Careful not to let the inside of my lips touch it, I crunched the tip of one of the hot cornbread sticks between my teeth. I chewed. I moaned softly. I took a
bite of chili and moaned again. Venal sinners surprised to wake up in heaven would not have been more grateful.
Michael poured himself a mug of coffee and sat down across from me. Ella lowered her eyelids and gazed worshipfully at him.
“So what does Maureen’s husband have to do with you?”
“You know that night she came here? That’s what she came for, to tell me he’d been kidnapped. She’d got a call from the kidnappers asking for a
million dollars.”
“Okay.”
“She wanted me to go with her to deliver it.”
He raised an eyebrow. I ate several more bites of chili in case he snatched it away after I’d told him the rest of it.
I said, “She came and got me the next night and I carried a duff el bag full of money down to a gazebo at their boat dock. Then she brought me home.”
He waited.
I said, “That’s all. At least that’s all I had to do with it. But Guidry told me that Victor had already been dead when he was thrown out of the boat.
Somebody shot him. His body had been tied to an anchor, and the rope that tied him was too long. That’s how he floated up high enough for fishermen to
snag him.”
Michael’s eyes got a look that said he might laugh. “They tied him to an anchor with a long rope?”
I said, “It’s not funny.”
“It’s a little bit funny.”
I ate some more chili.
Michael said, “So what was the deal with the marshal? Who was he looking for?”
I was almost to the bottom of the chili bowl, so I ate the last of it and polished off the second breadstick before I answered him. I figured I’d need all the
strength I could get.
“A couple of days ago, three teenage boys came in Reba Chandler’s house while I was there with Big Bubba. The parrot, you know. I turned around and
there they were. They seemed to think a girl named Jaz lived there.”
“You know her?”
“She’s a teenager I had seen at the vet’s office, the same girl that marshal you slugged was looking for. He was with her at the vet’s. He’d run over a
rabbit and killed it, and she was upset about it. Cute girl. He claimed he was her stepfather, but he was lying. She’s in witness protection and he’s her
guardian or whatever.”
Michael erased the air with a flat palm. “I don’t want to hear about the girl. I want to hear about the guys that came in on you.”
“But they’re all connected. They’re all from L.A., and the boys are part of a gang there. One of them left latent prints on a jar of birdseed at Reba’s
house, so the fingerprint people were able to identify him. He’s one of three guys who killed a boy in a drive-by shooting in L.A., and Jaz is the only
witness willing to testify. That’s why she’s in witness protection. They hid her here to wait until the trial. Now Jaz has disappeared, and the marshal thinks
the gang got her.”
He went still. “Why did he think you’d know where she was?”
“He probably saw my car at Hetty’s house and followed me.”
Michael raised an eyebrow asking for more information. I hate it when he does that.
I said, “Hetty Soames has a new service-dog pup she’s raising, and she took a shine to Jaz and offered her a job. She wrote her address for Jaz, so
the marshal knew it. Jaz was secretive about where she lived—well, she was secretive about everything—so Guidry asked me to try to learn more about
her. I’ve been stopping at Hetty’s every day.”
“Guidry has known about this?” Michael’s voice was defensive and a trifle hurt.
“He’s investigating a homicide that happened here a few days ago. A man was killed during a gang-related burglary. Some neighbors saw teenagers
loitering outside the man’s house earlier, and they matched the description of the boys who came into Reba’s house. The sheriff’s office got a positive
match on prints at the murdered man’s house and the prints left at Reba’s house, so they knew they were the same guys.”
“The gang members who killed a boy in L.A. also robbed and killed a man here?”
I could tell he was having a hard time finding slots in his brain to hold so many dismal bits of information. “Their trial in L.A. is the one Jaz is a witness
in.”
Michael stood up and got a cornbread stick and ate it in two bites. He does that when he’s agitated. Probably a holdover from the time that feeding
himself and me was the only escape he could find from our mother’s self-consumed immaturity.
“Okay. And what else?”
“I’m afraid Harry Henry had something to do with Maureen’s husband being kidnapped. I can’t believe he’d kill him, but I think he’s involved somehow.”
“Harry Henry? Nah, Harry wouldn’t do something like that.”
“He told me Maureen had planned to get a divorce from the first day she married Victor. Then he said he hadn’t seen her for two or three years, but I
know he was lying about that. Besides, who else do you know who’d sink a dead body with an anchor but use a rope so long the body could float to the
surface?”
Michael’s eyes had gone slitty.
“What do you mean, he told you? Did you ask him about it?”
“Not exactly. We just talked a little bit at the Sea Shack.”
Michael sat down and put his elbows on the table. He lowered his head between his hands and squeezed it for a long time while Ella widened her eyes
and looked alarmed. When he raised his head, his eyes were considerably less cheery than they’d been when I first came in.
“Anything else?”
“No, that’s it. Harry asked about you, by the way. Said you were a good fisherman.”
“Hell, Dixie.”
“I’m not involved in anything, Michael. It’s just that I know all these people.”
Michael sighed. “Let me get this straight. You’ve delivered ransom money to kidnappers. You’ve talked to a man who might have killed Maureen’s
husband. And you’ve spent time with a girl who’s on the run from a murdering gang from L.A.”
“It’s not as bad as you make it sound.”
“Stay away from Harry Henry.”
“Aw, Harry’s all right, he’s just weird. He has a new dog, named him Hugh Hefner.”
“Figures. Hugh Hefner’s probably Harry’s hero.”
I got up and rinsed my bowl and cup and put them in the dishwasher. I went around the bar and kissed Ella’s nose. Then I kissed Michael’s cheek.
“Thanks for the chili. Don’t worry about me. I’m cool.”
When I closed the kitchen door, I could see them through the window. Michael was letting Ella lick crumbs from his fingertips. Ella looked blissful.
Michael looked worried. On top of his concern about Paco, I had just given him another load to carry.
As for me, I didn’t feel half as cool as I’d pretended. Laying it all out for Michael had made me feel like I was in the middle of a hurricane’s eye. It was
calm there for the time being, but hurricanes move on. When they do, you get slammed by winds from an entirely different direction than the one you’ve
been facing.
I still had some time before I had to make afternoon rounds so I ran upstairs and got my car keys. I needed to talk to Cora Mathers.
C
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ora Mathers is an eighty-something-year-old friend whose granddaughter was once a client of mine. The granddaughter was murdered in a most
brutal way, and I had been immensely impressed by Cora’s strength when it happened. Afterward, she and I had sort of adopted each other.
Cora lives on the mainland in a lovely condo in Bayfront Village, a posh retirement tower on Tamiami Trail overlooking the bay. Her granddaughter
bought the condo for her with money made in ways Cora has never suspected. As far as Cora knows, her granddaughter was a smart woman who made
wise investments, and because she had a good heart she provided well for her cat and for her grandmother. The good heart part is true.
Driving north on the way to Bayfront Village, I swung off the Trail for a few blocks to Whole Foods. Leaving the Bronco in the parking garage, I hotfooted
it inside and bought a dozen pink roses and a carton of frozen soup. As I loped back to the garage, a motorcycle arced around me and pulled into a
parking spot. The driver’s head was covered by a black helmet and he wore so much denim that I couldn’t see his body, but I kept a hawk eye on his
hands in case he flashed Paco’s signal. He pulled off his helmet and turned his head to look at me. He had a broad freckled face, little piggy eyes, and a
scowl that looked as if it had been there forever. He definitely wasn’t Paco.
I pretended I hadn’t been staring at him and got in the Bronco and raced off. When I pulled under Bayfront’s portico, the parking attendant sprinted
smartly to open the Bronco’s door before I had time to get out. Rich people get service like that.
When he saw it was me, he lost the servile look but kept the grin.
He said, “You here to see Miz Mathers? Nice roses.”
I slid out of the Bronco and looped the bag with the soup over my arm.
I said, “They’re organic.”
“You gonna eat them?”
“No, but I guess if somebody gets stuck by a thorn, it won’t be a poisonous thorn.”
“Ha! Next thing you know, they’ll be selling organic fertilizer.”
I sort of thought they already were, but I just smiled and left him to disappear my car into the bowels of the Bayfront’s parking garage. I like that about
ritzy places. They make you feel like royalty.
The front doors sighed open as I approached, and the concierge waved to me from her French Provincial desk. The lobby was busy with enthusiastic
seniors making plans for music lessons and bridge parties and opera trips and gourmet dinners. For sure their lives were a lot more socially active than
mine. Maybe you have to be old to have the time for quality fun. Gives me something else to look forward to.
As I moved toward the bank of elevators, the concierge picked up her phone to warn Cora that I was coming. She used to make me wait until Cora had
given permission for me to come up, but now she knows Cora always wants to see me. I like that. It’s good to know somebody always welcomes your
presence.
Cora lives on the sixth floor, and when I got off the elevator she was already out in the hall, excited as a child to have company. When she was young,
Cora probably stretched herself to an inch or two over five feet, but now that age has condensed her, she’d have to stand on tiptoe to reach five feet. She
has wispy white hair like a baby chick and a skinny frame that moves on slow freckled legs. To make up for her slow feet, her brain moves at warp speed.
When she looks at me with her pale blue eyes, I feel like I’m being examined by an eagle.
She said, “Why didn’t you tell me you were coming? I’d of made some fresh chocolate bread. All I’ve got is left over.”
I said, “It’s still good left over.”
She said, “Oh my, what beautiful flowers. What else have you got there?”
“Some of that shrimp and corn chowder you like. The roses are organic, so you can stick your nose in them and not get poisoned. I guess the soup is
too.”
She laughed and began ministepping into her apartment so slowly that I had to march in place to keep from barreling into her. Cora’s apartment is pale
pink and soft turquoise everywhere you look, from the marble floors to the skirt on the round table between the galley kitchen and the living room. Glass
doors open to a sun porch overlooking the bay, so she has an ever-changing view of water and clouds and sailboats.
An odor of chocolate always hangs in the air from the decadent chocolate bread Cora makes in an old bread-making machine—another gift from her
granddaughter. She won’t divulge the recipe, but at some point in the process she throws in bittersweet chocolate chips that never completely melt but
make soft oozy blobs in the bread. She serves it in torn chunks, and when it’s hot and slathered with butter Cora’s chocolate bread would make hardened
criminals break down and confess just to get a taste.
Her kitchen wasn’t big enough for both of us, so she sat at her table and watched me work behind the open kitchen bar. She said, “Leave the soup out
to thaw. I’ll have it for supper.”
While water heated in her teakettle, I put the roses in a clear glass pitcher and set them on the bar. I got a tray for our tea things and found half a loaf of
chocolate bread.
Cora said, “Don’t put it in the microwave, it’ll get tough. Just tear off some hunks.”
“I know.”
She watched me get butter from the refrigerator, teacups from the cupboard, and pour hot water over tea bags in a pot. I brought the tray to the table
and sat down across from her. She waited until I’d poured our tea and distributed our hunks of chocolate bread.
She said, “What’s wrong?”
Cora is like Michael. One look at me and they both know what I’m feeling.
I took a sip of tea and tried to think which thing to tell. Like which disaster had precedence.
I said, “I met a teenaged girl a few days ago. Her name is Jasmine, but she’s called Jaz. She’s a cute girl, smart, likes pets. She’s from L.A., and she
saw some gang members shoot a boy. A whole street full of people saw it, but she’s the only one willing to testify because everybody else is scared of the
gang. The government has put her in witness protection to keep her safe until the trial. They moved her here and stuck her in a little apartment at a resort
hotel on Siesta Key. She had an officer assigned to her, and he checked on her a couple of times a day, but she was lonely and called some old friends in
L.A. Word got out where she was, and the gang came here looking for her. She’s disappeared now, and the marshal who’s been keeping an eye on her
thinks they’ve killed her.”
Sadness clouded Cora’s eyes. “Does her family know?”
“There isn’t a family. Her parents abandoned her when she was little, and her grandmother raised her. The grandmother died a few months ago and Jaz
was put in a foster home. Poor kid never had much of a chance.”
“That’s not true. She had a grandmother. She must have done a good job too, to raise a girl so brave and honest.”
I blinked at Cora. Until that moment, I hadn’t seen Jaz as anything except a girl in trouble. But Cora was right. Jaz was incredibly brave to be willing to
testify against a gang. None of the other witnesses had her courage. None of them had her honesty.
I tore off a bite of chocolate bread from my chunk and popped it in my mouth. It was almost as good as when it was piping hot.
I said, “I wish she hadn’t been so honest about telling people where she was.”
Cora said, “I blame the hospitals.”
I tore off another bite and wondered if Cora’s mind was going soft.
She said, “Used to be when babies were born, the hospital put them all in one room with a glass wall so people could look at them. They’d be all lined
up in their little plastic bins, pink blankets around the girls and blue around the boys. Sometimes they put little stocking caps on their heads to match. They
had strict viewing times, you couldn’t just go see them any old time, so it was a special thing to get to look at them. Sometimes when things were so hard
for me and I didn’t know if I was going to make it, I’d go to the hospital and look at those babies. They were so new they still had God’s fingerprints on
them, and looking at them would make me remember that we all come perfect.”
I said, “Those guys who killed a boy just for fun may have been perfect when they were born, but they’re bad now.”
Cora said, “That’s because people don’t ever get to see a whole roomful of new babies anymore, so they don’t understand that no baby is born bad.
People turn their backs on babies, let them go hungry and sick, and then when the babies grow up to be killers and thieves, they say, ‘See there? I told
you they were bad.’ ”
She raised her teacup and fixed me with her piercing old eyes. “That girl you’re talking about could have turned out bad just like those boys, but she had
a grandmother who loved her. That’s why she’s honest and brave. That’s why my granddaughter was honest and brave too, because that’s how I raised
her.”
I knew for a fact that Cora’s granddaughter had not been honest. But it was true she’d been brave, and that was probably because Cora had raised
her.
I said, “My grandmother raised me too.”
“See? Grandmothers do it best.”
I opened my mouth to say that Jaz could get killed no matter how honest and brave she was, then remembered what had happened to Cora’s
granddaughter and closed it. Cora was right about Jaz. None of the other witnesses had been honest enough to speak up.
The other side of complete honesty, of course, is that it’s a mark of immaturity. If you’re hiding from bad people who want to kill you, and the bad people
ask bystanders where you are, you hope the bystanders will be mature enough to lie. If they’re small children or immature adults, they’ll point to your hiding
place.
Jaz had the courage to agree to give honest testimony in court about the murder she’d seen. But immaturity had made her tell the truth to somebody
about where she was, and now she had been found and possibly killed.
As if she were testing my own level of maturity, Cora said, “What’s going on with you and that nice detective you’re in love with?”
I swallowed a sip of tea wrong and for a moment sounded like a drowning person. “I’m not in love with him!”
She gave me one of those serene smiles unique to wise old women, the kind that makes their eyes almost disappear into fine wrinkles but still allows
the flare in their eyes to pin you down like a laser beam.
She said, “I don’t know why you keep saying that. It’s plain as day you’re in love with him.”
My heart had started thumping like I’d been caught at something illicit. I said, “I don’t want to be in love with him. I don’t want to be in love with any man.”
“None of us do, hon, but it usually don’t make any difference what we want. We fall in love anyway.”
I always forget that Cora was once a young woman. But of course she was, and of course there had been men in her life.
She smoothed butter on a bit of chocolate bread, then used the bread like a lecturer holding a pointer. “Just make sure you’re not thinking you’re in love
when it’s really pity you feel. Women do that all the time. Loving is the easiest thing in the world for a woman. A woman could go out and flag down ten
men on the highway and there’d be two or three in the bunch she could love. Soon as a woman gets to know a man, finds out how he had a bad time in
school, or had an old man that was mean to him, she falls in love. Especially if he’s good-looking and smiles at her and talks halfway smart. But half the
time it’s not love, it’s pity. Women always want to make up to a man for all the bad things the world has done to him, and they think that’s love. Next thing
you know they’re marrying him, and that’s like bringing home a dog that foams at the mouth just because you feel sorry for it. I don’t care how much you
think you can fix him, the wrong man will turn on you quick as a mad dog.”
I said, “I don’t feel sorry for Guidry.”
“Well, that’s good. But you’ve got to be sure that other stuff is right too. You know, the part in bed. People don’t like to talk about it, but women need a lot
more lovemaking than men do. Men talk about it more, but women want to do it more. And if you’re with a man that don’t like to do it much, or isn’t any
good at doing it, you’ll get fat and cranky. Don’t get mixed up with a cold man.”
Oddly, I felt myself blushing. Not that talk about sex embarrassed me, but it made me remember what sex had been like with Todd. He had showed me
a survey one time in which people who’d been happily married twenty, thirty, sixty years had sheepishly admitted to fantastic sex. They felt a bit freakish
about it because they knew the lust part of love was supposed to die and be replaced with warm companionship, but their mutual lusts had never died.
Todd had said, “I guess that means we’ll still be chasing each other around when we’re a hundred.”
I thought about Judy saying that if I ever went to bed with Guidry, I’d probably kill him. But what if I was a firecracker ready to explode and Guidry turned
out to have no sizzle?
Cora was watching me with an expectant look, so I must have been lost in thought longer than I realized.
I said, “If I ever fall in love again, I want it to bloom slowly, not explode like Fourth of July fireworks.” I liked the sound of that. I thought it sounded wise and
mature.
Cora didn’t look impressed. “If love wants to bloom slowly, that’s what it’ll do. If it wants to bust out like firecrackers, it’ll do that too. Why don’t you just let
it take care of itself?”
Why did everybody persist in telling me to quit trying to control everything? Good grief, you’d think I was some kind of control freak. I wished I could
control them so they’d quit saying I controlled.
I couldn’t think of any honest response, so I told her it was time to make my afternoon rounds. Before I left, I gathered up our tea things and tidied up the
kitchen. I left the carton of soup sweating in the middle of the countertop so Cora wouldn’t forget it, then kissed the top of her feathery head.
She said, “You’re a good girl, Dixie, and I’m going to pray that missing girl’s all right.”
B
24
efore I left the Bayfront campus, my cellphone rang with the special ring reserved for Michael, Paco, or Guidry. With my heart rate up, I pulled to a stop
and answered. It was Guidry.
He said, “Where are you?”
I pulled the phone away from my ear and glared at it. “Why do you want to know?”
“Sorry. What I meant to say was that I would appreciate knowing where you are . . . because I would like a moment of your time . . . if you would be so
kind as to give it to me.”
“I’m just leaving Bayfront Village, and I’m headed to the Sea Breeze condos on Midnight Pass to run with Billy Elliot.”
“With who?”
“Whom. Billy Elliot. He’s a Greyhound. We run in the parking lot.”
“I’d like you to listen to something. It’ll just take a minute. I’ll meet you in the Sea Breeze lot.”
At least he was being polite.
Even with lighter out-of-season traffic, it took me fifteen minutes to thread my way from Bayfront to Siesta Drive and the north bridge to the key, then to
Midnight Pass Road and Tom’s condo building. Guidry’s Blazer was parked by the front door in a guest spot. When I parked beside him, he got out of his
car and got into mine.
Guidry had developed new lines around his mouth in the last few days. Even in his fine linen jacket and perfectly cut slacks, he looked tired and drawn. I
had to clench my hand into a fist because it wanted to reach over and trace the lines around his lips.
Reaching in a jacket pocket, he pulled out a small tape player and set it on the dash.
He said, “Mrs. Salazar kept the message she got from the kidnappers. I’d appreciate it if you’d listen to the call.”
It was a reasonable request. I had known Maureen a long time, and Maureen had asked me to deliver her ransom money. It made sense that Guidry
would think I might recognize the kidnapper’s voice. I didn’t think it was likely, but it was worth a shot.
Guidry hit the Play button, and a muffled man’s voice said a word I didn’t understand, followed by, “Salazar, we have your husband.”
The voice went on to say all the things Maureen had told me the kidnapper said, but I wasn’t listening.
Guidry said, “Anything about that voice you recognize?”
I felt icy cold. I said, “Play the beginning again.”
He rewound the tape and started it again. Again the muffled voice, again the odd first word that sounded like “momissus.” Was he saying, “No, Mrs.
Salazar . . .” or perhaps trying for rapster chic with “Yo, Mrs. Salazar . . .”?
I raised my hand to stop the sound. “Play it again. Just the beginning.”
It only took a few minutes to rewind and replay that opening, but it seemed like a lifetime. When I’d heard it again, I motioned Guidry to turn it off.
Guidry’s gray eyes were steady on me.
For a moment I couldn’t speak, but I had been raised by a grandmother who taught me to tell the truth.
I said, “There at the beginning, where it sounds like he’s stuttering before he says ‘Mrs. Salazar’?”
“Yeah?”
“He’s not stuttering. He first says, ‘Mo,’ and then he corrects himself and says, ‘Mrs. Salazar.’ Only Maureen’s close friends call her Mo.”
“You know who it is.” It wasn’t a question.
I said, “He would not have killed Victor.”
“Then he doesn’t have anything to worry about.”
I took a deep breath. “His name is Harry Henry. He’s been in love with Maureen since we were in high school. Harry’s sort of a beach bum, gets by
working on fishing boats, but he’s a good man. I don’t believe he’d kidnap anybody, and I’m sure he wouldn’t kill anybody. But I’m pretty sure that’s Harry’s
voice on the recorder.”
I didn’t add that Harry was the only person I knew dumb enough to anchor a dead man with a rope so long the body could float to the surface.
Guidry slipped the player back in his pocket. “Once again, you’ve corroborated what Mrs. Salazar said.”
“Maureen told you that was Harry’s voice?”
“Why does that surprise you?”
About a million answers occurred to me, like, “because they’ve been lovers for over fifteen years and you’d think she’d be more loyal,” or “because she
didn’t mention to me that it was Harry who’d called,” or “because something is very fishy about this whole thing.”
I said, “I guess you just never really know other people. Not even when you practically grew up with them.”
“Mrs. Salazar said Mr. Henry lives on a house boat docked at the Midnight Pass marina.”
That was apparently another thing he wanted me to corroborate.
“I’ve never been on his boat, and I’ve never seen it, but I’ve heard that’s where he lives.”
“Okay. Thanks, Dixie.”
He reached for the door handle, but I stopped him. “Guidry?”
“What?”
“Do you ever wish you hadn’t come here? Do you miss New Orleans?”
For a second I thought he was going to open the door without answering, but then his face softened.
“I never wish I hadn’t come here. But I do miss the New Orleans I grew up in, the way it was before the levees broke.”
“Katrina.”
He shook his head. “That name has become a catchword for disaster, but it wasn’t Katrina that ruined the city, it was human negligence. The hurricane
had already passed when the levees broke.”
As if he regretted the bitterness in his voice, he firmed his lips and took a deep breath.
He said, “For tourists, New Orleans was great food, Preservation Hall, Mardi Gras craziness. But for people who lived there, New Orleans was the nutty
old priest always haranguing people in Jackson Square, the transvestites strutting down Bourbon Street in their mesh hose and feathers, up-and-coming
young musicians in the park, ordinary people starting their day with beignets at Café du Monde, all of them giving one another room, looking one another
in the eye because they all belonged. And if a funeral parade came down the street, anybody who wanted to could join in, dance a little bit, clown around
some, because we all knew life can’t be taken too seriously or it’ll kill you.”
It was the longest speech I’d ever heard Guidry make, and when he finished he blushed a little bit under his tan as if he were embarrassed to have let
me see how passionate he was about his hometown.
And right then and there, I finished falling in love with him. Just leaned over the edge of love’s chasm and tumbled straight down. It didn’t have anything
to do with the fact that he looked like an Italian count with a vineyard in his backyard. It didn’t have anything to do with the fact that he was cultured and
intelligent, or that I’d seen him in action enough to know that his integrity was impeccable. It didn’t even have anything to do with the fact that he was one
heck of a kisser—oh, yes, he was. It had to do with that hidden passion he’d just exposed.
Lots of men are good-looking and smart and cultured. Well, not lots, but some. And a few have unquestionable integrity. Okay, they’re mostly in the
movies or in books, but some of them are for real. Guidry had all those qualities, plus passion for a city where people respected one another.
How could I not love him?
It scared me to death.
I said, “Guidry, do you think those guys killed Jaz?”
A spasm moved across his face like a shadow. “I don’t know, Dixie. I hope to hell not.”
His hand moved across the gap between our seats and his fingertips tapped my thigh. It was just a momentary touch, but all my nerve endings sizzled.
He pushed the car door open and left me feeling desolate.
I
25
went into the Sea Breeze condos like somebody walking underwater. Even riding up in the mirrored elevator seemed an effort. When I looked at my
reflections, I saw an endless procession of sad-eyed blond women in wrinkled cargo shorts and loose white T-shirts. None of those women knew where
Paco was or if he was safe. They didn’t know where Jaz was or if she was alive. And none of them could believe that Harry Henry had kidnapped and
murdered Maureen’s husband. But all the evidence said he had.
At Tom’s apartment, Billy Elliot was whuffing eagerly at the door when I unlocked it and went in. The filmy pink scarf was gone from the sofa, and Tom
was at the kitchen table working on some papers. As I knelt to clip Billy Elliot’s leash on his collar, Tom wheeled into the living room.
He said, “I saw the news about Victor Salazar drowning.”
He wasn’t exactly asking a question, just leaving the door open for any inside information I might want to provide. I didn’t provide any. If the sheriff’s
department hadn’t yet stated that Victor had been dead when he was dumped from a boat, it was because they didn’t want it noised about. Besides, I had
too many secrets buzzing in my head. If I let one of them slip out, the rest might fly out too. People always think they want to know other people’s secrets,
but secrets are like bee stings—too many at one time can be fatal.
I said, “Yeah, I saw it too.”
“Have you talked to your friend?”
I shook my head. “She has an unlisted number and I don’t have it.”
I hustled Billy Elliot out the door before Tom could ask me anything else.
When I brought Billy back after our run, Tom was still working at the kitchen table. I hung up Billy Elliot’s leash and smooched the top of his head.
I yelled, “Bye, Tom,” and beat it. I definitely did not want Tom to ask me any questions about Maureen.
As I went toward the elevator I was sorry I hadn’t had a chance to ask Tom about his new girlfriend. That’s the trouble with keeping secrets to yourself.
You do that, and you can’t ask other people about theirs.
For the rest of the afternoon, my mind played with the question of what the heck Maureen was up to. She had been very convincing the night she’d
come to beg me for help. She’d seemed truly distraught about the phone call she’d got telling her Victor had been kidnapped. I had believed every word,
but now I was suspicious of everything she’d said.
She had told me she’d replayed the kidnapper’s message so many times she knew it by heart, and yet she hadn’t told me it was Harry Henry’s voice.
While it was possible she hadn’t recognized the voice until later, that seemed a slim possibility. And when I’d asked her if she ever saw Harry, she’d
immediately gone on the defensive and denied she did. Protested too much that she was a faithful wife.
From what Harry had said, Maureen had talked for years about leaving her husband for Harry, then always changed her mind. Harry had denied seeing
Maureen for the last few years, but I hadn’t believed him. Now I was even more convinced that he’d lied.
While I cleaned litter boxes, I wondered if Maureen had told Harry one time too many that she was going to leave Victor and then changed her mind.
Would that have made Harry kidnap Victor? Kill him?
While I played roll-the-ball with cats, I wondered if Maureen and Harry had actually parted for a few years. If they had, maybe yearning for Maureen had
caused Harry to go bonkers and kidnap Victor so he could have her.
While I washed water and food bowls, I wondered if the ransom call Harry had made to Maureen had been for real. Knowing Harry, he might have felt
obliged to make the call because he knew from movies that a ransom call was what kidnappers did.
Driving from one cat’s house to the next, I wondered what had happened to that duff el bag full of money I’d left in the gazebo. Had Harry come and got
it? If so, where was it now?
Victor hadn’t just been kidnapped, he’d been shot in the forehead. I doubted that Harry Henry had ever handled a gun, much less shot anybody.
Furthermore, no matter how Guidry might downplay the mob execution angle, ordinary law-abiding people don’t get shot in the head and then dumped out
of a boat with their feet tied to an anchor. I kept remembering Tom’s suspicious face when I’d said that Maureen had a home safe with over a million
dollars in cash in it. According to Maureen, Victor had been an oil broker. But why would an oil broker keep that much cash in his house?
By the time I got to Big Bubba’s house, I was worn out with thinking. To spare my arm the effort of moving it up and down while Big Bubba rode it and
flapped his wings, I put him on his exercise wheel. He immediately jumped off. I didn’t blame him. To a bird, exercise wheels are probably like treadmills
are to humans, and riding a human’s arm is probably like riding a mechanical bucking bull at a cowboy bar. Anybody would choose the bull.
Thirty minutes later, having done bird calisthenics with Big Bubba, I gave him fresh fruit and hung a new spray of millet in his cage. I draped the
nighttime cover on his cage and left him muttering jokes to himself.
I weighed about two tons when I trudged up Hetty’s walk. When she opened her front door, she looked as dispirited as I was. Ben was at her feet, the
only one of us full of energy.
I said, “Hetty, I have to tell you something about Jaz.”
She stepped aside to let me through the door. “Come in the kitchen, we can have tea while we talk.”
Winston was asleep in a puddle of late sunshine through the kitchen window. He didn’t even open an eye when I came in.
While she made a pot of tea and put out a plate of cookies, Hetty talked nonstop about the weather and Ben and the mint growing on her windowsill. I
knew she was talking to avoid hearing what I’d come to tell her.
When she’d run out of irrelevant words, she sat down at the table with me. “Okay, tell me. I know something has happened to Jaz.”
I said, “She’s missing, Hetty. I mean officially missing. You know the man who said he was her stepfather? Well, he lied. He’s a U.S. marshal assigned
to watch over her. She’s in the government’s Witness Protection Program because she’s their only witness to a gang killing in Los Angeles. She was
brought here to keep her safe until the trial. Those young thugs who came in Reba’s house were looking for Jaz to shut her up.”
Hetty listened intently, as if she were getting directions to a place she had urgent reason to visit.
Hoarsely, she whispered, “Dixie, have those boys killed Jaz?”
“Nobody knows. The marshal said she’d left all her personal things behind, so he doesn’t think she went willingly.”
Tears welled in Hetty’s eyes. “Those new clothes we got at Wal-Mart—they were just cheap little shorts and tops, but she was excited as a kid at
Christmas. I don’t think she’s had many things given to her.”
“The marshal said her parents had abandoned her when she was very young, and her grandmother raised her. The grandmother died a few months
ago and she’s been in foster care.”
Hetty looked at Ben, also in foster care, who was lying on her feet.
“How did you get the marshal to tell you all this? Isn’t the Witness Protection Program supposed to be a secret?”
My face grew warm. “My brother beat him up, and then Guidry came and was going to arrest him. So he showed Guidry his credentials and explained it
all.”
“Your brother beat him up?”
My face got hotter. “I thought the marshal was going to attack me, so I kicked him down the stairs that go up to my garage apartment. My brother drove
in just as I kicked him, and he thought I needed protecting. My brother’s a little bit, um, physical when he gets mad.”
Hetty hid a smile behind her hand. “I think that’s nice. Brothers should protect their sisters.”
“I guess the marshal could have been nasty about it, pressed charges or something, but he let it go.”
Hetty’s face grew sad again. “So Jaz is missing, and nobody knows where she is.”
“I’m afraid so.”
There wasn’t anything else to say, and I needed to go home and sleep for a few million years.
As she walked me to the front door, Hetty said, “She’s a good girl, Dixie. She deserves a lot better.”
I thought of what Cora had said. “I guess they all deserve a lot better, Hetty.”
At the door, she said, “If you hear anything, will you let me know?”
“Of course.”
I was on the walk when Hetty called after me. “Dixie, if they find Jaz, does that mean she’ll have to go back to California?”
At first I thought she meant if they found Jaz’s body. But when I turned to look at her I realized she was referring to a living Jaz.
“I don’t know, Hetty.”
“I was just thinking, if they’d let her stay here in Florida, and if she wanted to, you know, I’d be pleased to have her live with me.”
My eyes burned, and I had to make several tries before I could speak. “I’ll tell them that.”
As I drove away, I muttered, “Tell who? The government? The gang? Nobody cares where she lives.”
That wasn’t true, of course. Hetty cared.
When I got home, Michael had a light supper waiting on the deck. I charged upstairs for a fast shower and clean clothes and joined him. Ella was on a
chaise in her diva pose, content in her harness with a thin leash attached to a leg of the chaise. The two place settings on the table looked pitifully few.
There should have been three.
On the horizon, a thin band of white clouds promised to hide the sun’s setting, but we took seats facing west just in case. Supper began with creamy
vichyssoise, then switched to roasted chicken and a green salad. We ate hot french bread with it. We drank chilled white wine. We didn’t talk much, just
mostly said, “Mmmmm.”
The cloud bank on the horizon glowed gold and saffron as the sun dipped behind it, and rays of pink and yellow shot toward the heavens. But the sun
slipped into the sea without showing itself, a striptease artist coy behind a gauzy fan.
When the colors above the clouds had dulled, Michael brought out a plate of fat strawberries whose tips had been dipped in chocolate.
Michael ate one or two strawberries, I ate about half a dozen. Chocolate brings out the hog in me.
When I’d finally stuffed myself as much as possible, I said, “Guidry met me in Tom Hale’s parking lot this afternoon. He wanted me to listen to a tape of
the message Maureen got from the kidnappers.”
“Yeah?”
“I’m almost positive it was Harry Henry’s voice. He even called her Mo at first, and then changed the Mo to Mrs.”
Michael snorted, either to indicate how dumb he thought Harry was to have given himself away like that, or to indicate how dumb he thought Harry was
in general.
I said, “Guidry said Maureen had already told him it was Harry.”
Michael moved his wineglass in little circles on the tabletop.
I said, “When she came to see me that night, she was so upset about that call. She quoted it word for word, exactly the way Harry had said it. Doesn’t
that seem weird to you? That she would have played it so many times she knew it by heart, but she didn’t recognize Harry’s voice until after Victor’s body
was found? Doesn’t that seem weird?”
“Everything about that woman is weird.”
“Cora Mathers thinks nobody would grow up bad if they were loved enough. Do you believe that?”
“Hell, Dixie, I don’t know.”
“Hetty Soames wants to be Jaz’s foster mother if they find her alive.”
“Hunh.”
“Michael, do you have any idea where Paco is?”
He stood up and began gathering dishes to take inside. He said, “Paco and I have an understanding. He doesn’t tell me how to put out fires, and I don’t
tell him how to catch criminals. Paco is wherever he is. When he’s finished doing whatever he’s doing, he’ll be home. End of discussion.”
I carried Ella inside and helped Michael tidy up the kitchen. Then I kissed them both good night and went up to my apartment and fell into bed.
In my dreams, I entered a restaurant looking for the perfect stranger. I didn’t have any notions of what that might be, just let my inner guide direct me. In
the bar area, none of the line of people perched on stools met whatever criteria my guide had set, so I crossed over to the other side and looked at the
diners sitting at tables. Nothing moved me toward any of them.
Just as I was beginning to think I’d got my dream message all wrong, a man came through double doors from a glass-walled kitchen. He wore a chef’s
tall hat and an immaculate white apron, and he carried a live stone crab in one hand. He stopped when he saw me, and for a second the only motion was
the crab’s waving claws. Diners fell silent watching us watch each other, and the waiters drew to attention against the walls.
I moved toward him, slowly and deliberately. He waited, the crab held shoulder high and beady-eyed. The room was silent as white.
I reached him and took the crab from his grip, holding it out to the side to escape its grasping claws.
The man said, “Good. I’ve been waiting for you to figure that out.”
I woke up with a start and lay staring into the darkness. I didn’t have a clue what the dream meant, but it wasn’t any more confusing than my waking life.
T
26
he breeze was brisk and smelled of rain when I went out the next morning, and the curdled sky was not so tall. A few agitated gulls flapped above the
waves, and on the beach a clawing surf tried to escape the pulsing sea. I stood on my porch a moment to inhale the salty day, then thumped down the
stairs to the carport. Seabirds slept on every car, no doubt thinking themselves smart to get a pregame seat before the clouds burst.
At Tom Hale’s dark apartment, I slipped in quickly and hustled Billy Elliot out with a minimum of smooching. At least between Billy and me. A faint scent
of perfume in the air made me think Tom had an overnight guest again, so there may have been other smooching.
In the parking lot, security lamps cast wide pools of light on the oval track where Billy and I ran, but the sky was too overcast to let any dawning light
through. We both looked up frequently. Billy probably hoped he’d get to sprint through a warm shower, I hoped the rain would hold off until Billy and I had
finished our run. Besides Ruthie and Big Bubba, my other clients for the day were seven cats—including two pairs—and a ferret. I would inevitably end up
trailing cat hair. I hoped it wouldn’t be stuck to wet clothes.
After Billy and I had made it around the last loop, and he had raised his leg one more time to announce to all the subsequent dogs on the track that he
was still the number one honcho, we skipped back into the lobby. A jelly-bottomed woman in skin-tight lycra leggings popped out of the elevator before we
got to it. She had slept-on hair and a bright-eyed Yorkie on a leash. The Yorkie was the size of a Hostess Sno Ball and was dancing with excitement. The
woman looked as if she hadn’t been awake more than two minutes.
Billy Elliot looked down at the Yorkie with keen interest.
As the woman opened the lobby door to go out, she said, “I’ve gotta house break this puppy.”
She sounded as if she thought she needed to explain why she was going out before sunup looking like an un-made bed and leading a dog. Obviously a
first-time dog owner.
As we got in the elevator, Billy Elliot looked over his shoulder for one last glimpse of the Yorkie—as if he wished he had one for himself. Whether we
have two legs or four, I suppose we all want a companion of our own kind.
Back in Tom’s apartment, the kitchen light was on and I could smell coffee brewing. I looked toward the kitchen but didn’t see Tom, so I hugged Billy
Elliot goodbye and slipped out. This time I was almost sure Tom had company. I’m not sure what it is, but people make impressions on the air so that
even if you can’t see them, you know they’re there. I just hoped this woman was better than Tom’s last girlfriend. Not that it was any of my business, but
Tom deserves the best.
The sky remained overcast and rain threatening for the rest of the morning. At every stop, I expected raindrops. I made a record fast stop to give Ruthie
her next-to-last pill, and goosed the Bronco toward Big Bubba’s.
It still hadn’t rained when I got to his house. I hurried up the stairs, removed his night cover, and opened his cage door. I gave him an anxious once-over
to make sure he hadn’t gone bird nuts from boredom, but all his feathers were intact and shiny. He cocked his head and regarded me with the same
scrutiny I was giving him, except I used both eyes.
He said, “Did you miss me?” Not angrily, just conversationally.
I said, “For breakfast this morning, may I suggest our best imported banana? It’s served with toasted Cheerios and prime sunflower seeds on a bed of
organic millet.”
He said, “Get that man!” Then he laughed like a demented Santa Claus.
In the kitchen, I got his banana and some sliced apple. When I went back to the sunroom, he was sitting atop his cage looking toward the lanai. With no
sun, the lanai probably didn’t look very appealing to him.
I said, “It’s cloudy today, with a ninety percent chance of rain. Temperatures will be in the high eighties. There are no major traffic problems.”
He said, “Hello! Hello! Hello!”
I considered trying to persuade him to play on his exercise wheel, but I knew he’d rather watch dew evaporate. I unlocked the lanai slider and opened it
so he could go out in the humid air.
I said, “While you’re at the gym, I’ll clean your house and put out your breakfast. Would you care for a news update?”
He waddled across the slider track to the lanai while I switched on the TV to a drug commercial featuring several lovely women wearing bedsheets
tastefully pulled above their bosoms. A soothing female voice-over listed the consequences of taking the drug being advertised—blood clots, strokes,
heart attacks, death—while the women in the sheets smiled benignly, bizarrely separate from the doublespeak.
The ad was replaced by local news people who were still covering kidnapping and murder.
An earnest woman with close-set eyes said, “Mrs. Salazar has not returned calls, and there have been no reported breaks in the case. A spokesperson
for the Sarasota Sheriff’s Department said the homicide investigation is ongoing.”
The newswoman didn’t say anything about Harry Henry being the person who’d made the ransom call to Maureen. I didn’t know what that meant, but I
was oddly pleased, as if it might all have been a misunderstanding, a case of mistaken identity that had been cleared up.
I’m too smart to fall for drug company propaganda, but gullible as a goose when it comes to old friends.
I changed the station to PBS so Big Bubba wouldn’t get brainwashed by commercials, and left to go to Hetty’s house. The sky was the color of mold,
and the air had stilled. Trees and flowers were motionless. Even songbirds seemed to be holding their breath waiting for the clouds to let go.
With rain looking more probable every minute, I pulled as far as I could into Hetty’s driveway so I wouldn’t have so far to sprint when I left. When I rang
the bell, Hetty and Ben let me in so quickly I thought they might have been watching for me. Lamps were lit in the shadowy house. By tacit agreement, we
didn’t move away from the front door, but stood in the foyer.
Hetty said, “Any word?”
“No. You?”
“Not a thing. She knows my number, Dixie. And I know she trusted me. She would call if she could.”
I could have called too. Or Hetty could have called me. I had stopped for the same reason she’d been waiting for me—we needed each other’s
personal assurance that everything that could be done was being done.
I said, “I guess all we can do is wait.”
“Wait for what?”
I didn’t want to answer her. I was very afraid we were waiting for somebody to stumble on Jaz’s body.
Perhaps because she feared I might voice those thoughts, she said, “It’s going to storm any minute now.”
I opened the door and stepped outside. I said, “If I hear anything, I’ll let you know.”
I trotted to the Bronco, and Hetty and Ben stood in the doorway and watched me back out. With the soft light behind them, they looked like the answer to
a hopeless person’s prayers.
The Village Diner was almost deserted, and the people inside were craning their necks toward the windows while they ate at double time. Judy
scooted to my booth with my coffee, and Tanisha waved at me from the kitchen pass-through to let me know she was on my breakfast.
Judy said, “It’s gonna come a real gully washer.”
“Looks like it.”
She said, “Dixie, did you know that kidnapped guy?”
“I went to school with his wife, but I only met him once or twice. Why?”
“Oh, they keep talking about it on the news, and they said the wife went to high school here, so I thought you might know them, all of you being natives.”
“He wasn’t from here.”
“They said Venezuela.”
“I think that’s right.”
“Something’s mighty fishy about that whole thing, Dixie. I hope that wife isn’t a good friend of yours because I’ll bet a million dollars she did it.”
I said, “You got a million dollars to pay me?”
“I’d have to pay it in installments, but I know I’m right.”
“I don’t know how she could kidnap her own husband. I mean, who would she be kidnapping him from? And then she’d have to pay herself off? I don’t
think so.”
“Well, but see, what if she killed him and then got somebody else to dump him out of a boat? What if he was already dead when he drowned? They’re
not saying exactly what killed him, have you noticed that? They say they won’t tell until they’ve done an autopsy. Why haven’t they done that yet?”
That’s the thing about being an ex-deputy. People think they can ask me questions about criminal investigations and that I’ll know the answers.
Tanisha dinged a bell to signal that my breakfast was ready, and Judy scooted away to get it. Good thing, because what she’d said made me feel like
somebody had slapped me upside the head. I didn’t know why I hadn’t thought of it myself. Could Maureen have killed Victor? I wondered if Guidry had
already considered the possibility.
If she had, then the money I’d carried to the gazebo hadn’t gone to kidnappers at all, but back into Maureen’s safe, and Maureen had used me sixteen
ways from Thursday.
The rains came just as Judy put my breakfast down. The air inside the diner seemed to drop a few degrees, and the muffled roar of falling rain shrank
the space to a refuge.
I ate my breakfast without a single glance at the windows. My mind was too busy thinking about what Judy had said to pay attention to a storm. For sure
she’d been right about Victor being already dead when he was thrown overboard, and as soon as the medical examiner did an autopsy, that would be
public knowledge.
If it also became public knowledge that Harry Henry had made the ransom call, the world would assume that Harry had killed Victor Salazar and that he
had a million dollars in ransom money stashed somewhere. If Maureen had killed Victor herself, would she let Harry take the rap? It was a dumb question.
Of course she would. If Maureen had to name the one person in the entire world who deserved her greatest loyalty, she would name herself.
I didn’t linger over coffee, but left while the rain was still slanting down in opaque sheets. I was drenched by the time I got to the Bronco, and shivered
when I started the motor and a blast of cold air came from the AC vents. I let the defogger run long enough to get rid of the moisture on the glass, started
the wipers front and back, and eased into sparse traffic. I headed south toward home, but when I got to the turnoff to my lane, I kept going south.
I wanted to talk to Harry Henry again, and this time I wasn’t going to let him lie to me.
A
27
t the marina, rain and steam rising from the bay shrouded boats and birds, and made the few scurrying people indistinct. Wet as a drowned rat, I
walked down the wooden dock looking for Harry’s house boat. According to local gossip, it was a forty-foot relic from a time when house boats were
mostly boxy cabins set on pontoon-floated decks. Even without that description, I would have known it by the figurehead lashed to the front—a department
store mannequin in a painted-on bikini. Harry probably thought it added a sophisticated touch.
Off the dock, a quintet of white yellow-billed pelicans sailed through the downpour like majestic dowager swans. One of their plain brown cousins had
compactly folded himself neck-to-back on Harry’s deck, and an immature blue heron with mud-colored feathers stood atop the cabin perfecting his neck
stretches.
A skiff from an anchored pink catamaran was tied up on one side of the house boat, and a runabout was on the other side. A man shiny-wet as a
dolphin was aboard the runabout gathering up empty beer cans and dropping them into a black garbage bag.
Nodding to him, I stepped off the dock to Harry’s deck and pounded on the cabin door. “Harry, it’s Dixie! Are you in there?”
The only response was the sound of rain and waves slapping against pontoons.
I circled the main cabin, peering into the shadows for Harry or Hef. All I saw were clean boards and carefully stored equipment. Harry might be
eccentric, but he was neat. Fishing equipment took up the port side—rods of every type for freshwater fishing, a line of gaffs arranged from a three-footer
to a six-footer, along with buoys, sinkers, cast nets, bait nets, fishing line, snorkels, and spear guns. Harry took his fishing seriously. He even had a chesthigh
stack of wooden crab traps ready—five of them, the legal limit for one person. A length of fine cotton twine had been tossed over the stack for tying
the traps’ exit doors closed. I like those exit doors. If a trap is left underwater too long, the twine disintegrates and the exit door swings open so the crab
can escape.
Back at the door, I knocked again, just in case.
Behind me, the man from the runabout hollered, “Harry’s not there.”
I turned and yelled through the rain. “You have any idea where he is?”
“Key’s above the door! Women use it all the time.”
Before I could tell him that I wasn’t one of Harry’s women, he gave me a knowing grin and walked away, swinging his plastic bag with a jaunty air as if
he weren’t soaking wet and walking through hard rain.
I waited until he was out of sight and then felt above the door for a key. Yep, it was there, but I pulled my hand down empty. It was one thing for a woman
to use the key to open Harry’s door if he’d told her to use it. But Harry didn’t exactly expect me. And he hadn’t exactly given me permission to enter his
house boat when he wasn’t there. Which would make it a little bit like breaking and entering if I went in.
On the other hand, Harry’s neighbor had told me to enter. You could even say he had given me permission to enter. He might not be authorized to give
me permission, but how could I know that? I had shown up at Harry’s door, and a man who could very well be his best friend in all the world had told me to
use the key. So I asked myself what any responsible, law-abiding person would do. And the answer was that a reasonable person would use the key and
go in and wait for Harry.
I reached up again and got the key. I looked around to make sure nobody was on any of the other slipped boats watching me—just in case I might be
lying to myself. Then I slid the key into the lock and pushed the door open and hurried inside.
The cabin was as neat as the deck. Square room with pecky cypress walls hung with framed photographs of sea and shore life. Single bench bed
covered by a quilt neatly tucked in. Immaculate galley kitchen with an eating bar. Shoved against the wall, a long wooden table with two drawers on its
outer side. The top was loaded with careful stacks of Sports Illustrated and Reader’s Digest. I didn’t know what was in the drawers.
Three things were obvious: One, Harry wasn’t home. Two, I was doing something that any court in the world would say was a violation of the law, not to
mention just plain bad manners. Three, I wanted to know what was in those table drawers.
Their contents were as organized as everything else. The first one held checkbooks, boxes of printed checks, a hand calculator, a package of AA
batteries, and a collection of pens and sharpened pencils. The second drawer had a phone book, some warranty papers for a boat motor, a digital
camera, and a box of nice linen stationery. I opened the box. It didn’t look as if Harry had ever used the stationery because the display envelope was still
under a flat ribbon tied around the paper. The box also held a square pink envelope like greeting cards come in. My fingers trembled when I pulled out the
paper folded inside it.
Even after fifteen years, I recognized the loopy handwriting, the humpbacked letters, the little open circles for dots on the i’s. I suppose people who don’t
grow up keep the same handwriting they had when they were teenagers. As I read it, I could hear Maureen’s voice.
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 will be watching you, and if you talk to anybody, we will kill your husband and feed him to the sharks.
Under my breath, I whispered, “Oh, Mo.”
Now I knew why Maureen had been so sure what the kidnapper had said on the phone. She had written the script. Probably made several drafts before
she’d decided on the final one, then gave it to Harry to read when he called her.
She had also sullied my memories of an innocent time that had been precious to me, a time before she chose money over love, and before I learned
that choosing love doesn’t mean you get to keep it.
The question was: What should I do about it?
Some old friendships are like cozy nests you can crawl into when you need comfort. Others are like giant squid, with tentacles lined with toothy suction
cups that attach themselves to you and leave permanent scars.
I had let Maureen use me because her father had abandoned her and her mother had been a shrew. I had understood her, and I’d let compassion
make me a martyr. So which one of us was the dumb one?
I pulled out my cellphone and punched in Guidry’s number. His voice mail answered, which allowed me to be brisk and businesslike.
I said, “Maureen Salazar wrote the script that Harry Henry used when he called her to demand ransom money for Victor’s kidnapping. If you should
happen to get a search warrant to look for it on Harry’s house boat, you’ll find it in a drawer in a long table.”
I put the cellphone back in my pocket. But before I could replace the note in its stationery box in the drawer, the door to the cabin opened. I jammed the
note in my pocket and turned around.
Maureen was dressed for rain. She wore a pink knee-length vinyl raincoat with matching shiny boots and a broad-brimmed hat. She looked cute and
ridiculous and repellent.
With water still running off me onto Harry’s immaculate floor, I said, “I know what you did.”
She batted her eyes, all innocence. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Oh, can it, Mo. I’ve had it with your lies.”
She seemed to weigh her response options, and went with woman-to-woman confidential.
“Dixie, Victor wasn’t a good husband like I always said. He used me like a toy—one of those ball-hitting things with the Ping-Pong paddle and the ball
on a rubber band. You know? Well, he hit me one time too many, and my rubber band broke.”
She paused and smiled, so pleased with her metaphor that I could see she was memorizing it so she could use it with the next person she met.
She said, “I tried to leave him, believe me, but I could never go through with it. He would cry and beg, and then he would hit me. And then when I
promised not to leave, he’d give me a big piece of expensive jewelry. Harry thinks I stayed because of the jewelry, but that’s not true. Victor was just a lot
stronger than me.”
Through cold lips, I said, “So you killed him?”
Her pink lips parted in surprise. “Is that what you think? That I killed my own husband? I can’t believe you’d think that!”
The smart thing would have been to pretend to believe her. But I was beyond smart. I had gone into honest.
I said, “I don’t know what to believe anymore. If you didn’t kill him yourself, you know who did. So who was it, Mo? Who killed Victor?”
While I steeled myself to hear her name Harry, she studied her manicure. “I don’t know his name. Victor never introduced us.”
If that was going to be her story, Harry was doomed.
I said, “Victor didn’t leave with some old buddies from South America, did he? You made all that up.”
“We can’t all be strong like you, Dixie.”
“Being honest isn’t a muscle test, Mo. It’s a choice, like whether to wear underwear.”
She tried for an arch smile. “I don’t like underwear.”
“Listen to me, Mo. Unless you can explain how Victor was killed, there’s a very good chance that you, or Harry, or maybe both of you are going to be
charged with murder. So start explaining and maybe I can help you avoid a lot of trouble.”
She looked hopeful. “It was because of his business. Like I told you, he had a lot of enemies because of his business.”
“His oil broker business.”
“It wasn’t exactly oil.”
“Victor sold drugs, didn’t he?”
“No, silly, he imported drugs. You make it sound like he was some street pusher. He dealt directly with the supplier—Colombia, Afghanistan, places
like that. He had it delivered to men called captains, like in the army, and they passed the stuff out to people under them. He was a businessman. He
didn’t hurt anybody.”
“You’re talking about heroin and cocaine?”
She avoided my eyes. Even Maureen wasn’t dumb enough to believe those drugs were harmless.
I thought of Jaz and all the other kids whose lives have been distorted by drugs. I thought of young men like Paulie and his friends, boys who sell drugs
that people like Victor bring into the country. The guys at the bottom get money for fast cars and cool shoes before they end up dead or in prison. Men like
Victor get megayachts and trophy women like Maureen and millions in cash in their home safes. It was cold comfort that Victor had ended up dead too,
because for every “businessman” like Victor who disappears, a line of others are ready to take his place.
I said, “Tell me what happened when he was killed. The truth, please.”
She said, “He was meeting somebody down at the gazebo, somebody who came in a boat. He did that a lot, so I didn’t think anything about it. I heard a
gunshot and then I heard a boat going away real fast. I knew something bad had happened so I went down to the gazebo and Victor was lying there
dead.”
She looked up at me with puzzled eyes. “There wasn’t much blood. That surprised me. And it wasn’t like his head was blown open or anything. It was
just a neat little hole in his forehead.”
I didn’t offer any explanations, so after a pause she went on.
“I knew he was dead, and I knew the men trying to get Victor’s business had done it. There wasn’t anything I could do about him being dead, and if I
called the cops and reported it, they would come investigating Victor’s business. I thought they might take the money or the house, the cars and boats,
maybe all of it. So I went to see Harry, and we came up with the idea of a kidnapping. See, if Victor was kidnapped, it wouldn’t look odd that he’d
disappeared, and nobody would know how he’d made his money. So Harry brought his boat around to the gazebo and we tied Victor’s ankles to an
anchor and then Harry took him out to deep water and dropped him overboard. Then he went home and waited until late that night and called me and left
that message.”
“And you came to see me.”
“Yeah. You were cool to help me, Dixie.”
“After I took the money to the gazebo and you drove me home, you went back to the gazebo and got the money, didn’t you?”
She looked proud of herself. “It wasn’t really money. It was phone books.”
I felt like banging my head on Harry’s walls. There hadn’t been anybody watching me from a boat when I walked down that dark path to the gazebo.
There hadn’t been any money in the duff el bag. I had been a total dope.
I said, “Why the press conference?”
She looked surprised at the question. “That’s what people do, Dixie. Rich people, I mean. When a rich person’s been kidnapped, the family calls a
press conference.”
I said, “They’ve identified Harry’s voice on the ransom call.”
“I know. I feel bad about that.”
“Do you understand? It means they think he kidnapped Victor.”
“Well, they can’t prove he did it. He doesn’t have a record or anything. I don’t think he’ll have to serve time.”
My hands itched to smack her. I took a deep breath and decided to come at her from another angle.
“You said Victor’s killer was one of his rivals. You must have some idea who he was.”
She shook her head. “It could have been a lot of people. See, some big shot from Colombia contacted them all and said he was coming here this
week. He’s going to put the entire North American operation in one broker’s hands, so people are coming from all over the place to find out who the main
guy will be. Victor expected it to be him. I think some other broker killed him to keep him from going to that meeting.”
It made my head swim to hear Maureen speak of drug kingpins as brokers, but what she’d said made sense.
I said, “Did you hear a name for the guy coming from Colombia?”
“No, but Victor said he was one of Escobar’s people. I don’t know who Escobar is, but Victor said you don’t screw around with one of his men. He
sounded pretty scared.”
I would have been scared too. Pablo Escobar was once the bad-ass head of the Medellín drug cartel in Colombia. He’s been dead over a decade, but
his former associates still use his name to instill fear. One of Escobar’s men coming to Sarasota would send an earthquake through the drug world.
“You have to tell them the truth.”
She shook her head like a four-year-old offered a bite of spinach. “I can’t do that, Dixie. That would get me in a lot of trouble. You know, they might think
I was Victor’s business partner or something.”
“If you don’t tell, I will.”
She looked at me as if she were seeing me for the first time. Baby gophers probably look like that the first time they poke their noses out of the ground
and see daylight.
I said, “Mo, I know about the script you wrote for Harry. You directed him to make that ransom call.”
Outraged, she said, “He told you about that?”
I pulled the note from my pocket. “I found it. I’m giving it to the police.”
It was stupid of me to wave it at her. Maureen was tall and long armed and quick. With a look of feral cunning, she snatched the note from my hand and
ran out the cabin door with me hot behind her.
I
28
nstead of leaping to the dock and running away, Maureen rounded the corner of the cabin toward the aft deck and disappeared into the shadows. Like a
kid, she probably thought she could escape by making herself invisible. That if she hid from me, I wouldn’t know where she was.
The rain had slackened to a fine mist, with steamy fog ghosting dark silhouettes of sleeping gulls and pelicans. Trembling with suppressed fury, I moved
cautiously on the wet deck looking for her. Maureen had got away with using people all her life, and I was determined not to let her get away with framing
Harry for kidnapping Victor. Maureen was taller than me by a good five inches, but I’d always been more athletic, and I had righteous outrage feeding me.
When I found her, I knew I could overpower her.
I crept around a group of deck chairs, but she wasn’t behind them. I peered behind a pile of coiled ropes and under a table lashed to the deck. She
wasn’t there. There was only one other place she could be. I stopped at the tower of Harry’s crab traps. They made a perfect shield for a woman who
thought she had the right to use old friends for her own selfish purposes.
I went still as a mongoose, waiting for her to give herself away.
After several silent minutes, the brim of her pink rain hat rose from behind the stack, then her big apprehensive eyes looked over its top at me.
By then I was a volcano ready to blow. All my anger and frustration and disappointment gathered into a bellow that would have traveled five miles in the
jungle.
“DID YOU MISS ME?”
She recoiled as if I had put a bullet in her head, and pushed the stack of traps toward me. More furious with every moment, I caught the upper trap in
both hands as it fell. I heaved it at her, and she made a noise like a squeaking mouse as she ducked away. She was afraid of me now. For the first time
since she’d known me, she was seeing the side of me that had faced down evil and won, a side of me that had killed a man.
Made clumsy by fear and the mist-slick deck, she tried to run, but one of her pink vinyl boots crashed into the escape hole in one of the traps she’d
knocked over. Flailing the air for balance, she grunted and kicked her leg as if she would shake it off, but it’s not that easy to disengage your foot from a
crab trap. Especially if you don’t know the size and shape of the exit. Especially if you don’t know you have to line your foot up exactly with the hole to
extract it. Especially if you’re being attacked by a she-devil from hell.
Lowering my voice to a normal level, I said, “Harry’s been loyal to you for as long as he’s known you. I won’t let you hurt him any more than you already
have.”
Her mouth thinned, and I saw her mother’s face. “Oh, you’re so high and mighty! Always thinking you’re smarter than everybody else, better than
everybody else. In high school it was always, ‘Don’t sleep with boys, Mo, you’ll get pregnant. Don’t smoke dope, Mo, it’ll make you a loser.’ Well, look
who’s the loser now. I’ve got a big house and lots of money, and you’re a pet sitter with a dead husband and a dead baby.”
To this day I don’t know why I moved toward her the way I did. To tell the truth, I don’t remember intending anything, I simply surged forward. She
shrieked and hobbled backward, eyes wide and scared. Awkwardly dragging the crab trap on one foot, she hit the low railing, lost her balance, and
shrieked again. Her vinyl raincoat was slippery and the railing was wet. In a blink, she toppled over the railing and vanished into the rain-darkened water.
My anger evaporated. Now I was guilt stricken and horrified. Maureen had never been a strong swimmer. Neither was I. We were more at home on the
beach than in the water. I ran to the forward deck and looked desperately for help. Not a soul. I ran back to the place where Maureen had gone over and
looked into the water. The bay isn’t deep, but Maureen was panicked and she had a heavy crab trap attached to one foot. She could easily become
disoriented and not know which way was up.
People underwater for more than three minutes lose consciousness. After five minutes, their brains suffer permanent damage from lack of oxygen. I
tried to estimate how long Maureen had been underwater. Half a minute, at least. Maybe more.
Shit!
Old deputy training made me put my cellphone in a protected spot out of the rain before I stepped over the railing. As I dropped into the dark water, I
heard a man’s shout and the barking of a dog.
My foot touched something, and I kicked away to come down beside it. My fingers felt Maureen’s slick raincoat. After a jolt of fear when I thought I might
be touching a shark, I moved forward to get a grip on her slippery arm. Maureen slewed toward me, clutching at my floating hair. Drowning people don’t
cooperate with their rescuers. They don’t go limp and allow themselves to be lifted to the surface. Instead, they go wild with panic. They claw at their
saviors, they try to climb them to reach air. Now we were both in danger of drowning. Maureen was weighted down by a crab trap, and I was weighted by
Maureen.
As I struggled free of her, my body realized the danger I was in and made my throat close to keep water from going into my lungs. I had only been down
a short time, but the smothering need to breathe sent me into the same blind terror Maureen felt.
A form suddenly moved against me, and two arms wrapped around me and tugged me upward. In seconds, my head was above water and I was
coughing and gagging. I heard other men’s voices shouting and the thunder of footsteps on the dock. Somebody boosted me toward the deck where
strong hands hauled me onto the boards.
I crawled to the cabin wall and leaned against it while Harry pulled Maureen out of the water. She was crying and gagging, and she’d lost her pink hat.
Harry stretched her on the deck, gently eased the crab trap off her foot, and carried her into the cabin.
A man squatted beside me. He said, “Good thing Harry saw you jump in and ran for help. Your friend’s going to be okay.”
I said, “She’s not my friend.”
Hef came to my side and nuzzled my neck, which made me burst into tears and bury my face in his wet fur. After a while, Harry came back and there
was some genial backslapping as he thanked the men who had helped save Maureen and me.
The men left, and Harry put his hands under my arms and lifted me upright. He didn’t even breathe hard when he did it. Harry was strong.
He said, “Are you okay?”
Through my tears, I nodded. I was still wheezing and weak-kneed, but more upset than harmed.
He said, “Come on, let’s get you inside so you can dry out.”
I knelt to snag my phone from its protected spot and let Harry lead me inside the cabin. Hef followed me with his tail wagging. Mo had taken off her
shiny raincoat and boots and was sitting on Harry’s bed wrapped in a big towel. When I came in, she gave me a murderous look.
Harry brought me towels and led me to a chair.
I said, “You saved our lives. Thank you.”
He grinned and shrugged. “I’m more at home in water than you two. What happened?”
Maureen said, “Dixie pushed me overboard. I nearly drowned.”
I looked from her to Harry. I’d never thought either of them was perfect, but then who is? When you’re young, you’re more prone to overlook friends’
faults and forgive their weaknesses because you know you’re all still cooking and nobody’s done. But we were adults now. All three of us had been in
life’s oven long enough to rise to our greatest heights.
I said, “I found the script Mo wrote for you to read when you made the fake ransom call. She took it from me and ran to the deck. I chased her and her
foot got caught in a crab trap and she fell overboard.”
Harry said, “I saw you jump in after her. Hef and I were coming home and I saw you. I yelled for help, and those other guys came running.”
He didn’t seem to get the implication of my knowing about the note and the fake ransom call.
I said, “Maureen told me that Victor was already dead when you tied the anchor to him and took him out to the inlet.”
The corners of his lips tucked in, so I thought I might be connecting.
I said, “Unless Maureen comes clean and tells how Victor’s drug-running rival killed him, you’ll probably be charged with both kidnapping and murder.”
He looked quizzically at me. Then he turned and looked at Maureen.
He said, “Mo, are you saying you didn’t kill your old man? I mean, for real you didn’t kill him?”
She glared at him. “I told you I didn’t kill him!”
“I thought you just said that ’cause you didn’t want me to know. That’s the only reason I helped you.”
Now it was my turn to finally get it. Harry had thought all along that Maureen had killed Victor. To protect her from a murder investigation, he’d agreed to
make the fake ransom call. And on the theory that nobody could prove she’d killed him if his body was never found, Harry had taken Victor’s corpse out in
a boat and dumped him overboard. The poor guy had done it all to protect Maureen.
Maureen didn’t share my sympathy for him.
She shrugged. “That’s your problem, Harry. I told you. And that note Dixie found is in the water. Nobody will ever see it, and nobody can prove it ever
existed. Anyway, you’re the one who made the fake kidnapping call, not me.”
Harry’s face registered shocked pain. “You told me to!”
She said, “That’s just your word against mine, Harry. Nobody will believe you.”
I had forgotten that Harry could be quick when he needed to be. He was at her side in a nanosecond, leaning over her with one big hand gripping her
arm.
He said, “You’d do that to me?”
Drawing her neck back, she swung her other arm up and slapped the air under his face. “Get your hands off me! Who the hell do you think you are?
You’re nobody!”
Harry flinched as if she had managed to hit him. Over her head, his eyes sought mine and sent me a look of sad acceptance. I had the feeling that Harry
was more disappointed in Maureen for her hateful words than he was for her greed or dishonesty.
Hef didn’t have Harry’s old loyalty to Maureen. All Hef knew was that a person had tried to hurt his friend. Like a shot, the dog ran at Maureen with his
teeth bared.
Still in Harry’s grip, she kicked at Hef. “Get that damn dog away from me!”
Every man has his limits, and Maureen had just pushed dumb, good-natured Harry over his.
White faced, he said, “You don’t kick my dog.” To me, he said, “Dixie, get the cops out here.”
She laughed. “Dummy, Dixie’s my friend. She won’t do that.”
I pulled my cellphone from my pocket and punched in Guidry’s number. This time he answered, and the sound of slapping windshield wipers told me he
was in his car.
I said, “I’m with Harry Henry and Maureen Salazar on Harry’s house boat. They want to talk to you about how they faked Victor Salazar’s kidnapping.
Maureen would also like to tell you about the rival drug dealer she believes killed Victor.”
“Are you speaking in code?”
I said, “Yes, his boat is in the Midnight Pass marina. Five minutes? That would be fine. We’ll wait for you.”
He said, “It’s raining. Give me fifteen.”
I slid the phone back in my pocket and smiled at Harry and Maureen. “The detective is on his way.”
Guidry actually made it in ten minutes, and considering the rain he had to drive through, that was some kind of record. I opened the door when he
knocked. With a quizzical glance at my dirty, bedraggled, waterlogged self, he strode inside.
Harry’s grip on Maureen was still firm, and Maureen looked as if she would bolt in a second if she got a chance.
Maureen said, “I want my lawyer.”
Guidry nodded. “Fine with me. He can meet us at the station.”
Maureen said, “She. My lawyer is a woman.”
She said it so defiantly that I felt sorry for her. Maureen was still stuck in an earlier time when it wasn’t so common for women to become lawyers. I
guess being the in-house bimbo of a drug dealer would keep you from noticing that a lot of old ideas had changed.
She was right about one thing, though. She definitely needed a lawyer.
W
29
ith a promise from Guidry that Hef wouldn’t have to spend the night in jail, I left the marina. Actually, I was pretty sure that Maureen’s lawyer would
have them home by midafternoon. Filing a false claim of kidnapping is only a misdemeanor, and so is illegally disposing of a corpse. More than
likely, they’d each get off with a fine for those crimes. On the other hand, while I believed Maureen’s story and expected the cops to eventually accept it, I
expected them both to be suspects in Victor’s murder.
On the way home, I thought how freaky it was that a group of big-time drug dealers were gathered somewhere in Sarasota right that minute. Every
Floridian suspects that some of the tasteless megamansions that ruin our views have been built with money made from drug trafficking, but we like to
believe they’re retired drug traffickers. If what Maureen had said was true, a lot of them were still in business. I imagined their counterparts flying into
Sarasota’s private airport in their personal jets, each of them as rich and well armed as some countries, all of them in silk suits and dark glasses, all of
them anxious about losing power to the man who would be named the new jefe of the North American drug-trafficking business. It made me feel like an
extra in The Sopranos.
By the time I got to my lane, the rain had resolved into a gentle soaker. The oaks and sea grape along my drive were drooping with the weight of water,
and all the parakeets were hidden under their leaves. I parked under the carport and squished up the stairs to my apartment. Inside, I was undressed by
the time I got to the stacked washer and dryer in the hall alcove. Everything went in, wet shorts, soggy T-shirt, damp underwear, water-logged Keds. I had
been in so much water, I wouldn’t have been surprised if I’d sprouted fins.
I padded to the bathroom and hauled my tired self into the shower to let blessed warm water beat away the film of bay scum and disillusionment. I
barely made it to bed before I fell into exhausted sleep.
I dreamed I went to a place with a lot of filmy white stuff that I guess was clouds. I was excited because I figured I was in heaven and that if I asked God
nicely, he would send me to be with Todd and Christy. I came to a big golden gate with an arched top, the generic kind of gate you see in cartoons about
heaven. I rang a doorbell and waited, a little annoyed that nobody was there to greet me. In a while, I heard a voice that wrapped around me with no
source that I could see. It was a melodious voice that I associated with harps or cellos, the kinds of instruments you would expect in heaven.
The voice said, “Are you sure you want to enter here? You can’t change your mind, you know.”
I said I was sure, and the gate clicked open. I walked through and looked around. It was clear in there, with no rain or clouds, just pretty flowers and
butterflies and songbirds and little gurgling streams—a standard heavenly environment.
The voice spoke again, and this time it was ahead of me. It said, “Come this way, honey.”
That struck me as funny, to have an archangel or whatever he was call me honey. I followed the voice and came to a place where a lot of women were
having a picnic. They had fried chicken and watermelon and potato salad and the little green olives I love so much. The women were all different ages and
colors and shapes. The only thing they had in common were big satisfied smiles. These women were enjoying life, big time.
I said, “Excuse me, I’m looking for God.”
They all turned their happy faces toward me and spoke with the sound of wind singing through silver flutes.
And the voice said, “Honey, I AM.”
I woke up smiling, and lay for a minute feeling happier than I could remember feeling in a long time.
Then I remembered that Jaz was missing and perhaps killed, which made me get up and get busy so I wouldn’t think about it. I’d done all I could do that
day.
Naked, I padded to the kitchen to make a cup of tea. While I waited for the water to boil, I looked out the window over the sink. Rain was still falling and
from the looks of the sky, it would continue to fall for a long time. As I carried my tea to the closet-office, I flipped on my CD player to let Patsy Cline’s nononsense,
no-equivocation, no-shit voice break the silence. With a fresh burst of energy, I returned phone calls to new and old clients, then whipped
through all the clerical part of my business. Then, still naked, I hauled out the vacuum cleaner and sucked up all the dust in my apartment. I cleaned my
bathroom too, and washed damp towels along with my wet clothes. Like Harry Henry, I like my environment to be clean and neat. It makes me feel as if I’m
in control of my little corner of the world.
When I finished, I still had a little time before my afternoon rounds, so I got dressed in jeans and T-shirt and pulled on a reflective yellow rain slicker. I
even put on the matching sou’wester hat with a dorky wide brim that drooped in the back like a dragging butterfly wing. Wearing all that rain stuff made me
feel like a kindergarten kid, but at least I wouldn’t get soaking wet again. Just sweaty and claustrophobic. I was careful going downstairs because the
steps were slippery, and then I dashed across the deck to Michael’s back door. He was sitting at the butcher-block island with a cup of coffee and a slice
of pie in front of him. He looked miserable.
Ella sat beside him on her adoring stool, and when I came in she let her eyes open all the way for a moment. Cats do that in the dark, so maybe she
thought my presence caused the lights to dim. Either that, or the sight of my big yellow self had made her think a lion had entered the kitchen.
Michael said, “Want some key lime pie?”
Like Guidry, he had new stress lines around his mouth. We were all too aware of dark fears lurking in the basement of our minds.
I shrugged off the coat and peeled off the hat and poured myself a cup of coffee. He sliced a wedge of pie for me, and I joined him at the island.
I said, “No word from Paco yet?”
He frowned. “I told you, Paco’s fine. He’ll call when he can.”
“I just thought he might have called.”
“I’ll tell you when he does.”
Ella watched us with a worried expression on her face.
I ate a few bites of pie. I drank some coffee. I said, “Guidry has taken Maureen and Harry to the sheriff’s office for questioning.”
Michael’s eyebrows raised. Good, I had distracted him.
He said, “I’m almost afraid to ask you what those two numb-nuts managed to get arrested for.”
“First you have to know that Maureen says her husband was a drug importer.”
“A what?”
“A major drug trafficker in heroin and cocaine. Bought it direct from the big cartels in South America and Afghanistan. I’m talking big dealer. She calls it
importing.”
He made a face. “And she stayed with him?”
I said, “Remember, this is Maureen Rhinegold we’re talking about. She’s not any smarter now that she’s Maureen Salazar. Anyway, she says there’s a
big shake-up going on in the drug world. Some Colombian top dog, one of Pablo Escobar’s men, has come to Sarasota to meet with all the drug bosses
in this country. He’s going to name one American to head the whole North American drug operation. Maureen thinks somebody killed Victor so it wouldn’t
be him.”
“She know who it was?”
“She claims she doesn’t, but that may change if she looks at doing jail time for any part she had in Victor’s business.”
Michael looked slightly less miserable at the thought.
I said, “Harry thought Maureen had killed Victor. He helped her because he wanted to protect her from a murder rap. He made a fake ransom call so
she could record it, and he took Victor’s body out and dumped it in the Venice inlet.”
“Poor stupid bastard.”
“He had plenty of direction. Maureen wrote out the words for him to say when he made the fake ransom call. I imagine it was her idea to dump Victor
overboard.”
Michael grinned. “Too bad she didn’t tell him to use a shorter rope on the anchor.”
“It’s not funny, Michael!”
He got up to rinse his plate at the sink. “Yeah, it is.”
I didn’t tell him about the near-drowning incident at the marina. It was too long a story to go into right then, but I would tell him later. I wanted him to know
that Harry had saved my life.
He put the plate in the dishwasher and turned to lean against the counter. “What about that what’s-her-name girl? Have they found her?”
I took a deep breath. “It’s Jaz. Not yet.”
He shook his head. “Doesn’t sound good.”
I said, “If those gang members were waiting for her when she left the resort to go back to Hetty’s house, they could easily have grabbed her without
anybody seeing. Even if she screamed, people are all shut up inside their houses with the air-conditioning on, so nobody would have heard her.”
Michael crossed his arms, probably thinking what he’d like to do to the gang guys.
I said, “I keep thinking about those boys, especially the one they called Paulie. He seemed like a pretty good kid. Or at least not as cynical as the other
two.”
“Good kids don’t kill other kids.”
“Why didn’t his mother pay closer attention to him? How could he be peddling drugs or robbing houses without her knowing? She’d have to be awfully
busy or stupid not to notice. Or maybe she just didn’t care.”
Michael gave me a knowing look. “Why do you blame the mother? The kid had a father too.”
I didn’t answer because I knew it wasn’t a real question. Michael knew why I blamed the mother.
I said, “If our grandparents hadn’t taken us in, we might have ended up like Paulie.”
He gave me a long, level look. “One of the guys at work has a wife who’s close to nine months pregnant. He’s nervous, so she got him some Chinese
worry balls. He’s supposed to rotate them in the palm of one hand to relax, but instead he’s more tense than ever.”
“Your point being?”
“You’re rotating all that crap around just like they’re worry balls, and it’s not doing you a bit of good. Not doing those kids any good either. It doesn’t
matter why those guys turned bad. They killed another kid, and they’ll have to pay for it. Period. End of story. Quit hooking everything to our mother leaving
us. And for God’s sake, stop wondering how we would have turned out if she hadn’t, or if our grandparents hadn’t taken us in. You can’t ever find an
answer, so quit worrying it to death.”
That’s one of the best things about having a family. They’ll tell you when you’re doing something dumb. Michael was right. It was senseless to dwell on
questions I couldn’t answer.
I said, “You’re right.”
“Damn straight I’m right. And I hope you’ve had your last conversation with Harry Henry and Maureen Rhinegold what’s her name now.”
“It’s Salazar, and I have.”
I thanked him for the pie, smooched the top of Ella’s head, and got back into my slicker. When I yanked the yellow hat down around my ears, Ella
looked alarmed.
I said, “I’m going to leave early for afternoon rounds.”
Michael said, “We’ll have meatloaf for dinner. Mashed potatoes. Rain food.”
Too brightly, I said, “Great!”
Carnivore that I am, I love meatloaf, especially the kind Michael makes with tomato gravy. But Paco doesn’t eat much meat, so the fact that Michael
was planning meatloaf for supper meant he didn’t expect Paco to be home.
I went upstairs to get my pet-sitting stuff and drove off through the soft rain. At least I didn’t have to wear the dumb hat in the car. The parakeets were still
hiding in the trees and the lane was soggy under the shell. When I looked across the Gulf to the horizon, it was hard to tell where the sea ended and the
sky began. The entire world was gray and dreary.
I wondered if Guidry had finished questioning Maureen and Harry. I wondered if they had posted bail and gone home. I wondered if Harry would ever
forgive Maureen.
I caught myself thinking about them, and murmured, “Worry balls.”
It was none of my business what happened with Maureen and Harry. My part in their drama was over. Furthermore, no way, no how, no time would I ever
again allow myself to get involved in somebody else’s problems. No matter how long I’d known them or how close we might once have been, people could
just damn well take their problems to a nice therapist or a minister or a priest, because I was through.
That’s what I swore, and I really meant it.
I should have remembered that any time you take a stand on something and say you’ll never, no matter what, do that or go there or be involved in
something, next thing you know you’ll be up to your eyebrows in it.
At the Sea Breeze, I wore the hat while Billy Elliot and I ran. Either because he was embarrassed to be seen with me or because of the rain, he was
willing to confine his run to only one lap around the parking lot’s oval track. At the cats’ houses, the order of the day was lethargic drowsiness. They’d put
themselves into lull-land from looking out at the rain, and none of them wanted to play any vigorous games. I felt the same way, so I promised them we’d
play twice as long the next time I came.
I took off the hat before I went into Big Bubba’s house. The slicker was alarming enough, I didn’t want him to think a yellow giant from the jungle was
after him. He was so subdued by the relentless rain that he hardly acknowledged my presence.
I said, “Your mom will be home in a few days.”
He said, “Get that man,” but he didn’t have his heart in it.
I left him with fresh fruit and a new millet strand and went out the front door. On the porch, I put the yellow rain hat back on and headed home. I didn’t
stop at Hetty’s house. I couldn’t bear to talk about Jaz right then. I didn’t even pull the hat off inside the Bronco. All I could think of was going home and
having comfort food with Michael.
At Old Stickney Point Road—so named after the city built a new Stickney Point approximately twenty-five feet from the old one—I hit the brakes to keep
from broadsiding a khaki-colored Hummer that shot out in front of me and made a sharp turn onto Midnight Pass Road. The driver didn’t even see me.
His wipers weren’t working, and he was bent over the steering wheel trying to locate the controls. The driver was Paulie, the kid who’d left fingerprints on
Big Bubba’s seed jar.
I dug under my slicker and winkled my cellphone from my tight jeans pocket to call Guidry. I got his voice mail.
I gave him a description and the tag number of the Hummer, even though I was sure it was a rental. I said, “I’m following him. I’ll call you when I have an
address.”
Then I put my cellphone back in my pocket and held the steering wheel with both hands, peering through the insistent rain to keep watch on the young
killer who might lead me to Jaz.
A
30
pale sun sat low on the horizon and cast a sickly yellow light through the rain. Instead of making it easier to see, the light acted as a lens that blurred
visibility. Since I was in familiar territory, I was able to navigate by known landmarks, but the Hummer in front of me slowed to a crawl at every
eastbound lane. Each time, Paulie’s head turned to look down the lane before he gunned the motor and sped off to the next intersection. All those lanes
look alike and some of them don’t have street signs, so it wasn’t surprising that he had trouble finding the right one.
Paulie finally turned left toward the bay, and I swung in behind him. The street was typical of the key, winding and heavily wooded on both sides, with
wide stretches of space between the houses. It was dark and gloomy under the trees, and my tires hit several low places that sent up sprays of dirty water.
Paulie switched on his lights, but I drove without mine. I didn’t want to call attention to myself.
The closer we got to the bay, the more often Paulie slowed the Hummer and hesitated at driveways. I supposed he was searching for an address or for
something familiar about a house.
He slowed even more when he came to a stretch where heavy rain had caused power and sewer damage. Several large panel trucks were parked
along the curb, and a big orange backhoe was maneuvering into position in the middle of the street. Barriers had been erected in the street to mark a
spot for digging, and a group of men in black rain slickers and rain hats stood by to watch the operation. Beyond the backhoe, an FPL truck with a raised
cherry picker crane and two men inside the bucket stood beside a streetlight.
As if all the activity surprised him, Paulie came to a complete stop in the street and looked at the workers for a moment before he turned into the
driveway of a one-story stucco house. The garage door began rising, and a curtain twitched aside at one of the lighted windows. A girl illuminated by
inside lamplight peered out at the workmen in the street. She looked frantic, and her mouth opened as if she was trying to get their attention.
It was Jaz.
Somebody jerked her away, and the curtain closed.
While Paulie waited for the garage door to rise high enough to drive under, I came to a lurching stop at the curb behind a Verizon truck.
The garage door reached its tallest height and Paulie drove inside.
A voice somewhere in the dark recesses of my mind spoke in a flat, unemotional voice: You know what you have to do.
The thing about internal voices is that they call you to action right then. No time to think about it, no time for debates, no time to weigh consequences.
Normal people would say what I did next was insane, but normal people have never met themselves face-to-face.
As the garage door began a rattling descent, I opened my car door and ran like hell. The garage door was about four feet from the ground when I got to
it, and I swooped under it and duck-walked to the rear of the Hummer.
Paulie was hauling Siesta Grill take-out bags from the Hummer and trying to figure out how to carry all of them in one trip. Stacking them and balancing
them taxed his brain, but he finally managed to gather them all in both arms. Without a free arm to keep his low-hanging pants from falling, he had to walk
spraddle legged to the back door. He kicked the door to get somebody’s attention, and when the door opened he dropped some of the bags.
The young guy who’d opened the door said, “Fuck, Paulie, you’re spilling stuff!”
Paulie said, “So pick it up! I’m the one doing all the work here!”
He went inside and kicked the door shut, and I crept forward. Half the people I know never lock the inside doors to their garages. With luck, gang
members wouldn’t lock theirs either. I pressed an ear against the door and heard muffled male conversation, a couple of shouts, and then silence. I hoped
the silence meant they had carried the food into another room.
Gingerly, I tried the doorknob. It turned, and I pushed the door open far enough to look inside. The kitchen was so messy and dirty it would have turned
the stomach of an orangutan, but nobody was in it. From what I judged to be the living room, male voices argued over who had ordered what. The voices
surprised me. I had expected young voices, but these were deep grown-up voices.
High on adrenaline, I crept forward. I didn’t have a plan. I didn’t have a weapon. I didn’t have an idea of what I was going to do. All I knew was that young
men who were members of a street gang had taken Jaz captive, and that she was still alive.
In the living room, a gruff voice said, “Goddam good thing you didn’t bring us more pizza. Or those damn chicken buckets. I didn’t come all this way to
eat drive-through crap.”
Several other men made vigorous agreeing noises, all of them apparently fed up with what they’d been eating. But who were they?
I moved faster. With all the noise they were making, plus the dull sound of the rain and the clatter of the backhoe digging up the street, I figured the
sound of my Keds moving across the kitchen tile wouldn’t be noticed.
Another man said, “At least one of those punks is good for something. I still don’t know why you brought them.”
A sharp voice said, “How many times do I have to explain it? I brought them to get that girl. If we let her testify, it’ll bring a shitload of trouble on all of us.”
Chilled, I listened to other men point out that the job hadn’t been done yet. As if Jaz were a rabid animal they’d caught in a trap and needed to dispose
of, their only point of agreement was that the longer she lived, the more all of them were in jeopardy.
Hugging the wall, I slipped out of the kitchen and into a dining area where a table was heaped with briefcases and laptops. The space formed the foot
of an L between the kitchen and living room. Cautiously, I edged to the corner and tilted my head so one eye could peek into the living area.
About a dozen men were in the room, and it was immediately apparent what the pecking order was. Two of them sat on a long sofa with a two-man
space between them. They wore expensive slacks and dress shirts. Their shoes were polished and they wore dark socks that didn’t expose any leg.
Each had a grandmotherly TV tray set up to hold food and a wineglass. Their food had been transferred from clamshell boxes to real plates, and they had
real flatware. Three other similarly dressed and TV-trayed men sat in club chairs.
Other men were younger and dressed as if they were junior executives or midlevel employees. They sat on the floor with their legs stretched out and
Styrofoam containers open on their laps. They had cans of beer rather than wine. The youngest, in sloppy jeans and droopy T-shirts, were Paulie and his
two bottom-of-the-barrel friends. They were awkwardly serving the men on the sofa and chairs, fearfully making sure they had the dinner they’d ordered,
pouring wine in their glasses, offering them extra napkins and salt and pepper from the carry-out bags.
At the far side of the room, a dark, broad-chested man with a curly black beard leaned in a doorway and watched the action. From the respectful way
everybody looked at him, even the important guys on the sofa and chairs, I knew he was the most dangerous man in the room. He wore an exquisitely
tailored black suit, black silk shirt, and black tie. Jet-black hair curved around his ears, and heavy gold bracelets glinted at his wrists. Even with the house
darkened by rain, his eyes were hidden behind slim dark glasses. Everything about the man said he had an obsidian heart as black as his suit.
Realization hit, and my heart struggled against its cage like a panicked bird. The man in the doorway was the big shot Maureen had talked about, the
one from Colombia who was here to appoint a North American drug czar, and the men who looked like executives were crime bosses. In a sickeningly
rational move, the mob head from L.A. had brought Paulie and his friends to find Jaz and kill her. Without her, there would be no murder trial of his young
street dealers, therefore no fallout that could hurt him.
With a take-out bag dangling from one hand, Paulie turned to the man leaning in the doorway. As if he were speaking to a coiled snake, he said, “Uh,
sir, where do you want yours?”
Silently, the man crooked a finger at Paulie. Everybody in the room stopped eating to watch Paulie carry the bag to him. Without speaking, the man
took the bag, and Paulie hurried away like a cowed dog to take a seat on the floor. At the door, the man extended the bag toward somebody inside the
room.
Jaz stepped forward, took the bag from the man, and disappeared from view.
I must have made a movement, because the Colombian swiveled his head toward me. For a long moment we stared at each other, me like a yellowcrested
bird, he with his eyes hidden behind those dark glasses.
Thinking that the best defense is a good offense, I stepped forward and let him see all of my reflective yellow glory. I must have been quite a surprise.
I said, “I’ve come for the girl.”
Cursing men leaped to their feet and grabbed for their guns. Dinners spilled, wineglasses fell to the floor, beer cans were kicked over. Behind the man
in the doorway, Jaz came to look out at me with pinched terror in her face.
I squared my shoulders and tried to look tough. I wasn’t sure what I was going to say, but I thought if I talked fast enough I might be able to convince
everybody that it would be a very good idea to let me take Jaz and leave.
I said, “I don’t have anything to do with this meeting, I don’t even know what it’s about. I’ve just come for Jaz. Let her go, and I won’t say anything to
anybody.”
There was a long, cold pause, then the man in the doorway crooked a finger at me the same way he’d motioned Paulie to bring him the take-out bag.
Jaz began to cry.
Oddly, everything seemed to become more distinct. Colors and scents and sounds were more vivid. I knew they were going to put me in that room with
Jaz. I also knew they could not let me live to tell about it. If I ran, I would surely get a bullet in my back, and nobody would hear the shot over the noise in the
street. The only good thing about this development was that Jaz would no longer be alone.
With a silent prayer that Michael would not be too devastated by my death, I moved forward. When I was close, the Colombian grabbed Jaz’s wrist,
pulled her from the room, and pushed her to me. Expecting him to order us to stand still while they executed us, I took her hand and squeezed it. Whatever
happened, we were in this together.
Everything that happened next seemed to happen simultaneously, everything slapped on top of everything else.
First, the Colombian held his hand out straight in front of me in Paco’s signal—his first two fingers making a V like open scissors.
Next, he turned toward the others and spoke in a loud voice. “Everybody freeze! You’re all under arrest.”
By some sleight of hand, a badge had materialized in the hand of the Colombian, except he was really Paco, and he was holding it out so all the men in
the room could see it. A gun was in the other, and I knew he had taken it from a soft holster that had been hidden under his jacket. The jacket was now
open, and the black holster displayed the word POLICE in big white letters.
In a low voice, he said, “My sister is coming out with the girl. Hold your fire.”
I was so addled at the Colombian drug lord being Paco in disguise that for a second I thought he had cracked up and was talking to himself. Then I
realized that in addition to a bulletproof vest under his silk shirt that added bulk to his chest, he was wired. He was speaking to somebody outside the
house.
To me, he said, “Go!”
I gripped Jaz’s hand and ran toward the kitchen. With a shrill yelp of fear, she let me pull her through the kitchen to the back door. We burst through the
door into the garage and I blindly pawed the wall to hit the button that opened the garage door. When the door began to rise, I pulled Jaz toward it and we
ducked under and ran across the boggy yard. At my Bronco, I stuffed her in, pulled myself inside, and gripped the steering wheel with both hands to keep
from flying apart.
In the next instant, the backhoe that had been digging a hole in the street came to a stop, and the workmen around it yanked off their slickers and hats
to reveal SWAT jackets and helmets. So did the backhoe driver. The cherry picker crane swung around to allow uniformed men inside the bucket to train
their rifle sights on the front door. Patrol cars screeched from both directions to barricade the street, and the whap-whap-whap of a helicopter sounded
overhead. A slew of men in dark flak jackets and helmets materialized out of nowhere. Every man had initials on his jacket—FBI, DEA, SCSD, SIB,
SWAT—and every man carried an assault rifle.
A big voice spoke through a bullhorn. “Come out with your hands up!”
I gripped the steering wheel so hard my shoulders shook. Every man inside that house had a gun. Every man inside that house realized by now that
Paco wasn’t a big Colombian drug lord but an undercover cop who had tricked them. They had two choices: to add cop killing to the charges already
against them, or to put down their weapons and come out.
Beside me, Jaz was frozen and confused, breathing in short laps like a stressed dog.
The front door opened and men began filing out with their hands above their heads. I waited, stiff as stone, until Paco appeared in the door. He had put
away his gun but still had the cloth holster open to show it was marked POLICE. Tensions run high in a situation like that, and I knew he didn’t want any of
the law enforcement people to mistake him for somebody else.
Within seconds, every man who’d come out of the house was handcuffed and led to the paneled trucks. The trucks were not plumbers’ trucks or Verizon
trucks or FPL trucks after all, but SWAT armored vehicles.
Paco separated himself from the others and slogged through the mist to the Bronco. He had taken off his dark glasses, but he still looked like a
gangster. I rolled down my window and he leaned inside and kissed me, his beard prickly against my cheek.
“Go home,” he said.
He gave Jaz a half smile and a thumbs-up, then turned and disappeared into the throng of uniformed lawmen.
I looked at Jaz and saw a new fear on her face. She was afraid of me.
She said, “Is he your brother?”
I said, “It’s a long story, but he was just pretending to be a bad guy. He’s really an undercover cop. You’re safe now. Those guys who were after you are
all going to jail. You don’t have to hide anymore.”
Her face crumpled and she dissolved into racking sobs. I gathered her into my arms and held her while she cried, patting her on the back like I once
patted Christy.
She said, “He wouldn’t . . . he wouldn’t let them . . . hurt me. They wanted to, and he stopped them.”
I squeezed her closer. “They can’t ever hurt you again.”
Jaz cried while the armored trucks drove off with their loads. She cried while men erected warning barriers around the hole they’d dug in the street. She
cried while the truck with the cherry picker crane lumbered off. She cried as if she had barrels of tears that needed shedding.
After a final shudder, she went limp and pulled away.
Dully, she said, “Where do I have to go now?”
“My orders were to take you home.”
In a tiny voice, she said, “I don’t have a home.”
I said, “Well, actually, you do. If you want it, that is. Hetty would like you to live with her.”
The light breaking on her face was like a glorious sunrise.
T
31
he only sound on the way to Hetty’s house was the swish-swish of the wipers.
When we got there, Jaz pushed out of the car and ran to the front door, her skinny legs churning. Hetty must have heard the car and looked through
her peephole, because I heard her whoop of joy before she opened the door. While I stood behind her grinning, Jaz fell into Hetty’s arms and the two
swayed in the doorway for a long moment, squeezing each other as if they’d found a long-lost treasure.
Hetty finally pulled Jaz aside so I could pass through, and we all trooped to the kitchen, where Hetty busied herself making hot chocolate for Jaz. Ben
ran to Jaz for a hug, and Winston graced her with a slow I love you eye blink.
I doubted Hetty would ever get all the story from Jaz, so I stayed long enough to fill her in on everything that had happened. Still dazed, Jaz didn’t really
understand it herself. She was a kid, and all she knew was that bad people had done bad things and had wanted to do more bad things to her, and now
she was safe. It might be a decade or more before she understood the full implication of everything she’d been through.
When I left them, Hetty was already talking about the colors they might use for decorating Jaz’s new room. A woman with less imagination might have
been talking about transferring Jaz’s school records from L.A. to Sarasota. Hetty knows how to set priorities.
I drove home on autopilot, too happy to do much more than steer the car. At home, I went straight to Michael’s kitchen. He was at the stove enveloped in
a cloud of steam, and he turned to me with a smile a mile wide.
He said, “Paco called. He’s on his way home. I’m making bouillabaisse.”
The butcher-block island was set for two, with wineglasses and cloth napkins. I didn’t need to be told that, on this evening, three really would be a
crowd.
Michael nodded toward the counter where an insulated hamper sat. “I packed the meatloaf and stuff for you. I put heated bricks in there, so it’ll stay hot
until you’re ready for it.”
I said, “Thanks. I love you.”
“Love you too, kid.”
The hamper was surprisingly heavy, but then Michael always gives a lot. I slopped out into the rain to cross the deck and go up my stairs. I left the
hamper on my one-person breakfast bar and squished down the hall to my bathroom where I stood a long time under a hot shower. I was extremely alone.
When I was warm and scrubbed clean as new, I pulled on a thick terry robe and went to the kitchen where the insulated hamper sat all by itself on the
bar. I opened the lid and inhaled heavenly smells. I took inventory: a metal pan with Michael’s meatloaf, a container of tomato gravy to pour over the
meatloaf, a covered Pyrex dish filled with mashed potatoes, and another with skinny green beans and slivered almonds. There was even a square pan
with warm blackberry cobbler. The cobbler called for vanilla ice cream which, wonder of wonders, I just happened to have in my refrigerator’s little freezing
compartment.
I closed the hamper’s lid. I thought about Michael and Paco downstairs together. I thought about the ways people demonstrate love. I thought about how
love lives in small acts as much as heroic ones—a smile, a word of support, a special dish, nice napkins for a dinner for two. I thought about how those
small acts are reflections of courage and loyalty and commitment. Most of all, I thought about how love is unavailable to cowards.
I left the hamper on the bar and went to the living room and fished my cellphone from the bag I’d thrown on the sofa. I dialed Guidry’s number.
He answered, which is a good thing because if he hadn’t, I might have lost my nerve and not even left a message.
I said, “I have meatloaf and mashed potatoes. Would you like to have dinner with me?”
My heart beat once, twice, three times.
Guidry said, “I like meatloaf.”
“Okay, then.”
“Ten minutes?”
“Ten minutes is fine.”
I clicked the phone shut and galloped to the hall closet. Breathing hard, I pawed through it until I found a five-pronged brass candelabra and five
candles. The candles didn’t match, and the candelabra needed polishing, but they would have to do. Charging to the living room, I set the candelabra on
my coffee table, jammed the mismatched candles into it, and lit them. With the lamps turned off and only the kitchen light on, the candles looked just fine.
Romantic, even. I found cloth napkins too, which were only slightly rumpled from lying in a drawer so long. I neatly refolded them and laid them next to
silverware on the coffee table.
Last, I put on a CD of Regina Carter playing Paganini’s violin, surely the most beautiful music ever made. Then, barefoot and breathless in my terry
cloth robe, I opened my french doors to Guidry.
A
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fter we’d all had time to recover from the gigantic sting Paco and his cohorts had pulled off, Michael made a feast—leg of lamb butterflied and slowly
roasted in his outdoor cooker, Bosc pears poached in peppermint schnapps, tabouli, leek and gorgonzola casserole, kibbe, prawn kebabs, burgers
for the kids—and we invited half the people we knew. We gathered on the deck at sunset.
Guidry brought a case of assorted French wines. Tom Hale brought his new girlfriend, who passed my standards when she took off her sandals and ran
with Billy Elliot along the shoreline. Jaz and Ben ran awhile too, but they were both so fascinated with the surf frothing on the shore that they sat down to
watch it as if it were TV. Cora brought a fresh loaf of chocolate bread. Paco’s SIB buddies and Michael’s fellow firefighters brought their wives and kids.
Max brought Jamaican ginger beer, and Reba Chandler brought a trove of Belgian chocolate. Ethan Crane came with a date, another attorney, and I was
only a smidgen jealous. My old friend Pete Madeira brought his saxophone and played for us. Tanisha brought a basket of pies and in no time was
exchanging recipes with Michael, while Judy couldn’t resist going around to see if everybody had been served.
All the talk was how federal, state, and local agencies had cooperated in the raid on that house full of mob bosses. After months of planning and
maneuvering, thousands of man-hours, lots of hard work, some lucky breaks, and Paco’s undercover pose, they had gathered enough hard evidence of
interstate racketeering to end the careers of several mob bosses and the underlings who served them. They were all being held without bail. If Victor
Salazar hadn’t been killed, he would have been with them.
Charges against gang members who had come to kill Jaz to keep her from testifying against them for a crime in California had expanded to counts in
Florida of witness intimidation, murder, robbery, drug trafficking, wrongful imprisonment, and kidnapping. Paulie had agreed to testify against the others
in exchange for leniency, but they would all spend the best years of their lives in prison. With the new charges, Jaz’s testimony was no longer needed. She
was free to become fully herself, with all the possibilities she’d had when she came with God’s fingerprints still on her.
A sadder and wiser Harry Henry was in seclusion with Hef on his house boat. Harry had been charged with illegally disposing of a body—not anything
he’d go to jail for—and Maureen was charged with filing a false police report. She wouldn’t go to jail for that either. She might have to reimburse the
sheriff’s department for the cost of investigating Victor’s reported kidnapping, but that was roughly what she spent every week on her hair and nails.
Federal agents were looking into whether her house or cars or boats had been used to promote interstate drug trafficking. If they had, she might lose
some of them. But neither she nor Harry had killed anybody or kidnapped anybody, and Maureen had hired an expensive lawyer, so she probably wouldn’t
lose much. Except for Harry. Maureen had no idea how big a loss that was.
We ate in the afterglow of sunset, some of us at the long table my grandfather had built and some draped over chairs or chaises. The children trooped
down to the water’s edge and ate with the surf tickling their toes. Cora sat in an Adirondack chair with Ella sprawled across her lap. Guidry sat at the table
beside me, so close I could feel his warmth against my hip.
Hetty and Jaz stayed long enough to eat, but left early because Hetty didn’t want Jaz stressed by talk of her rescue. Hetty was now Jaz’s official
guardian, and Jaz wore the stunned look of a lottery winner not yet able to believe her good fortune. She didn’t recognize a clean-shaven, short-haired
Paco in faded jeans, and I don’t think she yet realized what had actually happened in that house. But Hetty knew, and while Jaz carried a stack of plastic
containers filled with left overs to the car, Hetty went to Paco and gave him a tight hug.
“Thank you for protecting my girl,” she said.
The white smile he flashed was embarrassed. “It was my pleasure. Truly.”
After Hetty and Jaz left, the limo driver who’d brought Cora from Bayfront Village looked at me with eyes round and admiring, as if he were in the
presence of a rock star.
He said, “I saw you on the news, that helicopter shot of you and that girl running from the house, all those policemen swarming from behind cars and
houses with those big guns.”
Softly lit by a citronella candle, Cora said, “Dixie’s like Wonder Woman.”
One of the children ran to show her mother a cowrie shell, and people gathered around to look at it. Guidry’s arm slid around me and pulled me close. I
saw Michael’s watchful eyes on us, hope and caution hanging in the balance.
With his lips moving against my ear, Guidry murmured, “Hey, Wonder Woman.”
My head turned, and the sounds of the party drifted away.
I started to say, “Hey, yourself,” but my lips got covered by his.
Have I mentioned that Guidry is a great kisser?
Oh, yes, he is.