Cat Sitter Among the Pigeons (18 page)

“I think I know who took Opal. And I think we can put our heads together and figure out where she is.”

Zack’s blue-purple eyes almost disappeared in a skeptical squint. “If you know something, you should tell the cops.”

“I’m afraid telling what I know could make matters worse.”

I wiped my shrimpy hands on a napkin and leaned forward. I gave them a quick rundown of how Vern had kidnapped me the day before and taken me to Kantor Tucker’s place. I told them I believed Myra had seen me in Mr. Stern’s courtyard and ordered Vern to grab me. I told them about the young woman I’d seen at Myra’s window.

The waitress came bearing beer and two orders of buffalo shrimp. She put a plate in front of each man, but Zack pushed his across the table to Cupcake. Deftly, Cupcake transferred all the shrimp to one plate and handed the empty to the waitress.

As soon as she left us, Cupcake circled a finger the size of a bratwurst for me to go on with my story.

“This morning, after everybody left Mr. Stern’s house, I saw both Tucker and Myra leave. I thought the young woman might be in the house with Opal. It was stupid, I know, but I went into Myra’s house looking for Opal.”

Zack looked disapproving, Cupcake put a whole shrimp in his mouth and beamed at me.

Zack said, “So you like to involve yourself in the affairs of well-known people, is that it? Think you’d like to see your name in the newspaper?”

I felt heat rising to my face. “My name has been in the newspaper several times, Zack, and I hated it. Once was when my husband and child were killed. I know the pain of losing a child, and I hope you and Ruby never feel that pain.”

Zack looked chastened.

I said, “Just for the record, I was a deputy for several years.”

Cupcake raised a plate-sized hand. “Dixie, there’s something you should know too, just for the record. The arson investigators found some nitrous oxide canisters in the bedroom where the fire was. They questioned Zack about them.”

“I don’t understand.”

Zack’s voice was bitter. “Pro Modified racers use nitrous oxide to supercharge their engines. I don’t do Pro Modified racing, I’m Pro Stock, but whoever started that fire tried to implicate me with those canisters.”

I said, “There was a weird sweet smell along with the smoke.”

“That would have been the nitrous oxide. It’s not flammable itself, but it intensifies fire.”

“I don’t imagine the kind of people who kidnap babies and set fire to their bedrooms would get all moral when it came to leaving false evidence behind.”

“You’re right. Sorry to act like an ass. Go on with your story.”

I could see why Ruby had fallen for him. He had a problem with expressing emotion, but he made up for it with integrity.

I said, “I went all through Myra’s house, but it was empty. I can’t be sure, but it looked like somebody had packed a suitcase in one of the bedrooms. Before I could leave, Myra came home with a young Hispanic woman named Angelina. I hid, and I heard enough to know that Angelina had run away from a house where Vern had taken her. He had frightened her so badly that she’d gone out on a highway where a woman picked her up and took her to a bodega on Clark Road. She had called Myra to come get her. Myra was furious at her, and called Tucker to tell him he had to drive Angelina back to where she’d been. She got even more furious when Tucker told her she’d have to do it herself. She said she didn’t have time to drive forty miles to deliver Angelina. She had no choice, though, so she promised Angelina that Vern wouldn’t bother her again, and they left. That’s where Opal is, forty miles away.”

Both men stared at me.

Cupcake said, “Forty miles in which direction? In which house?”

Zack said, “This isn’t information, it’s gossip.”

I said, “Think about it. Angelina said there were lots of alligators on the road, on both sides.”

Dryly, Cupcake said, “Well, that narrows it down to about every road in Florida.”

“Not really. She sounded like the alligators were very close to the road, the way they are along Highway Seventy-two where it goes through Myakka State Park. The alligators along that stretch of road are huge. They’d scare anybody walking along the shoulder.”

Cupcake dipped two shrimp at one time into runny bleu cheese. “I don’t think there
is
a shoulder on that stretch.”

“That’s what I’m talking about.”

Zack said, “Have you told this to the officer handling the investigation?”

I studied his face, looking for a sign that would tell me he had the imagination to think in a non-linear, non-rote, non-lockstep way. The only thing I saw was a young man dazed by shock and misery.

I said, “If either of you repeat what I’m going to tell you, I’ll deny that I ever said it.”

Their necks straightened and their eyes widened. Cupcake even stopped eating.

“You know when Myra and Tucker spoke to Ruby this morning? And how Ruby told you she’d been wrong to think Myra had anything to do with the kidnapping? Well, she lied. I heard what Myra and Tucker said to her. They didn’t exactly spell it out, but they made it plain that Opal would be kept safe if Ruby zipped her lips at Myra’s trial. But if Ruby tells the truth about where Myra put all the money she stole from investors, Opal will be thrown to sharks.”

A spasm of pain flickered across Zack’s face. He took a long, shuddering breath, his jaws clamped together so hard that his lean cheek muscles quivered.

I said, “If this were a TV show, I’d go tell the investigators and they’d arrest Myra and Tucker, find Opal, and bring her home. But this is the real world, and Tucker is richer than the state of Florida. He probably owns a crooked cop in every county. The minute Tucker becomes a person of interest in Opal’s disappearance, one of his informers will call him and warn him. He could dispose of Opal’s little body in a million different ways, one of which could be tossing her to alligators in one of those swamps in Myakka Park.”

Zack said, “What do you have in mind?”

“First, we have to find out where they’re hiding her. Then we have to go in and get her.”

A look passed between Cupcake and Zack, one of those
Are-you-thinking-what-I’m-thinking?
looks that old friends do.

Cupcake said, “Chainsaw’s.”

Zack nodded. “If anywhere, that would be the place.”

While I tried to figure out what the heck they were talking about, Zack seemed to go inside himself and wrestle with an inner demon. After a long moment, he looked from Cupcake to me with a stern young face. “Ordinarily, I’d say we had to play it by the book, not play vigilante and take the law into our own hands. But not this time. This time my baby’s life is on the line, not some principle.”

Cupcake gave Zack a dimpled smile. “Atta boy.”

I said, “Who’s Chainsaw?”

Cupcake said, “It’s a what, not a who. Dive on the edge of Bradenton where lowlifes like baby-kidnappers hang out. Somebody there may know something.”

In one fluid motion, Zack stood up and tossed money on the table. “Let’s go.”

I said, “I’ll follow you.” No way in hell was I going to let them go without me.

Zack was moving toward the steps to the sidewalk as if the decision to act had galvanized him. Cupcake and I hurried after him.

Cupcake said, “You got a cap or something? Somebody in that place might recognize you.”

I had already had the same thought. If Vern or one of the guys who’d kidnapped me hung out at the bar, they’d spot me at once.

I said, “It’s in my truck. Also some dark shades.”

On the sidewalk, Zack and Cupcake rushed to Zack’s convertible and I loped off to my Bronco. Zack waited to pull away from the curb until there was a gap in traffic big enough to let me swing into the street behind him. You can tell a lot about a person by the way they handle being the lead car in a two-car convoy. Whether they’re thoughtless or aware, whether they’re able to gauge their speed so both cars end up on the same side of a red traffic light, whether they weave in and out of traffic or stay in the same lane. Zack was a good leader. My respect for him was climbing, but I still wished he would be his own man and not let his father push him around.

Chainsaw’s turned out to be a squat building in one of Florida’s few remaining old fishing villages on Cortez Road, a narrow street connecting Anna Maria Island to the mainland. Grill net bans have mostly put commercial fishermen out of business, but nostalgia and stubbornness have kept a few areas free of high-rises and hotels. Chainsaw’s was in one of those moldy places. It sat at one end of an almost abandoned strip center. A Goodwill store was at the other end.

Neither looked as if they were frequented by people living the good life.

23

I parked next to Zack’s car in an odd-shaped graveled lot full of potholes deep enough to lose a child in. I rummaged in the Bronco’s glove box and dragged out an old black cap with a big bill and a fishing lure embroidered on the front. It had originally belonged to Michael, and it had been in my car long enough to acquire a patina of aged dust. With my ponytail coiled under it and the cap pulled low over a big pair of dark glasses, I felt sufficiently disguised to pass under Vern’s nose without being recognized.

Crossing the uneven lot toward Chainsaw’s entrance felt as distasteful and dangerous as slogging across the river Styx. To add to the feeling, Chainsaw’s entrance was flanked by a row of humanoid figures crudely carved from driftwood. Every head was identical, with round maniacal eyes like sixteenth-century gargoyles. A tattoo parlor next door to Chainsaw’s had a big red
NO DRUNKS!
sign on the front door, but the sign looked as if it was accustomed to being ignored.

Inside, it was so dark that we had to wait a moment to let our eyes get accustomed to the change from bright sunshine. Considering the early afternoon hour, the place was surprisingly crowded. Shadowy masculine figures that looked a lot like the driftwood carvings slumped on bar stools, other men hunched over tables centered by dim lights inside thick red shades. A few heads turned to look our way, but mostly the men seemed too absorbed in their own bored resentment. Florida fishermen have long memories, and they’ll never reconcile to being ruined to further tourism and development.

When we could see, we followed a waitress way too old for the loose tank top that revealed sagging bare breasts in front and a mermaid tattooed across her back. She showed us to a table, took our orders, and weaved her way through tables and drunks coming from the men’s room. We sat back and scanned the room, not certain who we were looking for, but hoping we would recognize him if he was there. The men at the bar were silent, drinking bottled beer and staring at the wall covered by faded photographs of fishermen and their boats.

To one side of us, a drunken middle-aged man and woman were deep into sloppy pre-coital grins and slurred innuendos they believed were clever. He probably had a wife somewhere at work, but for the moment he was caught in the illusion of being free and desirable. They pushed back their chairs and left as the waitress brought our beers.

With practiced disdain, she watched the couple maneuver through the door with their arms around each other’s waists. “Between you and me, that woman’s days for making money with her body should have ended about ten years ago. Now she’s got it all held together with them elastic underthings, those whatcha-call-’em, Stanks.”

I said, “Spanx.”

She set our beers down with sharp clicks.

“You go around pushing things out and pulling things in that nature don’t mean to line up like that, it’s the same thing as lying to God and think he don’t know no better.”

I said, “You got that right.”

“You ain’t from around here, are you?”

“Not since I was real little. My daddy was a fisherman. I’m just passing through, wanted to stop here for old times’ sake.”

“Not many fishermen come here anymore. Mostly just a bunch of scum.”

She arched a meaningful eyebrow at a man at a table behind us, and I swiveled in my chair to get a better look at him. Caucasian, wide shoulders, big hands. He could have been one of the men who helped Vern kidnap me, but then so could most of the other men in the downrun bar.

The waitress leaned down and lowered her voice. “If that creep bothers you, you let me know.”

Somebody hollered for a refill, and she swished away with her back muscles rippling so the mermaid tattoo undulated.

The creep she’d singled out had an empty pitcher of beer on his table and a half-filled mug. From his flush-faced, loose-lipped scowl, he looked as if he’d already emptied several pitchers.

Cupcake straightened in his seat and yelled loud enough for everybody in the bar to hear. “Hey, sweetheart, my buddy over here’s running low. Bring him a fresh pitcher!”

The waitress whirled and stared at Cupcake, then looked at me as if I’d betrayed her. I shrugged and rolled my eyes, a woman-to-woman message that said I wasn’t to be held responsible for the dumb things any man did. She did the same eye-roll, and in a minute plopped down a full pitcher of beer at the next table. The man looked up at her stupidly, too drunk to realize what was going on.

In a nanosecond, Cupcake had scooted his chair across the grimy floor to the man’s table. “Drink’s on me, buddy! We gotta stick together.”

A little bit of drool moistened the corners of the man’s lips when he grinned. “Schtick together!”

Cupcake said, “Yes sir, me and my other buddy here have been where you are. We know what it’s like to be out of work, no paycheck. Man, it’s rough! Now we’re in the money, we help out our buddies.”

The man squinted and frowned. “I ain’t out of work. Got a good job.”

Zack stood up, dragged his chair to the man’s table, and sat down as delicately as a Sunday school teacher. “It’s okay, friend. Nothing to be ashamed about. Lots of good men out of work right now.”

Red-faced, the man sat as upright as he could manage. “Nah, nah, I’m telling you, man, I got a good job. Big job. Hell, my boss owns this place!”

Zack said, “This bar?”

“No, man! This whole place! All of it!”