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

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Ieased out of the driveway, drove the short distance to Laura’s house, and pulled behind the locksmith’s truck at the curb. As I walked up the driveway, I saw Celeste and
the locksmith in front of Laura’s front door, and from the way they were glaring at each other, it didn’t seem like a friendly meeting. When Celeste saw me, color rose in her
face and her eyebrows drew together in a furious frown.
“Oh, this is perfect! The pet sitter has come to join the party! I suppose the Sheriff’s Department sent out a special invitation to you. Did they give you a key to the house
too? They won’t give me one, but they’ll give one to anybody who lives in this godforsaken dump! I couldn’t even go through my sister’s house by myself, had to have a
deputy watch while I got her jewelry and some of her clothes. She was my sister, you know, and we were close—even with all I had to put up with, we were close. I didn’t
take anything she wouldn’t want me to have. Not that I don’t have nice things of my own, because I do, but there’s no point in leaving these things here. In any civilized town,
the neighbors would have helped me carry things, but not here. Here the cops keep the keys to my sister’s house from me.”
The locksmith heaved a huge sigh. “Ma’am, as I’ve told you probably a hundred times now, the cops aren’t keeping the keys from you, I am. You can have the keys as
soon as you pay me for changing the locks. You’re the one who ordered the change, you’re the one who has to pay for it. As soon as you pay me, I’ll give you the new keys.”
“I’m not paying you for something I have the right to have. It’s my sister’s house. I had the right to have her locks changed.”
“Yes, ma’am, but I have the right to be paid for changing them. You’ve made three appointments to get the keys, and you missed all of them. Now you want the keys for
free. Sorry, not gonna happen.”
Whirling to me, Celeste said, “And exactly what is your purpose here?”
Mildly, I said, “I just came to tell you I’d found a good home for Leo. I thought you might want to know.”
“That cat? You think I care about that stupid cat?”
“He was your sister’s cat, so I thought you might.”
It didn’t seem like a good time to tell her that the Kitty Haven charged fifty dollars a day for boarding a cat. Legally, the charge should go to her sister’s estate. In reality, I
would pay it.
Even allowing for the shock of learning that her sister had been brutally murdered, Celeste’s behavior was bizarre. She was not a stupid woman. If she were Laura’s legal
heir, she surely knew she had a right to everything in her sister’s house, no matter when she returned to Dallas. But she must also know that the house was devoid of art and
had extremely modest furnishings. Any valuables would be jewelry or furs, which Celeste had apparently already taken.
She said, “You think I’m a selfish bitch, don’t you? Both of you think that.”
Neither the locksmith nor I answered, at least not out loud.
With her face the color of new radishes, Celeste dived into her handbag and took out a leather wallet. As if she were thumbing out playing cards, she slipped some bills from
the wallet and flung them at the locksmith.
“Here’s your money.”
The money fell to his feet and he left it there while he pulled a small paper packet from his pocket. “Here’s your key.”
She held it on her open palm. “Just one?”
“One comes with the lock change. You want more, you pay for more.”
Her head jerked backward, and in the next instant she spat at him and threw the key against his chest.
“Take your damn key and to hell with you!”
Brushing past me, she stomped to the Camry and got in with a loud door slam. When she pulled out, she came within inches of hitting both the truck and my Bronco on the
street, and left with a loud revving of her engine. The locksmith waited until she was out of sight before he picked up two hundred-dollar bills at his feet.
He said, “That woman is a nut.”
I couldn’t disagree.
He said, “You want this key?”
I shook my head. “I’m just the pet sitter. I’ve got the cat that belonged to the woman that was killed here, that’s all.”
“She left a cat?”
“A Havana Brown. Beautiful cat. I’ve found him a good home.”
He handed me the key. “You might need something for the cat.”
I didn’t want the key, but I could see his quandary. He’d changed locks on the house and been paid for it, and he felt duty bound to leave the new key with somebody, even
if the somebody was just me.
I said, “I’ll give it to Lieutenant Guidry. He’s handling the murder investigation.”
“Okay, that’ll work.”
He stuffed the bills Celeste had thrown at him into his pocket and went out to his truck. I followed him. I had been tired and sweaty and hungry before, now I was tired and
sweaty and hungry and totally disgusted with Celeste Autrey.
The locksmith had been only half right. Celeste wasn’t just a nut, she was a vicious nut. She and Laura must have been two halves of one disturbed whole, but while Laura
had been disturbed and sweet, Celeste had soaked up all the bitter.
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My voice was hollow with weariness when I called Guidry.
I said, “I spoke to Celeste Autrey a few minutes ago. She was at Laura Halston’s house with the locksmith. Outside the house, actually, because she refused to pay for
having the locks changed, so he refused to give her the new key. She finally threw money at him and he gave her the key, but she was so mad that there was only one key that
she spit at him and threw it back. Then she left, and he gave the key to me. What do you want me to do with it?”
“She spit at him?”
“Like an adder.”
“Why’d the locksmith give you the key?”
I sighed. “I don’t know, Guidry. Probably because I was there and he was fed up with the whole business. He’d been paid for changing the locks and making the new key,
so he wanted to be rid of it. Good thing Martin Freuland wasn’t there, he would have given it to him. Did you pick Freuland up?”
“Can’t pick a man up just for being outside a house, Dixie. I sent some deputies over to suggest to him that loitering outside a dead woman’s house could be construed as
suspicious behavior, so he left.”
“What about Vaught? I’ve been thinking about him. The man’s hands are too clean. Freuland has more reason to want to kill Laura if she stole money from him, but
Vaught’s hands look more surgical, like they’d know how to use a scalpel.”
The line was silent for a long moment, then Guidry’s voice came back almost as heavy with fatigue as mine.
“Dixie, I never told you Laura Halston was stabbed with a scalpel.”
My tired brain started gathering all the information it had collected to tell him that of course the killer had used a scalpel. For starters, there was her sadistic surgeon husband
who threw scalpels at the ceiling for fun.
An icy trickle of reason slid down my neck, and my entire body went cold with shame. The husband had been one of Laura’s lies, and I was an idiot. Not only had I fallen
for the lie when I first heard it, I’d continued to operate as if it were true even after I’d learned it wasn’t.
I said, “Oh.”
“Does anybody else know you have that key? Anybody besides the locksmith?”
“You do.”
“Don’t mention it to anybody, okay? I’m a little tied up right now, but I’ll call you later and pick it up.”
“Okay.”
He must have been surprised at my unaccustomed meekness, because he actually said “Goodbye” before he clicked off.
I sat there with my phone in hand and wondered how I could have been so stupid. But I knew the reason. Laura had been a master at pulling people into her fantasies.
Unlike her sister’s, Laura’s dishonesty had been laced with warmth and generosity and humor. She’d made people want to believe her, and once they believed, they protected
themselves from feeling like fools by continuing to believe.
For the first time, I felt a touch of sympathy for Martin Freuland, whose huge ego and lust for power would have made him a perfect mark for a woman of Laura’s talents.
Even the town had been a perfect venue for her heist. A city in which the predominantly Hispanic residents throw a monthlong celebration every year in honor of George
Washington is a world where fantasy rules. In such an atmosphere, it wouldn’t have seemed incongruous to Freuland to allow his lover access to his bank’s vault. After all, he
believed in her. He believed she was mentor to the town’s debutantes, and he’d thought the model’s bag she carried on the day of the debutante ball was admirably
philanthropic.
I wondered how long she had plotted and schemed before she carried her model’s bag into the bank vault and filled it with stacks of Freuland’s ill-gotten money. I
wondered how long it had taken Freuland to realize he’d been had. It had been an almost perfect crime. He couldn’t charge her with theft because the money had been given
to him as a payoff for taking deposits from drug dealers. All he could do was report her missing, which must have seemed something of a joke to the city’s police.
I doubted he had understood right away—or that he’d been willing to admit to himself—that what she’d done had been premeditated. Laura would have pulled him in as
skillfully as she’d pulled me in. She would have made him believe she was in love with him, and even after she left he would have continued to believe it. More than likely, he
had chosen to believe that Laura had put money in her model’s bag and driven to Dallas as a spur-of-the-moment thing, a momentary lapse of ordinary good sense.
I might have thought that too, but she had taken Leo with her. Leo had either been in her car when she went in the bank with her model’s bag, or she’d gone home and got
him before she drove away. Laura had known exactly what she was doing when she took that money. Furthermore, she hadn’t been afraid of Freuland. Not then, and not
when he found her and confronted her. She had walked away from him, and the flippant finger she’d shot him hadn’t looked the least big frightened.
Had she underestimated his capacity for violence? Perhaps she went too far when she reported his illicit dealings with his drug-dealer depositors. Perhaps he would have
forgiven her for stealing his money, or at least not killed her for it, but killed her for being disloyal to him.
On the other hand, maybe he hadn’t been the killer at all. Maybe the creepy nurse Vaught had killed her because she’d rejected him. His sickness was a desire to control, to
humiliate, to create terror in helpless victims. The police suspected he’d smothered elderly people in nursing homes, but he could have committed other kinds of murders that
nobody knew about. Homeless people, children, mentally ill people, unwary women are killed every day and the killers are never found. Frederick Vaught could be a shadow
killer who’d gotten away with crimes simply because he chose helpless victims in private places.
With that gloomy thought, I backed out of Mazie’s driveway and headed for Tom Hale’s condo. I was a pet sitter, and it was time for my afternoon rounds, beginning as
always with Billy Elliot.
When I let myself into Tom’s condo, he and Billy Elliot took their eyes off the TV and looked up at me with mild welcome. Then they both widened their eyes a bit, and it
seemed to me that Billy Elliot’s nostrils pinched together. I know for sure he pulled his head back a bit.
I said, “I look like hell, don’t I?”
Tom said, “Maybe not hell. More like heck. Why are you so . . . ah . . .”
“Sweaty. The word is sweaty, Tom, plus rumpled, plus hairy, plus I don’t know what-all.”
“Yep, that would be the word. So why are you?”
I sighed and lowered my rump to the arm of the sofa. “Pete Madeira and I drove to St. Pete this morning and took Mazie to see Jeffrey.”
Tom’s face was blank, so I dragged an explanation from my basket of words.
“Mazie is a seizure-assistance dog. Jeffrey is a little boy who just had brain surgery to stop his seizures. Mazie was becoming too despondent away from him, so we took her
to the hospital. Which means that I didn’t get to go home and take a shower or nap. Well, I napped a little in the hospital in a chair, but it’s not the same.”
“She’s one of those dogs that signal a person when they’re about to have a seizure?”
“No, that’s a seizure-alert dog. Jeffrey’s too little to have that kind of dog. Mazie’s a seizure-assistance dog, which is different. She doesn’t alert him to a seizure, but she
stays close to him when his balance is off from the medication, and she distracts him when he’s unhappy and frustrated.”
“Dogs are so great.”
I got Billy Elliot’s leash and led him into the hall and to the elevator, where he moved as far from me as he could get.
I said, “If you hadn’t had a bath lately, you wouldn’t smell so hot either.”
He pretended not to understand, but when we got to the parking lot, he ran at a slower speed than usual, which I appreciated. By the time I got him back upstairs, I’d made
up my mind to go home and take a quick shower. When dogs make a point of standing upwind from you, it’s time to attend to your personal grooming.
My apartment is only about half a mile from Tom’s condo building, so if I hurried, I could shower and change clothes without losing more than half an hour. I didn’t even try
to avoid alarming the parakeets when I tore down my curving drive, just let them have hysterics in the air. They like to do that, so I didn’t feel bad.
Paco’s car was in the carport, but his Harley was gone, which meant that he was out impersonating some road-calloused biker, which meant that some drug dealer or gang
leader was under scrutiny. I took the stairs two at a time, using my remote to raise the aluminum shutters as I went. Inside, the apartment was fusty and warm, but I didn’t turn
on the AC because I’d only be there a short while. Peeling clothes off as I went toward the bathroom, I felt a renewed energy just from anticipation of a shower. Next to
telephones and Tampax, warm water piped to a shower has to be the greatest invention of modern man.
I didn’t indulge myself, just stayed in long enough to scrub down one side and up the other, letting the water fall hard on my hair but not actually shampooing it. Well, I may
have run a teensy bit of shampoo through it and rinsed it out, but it wasn’t a true shampoo with huge lather or anything, and I only used a dollop of conditioner so it wouldn’t
fan out from my head like a sunflower.
Out of the shower, I ran a comb through my hair, brushed my teeth, smeared on some moisturizer with sun block, and ran a quick slick of lipstick over my mouth. As I ran to
the office-closet still damp, I gathered my wet hair into a ponytail. It didn’t take five minutes to pull on underwear, clean shorts, a T, and lace up clean Keds. A new and bettersmelling
woman, I was halfway to the front door when I remembered the key to Laura’s house, and ran back to the bathroom to fish it out of the pocket in my dirty shorts.
As I raced back toward the front door, a very large man dressed head to toe in black loomed in the doorway between my bedroom and living room. Except for his eyes and
lips, his head and face were entirely covered by a dark ski mask, and he wore leather driving gloves on his hammy hands.
I came to a thudding halt with about a million thoughts running through my mind. One was that in my haste I’d left the front door unlocked and the shutters up. So much for
the lecture I’d given Pete about keeping doors locked because a killer was loose. The other was that my .38 was six feet away in its special case inside a secret drawer on the
wall side of my bed.
Through a slit in the mask thin as a mushroom gill, he said, “No doubt my presence is unwelcome, but it would behoove you to eschew any thoughts of escape. I assure you
I have taken every precaution to complete the task for which I came.”
Oh, Jesus, it was Frederick Vaught.
There have been a few times in my life when some wisdom I didn’t know I had takes over. This was one of them.
With a nervous giggle, I said, “Oh, my gosh! You scared me half to death! Richard put you up to this, didn’t he? I swear, that boy will do anything for a practical joke. When
he gets here, I’m sure the two of you will have a big laugh at how high I jumped.”
The eyes outlined by the ski mask’s holes wavered slightly.
I said, “For a minute there, I thought you were Richard, all dressed up to scare me. But he’s bigger than you. And excuse me for saying it, but he’s in better shape too.
Probably from his wrestling. Or maybe it’s just that he climbs utility poles all day. Being a lineman builds muscles.”
Vaught’s eyes shifted with uncertainty. I didn’t blame him. I was almost beginning to believe in a lineman named Richard myself.
Tilting my head to one side, I said, “If I were you, I’d take the mask off now. A joke is a joke, but Richard’s a good friend of my brother’s, and my brother will be royally
pissed if he thinks you overdid it making like the bogeyman with his little sister. I mean, my brother has a sense of humor as good as anybody’s, but he’s not going to think this
is funny.”
Vaught gave a quick look over his shoulder and then fled through the living room and out the open front door. I already had my cell phone out and was punching 911 when I
heard a car door slam. I sprinted to close the French doors and lower the shutters as the operator answered.
Crisply, I gave her my name and the address. Crisply, I told her an intruder wearing a ski mask had come into my apartment. Crisply, I told her he had already left the scene,
and I promised I would remain there until officers came to investigate. I was calm, cool, collected. It was amazing.
While I waited, I went to the bedroom and pulled my bed from the wall. I opened the drawer built into my bed and looked at the guns nestled in their specially built niches. I
no longer have the SigSauers issued by the Sheriff’s Department because they had to be returned when Todd was killed and I was put on indefinite leave. But I have Todd’s
old backup guns and my own. I took my favorite, a Smith & Wesson .38, from its niche. I dropped five rounds into the cylinder and another five in a Speed Loader to put in
my pocket. My hands were trembling, a peculiarity I noted from what seemed a far distance, as if I were watching somebody’s hands on a movie screen.
The doorbell rang, and I marched to the front door to peer through a slit in the hurricane shutters. I wasn’t taking any chances. I was cool. Deputy Jesse Morgan stood on
the other side of the door, his diamond stud glinting in the afternoon sunlight. His face was as impassive as ever.
I raised the shutters and opened the French door. I said, “Deputy Morgan, we have to stop meeting like this.”
Then I burst into convulsive sobs. I don’t know which of us was more surprised.
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Deputy Morgan said, “Miz Hemingway?”
I erased the air with the flat of my hand, denying what I was doing even as I did it.
Snuffling like a kid, I said, “I don’t know why I’m crying, I’m not hurt.”
“You reported an intruder?”
“His name is Frederick Vaught. He’s a suspect in the Laura Halston murder. He was stalking her. He used to be a nurse, but he lost his license for abusing elderly patients.
He may have killed some of them.”
While I leaked tears, Morgan pulled out his notepad and wrote the name. “You’ve had contact with him before?”
“He was waiting outside the Sea Breeze when I ran with a dog this morning. He told me to quit asking questions about him.”
“You’d been asking questions about him?”
“I overheard him talking to a patient at the Bayfront nursing unit, and I asked who he was. Lieutenant Guidry knows all about it.”
Morgan took in the information about Guidry and nodded.
“And this guy, Vaught, he came in your house?”
I snuffled some more and pointed toward the door into the bedroom, where my bed was still pulled away from the wall.
“I was running out, and he just stepped into the doorway.”
“He threaten you?”
“He said it would behoove me to eschew any thoughts of escape, because he had taken every precaution to complete the task for which he came.”
Morgan looked up from his notepad.
I said, “He talks like that. Like a dictionary. That’s how I knew it was him.”
“You didn’t recognize him?”
“He was wearing a ski mask. Also gloves.”
My voice quivered when I said the part about gloves. Laura’s killer had worn gloves.
“But you didn’t see his face.”
“Trust me, that man was Frederick Vaught.”
Morgan studied me for a moment. “How’d you get rid of him?”
“I pretended to believe he was pulling a prank, that it was a big joke that somebody named Richard had put him up to. I said Richard would be here any minute, and that
Richard was a good friend of my brother’s.”
“And he believed that?”
“I guess he did, he ran out.”
For some reason the tears came back then, and I stood there for a minute and bawled like an idiot while Morgan looked extremely uncomfortable.
When I could speak, I said, “I don’t know why I’m crying.”
In about three strides, Morgan walked over to my breakfast bar where a roll of paper towels stood. Tearing off a towel, he came back and handed it to me.
“Sure you do. That was a close call. If you hadn’t played it right, no telling what would have happened. That was a smart thing you did.”
Shakily, I mopped my face and blew my nose. “Thanks.”
“Are you going to be home for a while?”
“No, I have rounds to make. My pets. Dogs, cats, you know.”
“Oh, yeah. Okay, I’ll put out an alert about Vaught and I’ll contact Lieutenant Guidry. I imagine he’ll want to talk to you about it.”
“I imagine he will.”
“These calls you’re going to make, are all the houses empty? I mean, except for the pets? No people?”
I knew what he was getting at. If Vaught was determined to get me, he could follow me and surprise me inside a pet’s house.
I said, “I’ve got my thirty-eight now. Until Vaught is picked up, I’m carrying it with me.”
He nodded and closed his notepad. “I’ll just wait until you leave.”
I knew what that meant too. Vaught could be lurking nearby waiting for me to come out.
Together, Morgan and I went down my stairs to the carport, and Morgan waited until I was in the Bronco. I drove out first, with Morgan following me. In my rearview
mirror, I could see him talking on his phone.
For the rest of the afternoon, I was hyperalert for Frederick Vaught. At every pet’s house, I locked the door behind me when I went in and I was extra cautious when I left.
Even in ordinary circumstances pet sitters have to be vigilant for creeps hiding in the bushes, but in this case I had even more reason to take care, and I knew who the creep
was.
Even on edge and watching for Vaught to pop up in front of me in his freaky monster getup, I was still acutely aware that breakfast had been a long time ago. Maybe fear
makes me hungry, but I kept thinking about what I could eat for dinner without having to go to a lot of effort to get it. Michael was on duty at the firehouse, so he couldn’t feed
me, and I had no idea what Paco was doing.
By the time I was playing with the last cat on my schedule, I was having visions of platters of food set in front of me. The food on the platters was indistinct, but there was a
lot of it and I knew it would be delicious. That’s the good thing about visions, you don’t have to be specific about the details.
I was just telling the last cat goodbye when my cell phone rang.
It was Michael, with a curious sound to his voice. “Are you near a TV?”
“I’m at a cat’s house.”
“Turn on the TV quick, Channel Eight.”
He sounded so urgent that I obediently went to the TV set, punched it on, and found the channel. With the phone at my ear, I looked at a close-up of a young news reporter
holding a microphone close to her ruby-red lips. Under the shot on the screen, a hyperventilating banner told us we were watching a special news bulletin. To prove it, the
young woman was gushing that viewers were seeing a once-in-a-lifetime event.
The camera pulled back to show another person standing beside her, and I made the kind of sound you make when somebody punches you in the stomach. The other
person was Frederick Vaught, but without his ski mask and gloves.
On the phone, Michael said, “That guy claims he killed the woman you knew.”
I couldn’t answer. All I could do was breathe.
On-screen, the reporter was trying her best not to sound too perky, given that it was a murder she was talking about, but it was a stretch for her.
Shoving the microphone into Vaught’s face, she said, “Without going into any detail about the manner in which you killed Ms. Halston, would you repeat the main point of
what you’ve told me?”
Vaught stared directly into the camera and spoke in a deliberate monotone. “I had a romantic relationship with Laura Halston, and we had a lover’s quarrel. In a moment of
passion, I stabbed her. I feel incalculable remorse for what I’ve done, and I therefore make a full confession in a vain attempt to expiate my crime.”
There was a disturbance off camera, with sounds of raised voices. The camera swung to a uniformed deputy with about thirty pounds of guns and radios and flashlights
dripping from his belt. He seemed to be seriously contemplating a crime of his own.
Stepping to the reporter, he said, “Ma’am, this interview is over.”
Widening her eyes in mock innocence, she said, “Mr. Vaught called the press conference, officer.”
Another officer must have persuaded the cameraman to aim his camera away, because the screen went dark while a muffled voice read Vaught his Miranda rights. I
imagined Vaught was being handcuffed at the time, and that he was enjoying it immensely.
Every crime brings out mentally deranged people who confess their guilt. Some of them may actually believe they committed the crime, others just want the momentary
attention. Vaught was either crazy enough to believe himself actually guilty, or crazy enough to enjoy the limelight of TV interviewers and cameras.
Michael said, “What do you think?”
“In the first place, Laura Halston wouldn’t have touched Frederick Vaught with a ten-foot eyebrow pencil, so that stuff about being her lover is a lot of hooey. In the second
place, Vaught is crazy. I’m talking bona fide mentally ill, like he should be locked up. He came in my apartment today dressed up like some geek version of Darth Vader.”
Michael’s voice sharpened. “He came in your apartment?”
“It’s okay. I got rid of him, and I called nine-one-one. There’s been an alert out for his arrest.”
“Well, now they’ve got him.”
“And he’s having his fifteen minutes of fame. They’ll find out he’s lying and let him go.”
“Couldn’t he be telling the truth about killing her and lying about the reason? Maybe he killed her because she wouldn’t have anything to do with him.”
I said, “Huh,” because he had a point. I would never believe Frederick Vaught had been romantically involved with Laura, but he could have killed her in a frustrated rage
because she rejected him.
Michael said, “Call me before you go home tonight, okay?”
That’s my big brother, always concerned about me, always wanting to protect me. I promised I would call him, knowing he would get in touch with Paco if he could,
knowing they would join forces to keep the big bad world away from me. We’re a family, and that’s what families do.
Knowing that Vaught was in custody made me less wary, but it didn’t make me less hungry. Streetlights had come on, and early-bird diners were already headed home with
leftovers packaged in little square Styrofoam boxes. I would have paid a dollar and a quarter for one of those little boxes.
Thinking Pete might be starving too, I called him before I went to the Kitty Haven to get Leo.
He said, “Thanks, Dixie, but I heated a can of soup earlier. After I get Purr-C home, I’ll just have a bowl of cereal or something.”
“I’m picking him up in a few minutes.”
“Okay, that’s good. I forgot about the sheets from my bed, but they’re in the washer now. It’ll just take awhile to dry them and put them back on the bed, and then I’ll be
ready. But I don’t think you should bring Purr-C in here. I wouldn’t want Mazie to come home and smell cat in the house.”
It wouldn’t have been ethical to take a pet into another pet’s home in any case, but it was thoughtful of Pete to consider how Mazie would feel. I told him I’d get Leo, aka
Purr-C, and be there in half an hour.
I wished I had a chunk of cheese or an apple or at least some crackers. I rummaged around in my bag and found a box of breath mints and ate a few. They weren’t very
nourishing, but they gave me something to chew.
At the Kitty Haven, I took the .38 and the Speed Loader from my pocket and stashed them in the glove box. With Vaught in custody, I didn’t have to go around armed like
a vigilante. Besides, I don’t like to take a gun inside a gentle place like the Kitty Haven. I got one of my emergency cardboard cat carriers from the back of the Bronco and
took it inside. Marge had gone to her own apartment in the back, and a nighttime assistant was lolling on a velour sofa in the front room with a few cats piled on her. The TV
was on with the sound turned low, and the cats were as slow to take their eyes off the screen as the human.
I said, “Sorry to interrupt, but I’m here to pick up Leo.”
Disengaging herself from the limp cats, the young woman rose with feline grace.
“Last name?”
“His owner’s name was Halston, but Marge may have registered him under my name. I’m Dixie Hemingway.”
She looked at me with more interest. “I’ve heard of you.”
I swung the cat carrier. “I’m in a bit of a hurry, so I’ll settle up the charges with Marge later. I know where Leo is. Do you mind if I go on back and get him?”
She looked a little flustered at so much decisiveness in one sentence, but opened the door to the private cat rooms and followed me to Leo’s quarters.
Setting the open carrier on the floor, I said, “Good news, Leo. You’re going to a new home.”
I opened the screen door and lifted him, taking a moment to stroke him before I settled him in the carrier. He hunched low to the floor, looking up at me with suspicious
eyes.
The attendant said, “He’s been very quiet. I think he’s sad.”
“He’ll be happier now.”
“His owner got killed, didn’t she?”
I gave her the look I give dogs who lift their legs on the furniture, and closed the cat carrier.
“Tell Marge I’ll stop by in the next few days and pay her.”
The attendant blushed, undoubtedly hoping I wouldn’t mention her tactless nosiness to Marge.
The cats in the velvety front room languidly flipped their tails as Leo and I went out the door. While Leo had considered his time there a jail sentence, the resident cats
believed themselves in paradise. I know humans who feel one way or the other about their own situations.
It was almost eight when Leo and I got to Mazie’s house. While Leo waited in the Bronco, I rang the bell. Pete was slow getting to the door, and when he opened it his hair
was standing upright as if he’d been in a whirlwind.
He said, “I’m just finishing up. Had a heck of a time getting the sheets on the bed. Those king-size mattresses are big as a circus ring.”
“Leo’s in the car. Can you use a hand?”
“Purr-C. No, no, I’m almost done. My bags are packed and in the car. I just have to gather up some last-minute things, get my saxophone, make a last check to be sure I
haven’t forgotten anything.”
I said, “I’ll wait with Purr-C.” I was sort of looking forward to seeing how Leo would react when he found out his name had been changed.
“Dixie? Did you think to get food for him?”
I did a slow pivot to look at him. If he hadn’t looked so cute, with his white hair sticking up like a Smurf’s and his bramble eyebrows hovering above the kindest eyes in the
world, I would have yelled at him. I’d been up since 4 A.M. with only a catnap in a hospital lounge, I’d driven over the Skyway Bridge to St. Petersburg, I’d shopped for
supplies for Mazie, I’d been damn near attacked by a man who might be homicidal and who was definitely crazy, and I’d picked up Leo at the Kitty Haven, all without any
food since nine o’clock in the morning, which was damn near twelve hours ago unless you counted the piddling little apple thing I’d eaten in the car on the way to St.
Petersburg, a little apple thing I wished I had right then, and he wanted to know if I’d remembered to get cat food as well?
With what I thought was admirable mildness, I said, “No, Pete, I didn’t.”
“Well, I guess I can stop on the way home and get some. But I hate to leave him in the car by himself while I’m in the store, and I don’t want to take him home first and
leave him by himself because he won’t know what’s going on. Do you think you could go pick up some things for him now? While I finish up inside? I’d go but I don’t know
what brand to get. That’s one of the things I’ll have to learn.”
Like a lazy shark, the memory of the box of cat food on Laura’s counter swam across my cortex, the box she had set out to remind herself to buy more. That was the brand
Leo liked, but Laura had died before she could replace it. If she had lived long enough to buy another box, I could have simply used the key the locksmith had given me and
gone in her house and got it. Got the box of cat food, got Leo’s food and water bowls, got his toys, got the cat treats I’d seen in Laura’s kitchen cabinet.
It’s a wonder an orchestra didn’t pop up by the driveway right then with a rousing rendition of “The William Tell Overture,” because remembering the kitty treats made me
remember the two whopping twenty-pound bags of organic cat food that had been in the cabinet with the treats. Forty pounds of dry cat food would be like money in the bank
for a retired clown on a fixed income, and it would be a steady source of meals for Leo.
I said, “There’s cat food at Laura’s house, and a lot of other things you’ll need. I’ll get it while you finish making the bed.”
He looked anxious. “Is that all right? To go in her house?”
I shrugged. “It’s Leo’s house too, and Celeste officially gave me authority to find a home for him. As far as I’m concerned, that includes handing his food and toys over to his
new owner.”
“Well, if you think it’s all right.”
From the Bronco, Leo made a loud and indignant yowl. It was the first sound he’d made, and both Pete and I hurried to the car to see what had provoked him. He was
poking his paws through the air holes in the carrier, and from the low growling noise he was making, I didn’t think he was going to be quiet much longer.
Pete said, “I don’t want him to think I’m keeping him locked up in here. That’s not a good beginning for us.”
I grunted and reached inside the Bronco for the carrier.
I said, “I’ll take him with me.”
“Well, maybe that’s good. He can say goodbye to his old home before he moves to his new one.”
I grunted again. I was too tired and too hungry to speak. As I trudged down the sidewalk to Laura’s house with the cat carrier in my hand, a neon sign inside my head was
flashing Will This Friggin’ Day Never End?
32
Laura’s house looked smaller in the dark. Security lights on each side of her front door cast glittering reflections on the glass panes, but dull grayness lay behind the glass. As I
unlocked the door and pushed it open, I had a momentary apprehension that a passing motorist might see me going in and think I was an intruder.
Out of habit, I locked the door behind me, but I didn’t switch on a light. I might have had every legitimate right to be there, but I didn’t want to call attention to it. An
observer looking through the glass-paned front door and seeing me inside might get suspicious and call the cops, and then I’d have to explain the whole business. I was in no
mood to explain myself to anybody.
The house had the strange neutral feel that a place gets when its life odors have been eradicated. Crime-scene cleaners not only remove all traces of blood and body fluids,
they destroy all possibility of bacteria and odor with a pall of ozone, then cover up the ozone with a spray that smells like cherry-flavored cough syrup.
As I walked through the shadowy living room, Leo made a noise that seemed to end in a question mark.
I said, “I know it smells different, but this really is your house.”
At the end of the living room, where it made an L to a dining area next to the kitchen, I turned the corner and set Leo’s carrier on the bar between kitchen and dining area.
Out of sight of the front door, I felt safe to flip on overhead kitchen lights.
Leo whined and scrabbled at the roof of his carrier.
I said, “We’ll just be a minute, and then you’re going home with Pete. You’ll like him, he’s a sweet guy.”
While Leo growled and pushed at the carrier’s top, I searched for his food and water bowls. I found them in the utility room between kitchen and garage, where somebody
had neatly stacked them on the dryer. I carried them to the bar and put them down beside the carrier. As I did, it occurred to me that it was going to be awkward, to say the
least, to carry the bowls, two twenty-pound bags of cat food, and the cat carrier.
I said, “Damn, I should have brought the Bronco.”
Okay, no big deal. I’d just have to take Leo back to the Bronco and drive to Laura’s driveway, then come in and lug out the bags of cat food and the bowls. Except I’d
have to let Pete know what I was doing so he wouldn’t get anxious when I left in the Bronco. I rolled my eyes. Sometimes it’s a real pain in the butt to play well with others.
With a plan in place, I went to the pull-out cabinet where I’d seen the bags of cat food. Sure enough, there they were, each weighing twenty pounds. There were also several
jars of vitamins, along with a bunch of twenty-ounce bags of sun-dried bonita treats. Laura had definitely believed in having plenty of stuff on hand, which was good. Cats love
those fish flakes, and Pete would be glad to have them. They made a rather large heap when I piled them on the bar next to the carrier. They were also too slippery to carry by
hand, so I went looking for a bag to put them in.
While I was exploring the cupboards in the utility room, Leo popped open the top of the carrier, leaped to the floor, and streaked out of sight.
Under my breath, I said, “Shit.”
I had failed to take into consideration that Havana Browns are strong muscular cats, not to mention smart. Leo had used his brain and his muscles to open the carrier, which
made him a lot smarter than me. Furthermore, every cat has its favorite hiding place, and Leo was bound to have his. Now, lucky me, I’d have to coax a stressed cat out of its
hiding place.
I found a stash of plastic grocery bags and filled one with the packets of bonita flakes. Leo’s food and water bowls went in another bag. I didn’t intend to take Leo’s litter
box. I had plenty of temporary boxes in the Bronco and Pete could use some of them until he got a permanent one. All I had to do was get the bags of dry food out and
persuade Leo to play nice with me.
Back at the pull-out cabinet, I leaned down and lifted one of the bags. That sucker felt like a lot more than twenty pounds, but I was so tired a five-pound weight would have
seemed heavy. I carried it to the bar and plopped it beside the carrier. I looked again at the description of the contents printed on the bag. Chicken and lamb nuggets, it said.
Twenty pounds, it said, but I could have sworn it was a lot heavier. It was also oddly rigid. Dry cat food is usually packed a bit loosely to allow for the contents to slosh around
and not break through the bag. When you set it on the floor, it sits with a certain relaxed slump, like a woman sits when she doesn’t care if she bulges in spots.
I started to get the other bag from the cabinet, then turned back to check the first bag again. The top inch had been neatly folded over and stapled. That seemed peculiar,
because it seemed to me that most bags of cat food were glued at the top. But maybe they weren’t. Maybe some were glued and some were stapled, and what difference did
it make? It didn’t make an iota of difference to a cat, and it shouldn’t make any difference to me.
I got the other twenty-pound bag, and as I lifted it out I had an image of Laura Halston lifting her model’s bag after she’d stuffed it with money from Martin Freuland’s bank
vault. The image was so clear and so sudden that I went to my knees with the shock of comprehension. With the bag between my knees, I examined the stapled top. The
staples had been driven in with careful exactness, but they didn’t appear to have been done by a machine. Some human had laid those staples in that folded-over top, and the
human had probably been Laura Halston.
I stood up and got a table knife from a drawer, then knelt on the floor and gently used the knife to pry the staples out. Carefully unfolding the bag’s top, I peered inside. It
took a moment to recognize what I was seeing, because I’d never seen anything like it. Two rows of brown paper bands, each band imprinted with $10,000, each wrapped
around a stack of hundred-dollar bills. Six bands in all, holding sixty thousand dollars, and that was just the top layer. I sat down on the floor and pulled out one of the stacks.
It was surprisingly thin, not even an inch thick. The bag itself was about twenty inches tall. I did some fast arithmetic and came up with around a million dollars in the bag. And
there were two bags, which meant Laura had been hiding around two million dollars in plain sight in her kitchen.
I said, “Son of a gun.”
As if in response, a cracking sound came from the living room. My first thought was that Leo had become so agitated at the strangeness of his home that he’d knocked
something over. My second thought was that somebody had knocked out a glass panel in the front door so they could unlock it. My third thought was that I had left my .38 in
the Bronco.
With the bag of money on the floor between my outstretched legs, I began scrambling to get upright. I was on one knee, with one foot on the floor, when the bag tipped over
and spilled bundles of hundred-dollar bills onto the floor. Dimly aware of the puddle of money on the kitchen tile, I was frantically sorting through my options, which were more
or less limited to running to the back door and hoping to escape through the garage, or climbing into one of the kitchen cabinets.
Martin Freuland came around the living room’s L and stood on the other side of the bar separating the dining area from the kitchen. He held a .9mm Glock in his hand, and
his face registered a curious shock when he saw me.
He said, “Oh. It’s you.”
There were so many unspoken assumptions in those few words that I couldn’t think of a response. Obviously, he had known somebody was in the house, and obviously he
had expected it to be somebody else.
His gaze swung to the money on the floor, and he nodded. “I knew it was here.”
Still on one knee, I said, “Was it really worth killing for?”
His smile was like a barracuda’s. “It will be, yes.”
That was when I realized he meant killing me would be worth it.
I said, “I was talking about killing Laura. You said you didn’t, but you did.”
He moved the Glock back and forth like a head shaking. “You’re very naïve about the way the real world works. People like me don’t kill people like Laura. We pay other
people to do it for us.”
“Vaught?”
He frowned and spoke louder. “I said we pay other people to do it for us.”
Help me Rhonda, we were doing a “Who’s on First?” routine.
I said, “A man named Frederick Vaught has confessed to killing Laura. Is that who you paid?”
He actually laughed, an easy relaxed chuckle. “I don’t know who the hell you’re talking about.”
I wasn’t as naïve as Freuland thought. I knew about paid killers, knew how easy it is for somebody in Freuland’s position to hire somebody whose morality is measured in
dollars. But professional killers simply do their job and leave. They lay a bullet in a precise location, or they surprise with a wire garrote around the neck or a swiftly driven
blade between the ribs. They don’t hang around and slash the dead victim’s face in mad fury. Only killers with personal vendettas to settle do that. If Freuland hadn’t killed
Laura himself, he had paid somebody with personal history with her to do it.
A wave of dizziness swept over me as I realized how a thing can happen in one place, and the entire universe shifts to make space for the fact of it. A man accepts two
million dollars from drug dealers who’ve made millions more from selling hopelessness to other men, and hundreds of miles away a gap in time appears, a cosmic breath is held
until a woman is finally stabbed to death in her shower, a death that no longer has anything to do with the two million dollars, but is about a child knowing her father is in her
sister’s bedroom doing something shameful, and she is stunted, maimed, soul-stained with jealousy because it means her father loves her sister best.
I said, “Was mutilating Laura’s face part of what you paid Celeste to do?”
If I’d had any doubts that he was telling the truth about not being the killer, they were dispelled by the shock in his eyes.
“Mutilating her face?”
“Her face was so cut up that the deputy who found her body threw up. Think about that, Mr. Freuland. Think about how lovely Laura was, and how she looked when
Celeste finished with her.”
A faint sheen of perspiration glistened on his forehead. “I didn’t know.”
“Well, that’s the problem with having somebody killed, isn’t it? You can’t control all the details of how they’ll do it.”
For a moment, we looked into each other’s eyes with the stark rawness that can only happen when one person is about to blow another person to smithereens. He may have
paid Celeste to kill Laura, but we both knew he fully planned to kill me himself. I had to stall him, had to keep him talking until . . . until what? Until Pete wondered what was
taking so long and came to investigate and got killed too? I couldn’t let that happen, but I wasn’t ready to give up.
I said, “You expected to find Celeste here tonight, didn’t you?”
“She thought she could outsmart me and take all the money for herself. We’d gone all through the plan, all she had to do was show up, tell Laura she’d come to visit, act
friendly, like a sister, and then take her by surprise and punish her for what she’d done. The bitch spent the entire night here searching for the money but she couldn’t find it.”
Of course she didn’t. Celeste had never had a cat, and it wouldn’t have occurred to her that it was odd for a person to have forty pounds of cat food stored for one cat.
Now I knew who it was that Pete had seen. It had been Celeste, dressed in Laura’s clothes. That’s why Guidry had questioned him so closely about the time, because
Laura had been killed hours earlier.
“I suppose you’ll kill her too, when she comes back?”
He gave me that smile again. “That won’t be necessary. I’ll be long gone when she shows up, and all she’ll find is your body.”
“The cops will think she killed me, and she’ll tell them it was you.”
He shook his head. “She can’t afford to implicate me because she knows I’ll tell them she killed her sister. And the police have no reason to believe she killed Laura. No,
they’ll think the same person who killed Laura killed you, some unknown maniac.”
I had to agree that it was a fairly tight plan.
I had never imagined the end of my life happening this way. Even though my husband had died at thirty, and my child at three, I still thought of death as something that
happened to old people, an inevitable closure to a long full life. But now here I was with a man who seemed determined to make my death as premature as Laura Halston’s.
I said, “Could you just tell me why? Why did you want Laura killed? And don’t tell me it was because of the money she took, or because she reported you to the feds. That
would make you bitter, but it wouldn’t make you a killer.”
I didn’t need to ask why he planned to kill me. We both knew the answer to that.
For a long silent moment, I thought I might have gone too far, and that the next instant might be my last. But then Martin spoke in a tight voice.
“She treated me like a fish, reeling me in one minute and letting me flap at her feet, and then throwing me back.”
“Why? Because you were too little to keep?”
He wagged the gun at me like a head tut-tutting, and I bit my lower lip. I’ve never been good at keeping my mouth shut when a good line pops into my head.
“She liked keeping me on the hook. Wanted me to dangle there in case one of her other men got away. Then she’d have me in reserve. On ice, so to speak.”
I thought of how TV psychologists act, and drew my eyebrows together in a way I hoped looked sympathetic. “That must have been painful for you.”
He was too smart for that. Walking around the bar, he came toward me with the Glock pointed at my forehead. “It’s time to end this charade.”
I wish I could say I kept my cool, but I didn’t. My heart was hammering in my ears, and all I could think about was not letting him see how terrified I was. If this was going
to be my last moment, I didn’t want it to end with my humiliation.
He was breathing heavily, gathering the will to pull the trigger.
In my head, I heard Todd’s voice. “Use your feminine weakness, Dixie. It’s your ultimate weapon.”
Like being hit by lightning, I got the meaning in a flash. Freuland’s need for power made him especially vulnerable to a helpless woman at his feet.
Rolling to the floor, I stretched on my back, put my hands over my face and blubbered that I didn’t want to die.
He came closer, his feet shuffling beside me. When he spoke, his voice oozed satisfaction.
“I see you understand the situation.”
I bobbed my chin up and down and bawled. “Uh-huh, I do.”
“I thought you would. You seem like a smart woman. Too bad you had to stumble onto the money.”
Crying louder, I spread my fingers and looked through them. The overhead fluorescents bathed us both in cold light.
Straddling me, he leaned over with the Glock aimed between my eyes. I opened my mouth wide and howled like a little kid.
At the same time, I jerked a knee to my chest and drove my foot into his big bull balls.
33
A.9mm Glock going off in an enclosed kitchen makes an extremely loud roar. So does a large man with badly bruised gonads. Dropping his gun, Freuland folded to the floor
in a fetal position, and I scrabbled for the Glock.
Panting, I got to my feet. With my knees shaking so violently I had to lean on the counter for support, I covered Freuland with the Glock while I used my free hand to pull
out my cell phone. Fingers trembling like a drunk’s, I punched in Guidry’s number. Mercifully, he answered on the first ring.
My voice seemed to have forgotten how to work. All it could do was make choking noises.
He said, “Dixie?”
I gasped, “I’m at Laura’s—”
That’s all I got out before several shrieks like banshee fury sounded in the living room, so loud that Guidry heard them.
Guidry said, “What? What’s happened?”
There was another scream, a curious thunking sound, then a sound like a heavy object hitting the floor with a dull thump. Then utter silence.
Guidry said, “Dixie?”
Freuland lay mewling and puking on the floor, out of commission for two or three minutes at least. But somebody else was in the house, possibly with accomplices outside.
Guidry’s voice rose. “Dixie? Answer me! Dixie!”
In the stillness, his voice was so loud it echoed.
Putting my lips close to the mouthpiece, I whispered, “Somebody’s here.”
Freuland retched and groaned. I pointed the Glock at him while I kept one eye on the bar where Leo’s supplies sat next to the sack containing a million dollars.
At the edge of the bar, a silver glint extended from behind the wall, then withdrew. My first thought was that it was a gun barrel. My second thought was that it was the blade
of a knife. Then I realized what the shrieking sound had been—Celeste had stepped on Leo’s tail and they’d both screamed. I didn’t want to think about the implication of the
thudding sound hitting the floor. I didn’t want to think about the implication of the tip of that knife blade, either, but the fact was that Celeste was in the house and she was
slipping toward me with a knife in her hand.
Once again, I had been duped by one of the sisters. Celeste had made a big show of refusing the key the locksmith had made, and another big show of telling Guidry she
was returning to Dallas. And all the time she’d known she could easily knock out a pane of glass and get in the house without the key. She had either expected Freuland to
come looking for the money she hadn’t been able to find, or she’d thought she’d give it another search herself. In either case, she had made me a witness to the fact that she
didn’t have a key, and she would have known that I would tell Guidry.
Guidry yelled, “Dixie! Talk to me!”
I put the phone on the counter because I needed both hands to hold the Glock. I had to watch Freuland, and I also had to be ready to stop Celeste. The knife blade
reappeared, slowly edging forward. Bright, shiny, silver.
Guidry barked, “I’m on my way!”
The silver object went still, and Pete’s voice said, “Dixie?”
I swear I think my ears wiggled a little bit in disbelief.
“Pete?”
With saxophone in hand, Pete stepped behind the bar so I could get a good look at him. His fuzzy eyebrows were lowered like a mastiff’s, and his jaw was clenched in a
way I’d never imagined Pete capable of. He didn’t look like a sweet octogenarian clown, he looked like a man who would as soon kill you as smile at you.
With a glance at Freuland groaning on the floor, he said, “Looks like you’ve got him under control.”
I picked up the phone. “It’s okay, it’s Pete. I thought it was Celeste Autrey, but it’s Pete.”
Looking like himself again, Pete said, “Celeste is in the living room.”
For the second time that evening, I was struck speechless. While I gaped at him, he said, “Don’t worry, she’s asleep.”
Oh, shit, it must have been Celeste’s body I heard hitting the floor.
Guidry said, “Talk to me!”
I said, “I’ve got Martin Freuland covered, and I need backup. Freuland came to get his money, and he tried to kill me. But he didn’t kill Laura, Celeste did.” Weakly, I
added, “Celeste is here too.”
Guidry said, “I’m two minutes away, and some units are even closer.”
As he said it, a loud rapping sounded at the front door, and a voice yelled, “Sheriff’s Department!”
Pete sidled away and hollered, “Come on in!”
I heard a man say, “Sir, what’s going on here?”
I yelled, “Freuland’s in here!”
A deputy rounded the corner from the living room and in one sweep took in the bullet hole in the cabinet, the Glock in my hand, and Freuland’s agonized writhing.
Still quivering, I handed the gun to him and crossed my arms over my chest.
“This man tried to kill me with this gun. His aim went bad when I kicked him in the balls.”
The deputy winced. “Lieutenant Guidry is on his way.”
In the living room, the other deputy said, “Sir, what’s the story with the woman?”
Pete said, “Wait, I haven’t explained that to Dixie yet.”
He popped back into view behind the bar with his saxophone tucked under one arm and Leo cradled against his chest. Leo looked surprisingly contented.
“Dixie, I didn’t get a chance to tell you what happened with Celeste. I was on the way to my car to put my saxophone in there and I saw her cross the street from the hedge
where the jogging trail is. For a minute I thought it was Laura, and then I remembered Laura was dead. That’s who I saw Tuesday morning! She looks like Laura when she’s
got on all that jogging stuff. Anyway, she ran in behind the trees so I knew she was coming in here. I don’t trust that woman, and I didn’t like the idea of her coming in on you
like that, so I came down to see what she was up to. The front door was open, and she just came in. When I got to the door, I could see her in the living room, and she had a
big knife in her hand. She looked like she was planning something bad with that knife, so I snuck up on her real quiet.”
The deputy and I stared at him with big round eyes.
The deputy said, “And then?”
In the living room, Guidry’s voice barked a question, and we all looked toward the sound. He spoke a minute to the living room deputy and then came to stand beside Pete.
I turned to face him in all my snotty, tangled, smeared glory, and gave him a megawatt smile. I felt a little bit like a director of a play announcing the characters and their roles.
There in Laura’s kitchen we had a big moaning man in a thousand-dollar suit rolling on the floor and clutching his genitals with both hands. We had two million dollars bundled
in neat packages like Hershey’s chocolate bars. We had a long-tailed cat who had exacted feline revenge by tripping his owner’s killer. Last but by no means least, we had an
octogenarian who had cold-cocked a killer with his saxophone. And we had me, girl pet sitter, size six, thank you very much, five-foot-three inches tall, who had just felled the
big man in the suit.
I said, “Celeste Autrey murdered Laura Halston. She stabbed her to death and then mutilated her face.” I pointed to Freuland. “And he paid her to do it.”
Freuland shuddered and tried to roll to a sitting position. Guidry was instantly beside him, one hand helping him sit up, the other putting a handcuff on one of his wrists. As he
cuffed the other wrist, he Mirandaed him, his voice even and deliberate.
In a dramatic show of indignation, Freuland jerked his torso away, but he was still so groggy from my kick that he toppled over and landed with his head pillowed on a bag
of money. It seemed a fitting support.
EMTs were suddenly in the house to get Celeste. Still holding Leo in his arms, Pete stepped away from the bar to watch them haul her away, while Guidry motioned the
deputies to help Freuland to his feet. Freuland’s face was pasty, with beads of sweat dripping on his silk suit. In minutes, they were all gone except for Pete and me and Guidry
and the first deputies who’d arrived.
One of them said what I’d been dreading. “Lieutenant Guidry, we were just getting a statement from this gentleman when you came. He followed the woman into the house
and stopped her.”
Guidry said, “Stopped her?”
Pete drew himself as tall as possible and tilted his chin toward Leo.
“This here’s my cat. Name’s Purr-C. He was supposed to be in a carrying case”—here he gave me a stern look—“but I guess he got out. Anyway, I was behind Celeste
and she had that knife up, and she was listening to Dixie and that man, and it seemed to me that she didn’t plan anything good for either of them.”
I realized I’d stopped breathing, and forced myself to inhale.
Pete said, “There was a big blasting sound, and a man hollered real loud. I knew he was hurt, but I didn’t know what had happened to Dixie. I started running to see if she
was all right, and then Celeste stepped on Purr-C’s tail. Now, I don’t know if you’re familiar with cats, but when a cat’s tail is stepped on it makes a horrible noise, yowling
and screeching like nobody’s business, and that must have startled Celeste because she commenced yowling and screeching too, and with all that screeching and her with that
knife in her hand, I thought it would be best if I put a stop to it.”
I felt light-headed. Pete had been such a gentle man when I first met him.
The deputy said, “Sir?”
Touching the side of his neck, Pete said, “So I just tapped her with my saxophone.”
Guidry said, “You knocked her out?”
“But not hard. See, I was a clown for a long time with Ringling, and you learn a lot of things when you’re a clown. Some little-town bullies think killing a clown would be
better sport than killing deer or grizzlies, so clowns have to learn to protect themselves.” With a note of pride, he said, “I know sixty-six places to tap a person and put them to
sleep.”
We all went still. I was sure every person in that room believed that tapping a person in some of those sixty-six places would put them to sleep for good.
Pete seemed to know that we knew that, because he rushed to reassure us. “She’ll sleep for about an hour is all, then she’ll wake up yakking like always. If I was you, I’d
make sure she’s tied down before she wakes up. That woman is a she-devil for sure. She gets ahold of a knife, she’ll slit your throats and tell God you cut yourself shaving.”
For a moment, nobody spoke. What do you say to an octogenarian who has just used his saxophone to put a murderous woman to sleep?
Guidry recovered first. “Good job, sir.”
To the deputies, he said, “Radio the EMTs to make sure that woman can’t get access to a knife.”
When he turned to me, he had a glint in his eyes that I couldn’t exactly define, but it looked a lot like admiration. Like Pete, I drew myself a little taller.
Strength is where you find it, and Pete and Leo and I had plenty of it.
34
When Guidry first saw me in my new black dress and my new high heels, he quirked an eyebrow. “You clean up good, Dixie. I like that neckline.”
A blush began somewhere south of my navel and traveled upward. Resisting the urge to grab the front of my dress and hoist it higher, I made an inarticulate gurgling sound
that intended to be words and failed.
Guidry in evening clothes made me feel like a yokel at her first visit to an art museum. All men look dashing and sophisticated in black dinner jackets, but Guidry looked as if
the style had been created for him. His trousers fell in that easy straight way that bespeaks fine fabric and expert cut, the jacket lay on his shoulders in a perfectly fitted caress,
and the collar of his crisp white shirt rose like a tribute toward his firm jawline.
I was still in something of a daze from the hectic week. Pete and Purr-C were happily settled in Pete’s house, with Purr-C cozying up to Pete as if he’d been with him
forever, and not seeming to remember any of his former names.
As Pete had predicted, Celeste had been unconscious for about an hour and then woke up howling mad in the county jail, where she would be held without bail.
Martin Freuland was also in the county jail, his arrogant personage the source of a hot tug of war between federal, Texas, and Florida lawmen. No matter who got him first,
he would face a mountain of charges from the others, and it wasn’t likely that he would be a free man for a long, long time. Maybe never.
Frederick Vaught was still in the county jail too, but since he was only guilty of being weird, he would probably be released. He should have been incarcerated in a mental
hospital, but since our society no longer protects the public from the insane, he would be back on the streets. At least until he commits a crime for which he can be locked up.
The Humane Society gala was held in the ballroom at Michael’s on East, an upscale restaurant and convention center tucked behind a shopping center on the Tamiami Trail.
There was music, there were beautiful people, there was good food. Before we sat down to eat, there was a mingling hour, with cocktails.
Guidry raised his gaze from my chest and said, “You want a drink? They have cheap white wine, cheap red wine, and something in a punch bowl that I think is supposed to
be Sangria.”
“White, please.”
He disappeared into the crowd, leaving me to continue chasing the same question that had been racing through my mind since Thursday night. How could I have liked Laura
Halston so much? How could I have felt such a strong connection to her? Not just when I first met her, when she’d been bright and funny and warm and sympathetic, but after
I’d learned that she was a liar and a thief. Even then, I’d felt empathy for her.
Millions of people fall under the spell of skilled con artists—that’s why they’re called artists—but my attraction to Laura had been more than a rube falling under the
influence of a slick charmer. It hadn’t been sexual, that much I knew. I’d enjoyed her beauty, but I hadn’t wanted her in a sexual way. And while it was true that I was nostalgic
for woman talk and woman confidences, that wasn’t the whole story, and I knew it.
I caught a glimpse of Guidry threading his way through the crowd with a wineglass in each hand, and in the next moment I had a clear-eyed look at myself. I’d been drawn to
Laura Halston for the same reason I was drawn to Guidry. We each had come to it from different places and by different routes, but all three of us were attracted to the edge
of danger.
It was a sobering thought, but not nearly so sobering as the knowledge that flirting with danger was an integral part of who I was, and I doubted that I would ever change.
Guidry emerged from the crowd and sauntered toward me, graceful, bright, funny, honorable, a great-kissing cop. I watched his approach with a sense of fascinated
inevitability, knowing I was lost but unable to save myself.