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Authors: Blaize Clement

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BOOK: Duplicity Dogged the Dachshund
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At the loop, we turned and retraced our way back to the Ferrelli house. Stevie must have been listening for us, because she came in the kitchen as soon as we got back. She leaned on the kitchen counter and watched me get out Reggie’s bowl and shake food into it. She watched Reggie fall on his kibble and chew enthusiastically. She seemed dazed, as if she were in someone else’s house watching someone else’s dog.
I said, “I’ll come in the morning and take him for a walk. Is there anything else I can do for you now?”
“Dixie, tell me what happened this morning. How did you find Conrad?”
“I was walking the Powells’ dog, their little dachshund, and she got away from me. She ran into the bushes by the road, and when I went in after her she was digging in a mound of leaves and pine needles. I saw that it was a body, and checked for a pulse. Then I called nine-one-one.”
I didn’t think she needed to know that her neighbor’s dog had pulled on Conrad’s dead hand.
“Did you try CPR? Did you do anything to save him?”
Her voice had risen to a shrill pitch, and she put both hands across her mouth as if to keep herself from screaming.
“Stevie, he had been dead for a while.”
“How could you be sure?”
“I used to be a deputy. I know how to tell if a person is dead.”
“The detective wouldn’t tell me how he was killed. He said there would have to be an autopsy. Don’t they know how he was killed?”
“They probably have a good idea, but that’s the procedure.
Until there’s a formal autopsy, they can’t be absolutely sure what caused a death, so they wait.”
“They can surely see a bullet hole, can’t they?”
Her eyes were wide and unfocused, and I had the feeling she was about to spin out of control.
I said, “Stevie, do you have anything you can take? Something to get you through the next day or two?”
She laughed bitterly. “God, Dixie, everybody in my living room has brought their drug of choice for me. I don’t even take aspirin. I don’t want to be drugged.”
I could hear conversation from the living room. It sounded more like a business meeting than a gathering of the bereaved.
“Are those people in there family?”
She crossed her arms over her chest and hugged herself.
“Conrad’s brother and his wife; she’s the one who answered the door. I’m not sure who those other people are. Somebody Conrad was doing business with, I think. His brother brought them.”
“Do you want them here?”
“Jesus, no. I just don’t know how to get rid of them.”
“Would you like me to do it?”
She looked hopeful. “Could you?”
“Wait here.”
I grabbed a tray from a custom-built slot and walked briskly to the living room, where I started gathering up overflowing ashtrays and half-finished drinks.
I said, “Mrs. Ferrelli needs to rest now. She asked me to tell you good night. She’ll be in touch tomorrow.”
They all stared up at me with sullen expressions of outrage and shock.
The woman who had opened the door said, “Who the hell are you to tell us to leave? You’re not Stevie’s family.”
I straightened from leaning over a table to pick up a crumpled napkin and gave her the look, the look that anybody who has ever been trained in law enforcement knows, the one that says,
Don’t mess with me, bitch; don’t even think about it.
She flushed, and a tall bald man with sensual lips got up. Half of his hairless scalp was mottled with sun spots, the other half was covered with a livid birthmark that split his face in half.
“I think this is where I came in,” he said.
The bitterness in his voice seemed to come from old injustices, old pain, old anger. Everybody looked up at him with apprehensive faces, but his entire visage suddenly altered, going from brooding darkness to urbane smoothness. He crossed the room with a large hand held out to me, his thick lips drawn back in a patronizing smile.
“I’m Denton Ferrelli, Conrad’s brother. You’re the dog-sitter, aren’t you?”
He wore an expensive navy blue suit with the requisite white shirt and tie. Except for his bald head and the dark birthmark, he was like any well-educated rich man. But his voice was too icky-soft, like a scab that floats off in the bathwater, and either drugs or dislike for me had made his pupils contract to pinpricks.
Since both my hands were occupied with the tray, I ignored his proffered handshake.
“I’m Dixie Hemingway.”
“Good of you to take care of Stevie. The family appreciates it.”
My skin prickled at the slimy innuendo that Stevie was the dog I was there to take care of. He winked lazily, one maroon eyelid sliding over a milky yellow-green eye, giving his face the look of a heavy-lidded cobra. As he held my gaze, the tip of a fleshy gray tongue crept between his heavy lips and rapidly flicked back and forth. It was a peculiarly lewd gesture that left me feeling dirtied, as if he’d jacked off against me.
His expression hardened. “We’ll be going now. Because we choose to, dog-sitter, not because you’ve told us to.”
Everybody immediately got busy finding their purses or adjusting their crotches, depending on their sex, and generally working their way toward the front door. I stood with the tray full of cocktail glasses and watched them leave. The last
person out was Denton Ferrelli. He turned before he closed the front door and did the lip-licking thing again. Denton Ferrelli might be a multimillionaire, but he was a crass bastard.
I opened the sliding glass doors to air out the smoke in the room, and took the tray into the kitchen. Stevie was standing exactly where I’d left her, with Reggie lying on her feet, pushing his body close against her ankles.
I said, “They’re gone. I told them you’d be in touch tomorrow.”
She buried her face in her hands and sobbed for a quick moment, as if she had an allotted amount of time for crying and didn’t want to waste it.
When she raised her head, her face was wet.
I said, “Have you eaten anything today?”
“I guess. I don’t know.”
I suddenly realized what was missing from this house of mourning. In ordinary Florida neighborhoods, death automatically means neighbors bearing platters of fried chicken and bowls of potato salad. They bring deviled eggs and green Jell-O salad and red Jell-O salad and cookies and meat loaf. They bring it in a steady stream until the bereaved are inundated with gastronomic sympathy. Most of Stevie’s neighbors had left for the summer, and her relatives had brought drugs. The rich really
are
different from everybody else.
I pawed around in her refrigerator and found eggs and butter. She watched me beat a couple of eggs in a bowl, watched me scramble them in butter in a skillet, and obediently sat down at the bar when I put them on a plate. Neither of us talked. I gave her a fork and a napkin and poured her a glass of wine from a bottle in the refrigerator. While she ate, I ran water in the sink and squirted dishwashing liquid in it to make it bubble. I washed the skillet, bowl, and beater and turned around to look at her. She had polished off the scrambled eggs and was sipping her wine.
She said, “You had something like this happen to you, didn’t you?’
I leaned against the counter and wiped my wet hands with a dish towel. “Three years ago, my husband and our little girl were on their way home, and they stopped to get some things for supper. My husband was a deputy, and he had picked Christy up at day care when he got off duty. She was three years old.”
I stopped and swallowed a lump in my throat. I had never told this before, not to somebody I didn’t know well. I wasn’t sure I could tell it now, but I knew I needed to say it. Not just for Stevie, but for myself too.
“I’m sure Todd was holding her hand when they walked across the parking lot, he was always careful with her. She was probably skipping along and telling him all the things that had happened that day, and he was listening to her like everything she said was the most important thing he’d ever heard. He was like that. With everybody.”
My hands were bone dry but I kept drying them on the towel anyway. “A man driving across the parking lot turned into a parking place. He was ninety years old and almost blind, but he had a current driver’s license. He lifted his foot to hit the brake, but instead he slammed it down on the gas. He hit Todd and Christy and three other people. They told me Todd and Christy died instantly, but I’m not sure if that’s true.”
I looked up to see tears rolling down Stevie’s face. She whispered, “Oh, my dear God.”
I said, “That’s why I won’t try to make you feel better about what’s happened. I won’t tell you to cheer up because Conrad’s with Jesus now. I won’t tell you that one day you’ll stop hurting, because you won’t. But one day you’ll pick up your life and go on, because you’ll have to.”
She and Reggie walked with me to the front door. Before I went out, I said, “Stevie, Reggie wasn’t wearing a collar when I found him this morning. Is that unusual?”
She smiled and shook her head. “He’s so well trained to heel that Conrad always lets him run free.”
“And the necktie?”
She shrugged. “That was just Conrad. He really didn’t
like dog collars; he thought they were demeaning. He put bandannas and neckties on Reggie. Every now and then a necklace. A different drummer, you know.”
“I put the tie on the shelf with the dog food.”
She gave me a quick hug. “I’ll see you tomorrow.”
As I got in the Bronco, she and Reggie stood in the doorway and gazed after me with identical expressions of stunned sorrow.
B
efore I pulled out of the driveway, I punched the CD button and let Patsy Cline’s voice fill the car. Spend a few minutes with Patsy, and the world gets back in balance, especially after dark. Before noon it takes Roy Orbison to set things straight. They sort of balance out the day, which isn’t surprising. Anybody who’s ever given it any thought knows that Patsy and Roy are riding through eternity on the same soul train, blowing each other away with their heart truths.
It was near eight-thirty when I got home. Michael’s prized grill was glowing, and the plank table on the deck was set. Michael was standing on the beach with his feet spread wide and his hands jammed in his pockets. An enormous orange sun hovered wetly above the horizon, pulsating like a living heart so its edges moved with its own heat. I walked down and stood beside him, both of us silent as sun and sea touched like lovers. The sea pulled the sun inside herself and left the sky smiling cerise and violet and peach. Michael and I let out held breaths. No matter how many times you watch that lovemaking, you never stop being awed by it.
He slung an arm over my shoulder, and we walked up the beach to the deck.
He said, “Are you hungry?”
“Are you kidding? I’m positively hollow.”
He grinned with the pure joy that a master chef gets on
hearing that people want to eat. Michael works 24/48 at the firehouse, meaning twenty-four hours on duty, and fortyeight hours off. But always, whether he’s at the firehouse or at home, he cooks. Like firefighting, cooking is Michael’s way of saving people. To him, there’s nothing so awful that a good meal won’t make better.
I said, “Where’s Paco?”
“Asleep. He has to work tonight, and he didn’t get to bed until late this afternoon.”
Vice cops work irregular hours, and for the last several weeks Paco had been leaving every night a little before ten and coming home late in the morning. Since an undercover cop’s life can depend on secrecy, Michael and I never mentioned it, not even between ourselves. But it didn’t take a super sleuth to deduce that he was working at some night job.
As much as he might enjoy having dinner with us, Paco exercises a good cop’s judicious selfishness. Cops have to know what they absolutely require in order to function at their best, and not let anything keep them from getting it. A cop who needs sleep may accidentally kill somebody. A cop who goes too long without food may let his temper flare. A cop who needs to be alone and sort out the horror of something he’s just seen may do something stupid. A cop who puts time with his family over his own needs won’t be a good cop. He may not even be a living cop. Anybody too sentimental to be selfish ought to take up a different line of work than law enforcement.
I said, “I’ll just be a minute. I have to go shower.”
I ran up the stairs to my apartment and was naked by the time I got to the bathroom. I jumped in the shower to wash away the afternoon’s heat and pet spit, slicked my wet hair back into a ponytail, ran lipstick over my mouth, and hopped around the closet pulling on underpants. I stepped into canvas mules and fought on a short dress with spaghetti straps and a built-in bra—surely the best invention ever—and was still damp and pushing everything into place when I clattered down the stairs to join Michael on the wooden deck.
He pulled out my chair with an unself-conscious gallantry
that always makes me feel misty-eyed, and headed inside for the food. Paco met him at the door, groggy-eyed and cheek-creased, but alert.
Michael said, “Oh good, you’re awake!” and moved inside with a little extra zip in his step that made me grin.
Paco gave my ponytail a gentle yank and slid into his chair. He was wearing the same outfit he’d been wearing every night since he started working at his mystery job: pleated khaki Dockers and a tucked-in black waffle-knit shirt with a collar and front pocket. The shirt was bulky, and you could see the bulge of its tail under his pants. My mind ran down all the night jobs that would require those clothes and came up with something like a motel night clerk. Not a sleazy motel where the night clerks could wear anything they wanted to, and not a premium motel where they wore suits. Maybe something along Tamiami Trail where families stayed.
Whatever it was, he didn’t seem to be looking forward to it. He and I sat like slugs while Michael brushed olive oil on grouper fillets and slices of plantain and chayote squash. He squeezed lime juice on the grouper and laid everything on the grill along with a rack of corn on the cob. While that cooked, we all ate yummy cold avocado soup with teensy shrimp in it, and I told them how Mame had found Conrad Ferrelli’s body. Except I left out the part about the lipstick smear on Conrad’s face. Even to family, you don’t divulge important secrets like that.
Michael got up once to turn the stuff on the grill and get hot French bread and orange butter, but he didn’t ask any questions. Which made me nervous. Ever since we were kids, Michael has always known when I’m not being absolutely honest with him. When he thinks I’m holding out, he gets very quiet, like he was now. Paco was noncommittal too. He spooned up soup and listened intently, but he was as silent as Michael, and a couple of times I caught them exchanging enigmatic looks, the way parents do when they’re listening to a child getting herself deeper and deeper into trouble.
When the fish and corn and plantains and chayote were ready, Michael served our plates at the grill and brought them to the table. He topped the grouper with mango salsa and added wine to my glass and his. Paco was sticking to iced tea.
I took a bite and moaned like a satisfied cat. We all ate silently for a few minutes, our taste buds too overjoyed for speech, and then Michael came up for air.
“Who’s investigating the Ferrelli case?”
“Guidry. Guidry’s investigating.” I sounded like an echo chamber.
“Ah, Lieutenant Guidry. So did you tell Guidry everything you knew?”
“Sure.”
“Uh-hunh. Did you tell him whatever it is you haven’t told us?”
Paco looked across at him and quickly stopped himself from grinning.
I chewed and swallowed. I took a sip of wine. I shook my head.
“Not exactly.”
He gave me a stern look.
“What’s going on, Dixie? Why am I getting the feeling you’re involved in something you shouldn’t be?”
Like it might be my last meal, I took a second to enjoy the flavors in my mouth.
“It probably has something to do with the car I saw this morning.”
Michael chewed somberly, looking steadily at me while I took another bite.
I said, “I saw a car driving fast this morning. It was Conrad Ferrelli’s car, and his dog was in the backseat, so I thought Conrad was driving.”
I took another bite and avoided Michael’s stare.
“And?”
“And I waved hello.”
Michael drank half his glass of wine, sort of compulsively, I thought.
He put the glass down and leaned toward me a tiny bit, the way he used to do when we were kids and he was getting ready to tell me he was going to kick my ass clear to Cuba if I didn’t tell him the truth.
He said, “It’s all over the news that Conrad Ferrelli was murdered this morning. They found his car in one of the beach-access parking lots. Are you telling me you saw the murderer leaving and you waved at him?”
“That’s about the size of it.”
He took a deep breath and chomped hard on a chayote slice.
“Did you tell Guidry you saw the car?”
“Sure.”
“But you didn’t tell him about waving to the driver, did you?”
I chewed and swallowed. I took a sip of wine. I shook my head.
“Not exactly.”
“Dixie—”
“Don’t lecture me, Michael. I wouldn’t have waved if I’d known a murderer was driving the car.”
Paco said, “She’s right, Michael. You would have done the same thing.”
I shot Paco a grateful smile, but his face was somber.
He said, “You have plenty of bullets for your thirty-eight?”
Michael slammed down his wineglass. “Come on, Paco, it’s bad enough as it is.”
“That’s why she needs to get her gun out and keep it with her. She’s in and out of empty houses all the time, and whoever killed Ferrelli may know it. She’ll be a sitting duck if she’s not prepared.”
He was right, and I knew it. I had already thought about the thirty-eight.
I said, “It’ll just be for a little while, Michael. They’ll catch the guy.”
“You call your detective first thing in the morning and tell him about this.”
“He’s not my detective, but I’ll call him.”
“Just promise me you’ll stay out of this one, Dixie. I can’t go through that again.”
“Don’t worry, I’ll stay out of it.”
He went silent again, and I couldn’t blame him. I didn’t believe me either. How could I stay out of it when I was already in it?
Paco stood up and stacked his dishes to carry inside. Before he picked them up, he put his arms overhead and stretched, tilting his head back and pulling his spine tall, twisting a bit to get vertebrae lined up right. When a healthy man as gorgeous as Paco stretches out in front of you, you might as well enjoy the sight even though he’s as unattainable as one of the rings of Saturn. As he flexed his shoulders backward, his knit shirt snagged on something on his muscled chest, and a chunk of comprehension fell into my brain with a scary thunk. Paco wore a transmitter under that shirt.
I blurted, “I can see your nipples when you do that.”
Startled, he jerked his arms down and gave me a puzzled look. Michael had the same incredulous look on his face, like
What the hell?
I met Paco’s gaze and saw his eyes shift as he realized my meaning.
He said, “Thanks, babe, I’ll remember not to do that.”
Michael stood up and started gathering dishes to take inside, shaking his head and muttering that all God’s children had nipples, for God’s sake, and what was the big deal? Paco and I didn’t enlighten him. Michael worries enough as it is. He didn’t need to know that Paco was going to some job every night to record information that would lead to somebody’s arrest.
Up in my apartment, I locked the French doors and lowered the metal hurricane shutters that double as security bars. In the bedroom, I pulled my narrow bed away from the wall and opened the drawer built into its far side. The Sarasota County Sheriff’s Department issues 9-millimeter Sig-Sauers to its officers. When an officer leaves the force,
either through retirement or death, the department-issued gun has to be returned. But every law-enforcement officer has personal pieces for which he or she is lawfully qualified, and I had kept both Todd’s and mine in a specially built case in the drawer under my bed.
The guns were all there, fitted into their felt-lined niches: Todd’s 9-millimeter Glock and his Colt .357, along with my own Smith and Wesson .32 and a .38 that was my favorite. The .38 fit my hand the way it fit its niche in the case. I took it to the bar in the kitchen and cleaned and oiled it, finding as always a deep sense of satisfaction from the workmanship that went into making it, all the pieces sliding into one another so smoothly. When it was gleaming and ready to operate, I slid a magazine in the butt and got out two extra magazines to carry in my pocket. I put away the oil and polishing cloth and took the gun with me to the bathroom. I took a long shower and fell into bed with the .38 on the bedside table.
As usual, I dreamed of Todd and Christy. I dreamed of them every night, as if we had a standing dreamtime appointment to get together. This time I dreamed I went to heaven to get them and bring them home. I went to a big barred door and yelled for somebody to let me in, and God came down a long walk to look through the bars at me. He looked like Heidi’s grandfather, with long white hair and a flowing white robe, but he had a wreath of leaves around his head like Caesar.
I said, “You can’t keep them here. It’s against the law.”
He shook his head in a kind of pitying way, the way people do when they hear somebody say something incredibly stupid. “I’m above the law,” he said. “You should know that.”
I said, “Nobody’s above the law, not even you.”
“Ah,” he said, “you still believe that, do you? That’s your lesson to learn in this lifetime: the law isn’t for everybody.”
He turned his back on me and I clung weeping to the bars and shouted after him. “What about Todd and Christy?”
His voice floated back like a sigh. “They’ve already learned their lessons. Now they can reap their rewards.”
I woke up with clenched fists, so angry I could have smashed someone. It’s the same anger that has simmered under the surface for the past three years, the anger that makes the sheriff’s department leery of letting me go back to work. I wish I could get rid of it, but it seems to have moved in to stay, like an undesirable relative that I can’t shake.
The digital readout on the bedside clock showed 2:26. The red numbers lit the gun and gave it an eerie glow. I thought of Stevie Ferrelli sleeping for the first time without her husband, probably having her own dreams of loss. I thought of the killer who might believe I’d recognized him. I thought of all the places where I would be vulnerable: the early morning streets when I walked dogs, the houses where cats or gerbils or birds waited alone.
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