Cat Sitter Among the Pigeons (9 page)

While we waited, Paco said, “Okay, tell me.”

I gave him the CliffsNotes version. “Three guys in a limo grabbed me in the parking lot at the Village Diner. Two guys in ski masks rode with me in the back, the driver didn’t have a mask. They bound my wrists and ankles with duct tape and put a hood over my head. They took me east of I-Seventy-five to that wealthy area where everybody’s house has its own private landing strip and hangar. A man called Tuck came to the car and the driver said, ‘I got her,’ meaning me. Tuck looked in at me and said, ‘That’s not her.’ Vern was the driver’s name. Dumb as a stump, and mean. Tuck told Vern to fix the problem, also meaning me. So Vern drove me to Friendly’s on Sixty-four and put me out in the parking lot. He told me he would deny anything happened if I reported it, and that I’d be in big trouble.”

Paco dipped a tortilla chip in the guacamole and studied it as if he might find insight in it. “Guidry made you report it, didn’t he?”

“He said as an officer of the law he had to report it. Now there’ll be stuff in the newspaper about me again.”

He gave a dismissive wave of the tortilla. “I wouldn’t worry about it. Some reports of criminal behavior are confidential. Especially if there’s an ongoing investigation.”

A weight lifted from my shoulders. “I went to the Ringling office and looked at mug shots. I didn’t see any that looked like Vern, but I know who Vern thought I was.”

The waitress came wearing padded mitts and carrying metal platters holding bubbling chili-drenched food. As she set the plates down, she said, “The plates are very hot.
Very
hot.”

She always says that. Like idiots, Paco and I compulsively touched the plates anyway. We always do that. Then we jerked our hands away because, like the waitress had warned, those plates were plenty hot.

After we’d gone through the initial ritual of forking up bites so hot we had to fan our mouths and cool them with beer, Paco said, “Who did they think you were?”

I told him about Ruby, and how Ruby had worked for Myra Kreigle pulling rich men into her Ponzi scheme.

“She said Vern was Tucker’s muscle, and that he sometimes works for Myra.”

Paco blew on a forkful of enchilada. “Vern is Vernon Brogher. Vern’s a relative of some sort to Tucker, cousin or something. Works as a bouncer in a strip joint on the north Trail, drives limos for movie stars who come for the Film Festival, generally moves around job to job. He’s been in jail a few times for being drunk and disorderly, fighting in bars, that kind of thing. Word is that Vern sucks up to Tucker and Tucker throws him a bone now and then because he’s a relative.”

I had a mental image of Paco and Guidry standing over the desks of the deputies investigating my kidnapping and soaking up every bit of information.

I said, “What about the other men with Vern? The ones in the ski masks?”

“Last I heard, they hadn’t got results back from IAFIS yet.”

I said, “Ruby has a baby. Looks about four or five months old, a real cutie. Her name is Opal. Ruby is married to a race car driver named Zack.”

Paco nodded. “Zack Carlyle.”

What is it about men and race cars? I’d never heard of Zack Carlyle, but I had the feeling I could go stand in the middle of the street and say “Zack!” and every man for miles would know who he was.

I said, “I always thought a drag race was two hot rods on a downtown street illegally racing.”

“Actually, it’s very expensive gutted-up old cars driven by professional racers on a legal drag strip. Very short course, very fast cars. Zack Carlyle is a champion Pro Stock racer. His uncle is Webster Carlyle, who’s sort of a drag race legend. Webster’s retired, but I guess he was a big influence on Zack, bigger than his father anyway. The father owns an electrical supply company in Bradenton, and Zack works for him. From all accounts, the father isn’t keen on his son spending so much money on a hobby like racing, but Zack makes most of it back in prize money, so I guess the dad can’t complain too much. From all accounts, Zack’s a solid, stand-up guy. He runs a camp for disadvantaged kids, and he’s persuaded a lot of professional racers and other athletes to come out and work with them. They have a little racetrack, run kid-sized racers around it. The kids have fun and learn about timing, sportsmanship, things like that.”

I took a sip of beer and parsed what Paco had just told me. Zack’s father was a successful businessman, Zack was a successful athlete, and there probably was some tension between them. I wondered if Zack’s father had approved of Ruby as a daughter-in-law.

I said, “Zack and Ruby are separated. Mr. Stern doesn’t know if she left Zack or Zack left her, but she came home when Opal was just a few weeks old and then left again without telling Mr. Stern where she was going. According to Ruby, the DA had put her someplace where Myra and Tucker couldn’t get at her. She and the DA worked out a plea bargain deal and she’s going to testify against Myra.”

Paco raised an eyebrow. “If Ruby knows where Myra stashed the money she stole, she could do a lot of damage to Myra. Which means Myra has several hundred million reasons to try to keep Ruby from testifying.”

A beat went by. I wondered if Paco knew more than he was telling. I wondered if Ruby was as innocent as she’d seemed.

I said, “Zack thinks Ruby was in cahoots with Myra, but Ruby expects him to change his mind after she tells the truth in Myra’s trial.”

Paco looked skeptical. “Zack Carlyle’s organization for kids put about a quarter of a million in Myra’s real estate investment trust. He and the other athletes had big plans for expanding the kids’ program. Myra sent out false monthly reports showing their original investment had doubled. The reports were all lies, of course, and their money is down the drain. If Ruby knew the reports were false and kept quiet, he has good reason to be mad at her.”

I thought of Myra Kreigle’s hate-filled face looking down at me, and decided not to mention it to Paco. “No matter how the trial goes, it won’t change anything for all the people who’ve lost jobs and homes because of Myra.”

“Dixie, don’t get involved in this mess. White-collar criminals are just as violent as any other kind. They’ll kill you just as quickly if you get in their way.”

“I’m just taking care of Mr. Stern’s cat. Now that Vern knows I’m not Ruby, he won’t bother me again. He probably won’t bother Ruby, either. He knows she’ll be watching for him now.”

“People like Vern and Tucker and Myra Kreigle have been hurting people since humans stood upright. The only way to be safe from them is to stay away from them.”

“I promise I’m not involved.”

As I said it, I saw Opal’s trusting face. Adults can use common sense to keep themselves safe, but who will keep babies like Opal safe?

11

While Paco and I ate dinner, the sky had darkened to the color of a newborn baby’s eyes, with a lackadaisical gathering of stars punching weak holes in its vault. As we rounded the last curve on the drive to our house, we caught the glint of thin moonlight bouncing off Guidry’s Blazer parked beside the carport. Paco chuckled softly and waggled his eyebrows at me. I poked him in the side, but it was hard to look angry with my lips turned up at the corners. Paco parked in his space and we both climbed out of the car.

He said, “ ’Night.”

I said, “Thanks for dinner.”

Neither of us looked up at my balcony where we both knew Guidry waited. Paco walked briskly to his kitchen door and disappeared inside. I climbed the stairs to my apartment. I did not run, I walked normally. Well, I may have taken them a little faster than usual, but I definitely didn’t run.

In the shadowy darkness of my covered porch, Guidry was almost invisible. With his hands folded over his chest and his legs crossed at the ankle, he was asleep in the hammock strung in the corner. It was a rare opportunity to memorize his face without him knowing, so I stood quietly looking down at him. Except for his chest rising and falling, he looked like a corpse. A very healthy, bronzed corpse.

Around us, the night spoke with the soft chirps of tree frogs, the questioning whistles of ospreys, and tremulous wails of tiny screech owls. The sea seemed to hold its breath waiting for the evening tide.

As if he sensed my presence, Guidry opened his eyes, smiled, and reached for me. I stretched out beside him, the hammock rolled, and we ended up in a tangle of arms and legs on the porch floor, my laughter smothered under his lips. I gave a fleeting thought to the Mexican food on my breath, and then forgot it.

The moon smiled, the tide chuckled, the stars drew closer to watch, and at the end of time our hearts lay bare under an infinite sky, no longer separate from time and space but melded at the limit of love.

Later, behind Guidry’s sleeping shoulders in my narrow bed, I allowed my mind to acknowledge that my happiness had tears in it. Allowed myself to remember the weeks after Todd was killed, how I had inhaled his scent, pressed his shirts against my face, pushed the fabric close to my nose and sobbed. For a long time I hadn’t been able to sleep without him beside me. Death removes the smells, the sounds, the feel of the other that gives them life, so I hadn’t wanted to eat or bathe for fear I would lose the scent of him and have no more memories of him in my pores.

And now another man was in my bed, and I was inhaling him the way I had once inhaled Todd, and it was good and right that he was there. Pain was still with me, but there was more sweetness than pain. New love had come as quietly as cats’ paws, silent as smoke or trickling sand. It had drifted into my consciousness when I least expected it, shoving out memory of old loves, lost loves, hopeless loves, wrong loves, betrayed loves, true love, all fading into the darkness of doesn’t matter. This new love stood alone, marvelous and electric, always believed in but never expected. The lightning it created lit up the universe from eternity to infinity, and lit up my heart from edge to open.

I moved closer to Guidry and pressed my cheek against his bare back. In the night’s space, the touch of his skin made me feel safe. I drifted to sleep knowing that moment was the only thing that mattered, the only truth I needed to hold fast.

12

My daily schedule is set so firmly that I could do it in my sleep. A time or two I may have. I roll out of bed when my alarm rings at four
A.M.
, splash water on my face, brush my teeth, and pull my hair into a ponytail. Still half asleep, I drag on shorts and a T, lace up fresh white Keds—I can’t stand yesterday’s sweaty shoes—and head out to walk the dogs on my schedule. Dogs can’t wait the way cats can, so they get first dibs. Next I call on the cats. Maybe an occasional rabbit, ferret, or guinea pig. No snakes. I refer all snake-sitting jobs to other people. Not that I have anything against critters without feet, but it creeps me out to drop little mice into yawning snakes’ mouths.

Leaving a drowsy man in my bed is definitely not part of my routine, and it felt weird to do it. Even though I’m thirty-three years old and have every right to have a man in my bed any time I choose to, I sort of hoped this was the day Michael would pull an extra shift at the firehouse. Otherwise, he might have come home before Guidry left and know he’d spent the night. Michael respects my right to live my own life, but he’s a bit of a Victorian prude where I’m concerned.

The sky was a stretch of dull blue felt, with a few pale dawdling stars. On the horizon, night had lifted her dark skirt a few inches to let in a shimmer of pale pink day. Along the shoreline, surf babies were tumbling while mother sea slept unaware. The air smelled of ocean and first beginnings, and dew diamonds turned trees and flowers into fairy fantasies. On the porch railing, a slumbering snowy egret trembled at my presence and opened his topaz eyes to monitor my intentions.

Moving slowly so as not to alarm him, I went down the stairs to my Bronco, shooed a sleeping pelican and a young egret from the hood, and got myself back into a professional mode. Spending the night with a man is a surefire way to make a woman’s career go to dead bottom on her list of priorities.

Starting at the south end of the Key and working my way north, I did my usual run with Billy Elliot and the other dogs. Then I reversed direction and called on cat clients, which on that day included three mixed-breed cats who’d been left alone while their humans went on a cruise, a pair of Siamese who’d only been left for a day while their humans were at the hospital welcoming a new baby, and several single cats whose humans were away for reasons none of the cats thought were good enough.

As I was leaving the house of one of the single cats, I saw two women getting out of a van next door. They were taking cleaning supplies from the van, and one woman seemed to be having a personal fight with a rebellious vacuum hose. I was at my Bronco before I recognized them as the cleaning women I’d seen the day before at Mr. Stern’s house. The woman who’d been crying wasn’t with them. Since they worked for Mr. Stern and I worked for Mr. Stern, and since I was pretty sure that Mr. Stern had been rude to her, I sort of felt a sisterly compulsion to go speak to them, maybe try to smooth things over so they wouldn’t think badly of our mutual employer. I caught up with them before they got to the front door, and they both turned to me with the annoyed looks people give missionaries out ringing doorbells.

I said, “Hi, I’m Dixie Hemingway. I’m taking care of Mr. Stern’s cat while his arm heals. You clean for him, don’t you?”

They both studied me for a moment, still waiting for a punch line that would cost them something. Finally the older one said, “I remember you. You were going in when we were leaving.”

The other one said, “Everywhere we go people have cats. We vacuum up more cat hair than anything else. Ruins the motors. This here vacuum is almost brand-new and it’s already running hard from all the cat hair.”

I said, “I know your friend got upset because of the baby at Mr. Stern’s house. I hope she’s okay.”

The older woman scowled. “We don’t know because Doreen didn’t show up this morning. We always meet in the Target parking lot, but she never showed. I called and called, but she didn’t answer her phone, so I don’t know what to think.”